I moved slowly along the road, stepping over debris, moving through the sand. There were branches and whole logs tossed haphazardly across the road, and boards and a few bricks, and scattered among those were bright pieces of material—clothing. Had these been washed right off someone’s back, or were they what remained of somebody’s luggage, or had they been for sale in one of the little roadside stores?

Up ahead, the road was completely blocked by a bus tipped onto its side. Up close I could see that all of the windows had shattered, but the broken glass had been washed away. Inside, the bus was partially filled with sand. What had happened to the passengers and the driver? Hopefully they’d all made it out before the wave hit. I moved around the bus. Beyond it was a mangled bicycle, trapped underneath a car that was sitting on its roof, the side windows up and the windshield smashed out.

As I walked I looked on both sides of the road, trying to pick out something that I knew. Nothing was familiar. Whatever stores or stalls had been there were gone. The people were gone. Everything was gone.

Then, up ahead, I saw one of the hotels. It was ocean-side, ten stories tall. I could see the sign on its side, up at the top. I knew that sign well. There was one on each side of the building. I used to see it, bright and neon in the night sky, when I stood in front of our bungalow and looked way up the beach.

My parents hated that sign. They hated the hotel. I remembered how upset they were when it was built because they thought it took away from the character of the beach and the town. Now all I could think of was how people up on those higher floors would have been fine. They would have been like those people shooting video, the ones I’d seen on television, just watching, safely above the tsunami. Not like people in a bungalow.

The hotel gave me something to aim for. It was probably about halfway between where I now stood and our resort. It meant I knew where I was. I had a place to start.

I soon began to see a pattern. On one side of the road, the side away from the ocean, there was almost complete devastation. The stores and stalls and little houses that belonged to the locals had all been totally destroyed. On the other side sat the resorts. They were taller and made of concrete and bricks and they still stood. I was close enough to know there was damage—broken windows on the main floors all boarded up and yellow tape across entrances, doors missing—but these buildings were at least still standing. I knew the waves had been as high as thirty feet. That was like three stories tall, but there were four floors to our resort. All my family would have had to do was get to the top floor and they would have been fine. And even if the wave had caught them they could have kept swimming until they reached the top floor. They were all good, strong swimmers. I looked over at another car on its side. Were they strong enough to survive that kind of force? Was Mom?