“You already have,” Lulu said.

I knew what she meant. In this tragedy, in this unbelievable, unfathomable tragedy, with hundreds of thousands of people killed, many more injured, buildings destroyed, lives changed forever, this miracle that had taken place. And I was a little part of that miracle. Maybe that was all I could expect, and it would have to be enough. A second miracle was more than anybody could hope for.

“Beth.”

I looked at Ryan and Lulu.

“Beth.”

It wasn’t them. I stared across the aisle. My brother looked back at me and he smiled.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

I stood on the beach holding my brother’s hand. He was so much steadier on his feet than he’d been only three days before, and to look at him you wouldn’t have known how close he’d come to dying. The doctors had told me that he was unconscious for almost a full day after he was brought in—a blow to the head—and even the following day he’d barely made sense when he spoke. It was only a few hours before I’d found him—before he’d found me—that he’d been able to give his name. There was still a nasty bump, the size of an egg, on the back of his head. He said he remembered getting hit by the second wave, being torn away from our father, and then something hitting his head. Nothing else. He didn’t even know how he got to the hospital. The last time he’d seen our mother, he said, she was in the lobby of the resort, helping. He had no idea what might have happened to her.

When I’d found him I’d cried more than I ever had before. I cried tears of joy at finding him, but also tears of sadness for my father, for my mother, for everything I’d seen or heard, for everybody who had lost a life or a loved one. But still maybe most of all for my brother. I’d found him.

The next three nights I slept in a chair beside his hospital bed. Ryan and Lulu offered to stay with me, keep me company, but I told them I was okay. I had someone now—I had Sam. I kept finding myself reaching out, just to touch him, even when he was asleep. I’d wake up in the middle of the night in that chair and just lean over so I could put a hand against his shoulder. I needed to know that he was there and breathing, by my side. I just needed the contact. I think he needed it, too.

It was hard to leave him, especially that first morning, but I knew I had to keep looking for my mother. That was how I spent the days. Searching. For that first day and the next I felt hope. She wasn’t on the lists of the dead, no picture on the boards, and she wasn’t under a tarp in any of the morgues. But she also wasn’t at the evacuation center, or at the camp, or at the hospital. She hadn’t called. And I knew. She hadn’t called because she couldn’t.