Irene’s next move is a trip to Federal Republic. There’s a branch in Coralville, although she has never set foot in it. She manages to find the most recent statement, which shows a balance of $46,270.32. There was a deposit of $7,500 on Monday, December 10, and another deposit of $7,500 on Monday, December 24, at eleven o’clock in the morning. The withdrawals are automatic payments for the household bills—electricity, cable, heating oil. There’s a $3,200 payment to Citibank—that’s Irene’s credit card—an amount that was a little higher than normal due to Christmas.

Irene approaches the teller with trepidation, even though she has never seen the young woman before. She’s Asian and far younger than either Cash or Baker, which is good. Irene craves anonymity. The last thing she wants is to deal with someone who knows her family, even slightly. Irene checks the woman’s name plate: JOSEPHINE.

“Good afternoon, Josephine,” Irene says. She stretches her face into a smile, but she suspects it looks like a grimace. “I have some questions about my account.”

“Certainly,” Josephine says. She accepts the statement from Irene, then starts tapping at her computer keyboard. “Let me just bring this up on my screen.” She pauses. Her eyes grow wide.

What? Irene thinks. She’s worried she’s going to be exposed on the spot. She’d have to say, I’m here because my husband died under mysterious circumstances. I’ve just discovered he had a second life but I was never suspicious because, honestly, Josephine, I paid very little attention to him. And I know next to nothing about our current financial situation.

“You’re a valued and trusted account holder here at Federal Republic,” Josephine says. “With us since 2006?”

“Yes,” Irene says. She points to the amounts she underlined on the statement. “I was wondering if you could tell me where these two amounts were wired from? I don’t see any other account number or the name of the bank.”

Josephine checks the amounts on the statement, then blinks at her screen. “You’re referring to the seventy-five-hundred-dollar deposit on Monday, December tenth, and the seventy-five-hundred-dollar deposit on Monday, December twenty-fourth?” Josephine’s voice is very loud, Irene thinks. She seems to be intentionally drawing attention to her teller window. Irene quickly casts a glance around the bank. She lives in mortal fear of seeing someone she knows.

“Yes,” Irene whispers, trying to telegraph the delicate nature of the situation.

“Those deposits were made in cash,” Josephine announces brightly.

“Cash?” Irene says. She nearly adds: You mean to tell me Russ walked in here with seventy-five hundred dollars on his person and then did it again two weeks later?

“Yes, cash!” Josephine says with such gusto that Irene thinks, Why not just broadcast over the bank’s PA system that Russell Steele was a drug dealer?

“Okay,” Irene says. “Thank you. One more quick question.” She leans in, locking eyes with Josephine, hoping that Josephine will finally understand the need for discretion. “Are there any other accounts at this bank under my name or my husband’s name?”

Josephine pulls back a couple of inches. “Do you have the account numbers?”

“I don’t,” Irene says. She’s trying to choose her words carefully here, though really what she’s tempted to do is tell young Josephine a cautionary tale: I let my husband take over our finances and now I don’t know what I do or don’t have! “I think I may have a second account here, one I haven’t been keeping close tabs on. Would you be able to check using my name or my husband’s name, our address, or our Social Security numbers?” Here, Irene slides Josephine a piece of paper with both Socials clearly labeled. “I can’t find any paperwork on our other accounts but it’s a new year, so one resolution I made was to figure this out.”

Josephine presses her lips together in a way that lets Irene know she’s growing suspicious. Still, her fingers fly across the keyboard. She slows to punch the Social Security numbers in carefully, then waits for the results. Blood pulses in Irene’s ears, and her shearling coat feels like it’s made of lead.

“I don’t see another account under either name or Social,” Josephine says. “Nothing’s coming up. Would you like me to call over my branch manager?”

“No, thank you, that’s okay,” Irene says. “For all I know, the account I’m thinking of could be at a different bank altogether.”

Josephine tilts her head. “A different bank?”

Irene backs toward the door. She can’t get out of there fast enough. “Well, like I said, it’s my New Year’s resolution to get organized.”

“All righty!” Josephine says. “Good luck with that.”

Huck has asked Ayers to help him go through the things in Rosie’s bedroom during the week, while Maia is at school. Ayers doesn’t make it up to the house on Jacob’s Ladder until the Thursday before the Martin Luther King Day weekend.

“I’m sorry I didn’t come sooner,” Ayers says. “My life just got really busy all of a sudden.”

“Don’t apologize,” Huck says. “You have two jobs, and now that you’re back with Mick, I’m sure he wants your attention as well.”

Ayers sighs. She is back with Mick and he does want her attention. He admitted that seeing her with Baker (Mick calls him “Banker”) drove him crazy with jealousy, and he vowed not to let anything—or anyone—get between them again. Since they’ve been back together, Mick has stopped by La Tapa at the end of Ayers’s shift each night and walked her to her truck before heading back to Beach Bar until closing. He’s abandoned his usual ritual of late-night drinks at the Quiet Mon and instead drives straight to Ayers’s apartment in Fish Bay, where he spends the night. When Ayers works on Treasure Island, he meets her at the customs dock at four o’clock with a pineapple-banana smoothie from Our Market. On the one day off they’ve had together so far, Mick borrowed his boss’s boat and they cruised all the way up the north shore to snorkel at Waterlemon Cay. They spotted three basking sharks and two spotted eagle rays. Mick is as much of a snorkel-nerd as Ayers. When they saw the second spotted eagle ray rippling along the sandy bottom, Mick dived down and undulated right along top of it. When he and Ayers surfaced a few moments later, he pulled off his mask and grinned like a kid with a shiny new bike, and Ayers felt a wave of the familiar adoration. This was her guy.

They’d left Waterlemon and headed to Gibney for an hour on the beach. When Ayers’s stomach started to rumble, they climbed back into the boat and tied up to the dock at Caneel Bay. They strolled hand in hand, salty and sandy, to the Beach Bar, where Mick ordered a bottle of Moët, the conch fritters, and four sushi rolls.

Ayers had craned her neck to ogle the hotel rooms that lined the beach, each of them as luxurious and appealing as pearls on a string.

“I’m dying to stay here,” she said, then instantly regretted it. The champagne had gone right to her head.

“Guess you’ll have to wait for your banker to come back,” Mick said.

“Guess so,” she said lightly. Mick dipped a fritter in aioli and let the topic go. Maybe he was consciously avoiding a fight or maybe he wasn’t as jealous as he’d claimed to be. Maybe he was content to let the past be the past. Maybe he thought Baker Steele would never return to St. John. Maybe he thought he and Ayers could just continue their relationship where they’d left off, as though neither Baker nor Brigid had ever existed.

Ayers wasn’t so sure.

Huck leads Ayers to Rosie’s room and opens the door. Ayers has been in Rosie’s room only twice before, both times years ago. The first time was when they swung by after work so Rosie could change before they went dancing at Castaways. The other time, Rosie was at work and Ayers was off and Rosie had texted Ayers and begged her to grab her bottle of Percocet—she had just had all four wisdom teeth removed and was crying in pain. But that was it. They were grown women; they hung out in bars, not in each other’s bedrooms.

Ayers remembers, however, that while the rest of the house looked like it was shared by the protagonist of The Old Man and the Sea and the Little Mermaid (Huck and Maia), Rosie’s room was a sanctuary, cool and elegant, and it still is. The wallpaper is printed with pink hibiscus blossoms, and the hibiscus theme is echoed by a bush outside the open window. The queen-size bed has at least a dozen pillows artfully arranged against the rattan headboard. Rosie was a fastidious bed-maker, whereas Ayers sleeps in a tangle of sheets every night and sees absolutely no point in making a bed that she’s only going to climb right back into the next night. (Ayers gets a sudden vision of Rosie folding napkins at La Tapa. She was careful and precise in the task, like she was doing origami.)

Against the wall is a large teak bureau; over it hangs a giant, round silver-framed mirror. The door to the closet is closed tight. The only personal touches that Ayers can see are a trio of framed photographs in one corner and a copy of Jane Eyre on the nightstand. Rosie was a sucker for the classics, especially the novels of Edith Wharton, George Eliot, and the Brontë sisters, and it was nearly impossible to get her to read anything contemporary, though she and Ayers had made a deal: Ayers would read Middlemarch if Rosie would read Eat, Pray, Love. (Ayers hadn’t kept her end of the bargain, which she feels awful about now.)

Huck asked Ayers to “help” him go through Rosie’s things, but it’s clear he hasn’t been in here even once, and Ayers suspects Maia hasn’t either. The room is undisturbed, as if Rosie might walk back in at any moment, straw market bag over her shoulder, singing Aretha Franklin.

That, probably, is the point. If they go through everything and sort out what to keep and what to throw away, they’re admitting Rosie is gone.

“I’ll get started, I guess,” Ayers says to Huck. “I’ll make four piles—to keep, to give away, to throw away, and undecided.”

“Ayers,” Huck says.

She turns to him. She’s afraid he’s going to break down, and if he breaks down, she will too. They both vowed to be strong for Maia, and they have been, but this hasn’t left a lot of time for them to tend to their own grief. Ayers can practically hear the texture and timbre of Rosie’s voice: You make me feel like a nat-u-ral wo-man!

“Last Friday,” Huck says, “the FBI called.”

Ayers snaps back to reality.

“Virgin Islands Search and Rescue contacted them about the wreckage. The agent I spoke to said it looks like there might have been foul play.”

Ayers nods but says nothing. After she and Mick had left Caneel Bay and returned the inflatable dinghy, they’d continued on to Joe’s Rum Hut for happy hour, then they stopped at Woody’s for a drink, then they strolled down to Morgan’s Mango to have dinner. By that time, Mick was drunk enough to engage in some pretty wild theorizing. The bird Rosie was on did not go down by accident, Mick had said. I guarantee you that.

“Turns out the damage to the helicopter wasn’t consistent with a lightning strike,” Huck says. “They think there might have been a bomb aboard or that maybe someone tampered with the wiring to cause an explosion.”

Ayers blinks.

“I just thought you should know,” Huck says. “They’re still investigating.”

“Maia?”

“I didn’t tell her,” Huck says. “The less she thinks about the actual crash, the better.”

“Agreed,” Ayers says. “What about…I mean, do we know if…” She swallows. “Have you heard from Irene?”

“I made her promise she would text me once she made it home,” Huck says. “And she did. Then a day or two later, she texted to let me know that her mother-in-law, Russ’s mother, had passed away. Which I guess was something of a blessing. Though I don’t know…that’s a lot of loss for one week. I sent my condolences, then decided I’d leave her be for a while. So I’m not sure if she knows about this. Though I assume so. Have you heard from the boys?”

Ayers has not, which bothers her more than it probably should. Especially since she told both Baker and Cash to leave her alone. She was disappointed that they had lied to her about who they were, and besides that, she was back together with Mick. There was no reason for either of them to reach out to her, but their silence chafes nonetheless. They had both claimed to have feelings for her. Baker used the phrase “love at first sight,” and Cash said he thought he was in love with her. But now that they’re back in America, living their lives, Ayers has been forgotten.

Which is why she never dates tourists.

She is especially peeved at Cash because she had texted him the day before with a link to a job opening on Treasure Island. Wade, the first mate, was moving back to the States to manage a marijuana dispensary outside of Boston, and they needed to hire a replacement before he left in two weeks. Skip, the bartender at La Tapa, had expressed interest, but Ayers didn’t think she could handle dealing with Skip at both of her places of employment, and she suspects that James, the captain, would throw Skip overboard before they made it into British waters. The problem is that everyone on St. John already has a job, and anyone who’s not on St. John doesn’t have housing. Then Ayers thought of Cash. He had been a big help on that trip to Virgin Gorda. And he’d had years of experience as a ski instructor, which, as he pointed out, was exactly the same thing, only completely different. He’s probably certified in CPR. He would have to get his lifesaving certificate, take a marine-safety class, and, literally, learn the ropes. But all of that stuff is easy. The most attractive thing about Cash, other than his charm and love of the outdoors, is that he has a place to live.

Maybe it was a bit of a stretch to imagine that Cash would drop everything and move to the Virgin Islands in order to crew on Treasure Island. Maybe he thought Ayers was teasing him or taunting him, but if so, wouldn’t he have shot back a snappy response?

“Not a word,” Ayers tells Huck. She tries to make this sound like a good thing, but he must know better, because he pats her shoulder.

“Holler when you get hungry,” Huck says. “I’ll bring you some lunch.”

“Great,” Ayers says weakly. She thinks of the awful fish sandwiches on buttered Wonder Bread that Huck packs for Maia.

“I’m picking up barbecue from Candi’s,” he says, and Ayers perks up. “Thank you for doing this.” He casts his eyes upward. “I’m sure Rosie would prefer to have you discovering her secrets rather than me.”

Discovering her secrets makes the work sound intriguing when in fact it’s merely heartbreaking.

Ayers starts with the closet. Rosie loved to wear white; it made her skin look luminous. The clothes in the right half of the closet are all white. Shades of eggshell, ivory, ecru, and pearl mix with the most blinding of whites. Everything is crisp and ironed, even her jeans. The clothes in the left half of the closet are full of color—Rosie’s bright printed handkerchief halters, her bohemian blouses, her simple cotton tank dresses. Nobody rocked a jersey patio dress like Rosie Small. Ayers’s favorite is a ribbed cotton racerback in brilliant marigold. She fingers it, remembering some special occasion at Chateau Bordeaux. The two of them had gone for cocktails to enjoy the spectacular view over Coral Bay, and Rosie had been wearing that dress.

Beneath the clothes are shoes—sandals, wedges, and the pair of black Dansko clogs marked with green tape that Rosie wore when she waited tables at La Tapa.

Ayers inhales through her nose, trying to stave off the tears. Everyone at La Tapa wore black clogs, and on Ayers’s very first day of work, Rosie had advised making hers distinguishable in some way. She showed Ayers the green tape. Looks like we wear about the same size, Rosie said. But if I ever see these on your feet, I’ll cut you. Hear?

Ayers could take the clogs now, of course, and wear them as a tribute—but is she worthy? Rosie was hands down the best server at La Tapa, the best server on the island, period. The guests clamored for her; her name was mentioned something like a hundred and seventeen times on TripAdvisor. Ayers would also like the marigold dress and all of the pristine white jeans. The handkerchief halters are so quintessentially Rosie that Ayers can only imagine giving them to Maia to wear when she’s older. Much older.

Ayers throws herself down on the bed. She’d look awful in the yellow dress. But maybe she’ll take it anyway and hang it in her closet, a reminder of her beautiful friend.

Foul play. The FBI. Russell Steele was into something illegal. He had enemies. Someone wanted him dead, and Rosie was collateral damage.

Ayers pushes herself up and goes to the corner to study the photographs. The top is a photo of Rosie with LeeAnn and Huck. Rosie is wearing a white cap and gown; it’s her graduation from the University of the Virgin Islands on St. Thomas. Huck looks pretty much the same as he does now, maybe a few pounds lighter then with a bit more red in his beard. Ayers studies LeeAnn, Rosie’s mother. She was tall and statuesque and wore her reddish-brown hair in a braided topknot. Ayers had heard all about the glamorous LeeAnn—that she had modeled as a teenager and gotten as far away as the fashion shows in Milan but had come home to marry her childhood sweetheart, Levi Small, who’d ended up leaving the island for good shortly after Rosie was born. LeeAnn had then gone to school to become a nurse practitioner. To hear some people tell it, LeeAnn was the most qualified caregiver at the Myrah Keating Smith Community Health Center, even better than the doctors. Ayers had found LeeAnn intimidating—initially, anyway. She exuded competence as well as something Ayers could only describe as a regal bearing. When LeeAnn first met Ayers, she’d seemed disapproving that Ayers had no college degree and no way to support herself other than the hand-to-mouth existence that waiting tables afforded. Don’t your parents want more for you? LeeAnn had asked. Ayers had tried to explain that her parents were wanderers without a home, without possessions, really, and that they counted wealth by life experiences. LeeAnn had met this news with a skeptical arched eyebrow. Don’t you want more for yourself? LeeAnn asked. Ayers had shrugged; she was twenty-two years old at the time. But it was LeeAnn Powers’s questions that led Ayers to get her second, slightly more professional job on Treasure Island. After that, LeeAnn’s opinion of her had seemed to improve. Learn everything you can about the business, LeeAnn said. Then save your money and buy it.

LeeAnn had been even tougher when dealing with Rosie. The worst insult LeeAnn could dish out was to say that Rosie took after her Small relatives. That look in Rosie’s eyes, for example, that fire, that defiance, was pure Small, LeeAnn said, and it had to be contained or the girl would ruin herself.

What would LeeAnn have made of the Invisible Man? Nothing good, Ayers guesses.

Ayers hasn’t said this out loud to anyone but she doesn’t think it’s a coincidence that Russell Steele, the “Invisible Man,” reappeared in Rosie’s life just after LeeAnn died. A few weeks ago, Ayers had learned that Russ was Maia’s father, meaning he had been in Rosie’s life a lot longer than anyone knew.

Oh, how Ayers longs to ask Rosie herself. You could have told me everything, Ayers thinks. I was a safe place for you.

The center photo is of Maia, taken outside the Gifft Hill School. She’s very small, wearing a backpack that is nearly as big as she is, and in the photo she’s on her tiptoes, reaching for the latched gate of the fence to let herself in. The picture is precious and Ayers can imagine Rosie in the parking lot, possibly crouched down between two cars so Maia wouldn’t see her, capturing this early expression of independence.

Maia’s relationship with Rosie had been less contentious than Rosie’s with LeeAnn, but that’s not to say it was all milk and cookies after school and snuggles and stories at bedtime. There was a ferocity that ran through the female line of that family—maybe LeeAnn, Rosie, and Maia were all too similar—and Ayers had seen Rosie and Maia butt heads again and again. When Ayers was called on to referee, she usually sided with Maia, causing Maia to utter the famous line that Ayers was like a mother to her but better, because she wasn’t her mother.

The third photograph is of Rosie and Ayers on Oppenheimer Beach, back when the tire swing still hung from the crooked palm that stretched out over the water. The tire swing was more fun to look at than actually ride on, as Ayers had learned the hard way, but this picture of the two of them in bikinis is the best picture of them ever taken. Ayers keeps the same photo on her phone as her screen saver, and she will never replace it.

She feels honored that she has earned a spot on Rosie’s bedroom wall. It seems to mean that Rosie considered her family.

Ayers can’t help but notice that there is no picture of Russell Steele on the wall.

If there are secrets to discover, Ayers predicts she’ll find them in the top drawer of the dresser. That’s where people put intimate things, right? Women their lingerie and men their condoms. Rosie’s top drawer holds the expected collection of bras and panties, some functional, some recreational, as well as teddies and slips, cotton socks, a box of tampons, two full carousels of birth control pills, and a plastic bag containing six tightly rolled joints, which Ayers slips right into her purse. Rosie would definitely want Ayers to take those so Maia doesn’t find them and get thoughts about experimenting.

The middle drawer is a jumble of bikinis, nearly all of which Ayers recognizes; at least half a dozen are white. The rest are black, red, blue gingham, kelly green with hot-pink piping. There’s a pink smocked top that Ayers loves, and then she remembers a supercool turquoise crocheted bikini that Rosie got from Letarte. Ayers digs for it, but it’s not there—maybe Rosie wore it to Anegada? A sobering thought. Then Ayers finds something intriguing. Beneath the bikinis is a layer of clothbound books. But they’re not books, Ayers realizes when she opens one and sees Rosie’s handwriting. They’re journals.

Ayers extracts the journals like she’s unearthing the bones of ancient peoples on an archaeological dig. She reads from the one on top.

January 1, 2000

Ayers shuts that journal and scrambles for one closer to the bottom of the pile, from 2015. Her breathing is shallow.

January 1, 2015

He’s having dinner with his mother at the Pullman Bar and Diner when she asks the question he’s been dreading.

“So what’s next for you? Back to the mountains?”

“Trying to get rid of me already?” he says.

“Not at all,” Irene says. “It’s just that I thought this”—she indicates the restaurant and their server, Ryan, whom she seems to be on pretty familiar terms with—“was the stuff of your nightmares. Stuck in Iowa City, eating the early-bird special with your mother.”

“It’s been only five days,” Cash says. “And Milly—”

“Milly is handled,” Irene says. “I don’t mean to make your grandmother sound like a loathsome errand. But I also want you to know that you don’t need to stay here on my account. Surely you have better things to do than listen to me describe my crazy dreams.”

His mother is right. Cash should load Winnie into his truck and return to Denver to clean up what’s left of his life there before he heads to Breckenridge for the remainder of the winter. But what had seemed so appealing before he got Irene’s phone call informing him his father was dead has lost its luster. He received no fewer than ten panicked voicemails from Dylan, the manager of Cash’s Belmar store, asking why there are chains on the door and why no one is answering the phone at the Cherry Creek store. (Cash finally responded: Business went under. I would offer you a reference but I know you’ve been skimming from the register. Sorry, bro, good luck out there.) Cash is two payments behind on his truck so he needs a job right away. But because it’s already January, all of the positions at the ski school have been filled. Cash called his buddy Jay, and he said Cash could sleep on his sofa for a week but that would be all his new girlfriend would tolerate and finding other housing at this point would be tricky, especially with a dog.

“You might want to cool your heels there,” Jay said. “And try coming out in March when everyone else gets cabin fever and leaves.”

Cool his heels in Iowa for two months? In winter? There’s no way he can do it, can he? And yet, what choice does he have? Living with his mother is free, the house is comfortable and plenty big enough, and she gives him twenties and fifties every time he goes out. She would probably make his car payment in exchange for him doing some simple handyman work.

But would his morale survive? He fears not. Earlier that day, his mother pressed two hundred dollars into his hand and sent him to the Hy-Vee for groceries, which he didn’t object to as he needed dog food for Winnie and some shaving cream for himself. And who should he run into at the deli counter but his high-school girlfriend Claire Bellows, the one who went to Northwestern and promptly slept with Baker?

“Cash?” Claire said, blinking like he was an apparition. “Cash Steele, is that you?”

Cash forced a smile while he cursed his truly terrible luck. And yet, this was what happened when you returned to your hometown: you bumped into the people you used to know. Claire Bellows looked basically the same, maybe a little older, maybe a little washed out; her face was wan, her hair colorless and pulled back into a sad little bun. She was pushing a cart that held two children, a toddler who was standing up among the groceries—his left foot perilously close to a carton of eggs—and a baby in a bucket seat that snapped onto the front of the cart. The toddler was a boy; the baby was swaddled in a pink fleece sack, her face obscured.

“Hey, Claire.” Cash said it casually, as though he’d just seen her the week before. He felt like he’d just seen her the week before because he and Baker had spent so much time talking about her. The good news was that the bad mojo of Claire Bellows had been exorcised. Cash felt nothing when he looked at her. He leaned in to kiss her cheek. “How are you?”

“This is like that song!” Claire exclaimed. “Met my old lover in the grocery store, the snow was falling Christmas Eve!”

Cash nodded along, trying to be a good sport. The lyrics rang a distant bell—Gordon Lightfoot, maybe? Simon and Garfunkel? Cash was reminded that Claire used to be a lyrics wizard, especially when it came to the music of their parents’ era, because Claire’s mother, Adrienne Bellows, was a disc jockey on the local easy-listening station. When Cash and Claire were in high school, Adrienne worked the evening six-to-ten shift; she was eastern Iowa’s answer to Delilah. While Adrienne Bellows was comforting the heartbroken and lovelorn who called in with their requests and sappy dedications, Cash and Claire were making out and, eventually, having sex in Claire’s bedroom.

“And who do we have here?” Cash asked in an attempt to be gallant. He was trying, he really was.

Claire looked confused until she realized he meant the children. “Oh!” she said. “This is Eugene and the baby is Mabel.”

Cash tried not to grimace. Claire had followed the trend of naming her children as though they’d been born a hundred and twenty years ago. “Nice,” he said. “Hi, guys.” The toddler turned to look at Cash, missing the eggs by a fraction of an inch, and Cash couldn’t help himself—he moved the carton to safety. “So you’re back in Iowa City?”

“Temporarily,” Claire said. “For the next five or six years. My husband is doing a fellowship in endocrinology at the university.”

Cash nearly said, And you? But he was afraid Claire would tell him that she’d given up her job as a marketing executive with Colgate-Palmolive in Chicago in order to follow her husband back to Iowa and then add that she was “okay” with it or else openly express bitterness. To extract himself from that awkward topic, Cash would then ask about her mother, and Claire, realizing that she was doing all the talking, would take the reins and say, What about you? Why are you in town? Cash could then say he was visiting his parents, which would be half a lie, although lying would be preferable to telling Claire that Russ was dead. Claire had loved Russ. She and Russ had had a thing where they told each other knock-knock jokes, which Cash had found annoying even at the height of his passion for Claire.

He might be able to successfully evade the topic of his parents but there would undoubtedly be follow-up questions about where he was living and what he was doing—and then finally, as if it had just occurred to her for no particular reason, Claire would ask about Baker.

To avoid that inevitable moment, Cash smiled at Claire and said, “Well, at least Iowa City is a good place to raise kids. We learned that firsthand. See you later, Claire.”

“But—wait,” Claire said.

Cash did not wait. He sacrificed the half a pound of sliced turkey on Irene’s list and sauntered off in the direction of the bakery. Claire had always been socially awkward in a sweet way. When Baker hit on her at that frat party at Northwestern, it must have been like taking candy from a baby.

But, really, what did Cash care? He was over it.

Thinking about it now in the Pullman Diner, he can’t imagine spending two to three months here in Iowa City dodging land mines like his ex-girlfriend Claire.

To Irene he says, “I’m going to stay a few days longer. At least.”

She gives him a tight smile and Cash wonders if maybe she wants him gone.

“Let’s order,” she says.

He’s nearly asleep, sprawled across the massive acreage of the guest-room bed, when he gets a text on his phone.

Who would be texting him so late? Cash figures it must be Dylan again, telling Cash that he left his one-hitter behind the counter or complaining because he’s still owed for a day and a half of work. The first thing Cash notices when he picks up his phone is the time. It’s not late at all; it’s only ten o’clock. It just feels late because it gets dark at four thirty in the afternoon and there’s nothing to do in this town after the dinner hour. The second thing Cash notices is that the text is from Ayers.

Ayers.

Cash stares at the phone, wondering if it’s a trick. Did Baker somehow figure out a way to send Cash a text that looks like it’s from Ayers? Cash hesitates a moment, then swipes to open. The text isn’t a text but rather a link, and when Cash clicks on the link, it opens to the website for Treasure Island Cruises—Day Trips to the BVIs, St. Thomas, Water Island, and Beyond!

Beyond? Cash thinks. Beyond must be that place you visit in your mind after nine or ten painkillers.

This section of the website starts with Join the Treasure Island crew! In smaller print beneath that is We are currently seeking a first mate for our BVI routes. Must possess strong administrative skills and CPR and lifesaving certification; must enjoy working with people. Valid passport required, boating experience preferred. To apply, contact Ayers Wilson, ayers@treasureislandcruisesvi.com.

Did Ayers send this to him for a reason? Cash wonders. Does she think he should…apply? He has been boating exactly once in the past ten years—when he went on Treasure Island as Ayers’s guest. Yes, he’d enjoyed it, and yes, Ayers had asked him if he wanted a job. But that had been a joke. Right? And yet now, apparently, they were looking for someone.

CPR certification he has; lifesaving, not a chance—unless you considered avalanche-rescue certification “lifesaving.” Well, it was, but it wouldn’t help him save someone who was drowning. Cash is an okay swimmer and he does have years of experience working with people, but in his heart, he’s a mountain boy.

His thumbs hover over the keypad. It doesn’t matter why Ayers sent this; it only matters that she’s reaching out. She’s thinking of him.

He lies back in bed and tries to lasso his bucking bronco of a heart. Ayers had been so angry the last time he saw her, so indignant that two people she’d befriended had deceived her about who they were and what they were doing on St. John. In retrospect, Cash doesn’t blame her. They—meaning Baker—should have told Ayers who they were at Rosie’s funeral lunch. But okay, let’s say that would have been in poor taste. Fine. Cash should have told her who he was when he bumped into her on the Reef Bay Trail. No excuses; he should have and he hadn’t, and then once he’d spent the day with her aboard Treasure Island, he’d become infatuated with her and didn’t want to ruin his chances. The same had been true for Baker. And guess what—they both lost out. Ayers told them she had gotten back together with her old boyfriend, Mick.

Cash reads the link she’d texted him again. She must have sent it to him because she thought it would be a good fit. Right? Right? Or maybe it was a joke. For all Ayers knows, Cash is back in Colorado, skiing the bowl on Peak 8.

