IRENE

She wrote down everything Marilyn Monroe told her. There was a helicopter crash. Russ and a local woman and the pilot left from a private helipad at seven o’clock in the morning on Tuesday, January first. There had been a thunderstorm; the helicopter was struck and it went down somewhere between Virgin Gorda and Anegada. Anegada had been the apparent destination, Marilyn said. The helicopter wreckage had been recovered, as well as the three bodies.

“Mr. Steele’s property manager traveled to the British Virgin Islands to identify the body,” Marilyn said. “And Mr. Croft has arranged for cremation.”

“Wait,” Irene said. “What?” She knew that Russ wanted to be cremated, it’s what they both want, but does this mean…? “Am I not going to see him again, then, before…?”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Steele,” Marilyn said. “You’re going to have to trust Mr. Croft’s judgment on this. The body needed to be identified as soon as possible, so Mr. Croft requested that Mr. Steele’s property manager do it. Time was of the essence, and a decision had to be made.”

“I don’t understand!” Irene said. “Shouldn’t I have been the one to make the decision? I’m his wife. Who is this so-called property manager? What does that even mean? I don’t understand!”

“I know this is coming as a shock,” Marilyn said. “Beyond a shock. Again, you’ll just have to trust that Mr. Croft took the appropriate measures.”

Trust Todd Croft? He was a man Irene had met briefly only once, a man who had controlled their lives for thirteen years. And it wasn’t even Todd himself telling Irene that Russ had died in a helicopter crash between Virgin Gorda and someplace else, a place Irene had never heard of, but, rather, his secretary, Marilyn Monroe. It was like a joke, a prank, a bad dream. Irene had gone so far as to pinch the soft skin on the underside of her wrist, hard, to make sure she was awake and cogent; that Ryan, their handsome server, hadn’t slipped something into the Cakebread chardonnay earlier.

Marilyn was telling Irene that some “property manager” had ID’d the body and that Todd Croft had given the okay to cremate it. Time was of the essence and Irene would never see her husband again. “Why was Russ in the Virgin Islands?” Irene asked. “He never once mentioned the Virgin Islands. Was he there for work?”

“He had concerns there,” Marilyn said. “He owned a home there.”

“A home?” Irene said. “My husband did not own a home in the Virgin Islands. I would obviously know if he owned a home. I’m his wife.”

“I’m very sorry,” Marilyn said. She paused. “Mr. Steele owns a villa on St. John.”

“A villa?”

“Yes,” Marilyn said. “If you have a pen and paper, I can give you the specifics…”

“Pen and paper?” Irene said. “I’m flying down there.”

“That’s not advisable…,” Marilyn said.

“You can’t stop me,” Irene said. “Russ was my husband. I’ve lost my husband.” Does this secretary, Marilyn Monroe, understand? Irene briefly, fancifully, thinks about the husbands of the real Marilyn Monroe. Arthur Miller. Joe DiMaggio. Someone else. “I’m going down there to see about this so-called home. Because, frankly, this all sounds suspicious. Are you sure we’re talking about Russell Steele, of Iowa City, Iowa? Originally from…” Where was Russ born? She can’t remember. “Are you sure?”

“Mrs. Steele,” Marilyn said. Her tone of voice made it sound like Irene was being unreasonable. “There’s a woman who will meet you at the ferry if you insist on making the trip. Her name is Paulette Vickers. Her number is 340-555-6121. She’ll take you to Mr. Steele’s villa.”

Irene’s head was spinning. She had drunk too much of the Cakebread chardonnay. Dinner at the Pullman with Lydia, Brandon the barista at Prairie Lights—all of that now seemed to belong to a different life.

“I’m very sorry, Irene,” Marilyn Monroe said, more gently now, and then she hung up.

Cash arrives at noon the next day. Irene wakes up sprawled across the purple velvet fainting couch in her clothes, Winnie licking her face. She languishes in the warm, wet love of her son’s dog before she comes to full consciousness. Slowly she opens her eyes and sees Cash’s expression, and she remembers.

Russ is dead. Helicopter crash. West Indian woman, a local, dead, and the pilot also dead. Villa. On a scrap of paper on the coffee table is the phone number of someone named Paulette. Also on the paper is Irene’s flight information.

Cash has always been a free spirit, but he does a remarkably good job of taking charge. First, he sits next to Irene on the fainting couch and holds both her hands in his. He’s expecting her to cry. She keeps expecting herself to cry, to gush like a dam breaking—her husband of thirty-five years is dead!—but nothing comes. She doesn’t believe it. It makes no sense. There’s been a mistake. Russ is in the Virgin Islands and went on a helicopter ride to an island no one has ever heard of with a local woman? And what did Marilyn Monroe say about a villa? What is a villa, exactly? Irene pictures a vacation home, a tropical vacation home. Marilyn had called it Mr. Steele’s home. Which makes no sense. Russ’s home is here, on Church Street. He and Irene talked about buying someplace up in Door County once Milly passed so that they could have the boys and their families come visit. Irene had pictured waterskiing, trout fishing, big family dinners around a harvest table, lighting sparklers out on the porch while they listened to the loons. She envisioned a silvered, aging version of her and Russ, side by side in rocking chairs. But that image implodes like a star.

