Irene

She drives Cash and Winnie to the airport in Cedar Rapids. From Cedar Rapids, they will fly to Chicago, and from Chicago to St. Thomas. Irene is tempted to tell Cash that she received her own job offer on St. John but he’s so excited about getting back down there that Irene decides not to steal his thunder or distract from his anticipation.

Besides, she isn’t at all sure Huck was serious.

Still, it was nice to hear his voice.

Cash’s departure turns out to be the impetus Irene needs to get things done. On the way home from Cedar Rapids, she calls Ed Sorley.

“Oh, Irene,” he says. “You must have read my mind. I just dug up a photocopy of the check that Russ gave me when we closed on the Church Street house. Turns out, it was a cashier’s check drawn on a bank called SGMT in the Cayman Islands.”

“The Cayman Islands?” Irene says. “Not the Virgin Islands?”

“The Cayman Islands,” Ed says. “I double-checked that myself.”

“But it cleared, right?” Irene says. “We did actually pay for the house?”

“Yes, yes,” Ed says. “I’ll try to see if maybe this SGMT has a phone number or a website, but even if it does, it might be difficult to track down. It’s a cashier’s check, which is almost like Russ showed up at the bank with six hundred grand in cash…but that’s obviously impossible.”

Is it, though? Irene wonders.

“He might have an account at this bank,” Ed says. “I’ll try to figure it out.”

“Thank you, Ed,” Irene says.

She hangs up and calls Paulette Vickers. Paulette is out of the office—is Paulette ever in the office? Irene wonders—and so Irene leaves a voicemail.

“Paulette, it’s Irene Steele,” she says. “I need a copy of Russ’s death certificate. I can’t do anything without it. My attorney said that until it’s issued, Russ is technically still alive.” Irene gives a weak laugh and flashes back to her dream about the chickens. “So if you would please send me a certified copy, I would greatly appreciate it. That’s apparently what I need. You have my address and if there’s a fee, I’m happy to send a check, or maybe you can take it out of your operating account for the villa.” Irene pauses. “Thank you, Paulette. If this is an issue, please call me back.”

Irene hangs up and thinks, Please don’t call me back. Just send the death certificate. Paulette’s husband, Douglas Vickers, was the one who identified Russ’s body and delivered his ashes to Irene. He’s her only hope of getting this documentation.

She feels a small sense of accomplishment—really small, because she has learned nothing except that Russ apparently had a relationship with a bank in the Cayman Islands. Irene doesn’t have the foggiest idea where the Cayman Islands are. If she were to visit, would she find that Russ also has a mistress and child there? She laughs at the absurdity of the thought—and yet, it’s not out of the question!

The road home from the airport brings Irene perilously close to the offices of the magazine Heartland Home and Style, her place of employment. Irene hasn’t been to work in three weeks. She has two voicemails from Mavis Key on her cell phone; in the second of these, Mavis announced that she “did a little detective work” and learned that Milly had passed away—which, Mavis assumed, was the reason for Irene’s “extended absence.” Mavis offered her condolences, then asked if Irene would prefer the magazine to send flowers or donate to a particular cause.

Irene had ignored the message. She didn’t want to think about work.

But she can’t ignore it forever. Impulsively, Irene turns into the parking lot of the magazine and pulls into her spot. Already the signage has been changed to read EXECUTIVE EDITOR. She cuts the engine and checks her appearance in the rearview. Her hair is braided, her bangs long but not ratty. She’s not wearing any makeup but she still has a little bit of color on her nose and across her cheeks from the sun in St. John.

In she goes.

The first person she sees is the magazine’s receptionist, Jayne. Jayne decorates the reception desk herself using the magazine’s small slush fund; she follows the lead of all the major retailers and really gets a jump on things. Now that Christmas and New Year’s are behind them, Jayne has her area decked out for Valentine’s Day. There’s an arrangement of red and white carnations on the desk and, next to that, an enormous bowl of candy hearts.

“Irene!” Jayne shrieks. She leaps out of her chair and comes running to give Irene a maternal embrace; Jayne has five children, seventeen grandchildren, a pillowy bosom, and soft downy cheeks.

Irene allows herself to be swallowed up in Jayne’s arms and soon the rest of the staff—bored or easily distracted, even though they should be hard at work on the April issue—come trooping out, all filled with joy (or maybe just relief) at Irene’s unexpected return.

Happy New Year, we’ve missed you, is everything okay, we’ve been so worried, it’s not like you to take unscheduled time off, we knew something must be wrong, we heard about your promotion, and then Mavis gave us the news about Milly. God bless you, Irene, she was so lucky to have a daughter-in-law like you.

Bets, from advertising, says, “How’s Russ handling it?”

At this, Irene separates herself by an arm’s length. She can’t lie, but neither can she tell them the truth.

She says, “Is Mavis in her office? I really need to talk with her.”

Yes, yes, Mavis is in her office. Jayne takes it upon herself to personally escort Irene up the half-flight of stairs to Mavis’s office, which happens to be right next door to Irene’s own office, the door of which is shut tight.

Jayne raps on Mavis’s door, then swings it open and announces, “Irene is here!” As though Irene is the First Lady of Iowa.

Irene steps in. Mavis is on the phone. Jayne whispers, “Mavis is always on the phone.” As if this is Irene’s first time in the office, her first time meeting Mavis. “She shouldn’t be long. I’ll give you two your privacy.” And she closes the door.

Mavis is wearing a silk pantsuit in what must be considered winter white. She’s not wearing a blouse under the blazer, though Irene spies a peek of lacy camisole. In an office where most of the employees are women and most of those women wear embroidered sweaters or Eileen Fisher schmattas, Mavis is a curiosity indeed.

Mavis raises a finger (One minute!), then lowers a palm (Please sit!). She has decorated her office in eggshell suede and black leather, an aesthetic previously frowned upon as “modern” and “urban” by the executives at Heartland Home and Style. Irene helps herself to one of the Italian sparkling waters in Mavis’s glass-fronted minifridge. Why not enjoy the pretensions that are on offer?

She decides to remain standing.

Mavis says, “Thanks for your help with this, Bernie. I’ll circle back next week.” She hangs up. “Irene?”

