WHEN SOMETHING DOESN’T FIT INTO YOUR idea of the way things work, you come up with an explanation. Like: I was distracted, so I just didn’t notice the woman standing there. During the beach walk I’d been really upset, and everyone knows that the mind can play tricks. But I was emotional; I wasn’t blind. Not only was the woman close—maybe ten feet away—she was dressed weirdly for the beach, in a pink bathrobe and dirty white slippers. Her skin was almost yellow, and she was so thin that her cheeks were sunken. Only her hair looked good: bright white, full and curly, like it had just been set. There was no way I could have missed her. No way. So I moved on to rational explanation number two. Someone else took the picture. My mother borrowed my camera sometimes (she’d finally stopped asking me where to put the film). Maybe one of my parents took the picture when I was in the beach restroom. Only one small problem with this theory: when I’d been in the restroom, my camera had been right with me, in the beach bag.