“Milly,” Irene says. They need to tell Milly.

“Not yet,” Cash says. “First we’re going to worry about you.” He looks at the paper on the coffee table. “These are your flights? You booked these?”

Irene nods. She booked the flight last night, although it now seems like a dream. Making plane reservations to St. Thomas has no basis in Irene’s reality. (She had discovered that she couldn’t fly to St. John, because St. John has no airport. Private helipads, yes, but no commercial airport. She has to take a ferry from St. Thomas.) And yet she had done it. She flies Chicago to Atlanta, and then Atlanta to St. Thomas, on Delta. She has booked herself coming back a week later, and that seems surreal. Who would Irene be after a week in St. John, collecting her husband’s remains? Because she certainly can’t do it and stay the same person she is now.

“I booked them,” she says. “I have to be in Chicago tomorrow by nine.”

“I’ll drive,” Cash says. “I’m going to book myself on the flight as well. Myself and Winnie. And I’ll tell Baker to meet us in Atlanta.”

“With Floyd?” Irene asks.

“No, Floyd has school. He’s staying home with Anna. It’ll be just you, me, and Baker. And Winnie.”

Irene nods. There are so many things to think about, but none come to mind. “This woman, Paulette, is supposed to pick us up. Would you call her and let her know we’re coming?”

“I will,” Cash says. “I’m going to bring you ice water and aspirin. I’m going to make coffee. Can you handle toast?”

“I cannot handle toast,” Irene says. She takes a deep breath and looks around the impeccably furnished amethyst parlor. How many hours did she slave over this room, this house? For the past six years, she has been married to this house. Russ came second; he used to joke about it. When she was in a good mood, she told him she was feathering their love nest. When she was in a bad mood, she told him he was never home anyway, so what did it matter if she was preoccupied?

Only now does she realize how little attention she actually paid him—the particulars of his work, where he was and what he did. When she talked to him on Monday afternoon, what had he said? He had a dinner meeting with clients. He wasn’t sure if he would be able to stay up until midnight. He loved her.

Had he been lying?

Russ’s villa. The Virgin Islands. A local woman.

Yes, he’d been lying.

When Cash comes back in with Irene’s coffee, she says, “I haven’t told anyone except you and Baker.”

“Good,” Cash says.

“I haven’t told my friends. I haven’t told work. I haven’t told Milly. What am I going to tell Milly?”

“Let’s do this,” Cash says. “I’ll call the magazine and tell them there’s been a family emergency and that you’ll be out the next week or so.”

Irene nods. Work is the least of her worries, because, of course, she has just been demoted. The magazine will be fine without her. She doesn’t care about the magazine. She doesn’t care about anything except… this. This. Russ, he’s gone.

“We can’t tell Milly,” Cash says.

“We can’t not tell Milly,” Irene says.

“Let’s tell her together when we get back,” Cash says. “We can’t tell her and then leave.”

“That’s right,” Irene says. “We can’t tell her and then leave.”

“Call her tonight, as usual,” Cash says. “Tell her we’re taking a surprise vacation.”

A surprise vacation, Irene thinks.

It’s a blur, all a blur, until the plane lands in St. Thomas and the other passengers erupt in applause.

Irene peers out the window. St. Thomas has verdant hills—green and lush, dotted with brightly colored buildings, yellow and pink, the color of sand, the color of shells. The water is… well, it’s the brilliant turquoise you see in advertisements. Yes, St. Thomas is supposed to be a place that makes you clap and cheer.

“It’s so… pretty,” Irene says.

“Anna and I honeymooned on Anguilla,” Baker says. “It looked like this, only flatter.”

“That’s right, you did,” Irene says. She remembers being nonplussed when Baker and Anna chose Anguilla. Irene and Russ had offered the honeymoon as a wedding present—anywhere they wanted to go, anywhere in the world—and they had chosen Anguilla. It had seemed so… unimaginative to Irene. But Baker had said that Anna wanted to stay close to home. She had wanted sunshine, massages, a constant flow of alcohol. She didn’t want to tour anything.

Irene, if she had her druthers, would vacation in Europe—France, Switzerland, England, places with history, places with culture. And so that was what she and Russ had done: a week in London, a week in the Cotswolds, a week in Provence, in Paris, in St. Moritz. Or they went to Colorado and skied. Irene harbors a natural prejudice against the Caribbean. Why is that? She thinks back on a trip to Jamaica when the boys were young, eight and ten, maybe nine and seven. This was before they had money, so they had booked a mediocre hotel near the airport. It had rained all week and they had barely left their rooms. Russ had finally given the boys money to go to the arcade in the hotel lobby. Baker and Cash were down there for a couple of hours—Irene had napped—and then she had woken up, alarmed to discover they still weren’t back. Russ had gone down to check on them and had come rushing up, frantic. The kids were gone.