“Mavis,” Irene says. She turns back to make sure that the office door is closed and that Jayne isn’t stationed outside with her ear to the glass. “I need to talk to you. Can I trust you to keep what we say confidential?”

The question is rhetorical. Mavis doesn’t trade on gossip like the other people in the office because Mavis has invested only her head here, not her heart. She was hired to be a problem-solver and a moneymaker. She’s an ice queen, which, under the present circumstances, is a tremendous asset.

Irene lets it all out as concisely as possible: Russ has been killed in a helicopter crash in the Virgin Islands; Irene’s trip down to St. John with the boys revealed evidence of a second life—an expensive villa, a mistress (also dead), a twelve-year-old daughter. Russ’s body was identified and cremated before Irene arrived. Russ’s boss, Todd Croft, the apparent puppet master of this whole grotesque theater, can’t be reached, and the business’s website is down.

“I’m…I’m speechless,” Mavis says. “Your husband is dead? He had a secret life?”

Irene blinks.

“I’m sure you don’t want to go into the gritty details. Who can blame you. But…wow. I thought maybe you were angry about your new role here.”

“Oh, I was,” Irene says. “But then all this happened and…” She studies the bottle of fancy water in her hands because it gives her something to do other than cry.

“Irene,” Mavis says. “What can I do to help?”

“I’m giving you my notice,” Irene says. “I can’t come back to work. I thought maybe, with time…but no.” Irene sighs. “I’m not even sure I’ll stay in Iowa City.”

“What?” Mavis says. “What about your house?”

Irene shrugs. Three weeks ago, leaving behind the house would have been unthinkable. That house took six years of her life to complete; it’s a work of art. Now, of course, Irene sees how blindly devoted she was to the project, how she sweated over the details and completely ignored her marriage. It’s entirely possible that Irene had been standing at her workspace in the kitchen poring over four choices of wallpaper for the third upstairs bath and Russ had come to her and said, Honey, I have a lover in the Virgin Islands and I’ve fathered a daughter, and Irene had said, That’s great, honey.

What Russ did was wrong. But Irene is not blameless.

“You know, I’ve been to St. John,” Mavis says. “I stayed at the Westin with my parents. It’s beautiful.”

“I’d like you to pass my resignation on to Joseph,” Irene says. “I’ll call him myself eventually, but right now…”

Mavis waves a hand. “I got it. Consider it handled.”

“And would you smooth things over with the rest of the staff?”

“I certainly will,” Mavis says. “They’ll all miss you, of course. And they’ll assume it’s my fault you’re leaving. The good news is I don’t think they can hate me any more than they already do.”

“They’re midwesterners,” Irene says. “A bit resistant to change.”

“You think?” Mavis says. “I tried to win them over with team building—lunches at Formosa, happy hour at the Clinton Street Social Club—but I’m pretty sure they talk about me behind my back the second I pick up the check.”

“At least they see you,” Irene says.

Mavis cocks her head. She’s not pretty, exactly, but she’s young, strong, and vibrant. She has presence. But someday, Mavis Key, too, will find herself leaving less of an impression. She’ll be overlooked, shuffled aside, forgotten.

Or maybe Irene is just bitter. She tries to regain the feeling she had as she stood on the bow of Huck’s boat, but it’s gone. She wants to go back down to the islands, she realizes then, if only so she can feel seen again.

“I’ll come back for my things another time,” Irene says. “On a Saturday. Or after hours.”

Mavis says, “Whatever you need, Irene. Please ask me.” She opens her arms and Irene allows herself to be hugged. “I hope you figure this out.”

“Me too,” Irene says.

  

Back at home, Irene sits at the kitchen table with her list in front of her. Death certificates—being pursued. Resignation—tendered.

Obituary. Irene flips to the next page of her notebook and writes, Russell Steele died Tuesday, January 1. He is survived by his wife of thirty-five years, Irene Hagen Steele, and his sons, Baker and Cashman Steele.

Is that all? Irene can’t mention his job at Ascension. She could maybe say that he worked for the Corn Refiners Association for two decades. She could mention Rotary Club and his years of service to the Iowa City school board.

She drops her pen, picks up her phone. She sends a text to her best friend, Dr. Lydia Christensen.

Lydia, the first text says.

Irene feels like she’s falling backward in one of those Outward Bound games where you’re supposed to trust your comrades to catch you.

Russ is dead. He died on New Year’s Day but I didn’t find out until I got home from our dinner. The circumstances were so extraordinary and, honestly, so baffling that I didn’t know how to tell you or anyone else. I’ll call you later, I promise.

Irene presses Send.

Okay, she thinks. It’s officially out in the world. Unlike Mavis, Lydia is not a vault.

A little while later, the doorbell rings. The doorbell is an antique, salvaged from a convent in Vicenza, Italy, and it makes quite a formal sound, somewhere between a gong and cathedral bells. Irene hurries down the hallway, hoping and praying it’s FedEx with the death certificates but knowing that, unless Paulette read Irene’s mind before she left the voicemail, that’s logistically impossible. It might be Lydia, though Lydia normally flings open the door and walks right in. Maybe Lydia called the Dunns and the Kinseys and this is the start of the onslaught. Bobbi Kinsey will have pulled a casserole from her freezer or stopped by the Hy-Vee for a deli tray.

Irene pauses before opening the door and takes a sustaining breath. She’ll tell people the truth—helicopter crash, Virgin Islands, work, but leave out the villa, the mistress, and Maia.

Strong, beautiful Maia.

Irene opens the door. It’s not Lydia, and it’s not Bobbi. It’s four men in dark suits, trench coats, and impractical shoes for the weather. The man in front—African-American, tall and broad, with a grim facial expression—flashes a badge.

“Irene Steele?” he says.

Irene is so stunned, she can’t speak. Is she being arrested?

“Are you Irene Steele?” the man says. “Is this the Steele residence?” He glances above the door frame, then down toward the corner of Linn. “Thirty Church Street?”

Irene nods. “Yes, it is. I am.”

“Agent Kenneth Beckett, FBI, white-collar crime division. We have a search warrant for this address. If you’ll kindly step aside.”

White-collar crime. Irene steps aside.

Three of the agents start searching the house. Irene’s instinct is to follow them—not to hide anything but to make sure they’re careful with her things. However, Agent Beckett wants to talk to Irene in private. She leads him to the amethyst parlor. It’s chilly and she offers to lay a fire.

