Free Barefoot by Elin Hilderbrand Page A

wheezing already, and her heart was galloping at an unsafe speed. Do not panic, she thought. He’s here somewhere . She would find him any second, she would flood with relief. He’s okay, he’s right here . . . he just . . . but no, she didn’t see him anywhere. Not yet . She was approaching the main section of ’Sconset Beach, just thirty or forty yards away from the parking lot entrance. There were people here—families, couples, college girls lined up on a blanket. Vicki hurried to the lifeguard stand. As long as Blaine wasn’t in the water, he was safe. Why, oh why, hadn’t they sat between the two red flags? They were so far down that the lifeguard would never have noticed Blaine drowning.
    “Excuse me,” Vicki said.
    The lifeguard didn’t remove her eyes from the water. She was a chunky girl in a red tank suit; she had a sunburn on her cheeks that had peeled, revealing raw pink skin underneath . Skin cancer! Vicki thought.
    “My son is missing,” Vicki said. “He’s four years old. We’re sitting down there.” She pointed, but the lifeguard did not move her eyes. “He was wearing a green bathing suit with green frogs on it. He has blond hair. Have you seem him? Did he wander by, maybe?”
    “I haven’t seen him,” the lifeguard said.
    “No?” Vicki said. “Is there anything you can do to help me find him?”
    “You’re sitting beyond the flags?” the lifeguard asked.
    “Yes.”
    “I have to keep my eyes on the people who are in the water between the flags,” the lifeguard said. “Lots of times kids just walk away and get lost. Maybe you can ask some of the folks sitting nearby if they’ve seen him. I can’t leave my post to help. I’m sorry.”
    Vicki studied the other families, the other children, many of them Blaine’s age. The families reminded Vicki of herself and Brenda and her parents and Aunt Liv, sitting on the beach every single day, happy as larks, swimming, sunning, eating, sleeping in the sun. She had never gotten lost; Brenda had never gotten swept away by the undertow. They had been like the kids in front of Vicki now: whole, happy, in one piece. Blaine was someplace else, an unknown place. What if they couldn’t find him? Vicki would have to call Ted—though there was no way she could tell him Blaine was gone; that was just not acceptable . Three grown women on the beach, one of them his own mother, Ted would say. How did he slip away? Why wasn’t anyone watching? I thought Melanie was watching! I asked her to watch! I closed my eyes for . . . three minutes. Maybe four. Vicki felt like collapsing in a pile on the sand . Okay, fine, she told God, or the Devil, or whoever listened to pleas from desperate mothers. Take me. Let me die. Just please, please let Blaine be okay.
    “Please,” she whispered. “Please.”
    “Vick!”
    The voice was far away, but Vicki heard it over the roar of anxiety in her ears. She turned and saw a woman in a green bikini waving her arms. Brenda. Vicki allowed her hopes to rise a little bit. She saw a figure under the umbrella—maybe a little boy wrapped in a towel? Vicki got closer, running, walking, stopping to control her breathing. Vicki saw Brenda on her cell phone. The “figure” under the umbrella was just a towel hanging from the cooler. Vicki burst into tears. How many hundreds of hours in the past month had she spent wondering: What could be worse than lung cancer? What could be worse than chemotherapy? What could be worse than having my chest sliced open, my ribs spread, and my lung removed? Well, here was the answer. This was worse. Blaine was missing. Where was he? Every molecule in Vicki’s body screamed in chorus, Find him, find him! Porter was crying. Melanie was rocking him, but he pitched forward toward Vicki.
    Brenda said, “I checked the dunes. He’s not there. Your friend left. She really wanted to help us look, but she had a tennis lesson at the casino. She suggested I call the police, so that’s what I’m