Today, they were all missing and he still hadn’t gotten any sleep. Some things never changed, he mused, usually the wrong things. He hung over the motel balcony smoking his cigarette, watching the hotel restaurant where all the families were coming and going for their Easter dinner. All the little girls wore their Easter bonnets. He thought of the last time that Shawn wore hers, and he smelled the salt coming off the ocean. Both had bitter tastes as he blinked moisture form his eyes. He wondered if the tide was coming in.

There was movement coming from inside the room, the sound of a woman, her blow dryer at full speed. He could imagine Randi teasing the mound of black kinky curls that ballooned her head. God knows how he’d watched Cathleen over the years do the same to her red mane. He never understood the maddening frustration she subjected herself to over her hair. She’d look in the mirror, scrutinizing and pulling at tangles he couldn’t even see. You look beautiful without doing that, he’d say. She’d just look at him like he was an idiot and turn her attention back to her masterpiece in progress.

Hearing Randi now, he saw her in his mind the way he saw Cathleen. She was after all, a woman, just like Cathleen was. Strange that he thought of his wife of ten years and an escort in the same vein. He wondered what was happening to him.

There was muffled laughter coming form the balcony next to him the voices of a woman and a man. He wondered what they were doing here on Easter Sunday, if it was someone who had just found company like him for the evening. The laughter got louder and he decided, no way. They sounded happy, like lovebirds, the way he and Cathleen were ten years before, and, he thought darkly, the way he and Rachel had been a month ago.