Irene can still recall the sheer panic she felt then. It had been like falling into a hole with no bottom. They had alerted hotel security, who had directed them to a shantytown right across the street from the hotel; sometimes women infiltrated the lobby and convinced hotel guests to shop for souvenirs. They found a mishmash of shacks with corrugated tin roofs; it was noisy in the rain. There were women cooking and men playing cards and children and chickens running around, plenty of children, so it wasn’t sinister, by any means, but it had seemed so to Irene—a rabbit warren of foreignness that had swallowed her sons. She lashed out at the men, screaming, Where are my children? My sons? Her voice was accusatory, when really the only person Irene could blame was herself. She had been napping—and now her boys were gone.

They had turned up, of course, almost immediately. They were listening to a gentleman with long, graying dreadlocks play the guitar in one of the shacks. Irene had grabbed Baker so fiercely she’d nearly wrenched his arm out of its socket.

That had been it for Irene and the Caribbean. She had smiled politely whenever anyone said they were headed to Barbados or Aruba or the Dominican Republic, and she had probably said, “I’m sure it will be wonderful!” But in her head, she had been thinking, Better you than me.

And now here she is. They have to descend a set of stairs onto the tarmac and then walk into the terminal. The air is warm, humid, sweet-smelling. Irene is wearing a white short-sleeved blouse and a pair of khaki capri pants, sandals, sunglasses. She knows what she looks like to everyone else.

She looks like a woman taking a vacation.

AYERS

Helicopter crash off Virgin Gorda, three dead: Rosie, the Invisible Man, the pilot, whose name was Stephen Thompson. Ayers doesn’t know if he was white or West Indian.

“They think the helicopter got hit by lightning,” Mick says. “Did you hear the storm this morning?”

Ayers had been woken up by the thunder, but then she’d fallen right back to sleep.

“What do I do?” she asks Mick. “Where do I go?”

He holds his arms out to offer her a hug and she accepts. Out the front door she sees Gordon sitting patiently in the passenger seat of Mick’s blue Jeep. No Brigid, thank God. Although what does Brigid matter anymore? Ayers thought Mick dumping her for Brigid equaled heartbreak, but now Ayers understands a new definition of heartbreak.

Rosie is dead.

“I have to go to Huck’s,” Ayers says.

“I’ll drive you,” Mick says. “Let’s go.”

Huck lives up Jacob’s Ladder, a series of switchbacks so steep that Ayers’s head lolls back and she feels like she might swallow her tongue. At the last turn before Huck’s duplex, the cars are lined up: two local police cars, pickup trucks, a Jeep that belongs to Huck’s first mate, Adam, a car from U.S. Customs and Border Control.

Walking down the street are the West Indian women—many of them friends of LeeAnn’s, Ayers knows—some of them carrying covered dishes, some carrying flowers, one holding a Bible aloft. It’s as busy as downtown during Carnival. One thing about a close-knit community like St. John: no one endures a tragedy alone. Ayers had experienced the celebration of LeeAnn Powers’s life five years earlier; she hadn’t realized until then that dying could be beautiful and filled with love.

LeeAnn had been sixty years old when she died, a newly retired nurse practitioner and a grandmother. She’d had congestive heart failure, so her death hadn’t been a great surprise. Rosie, Maia, and Huck all had time to say good-bye.

Rosie’s death is something else entirely, but the support and prayers will be great, maybe greater. Many, if not all, of these women watched Rosie grow up; a handful probably cared for her while LeeAnn worked nights and weekends up at Myrah Keating and over at Schneider Regional Medical Center on St. Thomas—until Captain Huck swept LeeAnn off her feet and married her.

Mick hits the brakes before ascending the final hill, and Ayers sees the uncertainty on his face. Do they belong here? They’re locals, but they aren’t native islanders; neither of them has family here, or roots. They merely have jobs. Mick has managed the Beach Bar for eleven years; Ayers has waited tables at La Tapa for nine years and been a crew member on Treasure Island for seven. She has never had anyone close to her die. What’s the protocol?

If Ayers were to list anyone as a family member on this island, it would be Rosie. Would have been Rosie. And Maia and Huck. So, yes, Ayers is going up to the house. If she doesn’t go, what would Huck think?

“Park up there,” Ayers says, indicating a spot mid-hill. “We can walk the rest of the way.”

“You go,” Mick says. “I’ll wait here until you want to leave. Or, if you decide to stay for a while, text me and I’ll come back for you later.”

Ayers nods and rubs Gordon’s bucket head. She has missed him, and when human words and emotions fail, animals still provide comfort.

She climbs out of the Jeep. It’s broiling in the sun, and Ayers’s stomach roils with last night’s tequila and that stupid cigarette. Her best friend is dead. Ayers stops. She’s going to vomit or faint. Her vision splotches. One of the West Indian women—Dearie, she has a beauty shop up behind the Lumberyard building—takes Ayers’s hand and all but pulls her up the hill.

“Ayers!”

