As I come down the boardwalk, Dorothee is locking up the building. Her back is to me, bent at the big wooden door. I don’t want to surprise her.
“Excuse me.”
“Sorry, we’re closed for the weeken—” She turns, sees me, stops cold.
“Teddy says he’s sorry.”
The key is sticking out of the lock. She leaves it there, turning all the way around to face me.
I lift my cell phone. “I just talked to him. He said, ‘Go tell her I’m sorry.’ ”
Sometimes I think that being a grownup means keeping all your emotions under control, especially in public. But when all those feelings are stuffed inside, it just takes one tiny flick for the dam to break. Then whole rivers come rushing out. So I stand there, watching her face change, waiting for the water to drown us because Dorothee doesn’t look so fierce anymore. Her rust-colored eyes hold my gaze for an eternity. I can see all those pent-up rivers, sloshing around inside. But she shifts her gaze. She squints at the lighthouse beyond the swamp.
“I’ll be.” Her voice comes from a long way away. “He said that?”
I nod, afraid to speak. The dam’s been breached.
She turns back to the door, absently turning the key, dropping it into her pocket. “Thank you.”
We walk down the boardwalk, into that blustery wind. I pull strands of hair out of my eyes. Dorothee stares straight ahead, like the wind’s not whipping her red hair around. I decide I’d better say something before the rest of the tsunami hits.
“I need some more help, geology-wise.”
“Tell me,” she says, softly.
“The sand, on the beach. It looks weird.” I describe how the grains looked under the scope. “I decided one might be corundum, but the other could be—”
She turns, looks me over with smile. “Very good. We do have corundum in our sand.”
“But then there’s sand from maybe two hundred yards away, and it’s totally different. I didn’t see any corundum grains. Some green grains . . . maybe beryl.”
“You definitely know your minerals.” She points up ahead, directing me to turn left off the boardwalk. The road is empty, the beach town so deserted it’s like we’re the only two people here.
“This the same sand you collected oceanside?” she asks.
“In the bag I showed you.”
“You’re right to wonder about the beryllium. But you couldn’t have taken that sand oceanside. The beryllium’s only found facing inland.” She nods toward the swamp. “There’s beryllium in this sand, for instance.”
“But I did collect it oceanside.”
She glances at me. “You’re positive?”
I have to think a second. “Yes. From where the girl was buried. So how could beryllium get over there, to the eastern side?”
Her eyes. When she looks at me this time, her eyes are so different. More copper than rust. “I’m telling you what was in the coring samples approved by the USGS. The found corundum on the east, beryllium on the west.”
“And the two minerals don’t cross over?”
“Not that anyone’s discovered.”
“And I can’t go dig around.”
She smiles. “Nobody’s mentioned sands getting blown clear across the island, in any substantial volumes. But we did have some serious storms this winter. If you could prove the grains shifted, that information would make it into any professional geology journal.”
“Really?”
“And, you’re part of Bill’s contest. Gives you some real science cred.”
I look away. My dad always says he’s glad I’m really bad liar, but it seriously complicates my life. Like right now I’m trying to decide whether I’m lying by acting like all these questions are for the contest.
And while I’m wondering, she says, “There’s a large corundum mine in Franklin, North Carolina. It’s close to Raleigh.” She looks me over again. “Were you named after the city?”
“Uh, yeah.” The quickest answer I can give to that question. I rush back to my topic. “So these grains are definitely corundum and beryl?”
“Very likely.” She keeps walking but is still smiling. “The way I describe it to visitors is rubies and emeralds. It sounds more exciting than corundum and beryl.”
“Gems are the circus act of geology.”
She laughs. “That sounds like Teddy.”
“Yeah, he said it.”
With her hair blowing in the wind, the warm expression in her eyes, I can see the girl she used to be. Which is another thing about adults. Look hard enough—or maybe softly enough—and you can see their kid-self. Whenever it happens, I get an odd feeling. Like one part joy, one part sorrow. Bittersweet, I guess.
“Can I ask you a personal question?”
She tucks a red strand behind her ear. Her ears are kinda big. Which is also something I could see on her kid-self.
“Go ahead,” she says. “But it’s about Teddy. Isn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
“Ask me. I might not answer. But you can ask.”
“Did you know him before he was paralyzed, or after?”
It’s like the wind blows the smile off her face. She says, “Before.”
“Oh.”
“And during.” Agony fills her eyes. “And after.”
“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have—”
“You know what he says.” She tries to smile again, but it’s sad. “Schist happens.”
I stand there for a long moment, feeling awkward, pulling strands of hair out of my eyes. Trying to think of something to say. When there’s nothing I can say.
“Let me know how the sand hunt goes,” she says.
“I will.”
She walks down the road.
I stare at her back, thinking of all the times I’ve seen small boats, sailing into the wind.