Mina was kneeling on the lowest wharf step, one hand on the wet wood, the other reaching for a little toy boat bobbing in the river’s edge. The boat had been lost under a bench all morning, and now, at high tide, it had somehow come back. Its painted sides were damp and shiny, and something small and pale was tucked inside it.
Mina leaned closer. “That’s not a pebble,” she whispered.
She pinched the tiny thing free and found it was a button, smooth and white with four holes. Not a toy button. A real one. The kind sewn onto a coat or a sailor’s shirt.
Tobin stood above her on the next step, arms folded over his red vest. “Don’t go after it,” he said. “The river’s lifting the lower boards. It’ll drift off before you can blink.”
But the toy boat was already turning, nose pointed downriver, as if it knew where it had come from. Mina glanced at the button in her hand, then at the gray water sliding past the wharf posts. If the boat was carrying a clue, she could not let the tide wash it away. Yet Tobin was right too — the steps were already vanishing under the rising water.
Mina rose and tucked the button into her striped shirt pocket, feeling its little shape press against her ribs. Then she looked from Tobin to the drifting boat and had to choose: call for help and stay on the wharf, or follow the tiny boat’s path before it disappeared around the bend.
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