Chapter 5: The Bowline

I ran out onto the back landing.

The tide was high.

The water slapped the pilings right under the boards, green and cold and deep enough to drown a grown man.

"Poppy!"

A gull lifted off the railing.

Nothing else moved.

I ran back in and grabbed the sous chef by the sleeve.

"Have you seen her?"

"She was right there."

"Check the walk-in. Check the laundry. Check under the stairs, she hides under the stairs."

The dishwasher was already moving.

I ran through the dining room.

Blair's friends looked up from their phones. Eleanor was still at the head of the table.

"Lost something?" Eleanor said.

I didn't answer her.

I ran through the lobby, past the fish tank, past Gary sulking in his rocks.

The front desk girl stood up.

"Mara, what is it?"

"Poppy. Have you seen Poppy?"

"Not since lunch."

I went out the front door and down the porch steps and along the side of the inn toward the water.

My clogs slid on the wet grass.

I was praying without words.

Then I came around the corner of the boathouse and stopped.

The inn's long dock ran out into the harbor, gray and silvered, with lobster buoys stacked at the end.

Halfway down it, Lawrence Thayer sat cross-legged on the boards in his good trousers.

Poppy sat in his lap.

He had a length of old white rope across both their knees.

He was holding her small hands in his big ones and moving them slowly through a loop.

"The rabbit comes up out of the hole," he was saying. "Goes around the tree."

"Why is there a rabbit?"

"That's just how my dad said it."

"Where's the rabbit's mom?"

"I don't know. She's not in the knot."

"That's sad."