She sees Huck hurrying off his porch, where a group of men—some white, some West Indian, some in uniform, some not—are gathered. A West Indian woman named Helen—she was LeeAnn’s best friend—emerges from the house with a pot of coffee and starts filling cups.

“Oh, Huck,” Ayers whispers. She stands with her arms hanging uselessly at her sides, tears streaming down her face as he gathers her up in a hug. He’s a big bear of a man with a bushy reddish-gray beard and the ropy, muscled forearms of a fisherman. He’s missing half his left pinky thanks to a feisty barracuda. He’s an island character, nearly an icon. Everyone knows Huck, but few love him like Ayers does, and like Rosie did. He was more a father to Rosie than Rosie’s own father, and the same can probably be said for Ayers.

“Is it true?” she asks.

He lets her go. “It’s true,” he says. His eyes shine. “Helicopter went down. They were headed over to Anegada for the day, I guess.”

Ayers has questions. “They” means Rosie and the Invisible Man, but why did they take a helicopter and not a boat, like normal people? Too slow, she figures. Helicopter is faster and makes more of a statement. What happened? Who was this pilot, Stephen Thompson, and did he not check the weather report? Aren’t there rules, the FAA and whatever?

But those questions don’t matter.

“Maia?” Ayers asks.

“She’s at Joanie’s,” Huck says. “I talked to Joanie’s parents. They had planned to take the girls to Salt Pond and then to hike Ram’s Head in the late afternoon once it cooled down, then have dinner at Café Concordia. I told them to go ahead with their plans. Maia may end up hating me for it, but I want her to have today. I’ll tell her when she gets home. I was hoping you would be here when I tell her. She likes you. What does she always say? You’re like her mom, but…”

“But better,” Ayers says. “Because I’m not her mom.”

“She’s going to need you now,” Huck says. “She’s going to need you a whole lot.”

“Okay,” Ayers says, but she can barely get the word out because she’s crying too hard. It’s fine, she thinks. She’ll cry now, she can fall to absolute pieces now, but there’s a twelve-year-old girl depending on her to be strong, and, dammit, Ayers isn’t going to let her down.

CASH

Cash treats his mother like she’s made of bone china. She’s not, he knows—she has kept a stiff upper lip thus far, and she looks pulled together. Her chestnut hair is in its usual fat braid with a swoop of bangs that dips toward her right eye. For Cash’s entire life, his mother’s hair has looked exactly the same. They used to tease her about it, but now Cash finds it soothing. If Irene braided her hair, some essential part of her is intact. He can’t imagine what must be going through her mind. It’s bad enough that Russ is dead, but to die in such a dramatic, suspicious way, in a place none of them even knew he was, and then to find out that he has “concerns” and owns property here? It’s also an unusual burden to be on such a somber mission in such an achingly beautiful place. It’s bright, sunny, and hot. The air is crystalline, and the water is turquoise, more beautiful than any water Cash has ever seen. The islands are green and mountainous—volcanic, he learned, when he did a little research. There are enormous yachts anchored in the harbor with people out drinking, barbecuing, playing reggae music. The ferry is abuzz with excited tourists talking about fish tacos at Longboard and snorkeling at Maho Bay. Cash picks three seats on the far right side of the boat. He and Baker have barely spoken a word to each other since meeting up in Atlanta; Russ’s death hasn’t changed the fact that Baker is one of Cash’s least favorite people on planet Earth.

They take the seats on either side of their mother, buffering her. Winnie hangs her head over the lower railing, panting at the ocean. She’s a mountain dog; this is all brand-new to her.

It takes only twenty minutes to reach St. John. Cash has read that it’s a smaller, more rustic cousin of St. Thomas. There are no traffic lights, no chain stores, and only one small casino, The Parrot Club. Seventy percent or more of the land on St. John is owned by the National Park Service. It’s for hikers and snorkelers, birders and fishermen, people who love the outdoors. Cash likes the sound of it.

Or he would, under other circumstances.

Cash had spoken with Paulette Vickers on the phone. She told him she was the property manager of Mr. Steele’s villa. The phrase “property manager” triggered a memory of something Irene had told him.

“Are you the one who identified my father’s body?” Cash asked.

“That was my husband, Douglas,” Paulette said.

“And your husband knew my father? Knew what he looked like? And my father was dead? And the man who was dead was actually my father, Russell Steele?” Cash had paused. “I know these questions sound strange. It’s just that I’m in a state of suspended disbelief.”

Yes, yes, she understood, she said. Though how could she, possibly? Paulette said that she took care of maintaining the villa in the summer months, when Mr. Steele was away, and that Douglas did all the handyman work. When Cash had asked how long his father had owned the villa, Paulette had been slow to answer. She said that she had “inherited” the villa from another property manager three years earlier. She wasn’t certain when Mr. Steele had bought the villa; she would have to check the files.

“All right, I’ll wait,” Cash had said, and Paulette had laughed.

“How are you related to Mr. Steele?” Paulette had asked. “Marilyn, from Mr. Croft’s office, said only that a family member would be calling.”

