Irene

Before she leaves for St. John, Irene has some loose ends to take care of.

A death certificate issued by the Department of Vital Statistics of the British Virgin Islands arrives in the mail in an unmarked envelope. Is it authentic? It seems so, though Irene has no way of knowing for sure.

So, obviously, Paulette received her message. There’s no note, no invoice, no mention of a fee. Irene has assumed that Paulette is the one who pays to maintain the villa—taxes (do they have taxes in the Virgin Islands?), insurance, landscapers, repairs, et cetera—probably out of a fund that Russ or Todd Croft set up…with cash.

She takes the death certificate to Ed Sorley’s office and drops it off with the receptionist, then leaves before Ed appears with questions.

She withdraws eight thousand dollars from the account at Federal Republic, using the drive-through window. The cash and the postcards from M.L. go right into Irene’s suitcase.

  

At Lydia’s insistence, Irene puts an obituary in the Press-Citizen, and she phones her close friends and neighbors to invite them to the house for a memorial reception. She tells them that Russ was killed in a helicopter crash; lightning was the cause. He was down in the Virgin Islands for work. He’s been cremated and the ashes scattered. This is a small gathering so his friends can pay their respects.

“No food and no flowers,” Irene told them. “I’m taking some time away, leaving Monday. If you feel you must do something to honor his passing, you can donate to the Rotary Club scholarship fund. It always goes to some terrific kid who really needs it.”

Lydia arranges for the Linn Street Café to cater the reception and Irene is grateful. Under normal circumstances, she would insist on doing everything herself—but these aren’t normal circumstances. The people from the café will drop off sandwiches, quiche, salads, and urns of coffee. Irene chills wine and rolls her drinks trolley into the parlor. With so many people in the room, it will be too warm to light a fire and Irene will be so busy visiting that she won’t have time to tend it.

Irene is anxious about facing everyone. She doesn’t want to be the recipient of sympathy or to be asked any probing questions. She nearly succumbs to the temptation of taking an Ativan right before the reception begins. She has the prescription bottle in her hand, but the doorbell rings and Irene hurries downstairs.

It’s Lydia, attended by Brandon the barista, who looks far more distinguished out of his leather apron. He’s holding Lydia’s hand, and with his other hand he offers Irene a platter of cookies.

“Homemade,” he says. “Lemongrass sugar.”

Irene tries out a smile. Lydia looks radiant. She and Brandon are delirious with infatuation, and Irene is, of course, happy for her friend. Brandon and Lydia take charge of setting out the food and cups for coffee and filling buckets with ice, leaving Irene idle to steep in her dread and count the minutes until she boards the plane.

The doorbell rings again. Irene mentally pulls herself up by her bootstraps. Compared to what she’s been through already, this is nothing. This is easy.

And for a while, it’s not so bad. The Kinseys arrive, followed by the Dunns; Ed Sorley and his wife, Anita; Dot, the nurse from Brown Deer; and some of the neighbors. Nearly everyone from the magazine attends, including Irene’s boss, Joseph Feeney, Mavis Key, and the receptionist, Jayne, who brings her newly retired husband, Rooney. Rooney is something of a blunderbuss. He’s always the first to get drunk and obnoxious at the holiday party. He speaks without thinking, he’s a know-it-all; honestly, Irene can’t stand him. Thankfully, he leaves Jayne to gush out the condolences.

“I’m so sorry, Irene, none of us had any idea! But it was unusual for you to be out for an entire week without any notice. Of course, once we learned that Milly had passed, it all made sense…none of us knew that Russ…I mean, you’ve had such a double whammy!”

A little while later, Irene notices Rooney pouring himself a scotch at the drinks trolley. She needs to find Lydia and tell her to keep an eye on him. But she’s too busy. She has to spend time with everyone, nodding her head and lying by omission.

  

Why is it the people you’d like to leave the party first are always the last to go? The party has thinned out to just Irene, Lydia and Brandon, Dot, Ed and Anita Sorley, and Jayne and Rooney. Irene finally allows herself to eat something—a lemongrass sugar cookie—and Brandon, ever the barista, steeps her a tea that he thinks will complement the cookie. Irene nearly laughs at the absurdity of the notion. It’s a cookie, Brandon, she wants to say. Irene hasn’t tasted anything since Russ died—except the fish that Huck grilled. That had been delicious.

Her thoughts are interrupted by Rooney, who raises his voice above the others and says, “Russ worked for a hedge fund, right? You’re aware, I assume, that the Virgin Islands were recently added to a blacklist of tax havens by the EU? What kind of business was Russ involved in? Are you sure it was aboveboard?”

Brandon, possibly attempting to head Rooney away from the topic, makes things worse. “What does that mean, a blacklist of tax havens?” He looks around the room and shrugs. “I can explain the difference between a latte and an Americano, but tax havens confound me.”

“What does it mean?” Rooney asks in a way that makes it clear he isn’t sure what it means. He’s sitting in the velvet-upholstered bergère chair, holding court now. “It means they conduct business without obeying the tax code. We’re talking money-laundering, numbered accounts at banks in Switzerland and the Cayman Islands, shell companies, dark money, terrorists, drug dealers, human traffickers…”

Irene shoots a look at Ed Sorley. The Cayman Islands?

Jayne emits a nervous laugh. “Rooney, stop,” she says. “You knew Russ. He was…well, he was the nicest man in the world is what he was.”

“I second that,” Dot says.

“Sometimes it’s the nice guys who are the worst criminals,” Rooney says. “Because they’re the ones you’d least suspect of anything.”

Irene stands up. “I’m feeling a little worn out,” she says, and everyone takes the hint.

  

Monday afternoon, Irene’s ferry pulls in among the powerboats and catamarans moored in Cruz Bay, and Irene scans the crescent of white sand that’s home to a string of open-air restaurants backed by palm trees. She feels like she can breathe again. It’s bizarre that the place her husband conducted his wild and massive deception has become her refuge. Irene doesn’t want to overthink this and she doesn’t want to fight it. She’s now experiencing the emotions one should feel upon arriving on St. John: anticipation and joy.

Both of her boys are here, and her grandson. It feels like an embarrassment of riches, all of them choosing to be together this time, choosing to be in the paradise Russ unwittingly brought them to.

Cash had texted Irene the night before to let her know that today was his first day as a crew member aboard Treasure Island. He thought he’d be back in time to pick Irene up, but if not, he’d send Baker. However, when Irene steps off the ferry and grabs her luggage—two rolling suitcases that contain sundresses, sandals, plenty of bathing suits, and some old fishing shirts that she used to wear out on Clark Lake—she doesn’t see either Cash or Baker, and she’s annoyed. Have they forgotten her?

“Irene!”

Irene looks around. Huck is in the parking lot, standing in front of his truck. Irene can’t believe the feeling that overcomes her. She ducks her head so he can’t see her smiling.

Get a grip! she thinks. It’s just Huck. “Oh, hi,” she says. She grabs her luggage and starts rolling it over to his truck. “Are you here for me?”

“Baker took Floyd to the Gifft Hill School and Maia wanted to show them around,” Huck says. “So that left me free to pick you up.”

Things are really happening, then—Cash started a job, Floyd will go to school. Irene opens the passenger door to Huck’s truck.

“Wait a minute,” Huck says. He strides over and puts his hands on her shoulders and looks her in the eye. “It’s good to see you, Angler Cupcake. I’m glad you’re back.”

Irene feels herself reddening. “Stop it,” she says. “You’re embarrassing me.”

On the way to Russ’s villa, Irene thinks it best to fill Huck in on what’s been happening.

She says, “I’ve had a visit from the FBI.”

Huck says, “I’m afraid that might have been my fault. I had a call from an agent down here right after you left to let me know that they’d opened an investigation into the crash—”

“Yes,” Irene says. “The boys and I received calls as well—”

“And then I contacted Agent Vasco myself last week to let her know that…well, we found money in Rosie’s room.”

Irene gazes out the window, trying to focus on the views. The vista of the neighboring islands across the turquoise water is nothing short of spectacular. Less than a month ago, Irene made the same drive but she saw nothing, noticed nothing.

Money. “How much?”

“A lot.”

“How much, Huck?”

“A hundred and twenty-five grand.”

A hundred and twenty-five grand. A hot, nauseating panic rises in Irene’s chest. “In cash, you mean?”

“Yes, in cash. Bricks of it.”

“And they took it?”

“They took it,” Huck says. He lights a cigarette and blows the smoke out his window. “And I heard they paid a visit to Welcome to Paradise Real Estate.”

“Dear God,” Irene says. “Paulette?”

“She left the island. Her husband and her son too.”

“She left the island?” Irene says. “I called and left a message asking for a certified copy of the death certificate and she never returned my call, but then, voilà, a copy came in the mail.”

“Well, that’s good,” Huck says. “Right?”

“I thought Russ was still alive somewhere,” Irene says. “I had these dreams where he was so…vivid, so present, so whole. He was there, three-dimensionally, in my mind. And when I’d wake up, I’d think, He made it out of that helicopter and Croft plucked him out of the sea and whisked him away.” Irene is mortified when her voice breaks. “I thought he was just hiding somewhere. I thought I’d see him again.”

Huck takes Irene’s hand. Irene looks down to see their fingers intertwined, her hand slender and wrinkled and white, his large and wrinkled and brown.

“The FBI didn’t find anything in Iowa,” Irene says. “Did they find anything in your house, other than the money? Did they find anything in Rosie’s room?”

“Not that I know of,” Huck says. “I had Ayers go through Rosie’s things while Maia was at school. Ayers was the one who discovered the money.”

“But not anything else?” Irene says. “No clues? No…explanations?”

