Page 65 of A Line in the Sand

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“Thegrant,” Molly said.

They’d been arguing about it for days, bouncing back and forth between ideas about the application but unable to agree on anything. As per usual. Every time Molly tried to suggest infusing any sort of creativity into their proposal, Max looked at her like she was Ursula digging a hole on the beach.

“What about it?” Max said slowly.

“Don’t you see? This is it!” Molly waved a hand toward the nest that Ursula had just located, and she pressed a smacking kiss to the top of her puppy’s furry head. “We’ll write about how we’ve got a dog in Turtle Beach who can scent track sea turtle nests. The grant committee will love it.”

Max rubbed the back of his neck. He didn’t automatically agree like she’d hoped he would, but he didn’t protest either. And he definitely wasn’t looking at her like she’d just dug a hole on his precious beach.

“We’re going to get that grant, especially when they find out what we’re going to do next.” Molly flashed him her biggest and brightest smile.

He went still, looking less like Wilson all of a sudden and more like Dr. Max Miller, PhD. “I’m almost afraid to ask, but what are we going to do next?”

***

“Molly wants to try to train a team of dogs to sniff out sea turtle nests on the beach,” Max said to his uncle the following morning at the Turtle Beach Senior Center.

Henry barely looked up from the Scrabble board that lay on the table between them. “You don’t say.”

Max sighed. Was his uncle even listening?

At least they weren’t having this conversation while bending themselves into nutty yoga positions. Max had known better than to bring up the grant during class earlier today. He’d tried—yet again—to pin Uncle Henry down for a time when they could have a proper heart-to-heart about the aquarium and, more specifically, the grant. His uncle had told him to come back at eleven o’clock, neglecting to mention that eleven o’clock just happened to be the start time for the senior center’s annual Scrabble competition.

The funny thing was that Max hadn’t even been surprised. He’d walked into the lobby, taken in the sight of a dozen tables set up with two-person, head-to-head Scrabble games and knew there would be a seat with his name on it. Nothing shocked him anymore.

Except maybe how thoroughly his uncle was currently beating him. It was borderline humiliating, really. But for the first three turns, Max hadn’t drawn a single vowel tile. How was he supposed to make a decent word from a handful of M’s and a ragtag collection of other consonants?

The game doesn’t matter. That’s not the real reason you’re here, remember?

He slapped down a sad three-letter word worth less than ten points and finally drew two vowels—an E and an A.

“Your turn, Uncle Henry,” Max said. He spun the rotating game board so it faced his uncle.

Henry immediately laid down a word that used each and every letter on his rack, building on the C that Max had just put down.

“Read ’em and weep, Maxie boy. Schmooze.” Henry’s bushy eyebrows did a little dance. “S-C-H-M-O-O-Z-E, on a double-word space. That’s seventy-four points. Plus I used all my letters, so I get a fifty-point bonus.”

Super. Max was now operating at a deficit in excess of one hundred and fifty points,andhe’d yet to glean his uncle’s opinion on the grant application.

It wasn’t as if Max thought that training other dogs to scent track sea turtle eggs was a bad idea. On the contrary, it was great. But the grant application was due in ten days. Could they really develop a proper training program and write up a proposal of how they could implement it in such a short period of time?

Possibly…

If they lived someplace other than Turtle Beach.

Grant applications were tricky, especially for state-funded conservation grants like the one Molly wanted to apply for. They’d need to write an abstract and a summary that listed their stated program goals and objectives. Plus they’d need to include a detailed background of the aquarium and sea turtle hospital, as well as the qualifications of the grant applicants. Most important, the application required specifics concerning methods and implementation, which meant they’d need to conduct at least a few real-life training sessions to test out their procedures before they could write the proposal.

The grant committee would expect to see solid evidence of an ecological program that would make a significant impact on the community. Where were these dogs that Molly wanted to train and who was going to teach them?

Max hadn’t dared press her for specifics last night. She would have no doubt reminded him about Turtle Beach’s booming canine population. But Max had met a good number of the dogs on the island. Most notably, he’d met the dogs that belonged to Molly’s friends. Did she really think they could train Nibbles the Chihuahua and Violet’s bouncy Dalmatian to scent track turtle nests?

Max just couldn’t see it. And as far as Molly’s dog training skills went…

He knew better than to voice an opinion in that regard. They both knew she doted on Ursula, but the puppy had learned a skill that very few dogs around the world had mastered. Molly was clearly doing something right, whether intentional or not.

Max had told her they needed to slow down and sleep on the idea before committing to it. He’d been as kind as possible, but when she’d realized he wasn’t completely sold on the plan, her face had fallen. The disappointment in her eyes had reminded him so much of the way she’d reacted to her father’s comments at lunch during SandFest that an ache had formed deep in his chest.

They’d finished marking the nest by the pier and walked back to their side-by-side beach cottages in awkward silence. The moon overhead had been little more than a sliver.