“Just please sit down, Mrs. Steele,” Agent Beckett says. He’s stern and serious, like an FBI agent on television. Irene notices a black and gold knit cap sticking out of his briefcase.

“Iowa grad?” she asks. “I’m the class of ’84.”

“Class of ’91,” Beckett says. For a second, his eyes smile. “Go Hawks.”

“They aren’t going to break anything, are they?” Irene asks. “This house…well, it took me six years to renovate and the antiques are real. There’s a mural in the dining room; the moldings and trim have all been restored to period. The carpets…” She stares down at Beckett’s wet and icy wingtips on the Queen Victoria jewel-box carpet. “They’ll be careful, right? Respectful?”

Quick nod. “We’re professionals.”

“Of course.”

“Your husband was Russell Steele?” Beckett says. “Died January first in a helicopter crash off the coast of Virgin Gorda?”

“Yes.”

“And what did your husband do for a living, Mrs. Steele?”

Irene briefly wonders if she needs a lawyer present. She tries to imagine Ed Sorley in his sweater-vest dealing with these gentlemen. The idea is nearly laughable.

The fact is, Irene has done nothing wrong. Irene has nothing to hide.

“He worked for a hedge fund called Ascension,” Irene says.

“What was his position there?”

“My understanding was that he was in customer relations.”

Beckett looks up. “Customer relations.”

“Not like he answered the phone and took complaints,” Irene says. “He wined and dined the clients, played golf, a lot of golf, made them comfortable. Russ was a very…nice guy. Nonthreatening, friendly, engaging. He told a lot of corny jokes, asked to see pictures of your kids, remembered their names.” Irene had been jealous, at times, of how good with people Russ was, how generous with his attention. All of their friends and acquaintances liked Russ better than her. And that was fine, Irene understood; they had their roles. Irene let Russ do the talking because he liked it and she didn’t. She enjoyed quieter things—reading novels, cooking, nurturing one-on-one friendships, achieving goals in a timely and organized fashion, whether it was renovating a room in this house or putting an issue of the magazine to bed. She enjoyed fishing, the peace of being out on the water with a single simple mission.

Why is she thinking about fishing?

Well, she knows why.

“And where is this company, Ascension, based?” Beckett asks.

“Miami?” Irene says. “I’m not sure, though. Russ did a lot of traveling for work. He told me he was in Florida, Texas…”

“Told you?” Beckett says.

“Yes,” Irene says. “But I now have reason to believe he spent most of his time in the Virgin Islands. In St. John.”

Beckett scratches down a note.

“You know my husband owns property in St. John.”

“Yes,” Beckett says. “Federal agents are searching that house now.”

“Oh, dear,” Irene says.

Beckett looks up. “What?”

“I put my son Cash on a plane to St. Thomas this morning,” Irene says. “He’ll arrive at the house in St. John sometime tonight.”

Beckett nods. “They should be finished with the search by then.”

“But if they’re not?”

“They’ll let him know and he can make other arrangements.”

Huck, Irene thinks. Maybe he can stay with Huck for a night or two. Which is a crazy thought. Huck isn’t family; he’s merely a sort of friend.

“I guess I’m confused about what you’re after. Is this part of the investigation about the helicopter?”

“Possibly related,” Beckett says. “Do you know a man named Todd Croft?”

“Russ’s boss,” Irene says. “I met him once, December 2005, in the lobby of the Drake Hotel in Chicago. That was right before he offered Russ the job at Ascension. They knew each other at Northwestern. Or at least, that’s what Russ said.”

“Do you have contact information for Mr. Croft?” Beckett asks.

“I don’t. Mr. Croft’s secretary, Marilyn Monroe, called here on the night of January first to tell me Russ had died. I’ve tried calling her back since then but that number has been disconnected and the Ascension website is down.”

Beckett says, “Your husband made quite a good living, isn’t that right?”

“Yes,” Irene says. “After he took the job with Ascension.”

“This house must have been expensive to renovate.”

“It was.”

“And how did you think your husband was earning so much money?”

“He worked at a hedge fund,” Irene says. “And I thought that provided a good salary. I didn’t know about St. John. I didn’t know about the other house…”

“You went down there recently, though? After he died?”

“Yes. That was my first time. We went for a week and returned home last Friday. My mother-in-law, Russ’s mother, was failing. Now she’s passed away so I have that to deal with.”

“I’m sorry,” Beckett says. He looks at her again, this time more sympathetically.

“Would you like some tea, Agent Beckett?”

“No, but thank you.”

“I’d like some tea,” Irene says. “Is it all right if we go into the kitchen so I can make some? I mean, I’m free to move around the house, right?”

“Just stay where we can see you,” Agent Beckett says. He rests his hands on his thighs and pushes himself to a stand. “Actually, some tea might warm me up.”

Irene makes a pot of Lady Grey, and while she’s at it, she prepares a tray of sandwiches and rinses two bunches of grapes. Agent Beckett accepts a ham and cheese and a cup of tea. An agent who looks like Tom Selleck pops into the kitchen to report that they have found nothing.

“Did you remove or destroy any of your husband’s papers or personal belongings after he died?” Beckett asks.

“I did not,” Irene says. “I searched through both this house and the house on St. John, looking for clues.”

“Clues?”

“What he was into,” Irene says. “Certainly, Agent Beckett, you realize that I think all this is suspicious as well. My husband was killed in a place I didn’t know he was visiting, then I found out he lived there. He owned property there. I was looking for answers.”

“What did you find?”

A mistress, Irene thinks. A love child. “Nothing,” she says.

The youngest agent—a baby-faced ginger—pokes his head into the kitchen. “Nothing in the master bed or bath,” he says. He eyes the tray of sandwiches. “Are those for everyone?”

“Help yourself,” Irene says. Then she thinks of something! A hiding place! She looks at Beckett, who is reviewing his notes as he eats his ham and cheese.

No, she won’t tell them. Maybe they’ll find it. Maybe they won’t.

Irene wonders if this investigation can work both ways. “I called my real estate contact in St. John to request a death certificate.” She blows across the surface of her tea. “My family attorney here says that until I produce it, Russ is technically still alive.” She pauses, waiting for a reaction, but none comes. “Which would be quite something, because we’ve already scattered the ashes. Or what we thought were Russ’s ashes. I never saw the body and I wasn’t consulted about the cremation until after it was a done deal. Is there any chance…I mean, do you think my husband might still be alive?”