“No,” Huck says.

“And we can trust Ayers?” Irene asks. “We don’t think she knows more than she’s saying, do we?”

“I trust her,” Huck says. “She’s just as in the dark as you and me.”

“But she was Rosie’s best friend,” Irene says. “Her confidante. Surely…”

“Where the Invisible Man was concerned, Rosie was a brick wall,” Huck says. He signals to turn up Lovers Lane. “Sorry—I mean Russ.”

“It’s okay,” Irene says. “The nickname fits.”

When they get to the house, they see both Jeeps are gone; the boys must still be out. Huck brings Irene’s luggage up the stone steps to the deck.

“Will you stay for a beer?” Irene asks.

“I should go collect Maia,” he says.

“No, of course,” Irene says. She needs to shower and unpack. The news of the FBI, the cash, and Paulette leaving the island has Irene rattled. “Are you worried, Huck? Does it feel like the fire is getting a little close?”

“I’m concerned,” Huck says. “I want to remain informed and aware, but I’m not going to let this whole mess control me. This has nothing to do with us, AC. I have a clean conscience and I know you do as well.”

“I do,” Irene says.

“I’ll tell you if we ever have reason to worry,” he says. “Will you trust me on that?”

Irene nods. It’s remarkable how much better she feels knowing Huck’s on her side. If he’s not going to worry, she isn’t either.

“I’ll take a rain check on the beer,” Huck says. “I promise. And hey, we have an afternoon charter on Wednesday. Two couples from Wichita.”

“So you haven’t had second thoughts?” Irene says. “You still want me to be your first mate?”

“I need you to be my first mate,” Huck says.

“I’ll come on Wednesday and we’ll see how I do, okay? But I promise I won’t be offended if you want to hire some young guy.” She winks at him. “Or young woman.”

“Agent Vasco was quite attractive,” Huck says. “I nearly offered her the job.”

“Oh, was she,” Irene says. She sounds jealous to her own ears.

“Are you jealous?” Huck asks.

“Are you trying to make me jealous?” Irene says.

“I dunno. Maybe.”

“Well, maybe it worked,” Irene says. She’s afraid to look Huck in the eye so she busies herself by rolling her suitcases over to the slider. “Thank you for coming to get me. I’ll see you Wednesday.”

Huck smiles at her, shaking his head, and she thinks, What? What?

She shoos him away and he heads down the stairs. Only once he’s gone can Irene get a clear breath. She is so keyed up when he’s around, both agitated and happy.

Agent Vasco was attractive. Bah!

Before she goes into the house, Irene stands at the stone wall and inhales the sight of the sea and the verdant island mountains and the lush hillside below. It’s the prettiest place she’s ever seen, but what is she doing here? It’s truly insane, this decision to move down to work on a fishing boat. Has she lost her mind?

Well, yes, Irene thinks. She probably has. And good for her.

Ayers

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

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

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

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

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

“And what else?”

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

  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Well…” Baker said.

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

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

Which he was supposedly pulling Floyd out of.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I’m still with Mick,” Ayers said.

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

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

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

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

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

  

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

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

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

Adults are easier. Most of the time.

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

It’s Brigid.

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

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

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

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

“Permission granted,” James says from the wheelhouse.

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

She feels triumphant, but it lasts only an instant.

Brigid!

  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I’m Maxwell,” she says.

“That’s your first name?” Cash asks.

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

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

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

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

“No,” Maxwell says.

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

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

“You?” Ayers says.

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

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

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

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

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

  

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

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

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

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

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

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

Maybe now he’ll take Brigid.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ayers lifts her gaze from Donna to the cabin of the boat. The past two days, Cash has circulated around the boat and introduced himself to the guests, but there he is, behind the bar, making that chick Max another drink.

  

In the seven years that Ayers has been working on Treasure Island, she has seen a spectrum of eye-popping outfits, which she and Wade have put into three categories. Category one, the most popular, was the Siren. This included teensy bikinis and wet T-shirts. Category two was the Riviera Gigolo, a gentle way of describing men who wore, instead of trunks, European-cut briefs—nut-huggers, grape-smugglers, banana hammocks. Category three was the Vampire. These folks showed up in head-to-toe Lycra—usually black, for some reason—because they couldn’t risk exposure to the sun. (The Lycra suits were always accompanied by wide-brimmed floppy hats.) Ayers was all about SPF but in her opinion, if exposure to sunlight was that verboten, then a day trip on Treasure Island—hell, a vacation on a Caribbean island in general—probably wasn’t for you.

Once Max takes the paisley peasant blouse off and slides out of her jean shorts, Ayers sees that the green bikini consists of only three tiny triangles of iridescent material (possibly meant to reference fish scales) and some string. It’s a dental-floss thong, leaving the pale orbs of Max’s buttocks exposed. Ayers notices a tattoo on the right cheek—a pair of lips.

Kiss my ass, Ayers thinks. Got it. Max’s body is a living rebus.

Ayers is dismayed that Max chose to wear such a revealing suit on a family-oriented boat trip. What must the six boys think? At least half of them will be ogling her all day; it’s impossible not to ogle her.

Donna gives Ayers a sympathetic smile. “If you’ve got it, flaunt it.”

That’s a generous perspective, Ayers thinks. She will bet anyone the keys to her truck that Max is going to lose her bikini when she jumps off the boat to swim into the Baths.

Ayers puts on her headset and runs through the drill: Jump in, swim to shore, here are the life vests, and does anyone need a noodle?

Everyone does just fine—including six-year-old Dougie—and then Max climbs up to the edge of the bow and turns around in a panic. “Where’s Cash?” she says. “I want Cash to go with me.”

“He’s onshore already, Max,” Ayers says. “See him there?” Cash is standing on the small golden beach herding everyone toward the entrance of the Baths. He’s going to lead the tour today and Ayers is bringing up the rear. “Just jump in and swim right for him, okay?”

“Oh, okay,” Max says. She waves both arms overhead. “Cash! Cash!” She loses her footing and falls in. Ayers peers over the edge, checking to see whether Max can swim or if Ayers will have to save her.

To be safe, Ayers jumps in a few feet away. “You okay?”

Max is busy doing the doggie paddle, eyes squeezed shut, and because she is, actually, making forward progress, Ayers lets her be, swimming behind her just in case.

She can’t believe this chick isn’t a friend of Brigid.

“Looks like you have a barnacle on your boat,” Ayers says to Cash once they’re all back aboard Treasure Island. Max had trailed Cash through the Baths so closely that whenever he stopped, she bumped into him. At Cathedral, she jumped off the ledge into his arms and clung to him far longer than was necessary.

“Huh?” Cash says. “Oh, yeah. She’s harmless.” They both turn to see Max standing at the bar, waiting for Cash so he can make her another drink and she can show him her chest.

James anchors off the coast of Norman Island for snorkeling because there are already three boats parked over at the Indians. Cash helps everyone with equipment, and Ayers goes to see how the Dressler boys are faring.

“They’re all set,” Donna says. “But thank you.”

Ayers finds herself with a free minute and she’s in a spot that has reliable cell service. Should she check her phone? See if Mick responded?

No, she decides. If he knows what’s good for him, he’ll ditch Brigid and be waiting at the dock for Ayers, smoothie in hand.

Is that what she wants?

She checks her phone despite herself. There are two texts from Mick, but Cash has started sending people into the water. She has to go.

Ayers snorkels with the Dressler boys and encourages two of the middle ones to follow her over to a rocky outcrop of Norman where the spotted eagle rays like to hang out. She can hear the boys oohing and aahing through their snorkels, and as always, this makes her happy. Some things are more important than her romantic trials and tribulations. Things like wonder.

Ayers raises her head and sees everyone heading back to the boat. She lets the boys swim ahead and she brings up the rear, scanning the water for the fluorescent orange tape on the tips of their snorkels.

When she climbs up to the deck, she says, “Everyone accounted for?”

“Yes,” Cash says.

Ayers signals James, who starts the engine, and Cash goes to pull the anchor, which makes his muscles pop in a way that is undeniably attractive. Ayers can’t believe Max isn’t right beside him, taking pictures for her Instagram account: #coldhardcash.

When the anchor is up and they’re moving, Ayers says, “Where’s the barnacle?”

“Wait,” Cash says. “What?”

Panic in the form of absolute stillness seizes Ayers. “Stop the boat!” she yells.

  

Max is not dead and Max is not lost. Ayers repeats this like a mantra, though for the first thirty seconds after Ayers realizes Max isn’t on the boat (how can she not be on the boat? And why did Cash say everyone was present? Did he not do a head count?), these are Ayers’s prevailing thoughts, that Max is dead or Max is missing and will turn up dead.

James cuts the engines and Ayers races up to the top deck with the binoculars, trying not to exude any sign of the sheer terror she is feeling. But the rest of the guests realize something is wrong. Ayers overhears Cash say, “We’re missing someone, the woman in the green bikini.” Then everyone starts looking. They spread out around the port side and starboard side and the bow. Ayers’s main concern is that Max is under the boat, that they unwittingly ran over her when they lifted anchor and started toward Jost Van Dyke.

Max is not dead and Max is not lost, Ayers tells herself.

Cash appears next to her. “I’m so sorry, I thought—”

“There’s no time for sorry!” Ayers says. She mentally breaks the water into a grid and starts scanning it square foot by square foot. In seven years, she has never lost a swimmer. She has had to do only five rescues—five, in seven years. Today will be her sixth rescue, she tells herself. Today, she will rescue Max.

Someone calls out, “Over there!”

