"Ever since I can remember. I have two closets of the boxes. The new ones are either by my bed when I wake or at my place at breakfast."
"But how does this—person get these boxes to you out here? Does he give them to your aunts and do they put them there?"
"I'm not sure."
"But how can they get them in winter?"
"I don't know."
"Look here," he said, pouring himself more lemonade, "how long is it since you've been to the mainland?"
"Almost eighteen years. My aunts tell me I was born there in the middle of the war."
"What war?" he asked startledly, spilling some lemonade.
"The World War, of course. What's the matter?"
Jack Barr was staring down at the spilled lemonade and feeling a kind of terror he'd never experienced in his waking life. Nothing around him had changed. He could still feel the same hot sun on his shoulders, the same icy glass in his hand, scent the same lemon-acid odor in his nostrils. He could still hear the faint chop-chop of the waves.