Beckett stands up to secure the door to the hallway and then the door to the dining room. “You’ve been very accommodating,” he says. “And we appreciate it. I’m sure you realize that we’re here because we have reason to believe your husband had illegal business dealings. The one thing I can assure you”—Agent Beckett holds Irene’s gaze—“is that your husband is dead.”

“He is,” Irene says. Yes, he is, she knows this. She has been processing this news for over two weeks. And yet hearing Beckett say the words comes as a fresh shock. Irene’s eyes sting with tears. The dreams were just that—dreams—but Irene must have been hanging on to a thread of hope. None of this added up. From the beginning, it felt like a hoax. The person who told Irene that Russ was dead—Marilyn Monroe—wasn’t someone Irene had ever met face to face. Paulette had been professional to the point of seeming insensitive, nearly as if she was just going through the motions because she knew Russ would turn up eventually. “You’re sure?”

“Yes,” Beckett says. He must have definitive proof, Irene thinks, but he isn’t sharing it. “We’re going to need your cell phone and your computer. They’ll both be returned to you.”

“Yes, of course,” Irene says. She pulls her cell phone out of her purse just as it lights up and starts chiming with a call from Lydia. Of course it’s Lydia. Irene hits Decline and hands it over. She nods at her laptop on the desk in the corner. “When you say my husband had illegal business dealings, you mean Ascension had illegal business dealings, right? Todd Croft had illegal business dealings. I can tell you right now that Russ just wasn’t the kind of person who would—” She notices the expression on Agent Beckett’s face and stops talking. Russ wasn’t the kind of person who would…what? Have a mistress, a secret daughter, and a nine-bedroom villa down in the Caribbean? It’s pretty clear that Irene doesn’t know what kind of person Russ was. She is as clueless as Ruth Madoff was. Irene remembers back when that news story broke. She had thought, Of course the wife knew her husband was running a bazillion-dollar Ponzi scheme. How could she not know? But now that Irene is in a similar situation, she’s certain Mrs. Madoff had no idea what was going on. She probably spent all her time at the club lunching with her friends and meeting with her personal shopper. And if Ruth Madoff—or Irene—had asked her husband questions about his business, who’s to say either woman would have been told the truth?

Irene, for one, hadn’t asked any questions. She had happily accepted the money Russ deposited into her renovation account and turned her attention to wallpaper and crown molding. “Are you looking for Todd Croft?”

Barely a nod from Beckett. “Not at liberty to say.”

Yes; the answer was yes. “He’s drinking a daiquiri on some remote island without a name,” Irene says.

“That actually happens less than one would imagine,” Beckett says. “Men like Todd Croft can’t just drop out of society. They’re too power hungry.” Beckett pops the last bite of sandwich into his mouth and polishes off his tea. “Don’t worry. He’ll turn up.”

“I did learn two things on my own,” Irene says, “that you might find helpful.” She’s hesitant to hand over what she knows, but Russ’s words have taken root inside of her. Irene is the only person I trust to do the right thing. He probably meant the right thing for Rosie and Maia but he most certainly also meant the right thing morally, which was to cooperate with the FBI, tell the truth, preserve her own integrity, protect the boys. “We have a bank account at Federal Republic. I have a statement I can give you. And the teller informed me that Russ made the last two deposits of seventy-five hundred dollars apiece…in cash.” Irene searches Agent Beckett’s face to see if this news startles him as much as it startled her, but he doesn’t even blink. Of course, he’s in the FBI. He has seen…Irene can’t even imagine what. “And I asked my attorney, Ed, Edward Sorley, to find the account that Russ used to pay for this house when we bought it. He has a copy of a cashier’s check drawn on a bank—MGST or something like that—in the Cayman Islands.”

Agent Beckett’s left eyebrow lifts a fraction of an inch. “Sounds about right,” he says. “Would you give me Mr. Sorley’s contact information, please?”

  

The FBI agents leave at eight thirty that night. As they’re finally heading out the door—with far less evidence than they anticipated, Irene can tell by their dejected demeanors—she suggests that they go to the Wig and Pen for dinner.

“Great wings,” she says. “My mother-in-law…” But she can’t finish the sentence.

Agent Beckett shakes her hand. “Thank you for your help today.”

Irene finds herself uncharacteristically craving validation. She was helpful, right? They’re aware from how cooperative and accommodating she’s been, from the details she’s shared, and from her general demeanor that she had no idea what Russ was involved with. She is innocent. She should not be held accountable—and yet she fears that she’ll see these men again storming her house in the predawn hours with a warrant for her arrest.

Their visit today has taken its toll; she’s scared.

“Will you be back tomorrow?” she asks.

“Someone will be by to drop off your phone and your computer,” he says. “Here’s my card. Don’t hesitate to call if you think of anything else you want to tell us.”

  

Irene waits ten minutes, then fifteen. When she’s positive the agents are not coming back, she snaps off the porch light and heads for the library.

The house phone rings, startling her.

Should she answer?

It’s probably Cash, wondering why she isn’t answering her cell phone. Well, honey, the FBI has it…

“Irene?”

“Lydia,” Irene says. She carries the phone into the library, where she snaps on the Tiffany lamp and collapses in her favorite reading chair. “Hi.”

“I got your texts,” Lydia says. “But then you didn’t answer when I called. You can’t…be serious? Russ is not dead! You would have told me right away if you’d found out he was dead. It was just hyperbole, right? You wish he were dead. What did he do wrong? He was away somewhere, right?”

“The Virgin Islands,” Irene says. The conversation feels like a hill she doesn’t want to climb.

“The…where? Did you tell me Russ was in the Virgin Islands? You didn’t tell me that. I would have remembered.”

Irene closes her eyes. This is just as excruciating as she feared it would be. She has made things far worse by waiting for so long. Lydia doesn’t believe her; Irene should have called her right away. Irene should have brought her—or someone—in at the beginning. But she hadn’t. It had been so sudden and so bizarre, so inexplicable. It was still inexplicable—and yet, here they are.

