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Then worried.
Then terrified.
Lifeguards searched the water.
Police checked the bathrooms, parking lots, hotels, and roads leading away from the beach.
They found the ice cream stand.
Nobody working there remembered seeing her.
They found nothing.
The last thing Nora had been wearing was a turquoise cover-up my mother had sewn for her that spring.
It was light cotton, loose enough to throw over a swimsuit.
My mother had embroidered Nora’s initials, N. V., inside the bottom hem.
On the first day of that trip, Nora caught one corner on a piece of driftwood and tore it.
My mother had been with us.
She patched the tear with a crooked little yellow sun.
Nora laughed when she saw it.
“It looks funny now.”
My mother said, “It looks unique.”
Nora rubbed the stitching between her fingers and smiled.
“I like it better ruined.”
That sentence lived in my head for years.
I had one photo of Nora wearing the cover-up.
I took it about 40 minutes before she disappeared.
She was standing on the sand, squinting into the sun, one hand raised because she was telling me to stop taking pictures.
For eight years, I stared at that photo.
Police enlarged it. News stations used it. Volunteers printed it on flyers.
It all amounted to nothing.
Eventually, the searches stopped.
The calls slowed.