The storm was still swirling in Sharkey’s head, the surf like wild applause. He was silent, but he was not calm; his brain was frenzied, needing relief, rehearsing the mute panic of being underwater, tumbled and struggling, caught beneath a wave. But instead of fearing it he saw it as a form of rescue—an answer, a painkiller.

“Maybe tomorrow, crack of dawn,” Olive said, still quizzing herself over the homeless camp. “Start as we mean to go on.”

The idea filled Sharkey with dread, the uncertainty of “maybe,” the horror of “tomorrow.” He felt punished by time; he wanted no more days of pain.

“I’m sure you’re as knackered as I am,” Olive said, speaking on his behalf, because he was lying on the bed, the last of the daylight dimming on his face, decaying to a shadow passing over his eyes. He had not spoken aloud since the police station, his “Gone under” had not been audible. But he was awake—more than awake, his body buzzed with anticipation.

And when, stimulated by his sleeplessness—Olive asleep and turned away and lightly snoring—he slid from the bed, left the house, and started down the hill.

Sometime in the night, in the twitch of a dream, yawning and rolling over, Olive threw her arm beside her and was woken when it flopped against the emptiness of the bed, her arm unexpectedly loosened by a missing body.

“Joe?”

The silence clarified her mind. She called again, dressed and quickly looked from room to room, and then dashed to the lanai, where Sharkey often sat, his legs extended, when he could not sleep. There she saw his phone on the side table. She picked it up, thinking, If he left it behind, he’s not coming back—finding something reckless and final in his leaving it, like abandonment.

On an impulse, because it was late, because he was forgiving and mellow and she easily found his name on the phone, she called Moe Kahiko.

“Yah.” His voice was phlegmy, clotted with sleep.

“It’s Olive from down the road—I can’t find Joe. Will you help me look for him?”

“What time is it?”

“Two, or nearabout.”

“Where he stay?”

Waiting for his laborious sighlike yawn, like a groan, to cease, she paused, then said, “I don’t know. Moe, that’s why I’m asking you.”

“Give me a minute. I put some clothes on and pick you up.”

Two-twenty by her watch as she slid the gate open; a moony night of stillness, the only sound the drone of surf from down the hill at Waimea, audible confusion, strangely mechanical but out of sync, like the stammer of a pump misfiring, a sequence of interrupted thumps, the waves.

The lights of Moe’s pickup truck entered the gateway, and she ran to the vehicle, the sound of the surf immediate in her consciousness. She said, “Let’s try the beach.”