“Lydia,” Irene says. “Russ is dead. He was killed in a helicopter crash in the Virgin Islands on January first. He was there on business. The rest of the details are too painful to share right now. His body was cremated and the boys and I flew down to scatter his ashes.”

“What?” Lydia shouts. There’s a muffled voice in the background. “Brandon and I are on our way over right now.”

“No,” Irene says. “Please, I was just heading up to bed. We’ll talk tomorrow, I promise.” She thinks for a second. “Brandon who?”

“Brandon the barista,” Lydia says. “We’re dating. We’ve been dating since…that night.”

Irene supposes it’s too late to ask Lydia to keep the news of Russ’s death to herself. “I’ll call you tomorrow, really. I…I have to go.”

“Okay,” Lydia says. She sounds put out, and then she starts to cry. “I’m so sorry, Irene. I’m sure you’re destroyed. Russ was…well, you know he was the most devoted husband.”

Wasn’t he just, Irene thinks. “Good night, Lydia.” She punches off the phone, sighs deeply, then turns her attention to the library shelves. Three shelves in from the right, three shelves down from the ceiling, Irene finds the Oxford English Dictionary that she lugged to college, Roget’s Thesaurus, and Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations in a solid, scholarly stack. She moves the three massive tomes onto the brocade sofa and slides the panel out of the back of the shelf to reveal a secret compartment. And voilà! There’s a manila envelope, stuffed full.

Irene had forgotten all about the secret compartment until she started thinking about hiding places. The secret compartment had been original to this room, and even though the library had undergone a complete overhaul, Russ had insisted the compartment stay. It added character and history—they agreed it had probably been used to hide alcohol during Prohibition. It was one of the only aspects of the house Russ had taken a personal interest in.

What will we hide in there? Irene had asked.

Love notes, he’d said.

She remembers that, clear as day. Love notes.

She pulls out the manila envelope and empties the contents onto the coffee table. It’s a stack of postcards secured with a rubber band. For one second, Irene holds out hope that the postcards are family heirlooms, maybe the correspondence that Milly conducted with Russ’s father while he was away in the navy. But once she wrangles the rubber band off, she sees the pictures on the postcards are all of St. John—Cinnamon Bay, Maho Bay, Francis Bay, Hansen Bay.

None of the cards is addressed. On the back of each is a short, simple message. I love you. I’ll miss you. You are my heart. I’ll be here waiting. I love you. I love you. I love you. All of them are signed with the initials M.L.

M.L.? Not Rosie? She thinks of Maia, but these notes feel, almost certainly, like declarations of romantic love. So they have to be from Rosie. M.L. must be a nickname.

These are the love notes Russ was talking about then, years earlier, when he insisted they keep this compartment.

Irene feels a wave of anger and disgust—he kept these in the house!—but she also feels implicated. If she had to guess, she would say Rosie tucked these cards into Russ’s luggage for him to find once he’d arrived home. Or maybe she slipped them into his jacket pocket as he was leaving. Instead of throwing them away, as Russ certainly knew he should, he’d kept them. He’d wanted—or needed—to save this proof that someone loved him because so little love was shown to him at home.

Irene has heard that love is a garden that needs to be tended. And what had Irene thought about that? She had thought it was sentimental nonsense, the stuff of sappy Hallmark cards. Love, for Irene, was a daily act—steadfastness, loyalty, devotion. It was raising the boys, creating a beautiful, comfortable home, stopping by to see Milly three times a week because Russ was too busy to do it himself. It was ironing Russ’s shirts, making his oatmeal with raisins the way he liked it, taking his Audi to the car wash so it was gleaming when he returned from his trips.

She tosses the postcards in the air and they scatter. She would like to burn them in one of her six fireplaces; nothing would give her greater satisfaction than watching Rosie’s declarations of love for Russ curl, blacken, and go up in smoke.

Forgiveness, she thinks. She will save the postcards and give them to Maia someday.

She picks up the landline and dials, and Huck answers on the first ring. “Hello,” he says. “Who’s calling me from Iowa City?”

“It’s me,” Irene says, which she knows is presumptive. They haven’t been friends long enough for her to be “me.”

“Hello, you,” he says, and she feels better. “What’s up?”

What should Irene tell him first? That she spent all day with the FBI? Or that she found an illicit cache of postcards from his stepdaughter to her husband?

“Adam leaves a week from Tuesday?” she says.

“Yep,” Huck says.

“All right,” Irene says. “I guess that means I’ll be down a week from Monday.”

“You serious?” Huck says. She hears him exhale, presumably smoke. “Angler Cupcake, you serious?”

She squeezes her eyes shut. “Yes,” she says.

Ayers

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.

Cash

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!”

Huck

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.”

Baker

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.”

Rosie

February 22, 2006

I’m afraid to write down exactly what happened with Russ but I’m afraid not to write it down because what if I forget and my weekend with him is washed away like a heart drawn in the sand?

There was sex, a lot of sex, and it was the best sex of my life, but I have only Oscar to compare it to and if there’s one thing I can say about Oscar, it’s that he’s selfish and greedy and arrogant and any time I opened my mouth to ask him to change his style, he took offense and kept on doing things the same way because in his mind, he knew the path to my pleasure better than I did.

I faked a lot with Oscar. I faked so much that I got quite skilled at it and I assumed I would have to fake it with Russell from Iowa City because, well, let’s just say he was older and grayer and not at all in shape. But, man, was I surprised at how…good he was to me. He was gentle and firm and confident when he touched my body and he was also appreciative, maybe even reverent. The sex was so sublime that I started to feel both jealous of and guilty about his wife, Irene.

At one point I said to Russ, “I hope your wife knows how lucky she is to have you.”

Russ laughed. “I doubt she would describe herself that way. And not that you asked, but my wife and I don’t have sex like this. We don’t have sex much at all. Like I said, in Irene’s eyes, I’m a day late and a dollar short in nearly everything I do. Her main attitude toward me is weary disappointment. Which kind of kills the magic.”

On Saturday night I sneaked out of his room at three o’clock in the morning and got back to Jacob’s Ladder at three thirty. I somehow managed to get in the house without waking Mama, who is a very light sleeper.