But he’s not. He’s in Iowa City without a job, without prospects. He closes his eyes and tries to imagine a life on the water.

With Ayers. He would agree to live in the space station if it was with Ayers.

He decides not to respond to the text right away. He wants to sleep on it.

In the morning, the text is still there and Cash is proud of himself for exercising restraint and not sending a knee-jerk response.

Winnie is asleep at the foot of the bed. When she feels Cash stir, she lifts her head.

“You liked St. John, right?” Cash asks. “Wanna go back?”

Of course, it’s not Winnie’s permission that he needs. Cash pads down to the kitchen in his pajama bottoms and a decade-old Social Distortion T-shirt he found in the bureau in his room. Irene is juicing oranges the old-fashioned way—by crushing the hell out of the buggers with a galvanized-steel juicer that had belonged to her own mother. Cash watches her as she presses and twists the orange under her palms. All of that energy for a dribble of juice. Though it’s probably not the worst way to release pent-up frustration.

“Mom,” he says. “I’m not going back to Colorado.”

“You’re not?” she says, relaxing her death grip on the orange in her hand and then tossing the rind in the sink.

“With your permission…” he says. His voice sticks. Asking her this is harder than he thought it would be. “I’d like to go back down.”

“Down?” she says, though he can tell she understands.

“To St. John,” Cash says. He clears his throat. “I have a lead on a job there. And I was hoping I could just stay in the villa.”

Irene abandons the juice project altogether in order to stare at him. He can’t tell what she’s thinking, but then, his mother’s expressions have always been inscrutable. Against all odds, they had both sort of fallen in love with St. John—at least, Cash did. He knows Irene had warmed to it as well; she went out fishing with Huck once in an attempt to get information, but she also took a second boat trip with him before she and Cash left. He supposes it’s possible that her feelings have changed since they’ve been back home and now the whole Caribbean represents an enormous, ugly deception that she doesn’t want to revisit. And maybe she’d prefer that Cash not revisit it either.

It’s the idea that Irene might say no, might ask him nicely not to go or forbid him to stay in the villa, that makes Cash realize how badly he wants to return and give life down there a shot. He won’t stay forever. Maybe just until summer.

“Is this about the girl?” Irene asks.

“What?” Cash says. He can feel his face turning red. “No, of course not.”

“Oh,” Irene says. “That’s too bad. I like her for you, you know.”

“So…is it okay?” Cash asks.

“Yes, honey,” Irene says. “It’s fine. The villa is just sitting there empty. Someone should use it. Let me buy your plane ticket and give you some money to get started.”

Cash wants to tell her she doesn’t have to—he’s too old to be taking handouts from his mother—but the fact is, he’s flat broke. Broker than broke.

“Thank you, Mom,” he says. “Thank you so much.”

Irene gives him a sad smile. “I’m jealous,” she says.

One hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars; this is how much cash Huck and Ayers discover in the bottom drawer of Rosie’s dresser. It’s all banded up in neat bricks, just like in the movies. After they count the bricks, they count them again, announcing the amounts out loud as they go so they don’t lose track. Then Huck says, “Come into the kitchen.”

“I don’t think I can eat,” Ayers says.

“I’m not talking about barbecue,” Huck says. “I’m talking about rum.”

Ayers shuts the drawer, and the blue Benjamins disappear; Huck ushers her down the hall. In the kitchen, he takes two shot glasses out of the cabinet and brings his trusty bottle of eighteen-year-old Flor de Caña—useful in most emergencies—down from the shelf.

He pours two shots and gives one to Ayers. “I don’t know what to say,” he admits, raising his own glass.

“Me either.”

They clink glasses and drink. He notices Ayers eyeing the barbecue spread out across the counter. She grabs a drumstick dripping with comeback sauce. Huck follows suit. No matter what the circumstances, Candi’s is too tempting to resist.

After Ayers leaves, taking one yellow dress and three pairs of white jeans with her—the rest of the clothes they should let Maia go through, Ayers said, as soon as she’s old enough—Huck picks up the money, armful by armful, and stashes it under his bed. He’s aware that it has remained undetected in Rosie’s room, but he figures it’s only a matter of time before Maia goes snooping. Maia will never voluntarily enter Huck’s room. He’s messy, and Maia has declared on numerous occasions that, despite Huck’s valiant effort with the laundry, his room smells like fish guts, rotten fish guts.

After the money is beneath the bed, he stacks all the issues of Field and Stream and National Geographic that he’s collected over the past twenty years around the bed so that if Maia does come poking around, she will see only that Huck is a packrat.

Money hidden, he feels a little better. He drives to Gifft Hill to pick up Maia from school.

A hundred and twenty-five grand. In cash. In a dresser drawer.

It’s a lot of money, but it’s not enough to kill two people over; that’s Huck’s thought as he pulls into the school parking lot.

Maia is lingering by the gate with her friend Joanie and two boys Huck recognizes but can’t put names to. All four kids have their phones out and they’re laughing at something on the screen. Huck knows Maia sees him and he also knows enough to be patient and not tap the horn or, God forbid, call out to her. That would be so embarrassing.

Maia runs over to his window and he cranks it down.

“Hello there,” he says. His voice sounds normal to his own ears, gruff, grandfatherly. All of his internal panic about having so much cash hidden under his bed is, he thinks, undetectable. “Are you not getting in?”

Maia bites her lip. “Would you take me and my friends into town so we can walk around?”

“Walk around and do what?” Huck asks. Cruz Bay is a small town consisting mostly of bars. Three o’clock is when happy hour at Woody’s starts, luring people off the beaches in the name of good, cheap rum punch, and at four o’clock, all of the excursion boats pull in and disgorge people who have been drinking all day, most of whom are interested in continuing their drinking on land. This is all well and good for the island economy—Cruz Bay in the late afternoons is one of the most festive places on earth—but it’s not exactly a wholesome environment for a bunch of twelve-year-olds.

Maia shrugs. “Get ice cream at Scoops, walk around Mongoose, maybe listen to the guitar player at the Sun Dog. He knows some Drake songs.”

Huck is pretty cool for a grandpa; he, too, knows some Drake songs. “All right. Pile in, I guess. What time should I plan to pick you up?”

“Joanie’s mom will bring us home,” Maia says.

“Fine,” Huck says. If Julie is on board with the kids going into town, then Huck figures it must be all right. Joanie climbs into the truck, giving Huck a fist bump, but the boys offer him scared sideways looks, like he’s Lurch from The Addams Family. This actually cheers Huck up a bit.

“Hey, fellas,” he says. “I’m Captain Huck. Remind me of your names.”

“Colton,” says one.

“Bright,” says the other.

Colton and Bright—Huck has definitely heard both names before, so that’s good. The four kids wedge themselves into the back seat of the truck’s cab, leaving Huck to feel like very much the chauffeur. He nearly asks Maia to move up front, but he doesn’t want to embarrass her and he supposes that part of the fun is being smushed up against a boy. This is how it all starts, Huck thinks. One minute you’re leg to leg with a boy in your grandpa’s truck during a ride into town, and the next minute you’re hiding a hundred and twenty-five thousand of that boy’s illegally gotten dollars in your dresser drawer.

Huck heads up the hill to Myrah Keating, then takes a left on the Centerline Road. At every curve and dip, the kids hoot as though the thrill of the ride is brand-new, even though they’ve all grown up driving on this crazy road. When they descend to the roundabout and Huck signals to go right toward Mongoose Junction, Maia says, “Actually, Gramps, can you drop us off at Powell Park? We’re waiting for some Antilles kids to get off the ferry.”

“Antilles kids?” Huck says. Antilles is the private school over on St. Thomas. “Not those rascals.”

One of the boys guffaws and Huck can practically hear Maia rolling her eyes. Waiting for the Antilles kids is fine, Huck supposes. Powell Park attracts a colorful cast of characters but it’s perfectly safe to hang out there in the midafternoon. So why does Huck feel uneasy? He knew these days were coming; Maia wasn’t going to stay a child forever. But he’s not ready. He should probably acknowledge that he’ll never be ready. He needs Rosie back from the dead; he needs LeeAnn. Ayers has offered to serve as a surrogate mother but she has her own life, two jobs and a boyfriend, so how much can he really ask of her?

Huck has gotten used to the solo life, but right now he could really use a partner.

Irene? He immediately chastises himself for the thought. He must be out of his mind.

That night, after Maia shows Huck her completed homework and then goes into her room to FaceTime Joanie and giggle about God knows what—probably Colton and Bright or possibly a boy who goes to Antilles—Huck climbs into bed with his Michael Connelly novel. He’s been reading this book since before Rosie died, which is an addling thought. When he first cracked open The Late Show a couple weeks ago, his life was one way, and now that he’s on page 223, it’s completely another. Now Rosie is dead—dead!—and he’s hiding a hundred and twenty-five grand under his bed. The book does the trick, though—keeps him engrossed for a few chapters until his eyelids start to feel heavy. He closes the book and turns off the light.

Sleep, he thinks.

But he can’t sleep. He might as well have a pile of uranium under the bed; the money feels radioactive.

A hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars. In cash.

Why?

Eventually, he drifts off; when he’s awakened by his alarm, his head aches and he’s in a foul mood. In his day, this was known as getting up on the wrong side of the bed.

“Let’s go!” he calls out to Maia. “I have a charter at nine. A bachelor party.”

Maia emerges from her room wearing a pink jean skirt, a black tank top, and black Chuck Taylors. She looks older, as though she aged three years overnight.

“I thought you hated bachelor parties,” she says.

“Put on something else,” Huck says. “That top is too revealing and that skirt is too short.”

“What are you talking about?” Maia says. “I wear this outfit all the time.”

“You do?” Huck says. He has to admit, he doesn’t usually notice what Maia is wearing and he has never commented on it before. “I guess maybe you’re growing, because it looks too small.”

“Maybe you need new glasses,” Maia says with a grin. She peers into the frying pan, where he’s scrambling eggs. “Cut the heat. They’re perfect now.”

Huck snaps the burner off. It’s an ongoing joke that Huck tends to overcook the eggs, and Maia feels about dry eggs the way that Huck feels about dry fish. No bueno.

“Serve them up yourself,” Huck says. “And make your own toast. I have to get ready.”

Maia stares at him. “Is this about yesterday?”

Huck stops in his tracks. He’s facing the refrigerator, where he’s about to grab Maia’s lunch box—packed with a peanut butter and jelly as per her request because all of a sudden sandwiches made from freshly caught fish aren’t good enough. “Yesterday?”

“Taking my friends to town,” Maia says. “You’ve been in a weird mood since then.”

She’s intuitive, he’ll give her that. He can’t very well tell her the truth—that what has put him in a “weird mood” is the hundred and twenty-five grand he found in her mother’s room—but neither does he want her to think that he minds driving her and her friends around. If she believes that, she’ll start asking someone else for rides, and he’ll lose his window into her world.

“That’s not it,” Huck says. “I enjoyed taking you to town.”

“Oh,” Maia says. “What is it, then? Is it Irene?”

At this, Huck does turn around. “Irene?”

“You miss her, right? That’s why you’re grumpy?”

Huck opens his mouth but for the life of him, he can’t think of how to respond. The night following Irene’s departure, he made the mistake of drinking a couple of shots of Flor de Caña and saying some things to Maia that he should have kept private. What exactly did he say? Maybe something as innocuous as I’ve never seen a woman fish like that before. Maybe something more revealing. But did he say he had feelings for Irene? No. Did he ever say he’d miss her? No.

Huck nearly snaps, I’m not grumpy! But he is, and it’s not Maia’s fault.

“Sorry, Nut,” he says. “I’m just tired, I’m missing your mom—and your grandma too, for good measure—and I’m dreading this bachelor party.”

Maia opens her arms to give Huck a hug, which he gratefully accepts. He loves this child to distraction, she’s all he has left, and he’ll be damned if he’s going to let whatever mess Rosie was involved in affect her.

“Eat your breakfast,” he says.

Adam is late getting to the boat, which normally ticks Huck off, but today, he’s grateful. He has to think. What does he do about the money? He’s a human being, so part of him fantasizes about keeping it and slipping five hundred here and three hundred there into Maia’s college fund. He’s not rich, he might not even qualify as “comfortable,” but his house is paid off and so is the boat. He has money saved for a new truck once his old one finally dies and he has a fund for boat repairs. The money, if he kept it, would be a cushion. A really soft cushion.

He can’t keep it. He has to report it. But to whom? He’ll call Agent Vasco, he decides. He’ll call her today, after the charter.

But maybe he’ll call Irene first.

A dinghy putters up to the Mississippi. It’s Keegan, the first mate from What a Catch!, a friendly-rival fishing boat, dropping off Adam.

“Sorry, Cap,” Adam says, climbing aboard.

“He was up late talking to Marissa,” Keegan says.

Huck pretends not to hear this last comment, as though ignoring it might make the situation go away. Marissa is the daughter of Dan and Mrs. Dan, the Albany couple from Huck’s charter on New Year’s Eve. Marissa is the girl who did not cast a line, the one who barely took her eyes off her phone’s screen the entire time they were out on the water. Adam asked the girl out for New Year’s Eve, an act of desperation if Huck had ever seen one. But the date must have been a humdinger because after that, they’d been inseparable until Marissa left a few days ago.

The day before yesterday, Huck said to Adam, “Why pick a girl who doesn’t like to fish?”

Adam scoffed. “You know how hard it is to meet a chick who actually enjoys fishing?”

Huck nearly spoke up about Irene—the woman seemed to have taken up permanent residence in the front of his mind and on the tip of his tongue—but instead he said, “Maia likes to fish.”

Adam said, “Maia is twelve. She’ll grow out of it.”

Keegan putters away in the dinghy. Adam removes his visor, runs a hand through his hair, and gazes in the direction of St. Thomas, where they both see an airplane taking off, probably going back to the States.

“Head in the game,” Huck says. “Check the lines.”

“I have to talk to you, Cap,” Adam says.

Huck shakes his head. “Afterward, please. We have a bachelor party today, and you know how I feel about bachelor parties.”

Huck hates bachelor parties. Nine times out of ten, if someone calls looking to book the Mississippi for one, Huck will tell the person his boat is unavailable for the foreseeable future. With bachelor parties, something bad always happens. Huck keeps one case of Red Stripe on ice at all times—and one case only. Bachelor parties often bring an additional thirty-pack of Bud Light (undrinkable, in Huck’s opinion) as well as rum or tequila or sometimes punch in a plastic gallon jug. Huck gives extra alcohol the side-eye, but he has never flat-out forbidden it—that would be a fatal move for his TripAdvisor ratings—although he thinks to himself that what these kids really want is a booze cruise, not a fishing trip. He nearly always ends up with one participant completely jack-wagon drunk, puking off the back. He’s had guys fall off the boat, and he’s had fistfights. Huck never gets involved in the fistfights; he just turns the boat around and drops the group at the National Park Service dock without a word, regardless of whether they’ve caught any fish.

Huck agreed to book this bachelor party because he has been all but ignoring his business since Rosie died and he needs to get back into some kind of groove.

He pulls up to the National Park Service dock at ten minutes to nine but the only people waiting are four gentlemen, Huck’s age or maybe older. They’re in proper fishing shirts and visors and they have bags from the North Shore Deli, home of a roasted pork and broccoli rabe sandwich that Huck dreams about. He wonders if these guys are waiting for What a Catch! and feels a stab of envy.

Huck gives them a wave as he ties up and considers just poaching this foursome and letting Keegan and Captain Chris from What a Catch! handle the bachelor-party guys—who, Huck guesses, will show up late and hung over after a raucous night at the Dog House Pub.

One of the gentlemen, full head of snowy white hair, steps forward. “Captain Huck?” he says. “I’m Kyle Maguire.”

Kyle Maguire? That’s the name of Huck’s guy. These four geezers are the bachelor party! Huck laughs with relief. He’d been expecting Millennials with their hashtags and their GoPros and their swim trunks printed with watermelon margaritas.

“Welcome aboard!” Huck says.

When he tells his “school wives”—Wendy, Becky, Debbie, and Ellen—that Anna has asked him to get a sitter for Floyd so that she and Louisa can take Baker to dinner at Indigo and “civilly discuss arrangements,” they all start talking at once.

“Don’t let them railroad you,” Wendy says. “Ask for full custody if that’s what you want.”

Debbie slides a business card across the table: Perla Piuggi, Esq. “My divorce attorney,” she says. “Pitbull.”

“We’ve agreed to do mediation,” Baker says.

“Using words like civilly and mediation nearly always means an ambush is coming,” Becky says.

Baker slips the card into his pocket.

“I’m dying to eat at Indigo,” Ellen says. “Their tasting menus are the talk of the city. It’s neo–soul food.”

“I’m in,” Wendy says. “Let’s book a table the same night.” She cackles. “That way if things go south, you can come sit with us.”

“I thought Anna ate only pizza,” Debbie says. “Didn’t you tell me Anna hated going out to fancy places?”

“She was always too tired,” Baker says.

“But not anymore,” Ellen says with an eye roll.

“Call the lawyer,” Debbie says.

“And report back,” Wendy says.

“Also, take a picture if you can,” Becky says.

Debbie swats her hand. “We sound like a pack of catty teenagers.”

“I want to see if Anna looks happy,” Becky says. “I want to see if she has that glow.”

“Imagine,” Wendy says. “Anna, happy.”

Ellen wasn’t wrong; Indigo is a unique experience with its own set of rules and a robust social conscience—which must be why Louisa picked it (Baker assumes that Louisa picked it, since what Debbie said is true—Anna eats only pizza). There are only thirteen seats at a horseshoe-shaped bar, making for a communal experience, which Baker figures is both good and bad. On the one hand, things can’t possibly get too ugly in such a controlled environment, but on the other, their civil discussion of arrangements might become a group-therapy session. They are, blessedly, placed at the far side of the horseshoe with Baker agreeing to take the seat on the end, in a relatively dim corner. Louisa is next to him, Anna on the other side of Louisa. This feels weird and wrong—shouldn’t he be sitting next to Anna so they can talk about Floyd? And yet, it’s also symbolic; Louisa is, in fact, the person who came between Baker and Anna, as the seating now illustrates.

They’re asked to select their tasting menu; they can choose carnivore, omnivore, or pescatarian-chordate.

Pescatarian means fish, Baker knows. He hasn’t a clue about chordate, but listed underneath is the word amphibian, which probably means frogs’ legs, but it’s too risky to chance it. Baker chooses carnivore with a first course called Turtlenecks and Do-Rags, and the ladies—women!—choose omnivore and will enjoy a first course called Descendants of Igbo, which is apparently yams with marshmallows.

This place is truly an alternate universe, but at least it serves as a distraction.

Anna, not one for small talk, leans forward and says, “Louisa was offered a position in the neonatal cardiothoracic surgery department at the Cleveland Clinic and she’s going to take it, and she persuaded them that two heart surgeons are better than one, so they’ve offered me a job as well.”

“Turns out, they’re even more excited to get the great Anna Schaffer than they are to get me,” Louisa says, and she covers Anna’s hand with her own.

Baker gazes at the two of them. They seem like strangers to him, like people he’s met at jury duty. Anna is wearing her hair down and it looks lovely, like a dark velvet curtain. Louisa’s hair used to be dark and long like Anna’s—Baker has known her long enough to remember this—but now she has cut it very short and dyed it platinum blond. They’re both glowing; they’re both happy. It’s obvious that they’re in love, that they’re a couple. None of the other ten diners tonight would ever guess that Baker and Anna are the people who are married.

Immediately after making this observation, he processes the words Cleveland Clinic. They’re both taking positions at the Cleveland Clinic, which, if Baker isn’t mistaken, is in Cleveland.

He feels like he has to double-check. Hospitals all have satellite campuses these days.

“Are you talking about the Cleveland Clinic in…Cleveland?” he asks.

Louisa’s head bobs and he notices her grip on Anna’s hand tighten. “Yes, Baker,” she says. It’s probably not her intent to speak to him like he’s a moron but that’s pretty much what she’s doing. “We’re relocating to Cleveland.”

“Not with Floyd,” Baker says. “You aren’t taking my son to Cleveland.”

“That’s what we wanted to talk to you about,” Anna says. “There’s more than one way to look at this.”

“Oh, really,” Baker says. He runs his eyes along the horseshoe to the opposite side, hoping that he will see his four friends eating amphibians. He needs them now because it’s becoming clear that this is an ambush. Anna and Louisa have accepted positions at the Cleveland Clinic. They’re moving to Cleveland, Ohio!

“Yes, really,” Anna says. The server arrives with Anna’s and Louisa’s Descendants (yams) and Baker’s Turtlenecks and Do-Rags, which appears to be a crab dish (not actual turtles’ necks). Louisa and Anna dig in, but Baker can’t even remember how to use his cutlery. “Our first choice would be for you and Floyd to come to Cleveland.”

“What?” Baker says.

“You can do your job from anywhere,” Anna says. “You don’t have to be in Houston.”

“But…we have a house, Floyd has school, we have friends in Houston. A community. A life.”

Anna scrapes yams out of the bowl. “The deepest roots we have in Houston are mine, at the hospital. And I’m willing to pull those up for this opportunity.”

Baker stares at his crab, fervently wishing that Wendy, Becky, Debbie, and Ellen were here so he could inform them that his friendship with them is, according to Anna, shallow—or at least, not as deep as Anna’s career. The woman is so cold, so dispassionate, Baker can’t believe he ever decided to marry her. Good luck to Louisa!

“You and Louisa go to Cleveland,” Baker says. “Floyd and I will stay here. I’ll send him up to you on his vacations.”

“That’s our third choice,” Louisa says. “A distant third, because we’d obviously like to remain a cohesive family unit.” Baker very much resents her chiming in at all. She stole Baker’s wife and now she’s dragging her to Ohio. It’s clear that Louisa is maintaining some kind of utopian vision of the three of them as the parents in this “cohesive family unit,” with Anna and Louisa as the breadwinners and Baker as Floyd’s primary caregiver. “But we want to keep the transition as harmonious as possible, for Floyd’s sake. So we can try that option for the first year if you insist upon it. You and Floyd stay here and we’ll set up a realistic visitation schedule—holidays and summers.”

“Great,” Baker says. “You can be the Disneyland parents.” This is Debbie’s term. Her ex-husband, Jaybee, takes her kids only three weeks per year—to Martha’s Vineyard over the summer, to Aspen at Christmas, and to a different European city each spring. Baker considers the two very serious, accomplished women—people!—on his left. Sorry to say, they are no one’s idea of Disneyland parents.

And yet, this plan works for Baker. Because he is not moving to Cleveland.

“You should also know…” Anna says, and for the first time during this unpleasant and confusing dinner, she seems ill at ease.

“That I’m planning on getting pregnant,” Louisa finishes. She considers the yams and marshmallows on the end of her fork. “Using a sperm donor.”

The words sperm donor should never be uttered during dinner, Baker thinks. He has just lost his appetite.

Their server takes advantage of the pause in their conversation to whisk away their first-course dishes—Baker’s untouched—and set down the Homogenization of Mandingos (venison sausage with beets) for Baker and the Belly of the Beast (boar ribs) for the ladies. Women. People. Baker has some other words to describe them at this point, words that don’t fall in the category of “civilly discussing arrangements.”

“So Floyd will have a half brother or half sister, in a sense, and we obviously want them to have a relationship,” Anna says.

“Cohesive family unit,” Louisa says again. Those are her buzzwords, and it takes all of Baker’s willpower to keep from shouting at her that Anna, Baker, and Floyd are—were—the family unit. Louisa is the interloper. The homewrecker!

Baker reaches for his beer, which he’s been too distracted to drink. He takes a long sip, buying himself time. Anna has left herself wide open here.

“I thought you said you didn’t want any more children,” Baker says. “You were adamant about it, in fact. And now you’re talking about a baby.”

“Louisa will have the baby,” Anna says.

“And yet you want a cohesive family unit,” Baker says. “So you’ll be co-parents.”

“Of course,” Anna says, shrugging. She doesn’t meet Baker’s eyes because, very likely, she doesn’t want to provoke him into describing what having Dr. Anna Schaffer as a co-parent was like. It was like…having no co-parent at all! But Baker decides he won’t tell Louisa this; he’ll let her find out on her own. Two busy surgeons at the Cleveland Clinic, one baby—what could go wrong?

“Well,” Baker says. “Congratulations.” He picks up his fork. Suddenly, the whole situation seems amusing—and maybe even fortunate? Anna and Louisa are leaving town. Floyd will see them for vacations and holidays, which on the surface appears sad and pathetic. He’s a four-year-old boy; he needs his mother. But Baker is in a position to know that Floyd doesn’t need Anna. He’s been fine this long without her. Maybe Anna will be more engaged as a parent when the job is taken in small bites.

Anna smiles at him; her glow returns. “Thank you for being so understanding,” she says. “And please know that whatever financial resources you want, we’ll provide. You can keep the house; there will be support for Floyd and support for you as well.”

He’s being paid off, but he doesn’t care. He cuts into his venison sausage. He can’t wait to get home and call his friends.

He starts with Ellen because, really, theirs is the closest relationship, and Ellen is a single mother by choice, so she is savvy and resourceful by nature.

He tells her everything—including the esoteric menu items at dinner—and with each new revelation, she gasps.

Louisa offered job at Cleveland Clinic.

Anna offered job at Cleveland Clinic.

Louisa and Anna moving to Cleveland.

Louisa and Anna offering to move Baker and Floyd to Cleveland.

Louisa and Anna offering to take on the role of Disneyland parents while Baker keeps Floyd in Houston.

Louisa having a baby with sperm donor, Anna agreeing to co-parent. Anna and Louisa promising to support Baker and Floyd financially.

At the end, Ellen says, “On the surface, this sounds…great for you. Really great. Anna and Louisa are out of your hair, you get to keep Floyd and the house, and they’re going to pay you…”

“But?” Baker says.

“Doesn’t it seem too good to be true?” Ellen says. “Like something doesn’t add up? I know Anna isn’t the most hands-on mother, but is she really going to move twelve hundred miles away from her son and see him only at Christmas?”

“And summers,” Baker says weakly. He, too, feels uneasy now, but he can’t tell if it’s because he thinks Anna is going to renege and possibly sue him for custody—which is what it would take for her to get Floyd—or if he’s just embarrassed about marrying a woman who really just isn’t maternal. At all. “Listen, I know it sounds unconventional, but think about Anna. This scenario is perfect for her. She doesn’t have time to parent. I’m concerned about Floyd spending the entire summer with her because you and I both know that means he’ll have a full-time nanny. He’s better off with me.”

“Agreed,” Ellen says. She takes a sip of what he can only assume is 8th Wonder IPA (she’s a craft-beer fanatic) and says, “So my brilliant-best-friend mind now wonders why you would even stay in Houston. With Anna leaving, you’re free to go wherever you want.”

Ellen’s tone is heavy with innuendo. She’s the only one in the group that he’s told about his father dying in the Caribbean, the fifteen-million-dollar villa, and…Ayers. She’s the only one he’s told about Ayers.

That night, the carnivore tasting menu churns in Baker’s stomach as he scrolls through every reason why he shouldn’t leave Houston for good and move down to St. John. He starts with the reasons he gave Anna.

They have a house here.

Well, the house is a house. He can sell it or rent it or leave it be until he sees how things work out down in the islands. He and Anna bought it outright when they moved from Chicago, so there’s no mortgage, only taxes, insurance, and maintenance.

Floyd has school. They have friends, a community, a life.

Floyd is four. He goes to Montessori. He’s not a sophomore in high school; he’s not even in middle school. If they leave Houston now, it’s possible Floyd won’t have any memories of the place, much less feel resentful about moving. Floyd can already read and count to a hundred. Baker should investigate the schools in St. John, make sure there’s somewhere suitable.

Friends. Community. Baker is chairperson of the Children’s Cottage annual benefit auction, which is in two weeks. Baker’s work on the auction is basically done; all of the items have been solicited. He bought a table for three thousand dollars and invited all his school wives. He should really attend.

But it’s not necessarily a reason to stay. The auction will happen, the school will make money, the auction will be over.

Would Anna object to Floyd living in the Virgin Islands? She’s seen the villa; she knows it’s comfortable. She’d be concerned about the schools. Baker will look into it first thing in the morning. Maia goes to school. Maia is…Floyd’s aunt. Okay, that’s a little weird. But maybe not. It’s late, Baker is tired, everything seems weird.

Louisa wants to have a baby, essentially a half brother or half sister for Floyd.

Baker would love to have more kids.

