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I wonder if he even remembers what that sisterly guardianship felt like. I take this moment to grab the bucket from Carrie and thrust it into the bag, along with our sodden towels. Daniel glowers but puts his shoes on, first the left and then the right, in his normal methodical way. I think, as we head back to the turnstile, that for once, whatever her intention, Carrie may have helped me. Ha! I think, as if we are opponents.
    The boardwalk is changed in that familiar twilight way: the day people vanished and the night people materializing, stepping out from doorways. It’s only seven, but some of these women must be hookers, in all that mesh. Is it possible that Ocean Vista has gone even further downhill than it had when I was a kid? The promises of night in this town feel attractive in a way they shouldn’t, not to me, not anymore. It’s too easy to imagine myself younger, childless, unencumbered. I need to get out of here. A group of girls around Carrie’s age passes us, licking ice-cream cones and laughing. Carrie looks at them hungrily. “Are we coming back out here tonight?” she asks.
    We are not, but I don’t want Carrie to see how urgently I need to leave this place, or she will fight me just to fight me. I hurry us across the boards. “I think we’ll see what Kandy and her kids are up for.”
    “She has kids? This fucking sucks.”
    “Watch it,” I tell her, and immediately regret this approach. Carrie didn’t curse at all before this year. It’s not the words themselves that I disapprove of, but her tiresome need for emphasis.
    We pass a storefront selling Italian sausages and pizza by the slice, with a white pasteboard menu sign. Daniel is transfixed by the grill cook, who throws a shower of onion onto the hot black griddle. From the corner of my eye, I see a bench where I sat with my mother countless times, right at the top of the boardwalk ramp. I can picture her there, knitting, her legs thrust out and crossed at the ankle, her lips in their resting smile. I can feel the press of her calf against my shoulder as I play with a plastic truck on the boards. It hurts impossibly much to feel the warmth of her skin and then recall myself to the present and know that she died, and that I left her long before.
    I realize I am standing still.
    I turn to Daniel, but he is not where I expect him to be. I thought he was at my elbow, watching the man at the grill. I look up and down the boardwalk. The tall iron street lamps blink on helpfully. Vacationers throng past. I force my eyes into a slower panoramic sweep; maybe I am not being thorough. Mothers bend down to their children. Small black birds land skittering across the boards. I look for the salmon man, but I don’t see him. Daniel is nowhere.
    “Carrie?” I say. “Do you see your brother?”
    She is texting. I rip the phone out of her hands, and she makes an affronted face. “What the fuck? He’s—Oh.”
    We both yell his name a few times, but I can feel it: He is hiding somewhere, he doesn’t want to be found. People follow us with their eyes as they walk past. Although we are evidently having a problem, it doesn’t concern them.
    Please not this. I have managed, I have corralled, I have done passably to convey my children from Texas to New York, from one life to the next, despite everything. Not this, not here. I look at the cell phone in my palm and see that I am gripping it white-knuckled. Carrie’s half-composed text says this: on rd w freakshow miss u will—
    “Is that what you call your brother?” I snap at her. She stares at me with a rabbitty fear. “Freakshow? Do you think that is helpful? Who the hell is Will?”
    “No, Mom, will, like, will call you soon. I was texting Alana.”
    I thrust Carrie’s phone in the beach bag. Alana. It will be good for Carrie to find new friends in New York, less princessy. I should send her to wilderness camp or something. Drop her off unwilling and pick her up improved.
    “Should we split up?”