Ayers follows the pointing arm of Mr. Dressler. Yes, she sees a piece of fluorescent tape about two hundred yards away. Before Ayers knows what’s happening, someone dives off the lower deck of the boat and starts swimming toward the snorkeler. It’s the oldest Dressler kid, DJ, Ayers realizes. She strips off her shorts, and, although it’s forbidden, she dives off the top deck, hits the water with so much force that her nose and ears flood with water, and swims after him. A second later, she feels the concussion of someone else plunging in nearby and she envisions everyone on the boat trying to be a hero.

She raises her head in order to get her bearings. Cash goes thrashing past her. He’s moving so fast he nearly catches DJ. Ayers sees DJ and then Cash reach the snorkeler and Ayers hears shouts. She swims closer, and only then does she realize that the snorkeler isn’t a she. The snorkeler isn’t Max. It’s some guy from another boat who has also gone rogue.

“Go back to your boat!” Ayers yells to the other snorkeler. She casts about helplessly. Where is Max?

She hears the air horn and swivels her head to see Captain James on the top deck windmilling his arm to beckon her back.

What? Ayers thinks. We can’t just leave her here. Or…has Max turned up? DJ and Cash are already swimming back to the boat and Ayers puts her head down and powers forward with everything she’s got left, thinking, Please let her be okay, please let her be alive. If she’s injured, they can get her to Schneider Hospital on St. Thomas in half an hour.

When Ayers is only a few yards from the boat, James calls out, “She’s aboard.”

“She is?”

“She was in the head,” James says. “Why didn’t you guys check?”

In the head. Max was using the bathroom. Why didn’t Ayers check?

Sure enough, Max is sitting on the stairs to the upper deck (which isn’t allowed) drinking what’s left of a painkiller when Ayers hauls herself up the ladder.

Ayers can’t bring herself to say anything to the girl. What would she say? We thought we’d lost you. We thought you drowned. At which point, Max would say, I went to the bathroom. Sorry, I didn’t know I needed to report in. I wanted to change my swimsuit. Because, yup, Max is wearing a new bikini, white, which Ayers will (again) bet the key to her truck becomes completely see-through when wet.

Ayers climbs past Max without a word and goes into the wheelhouse to apologize to James.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I should have checked the head. I…” Ayers tries to explain what made her jump to the conclusion that Max was still in the water. All Cash had said was Wait. What? Ayers was the one who had panicked. “She’d been drinking. More than everyone else combined. I guess my mind supplied the worst-case scenario, that she went out snorkeling while drunk and she drowned.”

James gives her the eyebrows. He’s a man of few words, though he’s been blessed with wisdom beyond his years—he’s thirty-five; he went to high school with Rosie—and a dry sense of humor. “If I didn’t know you better, I’d say you were jealous.”

“Jealous of Max?” Ayers says. “Please give me some credit.”

“She’s been hanging on your boy,” James says. “And we both know it’s not like you to fly off like that.”

“First of all, he’s not my boy,” Ayers says. “Is that what you think?”

James starts the engine.

“I’d like permission to cut her off,” Ayers says. “She’s had enough to drink.”

“She didn’t do anything wrong,” James says. He leaves it unspoken that this whole event was Ayers’s fault. Ayers can only imagine what kind of dramatic retelling the fourteen adults will provide on TripAdvisor.

“I’m sorry,” Ayers says again. “I’m having a bad day.”

James nods. “You’re allowed,” he says. He laughs. “Tell you what, though—your boy sure can swim.”

Ayers puts on the headset. “Sorry about that, folks,” she says. She notices that the Dressler kids are all lined up at the railing seeing who can spit the farthest and there’s now a queue at the bar three-deep.

Right, she thinks. Crisis averted, people are getting bored, time to drink. “We’re on our way over to Jost Van Dyke, named for the man who discovered it in the early seventeenth century. It became a center of custom shipbuilding, but now, however, Jost is most famous for its world-class beach bars, including Foxy’s, One Love, and…the Soggy Dollar!”

Everyone claps. She’s forgiven.

  

There’s no happier place on earth than White Bay on a sunny day. The stunning crescent of powder-fine sand is lined with palm trees and funky, bare-bones beach bars. Treasure Island slips in among a flotilla of boats. There are people splashing in the shallows, tossing a football; there’s reggae music and the smell of jerk chicken and the low buzz of blenders making Bushwackers and piña coladas.

“Please get yourself some lunch,” Ayers says. “And try not to wander off. We’d like you back on the boat at two thirty sharp.”

Ayers counts the Dressler kids as they jump off the boat in succession. There’s a bit of a wade required, which the boys don’t seem to mind. To DJ, Ayers says, “Thank you for your help. You’re a fast swimmer.”

DJ shrugs and Donna Dressler puts a hand on Ayers’s shoulder and says, “That was some unexpected drama, huh?”

Ayers spies Max walking down the beach—with Cash, of course—toward the Soggy Dollar. “I don’t know if I should feel angry or relieved.”

“Sounds like being a parent,” Donna says. “You’re not sure whether to ground them or hug them.”

Grounding sounds good, Ayers thinks.

Lunch isn’t a bad idea, and Ayers is a big fan of the Soggy Dollar lobster roll, so she walks down the beach and into the bar. Her favorite bartender, Leon, is pouring something pink and fruity out of the blender and into two cups, which he delivers to Max and Cash, who are sitting together at the end of the bar.

Cash says, “I’m on the clock,” and passes his drink to Max.

“Awwww,” she says. “Thanks.” She leans her head on Cash’s shoulder and closes her eyes.

Did Ayers give Cash “the talk” about not fraternizing with the guests? She knows she didn’t. It never occurred to her that it would be a problem. Cash had been so earnest, so eager to please—please her, Ayers—that she hadn’t realized that many if not all of the available women (and maybe even those who weren’t necessarily available) would find Cash sexy and attractive and throw themselves at him as inelegantly as moths beating themselves against a screen.

Cash nudges Max’s head off his shoulder and orders a Coke and a blackened mahi sandwich with coleslaw. He says, “So what do you do for work?”

“I sell drugs,” Max says. She waits a beat, then honks out a laugh. “Not what you’re thinking! I’m a pharmaceutical rep.”

“Did you grow up in the Midwest?” Cash asks.

“Peoria,” she says, diving nose-first into her pink drink.

“I’m from Iowa City!” Cash says.

Ayers isn’t eavesdropping; she’s just waiting to get Leon’s attention. It’s like she’s invisible today. She debates interrupting the happy couple to remind Max to eat something, but she’s not the girl’s mother and she’s afraid of sounding like a schoolmarm or a scold.

Max says something under her breath and Cash laughs. Is Ayers jealous? Maybe she is. She had thought Cash was in love with her. She thought Cash had taken the job on Treasure Island because he wanted to work with her. And yet he hasn’t looked over at her even once. He’s completely entranced with Max!

Ayers can’t believe she’s having these thoughts. She doesn’t like Cash in that way—does she? She didn’t think so, but right now, there’s no denying she’s jealous.

No, Ayers thinks. She enjoys being the object of Cash’s affection. It’s flattering, a boost to her ego. What’s really going on is that she’s upset about Mick and Brigid and confused about her feelings for Baker. Baker, who is maybe staying on St. John but also maybe not staying. Ayers would bet the keys to her truck and her apartment that Baker will go back to Houston for the school fund-raiser and never return. He’ll find relocating too complicated. He’ll spend two weeks on St. John and become bored; without a job to do, it’s just sun, sand, and water. There are no museums or movie theaters, there are no professional sports teams or shopping malls. There isn’t even any golf.

He won’t stay. The schools won’t be good enough for Floyd. Baker won’t be able to find a fulfilling job; St. John isn’t Wall Street. There will be some solid reason why he has to go back to the States. St. John is paradise when you visit, but when you live here, it becomes very real very quickly.

Ayers can’t risk getting involved with Baker.

“Ayers,” Cash says suddenly, yanking her out of her mental quicksand. “Would you like to join us?”

Ayers assesses her options. Cash’s sandwich has now arrived and he offers some to Max, who slowly, slowly, shakes her head. She’s slipping down her stool, melting like a candle.

Leon finally gives Ayers a wave. “I see you, darling. Just gonna be a minute.”

“That’s okay, Leon,” Ayers says. “I’m not staying.” She steps back out onto the sand. She’ll head down to One Love, she decides, and get some jerk pork.

At a quarter after two, Ayers is feeling a little better. She has eaten and taken a ten-minute chair nap, and now she combs the beach for her guests, urging everyone to head back to the boat. If they get out of here at two thirty, there will be less of a line at customs.

Ayers has never so badly wanted a charter to end.

Coming toward her down the beach are Cash and Max. Max is stumbling and bent over; she’s so drunk she can barely walk. Cash has to take her by the hand once they’re wading back to the boat. If she fell over, she would drown in only two feet of water. Ayers wants to say something to Cash, something like Why did you let her get so drunk? She wants to point to Max and say to James, We should have cut her off after snorkeling! But instead, Ayers helps Cash get Max up the three-step ladder and onto the boat. Max heads toward starboard and Ayers thinks maybe she’s going to the bar for another drink, but she bypasses the cabin, pushes little Dougie Dressler out of the way, and starts puking over the side of the boat.

Ayers bows her head. It would be very unprofessional to let the others see her smirking.

Cash

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

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

“But—”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nope. No chance.

“Cash!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Yes!” Maia says.

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

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

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

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

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

  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I heard you,” Cash says.

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

“Um…okay?” Cash says.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Max rolls onto her side and continues to snore.

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

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

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

“So your parents…”

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

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

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

“You do?” Cash says.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cash laughs. “Did I?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Are we?” Tilda says.

“I don’t know, aren’t we?”

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

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

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

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

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

“Just do me one favor,” Tilda says.

“Okay?” Cash says.