Ayers. Baker knew the instant he saw her that he wanted to marry her. They’d ended on bad terms—really bad—and she said she was back with Mick. That means she’s having sex with Mick, Baker thinks, maybe even this very second, which is enough to make him sick. But he needs to think realistically about sex. Sex is ephemeral. Once it’s over, it’s over. Sex is not a lasting connection; it’s only real while it’s happening. It’s not love.

Besides, Mick cheated on Ayers, and once a cheater, always a cheater. If Baker is confident of anything, it’s that Mick will blow it and Baker will be there to show Ayers how she deserves to be treated.

Ayers hadn’t wanted to get serious about Baker because he was a tourist.

If Baker moves into his father’s villa, he will be a tourist no longer.

Bright and early the next morning, Baker books two tickets to St. Thomas with a return flight in two weeks so that he and Floyd will arrive back the day before the auction. Then, assuming all goes well on St. John, after the auction they will move back permanently. This trip will be an exploratory mission, a toe dipped in to test the waters.

He calls Paulette Vickers to let her know that he and Floyd will be down on Saturday to stay at the villa for a couple of weeks, and might she be able to meet him at the dock with the keys?

“Certainly, Mr. Steele,” she says. “I’m happy to know you’re using it. A beautiful villa like that shouldn’t sit empty. I asked your mother if she wanted me to rent it and she said to hold off for the time being.”

“My mother is overwhelmed,” Baker says. “She doesn’t need more to worry about. I’ll handle all things relating to the villa from now on.” He wonders if he’s overstepping, but all of the goodwill he’s put in with Paulette is paying off because she doesn’t question it.

“Very good,” she says. “I’ll meet you at the ferry dock on Saturday with the keys.”

Baker hangs up and feels an elation so strong he could levitate. The only string tying him to earth is…Irene. Baker should call her and tell her his plans.

But…what he just told Paulette is true—Irene is overwhelmed. She doesn’t need one more thing to worry about. She doesn’t need to fret about Baker and Floyd on St. John or about Anna relocating.

Then again, Irene had been perfectly clear that she would not tolerate any more secrets. Secrets are lies, Irene said.

Baker’s trip to St. John isn’t a secret. Of course it’s not a secret. Paulette knows he’s coming, and before he and Floyd leave, Baker will have to tell Anna.

Once Baker is down there and settled in, he’ll call Irene. This will give her a few more days of relative peace. That’s the kind thing to do.

February 21, 2006

You’re hiding something,” Mick says. It’s one of their rare nights off together and they’re having dinner at the bar at Ocean 362, where they can watch the sun set. Ayers spent the afternoon on Salomon Bay by herself; Mick asked to come along but Ayers said she wanted to be alone. It was important, this time around, to preserve her me-time.

I want to lie in the sun and think about Rosie, she said.

You can think about Rosie with me right next to you, Mick said. You can even talk about Rosie. I’ll listen.

It’s not the same, Ayers said. You’ll distract me. What she didn’t tell Mick, couldn’t tell him, was that she needed time to read Rosie’s journals. She had made it from the year 2000—Rosie at age seventeen—all the way through her tumultuous relationship with Oscar to the weekend in 2006 when she met Russ. Ayers was just getting to the good stuff, the important stuff—but it was tricky, finding blocks of time to read.

“If you’re suspicious,” Ayers says now, “it’s probably because of your own guilty conscience.” She digs into the walnut-crusted Roquefort cheesecake.

“What?” he says.

“Don’t act offended,” Ayers says. She lowers her voice because the bartender, Alex, is a friend of theirs and she doesn’t want him to hear them squabbling. “We agreed we wouldn’t dance around the topic of your infidelity. We agreed you would own it and that I was free to bring it up at any time.”

“Within reason. We said ‘within reason.’”

“You’re accusing me of hiding something,” Ayers says. “Meanwhile, you haven’t even fired Brigid.”

“I can’t fire her just because we broke up,” Mick says. “That’s against the law.” He pulls his phone out because the sun is going down and one of Mick’s passions is photographing the sunset every night, then posting it on Instagram as #sunset, #sunsetpics, #sunsetlover. Ayers has forgotten how this annoys her. She enjoys a good sunset as much as the next person, but she finds pictures of the sunset #overdone.

“You can fire her because she’s a terrible server,” Ayers says. “She’s the worst server I’ve ever seen.”

“You’re biased.”

Ayers carefully constructs a bite: a slice of toasted baguette smeared with the Roquefort topped with the accompanying shallot and garlic confit. “How do you think I feel knowing that she’s right there under your nose every single night? The answer is: not great. But do I complain? Do I sniff your clothes or show up at the restaurant unannounced? No. Do I accuse you of hiding something? I do not.”

“You’re right,” Mick says. He’s distracted by his sunset posting. “I’m sorry.”

Ayers lets the topic drop because guess what—she is hiding something! She’s obsessed with Rosie’s journals, and she isn’t using that word cavalierly like the rest of the world now does (“I’m obsessed with AOC’s lipstick” or “mango with chili salt” or “‘Seven Rings’ by Ariana Grande”). If Ayers didn’t have two jobs and a boyfriend, she would lock herself in a room and binge on the journals until she had the whole story—but there is pleasure to be had in pacing herself. Read, then process.

Of course, it’s more difficult to hold back now that Russ has entered the picture.

Ayers and Mick finish dinner and decide to end the evening by going to La Tapa for a nightcap. To an outsider, it might seem pathetic that Ayers can’t stay away from her place of employment on her night off, but the fact is, La Tapa is her home and her coworkers are her family. Skip and Tilda finally hooked up—they’ve been circling each other since October—and Tilda told Ayers that for three days straight, they did nothing but drink Schramsberg, eat mango with chili salt, and have wild sex. But on the fourth day, Tilda woke up at Skip’s place and wondered what the hell she was doing there.

It was like the fever broke, Tilda whispered to Ayers as they polished glasses before service. I’m over him. In fact, looking at him makes me feel kind of sick.

Human nature being what it is, when Tilda’s enthusiasm cooled, Skip’s grew more intense, and Tilda confided to Ayers—yes, somehow Ayers and Tilda were becoming confidantes—that Skip followed her home to her parents’ villa one night after work. (Tilda’s parents are quite wealthy and have a home in Peter Bay. Tilda doesn’t have to work at La Tapa but she’s determined not to “play the role of entitled rich kid,” so she hammers out four shifts a week and also volunteers at the Animal Care Center, walking rescue dogs. The more Ayers learns about Tilda’s life outside of work, the harder it is not to admire and even like her.) When Tilda explained to Skip in her parents’ driveway—she was not about to invite Skip in—that she thought maybe they had gotten too close too quickly, Skip had started to cry.

Now, apparently, he’s venting his anger at the restaurant during service; he’s been acting erratically with the customers.

And sure enough, after Ayers and Mick claim two seats at the bar and order Ayers’s favorite sipping tequila, Ayers overhears Skip describing a bottle of Malbec for the couple sitting a few stools away like this: “This wine is a personal favorite of mine,” Skip says. “It has hints of hashish, old piñata candy, and the tears of cloistered nuns.”

“What?” the woman says. “No, thank you!”

Ayers waves Skip over. “You okay?”

“Great, Ayers, yeah,” Skip says, scowling. “Seriously, never better.” He looks over Ayers’s shoulder and his expression changes. “Hey, man, how’re you doing? Good to see you! It’s…it’s…I’m sorry, bud, I’ve forgotten your name.”

“Cash,” a voice says.

Ayers whips around. “Cash!” she says. She hops off her stool. It’s Cash Steele, here at La Tapa! Ayers remembers too late that she’s angry with him. She finds that she’s happy, really happy, to see him. She inadvertently checks behind him to see if maybe Baker followed him in.

No. But Ayers finds her heart bouncing around at the prospect of his being here.

“Hey, Ayers,” Cash says. He offers Skip a hand across the bar. “Good to see you, man. Just got in on the ferry. I’m starving. Can I get an order of mussels and the bread with three sauces?”

“You got it, Cash,” Skip says.

Cash eyes the stool next to Ayers. “This taken?”

Mick clears his throat. Ayers says, “No, no, sit, please. Cash, this is…Mick. And Mick, this is Cash Steele.”

Mick raises his tequila and slams back the whole thing. Cash nods in response.

“So what are you doing here?” Ayers asks. “I thought you guys went back to your lives in America.” Which is how it always happens, she thinks. Which is why she doesn’t date tourists.

“My life in America kind of fell apart,” Cash says. “So that text you sent me was pure serendipity.”

On the other side of Ayers, Mick sounds like he’s choking. Ayers watches Skip set a glass of water in front of him.

“Text?” Ayers says, though she knows exactly what Cash is talking about.

“About the job on Treasure Island,” Cash says. “Have you filled it?”

“Uh…no,” Ayers says. “We haven’t. We’re pretty desperate, actually. Wade leaves in another week.”

Cash slaps some paperwork down on the bar. “I can fast-track my lifesaving certification,” he says. “I should be good to go in another week.”

“Seriously?” Ayers says. “You want the job on Treasure Island?”

“I’d love it,” Cash says.

Ayers hears Mick muttering on the other side of her. She would be lying if she said she wasn’t taking some satisfaction in his discomfort. She must be angrier at him than she realized.

“Cash!”

Tilda swoops in and throws her arms around Cash’s neck, then gives him a juicy kiss on the cheek.

“Hey, Tilda,” Cash says.

Across the bar, Skip holds Cash’s order of bread with three sauces. He glares at Tilda and Cash, then comes just short of slamming the plate down.

“I thought you were in Colorado!” Tilda says. “I’ve been trying to figure out how to tell my parents that I’m taking a trip to Breckenridge to ski with you.”

“No Breck for the foreseeable future,” Cash says. “I’m moving down here. And hopefully working on Treasure Island with Ayers.”

“‘Working on Treasure Island with Ayers,’” Mick mimics under his breath.

“Moving down here?” Tilda says. “That’s hot.”

Skip huffs. “Hot?” he says. “Get back to work, Tilda.”

Tilda appears unfazed. “Call me later,” she says to Cash. She sashays off to give table eight dessert menus.

Ayers says, “I didn’t realize you knew Tilda.”

“You sound jealous,” Mick murmurs. “How about you let lover boy eat his bread and we get out of here?”

“She gave me a ride home when I was here the last time,” Cash says. “She’s cool.”

“She’s taken,” Skip says. He’s holding Cash’s mussels and looks like he might dump them over Cash’s head.

“She’s not taken,” Ayers says. She waves Skip away. “Get back to work yourself.”

“You’re not my boss,” Skip says.

Mick stands up. “I’m going home. Are you coming?”

Ayers looks from Cash to Mick. It’s a standoff, she realizes. To Cash she says, “Hey, I’m picking up Maia tomorrow morning and we’re hiking from Leicester Bay to Brown Bay, then swimming after. Do you want to join us?”

“Do you think Maia would mind?” Cash asks.

“Are you kidding me? She’d love it.”

“I’m in,” Cash says. “I have Winnie with me. She’s tied up outside.”

“Winnie!” Ayers says. “This is so great! I’ll text you in the morning. How are you getting to the villa? I mean, we can wait until you’re finished and give you a ride.”

“No, we can’t,” Mick says. “We have to get home. I have work tomorrow.”

“At four o’clock,” Ayers says. “Chill.”

“Don’t tell me to chill,” Mick says. “Please.”

“No problem,” Cash says. “I’ll see if Tilda can give me a ride home. If not, I’ll take a taxi.”

Skip leans across the bar. “How are those mussels?” he asks aggressively.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Ayers says. “Welcome back.”

Ayers weaves her way out of the restaurant. Mick is already on the sidewalk, lighting a cigarette. Ayers stops to rub Winnie’s head. She seems to recognize Ayers; her tail is wagging like crazy.

Mick takes a deep drag of his cigarette, then exhales. “I guess I’m confused. That’s Banker’s brother, right?”

“Cash. Right.”

“And you guys are buddy-buddy as well?”

“Mick, stop.”

“You texted him,” Mick says. “You told him about the opening on Treasure Island.”

“That was a Hail Mary,” Ayers says. “He came out on Treasure Island a few weeks ago, he was good with the guests.”

“The plot thickens,” Mick says. “Why am I just hearing about this?”

Ayers shrugs. “Why would I have told you? We were broken up.”

Angry exhale of smoke.

“You know we need to hire someone who already has a place to live,” Ayers says. “Like Cash. And I think he’d be excellent on the boat. Not okay, not good, excellent. He likes people. He’s a ski instructor—”

“Did you not hear him say his life fell apart?” Mick says. “Doesn’t that send up a red flag?”

“His father died, Mick. He found out his father had this whole other life. That’s enough to throw anyone into a tailspin.”

“Yeah, but wouldn’t you think he’d want to stay as far away from here as possible?”

Ayers inhales the night air. There’s guitar music floating down from the Quiet Mon. Across the street, the lights twinkle at Extra Virgin Bistro. “I think he came down here and fell in love with the place,” she says. “Just like I did. Just like you did.”

“As long as he didn’t fall in love with you,” Mick says. “But who are we kidding? Of course he did. There isn’t a woman in Colorado or anywhere else that’s as beautiful and sexy and cool as you.”

Ayers climbs into Mick’s blue Jeep. She’s still bothered by the memory of Brigid sitting in this seat. “Honestly, I barely know him.”

“And yet you invited him hiking with you and Maia tomorrow. You didn’t invite me; you invited Money.”

“Cash,” Ayers says, trying not to smile. Mick is good with nicknames and it’ll be hard for her now not to think of Baker and Cash as Banker and Money. “You don’t like hiking. And I’ll point out that Cash is Maia’s brother.”

“Half brother.”

“Whatever. He and Baker are Maia’s only blood relatives, aside from whoever is left on Rosie’s father’s side.”

“I don’t want you hiking with him.”

“You don’t have any say.”

“But we’re in a relationship,” Mick says.

“We’re dating. You don’t own me. I’m sorry that you don’t like it. I don’t like it that Brigid still works for you. I didn’t like driving down to the Beach Bar at three o’clock in the morning and seeing you—”

“Stop,” Mick says.

“I’m going hiking with Cash and Maia,” Ayers says. “And Winnie!”

“Great,” Mick says. “You’re cheating on Gordon as well.”

“Just drive,” Ayers says. She leans back in the seat, marveling at the unexpected turn the night has taken and how buoyant she now feels. Mick is jealous, but Ayers doesn’t care. Cash is here—and tomorrow, Ayers will ask him about Baker.

His mother called to tell him about her visit from the FBI, so Cash isn’t surprised when the taxi turns onto his father’s road and he sees a dark SUV parked in one of the dummy driveways.

They’re watching the house. Well, he can’t blame them.

It’s been nearly three weeks since he left. The villa seems basically the same, although Cash can tell things have been gone through. The bed in the guest room he used last time has been hastily made and all of the drawers in the adjacent bath are ajar. Cash does a quick check of the house and this seems to be the case throughout. Irene said they found nothing at the house in Iowa City and Cash imagines the same is true here. There was very little of a personal nature in this house to begin with. When they arrived the first time, reeling from the news of Russ’s death, it seemed more like a hotel than someone’s house.

It feels good, though, to have the place to himself. It feels better than good; it feels luxurious. Cash stands out on the deck bare-chested while Winnie goes nuts sniffing everything and chasing after geckos. Cash gazes down the lush, leafy hill over the moon-spangled water. He’s king of the castle! He wants to howl, he wants to sing. The villa is his!

His exultation is tied to seeing Ayers. He wondered if he’d built her up in his mind—but when he saw her from behind, her curly blond hair hanging loose and crazy down her back and the silhouette of her body in that halter top and white jeans, he felt like he was being swallowed up. She had been so happy to see him, happier than he would have predicted, and she had seemed nearly jealous when Tilda came over to give Cash a hug. The interaction had been great, great, great, everything Cash could have dreamed of.

Today was the first day of the rest of his life, Cash thinks. It’s a tired phrase—and yet so true, so true! He has never been more certain of anything: his life began today. He swung down here on a slender filament of hope that a potential job on Treasure Island offered and now it looks like it will all work out.

He wants to beat his chest! He has escaped the doom of a lonely winter in Iowa City, shoveling snow and bumping into ex-girlfriends at the grocery store. Tomorrow he has plans with Ayers and Maia, and Monday he starts his lifesaving course, which Irene has given him more than enough money to pay for.

“I’m so happy!” Cash cries out. He wonders if the FBI has bugged the house. Well, if they have, they are going to hear the twenty-nine-year-old son of Russell Steele talking to himself. And maybe it will seem strange or even cruel that Cash is so jubilant only a few short weeks after his father died. Cash misses his father; he’s mourning his father, and he’s angry and resentful and disappointed in his father. But all of that feels like a pot Cash can pull off the stove for now. His excitement about this island and this girl and this sense of freedom and opportunity win out.

“It’s going to be epic!” Cash says. Winnie barks and comes trotting over; she noses around Cash’s legs and he bends to rub her soft butterscotch head. “Right, Winnie? Right?”

The next morning Cash winds his way down the hill in one of his father’s gray Jeeps, stops at the black SUV, and rolls down his window. “I’m Cash Steele,” he says. “Russell Steele’s son.”

The man sitting in the front seat—shaved head, blond Hulk Hogan mustache—flexes one of his enormous biceps as he brings a cup of coffee to his lips. “I know,” he says.

Cash waits a second, thinking maybe there will be more, but the guy looks down into his lap; he’s reading the paper. Cash is the one with questions—who is this guy? Why is he watching the house?—but Cash is certain he’ll be stonewalled and he doesn’t want to be late, so he carries on.

He meets Ayers and Maia in the parking area on Leicester Bay Road. In Cash’s backpack are three towels, nine bottles of water, and three sandwiches from the North Shore Deli. He’s wearing trunks under his cargo shorts, his Social Distortion T-shirt, and his lightweight hiking boots. Both girls are standing next to Ayers’s green truck, tying bandannas around their foreheads.

“Hey,” Cash says as he climbs out of the Jeep. Winnie heads straight for Maia, who crouches down to pet her. Winnie is an excellent ambassador; as always, she smooths over a potentially awkward situation. Cash follows, tentatively offering Maia a fist bump. Ayers said that Maia would be cool with Cash joining them, but will she? Cash knows nothing about the psyches of twelve-year-old girls.

“Hey, bro,” Maia says. She bumps knuckles with him, then grins. “You came back! And Ayers tells me you’re going to work on Treasure Island.”

“That’s the plan,” he says. He glances quickly at Ayers in her white tank and light blue Lululemon running shorts; he can see the outline of a bikini underneath.

“Ayers’s boyfriend, Mick, is really jealous,” Maia says.

“Maia!” Ayers says. “Hush!”

“What?” Maia says. “He is. He’s even jealous we’re taking this hike.”

“Well, he doesn’t need to be jealous,” Cash says. “Ayers and I are just friends.”

“That’s what I told him,” Ayers says. She drops her blue aviators down over her eyes. “Are you sure you don’t mind carrying the pack? It’s got to be heavy.”

“Please,” Cash says. “I hike at eight, nine thousand feet with a pack that’s three times this weight.”

“Ayers doesn’t like hiking,” Maia says. “But she’s my parent now, so she has to do enriching things with me.”

“Mangrove snorkeling is enriching,” Ayers says. She looks up at the brilliant blue sky. “And a far more appropriate activity than hiking on an eighty-degree day.”

“Next week,” Maia says. She strides toward the trailhead. “Come on, Winnie, let’s go.”

The Johnny Horn Trail has five spurs, Maia explains. The first spur, a flat, sandy walking path, leads to a narrow beach hugging a bay that has a rugged island a hundred yards offshore.

“Waterlemon Cay,” Ayers says. “Best snorkeling on St. John. How about I stay here and you guys keep going?”

“We’ve only been hiking thirty seconds,” Maia says. She turns to Cash. “See what I have to deal with?”

The second spur takes them up a steep, rocky incline that requires a fair amount of scrambling and careful foot placement before it levels out, when they reach stone ruins. This is the guardhouse, Maia tells them, built in the 1840s, back when slavery had been abolished in the British Virgin Islands across the Sir Francis Drake Channel but was still legal on St. John.

“There were sixteen soldiers stationed here,” Maia says. “And their job was to keep watch for runaway slaves.”

Cash is impressed. “You have quite the body of knowledge,” he says. “How did you learn all this?”

“My mom,” Maia says. “She knew everything about the Virgin Islands.”

Cash nods as the peculiarity of what he’s doing hits him. He’s hiking with a half sister he never knew he had. Maia bows her head and is quiet and Ayers places a hand on the back of her neck and draws her in. They’re thinking about Rosie; Cash can feel how much they miss her. A twelve-year-old girl lost her mother, lost both of her parents, and yet here she is, bravely soldiering on with her mother’s best friend and a strange man she has gamely decided to accept as “bro.”

“Did your mom like to hike?” Cash asks.

“No,” Maia says, and she and Ayers laugh. “She was more like Ayers; she preferred the beach. But, I mean, she brought me up here a few times because she wanted me to experience the place we lived.”

“I wish I’d been able to meet your mom,” Cash says honestly. More than once over the past couple of weeks, Cash has imagined this whole thing unfolding differently. What if, at some point, Russ had just come clean about his life, said that business had taken him to the Caribbean and he’d met a woman and fallen in love. Cash and Baker would have been furious at first, incredulous, resentful on Irene’s behalf. They probably would have refused to speak to Russ for a while. But eventually, Cash suspects, they would have come to terms with the situation and flown down to visit Russ here. They could have met Rosie. It might have taken time, but they could have accepted her as part of the family.

Cash shakes his head. That is a trail spur that never was; there’s no use dwelling on it.

“Shall we go?” Ayers asks. “Get this over with?”

After the guardhouse, they begin to hit their stride. There’s not much canopy cover but even so, Cash finds himself slowing down so he can enjoy just being. His breathing steadies. He reminds himself he doesn’t need to be anywhere; he has nothing else to do today. Ayers is here, Maia is here. Ayers is right, it’s hot, but just then, the sun disappears behind a cloud, so there’s a brief respite.

Maia not only knows history, she is also quite the naturalist. She points out a genip tree—in the summer it produces a fruit similar to a lime. Cash has never heard of it.

“In the summer, I eat elk jerky,” Cash says.

Maia shoots him a look. “I’m a vegetarian,” she says.

“You are?” Cash says. “Ayers told me to get you a pastrami melt.”

“I make an exception for pastrami,” Maia says. “And Candi’s barbecue.”

Maia points out wild tamarind, cassia trees, and something called catch-and-keep, which is a cute name for a nefarious pricker bush. They eventually reach a scenic overlook where each of them—Winnie included—sucks down a bottle of water. Maia points across the way to Jost Van Dyke and Tortola.

After the lookout, the trail heads downhill and it’s fully shaded. Everyone seems a little happier.

“So I guess I’ll address the elephant in the room,” Maia says. “How’s your brother?”

Cash isn’t sure he’s heard right. “Is Baker an elephant?”

“I don’t know, Ayers, is Baker an elephant?” Maia says.

“Stop being precocious for one minute, please,” Ayers says. She turns to Cash and he can see the hopeful expectation in her face, even with her sunglasses on. “How is Baker? He…went back to Houston, I take it? I haven’t heard from him.”

Cash can’t look at her. He concentrates on walking, left foot, then right, steady in his boots, moving down the dirt trail over rocks and around the tentacles of catch-and-keep. Ayers likes Baker. She’s hung up on him; Cash can hear it in her voice. He can’t believe it. He’d met Mick the night before, and Mick is who she’s with now, but Cash isn’t intimidated by Mick. Mick is ridiculous, a clown, a clown who cheated on Ayers once and who would most certainly do it again.

“I haven’t heard from him since our grandmother died a few days after we all got home,” Cash says.

“Milly?” Maia says. “The one I look like?”

“Yes,” Cash says. He chastises himself for being insensitive. Milly was Maia’s grandmother too—how weird is that? “I’m sorry. I should have broken the news in a different way. She was really old. Ninety-nine.”

They are all silent for a moment, then Ayers says, “So you don’t know if Baker is pursuing a divorce or—”

“No idea,” Baker says, cutting her off. “If you’re curious about Baker, just call him. You have his number, right?”

“Right,” Ayers says.

“Uh-oh,” Maia says. “Sounds like somebody needs lunch.”

When they reach Brown Bay, Maia shows them a little cemetery. “These are the graves of islanders from long ago,” Maia says, which is obvious, as the modest headstones are so old and weathered they’re barely legible. “But I kind of wish my mom had been buried here. Look at this view, and it’s so peaceful and shady under these trees.”

“She would have liked it here,” Ayers says.

“Where…” Cash starts. He has no idea where Rosie is buried.

“She’s with my grandma in the cemetery in Cruz Bay,” Maia says. “Or that’s where her body is. Her spirit is wherever spirits go when people die.”

They march single file onto a ribbon of white-sand beach. It’s completely deserted and the water is a clear, placid turquoise. Cash can’t recall ever seeing such inviting water. He shucks off the backpack and strips out of his shirt and shorts. Winnie is already splashing in, barking with joy and, probably, relief. Cash follows and soon he’s floating on his back, staring up into the cloudless sky. He hears Maia and Ayers get into the water as well. Cash tries to readjust his frame of mind. He’s not going to let his brother ruin a perfectly good day when he’s a thousand miles away in Houston.

Cash likes Ayers. Ayers likes Baker. It’s a classic like triangle. But Cash has the advantage because Cash is here and Baker isn’t. Cash has a further advantage because he will soon be working with Ayers. After spending some time with him, Ayers will realize that he’s the superior Steele brother. She’ll fall in love. He will, somehow, make her fall in love.

After swimming, he joins Ayers and Maia, who are drying off on a flat rock—Picnic Rock, Maia calls it. Cash passes out the sandwiches and gives Winnie the biscuits he brought. Maia slips Winnie some of her pastrami, which makes her Winnie’s new best friend. The silence is companionable, Cash thinks, or maybe it’s awkward; he can’t tell. It’s true that, among the three of them, there are a number of taboo subjects.

“How’s Huck?” Cash asks.

“Grouchy,” Maia says.

“Yeah?”

“Part of it is that I’ve started going to town with my friends and he doesn’t like it.”

“I don’t like it either,” Ayers says.

“We’re just hanging out,” Maia says.

“Who’s ‘we’?” Ayers and Cash say at the same time. They exchange a look and for a second, Cash feels like he and Ayers are Maia’s parents instead of her half brother and sort of aunt.

“Me and Joan,” Maia says.

“And?” Ayers says.

“And Colton Seeley and Bright Whittaker,” Maia says. She licks some mustard off her thumb. “Joan has a crush on Colton.”

“And you have a crush on Bright?” Ayers asks.

“No,” Maia says. “Bright isn’t my type. Plus, he has a crush on Posie Alvarez.”

“Do I know Posie?”

“She goes to Antilles,” Maia says. “She’s friends with a kid named Shane who’s a year ahead of us.”

“I’m going to take a wild stab in the dark here,” Ayers says. “You have a crush on Shane.”

Maia shrugs. “I might.”

“I can’t believe it,” Ayers says. “Your first crush! I have to meet this kid. I’m going to come find you guys in town one day before work. And Cash, you have to come with me. This is your little sister. You need to protect her. You need to be a lieutenant in the cause.”

Cash opens his mouth but he’s unsure of what to say. Your little sister. You need to protect her.

The FBI are staking out the house. Russ was conducting illegal business. He likely got Rosie killed. Do Ayers and Maia know this? If they don’t know and they find out, will they hate Cash? Isn’t it better to prepare for this eventuality and remain aloof?

Cash focuses on Ayers for a second. She’s sitting on Picnic Rock, wearing a white bikini and a towel around her waist. Her blond hair is drying in the sun. She takes a bite of her Cuban sandwich, waiting for him to answer.

They won’t hate him, he realizes. They know his heart is pure, that he’s as bewildered as they are, maybe more so. He’s a good guy. He doesn’t know a thing about having a “little sister”—both the phrase and the notion are completely foreign to him—but he wants to learn. He wants some good to come out of the choices Russ made. Their relationship—his and Maia’s—can be part of that good.

“I would certainly like to meet Shane before this goes any further,” he says.

Maia rolls her eyes theatrically, and although Cash knows exactly nothing about twelve-year-old girls, he can tell that beneath the surface of her exasperation, she’s grateful. Her mother is gone, but she’s not alone. She has Ayers and now she has Cash, and they’re here to pay attention. They’re here to care about her.

“Just please, please, don’t tell Huck,” Maia says.

“You have my word,” Ayers says.

“And mine,” Cash says.

“So I told my secret,” Maia says. “Now it’s your turn. Cash, who do you have a crush on?”

