At the time, Mr. Dobbin blamed the fog for what happened. Afterwards, he wasn’t so sure.

He’d been staying at Quaco two and a half weeks. It was mid August, and with homecoming week a month past and the Labour Day rush yet to arrive, the seaside village was deserted most days. He was the only guest at the local inn.

Mr. Dobbin rather enjoyed the quiet. His doctor had ordered him to take a vacation that would provide a modicum of exercise and a retreat from the stress of his law practice. So, Mr. Dobbin had booked himself three weeks at an inn on the shores of a bay he had never heard of, as far from Boston as he cared to drive in a day.

He passed the time walking and sketching, a hobby he had enjoyed in college and rediscovered during his convalescence from a double bypass surgery several years before. Mr. Dobbin had tried to wring as much as he could out of life early, and while this had made him comfortably wealthy, it had also very nearly killed him. He had experienced two heart attacks since the bypass, the most recent severe enough that his doctor had warned him if he suffered a third, neither his money nor the remaining veins in his leg would be likely to save him.

Even on vacation, Mr. Dobbin followed a daily routine. He rose as early as he would have in Boston, watching the sun rise over the bay and reading newspapers with coffee in his room. He breakfasted late, donned a waxed canvas satchel containing lunch and a few sketching supplies and set off wherever the impulse took him. With its covered bridges, long, crescent shaped beach and scores of Victorian sea captain’s homes, the little village offered a variety of interesting and challenging views. When he returned to the inn in the afternoon, Mr. Dobbin liked to paint his best sketches in watercolour.

What he hadn’t counted on was the fog.

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