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

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

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

“Baker might,” Cash says. “But I—”

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

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

“High school,” Tilda says.

“Max?” Cash asks.

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

They walk hand in hand over to La Tapa.

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

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

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

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

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

Maybe he shouldn’t examine it too closely.

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

“Hey, Skip,” Cash says.

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

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

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

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

Nervously, the couple laughs.

Tilda says, “Don’t do this, Skip.”

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

“He’s a maniac,” Tilda whispers.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Huck

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

Monday: 3 adults, 1 child; last name Ford; Calabasas, CA. 2 hardnose, 1 blue runner, 2 blackfin (1 keeper)

Tuesday: 2 adults; last name Poleman; Winchester, MA; 2 mahi (2 keepers)

Wednesday: 2 adults, 3 children; last name Toney; Excelsior, MN; 2 barracuda, 3 wahoo (3 keepers)

Thursday: 2 adults, 4 children; last name Petrushki; Chapel Hill, NC; 4 wahoo (4 keepers), 2 barracuda; 1 mahi (keeper)

Friday: 4 adults; last name Chang; Whitefish Bay, WI; 3 barracuda, 3 mahi (3 keepers), 1 wahoo (keeper)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I love Jane Austen,” Irene said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Irene,” Huck said.

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

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

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

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

  

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

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

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

“Really?” she says.

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

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

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

“I’m going to sleep in,” she says. “Go for a swim or two. Read. Spend time with the boys. And check in with my attorney at home.”

“You…haven’t heard any news, have you?” Huck asks.

“No.” She pauses. “Huck, I have to say it. I’m haunted by all that money in Rosie’s dresser.”

“That makes two of us.” Huck is uncomfortable talking about the Russ-and-Rosie mess at all, and he’s glad they’ve avoided it all week.

“Cash said there were FBI agents watching the house when he got here, but I guess they’ve decided we’re harmless because they haven’t been back.”

“I told you, AC, nothing to worry about,” Huck says. “Hey, listen, Maia is with Ayers tonight. Do you want to go to dinner? Say, Morgan’s Mango?”

Irene sighs. “I’m just not ready to go out,” she says. “It’s too soon.”

“I get it,” Huck says. “I have some of that wahoo from yesterday and I hid those cookies. Why don’t you come to my place and I’ll cook for you?”

“I should probably go on home,” Irene says. “But thank you.”

He nearly offers to grab some barbecue from Candi’s—enough for everyone—but then he thinks, She’s telling you no, Sam Powers. And can he blame her? She’s just spent five days straight trapped with him out at sea on a twenty-six-foot boat. Is it any wonder she wants to get away and have some time to herself?

This is what Huck should want as well. After all, the last person he’d wanted to spend his free time with during the past three years was Adam. When he bumped into Adam at Joe’s Rum Hut or the Beach Bar—which happened plenty of times—they would wave and not say a word to each other.

But what Huck wants now…is to see more of Irene. In fact, he feels bereft at the idea of an entire weekend without her. Maia is with Ayers tonight, which means Huck will be home alone. He can, in theory, crack open a cold beer and try to finish his damn book. Or he could wander over to the Rum Hut, then to the Beach Bar, then go up to the Banana Deck—he hasn’t been up to the Banana Deck since the new year. Well, yeah, he thinks. Because Rosie died. Maybe Irene is right; maybe it is too soon to go out to dinner and have a nice time. Maybe they should just stay home and reflect, confer with their attorneys, and wonder what the hell happened.

Then Huck remembers that Maia and her little friend who goes to Antilles, Shane, are planning to see the baobab tree with Cash.

“I heard Maia is planning a hike with Cash,” Huck says.

“That’s nice,” Irene says. “They’re forging a relationship.”

It is nice, Huck agrees. He notices that Irene doesn’t suggest they forge a relationship outside of work, off this boat, and what can Huck conclude but that Irene isn’t interested in him? Somehow, he never considered this. Somehow, he’d let himself believe that her interest in him matched his interest in her.

Was it strange as all get-out that Irene’s husband and Huck’s stepdaughter had been in a secret relationship and had a love child? Hell yes.

Too strange, maybe. Huck should just forget about it. He should be grateful that he and Irene are friends and now coworkers and that they don’t hate each other and aren’t in litigation over God knows what—money or the villa or Maia.

Huck watches Irene as she strolls off the dock carrying her reusable shopping bag filled with snacks.

He scratches his face. Maybe he should shave his beard. Or read some Jane Austen.

  

The next morning the phone rings, and Huck assumes it’ll be Maia asking to stay with Ayers a little longer. If that’s the case he might see if Irene wants to take a drive out to the East End. He’ll offer to bring Floyd and Baker along if they’re looking for something to do.

He’s making a nuisance of himself; he’s aware of this, but he can’t help it.

It’s not Maia calling, or Ayers. It’s Rupert.

“Huck.”

“Rupert.”

“You been drinking yet today?” Rupert asks.

“No,” Huck says. “Not yet.” His eyes graze his trusty bottle of Flor de Caña up on the shelf. Is he going to need it? Or is Rupert about to invite him to meet for lunch at Miss Lucy’s—an invitation Huck just might take him up on?

“You remember talking the other day about Paulette Vickers?”

“Yes,” Huck says warily. The Flor de Caña, then. He brings the bottle down to the counter.

“She and her husband were arrested over on St. Croix. You know how Doug Vickers has a sister there? FBI, two, three cars, pull into Wilma Vickers’s driveway in Frederiksted and Paulette and Doug get led away in handcuffs.”

“This reliable?” Huck asks.

“Sadie went to school with Wilma,” Rupert says. “Wilma called Sadie herself. She has the little boy. Parents went to jail.”

“Did they say why?” Huck asks. “What were they charged with?”

“Conspiracy to commit fraud, Wilma said. Real estate fraud. Financial fraud.” Rupert pauses. “The guy they were in business with, and the Invisible Man, too, were doing laundry.”

“Laundry?” Huck says.

“They were cleaning money,” Rupert says. “Head honcho had a yacht, Bluebeard, and Wilma told Sadie that she knows for certain that boat used to pull into Cruz Bay with a hold full of cash. From guerrilla groups in Nicaragua, Wilma said. And the Marxists in Cuba and Argentinean soccer stars trying to avoid taxes and God knows who else. And Paulette and Douglas Vickers were helping them.”

  

When Huck hangs up with Rupert, he calls Agent Vasco but is shuttled immediately to her voicemail. It’s Saturday, so maybe she’s off duty—but who is he kidding; she’s probably waist-deep in the Vickers morass.

Huck has known the Vickerses for twenty years—not well, he’s never been invited to their home, never done any direct business with them, but he knows them. Croft must have made them an offer they couldn’t refuse; they must have thought they would never get caught. Huck understands what it’s like to live here as a local person and see the big boats roll in and watch the enormous villas go up and wonder, Why them and not me? Maybe Paulette let herself get into a compromising spot with her family’s business; God knows, real estate is risky everywhere. Huck could call some of LeeAnn’s friends—Dearie and Helen come to mind—and ask what they’ve heard. But it’s possible that what they heard came from Sadie via Wilma as well, and it’s possible that Dearie and Helen haven’t heard a thing but will start jabbering as soon as they realize it’s a topic of interest. The Vickerses got mixed up with Russell Steele and his boss, Todd Croft, and they were helping to launder the money.

Huck’s next instinct is to call Irene. He’s been looking for a reason and now he has one. Paulette and Doug Vickers arrested on St. Croix. That much he could share. The rest of it—the laundering and Bluebeard—that all sounds suspiciously like gossip. Still, Huck feels the seed of fear that has been in his gut since Rosie died start to grow. Russ was involved in illegal and dangerous business dealings. Guerrillas in Nicaragua?

What Huck wants to know is if he or Maia—or Irene—will somehow be implicated in a crime.

We didn’t know anything, Huck thinks. Surely the FBI realizes this. Huck has done nothing wrong, Maia has done nothing wrong, and Irene has done nothing wrong. They’re innocent—but does that mean they’re safe?

Getting Paulette and Doug Vickers can’t possibly be the FBI’s endgame, Huck thinks. They want to find Todd Croft. And Paulette will sing—of this, Huck is certain. She has her child to think about.

From this perspective, maybe Irene would be intrigued by the news, possibly even happy to hear it. They’re tracking down answers. What were Croft and Russell Steele doing? Where was all that money coming from?

No, it will not make Irene happy, Huck decides. It will make her agitated, especially since all they can do until they get official word from Agent Vasco is speculate. And so Huck decides not to tell Irene until he’s had a conversation with Agent Vasco.

Huck sets the Flor de Caña back up on the shelf. He heads out onto the deck to have a cigarette. He imagines Irene lying on the beach in Little Cinnamon, thinking about little Elton Petrushki or about how cold it is back in Iowa City or about what she’s going to make for dinner. But she will not be thinking about Paulette Vickers sitting in an interrogation room and giving the FBI who knows what kind of information about her husband. Huck’s silence is a gift. Irene is sure to find out at some point; hell, maybe she’ll find out tomorrow. But at least she has today in peace. At least she has right now.

Baker

Baker is so excited after their meeting and tour at the Gifft Hill School that he texts Anna from the parking lot.

Found a school for F. They ran assessments, he can start kindergarten now. V. advanced, they said. Happy to have him and he loved it.

“Bye!” Maia calls out. She’s staying at the school to hang out with friends and then someone’s mother is taking them to town.

“Thank you, Maia!” Baker says.

“Thank you, Maia!” Floyd says, waving like a maniac. Then he turns to Baker. “Daddy, how do we know Maia?”

