“You know what we’re going to do?” he said. “When this is all over?”

“What?” Cole asked.

“I’m taking you kids back to Los Barriles.”

“Where?”

“You remember, buddy. That little town on the Sea of Cortez, where we stayed over Christmas a couple years ago? Well, when this is over, we’re going back for a month. Maybe two.”

He looked at Dee, at Naomi and Cole.

Exhaustion. Fear.

The overhead dome light cut out. Jack could feel the car listing in the wind, bits of dust and dirt and sand slamming into the metal like microscopic ball bearings.

Cole said, “Remember that sandcastle we built?”

Jack smiled in the darkness. They’d opened presents and gone out to the white-sand beach and spent all day, the four of them, building a castle with three-foot walls and a deep moat, wet sand dribbled over the towers and spires to resemble rotten and eroded stone.

“That sucked,” Naomi said. “Remember what happened?”

A storm had blown in that afternoon over Baja as the tide was coming in. When a rod of lightning touched the sea a quarter mile out, the Colcloughs had screamed and raced back to their bungalow as the rain poured down and the black clouds detonated. Jack had glanced back as they scrambled over the dunes, glimpsed their sandcastle rebuffing its first decent wave, the moat filling with saltwater.

“Do you think the waves knocked it down?” Cole said.

“No, it’s still standing.”

“Don’t speak to your brother that way. No, Cole, it wouldn’t have lasted the night.”

“But it was a big castle.”

“I know, but the tide’s a powerful force.”

“We walked out there the next morning, Cole,” Dee said. “Remember what we saw?”

“Smooth sand.”

“Like we hadn’t even been there,” Naomi said.

“We were there,” Jack said, and he pulled the key out of the ignition. “That was a great day.”

“That was a stupid day,” Naomi said. “What’s the point of building a sandcastle if you can’t watch it get destroyed?”