“Okay,” Cash says, standing up. “Time to head back.” He whistles for Winnie, who is down on the beach, chasing stray chickens.

He has a crush on Ayers; more than a crush. When they get back to the parking lot, it’s difficult to say goodbye. Ayers has to work at La Tapa that night and on Treasure Island the next day, and Maia is going fishing with Huck. Then, next week, Maia has school and Cash starts his lifesaving classes. He can begin crewing on Treasure Island a week from Sunday; Wade will still be around to train him.

A week from Sunday feels awfully far away.

“Maybe you and I can hike again sometime,” Maia says. “I’ll take you to the Esperance Trail. There’s a baobab tree.”

“It’s a date,” he says. He peers over Maia’s head at Ayers. “Thanks for inviting me along today.”

“Of course,” Ayers says. She and Maia hop in the little green truck and wave. “See ya later.”

Cash and Winnie watch them drive away.

There’s no reason to feel down, and yet he does. He drives back to the villa, knowing he can crack a beer and spend what remains of the afternoon by the pool, and then he should take a trip to the grocery store because he can’t eat at La Tapa every night or he’ll quickly burn through the money Irene gave him.

He passes the black SUV in the dummy driveway—different guy, dark-complected. Cash waves.

When he gets up to the house, he hears voices, splashing. Someone is in the pool.

Whoa! Cash’s crazy first thought is that it’s FBI agent number one. His second thought is that the house has been rented and Paulette forgot to tell Irene, or maybe she thought it wouldn’t matter since they’d gone back to the States. That must be it. What is Cash going to do? He doesn’t have money for a hotel and his lifesaving class starts Monday. He sends Winnie up the stairs ahead of him. Paulette will have to come up with a solution. Find these people another house.

Cash is nearly at the top step, prepping himself for an uncomfortable confrontation, when he hears a young voice say, “Winnie! Uncle Cash!”

It’s Floyd, bobbing in the pool. And Baker, sitting on the edge in just his bathing trunks.

“Hey,” Baker says.

“What—” Cash shakes his head. Winnie’s tail is going nuts; she barks. “What are you doing here?”

“We’re moving here!” Floyd announces. “To live!”

Agent Colette Vasco is a serious woman, though not unkind. She has a niece Maia’s age, her sister’s daughter, and they’re very close. Agent Vasco knows that being twelve isn’t easy, and she understands how difficult things must be for Maia right now with the sudden loss of her mother. She agrees to come get the money while Maia is at school.

“I’m sorry to say, I have to bring a search team, including a drug dog, but if all goes according to plan, Maia will never know we’ve been there.”

Huck is grateful. A team of four show up, along with a German shepherd named Comanche. Comanche does a quick, frenetic tour of the house, although he’s in and out of Huck’s room in a matter of seconds, which makes Huck wonder if maybe it does smell like rotting fish.

Comanche is tied up in the shade outside while the team comes in to retrieve the money from under Huck’s bed. Then they systematically search the rest of Huck’s house. Huck would be worried about them invading Maia’s room but it looks like it’s already been ransacked. There are clothes everywhere; supplies for Maia’s bath-bomb business are spread across her desk, and hair products and makeup cover the surface of the dresser. There’s also a fair amount of trash—wrappers from Clif Bars, half-full cans of LaCroix coconut seltzer.

“Maybe you could clean up while you’re in there,” Huck jokes. The FBI agents don’t so much as crack a smile. They aren’t humans, they’re robots, Huck thinks. Robots on a mission. Fine; Huck will leave them to it. He peers into Rosie’s room—Vasco herself is on her knees, pawing through the dresser drawers—then he goes into the kitchen, does a shot of Flor de Caña, and heads out to the deck, where he smokes three cigarettes in quick succession and keeps an eye on the southern waters for the Mississippi. Adam is taking the charter by himself today; Huck called and told him that something came up and he couldn’t get away.

 Agent Vasco lets Huck know that they haven’t found anything else of interest. They are taking the cash, and Vasco asks for the numbers of Rosie’s savings and checking accounts.

“I realize how difficult it must have been to call us about that money,” Agent Vasco says. She lays a hand on Huck’s arm. Her nails are polished shell pink and she wears no wedding ring; Huck checks out of habit. Agent Vasco is an attractive woman, a redhead like Huck, and she has a salty-sweet aspect that reminds Huck of his ex-wife, Kimberly. And, for that matter, LeeAnn. Huck puts Agent Vasco at about thirty-five, still young enough to want children, which is too young for Huck. He’s encouraged that he’s even thinking this way; it’s taking his mind off Irene.

When he next talks to Irene, he’ll tell her how attractive Agent Vasco is. Maybe she’ll get jealous.

“That wasn’t money I earned and I doubt it was money Rosie earned,” Huck says. He hands over the statements from Rosie’s bank accounts. “If Rosie is guilty by association of something…well, it’s my job to make sure it doesn’t affect Maia in any way.”

“I understand,” Agent Vasco says. “I was really hoping I might find something of a more personal nature in Rosie’s room. Letters, or a diary.”

Diary, Huck thinks. Rosie kept a diary when she was younger. She used to threaten LeeAnn with it, saying that future generations would someday learn what a mean witch LeeAnn was, how harsh and unfair she was to her only child. Huck has no idea if Rosie kept up her diary-writing into her adult years. Because she worked nights at La Tapa, most of her downtime was during the day, when Huck was at work and Maia at school.

Letters? Well, there might be letters from Russell Steele if this were 1819 or even 1989, but nowadays people didn’t write letters; they wrote to each other on their phones.

“I’m sure Rosie had her phone with her.”

“Yes,” Agent Vasco says. “We’ve subpoenaed the records.”

Subpoenaed sounds serious, but of course, Rosie had a huge amount of cash stuffed into a drawer.

“If you don’t mind my asking, what kind of crimes are you investigating?” Huck is thinking drugs, obviously. It’s the Caribbean.

“I’m not at liberty to say. Also, we aren’t really sure what we’re dealing with here.” Agent Vasco offers Huck a tight smile. “If we have any further questions, I’ll be in touch.”

“That’s it?” Huck says. “You’re leaving me?”

“Yes,” Agent Vasco says. “You should be happy.” She gathers the goons and they follow her out to the car with two black duffel bags filled with the money.

Easy come, easy go, Huck thinks.

Agent Vasco and company drive down Jacob’s Ladder’s series of switchbacks; Huck spies the car once, twice, three times—then they disappear. At nearly the same moment, Huck sees the Mississippi gliding across Rendezvous Bay. Today’s charter was a couple of state troopers from Alaska. Apparently, these two are famous; they’re featured on some reality-TV show, which Huck has a difficult time fathoming. Huck has less than no interest in celebrities; what makes him regret missing today is that these gentlemen really wanted to fish. Huck nearly calls Adam to tell him to turn around and pick him up at the Westin dock, but that’s impractical, a waste of time and gas.

It’s only ten o’clock and Huck doesn’t have to get Maia until three. He could read his book—he still hasn’t finished the Connelly—and, he supposes, he could go to the beach. He hasn’t been in a long time; whenever Maia wanted to go, Rosie would take her. LeeAnn used to love sitting on Gibney, and Huck loved LeeAnn so he would join her there, though left to his own devices, he would go to Little Lameshur, far, far away from the crowded north shore. Should Huck pack up a fish sandwich and drive out to Little Lameshur? Maybe live really large and stop at the Tourist Trap for a lobster roll on the way? The idea is novel enough to be intriguing, but then Huck thinks about one of Agent Vasco’s comments: We aren’t really sure what we’re dealing with here.

Huck isn’t sure what they’re dealing with either, but he does know one thing: he was relieved when the dog didn’t go pawing at the floorboards and they didn’t discover blocks of cocaine or heroin to go along with all that money.

Someone on this island must know more than Huck does. The coconut telegraph is real. Huck picks up his phone and calls Rupert.

Because Rupert doesn’t like to leave Coral Bay, he and Huck meet at Skinny Legs. It turns out, it’s as good a place as any to have a quiet conversation in the middle of a gorgeous sunny day. Skinny Legs is the quintessential Caribbean bar. It’s tucked into a grove of shade trees a few hundred feet from the lip of Coral Bay. The bar itself looks like a lean-to built by Robinson Crusoe after a few rum punches. It’s open to the air on one side and features picnic tables thick with paint and a little stage for live music from happy hour until last call. There’s an adjacent gift shop that sells souvenirs celebrating all things Skinny Legs; Huck has never set foot in it. In Huck’s opinion, Skinny Legs’ only fault is that it’s gotten so famous. The best way to ruin a place is to make it popular.

One of the things that keeps Skinny Legs authentic is that characters like Rupert still hang out here. Rupert is the prince of the establishment, if you can call a sixty-something-year-old man a prince. He’s in his usual spot, corner stool on the right-hand side; he has a Bud Light in front of him. Huck checks the time: eleven fifteen. He still has more than three hours before he has to pick up Maia from school, and for this conversation, he probably needs something stronger than an iced tea. He flags down Heidi, the bartender.

“Painkiller, please,” Huck says.

Rupert chuckles. “That’s a woman’s drink.”

“I’m not allowed to say things like that in my house,” Huck says. “Don’t you know any better?” He takes a stool and rubs the top of Rupert’s bald brown head.

They fall into their usual pattern of conversation, which is distinguished by long pauses and subsequent non sequiturs. Rupert doesn’t like to be rushed; he’s retired now and has earned the right to mull things over, and if his mind wanders in the process, oh, well. Rupert has lived on St. John his entire life; his family goes back generations, and Huck teases him by saying that Rupert’s ancestors invented the concept of island time, but Rupert is the one who perfected it.

Huck drinks one painkiller and waves to Heidi for another before Rupert finishes summarizing his list of physical ailments: his back has been giving him trouble, his right toe throbs in the rain, he can’t sleep more than three hours without having to get up to take a piss. Then it’s Huck’s turn to talk about how the fish are running. Better since the new year, he says—meaning since Rosie died, meaning since Irene set foot on his boat and into his life.

“Good to hear it,” Rupert says. “And how’s Maia?”

Huck tells Rupert about taking Maia to town with her friends and how that bothers him.

Rupert laughs. “It’s a goddamned island, Huck. How much trouble can she get in? All the West Indian ladies who grew up with your wife have eyes in the backs of their heads. If Maia takes so much as a puff of a cigarette, you’ll hear the crowing all the way up on Jacob’s Ladder.”

Huck shakes his head. “They don’t smoke anymore, Rupert. They vape. It’s electronic, thing looks like a pen. They put a pod in it—”

“Don’t tell me,” Rupert says. “I don’t want to know.”

“It’s all happening so fast. And I don’t like the timing, her getting so independent right after her mother dies.” This is when Maia would be most vulnerable to vaping and drinking and—Huck can barely let himself think it—sex. He has to find a way to make sure she grows up responsibly. Honestly, he could use some help.

They’re quiet a few minutes. The song in the background is Warren Zevon’s “Lawyers, Guns, and Money.” Huck isn’t sure Rupert is listening to the music, but it feels like a natural segue. “So I had a visit this morning,” Huck says. “From the FBI.”

Huck can sense his friend’s invisible antennae rising.

“That’s why I called you, actually,” Huck says. “To see if you know something I don’t.”

“Funny you should ask,” Rupert says. “Because I heard federal officers paid a visit to the Welcome to Paradise Real Estate office.”

“Really?” Huck says. “Paulette Vickers—”

“Paulette and Doug Vickers and the little boy are gone,” Rupert says. “Rumor has it they left last night on the car barge.”

“Left as in …”

“Left as in left,” Rupert says.

Left as in left. Paulette and Douglas Vickers, who owned Welcome to Paradise Real Estate, pulled their young son, Windsor, out of school and packed what they needed into Doug’s pickup and left twelve hours before the FBI showed up. That was the story Rupert heard from Sadie, one of his many girlfriends, and Sadie’s gossip was generally known to be reliable.

On his way home, Huck drives past the office, and sure enough, there’s the black SUV parked out front, its presence as ominous as a hearse.

The question that bothers Huck is this: How did Paulette and Douglas Vickers know that the FBI were coming? Did they find out Huck had contacted Agent Vasco? Was Huck’s phone compromised? Was there a bug somewhere in his house? If so, would the FBI have found it this morning in their search? Huck lights a cigarette. He needs to get a grip. This is the stuff of movies and Connelly novels. This is not daily life in the Virgin Islands.

At three o’clock, he’s waiting out in front of the Gifft Hill School when Maia emerges with her cronies Joanie, Colton, and Bright.

Here we go again, Huck thinks.

Maia studies his expression. “You okay, Gramps? You in a bad mood again?”

He meant what he told Agent Vasco. He is determined to keep whatever Rosie was involved with away from Maia. She’s a twelve-year-old girl who wants to hang out with her friends. It’s a goddamned island. She’s safe here.

But really, he could use some help.

“I’m fine,” he says. He won’t smile because then Maia will know there’s something wrong, so he adopts the air of a weary chauffeur. “You guys can all hop in.”

He knows he shouldn’t be surprised that his brother came back down to St. John and, apparently, plans to make it his permanent home, sponging off Irene, but he is. He tells Cash as much, though instead of using the word sponging, he calls it “taking full advantage of Mom’s generosity.” It’s marginally kinder; after all, Floyd is listening.

“I’m not taking advantage any more than you are,” Cash says with what Baker can only assume is a phony smile. “And I found a job.”

“So soon?” Baker says. “Where?”

“First mate on Treasure Island,” Cash says.

First mate on Treasure Island? It takes Baker a second, but he puts it together. Treasure Island is the boat that Ayers works on.

“You have got to be”—he swallows the swearword because of Floyd—“kidding me.”

“Not kidding,” Cash says.

Not kidding; of course not kidding. Somehow Cash weaseled his way onto that boat and into near-daily interaction with Ayers.

“I didn’t realize you liked the water,” Baker says. “I thought you were more of a mountain guy.” He says this with relative equanimity. What he’s thinking is this: You hate water unless it’s frozen! You’re ten thousand feet out of your comfort zone! The only reason you’re here is to try and steal my girl! “How did you find out about the job, anyway?”

“Ayers texted me,” Cash says. He rubs Winnie under the chin. “Winnie and I just went for a hike and a swim with Ayers and Maia on the Johnny Horn Trail. It was beautiful, but man, was it hot. I was dreaming about this pool the whole way back.” Cash pries off his hiking boots and strips down to his swim trunks. Baker tries to look at his brother objectively. Cash is in good shape; he has six-pack abs and really strong legs from all the skiing, but he’s not quite six feet tall, so Baker has always discounted him as a possible rival. But now, Baker has all kinds of troubling thoughts. Maybe Ayers is into the short, stocky, and (admittedly) super-cut look as opposed to the tall, broad-shouldered, and (admittedly) dad-bod look. (Baker flexes his arm behind him to see if he still has triceps. Maybe; it’s hard to tell.) Cash went hiking and swimming with Ayers and Maia—he’s been the recipient of Ayers’s smile. It’s Baker’s fantasy.

He’s jealous.

His first instinct is to be a jerk about it. But honestly, he doesn’t want to do battle with Cash over Ayers. He doesn’t want to do battle with Cash over anything. He finds he’s actually psyched—and relieved—that Cash is here. Baker talked a big game about moving down here but he doesn’t know a soul except for Ayers and, sort of, Huck, and he has nothing in the way of a support system. He can continue to day-trade and he can accept Anna’s offer of financial help, but he needs to see if life here is sustainable—school for Floyd, some kind of job for himself that’s part-time with flexible hours that will get him out of the house and into the community. He could even volunteer.

“How’s Maia doing?” Baker asks. “Was she…okay seeing you?”

“Surprisingly, yes,” Cash says. “She seems great. I mean, don’t get me wrong, she had a moment or two where she almost broke down—”

“I’m going down the slide,” Floyd announces. “Uncle Cash, are you getting in?”

Cash jumps into the pool and swims over to a spot where he can watch Floyd go down the slide to the lower pool.

“But, I mean, generally, she was okay. She’s a smart kid. She was teaching me about the island’s history and the plants and trees—”

“Maybe I’ll apply for a job with the National Park Service,” Baker says.

Cash gives him an incredulous look and Baker thinks it’s probably justified. Being a park ranger must require years in forestry school or some such.

“And before you ask, Ayers is still with Mick. I saw them together at La Tapa last night.”

“He’ll cheat on her again,” Baker says.

“Agreed,” Cash says. He holds Baker’s gaze for a second and Baker can tell they’re thinking the same thing: Once Mick cheats on her again, it’ll be brother against brother.

Or maybe not, Baker thinks. Maybe Cash will realize that he and Ayers should just remain friends. Maybe Cash will fall for one of the young, single women who climb aboard Treasure Island.

“What’s up with Anna?” Cash asks.

“She and Louisa have accepted positions at the Cleveland Clinic,” Baker says. “They’re moving to Shaker Heights. Floyd will go there holidays and summers. That’s why we decided to move down here. There’s nothing tethering us to Houston anymore.”

“Great minds think alike,” Cash says. “I was going to head to Breck to ski but it’s too late in the season for me to get a decent job. Then Ayers told me about Treasure Island. I start my lifesaving classes on Monday.”

Baker is surprised that Cash is so organized; it sounds like he’s thought something through for once. Objectively, Baker has to admit that Cash would be great as a first mate on a tour boat. When Baker and Anna visited Cash in Breckenridge, they had a chance to see him in action as a group ski instructor and they had both been impressed. Cash was friendly, engaging, funny, kind, and patient—his patience had been astonishing, in fact.

“What would Dad think,” Baker asks, “if he could see us together right now?”

Cash raises his eyebrows. “The more relevant question is, what would Mom think? I talked to her yesterday and she didn’t tell me you were coming down. Does she even know?”

Baker eases himself into the pool and swims over to Cash. He peers down at Floyd, splashing in the lower pool. “She doesn’t.”

“Why didn’t you tell her?”

“I’m not sure,” Baker says. “Probably because I didn’t want her to stop me.”

“Legally, it’s her house,” Cash says. “I’m not trying to be a jerk but my advice is to call her and tell her you’re here.”

Baker knows Cash is right. “I will,” he says. “I’ll call her tonight after Floyd is asleep.”

Before Cash can respond, Baker hears the strains of “Blitzkrieg Bop,” by the Ramones—and Cash pushes himself up out of the pool. He pulls his cell phone out of his hiking shorts, looks at the screen, and says, “Well, guess what, it’s Mom.”

“Good,” Baker says. “Tell her I’m here. She’ll like it better coming from you anyway.”

Cash says, “Hello, Mother Alarm Clock, what’s up? Good, yeah…I saw Maia today. Ayers and I took her on a hike, or she took us on a hike, actually…yeah, I start Monday, they said I’ll be good to go in a week. Hey, listen, I have some news…oh, all right. No, you go first.”

There’s a pause during which Baker can hear the tinny sound of Irene’s voice over the phone and Baker grows hot and uncomfortable. He just wants Cash to spit it out already! Baker checks on Floyd, who is splashing around, happy as can be, like a model only child. Baker will check out preschools for Floyd.

When Baker phoned Anna and told her that he and Floyd were considering moving down to St. John on a somewhat permanent basis, Anna had accepted the news the way she accepted everything he said: with indifference.

“It’s nice there,” Anna said. “I’ll have to see what Louisa thinks—”

“It doesn’t matter what Louisa thinks,” Baker said. “She doesn’t get to weigh in on my decisions.”

“But Floyd…” Anna says. He recognized her distracted tone of voice; she was probably writing in someone’s chart while she was talking to him.

“Louisa isn’t Floyd’s mother,” Baker said. “You are. Now, assuming I find a suitable school for our child, do you have any objections to Floyd and me spending some time in St. John? The vacation schedule will be the same. Nothing changes except he won’t be in Houston. Do you object?”

“No,” Anna said. “I guess not…”

“Wonderful, thank you,” Baker said, and he hung up before she could change her mind.

Baker is yanked back into the present moment when he hears Cash say, “A week from Monday?”

A week from Monday what? Baker wonders.

“Well, you’re in for a nice surprise,” Cash says. “Because guess who else is here—Baker and Floyd!”

Pause. Baker hears his mother’s voice, maybe a little more high-pitched than before.

“Yep, I guess Anna took a job in Cleveland and so Baker and Floyd are…yep, they’re here now. Yes, Mom, I think that’s the plan.” Cash locks eyes with Baker and starts nodding. “Yes, it will be so nice, all of us together.”

All of us together? Does this mean what Baker thinks it means?

“Just text to let us know what ferry you’ll be on,” Cash says. “And one of us will be there to pick you up. A week from Monday.”

That night, they grill steaks and asparagus and Baker makes his potato packets in foil and he and Cash and Floyd devour everything and Baker remembers that it’s nice cooking for people who actually appreciate it. Floyd goes inside to watch Despicable Me 3 for the ten thousandth time and Baker and Cash stare out at the scattering of lights across the water.

“So Mom is coming a week from Monday,” Baker says. He’s not sure how he feels about this. “There are obviously pluses and minuses to this situation.”

“Agreed,” Cash says. “On the plus side, we have been through a family crisis. If Mom stayed in Iowa, I would worry about her.”

“I can’t believe she quit her job,” Baker says.

“She wants a change, she says.”

“But working on Huck’s fishing boat? Mom? She’s a fifty-seven-year-old woman. She must have been kidding about that.”

“Don’t you remember the way she used to wake us up at dawn on Clark Lake to go out on Pop’s flat-bottom boat to fish for bass? Mom took us, not Dad. Mom baited our hooks. Mom taught us how to cast.”

“Yeah, I do,” Baker says. He hasn’t thought of it in eons but suddenly he has a vivid picture of being out on Clark Lake before the sun was even fully up, Irene yanking on the starter of the outboard motor, then Irene driving the boat to the spot where the smallmouth bass were biting. Irene had indeed taught both Baker and Cash to cast. She had shown them how to reel in a fish after they felt a tug on the line. She had deftly worked the hook from the fish’s mouth, using one gloved hand to hold the fish and one hand to maneuver her Gerber tool. Irene could snap fishing line with her teeth. She could fillet a bass or a perch so expertly that there were no bones to worry about when it came off the charcoal grill that evening at dinner. Baker had forgotten that his mother liked to fish, but even now that he remembers, he wonders if this is really what she wants to do for a living. Maybe she needs a break, a respite, a time to recharge and reset.

Maybe that’s what they all need.

“On the minus side,” Cash says, “we’ll be grown men living with our mother.”

“Sexy,” Baker says.

“But the house is big,” Cash says.

“The house is big,” Baker says. And it’ll be nice to have an extra person to watch Floyd. He won’t mention that, however, lest Cash call him a self-involved bastard.

Later that night, Baker wants to go out. The dishes are done and Baker has read to Floyd and tucked him in. Baker also showed him how their bedrooms connect; the house feels more familiar this time around.

Baker finds Cash collapsed in a heap in front of a basketball game. He considers slipping out the door—he needs to go to town; he needs to see Ayers—but he can’t just leave with Floyd asleep upstairs. “Hey, Cash?”

“Yeah.” Cash doesn’t move his eyes from the TV.

“I’m going out for a little while, man,” Baker says. “Or I’d like to. If you could just…keep one ear open in case Floyd wakes up?”

“Yeah, of course,” Cash says.

Baker lets his breath go.

“Are you going into town to see Ayers?” Cash asks.

Baker considers lying, but what can he say? That he’s going to the grocery store? Out for a nightcap? Cash will know better.

“Yeah,” Baker admits.

“She asked about you today on the hike,” Cash says.

Baker’s heart feels like a speeding car without brakes. “She did?”

“She said you didn’t call her after you left.” Cash pauses. “Were you really that stupid?”

Yes, Baker thinks, he was. There had been dozens of times when Baker thought to reach out, but, honestly, he hadn’t seen the point. He had been stuck in Houston…until Anna announced she was leaving. “I was that stupid,” Baker says.

“My guess is she has a thing for you,” Cash says. “Don’t mess it up.”

Cash’s tone indicates that he fully believes Baker will mess it up. It’s true that Baker’s track record with women hasn’t been great. He chose to marry a woman who didn’t love him, who may or may not have liked men at all. But Ayers is different. It’s as though Baker had been on a quest without even realizing it—until he found exactly what he was looking for.

He’s not going to mess it up.

Baker wonders why Cash is being so cool about Ayers. He seems relaxed and at ease in a way that is very un-Cash-like. Maybe it’s some kind of trap. Or maybe the island is working its magic.

“Thanks, man,” Baker says. “I mean it, Cash. Thank you.”

“Good luck,” Cash says.

Good luck. Baker turns up the radio in the Jeep; the excellent station out of San Juan—104.3 the Buzz—is playing the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Baker sings along, woefully off-key, but who cares; he’s got the windows open and the sweet night air is rushing in. Baker hasn’t felt this sense of freedom, this sense of possibility, since he was in high school. He’s nervous. He has butterflies.

He drives into town at ten thirty and things are still lively; it’s Saturday night. He worries that to see Ayers, he’ll have to go to La Tapa for a drink—he really wanted to be sober and clearheaded tonight—but then he spots her leaving the restaurant, wearing cutoff jean shorts and a T-shirt and a pair of Chucks, a suede bag hitched over her shoulder.

She reaches up and releases her hair from its bun. She is so strong and composed and self-possessed. Baker is dazzled. He has been dazzled by women before, of course—when he watched Anna pull a splinter out of Floyd’s foot with one quick, precise movement; when his old girlfriend Trinity knotted a cherry stem with her tongue (Baker still doesn’t understand how people do that)—but Ayers is different. She’s flawless.

Baker drives up alongside her and rolls the window down. He thinks about trying to be funny—Hey, little girl, want some candy?—but there’s no way he’ll be able to pull it off.

“Ayers,” he says. “Hi.”

She stops, ducks her head to peer into the car. They lock eyes.

“Baker,” she says. She holds his gaze and the two of them knit together somehow. He can’t speak so he nods his head toward the passenger seat. She runs around the front of the car, opens the door, climbs in, and fastens her seat belt.

“Wow,” she says. “I can’t believe I’m doing this.”

“Where to?” he asks.

“Hawksnest Beach,” she says. “I’ll show you the way.”

February 22, 2006

On Tuesday night, Mick announces that he’s going over to St. Thomas the next morning and he won’t be back until late, so he can’t meet Ayers after her charter with a smoothie.

“I guess the honeymoon is over,” Ayers says. “I knew it wouldn’t last. What’s happening in St. Thomas?”

“Picking up some stuff for the bar,” Mick says.

“Really?” Ayers says. “Like what, from where?”

“Stuff, from places,” Mick says. “Paper straws, for one thing. I have to take all the plastic straws to recycling and replace them with paper straws. Which, although environmentally friendly, disintegrate once they come in contact with liquid, thereby providing a poor straw experience.”

“And what else?”

“What’s with the third degree?” Mick asks.

She didn’t sleep with Baker. When he pulled up alongside of her out of the blue, she thought, Is this really happening? And then, without thinking twice, she’d climbed into the car with him and directed him to Hawksnest. She thought they would just sit in the parking lot and talk but that wasn’t very romantic, so she led him down the path toward the beach, which was deserted, and she thought, Is that what I want? Romantic?

The truth is, she hasn’t stopped thinking of him since he left. She doesn’t want to like him, but she does. And reading Rosie’s journals is screwing with her head. Rosie willingly had an affair with a man she knew was married. Ayers’s own dear, sweet friend, a person Ayers admired and respected, did that. The story in the diary is, at least, providing some context. Russ was unhappy, at a crossroads career-wise, and he’d been dropped into paradise for the weekend, where he’d met Rosie, who even on her worst day was achingly beautiful. Something had sparked between them—then ignited. It’s the spark and the flame that intrigue Ayers. Did two good people do something they knew was wrong because there was some kind of magical chemistry involved? Or was it plain old human fallibility, weakness in the face of temptation?

Ayers isn’t sure. What she is drawn to in Rosie’s journal is the rawness of Rosie’s desire for Russ and her pain when he leaves.

Has Ayers ever felt that way about anyone? Does she feel that way about Mick? She was hurt and angry—really angry—when she found Mick with Brigid, but that pain might simply have been the blow to her self-esteem and the sting of being rejected. The truth is, the way she feels about Mick now has changed. She still loves him but she doesn’t trust him and she doesn’t trust herself, and sometimes she thinks she went back to him only because it was comfortable and familiar, whereas the idea of embarking on a whole new relationship with Baker Steele is terrifying. And unrealistic. He’s still married. He lives in Houston.

