There was one last item at the bottom. An A4 sketchbook. He knew she liked to draw in her spare time. Next door’s sausage dog, the cheeky robin that sometimes came to their kitchen window—as well as countless pictures of Rio.

But what had she drawn when she was younger?

He tentatively turned the first page . . .

The sketchbook was full of whales.

6

Gray Whales

Absolutely full of them. A head. A tail flicking out of the ocean. Water shooting up from a blowhole. A picture of a whale leaping in the air. Yet another with a whale gliding along the surface. Other sketches capturing more tails, more spectacular leaps, more heads poking out of the water. Some were of individual whales, and others were of mothers and their calves.

Tearing his gaze away, Rio glanced out of the window toward the ocean, where the surface lay flat and calm. He remembered his mom telling him about the whales when she was trying to get him excited about California. Apparently, there were lots of them out there. Ones as big as soccer fields. Ones with hearts as large as a car. Ones that swam up and down the Californian coastline every year.

“This is the best time of year to visit,” she had exclaimed. “The gray whales will be passing Ocean Bay on their annual migration south. You’ll even get to see one!”

He could still remember the note of excitement in her voice, as if seeing a whale was somehow the best possible thing on earth—better than ice cream or roller coasters or even birthdays. Rio had doubted that seeing a whale could be that exciting, but now, looking at the pictures, a strange, shivery feeling ran down his spine.

“You’re beautiful,” he murmured, touching the paper gently with his fingertips.

Then, slowly, Rio went through the sketchbook page by page. While all the pictures were spectacular, there was one that stood out.

It was a penciled drawing of a whale with its head peering up out of the waves. The eye was so vivid that Rio half expected it to blink. He leaned closer to get a better look, and then he put his own eye as close as he could.

It took him a while to place what was so unsettling about the whale’s expression. And then he got it. Because it wasn’t a wild animal look at all. It was, Rio realized with a start, a peculiarly human look.

He was about to pull back from the picture when he noticed there was something else in the corner. Handwriting. It was faded, but he was just about able to read it.

White Beak.

As Rio peered through the rest of the sketchbook, he noticed that at least ten of the pictures were of the same whale. Each of them drawn with the same love, careful attention, but, most of all, the same unbridled joy.