“I’m his son,” Cash had said. “His younger son. My brother will be coming as well, and my mother, Irene. Mr. Steele’s widow.”

This had elicited a long pause from Paulette. “I see,” she said.

“Is there a problem?” Cash asked. He meant aside from the obvious problem that his father was dead under mysterious circumstances.

“Not at all,” Paulette said. “I didn’t realize Mr. Steele had sons, but then again, he was a very private person. He liked to keep a low profile, to be ‘invisible,’ he used to say. The villa, as you’ll see, has everything: a pool and a hot tub, a shuffleboard court and a billiards table, multiple decks and outdoor living spaces, nine bedrooms, seven of them en suite, and, of course, a private beach. There was no reason for him to leave the property, and he rarely did.”

Cash’s head was spinning. Nine bedrooms? A shuffleboard court? A private beach? It just wasn’t possible. Cash thanked Paulette, given her the details of their travel, and hung up.

Cash and Baker help their mother off the ferry while Winnie goes nuts, pulling on the leash, intrigued by so many new smells. Cash sees a West Indian woman in a purple dress waving at him. Is that Paulette Vickers? How would she have recognized him? He wonders if Paulette had been friends with Russ, if maybe Russ had shown Paulette pictures of his family at home. But then Cash remembers that he told Paulette he was bringing his golden retriever.

He strides up to her and offers his hand. “Paulette, I’m Cash Steele. Can we get into your car and away from here with minimum fanfare?” It has only just occurred to Cash that there might be some attendant celebrity to being the family of the man who died in the helicopter crash on New Year’s Day.

“Yes, of course,” Paulette says. She waits, smile plastered to her face, while Irene and Baker approach, and then she offers Irene her hand. Irene stares.

“You knew my husband?” Irene asks. “You knew Russ?”

“Mom, let’s get to the car,” Cash says.

Baker smooths things over by taking Paulette’s outstretched hand and saying, “Very nice to meet you. Thank you for coming to get us. What a beautiful island.”

Cash gives Baker a hard stare. It is a beautiful island, but it hardly seems appropriate to say so.

Paulette, although she must realize that the three of them are numb with shock and grief, prattles on about the sights as though they are run-of-the-mill tourists. The town is called Cruz Bay, it’s where the “action” is, the shopping, the restaurants, the infamous Woody’s, with its infamous happy hour.

Happy hour? Cash almost interrupts Paulette to remind her who she has in her car, but his mother puts a hand on his arm to silence him.

Winnie’s head is out the window, and Cash decides to follow suit and turn his gaze outward, tuning out Paulette. Baker can handle her.

The “town” is maybe four blocks long. It’s understated and laid-back. There are restaurants with outdoor seating under awnings, bakeries, barbecue joints, shops selling silver jewelry, renting snorkel equipment—nothing gaudy or overbearing. They pass public tennis courts and a school with children in yellow-and-navy uniforms out on the playground.

“The children are just back to school after the holiday break,” Paulette says. “I have a son at that school. He’s six.”

“I have a son who’s four,” Baker says. “He’s back in Houston with his mother.”

Cash supposes he should be grateful that Baker’s an extrovert; he will be the goodwill ambassador and Cash will tend to Irene. The family joke has always been that Cash is the daughter Irene never had; it doesn’t bother Cash because he’s secure in his masculinity. He knows his strengths: he’s sensitive, thoughtful, introspective, a nurturer. And Baker is alpha, or he was until he married Anna. She definitely wears the pants in that family—hell, the whole tuxedo—but Cash is relieved to see that Baker has retained his charm.

Out of town, the road grows steep and curvy. Paulette is pointing out trailheads, talking about hiking, about the three-thousand-year-old petroglyphs of the Reef Bay Trail.

“Very famous,” she says. “They’re what St. John is known for.”

On either side of the road is dense vegetation. Everything here is so green and alive, Cash can practically hear it growing. At the crest of a hill, Paulette pulls over to the shoulder. Below them is a crescent of white beach backed by palm trees. It’s the most picture-perfect beach Cash has ever seen. It’s so beautiful it hurts.

“That’s Trunk Bay,” Paulette says. “Perennially voted one of the best beaches in the world.”

“Great,” Baker says, nodding. He pulls out his phone, and Cash wonders if he’s going to take a picture, but no, he’s just checking the time. “Paulette, you are so kind to serve as our tour guide, and I hope you don’t think I’m being rude when I suggest you take us right to my father’s property. We’ve been traveling since early this morning.”

“Of course,” Paulette says. “I just thought since you were unfamiliar with the island, you might want to see what all the fuss is about.”

They couldn’t have sent anyone less sensitive, Cash thinks. And yet he doesn’t want to alienate Paulette because she is, right now, their only link to Russ’s life here.