Once they were on the beach, Baker reached for Ayers’s hand, but she batted him away, then turned to confront him. There wasn’t a moon; it was really dark. Ayers could barely see Baker, but despite this, there was an instant pull of attraction. He was so tall and broad; she loved having to crane her neck to look up at him. He had a fresh haircut, she’d noticed; it looked good with his chiseled features and his dimple. He’d gone soft around the middle and there was something dad-like and a little nerdy in his demeanor. But these things set her at ease.

“I didn’t bring you here for that,” Ayers said. “I want to talk.”

Baker nodded. “Yeah, me too. Sorry, it’s a beach, we were walking, I’ve been thinking of you every second of every day since I left, so believe me when I say that reaching for your hand was something I did instinctively.”

“I need to know a couple things,” she said. “One, are you still married?”

“Legally, yes,” Baker said. “It’s only been a few weeks. But Anna, my wife, accepted a surgical post at the Cleveland Clinic with her girlfriend, Louisa, so they’re moving and giving me physical custody of Floyd.”

“Have you started divorce proceedings?” Ayers asked. “Have you spoken to a lawyer?”

“We’re using a mediator,” Baker said. “And yes, I’ve spoken to her. This is happening. There’s no going back. I actually had dinner with Anna and Louisa a few days ago, and, wow, they’re together. Two peas in a pod. An intimidating pair.”

Intimidating, Ayers thought, because they weren’t sexually attracted to men. Ayers let Baker’s typical attitude slide because she had a more pressing question. “How long are you staying down here?”

“We’re moving here,” Baker said. “I have Floyd with me. I want to put him in school.”

This wasn’t the answer Ayers was expecting. “So you packed up all your stuff and shipped it down here?”

“Well…” Baker said.

No, she didn’t think so. It would have been too good to be true.

“We’re here for two weeks. Then I have to go back to Houston for this event at Floyd’s school.”

Which he was supposedly pulling Floyd out of.

“And then I’ll take care of packing up the rest of what we need.”

“So it’s your intention to move down here,” Ayers said. “But if after two weeks you aren’t feeling it, you’ll go back to Houston.”

“It’s my intention to stay,” Baker said. “Cash is staying. And tonight I found out my mother is coming down. So I’ll have a built-in support system.”

Irene, Ayers thought. She had a whole new set of feelings about Irene now that she’d read Rosie’s journals—mostly fear that she, Ayers, could someday be duped and blindsided as badly as Irene had been. It was so important to stay vigilant where your heart was concerned. Why didn’t they teach you that in school?

“What about a job?” Ayers said. “Cash has a job, with me.” Even in the darkness, she could see Baker wince. “I won’t believe you’re staying until you have something tethering you to this island.”

“I’m going to look for a job,” Baker said. “I day-trade for money, I can do that anywhere, which is how I’m able to pick up and leave Houston. But I want something part-time here, something flexible so I can still be around for Floyd. I admit I don’t have any leads yet. I just got here today. The first thing I wanted to do was find you.”

“I’m still with Mick,” Ayers said.

“I know,” Baker said. “Cash told me.” He reached out and touched a strand of her hair. “I’m not going to put any pressure on you. I just want you to know that I’m here because of you.”

Against her wishes, this affected her. “I’m with Mick,” she said again, weakly.

“Well, if things don’t work out with Mick, I’ll be here waiting.” He grinned. “Like a complete idiot. An utter fool.”

She laughed, then they stood smiling at each other and she thought, He’s going to try and kiss me.

He bent down toward her—but stopped. “Come on,” he said. “I’ll take you back to town.”

Wednesday morning, Ayers drives down to Treasure Island and Mick follows behind her in his blue Jeep with Gordon hanging his head over the side. They’re on their way to the ferry; Mick honks as he peels off.

They have a full boat today, twenty people, six of them kids, and handling that is a tall order, especially because it’s only Cash’s third day of work, his first without Wade there to train him. But Cash seems to be a natural when it comes to managing groups of strangers all keyed up for an adventure. He’s courteous and convivial, he has the gift of gab, and it’s clear that he takes his procedural responsibilities—the passport paperwork, tying up at the docks, cleaning and prepping all the snorkel equipment, and assisting with any young, old, or infirm guests—very seriously. Of course, this job offers a different roll of the dice each and every day; that’s one of the things Ayers likes about it. Occasionally there are mechanical issues with the boat or the weather isn’t great, but that’s for Captain James to deal with. Ayers and Cash handle the humans.

Ayers goes to the top deck to put out the seat cushions. Six kids is a lot, she thinks, especially if the parents start drinking. She decides to tell Cash that she’ll manage the kids and he’ll be in charge of the adults.

Adults are easier. Most of the time.

From her perch, Ayers spies Mick on the top deck of the ferry, Gordon with him on a leash, garnering attention from every dog lover on the boat. Mick took Gordon with him because, with both Ayers and Mick gone all day, there’d be no one to let him out. Still, Ayers suspects Mick also brought Gordon because Gordon is a chick magnet. And sure enough, a girl with long brown hair in a cute white sundress takes the seat next to Mick. The girl puts her arm around Mick and lays her head on his shoulder, so it must be someone they know. Ayers squints; the girl lifts her head and turns.

It’s Brigid.

To get some stuff for the bar, Ayers thinks. Paper straws. This is such bullshit, Ayers can’t believe she bought it! Well, she didn’t quite buy it, did she? She’d had a funny feeling because Mick hated going to St. Thomas. If there was a reason to go, he’d send one of his employees. But when Ayers asked follow-up questions, he’d accused her of giving him the third degree, and she hadn’t argued the point because she was feeling guilty about the journals and about seeing Baker.

Brigid! Where is he going with Brigid? To the recycling center and the restaurant-supply store? Or to the Tap and Still for a long boozy lunch followed by…what? Not back until late, he said. What a jerk!

Gordon puts his paws up on Brigid’s knees and starts licking her face, and Ayers turns away; if she watches any longer, she’s going to be sick. She pulls her phone out of her shorts pocket and as she’s wondering what to text to Mick—what can she say that will make him feel as nauseated as she feels right now?—Cash calls up the stairs.

“Paperwork is ready,” he says. “Permission to board?”

“Permission granted,” James says from the wheelhouse.

Ayers’s phone says it’s ten past eight. Time to get everyone on so they can leave. She shoves her phone back into her shorts pocket, then whips it back out and shoots a quick text to Mick: I saw you with Brigid. Please don’t ever call me again. It’s over.

She feels triumphant, but it lasts only an instant.

Brigid!

The six children are all in the same family, the Dresslers, and they’re all boys, towheaded and tan, ranging in age from fourteen to six. They all have D-names: DJ, Danny, Damian, Duncan, Donner (“Like the reindeer,” the mother says), and Dougie.

Who names a child after a reindeer? Ayers wonders. She’s in a foul mood.

The kids seem relatively well behaved, and the parents—Dave and Donna—are a striking couple, tall and superior-looking. Donna carries a bag (as big as Santa’s!) that holds the entire family’s snorkeling equipment.

You just never know what you’re going to get, Ayers thinks. Today it’s a cross between the von Trapp children and Russian matryoshka dolls.

She finds Cash in the cabin; he’s setting out the platter of fruit and the sliced coconut-banana bread. The greatest thing about Cash is he doesn’t mind the menial jobs. He thinks it’s a privilege! And Cash is clearly skilled with a knife. The fruit is uniformly sliced and spread out in an appetizing pinwheel.

Ayers pulls Cash aside. “I’ll keep a close eye on the boys. You take the so-called grown-ups.”

“Got it, boss,” he says. He turns from Ayers and smiles at a young woman who is hanging by the counter. “What can I get for you?”

“When does the bar open?” the young woman asks.

Ayers has to wait a beat before she answers. This happens every day, but Ayers is in no mood right now for someone whose sole reason for coming aboard Treasure Island is to get shitfaced.

“No alcohol until we’re under way,” Ayers says. “And even then, I’d urge you to be prudent until the snorkeling portion is over.”

“Prudent is my middle name,” she says. “But snorkeling is quite a while from now, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Ayers says. “Baths first—including travel, that takes two hours—then the captain will pick a snorkeling spot. We should be finished snorkeling by eleven or eleven thirty.”

“That’s a long time to be prudent,” the woman says.

Ayers feels herself about to snap. “Once we are on our way to Jost, you can drink as much as you want.”

Cash says, “If Prudent is your middle name, what’s your first name?” He sticks out a hand. “I’m Cash.”

“I’m Maxwell,” she says.

“That’s your first name?” Cash asks.

“’Fraid so,” she says. “It’s kind of confusing, but don’t worry, I’m very female.” She sticks her chest out at Cash, and Ayers notices a tattoo of a keyhole between her breasts. Ayers gets it—she’s waiting for the person who holds the key to her heart.

Cash must notice the tattoo at the same time—how could he not; it’s nestled right there between her boobs, which are straining against the green cups of her bikini—because he says, “Cool tattoo.”

Maxwell glances down at her chest as if she has no idea what he’s talking about. “Oh, thanks,” she says. Over the bikini, she’s wearing a sheer green paisley peasant blouse. She gives a tiny shrug, and the blouse slips down off her shoulder. This girl has all the moves and she has her bright gaze trained on Cash. “I hope you don’t mind my hanging around. It’s just that I came on this trip by myself. I’m visiting a friend of mine from high school who lives here but she said she has a lot of errands today because she works at night—”

Ayers can’t stop herself from jumping in. “Is your friend named Brigid, by any chance?”

“No,” Maxwell says.

“Long shot, I know,” Ayers says. “You just remind me of someone.”

“Anyway,” Maxwell says, now showing Cash one creamy shoulder, “she encouraged me to come out on this tour. She said it’s the best.” She beams at Cash, as though Treasure Island’s sterling reputation is all Cash’s doing. “I think she was trying to get rid of me. I can be a lot.”

“You?” Ayers says.

The boat engine starts. Cash says, “I have to go tend to the ropes. Excuse me, Maxwell.”

“Just call me Max,” she says. “When you’re finished, will you come back and make me a painkiller, extra strong?”

“You got it,” Cash says. He gives her a wink and shoots out a finger like Isaac, the bartender from The Love Boat, a cultural reference Ayers suspects is lost on Max.

Ayers wrestles with her wandering mind. She told Cash she would keep an eye on the kids and let him handle the adults, but by now, all six of the boys might have drowned.

Ayers puts on her headset. “I’m about to give the safety talk,” she says to Max. “You should listen.”

The ride to Virgin Gorda is smooth. Ayers makes herself notice how glorious the water, the sky, and the emerald-green islands are. She is so lucky to live here, to have this job and her job at La Tapa, her friends, her community, Maia and Huck. Rosie is gone, but at least while Ayers is reading the journals, it feels like she has Rosie back. It feels like Rosie is, finally, telling her everything.

But then she succumbs to the red, hot, itchy temptation of thinking about Mick and Brigid. Brigid! If Ayers had seen Mick with anyone else—Emily Ratajkowski, Scarlett Johansson with her tongue in Mick’s ear—it wouldn’t have sickened Ayers the way seeing him with Brigid has. Why did he even bother getting back together with her? Because she was hurting? Because he felt sorry for her? Because her apartment was far more homey and comfortable than the rat hole where he and Gordon lived? Is he using her? Preying on her pain and her wobbly judgment? She’s actively mourning the loss of her best friend and she has been trying to hold it together so she can be whole and strong for Maia. How dare Mick go behind her back again after all Ayers has just been through. That is what makes this unforgivable.

She scans the boat, looking for anyone who seems to be suffering from seasickness, but the passengers look calm and happy, their faces turned toward the sun, hair blowing back in the breeze. The six boys are sitting on a bench between the statuesque bookends of their parents, and there isn’t a single electronic device among them, which Ayers finds impressive.

She leans toward the mother, Donna, and says, “Your boys are so well behaved.”

Donna wraps her arm around the youngest, Dougie, who is sitting next to her, and kisses the top of his head. “Believe me, this is a rare moment of peace. We told them if they behaved today, we’d rent a dinghy tomorrow and go to the pizza boat in Christmas Cove.”

“Good bribe!” Ayers says. “I love Pizza Pi.” Mick had said something the night before about borrowing his boss’s boat so they could raft up in Christmas Cove on Monday—eat pizza, listen to live music.

Maybe now he’ll take Brigid.

“How do you manage six boys?” Ayers asks. Because she’s an only child, she has always been fascinated by big families and she still harbors a fantasy of having a bunch of kids herself someday. Which will probably never happen, seeing as how she can’t even sustain a relationship. (She has to lasso her psyche! Stay in the moment!) “Isn’t it a lot, to keep track of their sports and activities and their dental appointments and haircuts and stuff?” Just looking at the Dressler family brings up visions of reminders written on a chalkboard in the mudroom, a color-coded calendar, baskets labeled with each boy’s name to hold hats and gloves and rainboots.

“They’re all swimmers,” Donna says. “I just drop them off at the Y on Saturday morning and collect them at the end of the day. I go to some of the meets, though I’ve learned to pick and choose. I used to go to every single one and my hair turned green just from sitting in the pool balcony for so long.” She laughs. “They aren’t interested in impressing me, anyway. They want to impress their coach, their teammates, and each other. They all swim freestyle and do the IM, so it’s pretty intense competition.” She looks down to the end of the bench and whispers, “DJ has just committed to swim at Stanford.”

“That’s so cool,” Ayers says. “Where are you guys from?”

“Philadelphia,” Donna says. “The Main Line.”

Sure, of course, Ayers might have predicted that. The Dresslers probably live in an old stone house that has a creek running behind it. The husband, Dave, probably takes the train downtown to work, and Donna probably makes enormous dinners—Taco Tuesdays!—that the boys devour, exhausted from a day of school and swimming the fifty-free in under a minute. Ayers feels herself falling in love with the Dressler family. Adopt me, please, she thinks.

But maybe there are secrets, like soft spots on a seemingly perfect apple. Maybe Donna is having an affair with the kids’ swim coach; maybe Dave is a degenerate gambler who has lost the college savings; maybe the oldest boy got his girlfriend pregnant, which he’ll reveal the day they get home from this vacation, and suddenly, Stanford will be called into question.

Ayers shakes her head. What is wrong with her today? She suspects it’s a combination of the diaries and seeing Mick and Brigid together. It feels like the whole world is hiding something.

He’s not sure how he got saddled with the drunk, and now crying, young woman named Maxwell—well, yes, he does know, he enabled her drinking and indulged her little crush on him because she’s attractive and flirtatious, and both of these things seemed to bother Ayers, which was, he thought, a very good sign—but now he’s responsible for making sure she gets home safely.

“Find her friend, her people, whoever,” Ayers says. “I’ll clean the boat by myself.”

“But—”

“And, please, Cash, don’t let this happen again. These are our guests, not our friends.”

“You’re right,” he says. “It won’t happen again.”

He half leads, half carries Max off the dock and into the streets of St. John. As they pulled into port, he’d asked Max the name of her friend from high school, but all she’d said was I dunno, and then she groaned and started vomiting again.

It hadn’t been a good look for her, for him, or for Treasure Island, though everyone else on the boat seemed to take it in stride. The parents of the six boys used it as a cautionary tale. “That,” Cash overheard the father whisper to the Stanford-bound DJ, “is what happens when you decide three shots of tequila sound good after midnight.”

There was a couple on the boat, keen snorkelers who’d brought a checklist of fish they were hoping to see, and the man said, “I could have told you how this was going to end up, but she was having so much fun, I hated to put a damper on it.”

“We’ve all been there,” his wife said. “For me, it was the Sig Ep house at West Virginia University in 1996.”

Cash tended to agree; many people at some point in their lives had overdone it like Max. Cash had sampled his father’s scotch and smoked one of his cigars when he was a week away from graduating high school, and that had ended badly. And he had taken care of Claire Bellows after she drank Jägermeister from a flask in the bathroom during their junior prom.

The town is teeming with people. All of the tour boats have just disgorged their passengers and it’s happy hour at nearly every bar in Cruz Bay. Cash has no leads on who he should hand this chick off to. No one seems to be waiting for her. Cash then tries to imagine bringing Max home to the villa, where Baker, Floyd, and his mother will all be waiting.

Nope. No chance.

“Cash!”

Cash cranes his neck, trying to figure out who’s calling his name. Then someone appears under his nose.

It’s Maia. With a boy in tow—a handsome young man with dark hair that has been highlighted in the front. He’s a couple inches taller than Maia.

“Hey,” Cash says. He’s more than a little uncomfortable bumping into…well, his little sister…with Max draped over him like a fur coat. “What are you doing?”

Maia shrugs. “Hanging out.” She nods at the boy next to her. “This is my friend Shane. He goes to Antilles.”

“Hey, Shane,” Cash says. Shane is the kid that Maia has a crush on; Cash remembers this much. It’s nice that they’re hanging out together—alone, from the looks of it; is that okay?—and Cash feels honored to be introduced, but he really wishes it wasn’t under these circumstances. Any minute, Max might projectile-vomit onto Shane’s shoes.

“What are you doing?” Maia asks, taking an appraising look at Max.

“I’m…well, this woman was a guest on the boat and I’m trying to find her friend. She has a friend who lives here, she said, but I have no idea who it is or what to do.”

“Is it Tilda?” Maia asks. “She was just here, looking for her friend who was visiting…from Chicago.” Maia turns to Shane. “Did she say Chicago?”

Shane nods. “Definitely Chicago,” he says. “But I thought her friend was a boy.”

“Was she looking for a Max?” Cash asks. “Maxwell?”

“Yes!” Maia says.

“Tilda is her friend?” Cash says. “Really? The Tilda that I know? Tilda from La Tapa?”

“Yeah,” Maia says. “She worked with my mom.”

“Right, yes, yes,” Cash says. He’s forgotten that everyone on this island is connected. “I’m going to sit with Max on this bench. Can you guys go find Tilda and tell her where we are?”

“Come on,” Shane says, clearly energized by this mission. He takes Maia’s hand and leads her across the street toward the docks. Is it okay that they’re holding hands? Cash wonders. They look pretty darn cute.

“This way, Max, easy does it, here we go,” Cash says. He sighs. He would give anything to be twelve again.

“I am so sorry about this,” Tilda says. “I’m mortified. I told her to behave herself. I told her I worked with Ayers. And I’d forgotten that you were working on the boat now too. That makes it so much worse!”

“You don’t have to apologize,” Cash says. “It’s not your fault.” Cash offered to help Tilda get Max settled at home, and now he leans back into the soft leather seat of Tilda’s Range Rover and enjoys the air-conditioning blowing full blast. Max is lying across the back seat, moaning. Tilda laid a beach towel across the floor of the car in case Max throws up again, although she’s been at it for so long that Cash doesn’t see how there could be anything left in her stomach. “I think maybe she was just nervous about going on the trip by herself.”

“She should have made some friends,” Tilda says.

“She sort of…attached herself to me,” Cash says.

“Of course she did,” Tilda says. “You’re superhot and you’re her type. You look exactly like her boyfriend in high school. Freddy Jarvis.”

Cash isn’t sure how he feels about being the reincarnation of high-school boyfriend Freddy Jarvis. If he’d seen a woman who looked like Claire Bellows, he would have steered clear. “I don’t think Ayers was too happy about it.”

“Oh, please,” Tilda says. “As if Ayers isn’t hit on herself every single charter.”

“Is she?” Cash says. “She wasn’t today.”

“That’s rare,” Tilda says. “But Ayers is used to it. She never succumbs to temptation because she loves Mick.” Tilda pauses. “Did you hear me, Cash? She loves Mick.”

“I heard you,” Cash says.

Tilda pulls up a steep incline called Upper Peter Bay and they go up, up, up until they can’t go any farther. There’s a gate; Tilda punches in the code and then they shoot down a driveway that’s so steep Cash feels like he’s on a luge or a log flume in the amusement park. They arrive, finally, at the villa, which is absolutely stunning. It’s three separate buildings in the Spanish-mission style attached by arched, columned walkways.

“Um…okay?” Cash says.

“It’s my parents’,” Tilda says. “As is this Rover. They only come three times a year, and I have the west wing to myself.” She parks the car. “Max is staying in the guest wing.”

Cash follows Tilda through the main entrance into a foyer that’s two stories high. Everything is white, with accents of palm green and the palest blue. To the right is a sweeping curved staircase; above it hangs a long, dripping chandelier that looks like crystal rain. In front of them is a white and pale blue living room and a white kitchen with a very cool curved bar around which are pale blue suede stools. Beyond the kitchen are floor-to-ceiling sliding doors that open out onto a patio and a T-shaped pool.

“That pool,” Cash whispers. He’s carrying Max like a bride over the threshold. She’s snoring.

“The pool is for Granger, my dad,” Tilda says. “He’s very intense about his swimming. About everything, actually.” Tilda sighs. “The only person who makes him seem relaxed is my mom. Now, she’s a maniac.”

Cash wants to hear more but Max is getting heavy. “Which way?”

They head out a side door and down one of the covered walkways into the guest wing. It’s two stories, complete with its own garden and plunge pool. They are so high up that Cash can see all of Jost Van Dyke and Tortola.

The bedroom is on the first floor. Tilda throws Max’s bag down and hurries to sweep back the white sheers from the side of the mahogany four-poster bed so Cash can set Max on it. It’s like they’re in some kind of weird fairy tale.

Max rolls onto her side and continues to snore.

“She needs to sleep it off,” Tilda says. “Wanna go get a drink?”

“Yes,” Cash says. “As a matter of fact, I do.”

They go back to town and Tilda picks a place called the Lime Inn, where they sit at the open-air horseshoe-shaped bar. Tilda orders them each a cocktail called the Danger, which is probably the exact opposite of what Cash needs right now, but he rolls with it.

“So your parents…”

“Run an international headhunting firm,” Tilda says. “Specializing in IT. My mother is the owner and CEO and my father is the CFO. I’m proud of them. When I was young, my mother worked in HR at a software company in Peoria and my father was a financial adviser for a lot of the top execs at Caterpillar. Then, when I was eight, my mother had an idea for this business. We moved to Chicago right before I started high school and by the time I was a freshman at Lake Forest, their company was everywhere—India, Australia, Eastern Europe, South Africa.”

It’s not so different from Cash’s own story. Russ took the job with Ascension when Cash was sixteen and life changed—for the better, he’d thought at the time.

“My parents want to invest in a business for me,” Tilda says. “But I’m not sure what I want to do yet. So I’m living down here, waiting tables at La Tapa, and I volunteer at the animal shelter.”

“You do?” Cash says.

“I love dogs,” Tilda says. “But I can’t have one because…a white house.”

“I have a golden retriever named Winnie,” Cash says. “She’s my world.”

“I’d love to meet your world sometime,” Tilda says. “Should we have one more Danger or do you have to go?”

Cash thinks about it for a second. “Let’s have one more,” he says.

Tilda is cool. And she’s really smart. She has a degree in economics from Lake Forest. She gave business school some thought, but she’s grown attached to St. John.

“I’m thinking about starting an eco-tour company here,” she says. “Hiking, kayaking, snorkeling. But I’d want to provide lodging too, I think, so I’ve been checking out real estate. I’m not going to jump into anything.”

“I wish I’d been as savvy as you,” Cash says. He taps his fingers alongside his glass, wondering how in depth he wants to get with Tilda. “You know that my father was killed in the helicopter crash with Rosie?”

“You told me,” Tilda says. “A few weeks ago, when you were hitchhiking and I picked you up. You remember that night, right?”

“Kind of,” he says. He remembers Tilda picking him up; he hadn’t recognized her as working at La Tapa until she reminded him. That was the night he’d gotten drunk at High Tide after his fight with Baker. He can’t recall a thing that he and Tilda talked about. At that point, Tilda had been a minor character, someone in the background. But now that Cash is getting to know her, he’s intrigued. It’s enough of a plot twist that she’s a child of enormous wealth, but it’s an even greater twist that, despite this, she works her ass off and volunteers and is researching business ventures. “So what did I tell you about my dad?”

“That he had been killed in the copter crash, that he was Rosie’s lover, and that he’d bought you two outdoor-supply stores in Denver that went under.”

“I told you that? Ouch. I can’t believe you’re still sitting here with me.”

“You invited me to Breckenridge to ski!” Tilda says. “You made me promise I would come.”

Cash laughs. “Did I?”

“And…” Tilda fiddles with the straw in her drink. “You told me that both you and your brother were in love with Ayers.”

Cash drops his head into his hands. “Idiot,” he says. “I’m an idiot.”

They decide to stay at the Lime Inn for dinner. Tilda gets the grilled lobster, which she says is the best on the island, and Cash gets the guava pork ribs, and when their food comes, they push their plates together and share.

“Eco-tourism, huh?” Cash says. “Do you like to hike?”

“Obsessed,” Tilda says. “I’m trying to do every hike on the island this year.”

“I told Maia I’d do the Esperance Trail with her,” Cash says.

“To see the baobab tree?” Tilda says. “I haven’t done that one yet!”

“Well, let’s plan a time and you can come with us,” Cash says.

“Are you asking me on a date?” Tilda says. She leans into him, much like Max did at lunch, but instead of being irritating, it feels nice. Tilda smells good. She’s tomboyish, which he finds sexy. Her short hair draws attention to her light brown eyes.

“A date?” Cash says. “Aren’t we on a date now?”

“Are we?” Tilda says.

“I don’t know, aren’t we?”

“Maybe we shouldn’t examine it too closely,” Tilda says.

“Maybe you’re right,” Cash says. “The hike would be with Maia. So I don’t know how romantic it would be.”

“No kissing under the baobab tree?” Tilda says.

Cash puts his hand over Tilda’s. “I wouldn’t rule it out.”

Tilda turns her hand so that it’s clasping his. Cash feels a rush. Does he like Tilda?

“Just do me one favor,” Tilda says.

“Okay?” Cash says.

“Don’t use me as a substitute for Ayers.”

“What?” Cash says. “I know what I supposedly told you in the car, but I was very drunk. Ayers and I are just friends.”

“I’m not stupid, Cash,” Tilda says. “And I don’t blame you. I get it. Ayers is a queen. She’s the complete package. I know you and your brother both have a thing for her—”

“Baker might,” Cash says. “But I—”

“You do too,” Tilda says. “Trust me, I get it. If I were still in my lesbian phase, I’d go after Ayers.”

Cash takes a deep breath. This has been a very long, very strange day. “Lesbian phase?”

“High school,” Tilda says.

“Max?” Cash asks.

Tilda swats him. “Come on, let’s get a nightcap.”

They walk hand in hand over to La Tapa.

“It’s kind of a thing we do,” Tilda says. “Whenever we’re out on our nights off, we stop in for a drink.”

“I would think it’d be the last place you’d want to go,” Cash says.

“Except we all love it,” Tilda says. “It’s so gratifying to watch everyone else work.”

“Ohhhhkay,” Cash says. He wonders if Ayers will be there and, if she is, what she’ll think when she sees him with Tilda. Will she be jealous? She had been jealous of Cash’s attention to Max, that’s for damn sure.

Cash worries that he is using Tilda. But he likes Tilda and he doesn’t want to stop holding her hand.

Maybe he shouldn’t examine it too closely.

By the time they reach La Tapa, service has ended. Ayers is nowhere to be seen, though there are still a few people sitting at the bar. Cash and Tilda take seats on the corner and Skip, the bartender, looks between the two of them and glowers.

“Hey, Skip,” Cash says.

“So, what, are you two together now?” he asks. He glares at Tilda.

“I’ll have a glass of the Schramsberg, please,” Tilda says.

“Beer for me,” Cash says. “Island Hoppin’. Please.”

“I’m helping these people right now,” Skip says. He holds up a bottle of wine for the couple sitting next to Cash to inspect. “This is the Penfolds Bin Eight Cab. It has notes of imitation crabmeat, hot asphalt, and a one-night stand.”

Nervously, the couple laughs.

Tilda says, “Don’t do this, Skip.”

Skip opens the bottle with a flourish and pours some in the woman’s glass. She brings it to her lips. “I can definitely taste the one-night stand,” she says. “The asphalt is harder to detect.”

“He’s a maniac,” Tilda whispers.

“What’s going on with you two?” Cash asks.

“Nothing,” Tilda says. “And I do mean nothing.”

“But something did happen, right?” Cash says. “Let me guess. You had a thing, then you broke it off and he’s pissed. That’s the vibe I’m getting.”

“A very short thing,” Tilda says. “A very insignificant thing.”

Cash puts his hand on the slender stalk of Tilda’s neck and pulls her in close. “Tell you what,” he says. “I promise not to use you as a substitute for Ayers if you promise not to use me as revenge for old Skippy here. Deal?”

Tilda pantomimes picking up a glass—her champagne has not yet, and may never, arrive—and raises it to Cash. “Deal,” she says.

