She lost weight, got dark rings under her eyes, and decided that what she needed was fresh air. She started driving out to the beaches with Leah. Leah loved it; she screamed when the waves broke, and clutched wildly at the sea gulls that flew over their heads. Rachel looked out over the gray water toward Europe; Finland was there, she thought; Norway, Russia. “Home,” she whispered to Leah. But she knew if she ever found that flat ice plain her grandmother had told her about, it would be covered with factories. Ten thousand factories, all making rubber boots. “Rubber boots,” she told Leah, who waved her hands and cried “ubbah.” Rachel started back to the car, then saw a black man in fishing boots standing in the water almost up to his knees, casting into the waves. He had the same strands of white in his frizzy hair that Roger Hawkins did, and even though she knew it wasn’t Hawkins, something about the figure was reassuring; she crossed the pebbles and stood near him; he didn’t move away.

“Did you get anything?” she asked, wanting to hear his voice.

“Not yet,” he said. He didn’t sound like Hawkins, except for the soft timbre some black men’s voices had.

“What’s running?” she asked.

He shrugged. “Blues maybe.”

He kept his back turned and she left him alone. When she got home, she looked for Hawkins’s name in the address book. It wasn’t there and she called Levy at the shop. He was quiet at first, then he asked, “Why do you want his number?”

“He was Adam’s best friend and we haven’t heard from him for almost a year, Jacob.”