Paulette pulls back onto the road. She’s at ease on the windy, twisty, steep terrain, where there’s zero room for error. One side of the road is unforgiving mountain face, and the other side is a dramatic drop to the sea. Paulette waves to the drivers of the big open-air taxis that pass them—too close for Cash’s comfort—in the oncoming lane. She stops to talk to one of the taxi drivers. They speak some kind of island patois; the only words Cash recognizes are “invisible man.” Is that what they call Russ? he wonders. He peers discreetly at his mother. Her eyes are closed.

Finally, Paulette slows down, puts on her blinker, and turns. They drive up a series of hairpin turns. The road is deserted and it’s shady; there are driveways, but no houses are visible. At the end of the road is a high gate with a sign that reads: PRIVATE.

Baker laughs. “Is this where Kenny Chesney lives?”

Paulette punches a code into the keypad and the gate swings open. Cash nudges his mother awake. He knows she’s tired, but she has to see this. It’s like something from a movie. This is his father’s villa, his father’s villa, on an island in the Caribbean. Cash can’t help thinking that there has been a mistake, a very large, serious, and yet simple mistake. A man named Russell Steele did die in a helicopter crash north of Virgin Gorda, but it was a different Russell Steele. Their Russell Steele—husband, father, connoisseur of arcane trivia and corny puns, fan of the Beatles and The Blues Brothers, is still alive somewhere, schmoozing with clients in Sarasota or Pensacola.

The driveway is long, surrounded on both sides by evenly spaced palm trees, each of which has a spotlight at the bottom. When they reach the house, Cash takes his mother’s hand.

“We’re here,” Paulette says.

They all climb out of the car. Baker lets out a long, low whistle. He has absolutely no impulse control.

The property is… stunning. They’re way, way up high, with hundred-eighty-degree views of the water and the islands beyond. Paulette leads them up a curved stone staircase to a mahogany deck, where she turns with her arms open like a woman on a game show, as if to present the view.

“That’s Jost Van Dyke and, next to it, Tortola.”

“What?” Irene says.

“The British Virgin Islands, Mom,” Baker says.

Paulette guides them around the outside of the house. The grounds are impeccably landscaped with bougainvillea, frangipani, banana trees, and tall hibiscus bushes. There’s a round aqua pool with a slide down to a second, free-form, dark-blue pool. A few yards away is a separate hot tub, water bubbling, surface steaming. There’s a covered outdoor kitchen with a granite bar, a grill, an ice machine, and a glass-fronted refrigerator displaying a variety of Italian sparkling waters. Cash shakes his head. This isn’t his father’s house. Russ drinks tap water.

Paulette opens a sliding glass door and they all step into the house; after the heat outside, the air-conditioning is delicious. The ceiling of the living room is peaked, with thick beams jutting from the center like the spokes of a wheel. They wander into the enormous eat-in kitchen and Paulette says, “I’ll let you explore in peace. I’ll be on the deck if you have any questions.”

“Which way to the master bedroom?” Irene asks. “And is there a study?”

“The master is at the end of that hall,” Paulette says. “Mr. Steele’s study is attached. All of the other bedrooms are upstairs, and there’s a lower level with a billiards table and a wine cellar. That level opens up onto the shuffleboard court below. And the steps to the beach. There are eighty steps, just so you’re aware.”

“I’m going down to check that out,” Baker says. He looks at Cash. “Do you want to come?”

“I’ll go with Mom,” Cash says. He can’t let his mother walk into the “master bedroom”—presumably where his father slept—by herself.

Baker cocks an eyebrow, a signature expression of his, and Cash remembers just how much his brother irks him. Cash resents Baker’s confidence, his smug self-assuredness, his aura of superiority. Baker is the worst kind of older brother—all alpha dominance, no support or advice. But the most frustrating thing is that despite this, Cash yearns to be just like him. “This place is unbelievable,” Baker says. “And I do mean unbelievable.” He lowers his voice. “It can’t be Dad’s. They have the wrong guy.”

Cash doesn’t comment, though he happens to agree. He trails his mother down the long hall to the master suite. In the bedroom is a king bed positioned to face the water through an enormous sliding glass door. There are two walk-in closets—empty, both of them: Cash checks immediately—and there’s a huge marble bathroom with dual sinks, a sunken soaking tub for two, and a glassed-in shower. There’s a paneled study, which is where Irene has chosen to start poking around. The top of the desk is clear, so she’s rifling through drawers. Cash, meanwhile, pokes through the bathroom. There are a couple of toothbrushes and a can of shaving cream, but nothing else in the way of personal items.

The place feels staged. It feels cleaned out. If Russ had been living here or even just staying here—Irene said he’d left Iowa on December 26—then wouldn’t he have left behind clothes, a razor, aftershave, reading glasses?

Cash opens the dresser drawers. Empty. That’s weird, right? He goes over to the bed and opens the nightstand drawer. He startles as if he’s found a disembodied head.

There’s a photograph staring up at him. It’s a framed photograph of Russ with a West Indian woman. They’re lying in a hammock. Cash turns around. It’s the hammock that’s hanging out on the deck right off the master bedroom. Russ is wearing sunglasses and grinning at the camera and the woman is snuggled up against him.

Cash casts about the room for a place to hide the photograph. He can’t have his mother see it.