At the end of his first week of fishing with Irene, he writes down the following in his ledger:

These are the usual details that Huck records, along with the credit card numbers or a notation that the client paid with cash. He used to include where the clients were staying on the island and how they’d heard about his charter, but then he decided it didn’t make any difference. Nearly everyone finds him one of two ways: word of mouth or the GD internet. Huck pays a computer whiz named Destiny over in St. Thomas to make sure that when someone types in deep-sea fishing and St. John USVI, the Mississippi is the first link to pop up. Destiny also runs the cards and sends Huck a brief text the night before a charter so he knows what he’ll be dealing with the following day.

What Huck doesn’t write down is the way that having Irene on the boat has changed the experience of going to work. Adam was good. Adam was great. He was technically sound with the rods and the gaff, he was excellent when driving the boat, and he was usually pretty friendly with the clients—some more than others, of course, but that’s true of Huck as well. Huck doesn’t need to be friendly; he’s the captain. His only responsibilities are keeping everyone safe and putting people on fish.

If Huck had any reservations about hiring Irene—and yeah, there had been a couple moments when he’d wondered if he was making a giant mistake—they were erased on the very first day. Irene showed up at the boat even before he did, bringing two cups of good, strong, black coffee and two sausage biscuits from Provisions. She was wearing shorts with pockets and a long-sleeved fishing shirt and a visor and sunglasses; her hair was in that fat braid of hers and she looked every inch like the fisherwoman of Huck’s dreams. He had forwarded Destiny’s text to Irene so she knew they were expecting three adults and one child from Calabasas, wherever that was, someplace in California.

“Los Angeles suburb,” Irene said. “The Kardashians live there.”

“I don’t know who that is,” Huck said gruffly, though he did, sort of, because he lived with a twelve-year-old girl.

The three adults turned out to be a gay couple, Brian and Rafael, and a drop-dead gorgeous Swedish au pair who wore only a bikini and a sarong. They wandered down the dock with an eight-year-old boy who was crying.

Irene looked at Huck and said, “We’ll stay inshore?”

I love you, Huck thought. “You bet,” he said.

The charter—one Huck and Adam might have written off as a bad blind date due to the crying child and uninterested nanny—had been a big success. Brian was an interior designer to the stars who had zero interest in fishing. Rafael was Brazilian and had grown up fishing in Recife, so he was enthusiastic. The au pair lay across the bench seating in the sun and Irene—somehow—worked magic with the kid, whose name was Bennie. She not only got him casting but helped him when he got a bite. Together, Irene and Bennie reeled in a blue runner; it wasn’t a keeper but it was a good-looking fish in pictures. Rafael caught two hardnoses and a blackfin that was too small to keep, but all that action made him happy. While checking everyone’s lines, Irene chatted with Brian about restoration glass (whatever that was) and epoxy floors (whatever those were). The coup de grâce, however, came near the end of the trip when Irene encouraged the au pair, Mathilde, to cast a line and she caught a nice-size blackfin that they could take home. It was big enough for a sushi appetizer.

“That’s the first useful thing she’s done all week,” Brian whispered. Huck watched him slip Irene a hundred-dollar bill.

Huck figured that was beginner’s luck. However, the entire week had gone smoothly. No matter who walked down the dock, Irene was ready, friendly but not too familiar (Adam would have fallen all over himself with the Swedish au pair). After the first day with Bennie, Irene made a habit of bringing snacks—boxes of cheese crackers, bags of hard pretzels. On Friday, Irene showed up with two dozen lemongrass sugar cookies and after Huck tasted one, he took the whole bag from her and said, “These are too good to share.”

Irene laughed and tried to take the bag back and soon they were in a tug-of-war and Irene shrieked, “Huck, you’re going to turn them to crumbs!” Her tone was playful and the delight on her face made her look even younger and more beautiful than the Swedish au pair and Huck had relented because at that moment, all he wanted to do was kiss her.

He didn’t, of course. He couldn’t—not on the boat, not while she was working for him.

That wasn’t the first time he realized he might be falling in love with Irene. The first time it hit him was Thursday, when they had the family from Chapel Hill on board. The Petrushkis were a mixed-race couple—husband a big white dude, wife a dark-skinned lady—and they had four children: twin fourteen-year-old girls, Emma and Jane, a ten-year-old son, Woody, and a four-year-old son named Elton. Huck had no opinion, really, when it came to children; all he wanted to know was whether they were interested in fishing and, if not, whether they were able to sit on a boat for six or eight hours without causing trouble. If a child was “cute” or not didn’t enter his brain. All children were cute, except for Maia, who was exquisite. But even Huck would have had a hard time saying that Elton Petrushki wasn’t the cutest child he’d ever seen. He had café-au-lait skin, like Maia, big brown eyes, and chubby cheeks, and as soon as he climbed aboard the boat, he attached himself to Irene and started asking, “We gon’ fish? We gon’ fish?”

Irene said, “Yes, yes, Elton, we gon’ fish.”

“We gon’ fish!” Elton announced to Huck.

Elton sat with his mother for the trip offshore. Huck was always worried about taking children offshore but Mr. Petrushki assured him that the kids had grown up on the water. The Petrushkis owned a vacation home on Wrightsville Beach on the North Carolina coast and they boated around Cape Fear.

When they slowed down to troll out at Tambo, the fertile spot where Huck and Irene had had such phenomenal luck just after the new year, Huck ran through the drill with Mr. Petrushki and the older kids. He was extra-kind and solicitous—maybe he was trying to show off for Irene—while she dealt with little Elton, who was dead set on catching a fish of his own.

“He gets a fish on, you hold his rod,” Huck said. “Wahoo gets a hold of that line, kid’s going in. Shark bait.”

“Understood, Captain,” Irene said. “Nothing is going to happen to this child in my care.”

The Petrushki family had, in fact, enjoyed a banner day. Mr. Petrushki got a fish on first—Huck was secretly relieved because plenty of time, he had seen grown men bitter about being shown up by their own children—then Huck tossed chum into the water and they got more hits. Mister brought in a wahoo, then one of the twins brought in a smaller wahoo, then a few minutes later, the other twin brought in a wahoo exactly the same size. It was almost eerie. With the appearance of each fish, Elton Petrushki would jump up and down and yell, “Got fish! Got fish!” He stood over the hold staring down with wide eyes as Huck tossed the fish in.

There was a little bit of a lull at one point but Huck saw birds diving and directed the boat over. Sure enough, the ten-year-old Woody caught a barracuda, and then Mr. Petrushki caught a barracuda.

Mrs. Petrushki was reading a book bigger than the Bible, the Collected Works of Jane Austen.

“I love Jane Austen,” Irene said.

“So do I!” Mrs. Petrushki said. “I’m a professor at UNC. I teach the Austen survey course.”

“Oh, I get it now,” Irene said. “The children’s names! Emma, Jane, Wood for Woodhouse, and Elton.”

“Yes, I did my thesis on Emma,” Mrs. Petrushki said. “I’m a bit obsessed, as my girls like to say.”

Huck was in awe at the same time that he felt like an illiterate dummy.

Mrs. Petrushki closed her book and beamed. “Looks like wahoo for dinner.”

Elton gazed up at Irene. “We gon’ fish?”

“We gon’ fish,” Irene said. She got a determined set to her mouth. “Elton is taking the next fish.”

A few minutes later, they had a bite. Irene steered Elton to the port rod. “We have a bite, Elton,” she said. “We are going to reel in your fish. But you have to do exactly what I say.”

“Listen to Miss Irene,” Mrs. Petrushki said.

Irene showed Elton how to spin the reel; meanwhile, she had her hand firmly on the rod. Huck could see the tight clench of her fingers and he was glad. The rod bowed dramatically; this was a big fish.

“Irene,” Huck said.

“We’ve got it, Captain,” she said. “This is Elton’s fish.”

The fish put up a terrific fight, Huck thought, and by terrific, he meant terrible. Irene could maybe have brought the fish up alone but she had Elton squeezed between her legs and her hand over his hand on the reel. Huck was about ready to suggest she pass the kid off to his mother when he saw the flash of green-gold under the surface. He grabbed the gaff and brought up a gorgeous bull mahi that was nearly as big as the one Irene had brought up their first time out.

The other kids were impressed and Elton was beside himself. “My fish! My fish!” As soon as Huck yanked the gaff out and extracted the hook, they all watched the fish flop on the deck while Elton danced alongside it, yelling his head off with joy.

Elton decided he wanted to sit next to Irene going home and it was then, as Huck caught a glimpse of the two of them—Irene with her face raised to the mellow late-afternoon sun, Elton Petrushki tucked under one arm—that he realized he was in serious danger of falling in love with the woman. When Huck looked at Irene, he could see the future. That could be her, fifteen years from now, with Maia’s child.

After their charter on Friday with the Changs (who had wanted to stay inshore and fly-fish), Huck and Irene clean the boat (the boat was never this spick-and-span when Adam did the cleaning), and then Huck hands Irene her first paycheck, which he wrote out that morning at home, and says, “Good job this week, Angler Cupcake.”

She looks at the check, raises one eyebrow, and says, “I had so much fun, I feel bad taking your money.”

“You earned it,” Huck says. He wants to tell her how different work was this week compared to every other week of the past six years since LeeAnn died, but he finds a lump in his throat. “I couldn’t ask for a better mate.”

“Really?” she says.

Huck fears if he gives her any specific compliments, all of his feelings will come tumbling out and he’ll embarrass them both. “Next week, we have driving lessons.”

“I signed up for the online marine-safety class,” she says.

“Good girl,” Huck says. He unties his neckerchief and wipes off his forehead. The sun is starting its descent and Huck can already hear the hooting, hollering, and steel-drum music that characterize Cruz Bay on a Friday night. “So, do you have big plans for the weekend?”

“I’m going to sleep in,” she says. “Go for a swim or two. Read. Spend time with the boys. And check in with my attorney at home.”

“You…haven’t heard any news, have you?” Huck asks.

“No.” She pauses. “Huck, I have to say it. I’m haunted by all that money in Rosie’s dresser.”

“That makes two of us.” Huck is uncomfortable talking about the Russ-and-Rosie mess at all, and he’s glad they’ve avoided it all week.

“Cash said there were FBI agents watching the house when he got here, but I guess they’ve decided we’re harmless because they haven’t been back.”

“I told you, AC, nothing to worry about,” Huck says. “Hey, listen, Maia is with Ayers tonight. Do you want to go to dinner? Say, Morgan’s Mango?”

Irene sighs. “I’m just not ready to go out,” she says. “It’s too soon.”

“I get it,” Huck says. “I have some of that wahoo from yesterday and I hid those cookies. Why don’t you come to my place and I’ll cook for you?”

“I should probably go on home,” Irene says. “But thank you.”

He nearly offers to grab some barbecue from Candi’s—enough for everyone—but then he thinks, She’s telling you no, Sam Powers. And can he blame her? She’s just spent five days straight trapped with him out at sea on a twenty-six-foot boat. Is it any wonder she wants to get away and have some time to herself?

This is what Huck should want as well. After all, the last person he’d wanted to spend his free time with during the past three years was Adam. When he bumped into Adam at Joe’s Rum Hut or the Beach Bar—which happened plenty of times—they would wave and not say a word to each other.

But what Huck wants now…is to see more of Irene. In fact, he feels bereft at the idea of an entire weekend without her. Maia is with Ayers tonight, which means Huck will be home alone. He can, in theory, crack open a cold beer and try to finish his damn book. Or he could wander over to the Rum Hut, then to the Beach Bar, then go up to the Banana Deck—he hasn’t been up to the Banana Deck since the new year. Well, yeah, he thinks. Because Rosie died. Maybe Irene is right; maybe it is too soon to go out to dinner and have a nice time. Maybe they should just stay home and reflect, confer with their attorneys, and wonder what the hell happened.

Then Huck remembers that Maia and her little friend who goes to Antilles, Shane, are planning to see the baobab tree with Cash.

“I heard Maia is planning a hike with Cash,” Huck says.

“That’s nice,” Irene says. “They’re forging a relationship.”

It is nice, Huck agrees. He notices that Irene doesn’t suggest they forge a relationship outside of work, off this boat, and what can Huck conclude but that Irene isn’t interested in him? Somehow, he never considered this. Somehow, he’d let himself believe that her interest in him matched his interest in her.

Was it strange as all get-out that Irene’s husband and Huck’s stepdaughter had been in a secret relationship and had a love child? Hell yes.

Too strange, maybe. Huck should just forget about it. He should be grateful that he and Irene are friends and now coworkers and that they don’t hate each other and aren’t in litigation over God knows what—money or the villa or Maia.

Huck watches Irene as she strolls off the dock carrying her reusable shopping bag filled with snacks.

He scratches his face. Maybe he should shave his beard. Or read some Jane Austen.

The next morning the phone rings, and Huck assumes it’ll be Maia asking to stay with Ayers a little longer. If that’s the case he might see if Irene wants to take a drive out to the East End. He’ll offer to bring Floyd and Baker along if they’re looking for something to do.

He’s making a nuisance of himself; he’s aware of this, but he can’t help it.

It’s not Maia calling, or Ayers. It’s Rupert.

“Huck.”

“Rupert.”

“You been drinking yet today?” Rupert asks.

“No,” Huck says. “Not yet.” His eyes graze his trusty bottle of Flor de Caña up on the shelf. Is he going to need it? Or is Rupert about to invite him to meet for lunch at Miss Lucy’s—an invitation Huck just might take him up on?

“You remember talking the other day about Paulette Vickers?”

“Yes,” Huck says warily. The Flor de Caña, then. He brings the bottle down to the counter.

“She and her husband were arrested over on St. Croix. You know how Doug Vickers has a sister there? FBI, two, three cars, pull into Wilma Vickers’s driveway in Frederiksted and Paulette and Doug get led away in handcuffs.”

“This reliable?” Huck asks.

“Sadie went to school with Wilma,” Rupert says. “Wilma called Sadie herself. She has the little boy. Parents went to jail.”

“Did they say why?” Huck asks. “What were they charged with?”

“Conspiracy to commit fraud, Wilma said. Real estate fraud. Financial fraud.” Rupert pauses. “The guy they were in business with, and the Invisible Man, too, were doing laundry.”

“Laundry?” Huck says.

“They were cleaning money,” Rupert says. “Head honcho had a yacht, Bluebeard, and Wilma told Sadie that she knows for certain that boat used to pull into Cruz Bay with a hold full of cash. From guerrilla groups in Nicaragua, Wilma said. And the Marxists in Cuba and Argentinean soccer stars trying to avoid taxes and God knows who else. And Paulette and Douglas Vickers were helping them.”

When Huck hangs up with Rupert, he calls Agent Vasco but is shuttled immediately to her voicemail. It’s Saturday, so maybe she’s off duty—but who is he kidding; she’s probably waist-deep in the Vickers morass.

Huck has known the Vickerses for twenty years—not well, he’s never been invited to their home, never done any direct business with them, but he knows them. Croft must have made them an offer they couldn’t refuse; they must have thought they would never get caught. Huck understands what it’s like to live here as a local person and see the big boats roll in and watch the enormous villas go up and wonder, Why them and not me? Maybe Paulette let herself get into a compromising spot with her family’s business; God knows, real estate is risky everywhere. Huck could call some of LeeAnn’s friends—Dearie and Helen come to mind—and ask what they’ve heard. But it’s possible that what they heard came from Sadie via Wilma as well, and it’s possible that Dearie and Helen haven’t heard a thing but will start jabbering as soon as they realize it’s a topic of interest. The Vickerses got mixed up with Russell Steele and his boss, Todd Croft, and they were helping to launder the money.

Huck’s next instinct is to call Irene. He’s been looking for a reason and now he has one. Paulette and Doug Vickers arrested on St. Croix. That much he could share. The rest of it—the laundering and Bluebeard—that all sounds suspiciously like gossip. Still, Huck feels the seed of fear that has been in his gut since Rosie died start to grow. Russ was involved in illegal and dangerous business dealings. Guerrillas in Nicaragua?

What Huck wants to know is if he or Maia—or Irene—will somehow be implicated in a crime.

We didn’t know anything, Huck thinks. Surely the FBI realizes this. Huck has done nothing wrong, Maia has done nothing wrong, and Irene has done nothing wrong. They’re innocent—but does that mean they’re safe?

Getting Paulette and Doug Vickers can’t possibly be the FBI’s endgame, Huck thinks. They want to find Todd Croft. And Paulette will sing—of this, Huck is certain. She has her child to think about.

From this perspective, maybe Irene would be intrigued by the news, possibly even happy to hear it. They’re tracking down answers. What were Croft and Russell Steele doing? Where was all that money coming from?

No, it will not make Irene happy, Huck decides. It will make her agitated, especially since all they can do until they get official word from Agent Vasco is speculate. And so Huck decides not to tell Irene until he’s had a conversation with Agent Vasco.

Huck sets the Flor de Caña back up on the shelf. He heads out onto the deck to have a cigarette. He imagines Irene lying on the beach in Little Cinnamon, thinking about little Elton Petrushki or about how cold it is back in Iowa City or about what she’s going to make for dinner. But she will not be thinking about Paulette Vickers sitting in an interrogation room and giving the FBI who knows what kind of information about her husband. Huck’s silence is a gift. Irene is sure to find out at some point; hell, maybe she’ll find out tomorrow. But at least she has today in peace. At least she has right now.

Baker is so excited after their meeting and tour at the Gifft Hill School that he texts Anna from the parking lot.

Found a school for F. They ran assessments, he can start kindergarten now. V. advanced, they said. Happy to have him and he loved it.

“Bye!” Maia calls out. She’s staying at the school to hang out with friends and then someone’s mother is taking them to town.

“Thank you, Maia!” Baker says.

“Thank you, Maia!” Floyd says, waving like a maniac. Then he turns to Baker. “Daddy, how do we know Maia?”

“Oh,” Baker says. Floyd is probably confused because Maia introduced Floyd to the head teacher, Miss Phaedra, as her “sort of nephew,” a phrase that elicited an expression of surprise and suspicion from Miss Phaedra. Apparently, the phrase didn’t get past Floyd either. Baker was glad Maia threw the sort of in there because it could be explained any number of ways; they wouldn’t have to tell Miss Phaedra that Floyd is, in fact, Maia’s actual nephew, the son of Maia’s brother Baker.

Sometimes Baker wishes Floyd weren’t so “advanced.”

“She’s our friend,” Baker says. Not a lie.

“I like her,” Floyd says. “I like the Gifft Hill School. Why are there two Fs?”

“No idea, buddy,” Baker says. He checks that Floyd’s seat belt is fastened, then heads for home.

He doesn’t hear back from Anna until two days later, Wednesday.

K, the text says.

K? Baker thinks. He hadn’t expected a fight, necessarily, or even a debate, but he had anticipated something more than just K. They’re talking about Floyd’s education! Baker was armed with the school brochure and the notes he’d taken in the margins, and he has the website for backup as well as his own impressions, which he’d spent the past two days organizing into a sales pitch. The school is nurturing (but not indulgent), inclusive, tolerant, and forward-thinking. (Anna will love all of this.) The sky is the limit for Floyd! The classes are small and they have an island-as-classroom initiative that gets the kids outside studying nature and history and Caribbean culture.

But…Anna doesn’t care. Anna is relocating to Cleveland, learning the ropes at a new hospital, meeting her colleagues, reviewing protocols, buying furniture, and maybe even getting excited for Louisa to become pregnant.

Baker tries not to feel like he and Floyd have been brushed off, forgotten.

He doesn’t bother telling Anna that he also got good news during the visit to the Gifft Hill School—he’d received a job offer. The upper school, Miss Phaedra said, desperately needed someone to coach basketball and baseball as well as do some administrative work for the athletic department. She mentioned this because Baker was so tall and “fit-seeming” (the “seeming” being key) and she wondered if maybe he had any background in either sport and might want a chance to get involved in the community, seeing as how he was new to the island. It was like she’d read his mind. Baker said that he did indeed have some background in both sports; he’d played basketball and baseball in high school and in college at Northwestern on the intramural level.

“Which means, essentially, that I haven’t used my skills in almost ten years. I’ve been waiting for Floyd to be old enough so I could coach his teams.”

“The job does come with a stipend, and the hours would be after school during the respective seasons,” Miss Phaedra says. “I’d love to be able to pass your name on to the head of school, and she can talk with you more about it.”

It’s exactly what Baker is looking for, and yet he doesn’t commit right away because he still has to go back to Houston for the auction this coming weekend. There’s a quiet but persistent voice in Baker’s head telling him that it’s crazy—and, worse, irresponsible—to move to the Caribbean with Floyd.

He came down here for one reason only and that’s Ayers. But Ayers is with Mick. And Ayers was clear that she wouldn’t even entertain the possibility of a relationship with Baker until he had a job or an opportunity here on St. John.

The whole thing is risky. Baker can leave Houston, take the job at Gifft Hill, and move here, but Ayers might still stay with Mick.

The evening that Anna responds with K, Irene comes home from work with some fresh wahoo steaks from her charter. She grills them for Baker and Floyd, and because Cash is out somewhere, it’s just the three of them eating dinner on the deck. It’s nice. Irene is in a good mood; her frame of mind seems better now that she’s working on Huck’s fishing boat, though she’s not her old self by any means. Baker tells her that Floyd liked the school but he doesn’t say anything about the job offer yet. He reminds his mother that he and Floyd are headed back to Houston on Friday for the auction.

“Right,” Irene says, though it’s clear she’s forgotten about it. “But you’re coming back, yes?”

“Yes?” Baker says. “I think so. I mean, yes.” He wants to sound definitive but the truth is, he’s not sure. He’s packing everything they brought down, just in case.

“When?” Irene says. “When will you be back?”

“I don’t have return tickets yet,” Baker says. “Though I can get them, of course, at a moment’s notice. I have to figure some stuff out when I get to Houston. What to do about the house, my car, that kind of thing.”

“Of course,” Irene says. “No one expects you to drop everything and move down here. Though that’s what I did.” She laughs—at her own crazy spontaneity, maybe. “And that’s what your brother did.”

“Where is Cash tonight?” Baker asks. He suddenly gets a bad feeling. Cash didn’t come back after Treasure Island. Did he go somewhere with Ayers? Out to dinner? This is what Baker has privately feared about Cash and Ayers working together, that they would become chummy, that Cash would, somehow, manage to charm her.

“He had an incident on the boat today, I guess,” Irene says. “Passenger got drunk and Cash was called on to help get the girl home. Turned out the girl had a friend that Cash knew. From that restaurant you both like so much?”

“La Tapa?” Baker says.

“That must be it,” Irene says. “And I think he went out with the friend. Something like that.”

Baker pushes his chair away from the table. “Was it Ayers, Mom? Is he out with Ayers?”

“It wasn’t Ayers,” Irene says. She throws Baker an exasperated look. “You boys, honestly. No, it was some other name. British, unusual…”

“Tilda?” Baker says.

“Yes!” Irene says. “He went out with Tilda.”

“Who’s Tilda?” Floyd asks.

“A friend of your uncle’s,” Irene says.

Baker can’t describe his relief. He tousles Floyd’s hair. “You want some ice cream, buddy? They had red velvet cake at the Starfish Market.”

Baker puts Floyd to bed, then decides to turn in himself, mostly because there’s nothing else to do. Cash is still out and Baker has no other friends. If he were at home in Houston right now, he would smoke some weed and crash out in front of the TV—he needs to catch up on Game of Thrones—but he can’t watch that with Irene around.

His phone rings. This, he thinks, will be Anna, just getting home from work at nine o’clock at night. He steels himself. It would be just like Anna to have glanced at his text distractedly and responded with K, but then, after running the whole thing past Louisa, suddenly have a list of objections.

Baker should have texted Louisa.

But his display says Ayers.

“Ayers?” he says.

“Hey.” Her voice sounds funny—sad, trembling, like she’s been crying. “Are you busy?”

“Not at all,” he says. “I just put Floyd to bed so I can talk. What’s up?”

There’s a pause. “Can you get out? Is Cash there? Or your mom? To watch Floyd?”

“Uh…yeah. Cash is out but my mom is here.” Baker stands up and checks himself in the mirror. He hasn’t shaved—or showered, for that matter, unless swimming in the pool counts as a shower—since the day he went to Gifft Hill, Monday. He does have a nice tan now, but he looks like a Caribbean hobo. “Do you want to meet somewhere?”

“Can you just come here, to my place?” Ayers asks. “There’s something I want to talk to you about.”

“Your place?”

“Fish Bay,” Ayers says. “It’ll take you fifteen minutes if you leave right now.”

“Right now?” Baker says. And before he can explain that he needs to shower and change, she’s giving him directions.

Unlike the rest of the island, Fish Bay is flat. And really dark. Ayers said she lived past the second little bridge on the left, but Baker would have missed her house if he hadn’t caught a flash of green, her truck, out of the corner of his eye.

She’s standing in the doorway, backlit, hugging herself. He doesn’t need to feel bad about not showering, he sees. She’s still wearing her Treasure Island uniform and her hair is wild and curly.

“Hey,” he says. “You okay?”

She moves so that he can step past her, inside.

Her place is small, cute, bohemian. There’s a tiny kitchen with thick ceramic dishes on open shelves. There’s a papasan chair, a bunch of houseplants, a glass bowl filled with sand dollars, and a gallery wall of photographs from places all over the world—the Taj Mahal, the Great Pyramids, the Matterhorn. Ayers is in every picture; in many, she’s a kid.

“Have you been to all these places?” Baker asks.

“Story for another day,” she says. “Come sit.”

Baker picks a spot next to Ayers on a worn leather sofa draped with a tapestry. There’s a coffee table with three pillar candles sitting in a dish of pebbles, and lying across the pebbles is a joint.

Are they going to smoke?

“Would you like a glass of water?” Ayers asks.

“Maybe in a minute,” Baker says. “Why don’t you tell me what’s going on.”

Ayers folds her legs underneath her. How is it possible that even when she looks awful, she’s beautiful?

“This morning—” She laughs. “Which now feels like three days ago.” She picks up the joint and lifts a barbecue lighter off the side table, then seems to think better of it and sets both down. “It’s been a very long day.”

“Some days are like that,” Baker says. “Start at the beginning.”

“Last night Mick told me he had to go to St. Thomas to get restaurant supplies today,” Ayers says. “Whatever, I found it a little strange, but I didn’t question it. Too much.” She throws her hands up. “Anyway, then this morning, I saw him on the ferry with Brigid.”

Baker makes a face like he’s surprised. But he’s not surprised. He knew Mick would screw it up. He actually wishes Cash were here to listen to this. Baker leans in. “You’re kidding.”

“Not kidding. I saw them sitting together and I was…pissed. Livid. Suspicious.”

“I bet.”

“So I sent him a text telling him never to call me again.”

Baker spreads his palms against the cool, cracked leather of the sofa. This is real? He didn’t fall asleep in bed next to Floyd? Ayers is telling him exactly what he’s been waiting to hear, only much sooner than he had hoped. Her timing couldn’t be better.

“Then Cash and I had this weird, awful thing happen at work.”

“Yeah, I heard, sort of.”

“This girl got really drunk, and I thought she’d tanked while snorkeling. We stopped the boat, I dove off, your brother dove off, this other kid who’s probably going to be in the Olympics dove off, it was a total circus, and in the end the chick was in the head changing out of one inappropriate suit into a second, even more inappropriate suit, and this was all before we even got to Jost. The girl continued to drink and then puked off the side the whole way home.” Ayers sighs. “And I left your brother to handle it because guess who was waiting for me at the dock.”

“Mick,” Baker says, and he suspects that maybe this story isn’t going to have the ending he wants it to.

“Mick,” Ayers says. “He just left here a little while ago. Right before I called you. We broke up.”

“You broke up?” Baker says. He’s afraid to go back to feeling optimistic. “What did he say? Why was he with Brigid?”

“He said they bumped into each other. Unplanned. A coincidence. She was headed over to St. Thomas to get a tattoo of the petroglyphs.”

“Okay?” Baker says.

“I just got a tattoo of the petroglyphs a few weeks ago,” Ayers says. She holds out her ankle so Baker can see the tattoo; it’s a curlicue symbol in dark green. “We’re hardly the only two people in the universe with a petroglyph tattoo. Rosie had one. But still, I was chafed.”

“Understandably,” Baker says.

“Mick says they only talked for a couple of minutes, then Mick took Gordon, that’s our dog, his dog, up to stand at the bow and he didn’t see Brigid again.”

“Do you believe him?”

“I don’t want to believe him,” Ayers says. “But I do.”

“You do?”

“I do.”

“So…why did you break up?”