“Oh,” Baker says. Floyd is probably confused because Maia introduced Floyd to the head teacher, Miss Phaedra, as her “sort of nephew,” a phrase that elicited an expression of surprise and suspicion from Miss Phaedra. Apparently, the phrase didn’t get past Floyd either. Baker was glad Maia threw the sort of in there because it could be explained any number of ways; they wouldn’t have to tell Miss Phaedra that Floyd is, in fact, Maia’s actual nephew, the son of Maia’s brother Baker.

Sometimes Baker wishes Floyd weren’t so “advanced.”

“She’s our friend,” Baker says. Not a lie.

“I like her,” Floyd says. “I like the Gifft Hill School. Why are there two Fs?”

“No idea, buddy,” Baker says. He checks that Floyd’s seat belt is fastened, then heads for home.

  

He doesn’t hear back from Anna until two days later, Wednesday.

K, the text says.

K? Baker thinks. He hadn’t expected a fight, necessarily, or even a debate, but he had anticipated something more than just K. They’re talking about Floyd’s education! Baker was armed with the school brochure and the notes he’d taken in the margins, and he has the website for backup as well as his own impressions, which he’d spent the past two days organizing into a sales pitch. The school is nurturing (but not indulgent), inclusive, tolerant, and forward-thinking. (Anna will love all of this.) The sky is the limit for Floyd! The classes are small and they have an island-as-classroom initiative that gets the kids outside studying nature and history and Caribbean culture.

But…Anna doesn’t care. Anna is relocating to Cleveland, learning the ropes at a new hospital, meeting her colleagues, reviewing protocols, buying furniture, and maybe even getting excited for Louisa to become pregnant.

Baker tries not to feel like he and Floyd have been brushed off, forgotten.

He doesn’t bother telling Anna that he also got good news during the visit to the Gifft Hill School—he’d received a job offer. The upper school, Miss Phaedra said, desperately needed someone to coach basketball and baseball as well as do some administrative work for the athletic department. She mentioned this because Baker was so tall and “fit-seeming” (the “seeming” being key) and she wondered if maybe he had any background in either sport and might want a chance to get involved in the community, seeing as how he was new to the island. It was like she’d read his mind. Baker said that he did indeed have some background in both sports; he’d played basketball and baseball in high school and in college at Northwestern on the intramural level.

“Which means, essentially, that I haven’t used my skills in almost ten years. I’ve been waiting for Floyd to be old enough so I could coach his teams.”

“The job does come with a stipend, and the hours would be after school during the respective seasons,” Miss Phaedra says. “I’d love to be able to pass your name on to the head of school, and she can talk with you more about it.”

It’s exactly what Baker is looking for, and yet he doesn’t commit right away because he still has to go back to Houston for the auction this coming weekend. There’s a quiet but persistent voice in Baker’s head telling him that it’s crazy—and, worse, irresponsible—to move to the Caribbean with Floyd.

He came down here for one reason only and that’s Ayers. But Ayers is with Mick. And Ayers was clear that she wouldn’t even entertain the possibility of a relationship with Baker until he had a job or an opportunity here on St. John.

The whole thing is risky. Baker can leave Houston, take the job at Gifft Hill, and move here, but Ayers might still stay with Mick.

The evening that Anna responds with K, Irene comes home from work with some fresh wahoo steaks from her charter. She grills them for Baker and Floyd, and because Cash is out somewhere, it’s just the three of them eating dinner on the deck. It’s nice. Irene is in a good mood; her frame of mind seems better now that she’s working on Huck’s fishing boat, though she’s not her old self by any means. Baker tells her that Floyd liked the school but he doesn’t say anything about the job offer yet. He reminds his mother that he and Floyd are headed back to Houston on Friday for the auction.

“Right,” Irene says, though it’s clear she’s forgotten about it. “But you’re coming back, yes?”

“Yes?” Baker says. “I think so. I mean, yes.” He wants to sound definitive but the truth is, he’s not sure. He’s packing everything they brought down, just in case.

“When?” Irene says. “When will you be back?”

“I don’t have return tickets yet,” Baker says. “Though I can get them, of course, at a moment’s notice. I have to figure some stuff out when I get to Houston. What to do about the house, my car, that kind of thing.”

“Of course,” Irene says. “No one expects you to drop everything and move down here. Though that’s what I did.” She laughs—at her own crazy spontaneity, maybe. “And that’s what your brother did.”

“Where is Cash tonight?” Baker asks. He suddenly gets a bad feeling. Cash didn’t come back after Treasure Island. Did he go somewhere with Ayers? Out to dinner? This is what Baker has privately feared about Cash and Ayers working together, that they would become chummy, that Cash would, somehow, manage to charm her.

“He had an incident on the boat today, I guess,” Irene says. “Passenger got drunk and Cash was called on to help get the girl home. Turned out the girl had a friend that Cash knew. From that restaurant you both like so much?”

“La Tapa?” Baker says.

“That must be it,” Irene says. “And I think he went out with the friend. Something like that.”

Baker pushes his chair away from the table. “Was it Ayers, Mom? Is he out with Ayers?”

“It wasn’t Ayers,” Irene says. She throws Baker an exasperated look. “You boys, honestly. No, it was some other name. British, unusual…”

“Tilda?” Baker says.

“Yes!” Irene says. “He went out with Tilda.”

“Who’s Tilda?” Floyd asks.

“A friend of your uncle’s,” Irene says.

Baker can’t describe his relief. He tousles Floyd’s hair. “You want some ice cream, buddy? They had red velvet cake at the Starfish Market.”

  

Baker puts Floyd to bed, then decides to turn in himself, mostly because there’s nothing else to do. Cash is still out and Baker has no other friends. If he were at home in Houston right now, he would smoke some weed and crash out in front of the TV—he needs to catch up on Game of Thrones—but he can’t watch that with Irene around.

His phone rings. This, he thinks, will be Anna, just getting home from work at nine o’clock at night. He steels himself. It would be just like Anna to have glanced at his text distractedly and responded with K, but then, after running the whole thing past Louisa, suddenly have a list of objections.

Baker should have texted Louisa.

But his display says Ayers.

“Ayers?” he says.

“Hey.” Her voice sounds funny—sad, trembling, like she’s been crying. “Are you busy?”

“Not at all,” he says. “I just put Floyd to bed so I can talk. What’s up?”

There’s a pause. “Can you get out? Is Cash there? Or your mom? To watch Floyd?”

“Uh…yeah. Cash is out but my mom is here.” Baker stands up and checks himself in the mirror. He hasn’t shaved—or showered, for that matter, unless swimming in the pool counts as a shower—since the day he went to Gifft Hill, Monday. He does have a nice tan now, but he looks like a Caribbean hobo. “Do you want to meet somewhere?”

“Can you just come here, to my place?” Ayers asks. “There’s something I want to talk to you about.”

“Your place?”

“Fish Bay,” Ayers says. “It’ll take you fifteen minutes if you leave right now.”

“Right now?” Baker says. And before he can explain that he needs to shower and change, she’s giving him directions.

  

Unlike the rest of the island, Fish Bay is flat. And really dark. Ayers said she lived past the second little bridge on the left, but Baker would have missed her house if he hadn’t caught a flash of green, her truck, out of the corner of his eye.

She’s standing in the doorway, backlit, hugging herself. He doesn’t need to feel bad about not showering, he sees. She’s still wearing her Treasure Island uniform and her hair is wild and curly.

“Hey,” he says. “You okay?”

She moves so that he can step past her, inside.

Her place is small, cute, bohemian. There’s a tiny kitchen with thick ceramic dishes on open shelves. There’s a papasan chair, a bunch of houseplants, a glass bowl filled with sand dollars, and a gallery wall of photographs from places all over the world—the Taj Mahal, the Great Pyramids, the Matterhorn. Ayers is in every picture; in many, she’s a kid.

“Have you been to all these places?” Baker asks.

“Story for another day,” she says. “Come sit.”

Baker picks a spot next to Ayers on a worn leather sofa draped with a tapestry. There’s a coffee table with three pillar candles sitting in a dish of pebbles, and lying across the pebbles is a joint.

Are they going to smoke?

“Would you like a glass of water?” Ayers asks.

“Maybe in a minute,” Baker says. “Why don’t you tell me what’s going on.”

Ayers folds her legs underneath her. How is it possible that even when she looks awful, she’s beautiful?

“This morning—” She laughs. “Which now feels like three days ago.” She picks up the joint and lifts a barbecue lighter off the side table, then seems to think better of it and sets both down. “It’s been a very long day.”

“Some days are like that,” Baker says. “Start at the beginning.”

“Last night Mick told me he had to go to St. Thomas to get restaurant supplies today,” Ayers says. “Whatever, I found it a little strange, but I didn’t question it. Too much.” She throws her hands up. “Anyway, then this morning, I saw him on the ferry with Brigid.”

Baker makes a face like he’s surprised. But he’s not surprised. He knew Mick would screw it up. He actually wishes Cash were here to listen to this. Baker leans in. “You’re kidding.”

“Not kidding. I saw them sitting together and I was…pissed. Livid. Suspicious.”

“I bet.”

“So I sent him a text telling him never to call me again.”

Baker spreads his palms against the cool, cracked leather of the sofa. This is real? He didn’t fall asleep in bed next to Floyd? Ayers is telling him exactly what he’s been waiting to hear, only much sooner than he had hoped. Her timing couldn’t be better.

“Then Cash and I had this weird, awful thing happen at work.”

“Yeah, I heard, sort of.”

