The Photographer's Return novel · Chapter 7 of 24

Chapter 7: Rip Current

I didn't comment.

I didn't call my mother back.

I turned the phone face down and slept, because I had a shift in the morning and that was a thing I had now.

Saturday the shop was packed with tourists.

Saturday night the phone woke me at twelve-forty.

A number I didn't know. Plus six two.

Indonesia.

I was out of bed before the second ring.

"Hello?"

"Is this Milo's mother?"

A man's voice. Calm, accented English, wind roaring behind him.

"Yes. Yes. What happened? Is he okay?"

"He is okay. He is safe. I am a lifeguard at the beach in Nusa Dua. Your son asked me to call you. He knew your number."

I had made him learn it when he was four.

I'd sung it to him in the bath until he could sing it back.

I hadn't known he still remembered.

"Can I talk to him? Please."

A rustle. A sniff.

"Mom?"

His voice was small and hoarse.

I sat down hard on the motel carpet.

"I'm here. I'm right here, baby. Are you hurt?"

"My knee is bleeding. On the coral. They put a bandage."

"Okay. That's okay. What happened?"

He started crying.

Not the whiny crying he did for Warner when he wanted something.

The real kind, the kind that hiccups.

"Aunt Kenzie was making a video," he said. "Of her surfing. She put her phone on the stick thing in the sand and she told me to stay by it so nobody steals it."

"Okay."

"And she went way out. And I waited a long time. And I got hot."

"Where was Dad?"

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