Boot-shaped footprints led him to a stand of bushes in the dunes. Behind them were more prints, and more cigarette butts. Whoever had been there had been camping out awhile.
He crouched and scooped three of the butts into a little plastic Baggie, the kind cops used – or were supposed to anyway.
That's when his flashlight picked out a crushed bright yellow box in the sand. Kodak.
Christ, someone had been shooting film!
Chapter 10
THE NEXT MORNING my eyeballs hurt. So did everything else above and below. What didn't actually ache just felt lousy. And that was in the two-second reprieve before I remembered what had happened to my brother.
I rubbed my eyes. That's when I saw that Dana was gone. There was a note taped to the lamp: "Jack, I didn't want to wake you. Thanks for letting me stay. It meant a lot to me. I miss you already. Love, Dana." She was smart and beautiful, and I was lucky to have her. It's just that I was having a little trouble feeling lucky that morning.
I walked gingerly downstairs and took my place at the kitchen table with two grieving old men in bathrobes. We weren't a pretty sight.
"Dana's gone."
"I had coffee with her," said Mack. "She was crying a lot."
I looked at my father, and there was almost no reaction. One look at him in the morning light and it was clear to me he'd never be the same. It was as if he had aged twenty years overnight.
Mack seemed as steady as ever, almost stronger, as if fortified by the tragic turn of events. "I'll make you some eggs," he said, springing from his chair.
It's not that my grandfather wasn't devastated by Peter's death. If anything, Peter had been his favorite. But to my grandfather, life, for better or worse, is a holy war, and he was girding himself for another battle.