“This girl got really drunk, and I thought she’d tanked while snorkeling. We stopped the boat, I dove off, your brother dove off, this other kid who’s probably going to be in the Olympics dove off, it was a total circus, and in the end the chick was in the head changing out of one inappropriate suit into a second, even more inappropriate suit, and this was all before we even got to Jost. The girl continued to drink and then puked off the side the whole way home.” Ayers sighs. “And I left your brother to handle it because guess who was waiting for me at the dock.”

“Mick,” Baker says, and he suspects that maybe this story isn’t going to have the ending he wants it to.

“Mick,” Ayers says. “He just left here a little while ago. Right before I called you. We broke up.”

“You broke up?” Baker says. He’s afraid to go back to feeling optimistic. “What did he say? Why was he with Brigid?”

“He said they bumped into each other. Unplanned. A coincidence. She was headed over to St. Thomas to get a tattoo of the petroglyphs.”

“Okay?” Baker says.

“I just got a tattoo of the petroglyphs a few weeks ago,” Ayers says. She holds out her ankle so Baker can see the tattoo; it’s a curlicue symbol in dark green. “We’re hardly the only two people in the universe with a petroglyph tattoo. Rosie had one. But still, I was chafed.”

“Understandably,” Baker says.

“Mick says they only talked for a couple of minutes, then Mick took Gordon, that’s our dog, his dog, up to stand at the bow and he didn’t see Brigid again.”

“Do you believe him?”

“I don’t want to believe him,” Ayers says. “But I do.”

“You do?”

“I do.”

“So…why did you break up?”

“Two reasons,” Ayers says. “Both are secrets that I’m keeping from him. One is this…project that I’m working on. I can’t tell him about it, and I can’t tell you about it yet either. Maybe in the future, once I’m finished, but not right now.”

“Secret project,” Baker says. “I won’t ask.”

“Please don’t,” Ayers says. She seems to shrink under her Treasure Island T-shirt and when she gazes at him, her eyes appear robbed of their pigment. They are very, very pale blue. “The second reason is…that I have feelings for you.”

“For me?”

“For you,” Ayers says. “I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you.”

“You haven’t?” Baker says.

She shakes her head and presses her lips together like she’s embarrassed.

“So, wait,” Baker says. Is this really happening? Him and Ayers? Does she want him to kiss her? Does she want him to—finally—make proper love to her? Baker can’t find the words to ask, he’s too overwhelmed, but it turns out it doesn’t matter.

Ayers stands up, takes his hand, and leads him to her bed.

  

He wakes up in the middle of the night; 4:20 a.m., his phone says. Ayers is naked in bed next to him. He’s in love. He’s beyond in love.

But he has to get out of there. He can’t have Floyd waking up and finding his dad gone.

Baker eases out of bed and uses the bathroom. He sees a clothbound book balanced on the edge of the sink. Ayers’s journal? Baker is, of course, tempted to open it and read Ayers’s innermost thoughts, presumably about how she’s stuck with crappy cheater Mick but can’t get Baker Steele out of her mind. However, back when Baker was in college, he read his girlfriend Trinity’s diary and all hell broke loose. That was why they’d split. Trinity had called it a “devastating breach of personal trust.”

If you learn one thing from me, Baker Steele, she’d said, I hope it’s never to read a woman’s private thoughts without her express permission.

No matter how tempting, she’d added. And, oh yes, it will be tempting.

It is tempting—the journal with the red floral cover, demure and innocent with the look of a colonial-era recipe book.

But Baker leaves it be.

In the end, Trinity taught him a lot. He must remember to hit her up on Facebook and thank her.

Back in the bedroom, he runs a finger down the length of Ayers’s spine and she shivers awake and opens one eye. “You leaving?”

“I have to,” he whispers. “Floyd.”

“Okay,” she says.

Baker clears his throat. “And, uh, you remember that I’m leaving tomorrow for Houston? I have that thing on Saturday? But I’m coming right back. So you don’t have to worry.”

“What day?” Ayers asks. “What day are you coming back?”

Baker does a quick calculation. The benefit auction is Saturday night. Sunday he’s on cleanup duty. He needs at least two additional days to get the move organized, maybe three; honestly, he could use a week, but now that this has happened, all he can think about is how to get back here as quickly as possible. But then again, he has a life to dismantle—Floyd’s medical records need to be transferred (to where?); Baker needs to forward his mail (to where?) and figure out what to do about his income taxes. There’s stuff. “Wednesday,” he says. “Thursday.”

“Wednesday or Thursday?” she asks.

“Thursday,” he says. “Week from today.”

“I’m working at La Tapa Thursday night,” she says. “Come by after work. We can celebrate your move.”

He kisses her temple. “You got it,” he says. He puts his clothes on and runs both hands through his hair. “Oh, by the way, the chick who got drunk on your boat was a friend of Tilda’s.”

Ayers rolls over and squints at him. “Really?”

“Yeah, that’s what my mother told me Cash said. I guess Cash and Tilda went out last night.”

“They did?” Ayers says, sitting up.

“Yeah,” Baker says. “I think so.” He wonders if hearing this bothers Ayers for some reason.

She smiles. “They’re perfect for each other.” She falls back into her pillows. “When you get back, we can double-date.”

“Great,” Baker says sardonically—although, actually, it sounds like fun.

  

The theme for the Children’s Cottage benefit auction is Monopoly. This was Debbie’s idea. She was in charge of dreaming up something to top Oh, the Places You’ll Go!, which was last year’s theme. Although Baker was skeptical about the appeal of Monopoly—it evoked nothing so much as the rainy afternoons of childhood, trapped in a never-ending game of being sent to jail, paying other people rent, and eventually going bankrupt due to real estate failures—the execution is brilliantly done. Baker has dressed up as Rich Uncle Pennybags, in a vest with a pocket watch, and people are chattering with anticipation as they leave the school parking lot. (FREE PARKING signs abound, which is cute, even though parking is always free at the Children’s Cottage.)

The event is being held in the school gymnasium (built back in 2000 by one of the owners of the Houston Rockets), but the board of directors, naturally, have created a path that takes attendees through the school so that they can see where their donations will be going. Baker, with Ellen at his side, walks through the reading nook filled with picture books, the numbers room with boxes of manipulatives, the science room where kids study birds’ nests and leaves and different kinds of rocks, the social studies room, festooned with flags of the world, and last, and most popular, the water-table room. They then pass through the courtyard with the outdoor playground into the gym, which has been transformed into a Monopoly board for the evening.

At the front table, everyone picks up a plastic top hat and mustache on a stick (each stick has a number printed on the back; it doubles as an auction paddle) and proceeds to one of the tables, all of which are named for Monopoly properties and sheathed in tablecloths of the corresponding colors. Baker and his school wives are, naturally, at Boardwalk, with a tablecloth of Columbia blue. The centerpiece is a flour-sack money bag filled with pebbles and holding a bouquet of gold dahlias. The photo booth is decorated to look like the Jail square, so once Baker’s friends choose seats, he suggests they get their pictures taken, then go find glasses of the event’s signature cocktail, the Chance Card, which is a lurid orange. They’re being served by Vicki Styles, who likes to expose her cleavage whenever she can.

“That was a good choice,” Becky says. “The Chance Cards are being served by the Community Chest.”

Baker loves his school wives. How will he ever leave them?

The event swims along. People drink, eat hors d’oeuvres, bid on silent-auction items. Baker really wants to get Floyd tickets to the first Texans game, but then he remembers that he’s not going to be around for it. Wendy wants them all to chip in on a house in Galveston in May—but Baker won’t be here for that either. He needs to tell his friends about his plans, and soon; the only person who knows is Ellen.

Standing in the strobe-lit school gym surrounded by people he has known for years—and even psycho Mandy in her little black dress with her satin Justin Verlander team jacket on top seems endearing tonight—Baker has a hard time believing that he was in Ayers’s apartment only two days earlier. He has switched worlds. Which one of them is real?

He could easily make the argument that this world is real. This is Houston, a real place; the Children’s Cottage is a real school. Baker is a part of this community. He is known. He’s Floyd’s dad. No one misses Anna, though they all know that she’s a big deal, if not a particularly hands-on mother. Baker’s friends are real friends, there when he needs them. He’s giving up a lot by leaving—his house, his autonomy. There’s a way in which moving to St. John feels like regressing. He’ll be back living with his mom and brother.

All of this is on one side of the scale—and Ayers is on the other.

Dinner is served. It’s boardwalk food, which sounds iffy but ends up being delicious: jumbo hot dogs with a variety of toppings, skinny truffle fries, and Mexican street corn. Then the live auction starts and Baker zones out, thinking he’ll tell Debbie, Becky, and Wendy his plans after the auction but before the dancing. They’ll be upset initially but then one of them will request “We Are Family” from the DJ and they’ll all cluster together to dance and all the married parents will be jealous. Nothing new there.

Baker perks up only when the auctioneer announces a superspecial item, added at the last minute by an anonymous donor. It’s one week in a villa on St. John with 180-degree views over the Caribbean Sea. Nine bedrooms, dual-level pool, private beach and shuffleboard court, outdoor kitchen, and the use of two 2018 Jeeps. July or August dates only.

Ellen nudges Baker’s leg under the table. “This is you?”

He gives the slightest of nods.

The bidding is robust. It starts at five thousand and skyrockets from there—ten, fifteen, twenty thousand dollars. July or August is the perfect time of year to escape the beastly heat of Houston, and when Baker ran the idea past Irene and Cash, they’d agreed that July or August would be an ideal time to take a break from St. John and fly to Door County (Irene) and Breckenridge (Cash).

Twenty-five thousand dollars. Thirty thousand.

“Jeez, Baker,” Ellen murmurs.

“It’s Nanette’s husband bidding,” Wendy says. “Oil.”

“Against Beanie O’Connor’s grandmother,” Becky says. “Oil.”

