Chapter 50
IN THE last moments, the sun had slipped behind the peaks of the pines, fracturing the light shining through the apartment complex. The asphalt parking lot radiated more heat than the sky.
I felt exhausted and brutalized and terribly, terribly hungry. But Rose’s words chilled my blood.
Ceren, shocked, released Rose’s shoulder, leaving an ill-looking Alice to quickly stabilize the seventy-year-old retired teacher who looked twenty.
“Was touring Rhode Island,” Rose said. Her voice came out softly, the words grinding against each other like the inexorable motion of rocks in a glacier. “Got up early one day. Walked the beach. Nobody around. Didn’t know anything about what was going on—we bombed South America that afternoon. The seaweed, seaweed…” She gulped air. “Seaweed on the
