“Graham said she was earlier. They were sitting on them in the kayak after the island. He doesn’t remember why they hadn’t put them back on.”

Polly thought of being young, warm sand grinding into your tailbone or knees. You finish and you laugh and you climb back into a kayak without weighing your skin down.

Not Polly. She could have been out of her sexual pea brain, drunk to her nose, and she still would have put on a preserver in a kayak in that kind of water.

“People fuck up,” said Harry. “It’s so easy to fuck up. It only takes a moment when the water is this high. Don’t overthink this.”

Helen touched Polly’s cheek and whispered. Had Polly read the secret message?

Polly looked down at the waves Helen had drawn in lieu of letters.

“Is it about a treasure?”

Helen shook her head, disappointed. Her brown eyes, the spiral of blond curls, a hint of the family attitude to her mouth.

“Magic?” asked Polly.

Helen smiled. Harry leaned over and studied the notebook. “Working again, Poll?”

“Always,” she said. “Just Drake’s slush pile.”

Harry tapped the notebook. “Is that Dee?”

They looked at the open page next to Helen’s secret alphabet, Polly’s paltry paragraph of notes about a script next to a doodle of tree leaves and a profile of an old woman.

Huh, thought Polly. It did look like her.

Helen was sad, Helen was quiet. She wanted a glass of chocolate milk and Polly didn’t bother with a lecture about dental health. When Polly tucked her in, Helen said again that she wanted to look for Ariel. They’d get in a boat and find her. Polly was so good at finding things.

Ah, said Polly, lying down next to her. We will find her, but you have swimming lessons. She knew where Helen was going with this. Finding meant fixing. Finding was a cure, and being lost was horror. A kid could hear a word clearly but entirely miss its context. She watched the tiny wrist flex to drink the milk, listening to the stagy gulp, waited for Helen to close her eyes, remembering what it was like to be small, holding a glass like that, wanting to make everything better in the world.