“Mum!” he exclaimed.

Fran nodded. “Your grandfather took her on that boat trip when she was about seven. Her first ever one. Oh, I still remember when she came home. Her eyes were like saucers! She’d seen a gray whale swim right past the boat. Said it was the most magical thing she’d ever laid eyes on and that it made her heart smile. After that, she begged us to go every day.”

Rio was still gazing at the photo of his mother. She looked so carefree, so healthy, so happy. He wished he could peel open the cabinet and press the photo to his own heart. He was staring at it so hard, he didn’t realize Fran was still talking.

“But of course, we don’t get gray whales all year round, only in wintertime. So, for the rest of the year, your mom would come here. Everything you want to know about gray whales is in this museum.”

She was about to say more when someone called her name from the other side of the museum. “Excuse me a moment, Rio, will you?”

He nodded, and as she moved away, he noticed that dotted around the skeleton were various handwritten signs, in both English and Spanish. They listed facts about the gray whale.

In this way, he soon discovered:

• • Gray whales were the seventh-largest whale out of all the whale species.
• • There were approximately 20,000 to 30,000 of them.
• • They grew to about 43 to 50 feet in length.
• • They could live between 55 and 70 years.
• • They were only found in this part of the world—the Pacific Ocean.
• • Because of this, they were sometimes also referred to as the Pacific gray whale or even the California gray whale.

Fran was still chatting to her friend, so Rio shifted his attention back to the photo of his mom. There were a few other photos of the boat trip, but no other clear shots of his mother. Apart from one. It was taken from a different angle, presumably by his grandfather, and showed the back of Mom’s head as she leaned over the side of the boat.

Where in the water, there was a gray whale.

The photo was slightly blurry and there were so many people in the way, Rio couldn’t see much of the whale at all. Just a gray smudge.

But it was a gray smudge with distinctive white markings on its face.

White Beak.

8

Hunted

Rio pulled the picture of White Beak from his pocket. It was hard to be sure they were the same whale. But if so, surely this explained why his mother had drawn so many pictures of this particular animal.

It had been the first whale she had ever seen—the one that had stolen her heart. The one that had put that huge, beaming grin on her face. Rio gazed from the photo to the picture and then back again. Something lit up in his chest. No wonder it was in her Box of Joy.