Russ and I had planned to spend the day together on Sunday but I had to be careful, so careful, because the island has eyes and very loose lips. Turns out, Russ’s friend and potential new boss, Todd Croft, had left behind the skiff from the yacht for Russ to use, although Russ admitted he didn’t feel comfortable navigating in unfamiliar waters. “Leave the driving to me,” I said. I was off all day Sunday and Sunday night, so I went to church with Mama, which normally I hated, but I needed to ask forgiveness for the sins I had already committed as well as the ones I was about to commit. I told Mama I was going to Salomon Bay for the day, then straight to a barbecue, and I’d be home late.

Mama said, “You got home late last night, mon chou.” (She uses the French phrases that she picked up in Paris when she’s displeased; it’s a signal I alone understand.) “I want you to tell me right now that you are not back involved with Oscar. I’ve heard he’s been sniffing around.”

Estella must have been talking to Dearie, who did my mother’s hair. I faced her on the stone walk outside the Catholic church and said, “Mama, I am not involved with Oscar.”

Her expression was dubious but my words contained conviction. “Better not be,” she said.

  

Even though we were traveling over water, which was a lot safer than land, I had to be sneaky. I left my car at the National Park Service sign as though I had indeed headed to Salomon Bay, but instead I hiked down to the public part of Honeymoon Beach and cut through the back way so that I popped out of the trees in a place where I could wade to the skiff, which I did, holding my bag above my head. Russ was waiting for me with a cooler and a picnic basket he’d asked the hotel to pack. I started the motor on the first try, and we were off.

It was an idyllic day. The water sparkled in the sun; the air had a rare scrubbed-clean feel, as though it had just received a benediction. It was as fine a performance by planet Earth as I had ever seen. Russ had on bathing trunks, a long-sleeved T-shirt, and a baseball cap that said IOWA CITY ROTARY CLUB, which made me chuckle because, really, what was I doing with this guy? And yet I liked him. Just as I thought I had him pegged as one kind of person—he had just ended his second term on the Iowa City school board; he was encouraging his mother, Milly, to move into a retirement community but she was having none of it—he would pull out a surprise. Like the way he stroked behind my knee in a spot so sweet and sensitive, I had a hard time concentrating.

We anchored off of Little Cinnamon because the cliff above was undeveloped so no one would be spying on us with binoculars for voyeuristic purposes. Russ unpacked the cooler—there was a nice bottle of Sancerre for me, the Chavignol, which I loved, and a couple of cold beers for Russ. There were slender baguette sandwiches with duck, arugula, and fig jam, and as I ate one, all I could think of was Remy the chef preparing them, having no idea that one was for me. There was also a container of truffled potato salad and a couple of lemon tarts, and I thought of how nice it was to be on the receiving end of Caneel’s hospitality for once.

We puttered along the north shore as far as Waterlemon Cay, where we stopped again because, although we hadn’t brought snorkeling gear, you could watch turtles pop their heads above the surface for air and Russ loved that. It was hot enough that we both decided to jump in for a swim and Russ held me in the water, his arms incredibly strong for a corn-syrup salesman or whatever he was. We kissed, and I thought, What are we doing here at Waterlemon Cay when we have a perfectly good hotel room?

I said, “Do you think you’ll take the job?”

“It’s hard to say no. The signing bonus is nearly as much as I make in a year right now.”

“If you take the job, will you spend more time down here?” Unfortunately, my voice betrayed what I was really asking: Would I ever see him again? I was afraid the answer would be no; I was afraid the answer would be yes. What we were doing was wrong. He was married with two sons in high school and he must have been trying not to imagine what they would think if they could see him at that moment. But…it was as if we were living in a sealed bubble. One weekend in February in the sixth year of the new millennium, this happened. I had a vague idea that affairs like this could actually improve a marriage. Russ would return to Iowa City with not only a big job offer but also a sense of power and virility, and Irene would see him in a new light. They would renew their vows, go on a second honeymoon.

And for me—well, things wouldn’t be awful for me either. I had faith in men again. The ghost of Oscar was permanently banished; every time I thought of him helpless and whimpering in Russ’s grip, I thought, How pathetic. I would venture forth with my self-esteem and self-worth restored. I would meet someone like Russ—kind, thoughtful, secure, adult—and that would blossom into the relationship that this could never be.

Our affair would be almost excusable if this all turned out to be the case. But even as I had these pretty and nice thoughts about us both going our own ways after this without any looking back, I felt my heart stirring up trouble. Maybe Russ was experiencing the same thing, because he looked genuinely crestfallen as he said, “You know, I’m really not sure. I know there will be travel with this job but I think it’ll be in dull places like Palm Beach and Midland, Texas. I think Todd just brought me down here to woo me.”

“Okay,” I said, trying to keep my tone light and unconcerned. “Let’s go back to the hotel, then, and properly enjoy the time we have left.”

We did just that, and it was wonderful—not only the sex, but also falling asleep in that luscious bed with our limbs intertwined.

When I woke up, he was staring at me just like the leading man in the movies looks at his leading lady—right before he betrays her or kills her or carries her off into the sunset.

“You’re exquisite,” he said. “And just now, watching you sleep, I felt so…privileged. Like I’ve been granted a private viewing of the Mona Lisa.”

“Everyone says the Mona Lisa is so beautiful,” I said. “But frankly, I don’t get it.”

This made Russ laugh and he reached over to the nightstand and plucked a pale pink hibiscus blossom out of a water glass. He tucked it behind my ear.

“You’re right,” he said. “You’re far prettier than the Mona Lisa.”

I swatted him to downplay how happy that made me—show me a woman who doesn’t like being compared to a masterpiece—then said, “I’m starving.”

It was dark outside. The bedside clock said twenty past nine. It was too late to get dinner anywhere on this sleepy island, besides which I was basically in hiding. So we ordered room service, lavishly, recklessly, like we were rock stars on the last leg of a world tour—one bacon cheeseburger, one lobster pizza, French fries, a Caesar salad, the key lime pie, a hot fudge sundae, and, of course, conch fritters, because now that was our “thing.” I would never see Russell Steele again but every time I put in an order of conch fritters, I would think of him. I told him this and he threw me down on the bed and said, “God, Rosie, how can I ever leave you? I’m…different now, in such a short time. I’m changed.” He was putting words to what I felt as well. I had tears in my eyes as I tried to control my crazy, runaway heart.

