Flora barked. She dug in her front paws, pointing at the leviathan, barking and howling. Patrick was a fisherman; he often took Probable Cause out to the Race, to go after stripers. He had once hooked a prizewinning bluefish that weighed in at close to forty pounds. This monster put anything Patrick had ever caught to shame. It had to be four meters long. And he knew, from having been to Mystic Aquarium and having visited Nova Scotia, that it was a beluga whale.

Beluga whales were native to Cape Hawk. While there a month ago, when he first found Lily and Rose, he had heard the whole story about Nanny. Supposedly she had swum down to Boston while Rose had her heart surgery. Could this be the same damn whale, here in the waters of Hubbard's Point? Was this part of the oceanographic anomaly Liam had spoken about?

Wherever it had come from, it didn't seem in a big hurry to leave. Patrick's heart was beating like a snare drum, so fast he could hardly breathe. Flora, on the other hand, seemed to have made her peace with the whale. She lay on the seawall, panting. The whale rose to the surface, eyes on Patrick.

As Patrick followed the whale, he felt his heart start to calm down. In fact, he felt an ease spread through his body that he hadn't felt in a long time. There was something very beautiful about the animal; its eyes looked almost human, as if there was a soul deep inside. It gave him a sense of peace, and he suddenly knew what he had to do.

Almost without thinking, Patrick reached for his cell phone. He dialed a number that he had rarely called before, but that he had somehow committed to memory.

“Hello?” she said.

“Marisa,” he said. “It's Patrick.”

“Hi, Patrick,” she said.

“I had to call you, Marisa,” he said. “I took a drive today.”

“Really?” she asked. “Where did you go?”

“Baltimore,” he said.

“Oh!” she said, sounding excited. “Where I used to live with Sam. She'll be back there soon, unless she comes straight up here, to the ceili.”

“Marisa, I went to see Sam,” he said.

“But she's in Peru,” Marisa said.

Patrick stared out at the whale. Her dark, sweet eyes gazed out from the gentle waves. He wished he could somehow soften what he had to say. He held the phone with both hands, just as he would have held Marisa's hand.

“She's home,” he said.

Marisa was silent for a few long moments. “No,” she said.

“I'm sorry,” he said. “She got home last week.”

“Why didn't she call me?” Marisa whispered.