Thirty-five thousand. Forty thousand.

“That’s going to buy a lot of manipulatives,” Debbie whispers.

Forty-five thousand.

Fifty thousand. Going once, going twice…sold, for fifty thousand dollars.

“Are you going back?” Ellen asks. “For good?”

Baker sighs. He hasn’t even told Ellen about his night with Ayers. He hasn’t told anyone. “I am,” he says.

“Good for you,” Ellen says.

The auction is over, the DJ gets warmed up with “Celebrate,” and all of Baker’s friends go to the ladies’ room, leaving him sitting at the table alone.

First order of business on getting back to St. John: Find some male friends. Other than Cash.

When the ladies reappear, they envelop Baker in a group hug. Wendy is crying. Baker gives Ellen a quizzical look and she shrugs as if to say, Sorry, not sorry. The thing that Baker has long suspected happens in ladies’ rooms has happened. The truth has come out.

“I’m going to miss you guys,” Baker says.

  

Turns out that when Nanette’s husband, Tony, lost out to Beanie O’Connor’s grandmother in the auction, it lit a fuse. Nanette and Tony have a raging, alcohol-fueled fight in Free Parking (though, thankfully, no one ends up dead like in that book all Baker’s friends read three or four years ago), and Nanette announces that she wants a divorce.

“The auction was just an excuse,” Debbie says when she comes over the next day to help Baker get organized. “She’s been sleeping with Ian for years.” Ian is Wendy’s ex-husband.

Yes, true, everyone knows this.

Nanette sends Baker a text less than an hour later: I hear you have a place for rent?

He texts back, Just so happens, I do.

  

On Sunday, Debbie helps Baker clean out his fridge and cabinets. Becky helps him figure out his tax returns. Wendy comes over with her daughters, Evelyn and Ondine, and they play with Floyd while Baker packs Floyd’s suitcase.

Ellen stops by with a goodbye present, a Rawlings alloy baseball bat for his new coaching duties.

“You won’t hit the ball if you don’t swing,” she says.

Baker books tickets for Wednesday. Debbie drives a minivan; she’s going to take Baker and Floyd to the airport after she drops Eleanor and Gale at school.

Monday after school, Baker and Floyd sit in the kitchen eating pizza because Baker doesn’t want to dirty any dishes. It’s ironic that they’re eating pizza, Anna’s favorite meal, when Anna is so far away.

Baker decides to reach out to Anna. He snaps a selfie of himself and Floyd and the sausage and pepperoni pie from Brother’s and texts it to her with the words Miss you, Mom!

She’ll probably respond to the text sometime next week, Baker thinks.

A few minutes later, Baker’s phone beeps and he checks it, expecting Anna’s response to be Okay or Sounds good or maybe even Miss you 2.

The text isn’t from Anna, however. It’s from Cash. Baker reads it, then drops his phone.

Rosie

July 31, 2006

I should have known that telling Mama and Huck had gone too easily.

Mama read my diary and found out about Russell and found out about Irene—and one night after work, I walked in the door expecting to find her asleep or, possibly, waiting up with a plate of chicken, beans, and rice—she was concerned that I wasn’t eating enough for two—but instead she was in the doorway, my diary in her hand, her eyes popping.

“A married man?” she said. “Have you no shame, Rosie?”

I grabbed the diary from her. “Have you no shame?” I asked. I went into my room and slammed the door behind me, my heart cowering in my chest because I had left it exposed and my mother had found it.

I’m going to set the diary on fire, I thought. And if the whole house goes up in smoke, so be it.

There was a light knock on the door and I figured it was Huck, there to try and fix what my mother had broken. But when I opened the door, it was Mama herself. I tried to slam the door in her face but she pushed back—for a second, our eyes locked, and it was a test of strength. I was younger but pregnant; Mama was Mama. Then she put a finger to her lips and I relented.

She entered, closed the door quietly behind her, sat on my bed, and patted the spot next to her.

I shook my head, lips closed in anger.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I had to be sure.”

What she meant was that she had to be sure the baby wasn’t Oscar’s.

I wasn’t naive. I knew there was talk across the island. Who is the father of Rosie Small’s baby? The odds were on Oscar. It was possible that Oscar had even claimed it was his, though we hadn’t been together since he’d been out of jail.

“My word isn’t good enough?” I said.

“It’s not,” Mama said. I gave her a look, which she brushed off. “You’re young, you’re afraid, you might have said anything to keep a roof over your head.”

“I don’t need this roof,” I said. “I have money saved.”

“Oh, that’s right,” she said. “The ten thousand dollars. Where is it?”

She knew about the ten thousand dollars, of course. She knew everything now: Vie’s Beach, the sex, the room service, the wife and sons in Iowa, the name of the boat—Bluebeard.

“I kept a thousand in cash,” I said. “The other nine I deposited a little at a time along with my paychecks.”

She nodded like she approved. “Good.”

“I haven’t contacted him,” I said. “I have no intention of ever seeing him again, Mama. Like I said, it was a mistake.”

“Your voice is saying it was a mistake but your face is telling a different story.”

I almost broke then. I almost said that it wasn’t a mistake, that I didn’t regret being with Russ, that there had been something between us and that something was real. But my mother was Catholic; she believed in the sanctity of marriage. A married white man having a baby with an island girl was no good. I could tell, however, by her mere presence in my bedroom that it was far, far better than me being pregnant by Oscar.

“What does Huck think?” I asked. I wondered if he might be more sympathetic to my situation. He had been married, then divorced. He, maybe, understood that relationships didn’t always fit into neat boxes—though it would be very unusual for him to battle Mama.

“Huck doesn’t know.”

“You didn’t tell him?” I said. It was even more unusual for my mother to keep a secret from Huck.

“I told him the man was white. A pirate.”

Pirate had been the word I used in my diary.

“That’s the story from here on out,” Mama said. “Pirate came in on his yacht, you had relations, then he left, never to be seen again.” She clasped my hand. “Do you understand me, Rosie? Never to be seen again. You see this man again, I phone the wife. Irene Steele from Iowa City. I called Information. I have the number.”

Hearing Irene’s name come out of my mother’s mouth gave me chills. I knew she was serious. I could never see Russ again, even if he did someday return.

August 22, 2006

It was as though we’d conjured him. Three weeks after my mother confronted me, I was at work—still cocktail waitressing, even though my belly was enormous and my ankles swollen—when Estella tapped me on the shoulder and said, “There’s a man at the bar who wants an order of the conch fritters.”

“Isn’t Purcell on the bar?” I asked.

“He is, child, but this gentleman asked for you.”

I was punching in an order and I had a table with food up and a table still waiting to order drinks and Tessie was taking a leisurely cigarette break as always and I was about to snap. The restaurant was closing September first for two and a half months—hurricane season—so I only had to make it through another week. I gathered my wits, delivered one table their meals, took the drink order, ran quickly to the ladies’ room, and then, feeling relieved and refreshed, I lumbered over to the bar to see which gentleman at the bar wanted the conch fritters.

Honestly, I didn’t even think.

Russ was sitting at the corner seat.

I was torn between running straight into his arms and running for the parking lot.

His eyes became round as plates when he saw my belly. He knew, Todd Croft must have told him, but maybe he didn’t believe it or maybe he was overwhelmed to see evidence of his child with his own eyes.

“Mona Lisa,” he said.

“Stop,” I said.

“Mine?” he said.

“Don’t insult me,” I said. I turned and gazed out at the water in front of Caneel, but I didn’t see the yacht.

“Bluebeard is on Necker Island today,” he said. “I came over in a helicopter. We have…a client…with a helicopter.” He seemed proud to be telling me this, like I would care about a helicopter, of all things.

“Must be nice,” I said. My voice was stony, nearly icy, but my insides were molten. He came back. He was here. As discreetly as I could, I checked his left hand—ring still in place. At least today he was dressed appropriately. He wore stone-white shorts and a navy gingham shirt, crisp and expensive-looking, turned back at the cuffs. A new watch, a Breitling. He had a tan, a fresh haircut; he had lost twenty pounds. He looked great; there was very little trace of the sweet, bumbling man I had known. I was even more drawn to this sleeker, more confident version.

“What time are you off?” he asked. He nodded down the beach. “I got our room.”

Our room, 718. I had avoided going anywhere near the hotel rooms since he left.

“I can’t,” I said.

“Why not?”

Why not. I thought about telling him that my mother had read my diary and was threatening to call Irene, but I didn’t want him to know how much control my mother had over me. I thought he’d be angry that I’d written about our relationship and been stupid enough to leave the diary in a place where Mama could find it. I thought he’d think poorly of my mother for blackmailing me—and I couldn’t bear that. Mama was looking out for me.

“You’re married,” I said. “To Irene. You have children already. I’m not going to disrespect that. You can’t ask me to. It’s not fair.”

“Rosie…” he said.

“It happened,” I said. “But it can’t continue.”

He nodded at my midsection. “Except it is continuing. You’re having my baby.”

I nearly surrendered to him right then and there. My baby. Here he was, willing to claim the child so that I wasn’t alone in all of this. And in the months since he’d left I had felt very, very alone. Mama and Huck would help me. I would live with them and bank the money that Todd Croft had given me to get me through the first year.

“I have to get back to work,” I said. I left Russ and put in an order for conch fritters.

  

He stayed until service ended. His mere presence at the bar—he was watching the Braves-Phillies game—made my pulse quicken and my breathing get shallow and I feared this reaction would affect the baby so I tried to stop and rest, drink plenty of ice water, and get to the ladies’ room often to splash my face.

Finally, I was finished. It was time for me to leave. I walked over to him.

“I’m going home,” I said. “It was nice to see you again.”