July 31, 2006

August 22, 2006

October 29, 2006

November 1, 2006

September 4, 2012

February 9, 2013

February 13, 2014

March 3, 2014

March 10, 2014

There’s no such thing as a clean breakup, Ayers thinks.

When she and Mick hashed it out, Ayers told him exactly how she felt—his infidelity with Brigid was insurmountable. Mick said that he had bumped into Brigid on the ferry and Ayers believed that—but she still didn’t trust him, with Brigid or with anyone else.

“I can’t do this anymore,” she said.

Deep down, she acknowledges that the fault is not entirely Mick’s. Ayers wanted a chance to be with Baker and she refused to sleep with him while she was still with Mick. She had only gotten back together with Mick as a way to exact revenge on both Baker and Cash for withholding the truth about who they were, and then once she and Mick—and Gordon—were back in their routine, Ayers was comfortable, if not particularly happy.

Now that she has slept with Baker—and without protection, like an irresponsible idiot—and now that Baker has left to go back to Houston, Ayers is neither comfortable nor happy.

She had meant to take it slow and steady with Baker. She had vowed to wait until he came back from Houston to consummate their relationship. But passion and high emotion had ruled and although their night together had been unforgettable—at least for her—now the anticipation is gone. Baker might decide Ayers isn’t worth returning for.

Monday morning, there’s a knock on her door. Ayers is in bed. Mondays she’s off from both jobs, though she has Maia tonight. Ayers is picking Maia up in town at six and they have plans to get takeout from De Coal Pot.

Ayers doesn’t like unexpected knocks at the door. Who could it be at nine thirty in the morning? Her landlady? Jehovah’s Witnesses?

She pulls a pillow over her head. The door is locked. Whoever you are, she thinks, please go away. Monday is her day of rest.

“Hello?” a voice says, loud and clear. “Ayers?”

It’s Mick. He still has a key. Why didn’t she ask for her key back?

A second later there’s a flutter of footsteps as Gordon comes running into the bedroom and jumps up on Ayers’s bed. Mick is no dummy, she thinks. He sent his goodwill ambassador in first.

But Mick soon follows. “Get up,” he says.

Ayers flips over and partially opens one eye. “What are you doing here?” Does she need to remind him that they’ve broken up? What if she had company?

“It’s Monday,” Mick says. “We’re going to Christmas Cove. The boat is anchored in Frank Bay. I have rum punch, I have water, I have snacks, I have your snorkel and fins.”

“It’s over, Mick,” Ayers says. “We’re through.”

Mick sits on the bed and brushes Ayers’s hair out of her eyes. “We’re not through,” he says. “We’ll never be through.”

He looks unreasonably good, for Mick. He has a day’s worth of scruff, which is how she likes him best, and he’s gotten some sun on his face, making his eyes look very green. Gordon has already snuggled against the curve of Ayers’s back. Ayers closes her eyes for one second and travels back in time to before the disgusting discovery of Brigid, back when Mick and Gordon were “her boys,” back when life was calm and happy.

But she can travel backward only in her mind. In real time, she has no choice but to move forward. Baker. And Floyd too, she supposes. Assuming they come back.

“I slept with Baker last week,” Ayers says. “The night we broke up.”

Mick’s eyebrows shoot up in an expression of surprise, and then a split second later, Ayers sees the hurt, which was her aim. “Banker? Wow. You wasted no time.”

Ayers props herself up on her elbows. “I like him,” she says. “He’s a grown-up. He doesn’t lie to me.”

“Doesn’t he?” Mick says. “He didn’t tell you who he was. And his father”—Mick whistles—“didn’t exactly serve as a role model in the honesty department.”

Ayers should never have told Mick anything about Baker. “He’s not his father,” she says. “I’m nothing like my parents. You’re nothing like yours.”

“Point taken,” Mick says. “I’m sure you want me to be angry or jealous about your tryst with Banker, and I am.” He takes a couple of deep breaths and Ayers can see his Irish temper eddying beneath the surface. Baker is bigger than Mick, but Mick is fiercer; if they ever came to blows, Baker would lose. “But I’m glad you got it out of your system. I had my fling and now you’ve had yours—”

“It doesn’t work like that, Mick,” Ayers says. “I didn’t do it for revenge. This isn’t a tit for tat. And by the way, I waited until we were broken up—”

“You waited, what, an hour? And we aren’t really broken up. We had a misunderstanding, and you overreacted. Bumping into Brigid on the ferry doesn’t warrant a breakup. Check the relationship rule book. Ask your friends.”

“I don’t have any friends,” Ayers says.

“That’s what this is really about,” Mick says. “Banker, Money…they’re attractive to you because it’s a connection to Rosie.”

“Baker is in love with me,” Ayers says.

“Oh, really?” Mick says. “Well, where is he now? Is he here with a pineapple-banana smoothie, waiting for you in the Jeep? Has he planned the best day off imaginable, complete with a new Jack Johnson Spotify playlist and a solemn promise that we can order the carbonara pizza and the bloomin’ onion pizza and the chocolate-banana Pizza Stix? Did he arrange for Captain Stephen from the Singing Dog to play his guitar for three hours this afternoon? Did he make a reservation for tonight at the Longboard?”

“I have Maia tonight,” Ayers says.

“I know,” Mick says. “I made the reservation for three people.”

Ayers has to give him credit for that. Maia will die of happiness, eating at the Longboard with Mick. She loves the lobster tacos.

“It’s over, Mick,” Ayers says, though even she can hear that her voice lacks conviction. “Go to Christmas Cove by yourself and when everyone asks where I am, tell them we broke up. Or better still, take Brigid with you so they figure it out on their own.”

“I called Bex at Rhumb Lines,” Mick says. “I begged her to take Brigid off my hands, but she says she’s fully staffed. Then I heard Robert and Brittany at Island Abodes were looking for someone to help out with the villas. Brigid has an interview with them on Thursday.”

“Poor Robert and Brittany,” Ayers says. They’re one of the nicest, coolest couples on island, and they have a cute baby. “But it’ll be good for Brigid to get a different kind of job. She’s a terrible server.”

“Agreed,” Mick says. “I wish I’d never hired her. I wish I’d never met her. But what’s done is done. She’ll be out of the Beach Bar by next week.”

Ayers can’t deny it—this news pleases her.

“Back to Banker,” Mick says. “Does he know that you’re ticklish right here?” Mick digs his fingers into Ayers’s ribs. She shrieks and soon they’re tussling in bed and Mick crawls on top of her and she lets him rest on her for a couple of seconds before pushing him off.

“I have a surprise for you,” Mick says. “Two surprises. One for now and one for later. Does Banker know how much you love surprises?”

Ayers does love surprises. “Okay,” she says. “I’ll come.”

It’s a swan song, she tells herself, a last hurrah. Because she has Maia tonight, there’s no danger of her sleeping with Mick. There’s no reason they can’t go out together in public as friends.

The second Ayers sits in Mick’s Jeep with Gordon perched in her lap, she feels happy about her decision. The day is crystal clear, sunny, and hot—and what else would Ayers have done with her time? She would have holed up at home and read Rosie’s diaries. She has been so engrossed in the story about Russ, she’s on the verge of becoming addicted. She has finally gotten to the part where they’re reunited. Russ knows about Maia. Rosie knows about Irene and the boys.

They’re going to be together.

It’s good for Ayers to leave the diaries alone for a while. She sips the smoothie Mick got her from Our Market and sings along to Chesney on the radio. This is what a day off is supposed to feel like.

Mick turns onto Great Cruz Bay Road and Ayers says, “Where are we going?”

“Surprise number one,” Mick says. Great Cruz Bay Road is one of Ayers’s favorite places; it has views northwest over the Westin toward St. Thomas and Water Island. Mick follows the road almost to the tip of the point, then he signals and turns into a driveway marked with a sign that says PURE JOY. This leads to an adorable white cottage with bright blue shutters. It reminds Ayers of the months that she and her parents spent living on Santorini.

They climb out of the car. “Follow me,” Mick says. He steps up onto the wraparound porch that has an uninterrupted water view.

“What are we doing here?”

“This is my new place,” Mick says.

“You bought it?”

“Renting,” Mick says. “Long-term. But it’s mine. You want to see the rest?”

He leads her inside, and everything is picture-perfect. There’s a bedroom, living room, dining nook, kitchen, and a brand-new, sparkling-white-tiled bathroom; every room in the house has a view of the water. On the deck is a grill and a hot tub, and around the corner is an outdoor shower painted the same blue as the shutters.

It’s a real place. Not a hole-in-the-wall like where Mick lives now, which meant that he was always crashing at Ayers’s in a way that felt like he was infringing on her space. For years, Ayers has been begging him to find someplace better. And now he has. This cottage—Pure Joy—is a dream.

“This is amazing,” Ayers says. “You’ll be much happier here.”

“We will be happier here,” Mick says. “I got it for us. See those chairs?” He points to two stools, upholstered in blue, in front of a bar counter. “Those are what convinced me to take it. I pictured the two of us coming home from work late at night and having a drink there together—and can you imagine the sunset from here?”

“Hashtag sunset,” Ayers says. “Your Instagram account will blow up.”

“We can have our coffee out here in the mornings,” Mick says.

We broke up, Ayers thinks. But Mick’s expression is so earnest that she doesn’t have the heart to say it.

“It’s nice,” she admits.

One last hurrah, she tells herself again, though Mick is slowly but surely wearing down her resistance. Her night with Baker—which had seemed so vivid and unforgettable right after it happened—is now fading from her mind.

Has she merely fallen prey to the sexual attraction she feels for Baker because it’s bright, shiny, and new? Her relationship with Mick is deep and long and intense. Mick is the person Ayers tells things, even the small, inconsequential things, because he’s the one who has shared her history. He has context.

If she starts something new with Baker, she would have to go back to square one. The thought is, frankly, exhausting.

Ayers wades through the crystal water of Frank Bay and climbs into the boat. Mick is borrowing Funday, a thirty-two-foot Grady-White, from his boss for the day, something he normally does only on special occasions. Mick loads Gordon in and turns up the music and they go zipping across the surface of the water at breathtaking speed. Ayers loves nothing in the world more than being out on a boat—Treasure Island included—though the experience is much better when she isn’t working. She fills a Yeti cup with rum punch—Mick makes the best—and belts out, “Save it for a rainy day!”

It’s well known that Monday is the weekend for people in the service industry. La Tapa closes on Monday nights after the holiday rush, as do a bunch of other restaurants, so when Mick and Ayers arrive in Christmas Cove, it’s a Who’s Who of St. John hospitality all rafted together on either side of the Pizza Pi boat. The guys from 420 to Center are there and so is Bex from Rhumb Lines and Mattie the bartender from the Dog House Pub with his girlfriend, Lindsay, who works at the Beach Bar with Mick, and Colleen from Pizzabar in Paradise and Jena from Extra Virgin Bistro. Alex the bartender from Ocean 362 is on a catamaran—with Skip. From the looks of things, Skip is pretty far along in the partying department. When he sees Mick and Ayers pull in, he raises his arms over his head and hollers at the top of his lungs, “They’re here!” As though Mick and Ayers are the king and queen of this particular St. John prom.

Ayers grins at everyone and waves. This is her family.

Mick and Ayers tie up to a sleek, black Midnight Express that has a woman on board who looks familiar. She’s wearing a tropical-print bikini and enormous sunglasses. She waves and says, “Hey, Ayers!” and then she helps Mick with the ropes and the bumpers while Ayers racks her brain for how she knows this woman.

She leans over to hug Ayers. “I suppose you’ve heard that Brent and I are getting a divorce?”

Who’s Brent? Ayers thinks. The woman pulls a cigarette and a lighter out of a pair of teensy white shorts lying at her feet and Ayers realizes the woman is Swan Seeley, the mother of Colton Seeley, Maia’s little friend. Swan has traded in her reusable shopping bags and sustainable vegetable gardening for day-drinking and lung cancer.

Ayers laughs. This is fabulous! She always liked Swan best when she was breaking the rules anyway. But a divorce is sad, right? “I’m sorry to hear that,” Ayers says.

Swan waves the sentiment and her exhale of smoke away. “Don’t be,” she says. “He’s got a gambling problem. I had to cut bait before he sank us.”

“Good for you, then.”

Swan smiles. “There are eligible men everywhere,” she says. “Just look at this place!” Her eyes scan the now-impressive raft of boats. “What about Skip? He’s single, right?”

“He’s single,” Ayers says. “But I’m not sure he’s your type.” Or anyone’s type, she thinks. Although who’s to say that Skip, who’s coming off his weird thing with Tilda, and Swan Seeley, freshly separated, wouldn’t be a good match for each other?

“There’s the hottest new dad at the school,” Swan says. “He’s brand-new to the island, relocating from Houston. I saw him last week when I was picking up Colton. Maia seemed to know him, though of course I couldn’t ask who he was with Colton in the car.”

Hottest new dad. That would be Baker. Ayers feels herself bristling. Naturally Swan Seeley and all the other Gifft Hill mothers will pant over Baker. Ayers wants to inform Swan that Baker is taken, by her, but she can’t very well do this when she’s here with Mick.

At that moment, who should step onto Swan’s boat but Skip, holding a chilled bottle of Dom Pérignon and a bouquet of plastic flutes.

“Champagne, ladies?” He pours some for Swan and some for Ayers. “This storied bubbly has notes of Canadian pennies, your dad’s Members Only jacket, and…” He glances over Ayers’s shoulder. “‘We Are Never, Ever, Ever Getting Back Together.’”

Why does he keep doing this? Ayers wonders, but Swan laughs. “Ha! You can say that again!”

Ayers turns to see a cute little speedboat pull up. Tilda is at the wheel and Cash is next to her.

Ayers is seized with panic. Cash is here? What’s Cash doing here? It’s obvious, hello, that he came with Tilda, that’s her parents’ little runabout, though they also have a sixty-two-foot single-hull sailboat. Tilda and Cash? Yes, Baker told her this the other night. It’s good, it’s great, Tilda and Cash together isn’t the problem—except, maybe, for Skip. The problem is that Cash will see Ayers here with Mick and report back to Baker.

Ugh! Arrgh! What can she do? Can she pretend she’s here with Swan? Maybe Cash and Tilda won’t stay; there are a lot of boats here already, maybe they want privacy, maybe they’ll head over to Mermaid’s Chair where they can be alone. Or to Dinghy’s on Water Island.

Go to Dinghy’s! Ayers thinks.

But Tilda has earned her place at this party; she works just as hard as everyone else. Ayers notices she gets a sadistic grin on her face when she sees Skip. She must want to gloat.

Cash and Tilda raft up with Mick. Ayers watches Mick and Cash shake hands. Ayers offers a lame little wave.

Captain Stephen starts playing the guitar and singing “Southern Cross.”

Think about how many times I have fallen…

Mick’s hand lands on the back of Ayers’s neck. He knows how much she loves this song.

The pizza arrives—one carbonara with lobster, one bloomin’ onion drizzled with lemon aioli, and Ayers’s ultimate splurge, the chocolate-banana Pizza Stix. She drinks her champagne—Skip has, generously, left the bottle for her and Swan to split—and she eats some pizza, plays tug-of-war with the crust with Gordon, and dives off the boat for a swim.

Tilda and Cash have noodles. They’re floating in the water, interested in no one but each other.

Mick is gone somewhere. Ayers cranes her neck to see if, by chance, Brigid has arrived on any of the boats. Captain Stephen stops playing and there’s the spine-chilling shriek of microphone feedback, then she hears Mick’s voice.

“You guys, can I have your attention please? Hey! Everyone, please quiet down.”

Ayers sees Mick heading toward her with the microphone. Is he going to sing to her or ask her to sing, maybe something from the Jack Johnson Spotify playlist?

It all happens so fast. A hush blankets Christmas Cove, and all eyes are on Mick, now standing in the bow of Funday in front of Ayers, who is dripping wet in her bikini.

He drops to one knee and only then does Ayers get it: the second surprise.

“This is why I went to St. Thomas,” he whispers. He pulls a box out of the pocket of his swim trunks and says into the microphone so that every single person they work and live with on the tiny island that is St. John USVI can hear, “Ayers Wilson, will you marry me? Will you be my wife?”

Ayers isn’t sure where Cash is, but she can feel his eyes boring into her. Swan Seeley claps a hand over her mouth and then everyone starts chanting, “Say yes! Say yes! Say yes!”

Gordon, who never barks, is pressing his flank against Ayers’s leg, barking.

A public proposal is never a good idea, Ayers thinks. Or is it? She can’t say no. She can’t dive off the boat and seek asylum on Little St. James Island. She could, she supposes, beg Cash and Tilda to take her back to Cruz Bay. Yes, that’s what she should do.

But what a buzzkill. What a depressing end to such a well-executed surprise. Ayers realizes that a good number of these people must have been in on it. Nobody knows that Ayers and Mick broke up and that Ayers embarked on a new relationship. They’re all caught up in the theatrics.

Rosie? Ayers thinks with a glance skyward.

But there’s no answer.

Ayers presents her left hand to Mick and he slips the ring on her finger, then stands and pulls her in for a kiss.

The crowd cheers. Ayers studies the diamond. It’s a beautiful ring; she has to give him that. The stone sparkles so brightly that Ayers is, temporarily, blinded.

Cash takes a picture of Mick down on one knee, holding out a ring to Ayers. He sends it to Baker with a caption that reads She said yes, dude. Sorry.

Maybe, just maybe, it was all for show. Cash always wondered about guys who thought it was a good idea to propose during the seventh-inning stretch of a Colorado Rockies game or up on the stage during a Jason Aldean concert. Was it to guarantee a yes because most women wouldn’t say no in front of twenty thousand people? But then, later, was the ring pulled off the finger, put back in the box, and taken to the nearest pawnshop? Ayers looked surprised but not necessarily happy.

On the boat ride home, he asks Tilda for her opinion.

“She looked dazzled,” Tilda says. “In the best possible way. And who can blame her? Those two have been together forever, they’ve had their issues and come out the other side. They’ll get married and have kids. They’ll be great parents. They dote on Mick’s dog, Gordon.”

“Okay,” Cash says.

“Please don’t tell me seeing that upset you,” Tilda says. “If it did, I’ll drop you off at the National Park Service dock right now and you can walk home. Or find another unsuspecting woman to pick you up hitchhiking.”

“It didn’t bother me in the slightest,” Cash says. Which is true. His feelings for Ayers have changed dramatically in the past few days. “I’m worried for my brother. He really likes her. Maybe I shouldn’t have sent him that text.”

Sure enough, as soon as they get back to Cruz Bay, Cash’s phone starts ringing. Baker.

Cash sends him to voicemail. He and Tilda are going to her villa to “hang out,” then they’re heading into town for dinner.

La Tapa is closed so they decide to go to the Longboard—Tilda is in the mood for their frozen rosé—and who should they happen across but Ayers, Mick, and Maia, who are enjoying more champagne and platters of tacos.

When Maia sees Cash, she jumps to her feet. “Bro!” she says. “Did you hear the news?”

“I did,” Cash says. He smiles at Mick and Ayers. “Congratulations, you two.”

Mick puts an arm around Ayers and squeezes her. “I should have done this a long time ago.”

Ayers’s expression can only be described as dazed. Or maybe she’s just drunk. “I meant to text you,” she says. “The boat has a mechanical issue and we had to cancel the charter for tomorrow.”

“She wouldn’t have been able to go anyway,” Mick says. “I want to keep her in bed all day.”

“Really?” Maia says. “We’re eating!”

Yeah, Cash thinks. The idea of Mick and Ayers in bed is enough to turn his stomach as well. He can feel his phone buzzing away in his pocket. Baker. Baker. Baker.

“Well, if I don’t have work,” Cash says, “that means we can finally hike to the baobab tree.”

“After school?” Maia says. “Can we leave at four so my friend Shane can come?”

“Works for me,” Cash says.

“And me,” Tilda says.

“Pick us up at the ferry dock, please,” Maia says. “And bring plenty of water.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Cash says.

“She’s a force,” Ayers says. Her eyes mist over. “Just like her mother.”

At four o’clock the next day, Cash and Tilda pick up Maia and Shane in Tilda’s Range Rover, which both kids find impressive; immediately, they start taking pictures of themselves in the back. Cash has probably overprepared for the hike. In his backpack, he has eight bottles of water, two of them frozen, as well as trail mix, four Kind bars, two spare clean bandannas, and a first-aid kit. He and Tilda are both dressed in hiking shorts and boots. Tilda has six bottles of water in her pack, plus sunscreen, bug spray, peanut butter–filled pretzels, a selfie stick, and a paper map from the National Park Service.

“You guys are so…gung ho,” Maia says. She holds her phone over her head and snaps a photo of herself making a fish face. “We’re just gonna hike in our Chucks.”

“Yeah,” Shane says. They all climb out of the Rover and Shane gives Cash and Tilda the once-over. “But when I climb Everest, I’m bringing you guys with me.”

“Smart aleck,” Tilda says.

Chucks aren’t really the proper footwear for a hike but Maia and Shane have youth and exuberance on their side. They bound down the trail, and in a couple of minutes, they’re so far ahead, they’re out of sight.

“Hey, wait up!” Cash calls out. “It’s not a race!” He would like to look around, take in the scenery, maybe stop to identify some plants—though that clearly isn’t happening.

“So this company I want to start,” Tilda says, “would provide guides for every hike on the island. You wouldn’t need a map, and you’d have someone there to point out the pineapple cactus and the catch-and-keep, and someone to explain the historical significance of the ruins. The National Parks just aren’t staffed to keep up with demand.”

“I should quit Treasure Island and come work for you,” Cash says. “I’m much more comfortable on land.”

“We should be partners,” Tilda says.

“I have no money,” Cash says. “I might get some once my father’s estate is settled.” This isn’t something Cash lets himself think about often, but it’s always there, twinkling like a star in the distance—a possible inheritance.

“Sweat equity,” Tilda says, then she nods down the trail. “Look.”

Maia and Shane are up ahead, holding hands. Cash says, “I saw them holding hands last week in town. It’s cute, as long as that’s all they’re doing.”

“Don’t be naive,” Tilda says. “Do you think that’s all they’re doing?”

“Yes,” Cash says, because he can’t stand to think otherwise. “I’m new at this big-brother thing, but my natural instinct is to be overprotective. If he tries anything more, he’ll have me to deal with.”

“You’re adorable,” Tilda says. She turns, stops in the middle of the trail, and gives him a kiss.

Because they’re losing daylight and the mosquitoes are coming out, once they reach the baobab tree by the Sieben plantation ruins they decide to turn around—but first they give the tree the reverence it deserves. The tree is extraordinary in breadth and height. It’s the only one of its kind on the island.

“The seeds are edible,” Maia says. “They were brought over from Africa by Danish slaves.”

They use Tilda’s selfie stick to take a picture of the four of them standing at the base of the tree. After Maia inspects the picture, she turns to Shane. “We’re a cute couple,” she says. She looks over at Cash and Tilda. “And so are you guys.” She pauses a beat. “You two are a couple, right?”

“Uh…” Cash says.

“Right,” Tilda says, and they all head back up the hill.

When they reach the Range Rover, both Cash’s and Maia’s phones start going nuts. Cash ignores his—it’s Baker, of course. Maia does not ignore hers.

“Would you guys please drop us in town?” she asks after she checks her texts.

“Are you sure?” Tilda says. “I’m happy to take you all the way home.”

“I live on Jacob’s Ladder,” Maia says. “Trust me, you do not want to drive the Rover up Jacob’s Ladder.”

“You’re probably right,” Tilda says. “Town it is.”

“And how will you get home from town?” Cash asks.

“You’re being overprotective,” Tilda murmurs.

“I’m being responsible,” Cash says. “She’s twelve.” He looks at Maia in the rearview mirror. “How are you getting home? Shane’s parents?”

“Huck is coming to get me,” Maia says. “His charter ran late.”

“Okay,” Cash says. Reluctantly, he pulls his phone out. He has two missed calls from Baker and one missed call from Ayers, which he hopes is work-related. He shoots her a text: What’s up?

A second later, she responds: I need your advice.

No, Cash thinks. He’s not getting in the middle of this.

As soon as the kids climb out at Powell Park, Cash reaches over and pulls Tilda in for a kiss. “So we’re a couple, huh?”

“Yes,” Tilda says. “We are.”

Cash becomes so light-headed thinking about this that they get all the way to Jumbie Bay before he realizes that Maia was lying to him. Huck’s charter didn’t run late. Huck didn’t have a charter today. Irene told Cash that this morning. She was home all day.

“Turn the car around,” he says to Tilda.

They head back to Powell Park, where they dropped Maia and Shane off, but of course the kids are gone. Cash calls Maia and gets her voicemail.

“What do you want to do?” Tilda asks.

“Loop around, please,” Cash says. He hangs out the window of the Rover scanning the ferry dock, which is packed with workers headed back to St. Thomas. Did Maia and Shane get on the ferry? The thought makes Cash ill. They pass the jewelry store, the timeshare office, Slim Man’s parking lot. Then Tilda has to make a decision—right toward Drink and Gallows Point or left past the Lime Inn and De Coal Pot?

“Arrrgh, I don’t know,” Cash says. “I should never have let her get out of the car in town. It’s just, I knew she and Shane had hung out in town together before, but now it’s dark and she lied to me, so she must be doing something she doesn’t want Huck to know about.”

Tilda turns left. They pass the Dog House and the Longboard and Our Market and Cap’s, then Tilda takes a right and says, “Maybe they went for pizza. Let’s check Ronnie’s.”

Yes, Ronnie’s Pizza, bingo, brilliant, Cash thinks. They’re twelve.

Tilda pulls up out front and Cash runs in, looks around. No Maia, no Shane.

“She likes Candi’s Barbecue,” Tilda says. “I remember Rosie telling me that. Let’s swing by and if she’s not there, we’ll call Huck.”

“I don’t have Huck’s number,” Cash says. “I’ll call my mother if she’s not at Candi’s.”

Maia is not at Candi’s. Cash climbs back into the Rover and stares at his phone. He calls Maia’s phone again and again, it goes directly to voicemail.

“She’s ghosting me,” he says.

Tilda laughs. “Maybe. Or maybe her phone died. Or maybe she turned her phone off because she wants to kiss Shane in peace.”

“You’re not making me feel any better,” Cash says.

“Sorry, sorry,” Tilda says. “Okay, let’s think. Do you want me to take you home or run you up to Huck’s?”

“Home,” Cash says. “The last thing I want to do is face Huck.”

When Cash and Tilda arrive at the villa, Irene is sitting at the kitchen table, paging through a House Beautiful.

“Cash,” she says, standing up. “And you must be…”

“Tilda. It’s nice to meet you, Mrs. Steele.”

“Are you kids hungry? I haven’t given a single thought to dinner, though I probably should, it’s getting late—”

“Mom,” Cash says. He’s not sure why he feels so panicked. Maia has probably already made it home. Shane’s parents probably came and picked them up. But what if they didn’t? Cash should have insisted on taking Maia straight home. She acted like a full-blown teenager but she’s only twelve. Twelve! “We hiked the Esperance Trail with Maia and her friend Shane.”

“Oh, that’s nice,” Irene says.

“Then she asked us to drop her off in town,” Tilda says.

“She told us Huck would pick her up,” Cash says. “She told us it wouldn’t be an inconvenience because his charter was running late…”

“Wait,” Irene says. “What?” Cash watches Irene snap into parenting mode and it’s like being transported back in time fifteen years. “Let me call Huck.” Irene fishes her cell phone out of her bag and dials. Cash can hear her reach Huck’s recording.

“He’s not answering,” she says. “And I don’t want to leave a message and panic him. Maybe Maia is home and they’re sitting down to dinner.”

Maybe, Cash thinks. He pictures Huck and Maia at a table, Maia describing the baobab tree.

Cash needs her to be home, to be safe. He can’t handle losing anyone else.

When he gets out of the shower, he sees Irene has called.

Prayers answered, he thinks.

It was bad luck that there had been no charter today—or maybe it was good luck. Huck isn’t sure.

Huck has done nothing all day but think about kissing Irene. He kissed her on the boat, then he kissed her in his truck, and finally he walked her up the steps to the villa and kissed her next to the sliding glass door. He thought that maybe, just maybe, he’d get an invitation to come inside, upstairs—but eventually, Irene had put her index finger to his lips and slipped inside alone.

He understood. It was too soon to go any further. She was newly widowed and so much still remained a mystery.

But he had hoped.

If they’d had a charter, would they have gone back to their normal, pre-kiss selves? Would it have been like the kiss never happened? What torture. Huck wouldn’t have been able to focus on fishing for one second. Who cared about fishing? Love was the only thing that mattered.