He stuffs it between the mattress and box spring, then sits on the bed and drops his head in his hands. His unspoken suspicions have been confirmed: Russ had a mistress, most likely the woman who was with him on the helicopter. The bigger shock, perhaps, is seeing a picture of his father in this house. This is real. This is his father’s house. His father is dead.

Cash wants to laugh. It’s absurd! He wants to scream. After all of Russ’s gentle prodding for Cash to finish his education and establish an “infrastructure,” it turns out his father’s own infrastructure was built of lies! He had a secret life! A fifteen-million-dollar villa in the Caribbean and a West Indian mistress!

What else? Cash wonders. What else was Russell Steele—a three-term member of the Iowa City School Board while Cash was growing up—hiding?

He pokes his head into the study, where his mother is sitting at the desk, staring out the window.

“I’m going out to get some air, Mom,” he says. “I’ll be right back.”

“Was there anything in the bedroom?” she asks.

“Not really,” Cash says. “This is like the house of a stranger.”

“Well,” she says.

He finds Paulette out on the front deck, reciting a shopping list to someone over the phone. When she sees him, she hangs up and lights a cigarette. He’s encouraged by this gesture. He needs to talk to the real Paulette Vickers.

“So, what do you think of the house?” she asks.

“I have some questions.” His voice is low. He leans his forearms on the railing and she follows suit. Together, they gaze out at the vista—the glittering aquamarine water, the lush green islands, the sleek boats that must belong to the luckiest people in the world. Maybe Paulette takes this landscape for granted, but for Cash it’s like discovering another planet. “I’d like to talk frankly, without my mother present.”

“I’ll answer what questions I can,” Paulette says.

“This is my father’s house?”

“Yes.”

“Where are all of his things? His clothes, for example? His shoes, his bathing suits, his deodorant? It’s as anonymous as a Holiday Inn.”

“Nicer than a Holiday Inn,” Paulette says.

“Please don’t dodge the question,” Cash says. “If he was staying here before he left on that helicopter, where are his things? Did someone go through the house?”

“I did,” Paulette says. “I had strict orders from Mr. Croft’s secretary to rid the house of all personal effects.” She pauses. “So as not to upset you. Or your mother.”

“So where are they?” Cash asks.

“Packed up,” Paulette says. “Mr. Croft sent someone to collect them this morning.”

“Did he,” Cash says. “Does Mr. Croft have a house on St. John as well?”

“Not to my knowledge,” Paulette says.

“What does that mean, not to your knowledge?” Cash says. “You’re a local with a child in the schools. You work for a real estate agency. It seems like you would know whether or not Mr. Croft has a house here.”

“Down here…,” Paulette says, “a lot of the high-end properties are owned by trusts. People come to the islands to escape, Mr. Steele.”

To hide, Cash thinks.

“Can you tell me where Mr. Croft does live?” Cash says. “Where is his business located?”

“Again, I’m not certain…”

“Paulette,” Cash says. He feels himself about to lash out at her. She seems nice—lovely, even—and he can’t understand why she’s giving him the run-around. “I’m sure you can see that we’re grieving. My brother and I lost our father, my mother her husband. If he’d died of a heart attack at home, this would have been tragic enough. But he died here, in a place we didn’t know he’d even visited, much less owned property in. The details we’ve received are sparse. Part of the way the three of us are going to process our loss is to find out exactly what happened. We need to talk to Todd Croft.”

“That would be a start, I suppose,” Paulette says.

“Do you have a phone number for him?”

Paulette laughs drily. “For Mr. Croft? No, I’m afraid not. I’ve never met the man. I’ve never even spoken to him on the phone.”

“You’re kidding,” Cash says.

“I deal with his secretary,” Paulette says. “Marilyn. She called your mother, so your mother has her number.”

“But it’s Mr. Croft who pays you,” Cash says. “Right?” He nearly says, It’s Mr. Croft who pulls the puppet strings. He pulled Russ’s, or at least that was how it had seemed.

“I was paid by Mr. Steele directly,” Paulette says. “In cash. And occasionally by Mr. Thompson.”

“Mr. Thompson?” Cash says. “Who is Mr. Thompson?”

“Stephen Thompson,” Paulette says. “He was their associate.”

“Their associate,” Cash says. He feels like he’s on a detective show, only he’s the new guy, first day on the job, trying to figure things out. “Do you have a number for Mr. Thompson, then?”

“I do,” Paulette says. She stares at the glowing tip of her cigarette.

“Paulette, again…”

“Mr. Thompson is dead,” Paulette says. “He was the pilot.”

“He was the pilot,” Cash says. “And the third person who died, the local woman, she and my father… were involved?”

“I’m not comfortable discussing that,” Paulette says.

“I have a photograph of them together,” Cash says. “It was in the drawer of the nightstand.”

Paulette exhales a stream of smoke and casts her eyes down.

“What’s her name?”

