It hadn’t been any different throughout her life. When Dad needed to think or needed to understand or decide, he’d take the boat out. Maybe he’d be gone for an hour, or maybe six, but when he returned so did his smile and peaceful way. He found himself out on these waters and somehow in the middle of last night, he’d tried to do the same again. He’d wanted Gavin back and he’d believed that he’d find himself out here as he always had.

She couldn’t explain all that to Beckett. She could just point him to the outlet where the river met the sea.

Chapter Thirty-one

Memory both is and is not our past.

James Gleick, Time Travel

Sunlight glittered over the surface of the water, tossing itself around the waves, playing. Splendor didn’t fade in the light of danger, but instead seemed to taunt Colleen. Her dad had headed out here for exactly this, for the inherent beauty, and for the connection to the other side of the sea.

The immensity of the ocean overwhelmed Colleen and she let out a cry as she moved to the bow of Beckett’s boat. She and Hallie had always talked of the universe’s never-ending expanses. As children this had scared them. So much out there. Too much unknown. They’d talk about it and scare themselves and then cower beneath the covers together. No matter how big the universe, together they had their one little square on earth.

But now the sea felt larger than the universe, a place where it would be impossible to find one little dot of a boat and man who had been gone for at least twelve hours. Colleen stared over the water and then to the sky, wanting to beg the sun not to move, to stay exactly where it was until they found her dad. Don’t slide below the horizon. Don’t take us to darkness.

Above, the whap-whap sound of blades slapping through the air caused Colleen to look up. A helicopter. She glanced back at Beckett and formed a prayer motion, hands on her chest. Thank God for the helicopter, they would find him. She knew they would. Which didn’t mean that she would quit looking, but now they had a better chance.

It was afternoon now—the sun was brutal and Beckett’s small canopy offered little shade. He found two baseball hats in the bottom of a cooler, moldy and wet, but they both put them on, knowing the beating sun would do them no favors. There was an old curdled tube of sunblock and they both slathered cream on their exposed skin. But there was no turning back, that much was for certain.