Elin Hilderbrand - Summer People

Beth couldn’t help herself from doing a visual sweep of their area, mentally calculating how long it would take them to break camp. It was then that she noticed Peyton was gone.

She looked at David. He was grinning like a boy, his face catching light from the sky.

“Did Peyton go to the bathroom?” Beth asked.

David checked the blanket. His smile faded and he sat up straighter in his chair. “Piper,” he said. “Where’s your sister?”

Asking this was pointless. Piper couldn’t hear David over the noise of the fireworks. No one could hear him but Beth. Piper was so absorbed with tasting the inside of Garrett’s mouth that anyone could see the whereabouts of her younger sister was the furthest thing from her mind. David concluded as much after a few seconds, and he picked his way across the blanket, over the cooler and between thermoses, to ask Piper again. Piper sat up and looked around. Shrugged. David asked something of Winnie and Marcus, who mimicked Piper’s actions. We don’t know.

Beth stood up. She felt sorry for David-a missing child was a parent’s worst nightmare. Even when the child was thirteen. Even in a place as safe as Nantucket.

“They don’t know where she went?” Beth asked.

“No,” David said. He scanned the patchwork of blankets around them. “How long has she been gone? And how did she leave without my noticing?”

“You went to talk to some people,” Beth said. “Maybe she met up with friends.”

“Maybe,” David said. “Or maybe she just went to the bathroom.”

“That’s probably it,” Beth said. She, too, wondered how long Peyton had been gone. Beth remembered handing her two oatmeal cookies and then offering to refill her lemonade, but that was before the fireworks started. Beth tried to remember if she’d seen Peyton with a sparkler. The sparklers were a long time ago, certainly allowing enough time to go to the bathroom and come back. Unless there was a horrendous line.

As if reading her mind, David said, “I’m going to check the bathrooms. Will you stay here?”

“Of course,” Beth said. “She’ll probably make it back before you do.”

Beth’s optimism flagged once the fireworks ended, because at that point, chaos broke out. Children started to whine and everyone and his brother tried to jam their way through the narrow passageway between the dunes that led to the parking lot. People poured past them, like a stream moving around a rock. Beth stood on her chair and waved her arms so that Peyton might be able to locate them. Marcus followed suit, standing on the cooler, waving the flashlight that Beth had packed. Winnie folded the blankets and the unused chairs while Garrett and Piper clung to one another-Piper suddenly so concerned about her sister that she needed constant petting from Garrett. Beth almost snapped at them to separate and help, but what kind of help was needed? They simply had to stay put until Peyton materialized out of the crowd, and Garrett and Piper were doing just that-staying put with their hands all over each other.

David returned, his eyes darting everywhere. The key, he said, was not to panic because Peyton had a good head on her shoulders and she could find her way to the police station once she got to the road.

“It’s not like she’s a tourist,” he said. “This island is her home.”

They waited until the last stragglers left the beach. At this point, Beth was tired and had to go to the bathroom herself. She walked through the cold sand toward the now-abandoned portable toilets. Because she was from New York, she couldn’t help thinking of how the fingers of evil could touch anyone, even here. Beth eyed the dark ocean. With a missing child on the brain, it looked sinister.

On the way back she was more hopeful. But from a hundred yards away she could see David standing on the cooler; as she neared, she heard him calling out Peyton’s name. Beth joined Winnie and Marcus who were huddled nearby. They told her that Garrett and Piper had gone to the lost child tent, or whatever it was, that the police had set up.

Beth helped David down from the cooler. Even touching his hand made her feel conflicted.

“She’ll turn up,” Beth said.

“Oh, I know,” he said. “I’m not worried.”

“Of course you’re worried,” Beth said. “She’s your baby girl. You don’t have to play tough guy with me, not under these circumstances. Maybe she went home.”

“There’s no way she would have gone home without telling me. It’s too far to walk. It’s four miles in the dark.”

Garrett and Piper approached; Piper’s face looked ready to crumble. “The police haven’t seen her,” she said. “Your friend was there, Dad, Lieutenant Egan, and he said he’d send his guys out to scan the area. He said if she doesn’t turn up in the next twenty minutes, you should go talk to him.”

“Twenty minutes, my ass,” David said. “I’m going to talk to him now.” David charged through the sand toward the parking lot, calling Peyton’s name along the way. Beth stayed with the other kids.

“None of you saw her leave?” Beth asked. “Who spoke to her last?”

“I told her I liked her shoes,” Winnie said. “But that was during dinner.”

Piper nuzzled Garrett’s neck and ran a hand inside the collar of his polo shirt. Something about Piper touching Garrett made Beth uncomfortable. She wondered if this were a typical mother-son-girlfriend dynamic at work, or if there was actually something about Piper that was unlikable, which only Beth discerned.

“This isn’t like my sister,” Piper said. “Peyton is such a goody-goody. It’s not like she ran off to smoke and drink with her friends. She never does anything on her own unless she asks Dad, like, six times if it’s okay. So I don’t know what to think. Maybe she was abducted?”

“She wasn’t abducted,” Beth said. “But she may be lost.”

Piper sniffed. “We used to play on this beach when we were kids. If she got lost, she’d wait for us in the parking lot. Plus, the police tent is in the parking lot and she wasn’t there.” Piper’s tone was condescending-it was the tone of voice she normally reserved for David, and Beth was about to let her know that it wasn’t an okay tone to use with her boyfriend’s mother when David jogged toward them through the sand.

“They’re going to start a real search,” he said. “I’ll stay here. Beth, you take the kids home. To my house. Keep your eyes peeled for her on the way. The police seem to think she got bored, or angry, and decided to walk home. They said they see it every year. Also, check the machine, Piper, when you get in. Maybe she left a message. I’ll call you later to see if she’s turned up.”

Beth and the kids trudged back to the car, everyone so loaded down with stuff that there was no opportunity for kissing or hand-holding. It was a silent march out to North Beach Street and then up the Cobblestone Hill. They piled into the Range Rover and drove to David’s house, slowing to check the identity of each person walking on the side of the road along the way. No Peyton. The house was dark except for the onion lamp by the front door.

“She’s not home,” Piper said. “God, I hope she left a message.”

The kids trooped into the house while Beth stood at the back of the car and separated out David’s belongings from her own- his chairs, his thermos, his blanket. She knew there wouldn’t be a message. No one had spoken to the girl, no one noticed her missing until she was long gone. Peyton had been ignored, so she ran away. It didn’t take a brain surgeon to figure it out, only a mother.

When Beth walked into the kitchen, the kids were sitting on barstools around the island.