He prefers to think there would have been a new energy between him and his first mate, barely sublimated. Huck would brush against Irene, their hands would touch, she would sit next to him behind the wheel of the boat. He would count the hours and then the minutes until the clients were walking away down the dock so that he could kiss Irene again.

People would assume they were newlyweds.

It’s been so long since Huck has felt this way about a woman that he hardly recognizes himself. He feels twenty-five again.

But they hadn’t had a charter and so Huck was left in a vacuum of solitude. He wanted to call Irene and invite her to do something. There was a new floating taco bar in the East End called Lime Out. They could drive to Hansen Bay, rent a kayak, and paddle out for tacos. Would Irene like that? Or maybe a simple lunch would be better, at Aqua Bistro in Coral Bay. Huck could introduce Irene to Rupert—but no, Rupert would be smitten immediately and Huck would have to beat him back.

In the end, Huck lay in his hammock and finally finished the Connelly book. After enjoying a brief sense of accomplishment, he’d stared at his damn phone, willing it to ring, willing it to be Irene inviting him to the villa for a swim in the pool.

Three o’clock didn’t even provide its usual respite because Maia was going hiking with Cash so she didn’t need a ride home from school.

Huck figured Maia would be hungry when she got home and so at five thirty, he went to Candi’s for barbecue, then he got the text from Destiny about the next day’s charter and he assumed Irene had received it too. They would be together tomorrow on the boat.

Huck tried Maia to get her ETA but was delivered straight to her voicemail. She always let her phone run down at the end of a day; it was frustrating. He decided to take a shower—and now that he’s out, he can see he has two missed calls, both from Irene, which at this time of day is strange—and maybe troubling.

“Maia?” Huck calls out, but there’s no answer. Huck pokes his head out into the hallway. The house is quiet; Maia’s bedroom door is open. She’s not home yet, but she should be any second, so his privacy is limited. He closes the bedroom door and prepares to call Irene back, but something stops him.

She has called twice without leaving a message, so clearly there’s something she wants to tell him in person. He fears—he can barely say the words in his mind—that the kissing changed things for the worse and that Irene no longer feels she can work on the boat. He’ll be crushed. He has relived the kissing so many times in the past twenty-one hours that it has taken on the quality of a dream. Irene was enthusiastic about kissing him back, right? In his mind, she has her hands in his hair; she’s pulling him closer, wanting the kiss to be deeper. But Huck had been drinking and he has seen far too much on the news not to have doubts about even the most consensual-seeming of acts. Huck shouldn’t have gotten so carried away. There was a moment at the villa where he’d wanted very badly to press his body against hers, but he hadn’t done it. There had been the impulse and then maybe the start of a movement but he’d stopped himself in time. Still, he worries she read his mind, sensed the power of his urges, and now is afraid and maybe even repulsed by him and thinks that working together is no longer a good idea. In fact, it’s inappropriate. In fact, the friendship has to go as well.

As Huck is spiraling down into bleaker and bleaker depths, his phone rings. It’s Irene.

Hard things are hard, he thinks. He’ll just have to apologize and promise to be a gentleman from here on out. But he cannot, cannot, let her quit.

“Hello?” he says, as jolly as Santa Claus.

“Huck,” she says. “It’s Irene.”

“I already knew that,” he says. “The marvel of cell phones.”

“I’m calling to see if Maia has made it home?” Irene says.

“What?” Huck says. He’s confused. “Not yet, no. Why? I thought she was with Cash.”

“Oh, dear,” Irene says.

Huck hangs up the phone, calls Maia, gets her voicemail, then climbs into his truck and slams the door so hard his ears ring.

Late charter? Since when has Huck ever, ever come home late from a charter?

Never, that’s when.

He wants to wring Cash Steele’s neck!

Put your son on the goddamned phone! Huck had shouted at Irene. I need to know exactly where he dropped her off.

Irene gave the phone to Cash. Cash sounded worried and kept apologizing; he should have brought her straight home, he said.

You’re goddamned right you should have brought her home! Huck said. You should have checked with me. I’m her family. I’m her only family!

You’re not, though, Cash had said. I’m her brother. You can’t possibly be accusing me of intentionally putting her in danger.

I’m accusing you of being thoughtless, Huck said. And negligent. She was a child in your care. Huck slammed down the phone; he was livid. The Steele family, one and all, are pirates, he decides. And now they’re trying to steal Maia. Well, Huck won’t allow it.

He sits in his car, fuming, wondering who to call. Joanie’s mother? Shane’s parents?

As he’s wondering about this, his phone rings. Irene, it says.

“What?” he barks.

“Huck, please, calm down,” Irene says. “Whatever you said to Cash really upset him. You and I both know it was an innocent mistake. Why don’t you come pick me up and we’ll look for Maia together? Or I can take one of the Jeeps and meet you in town?”

“How about you and your family stay away from my granddaughter?” Huck says. “Assuming I can even find her. Your numbskull son dropped her off at Powell Park when it was nearly dark. She’s twelve years old, Irene. Twelve! That is called gross negligence in my book. Now, I’m going to hang up and find my granddaughter. She’s mine, Irene. Not yours, not Cash’s—mine. Goodbye.” Huck ends the call and feels much better for one second, then much, much worse. He dials Joanie’s mom, Julie.

“I hate to bother you,” Huck says.

“Oh, Huck,” Julie says. “I was just about to call you. We’re frantic. We can’t find Joanie.”

Julie is an organizer, so with a few calls, she discovers that they’re all missing: Maia, Shane, Joanie, Colton, and Bright Whittaker. But Julie doesn’t have eyes and ears the way Huck does. He calls Rupert, tells him Maia and her little friends are at large, probably somewhere in Cruz Bay, and asks him to alert his lady friends.

Meanwhile, Huck drives into town and checks first at the little beach in Chocolate Hole and then at the basketball courts across from the gas station.

No Maia.

As Huck is heading into the roundabout, his phone rings. It’s Mick. Huck heard from Maia that Ayers and Mick got engaged—which, Huck has to admit, he found startling—and he wonders if Mick is calling to give him the news. Huck nearly sends the call to voicemail, but at the last second, he answers. “Hey, Mick, what’s up?”

“Hey, Huck,” Mick says. “Just thought you should know that Maia and her friends are hanging out on the edge of Frank Bay. I…was taking a little walk, and I saw them down there. It’s pretty late, so I thought—”

“Yes, thank you,” Huck says. “I’m on my way.”

Huck drives to the Beach Bar, double-parks, and strides out onto the sand. He doesn’t see Maia. He heads to the left, spies a couple of kids—it’s pretty far away from the Beach Bar, Huck wonders what Mick was doing all the way down here—and whistles. Even in the dark, he can see Maia jump to her feet. She comes running through the sand toward him.

“Uh-oh,” she says.

“Uh-oh is right,” he says. “Follow me. We’re going home.” Over Maia’s head, Huck calls out, “Party’s over, kids. I’m calling everyone’s parents.”

Maia sits in the truck while Huck leans against it. He really wants a cigarette right now, but he can’t set that kind of poor example until every child is claimed. This gives Huck a chance to calm down and second-guess himself. Did he overreact? No; it’s nearly nine o’clock on a school night and they were having a kumbaya sit-in on a deserted section of beach. God only knows what they were doing.

“What were you doing?” Huck asks Maia once he gets behind the wheel. “Other than trying to send me to an early grave.”

“Talking,” Maia says. “And I know I was wrong and I know I owe you an apology. I’m sorry. I also know it’s not going to make any difference and that I’m grounded. But we had a crisis.”

“Crisis?”

“Colton’s parents are getting a divorce,” Maia says. “He needed us.”

Huck sighs and lets the rest of his anger go. One of the things he likes best about St. John is exactly what Maia is describing: in times of trouble, people come together. That was true when LeeAnn died and even more true when Rosie died. Why should it be any less true for Maia and Colton just because they’re kids?

“You should have called me,” Huck says.

“My phone was dead.”

“Not everyone’s phone was dead,” Huck says.

“I didn’t want to call,” Maia says, “because I thought you’d make me come home. We all made a vow we wouldn’t tell our parents where we were until we knew Colton was going to be all right.”

“Colton is going to be just fine,” Huck says. He nearly points out that Maia just endured something far worse and she’s okay, but Huck doesn’t want to bring up Rosie right now, even though he misses her very, very much at this moment. Rosie would have been far more understanding than Huck about this little powwow. Rosie might have invited all the kids to pile into her car and then taken them all home herself, encouraging them to share their feelings as she drove. “He has two parents who love him.”

“Facts,” Maia says. “Unfortunately, while we were on the beach, I discovered another problem.”

“Oh, really.”

“I saw Mick,” Maia says. “He walked all the way down from the Beach Bar.”

Huck nearly says, Yes, he was the one who called me—but he doesn’t want to reveal his sources.

“And he was with Brigid. Brigid was crying hysterically. Mick had his arms around her trying to comfort her—this was before he noticed me sitting with my friends…”

“Yeah?” Huck says.

“And then they started kissing!” Maia says. Her voice is shaky. “I’m so disgusted with him. He pulled away after a minute, but not soon enough. As soon as I get home and charge my phone, I’m calling Ayers.”

For Pete’s sake, Huck thinks. Does the drama never end?

“They’re adults, Nut,” he says. “I think maybe you should let them work it out.”

“He’ll never tell her,” Maia says. “Ayers will never know if I don’t say something.”

“Maybe that’s for the best,” Huck says. He lights a cigarette and takes a long, much-needed drag. “Maybe he and Brigid needed closure.”

“Closure?” Maia says, and she laughs like a full-grown woman. “Spare me.”

When they get back to Jacob’s Ladder, Huck says, “Grounded for a week. No town for two weeks.”

Maia nods.

“You lied to Cash,” Huck says. “You told him I had a late charter. So then I turned around and ripped him a new one for believing you. Now your own brother can’t trust you.”

“I’m sorry,” Maia says.

“Your mother hid a lot of things from me,” Huck says. He hadn’t wanted to bring up Rosie, but here she is, showing up anyway. “Probably because she didn’t think I could handle the truth.” Huck clears the lump in his throat. “I’ve learned my lesson. You promise to tell me the truth, whatever it is, and I promise to handle it. Understand?”

“Yes, sir,” she says.

“Go inside, please. There’s Candi’s on the table with extra comeback sauce. Then straight to bed.”

“Where are you going?” Maia asks.

“I have some apologizing to do myself,” Huck says.

He drives to the villa even though it’s late and Irene might be in bed. Both Jeeps are in the driveway, which Huck supposes is a good thing. He needs to apologize to Cash; he shudders when he thinks how hard he was on the poor guy.

But it was Maia. When Cash has a child of his own, he’ll understand.

Huck trudges up the stairs and sees a light on in the kitchen. Cash is sitting at the kitchen table with his phone in front of him.

Huck knocks on the sliding door and Cash jumps, then hurries to let Huck in. “Did you find her?”

“I did,” Huck says. “She’s safe.” He can see the relief wash over Cash’s face and Huck feels ashamed. He’s so afraid of losing Maia, even of sharing her, that he’s ignoring the best part about her newfound family: there are more people who care about her. “Listen, I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry,” Cash says. “I’ve been beating myself up since I dropped her off, wondering how I could have been so gullible—”

“You trusted her,” Huck says. “That’s a good thing. I had no right to speak to you the way I did, and I hope you can forgive me.”

“My mom gave me your cell number,” Cash says. “If you ever let me hang out with Maia again, I promise I’ll follow the rules and drop her only at home.”

“She’s grounded for a week,” Huck says. “But I’m sure she’ll be bugging you as soon as she’s a free woman.”

“I hope so,” Cash says. He offers Huck his hand. “Thanks for coming all the way up here to apologize, that was above and beyond. But I have an early morning tomorrow…”

“Right,” Huck says. He turns toward the door, then stops. “Is your mom still awake, do you think?”

“Probably,” Cash says. “She just headed upstairs a minute ago. Do you want me to check?”

Huck hesitates. He could just wait and talk to Irene on the boat tomorrow.

“I’ll get her,” Cash says. “I’m sure she wants to know about Maia.”

Cash disappears up the stairs, and a moment later, Irene comes down. Her hair is out of its braid, wavy over her shoulders. She’s wearing gym shorts and a gray Iowa Hawkeyes T-shirt. Huck feels himself trembling.

“I owe you an apology, AC,” he says.

Irene points at the door. “Let’s go outside.”

This is a good sign, he thinks. He holds the door open for her and she heads out to the railing at the edge of the deck, where they can look out over the water. The pool is gurgling to their right and glowing an ethereal blue.

“Maia is okay?” she asks.

“She was at the beach with her friends,” Huck says. “I’m sorry I lost my temper.”

“It was understandable,” Irene says. “She’s your girl.”

“That she is,” Huck says. “I vowed she would be my first and only priority. I can’t let anything happen to her.”

“She’s lucky to have you,” Irene says.

Huck throws caution to the wind and gathers Irene up in his arms. She allows this, but he can feel tension in her body.

“What’s wrong?” he says.

“The other night was magical…” Irene says.

Huck loosens his hold on her. “But?”

“Meeting you, becoming friends with you, has been nothing short of miraculous. That first day of fishing…it saved me.”

And me, he thinks.

“I love working on the boat. Not just because I like the work but because I enjoy your company—”

“Did I mess things up by kissing you?” he asks. Meeting him was miraculous, he saved her, she enjoys his company…but that doesn’t mean she feels romantic about him.

“Yes and no,” Irene says. Without warning, tears pool in her eyes. “When we kissed…I never thought I’d feel that way again.” She sniffs. “There’s a way in which I’ve never felt that way before, ever.”

“That’s good, right?” Huck says.

“It’s too soon, Huck,” she says. “This whole situation is still so fresh. I know you don’t think we need to worry about the authorities hauling us off to jail like they did the Vickerses, but I do anyway.”

“I’m not going to let anything happen to you,” Huck says. “I care for you.”

Irene reaches up to touch his face. “And I care for you. But I need more time. I just…I need time.” She rests her hand on the side of his neck. “I want you to promise you won’t give up on me.”

Huck isn’t sure he can speak. He’s disappointed. Crushed. Can she not feel the chemistry here? The love? He’s not sure how he’ll be able to hold himself in check. And yet he’s also relieved. Irene is nothing if not a woman of her word. She does have feelings for him. She’s not ready. Is Huck going to give up on her? Hell no.

“You have my word, AC,” he says.

She pulls him close and rests her head on his chest for a moment. “We have an early day tomorrow,” she says.

“You’re right,” he says. “I should go.” It’s difficult, but he releases her. “See you tomorrow, AC.” He strides across the deck without looking back, but he hopes it’s like the movies and Irene is staring after him with longing, telling herself she’s made a mistake, that she is in love with Huck and should chase after him and let him know.

Huck is halfway down the stairs when he sees a pair of headlights winding up the hill toward the villa. Then he sees another pair, and another and another. Four vehicles are winding their way up Lovers Lane.

On Tuesday, he calls an emergency breakfast meeting at Snooze. Once his friends are assembled and they all have coffee—he can’t expect them to provide any kind of decent advice without coffee—Baker passes around his phone.

On the screen is a picture of Mick on one knee, proposing to Ayers, with Cash’s text: She said yes, dude. Sorry.

Debbie says, “Wow, she’s hot. I know you said she was hot, but…wow.”

“Wow,” Wendy echoes when she gets the phone. “Debbie’s right.”

“That’s not helpful,” Baker says morosely.

“Can we talk about the manipulative nature of public proposals in general?” Ellen says. “Why do people do it?”

“Insecurity?” Becky says. “Fear? Or is it the opposite—hubris.”

“I think it’s romantic,” Wendy says. “And fearless. Don’t you think it takes courage?”

“You’re off topic,” Baker says. “I’m now moving myself and my four-year-old son down to a remote Caribbean island for a woman who just agreed to marry someone else.”

“This is Mick, right?” Ellen says. “The guy who cheated on her?”

“Yes.”

“Ew,” Debbie says.

“He’s not bad-looking,” Wendy says. “But he’s not you.”

“Cool dog,” Becky says. “Is that Mick’s dog? Or Ayers’s dog?”

“Mick’s,” Baker says. “He has a cool dog but I have a cool kid.”

“That’s a pizza boat in the background?” Ellen says. She looks at the others. “A pizza boat! We need to plan a trip to St. John.”

“We’ll come visit you,” Debbie says. “The villa has room, right?”

“Nine bedrooms,” Baker says. “But again, off topic. Should I even go? Or should I stay here?”

“Wearing my human-resources hat, here’s what I think,” Becky says. “I like this move for you. It’s not necessarily permanent. You go down there, you coach at the school, you get Floyd situated. He’s a bright, perceptive, resilient kid and he’s a sponge. I think it’ll be good for both of you to live somewhere else for a while. You’re renting your house, not selling it, so you can always come back. Think of it as a sabbatical of sorts. And then if Ayers sees the light and you two get together, you can make it more permanent.”

The other women nod their heads.

“What did I tell you before?” Ellen says. “You won’t hit the ball if you don’t swing.”

Baker appreciates his friends’ advice, but there’s no way he’s making such a huge leap of faith without talking to Ayers.

But first, Baker tries Cash. He would like some intel. Has his brother talked to Ayers about the engagement? What does he know? Cash doesn’t answer his phone; either he’s very busy or he doesn’t want to get involved. Baker assumes it’s the latter, but why did he send the photo, then? To be informative or to be a jerk?

Baker tries Ayers on Tuesday evening, a full twenty-four hours after he received the photo. It doesn’t seem quite as horrific now that some time has passed. Engagements get broken every day, right?

She doesn’t answer either, which could be a bad sign—she’s with Mick, she’s finished with Baker, she wants him to go away—in which case, Baker will just stay in Houston.

He doesn’t leave a voicemail—no one ever listens to them—but he does shoot her a text. Any chance I can talk to you tonight?

A little while later, there’s a response. I’m at work. I’ll call on my way home.

Baker stares at the words for a long time, trying to imagine what Ayers is thinking.

Well, he’ll know in a few hours.

He feeds Floyd and reads him three stories, but Floyd is keyed up because they’re supposed to leave in the morning. Floyd has already said goodbye to his friends and his teachers. He’s excited to live on an island.

“Dad,” he says. “Islands are surrounded by water.”

“That’s right,” Baker says.

“Gramma has a job on a boat,” Floyd says. “Catching fish. And Uncle Cash has a job on a boat, giving tours to people from other places.” Floyd closes his eyes. “I want to work on a boat.”

“Okay, buddy,” Baker says, ruffling Floyd’s hair. “We’ll get you a job on a boat.”

Floyd’s eyes fly open. “Really?”

Baker laughs, and he thinks of what a unique and amazing experience it would be for Floyd to grow up on a Caribbean island. He’ll learn to sail and navigate; he’ll become familiar with the natural world. And maybe he will grow up to be a person who contributes so much to the island that it makes up for his grandfather’s wrongs—whatever those turn out to be.

Baker indulges in some red velvet–cake ice cream but resists the temptation of marijuana.

At nine fifteen, his phone rings. It’s Ayers.

“Hey,” she says.

“Hey.”

“You heard?”

“I did. Cash sent me a picture of Mick slipping the ring on your finger.” Baker pauses. “I guess the breakup didn’t last long.”

“I was taken by surprise,” Ayers says.

“But you said yes, right?” Baker says. “And it was still a yes once you were alone with him? I mean, I understand the manipulative nature of public proposals…” He shakes his head; he’s parroting Ellen.

“Yes,” Ayers says. “It was manipulative. Good choice of words.”

Ellen has never steered him wrong, he thinks. “You’re going to marry Mick? Even though he cheated on you? Even though you said yourself that you can’t trust him?”

“Do you have time for a story?” Ayers asks. “This is something I’ve never told anyone—not Mick, not Rosie, not anybody.”

“I have all night,” Baker says.

She takes a breath. “When I was Maia’s age—younger even; ten or eleven—I lived in Kathmandu with my parents.”

“Kathmandu.” Baker remembers all the photographs on Ayers’s wall. Story for another day. “In Nepal?”

“Yes,” Ayers says. “Kathmandu used to be this frenetic, dirty, dusty, poverty-stricken place where emaciated cows roamed the streets along with the cars and the motorbikes. My parents and I lived in a backpacker hostel. My mother, Sunny, tended bar at an expat pub, I can’t remember the name, only that it had a snooker table, and while my mother worked, my father would try to teach me to play, but my arms were too short to hold the cue stick. Anyway, the manager of the pub was this guy named Simon and he was the most handsome man I have ever seen in my life—and he liked my mother. Even at my tender age, I figured out that was why my father kept me in the pub playing snooker rather than exploring the city.” She sighed. “But my father couldn’t keep me there too late, so eventually every night we’d go back to the hostel. One night, something must have happened with Simon because my mother didn’t come home. For three days, we didn’t see her.”

“What did your dad do?” Baker asks.

“He moved us to this place called the Hotel Vajra, which looked like it was pulled out of a fairy tale. The beds had crimson silk spreads and the doors were made of carved teak. At night they lit pillar candles up and down the hallways, and my father and I would go to the rooftop terrace restaurant and eat lamb momos. It was a big change for me, having a hotel room to myself and eating out in a fancy restaurant, and I knew, somehow, that we were doing it only because my mother wasn’t there. I think I even knew that we were doing it to get back at her.” Ayers sighs. “Anyway, one morning as we were headed over to Mike’s, this place that served a real American breakfast, we saw my mother sitting in the front garden, waiting for us. She linked her arms through ours and we all went to Mike’s and ordered big stacks of pancakes.”

“Did she say where she’d been?”

“No,” Ayers says. “Nothing was ever mentioned about it to me. My mother quit the job at the pub and we moved to Vietnam.” She pauses. “Now, as an adult, I can only assume my mother had a fling with Simon and my father waited it out.”

“Are your parents still together?” Baker asks.

“Yes,” Ayers says. “They’re very happy. To my knowledge, nothing like that has ever happened again, on either side. It was like a hiccup.”

“A hiccup,” Baker says. “And that’s how you see Mick’s behavior with Brigid? As a hiccup?”

“Mick took a detour,” Ayers says. “But he found his way back to me. And I truly believe it was a one-and-done. He knows what he lost and he won’t risk it again. I’ve asked him for years to find a better place to live, and on our way to the boat yesterday, he drove me past this house he rented. It’s gorgeous.”

“Where is it?” Baker says. “I’ll buy it right out from under him.”

“Baker,” Ayers says.

“You said you have feelings for me,” Baker says. “You said you couldn’t stop thinking about me.”

“That’s true,” Ayers says. “Even on Monday before Mick proposed, one of the mothers from Gifft Hill was talking about this hot new dad, and I knew it was you and I was…jealous.”

“Think about that,” Baker says.

“I have been thinking about it!” Ayers says. “But Mick and I have been together a long time. He knows me. We have a life here that we built together, month by month, year by year. I can’t just throw that away for something new.”

“You can, though,” Baker says. “Because I’m moving to St. John tomorrow and I’m going to stay. I got a coaching job at Gifft Hill. I’m going to take scuba lessons…” He doesn’t know where this idea comes from, it just pops into his head, but it sounds good. “I’m going to work on getting my real estate license down there. I’m going to build a life, month by month, year by year, and I want you to be in that life. When I first saw you, I felt like I was the one who had been struck by lightning—only instead of dying, I came to life.” Is this corny? He can’t tell. “I made a decision then and there that I was going to marry you. So you can hang up with me now thinking you’re going to marry Mick. But I promise you, I promise you, Ayers, that I can do better than Mick. I will be true and steadfast and devoted and crazily in love with you until the day I die. I will never have any hiccups. Ever.”

Ayers is quiet.

“If a proposal is what you want, then you have one from me. I want to marry you as soon as I’m legally able.”

“You barely know me,” she says, but her voice is softer. He’s getting to her, maybe.

“We can worry about that later.”

Ayers laughs, but her laugh is cut short. “Oh, hey,” she says. “Maia is calling in on my line, and I should take it. It’s late and she never calls me this late. She never calls me at all, she only texts.”

“By all means, take it,” Baker says. “I hope everything is okay.”

“Me too,” Ayers says. “I’ll let you know. Bye.”

Baker stares at the blank screen of his phone. If Floyd weren’t asleep, he would play the Clash’s “Should I Stay or Should I Go?” at top volume. What the hell—he finds his AirPods and cranks the song up.

If I go, there will be trouble.

And if I stay it will be double.

Repeat song, repeat song, repeat song.

During his fourth time through—Baker is still waiting for the answer to be revealed—he sees a text from Anna. What does she want? he wonders.

Louisa and I have some concerns about you uprooting Floyd, the text says. Please hold off on your move until we talk. I should have some time for a conference call next week.

“Ha!” Baker says to the empty living room. “That’s rich. That’s really rich!” ‘Louisa and I have some concerns’ means that Louisa has concerns, because Anna said she was ‘K’ with it last week.”

Baker knows the text should persuade him to stay put, but it does exactly the opposite. Louisa has concerns about Baker uprooting Floyd to take him to St. John, but Anna and Louisa uprooting Floyd to take him to Cleveland was fine?

Ha!

Ha!

Another text comes in, and Baker assumes it’s Anna burying herself even further—she doesn’t even have time to talk about it until next week!—but the text isn’t from Anna.

It’s from Ayers.

Maia saw Mick kissing Brigid on the beach tonight. I’m giving the ring back.

Baker shuts the music off and heads upstairs to bed. He has an early flight in the morning.

January 1, 2015

June 24, 2015

November 9, 2015

December 18, 2015

February 11, 2016

April 8, 2016

May 23, 2016

May 30, 2016

Irene watches Huck’s back as he leaves. What is she doing? She’s asking for more time because she’s scared. She has never felt so drawn to a man in her life and it’s terrifying; she doesn’t like the sensation of losing control.

But what did Russ’s accident teach her? What is the number-one thing?

She’s alive.

She, Irene Hagen Steele, has today and God knows how many days after. Why not spend those days falling headlong in love with Captain Sam Powers?

“Hey, Huck?” she says.

But he has disappeared down the stairs.

She shakes her head. Go to bed, Irene, she thinks. You can talk to Huck in the morning.

Yes, that’s a smart idea—but even as she decides this, she’s walking toward the villa stairs, envisioning kissing Huck through the open window of his truck.

And then she sees a flash of light. Headlights, more than one pair, are coming up the hill.

“Huck?” she calls out.

The headlights get closer, and before Irene can process what’s happening, four black SUVs pull into the driveway.

What must be ten people climb out of the cars and start up the steps. Irene’s instinct is to back up all the way to the far railing of the deck.

The first person to arrive at the top is a woman, red-haired, attractive. She flashes her badge and a piece of paper that could be a shopping list for all Irene can tell; she’d need her glasses to read it.

“Hello?” Irene says. “Can I help you?”

“I’m Agent Vasco, and as of right now, this villa, one Lovers Lane, is the property of the United States government.” She looks at Irene, not unkindly. “Mrs. Steele?”

Irene nods.

“Your husband, Russell Steele, bought this property as well as the property at thirty Church Street, Iowa City, Iowa, with illegally acquired funds. We’ve arrested Todd Croft and charged him with one hundred and seventeen counts of fraud, money-laundering, and tax evasion for a total of over three point five billion dollars. He named your husband, Russell Steele, as a coconspirator, and he has documentation to prove it. I’m afraid we have to seize both properties.”

“Wait,” Irene says. “You’re taking this house?”

“This house, yes,” Agent Vasco says. “And there are federal agents at your home in Iowa City right now.”

“But that’s my home,” Irene says. “I invested six years restoring it. I live there.”

“You may pack one suitcase of personal effects,” Agent Vasco says. “But I’m afraid you have to vacate the property.”

“But my boys,” Irene says. “My grandson.” Irene can’t think. Baker and Floyd are in Houston, but they’re on their way back. Cash is asleep upstairs.

“I’m sorry,” Agent Vasco says. “I’m afraid I’ll have to oversee your packing.”

“But I’ve done nothing wrong,” Irene says. “I met with Agent Beckett in Iowa City. I was very forthcoming. I told him everything I knew. I helped him.”

“I wish it were different,” Agent Vasco says. “But it’s not. This is no longer your property, I’m afraid.”

For one suspended moment, Irene mentally leaves the scene. She’s back on the unnamed beach, naked. She hears Russ say, The storm is coming. It will be a bad storm. Destructive.

This is the storm. It’s here. The villa. Her home in Iowa City. What is she going to do? Where is she going to go?

“Huck?” she cries out.

She sees him running up the villa stairs toward her.

“I’m here, AC,” he says. “I’m here.”