Still no Chami this morning. Sheri and I took a long, hot walk after a lazy breakfast, Loren stayed behind to study for a biology test. The girls had planned to leave early but it was so hot they stuck around until after lunch. They had brought their bikes and Sheri wanted to make sure it wasn’t a waste, so she and I went biking for an hour. In the heat of the day we cooled off in the river, then they packed and left. Of course a bit of melancholy floated like mist above the river, and through our hearts. They both love Chami too. Who doesn’t, of those who know her.

 

It was a very tearful afternoon as Bob and I talked on the phone and decided he had done all that he could to find her and that surely, she must be dead. There is so much scrub brush along the dunes and though he looked under hundreds of them, he never found her body. We have suspected for a while that she wasn’t doing so well, and we don’t even mind if she has died, but not knowing what happened to her will haunt us for a long while. With heavy hearts we stayed connected by telephone, as Bob drove away from the Oregon coast, without his surf buddy.