Don’t leave me, I nearly said—which would have been pathetic after a relationship of only twenty-four or forty-eight hours (depending on how you looked at it)—but I was saved from myself by a knock at the door.

It was room service with our food, which I knew would be delivered by Woodrow, so I had to go hide in the bathroom while Russ answered the door.

  

I stayed overnight Sunday; Todd Croft and the other guy, the company lawyer, Stephen, were due to pick Russ up at noon. I had been up since dawn worrying about how the goodbye would go and I even brazenly wandered out to the beach where I saw my donkeys, Stop, Drop, and Roll, eating grass at the edge of the beach. I decided to take their presence as a positive omen. This is my home, this is where I belong, and I need to find someone who calls St. John home as well. The reason that getting involved with a married man is wrong is that it hurts. I knew that if it continued one minute past noon today, it would be destructive. What did I want Russ to do? Go home and tell his wife that he was leaving her for some woman half his age with whom he’d had a fling in the Caribbean?

Hell no!

We lay in bed together until the last possible minute. Then Russ showered and dressed and I thought, What can I give him to remember me by? I wished I’d dived down at Waterlemon and picked up a shell or a piece of coral—some island token—but I hadn’t. And so I rummaged through the desk in the room and found a postcard with a picture of the Sugar Mill on the front, and I wrote, I’m going to miss you. I signed it with the initials M.L., for Mona Lisa. I wasn’t sure he would figure that out, but I enjoyed imagining him puzzling over it. I stuck the postcard in the side zip pocket of his bag and right as he was gathering up his things to go, I told him I’d left him a surprise in that pocket that he should look at before returning home. The last thing I wanted was for Irene to find it.

He held my face in his hands. Out the window I could see the yacht anchored and a crew member pulling the skiff around (it fit, somehow, underneath the boat or inside of it). Russ kissed me hard and deep. It was the kiss you give someone when you’re absolutely, positively never going to see her again.

“I don’t have anything to leave you with except for that,” he said. Then he turned and left the room and I was so addled, so undone, that I hung in the doorway and watched him trudge through the sand. He raised an arm to Todd Croft, who was standing on the deck of the boat.

Bluebeard was the yacht’s name. I hadn’t noticed that before.

I saw Todd Croft see me; his head tilted and his smile grew wider, and I disappeared into the shadows of the room, cursing myself. I was wearing my swim cover-up. If Todd asked, Russ could say we’d struck up a friendship and I’d come to say goodbye. It didn’t matter, I would likely never see Todd Croft again, but I regretted not leaving first. I should have headed for home an hour or two earlier, but that would have meant losing time with Russ, and I hadn’t wanted to do that. For my greed, then, I was punished. I became the one who was left behind.

As I drove home, I thought of how the weekend had been a Cinderella story, minus the part with the glass slipper. I was returned to my ordinary self, in my proverbial rags, facing my scullery work. The only part of that magical story I could claim was that I had enjoyed a night (in my case, two nights) of bliss. I had successfully charmed a prince, only the prince was a midwestern corn-syrup salesman. A married corn-syrup salesman.

Mama was at work when I got home, despite the holiday, and I was momentarily relieved. Now I’m locked in my room, writing this down, because supposedly “getting it out” is a kind of catharsis. I have an hour left to get ready before I have to go back to Caneel, where I will work and pretend that everything is just fine.

February 23, 2006

I’ve decided that Bluebeard is an appropriate name for the yacht that delivered Russ to me and then took him away.

He was a pirate.

He stole my heart.

March 30, 2006

Mama was the one who noticed that I looked peaked and that I wasn’t eating much. When had I ever said no to her blackened mahi tacos with pineapple-mango salsa? Never was the answer. But they just didn’t seem appealing. Nothing seemed appealing.

She said, “Do you want to come to the clinic at lunchtime tomorrow and I’ll slide you in?”

I couldn’t tell her that I was suffering from a broken heart, and there’s no cure for that except time, and for all the technological advances going on in the world, no one has figured out how to speed time up or slow it down—or stop it. Whoever figures out that trick is going to be rich. “Nah,” I said.

“No, but thanks for offering,” Mama prompted.

I retreated to my room. I needed to put less energy into pining for the pirate and more into saving money so I could get a place of my own.

Then, a couple of days ago, I woke up feeling dizzy and nauseated and I thought, Damn it, I really am sick. I had planned to go to Salomon Bay—the best thing for me to do was get back into a routine—but it looked like it would be the clinic instead.

I raced to the bathroom and puked into the toilet. I heard Mama knocking on my bedroom door, asking if I was all right, and then I heard Huck say, “LeeAnn, leave the poor girl alone, no one likes to be bothered when they’re praying to the porcelain god.”

And Mama said, “You’re right, handsome. I’ll leave her be. She’ll be okay as long as it’s not morning sickness.”

Morning sickness, I thought.

  

It was off to the Chelsea drugstore for a test, but I had to wait until my mother’s friend Fatima left for lunch because Rosie Small buying a pregnancy test would win Fatima a gold medal in the Gossip Olympics.

I hurried home, praying, praying, and then I peed on the stick.

I’m pregnant.

April 30, 2006

Today a package addressed to me was hand-delivered to the house. The package contained ten thousand dollars in cash.

I’m being bought off.

There wasn’t a note but I don’t have to be a wizard to know the money is from Todd Croft. But has Todd Croft told Russ that I’m pregnant?

Let me go back.

When I found out I was pregnant four weeks ago, all I could think was that I needed to tell Russ. I was pretty sure he would offer to help. And by help, a part of me was thinking he would leave his wife, move to St. John, and raise this baby with me. It was a long shot, I knew, but not impossible. Maybe instead of making Russ’s marriage stronger, the weekend affair (I’m shying away from the word fling) had been a breaking point. Maybe Russ would say yes to the job and goodbye to Irene and start a whole new life. The boys were teenagers; the older boy was headed to college in the fall and the younger one was only a year or two behind, so they were nearly out of the house. If anyone was poised for a second act, it was Russ.

Or so I let myself momentarily believe.

I called Iowa City information and asked for the phone number for Russell or Irene Steele.

“Irene Steele,” the operator said. “Hold for the number.”

I hung up the phone. The listing was under Irene’s name. She paid the bills. She was in charge of the household. She intimidated me—indeed, scared me—even from afar. I would never call the house, I decided. I wasn’t that desperate.