“Please, Rosie,” he said. “Just come to the room.”

I wanted to, if only for the air-conditioning and because I knew he would order me whatever I wanted from room service. But then it occurred to me that Russ might have been after sex and sex alone; maybe he saw me as a girl in a port, an island wife. I was nobody’s island wife.

“No,” I said. “I’m sorry. You’re married.”

He nodded. “That I am.”

It pained me to hear him say it, but it also gave me resolve.

“Please don’t come back here,” I said. “Unless you get divorced and you have bona fide legal documents to prove it. It’s difficult for me to see you.” I spread my hands across my stomach. “I had feelings for you.”

“Had?”

“Had, have, it doesn’t matter because you don’t live here and you aren’t mine.”

“I’d like to support the baby,” he said.

“I received money already,” I said. I wasn’t sure if this would come as news to him or not.

He said, “Todd showed me your e-mail last week. He told me he sent you money back in May. He told me he came down to Carnival in July and that he checked in on you and that his hunch was correct: you were pregnant. The instant he told me, I made plans to come down here. I’m here only to see you, Rosie.”

Todd Croft had come during St. John’s Carnival and had spied on me? I didn’t like that one bit.

Russ had found out only last week?

“I have everything I need,” I said. “But thank you.”

“You don’t have to forgive me but you do have to let me support that child,” Russ said.

“I don’t, though,” I said, and I walked out of the restaurant, past the Sugar Mill, and into the parking lot, where I climbed in my car and cried.

The following week, a package arrived containing five thousand dollars in cash. An identical package came the week after that. And the week after that.

October 29, 2006

Today at 5:09 a.m., Maia Rosalie Small entered the world weighing six pounds and fourteen ounces and measuring twenty inches long. She is the most beautiful creature I have ever laid eyes on.

The nurse brought me a form to fill out so she could make the birth certificate. On the line where it asked for the father’s name, I wrote Unknown.

November 1, 2006

Maia is three days old. Today, I sent an e-mail to Todd Croft at Ascension letting him know that I’d had a baby girl and that her name was Maia Small.

September 4, 2012

Today is Maia’s first day at the Gifft Hill School. She marched into the classroom, head held high, shoulders back, with barely a wave to me and Mama and Huck, all of us standing in the doorway, watching her go.

Huck had a charter and Mama was due at the health center and I thought, What am I going to do now? Then I realized this was the perfect time to start journaling again. Because if you don’t write down what happens in a day, you forget—and that day becomes a blur and that blur becomes your life.

If I had to describe what has happened in the past six years, what would I say?

I quit my job cocktail waitressing at Caneel and got a job waiting tables at La Tapa, but only four nights a week because of Maia.

I have a best friend named Ayers Wilson, who’s another waitress at La Tapa. She’s like a sister to me and an auntie to Maia. She dates Mick, the manager at the Beach Bar, so we stop by there after our shift and sometimes there are cute guys and a live band and sometimes I dance and a date comes out of it—but there has been no one special because the first thing I say is that I have a daughter but the father isn’t in the picture and the second thing I say is that I was born and raised on the island and will never leave.

This scares everyone away. Everyone.

On the first day of each month, cash arrives in a package and I put it in the bank for Maia. It’s how I can pay for Gifft Hill. I won’t say I’m not grateful, but receiving the packages also fills me with anger, shame…and longing.

Unbelievably, after all this time, I still think about Russ. I wonder how he’s doing. I can only assume he’s still married to Irene, trying in earnest to make the marriage work.

I hope he’s happy—because if he’s not happy, then what’s the point of staying with her?

February 9, 2013

Journaling is like exercise; it’s hard to keep it up. You have to make yourself do it, and ultimately, I don’t see the point of Went to work, played Tooth Fairy, went to bed.

Tooth Fairy because Maia lost her first tooth, bottom front left. It popped out when she bit down on a piece of breakfast toast, then it skittered across the floor and Huck found it.

I sometimes wish I had an e-mail or a cell phone number for Russ. I would tell him: Your daughter lost her first tooth. What would he do with that news? I wonder. He has no one to share it with.

February 13, 2014

Two things happened today, almost at the same time. One, I was on Salomon Beach, finally reading Eat, Pray, Love, the book that Ayers holds above all others. (She has been to Italy, India, and Bali, so it resonates with her.) Anyway, I was in the midst of the India section when I looked up and saw that yacht, Bluebeard, sailing past Salomon toward Caneel.

No, I thought. But then I remembered that it was this time eight years ago that I met Russ.

I stood up. I was wearing a white bikini, just like I had been when I met Russ at Hansen Bay. I wondered if Russ was on the boat and, if so, whether he could see me. I was tempted to drive to Caneel to check if Bluebeard had anchored out front, but while I was in my car, debating, my phone rang and it was Huck.

It was midafternoon. This was very unusual.

“It’s your mother,” he said. “She’s sick and I’m taking her over to Schneider.”

“What do you mean?” I said. My mother didn’t get sick. My mother was a nurse practitioner who, after years of treating everything from head colds to herpes, had developed a force field around her. Nothing got through.

“She’s being admitted,” he said. “It’s her heart. It’s failing. You and Maia should plan to come over and see her after school lets out. I’ll handle today, get her settled, talk to the doctors, see if it’s better for us to go to Puerto Rico or the States.”

I could have told Huck then and there that Mama would never agree to be treated in the States, but I didn’t want to start a health-care debate.

Her heart failing? It seemed impossible. My mother had the strongest constitution of anyone I knew, and that didn’t even take into account her iron will.

For years I would have said it was impossible for my mother’s heart to fail—because she didn’t have a heart.

March 3, 2014

My mother, LeeAnn Small Powers, died at home with Huck and me by her side. We’d let Maia have her first sleepover, an overnight with her little friend Joanie. We explained the situation to Joanie’s parents and they were very kind.

We’ll tell Maia in the morning.

March 10, 2014

My mother is dead and, now, buried in the Catholic cemetery. We had a service, led by Father Abrams, my mother’s favorite, followed by an enormous reception on Oppenheimer Beach. The community center was open, everyone brought a dish to share, the men got the grill going, my mother’s friends sang some gospel hymns followed by some Bob Marley. There were children running in and out of the water and down the beach. It was as much a celebration of life as it was a memorial.

When the sun set, the rum came out and a steel band set up, and once I made sure Maia was safe, under the watchful eyes of her aunties, I found Huck and he poured some Flor de Caña and we did a shot together.

“We’re going to make it,” he said.

“Are we?” I said. I knew it was the right time for me to find a home of my own. I had plenty of money in the bank to rent a nice place, maybe even buy, but I knew that if I moved out, my heart would break and so would Huck’s. My mother was gone. We needed to stick together.

I found Ayers and Mick sitting on the beach together and I joined them and Mick’s dog, Gordon. We were such good friends that we didn’t have to speak; we could just be.

Mick whistled, snapping me out of my daydream. “Would you look at that,” he said. “Bluebeard.”

I made a sound, words trying to escape that I caught at the last second. Bluebeard? I stood up and, sure enough, there was the yacht, cruising across the horizon in front of us. Headed away from Tortola, it looked like, and toward…well, toward Caneel. Where else?

I stayed on Oppenheimer until the very end, helping to clean up until every trace of the celebration was swept away. Ayers and Mick offered to take Huck and Maia home. I wanted to stay there and hang out by myself for a while. They hugged me. They said they understood.

They did not understand. Ayers was my confidante but I hadn’t even told her the truth. I feared she would tell Mick, and Mick would tell someone who worked at the Beach Bar, and the next day, the whole island would know. Ayers thought Maia’s father, someone I called the Pirate, had come in on a yacht one weekend and then left, never to return.

Ayers hadn’t given a second thought to a yacht called Bluebeard.

By the time I got to Caneel, it was very late. I still knew people who worked there—Estella, Woodrow, and Chauncey, the night desk manager. I knew that Chauncey had grown complacent at his job. Absolutely nothing happened at Caneel between the hours of midnight and five a.m. Chauncey slept in the back on a cot.

I parked in the lot and sneaked across the property in the shadows, going past the Sugar Mill, the swimming pool, and tennis courts, across the expanse of manicured grass, to a string of palm trees that lined the beach.

Bluebeard was anchored offshore.

Honeymoon 718. I stood in front of the room trying to summon my courage. If I knocked and it wasn’t Russ’s room, whoever was in there might call security—and what would they think, seeing me there? They’d escort me off the property or they’d call the police or…Huck. Maybe someone would know me and realize I’d just lost my mother. They would chalk it up to grief.

The worst outcome would be if Russ did answer the door and he had a woman in there.

Irene.

Someone other than Irene.

I knew it was naive, but for some reason, I didn’t think Russ would take Irene or another woman to our room.

I stepped up and knocked.

Nothing. No rustle, no voices, no footsteps.

I knocked again, louder—and then I turned to look at the boat. Bluebeard. I could swim out to the boat, climb up the ladder at the back, ask for Todd Croft. I laughed. I was losing my mind.

The door to 718 opened.

It was Russ standing before me, blinking, befuddled.

“Rosie?” he said.

“Hi.”

“You’re real? I’m not dreaming?”

“My mother died,” I said. “Today was her service.”

“Oh, Rosie,” he said. “I’m so, so sorry.” His voice was thick with sleep.

I peeked behind him. The room was dark, the bed empty. “Can I come in?”

“Yes,” Russ said. His eyes filled and I could see my own emotions reflected back at me. For eight years I’d told myself that staying away was for the best, that denying what we’d shared was for the best, that sacrificing this man was for the best.

I had lived with agony, with sadness, with longing.

I had been such a fool.

I stepped inside.