Bruce, thrilled to be outside and seemingly impervious to the wind whipping off the ocean and finding its way into collars and sleeves, barreled out of the car and began sniffing wildly.

Ash clipped on his leash and gave him a hearty pat, then began picking his way over boulders.

“Try and step where I step,” he called over his shoulder.

Truman did as instructed gladly, since some of the boulders seemed more like seesaws if you stepped in the wrong place.

“This is safe?” Truman called, imagining his foot sliding off a slick rock and his leg lodging in a crevice between them.

“Ya know. Don’t try this when they’re covered with snow. But yeah, it should be okay.”

“Not comforting,” Truman muttered.

It should be okay was what Ramona had told him when she took him to the gator preserve, and three minutes after that, a gator had almost snapped his face off. Truman redoubled his efforts to step where Ash stepped, even though he was fairly sure there weren’t alligators this far north. Once you’ve seen them in the water, you never forgot it.

They rounded a curve in the coastline, and then it came into view.

“Oh my god,” Truman breathed. “This is it.”

It was just as Agatha Tark described it in The Heart Stops. From the outside, it looked like a head rising from the ocean—oops, the bay—gaping maw dripping with saline froth. Inside, the light narrowed to a triangle that drew you in. At the bottom, jagged rocks jutted up like teeth, rimed white with salt.

He fumbled for his camera and managed a few pictures with shaking hands.

If there was a ledge on the left side of the cave with fossil traces, Truman was gonna lose it.

“Can we go in?”

“Yeah, just watch the foam. It’s slippery.”

Bruce bounded over rocks to the mouth of the cave easily, and Ash followed. For a large person, he sure was light on his feet. Truman followed, forcing himself to look at where he was stepping rather than stare in wonder at the cave. But as he got close, he couldn’t help peering deep into its darkness.

It was vertiginous and the cave echoed the sound of the waves back at him like a giant ear.

“Whoa!”

Ash’s arms shot out, and Truman stumbled into them on his last step into the cave.

He found himself held tight against a broad, warm chest. Ash wrapped his arms around him and said very softly, “You okay?”

“Ugh, yeah, sorry, jeez. I promise I don’t usually wander around just falling over. Today isn’t indicative of my typical ability to, like, be upright.”

He felt Ash smile against his hair and then let him go slowly.

Reluctantly?