I had to somehow circumvent Irene. I needed an e-mail. I knew there was probably an e-mail attached to the room reservation at Caneel. I had worked at Caneel long enough to know that all reservations were kept in a database, but that database couldn’t be accessed on any of the restaurant computers.

So I would have to ask the restaurant manager, Estella, to get it for me.

I said to her, “Please don’t tell my mother”—Estella rolled her eyes as if to say, Rosie-child, no matter how you implore me, you know I could never keep a secret from LeeAnn—“but a gentleman who stayed here over Presidents’ Day weekend begged me for the conch-fritter recipe. He wants to give it to the chef at his country club so they can serve them at his wife’s surprise birthday party and I promised him I’d send him the recipes for the fritters and the aioli. He gave me his e-mail, but I lost it, Estella. And I feel terrible. I remember he said his wife’s birthday is May twenty-third because that’s a day after mine and so time is of the essence. Can you help me find the man’s e-mail, please, Estella? I want to provide the kind of service Caneel is famous for.”

Estella huffed for a minute. Didn’t I know that accessing the guests’ personal information was forbidden?

I said, “But he already gave it to me and I lost it! It’s his wife’s fortieth birthday!”

Estella hesitated, then she ushered me into the back office, and together, we looked. The name Russell Steele didn’t turn up in the system, which was perplexing. Had he used a fake name? Was he not only a pirate but an impostor?

Then I said, “Let’s check the name Todd Croft.” And it popped right up—room 718 for two nights, total bill $1,652. There was an e-mail, but it was Todd’s, and my heart sank, though I did think it was encouraging that it was a BVI e-mail address.

I copied it down and thanked Estella, who closed the file and hurried us out of the office, saying, “That was the easy part. Good luck convincing Chef to hand over his recipes.”

I wrote to Todd Croft, explained who I was, and said merely that I would like an e-mail address for Russ so that I could send him the conch-fritter and aioli recipes that he’d requested.

But I guess Mr. Croft saw right through my ploy because here I am, holding ten large.

I know I should feel insulted but all I feel is relieved. Because if Mama kicks me out, and she very well might, I’ll have money to get a place for me and the baby.

I’m telling her tomorrow.

May 1, 2006

I was so nervous that I got out of bed early after barely sleeping all night. I couldn’t wait another hour, another minute. Once I heard both Mama and Huck in the kitchen, I walked down the hall, comforted by the idea that in thirty seconds, the secret would be out. They could holler; they could scream, call me names, and cast me out, but all of that would pale against the relief of speaking the truth.

When Mama saw me, she was shocked. “Rosie? What are you doing awake? Is everything all right?”

In that second, everything was still all right. Mama was dressed for work in her raspberry scrubs and her white lab coat, her towering bun wrapped in a brightly patterned scarf. She’d had her nails done—she was vain about her nails, and they were the same shade of raspberry—and I noticed her fingers against the white porcelain of her coffee cup. Every morning, Huck makes her coffee, one poached egg, and a piece of lightly buttered wheat toast. Huck was standing at the stove tending to the egg. He was wearing cargo shorts with a lure hanging from the belt loop and a long-sleeved T-shirt advertising the Mississippi. He had a bandanna wrapped around his neck and was ready for a day of fishing. I didn’t dread Huck’s anger; what I dreaded was his disappointment in me. We’d had a rocky start to our relationship. When he started courting Mama seven years ago, I resented him. I thought, He sees a single woman and her wayward daughter and thinks they need to be saved—but we don’t need to be saved. But I quickly grew to love Huck and, yes, to count on him. I remember one time when he’d told me to help myself to twenty bucks from his wallet so I could go into town to meet my friends, I found a folded-up, faded picture of Huck with another woman. The picture was obviously old, from the seventies or eighties. In it, Huck was a young man. He had a full head of strawberry-blond hair and a mustache but no beard; he wore jeans with what looked like a white patent-leather belt and a Led Zeppelin T-shirt. The woman was in a crocheted chevron-print dress and had on white patent-leather boots. Her blond hair was feathered and she wore too much black eyeliner.

I took the picture to Huck and said, “Who’s this?” Huck had had a sister who had died of cancer and I thought maybe this was her; he rarely talked about her but I knew her name was Caroline.

“Her?” Huck said. I thought he might be angry that I’d snooped in his wallet for more than just the twenty, but he didn’t seem angry. “That’s my first wife, Kimberly.”

I was shocked by this. I didn’t know Huck had been married before. I felt affronted, maybe even betrayed—for Mama’s sake, but also my own. He and Mama had been married a year or two when I found this picture and the three of us had become a happy family. I didn’t like the idea of sharing Huck with anyone. “I didn’t realize you’d been married before.” I swallowed. “Does my mother know?”

“Yes, of course,” he said. He smiled sadly. “Sorry, Rosie, I should have told you. There just never seemed to be an appropriate time and it doesn’t matter anyway.”

“If it doesn’t matter, why do you keep the picture?” I asked. I handed it back to him, though really I wanted to tear it to shreds.

“Well,” Huck said. He thought about it for a minute. One thing I love most about Huck is that he’s a straight shooter. He doesn’t candy-coat the truth or brush it away because he doesn’t want me to see it. “Kimberly ended up being a disappointment to me. She was an alcoholic, a really, really mean drunk, and that destroyed our marriage. It destroyed just about all of her relationships, actually. But in this picture, we were happy, so I keep it as a reminder that my time with her wasn’t all bad.” He slipped the picture back into the wallet. “In even the bleakest situations, there’s usually some good to be salvaged.”

Facing Mama and Huck to tell them I was pregnant was a bleak situation. Would any good be salvaged from it?

“I’m pregnant,” I said.

Huck turned from the stove.

“What?” Mama said.

“I’m pregnant.”

She set down her coffee cup and stood up. Her face was unreadable. Shock, I suppose. Huck was watching her.

“Oscar?” she said.

“Not Oscar,” I said. “It was a man at the hotel, someone you don’t know. I was stupid. He’s gone now and I don’t know how to reach him.”

There was a moment of such profound silence that I felt like the world had stopped. She was probably deciding whether or not to believe me.

Then, finally, she opened her arms, and I entered them.