“Again, Mr. Steele, I’m not…”

“Paulette,” Cash says. “Please. Please.” His voice breaks, and he fears he’s going to cry. He wants to go back to New Year’s Eve, or even to New Year’s Day, to the mortifying and yet inevitable conversation with Glenn the accountant. He wants his father to be alive. Cash will confess his failure with the stores and he won’t go to Breckenridge to waste away the rest of his young adulthood. He’ll enroll at the University of Colorado, Denver. He’ll get a degree. He’ll make something of himself. But he wants his father back. His desperation creates a sour taste in his mouth and he inhales a breath—the honey scent of frangipani combined with Paulette’s secondhand smoke.

Paulette looks at Cash. She must sense his pain, because her brown eyes well with tears. “Rosie,” she says. “Rosie Small. She was the daughter of LeeAnn Powers, who was married to Captain Huck. LeeAnn died five years ago.” Paulette taps her ashes into the bougainvillea below. “There’s going to be a memorial service tomorrow at the Episcopalian church, with a reception following at Chester’s Getaway. If you go to either the service or the reception, you’ll find people who can tell you more. But I’d advise you to be discreet. And to go with an open mind and an open heart. Lots and lots of people on this island loved Rosie Small. And almost no one on this island knew your father. Like I said, he preferred to remain invisible.”

Cash turns around to face the house. “And we can stay here a few days?”

“As long as you want,” Paulette says. “It’s yours now.”

“Okay, thank you, Paulette,” Cash says. “Really, thank you.”

“God bless you boys,” Paulette says. “And God bless your mother.”

HUCK

Joanie’s parents, Jeff and Julie—they are a self-proclaimed “J” family—pull into the driveway at six o’clock on the dot. Huck somehow managed to get everyone out of the house except for Ayers. She is sitting at the counter, wringing her hands and staring at a bottle of eighteen-year-old Flor de Caña rum like she’s drowning and it’s a life raft. Huck nearly suggests they both do a shot to fortify their nerves, but then he thinks better of it.

As his grandfather used to say: hard things are hard. Huck has done plenty of hard things in his life. He was drafted into the Vietnam War right out of high school. He had been born and raised on Islamorada in the Florida Keys, so he thought the U.S. Navy would be a natural fit, and he was happy because in the navy, you didn’t get shot at. But choice was for those who enlisted, not for those who got drafted, and the powers that be placed Huck in the Marine Corps. His first year in Vietnam was spent facedown in the mud, in the jungle, in the rice paddies, fearing for his life every second of every day, developing an addiction to nicotine that he still can’t shake.

Later, years after he got home, he had to put his then-wife, Kimberly, into rehab for drinking and serve her with divorce papers.

He buried his sister, Caroline, who died of brain cancer at forty-one, and his mother, who died of heartbreak over Caroline, and eventually his beloved father, the original captain, Captain Paul Powers, who had run a fishing charter out of Islamorada for fifty years and whose passengers had included Jack Nicklaus and Frank Sinatra. He had taught Huck everything he knew about fishing and about being a man.

It was after his father died that Huck moved to the Virgin Islands, where life was easy for a long time. He bought his boat, started his business, and met and married LeeAnn Small, an island treasure. Huck would name burying LeeAnn as the hardest thing he’d ever had to do, but only because he had loved the woman so damn much.

This would be harder.

Maia comes bounding into the house, her skin burnished from a full day outside, even though Jeff and Julie are fastidious about sunscreen and bug spray. The smile on her face is proof that he was right: she had a happy day. Maybe the last happy day for the rest of her childhood.

He doesn’t want to tell her.

Maia sees Ayers and goes right to her for a hug. Huck catches Ayers’s expression over Maia’s shoulder; her eyes are shining. He doesn’t have but a few seconds left before Ayers breaks down.

They should have done the rum shot. He’s shaking.

“Maia,” he says. “Please sit.”

She pulls away from Ayers and looks at him wide-eyed. “Are you mad?” she asks. “You said I could go.”

“I’m not mad,” Huck says. “But would you please sit down? Ayers and I have to tell you something.”

“What?” Maia says. She is standing, defiant now in her posture.

Ayers reaches out to take Maia’s hand.

“There was a helicopter crash north of Virgin Gorda,” Huck says. “Maia, your mother is dead.”

There is a blankness on Maia’s face and this, Huck thinks, is the soul-destroying moment: Maia taking in the words and making sense of them.

Then, Maia starts to scream. The sound is raw, primitive; it’s the sound of an animal. Ayers pulls Maia close and tears stream down Huck’s face and he thinks, Hard things are hard, and Please, God, do not give him anything harder than this.

The screaming morphs into crying, great ragged sobs, seemingly bigger than the girl herself. Huck goes for tissues, a glass of ice water, a pillow in case she wants to punch something. He and Ayers had made a pact that they would not shush Maia or tell her everything was going to be okay. They were not going to lie to the girl. They were going to let her take in what she could, and then they were going to answer her questions as honestly as possible.

The crying ends eventually. Ayers leads Maia to the sofa, and Huck plants himself in the chair, within arm’s reach. He had been over at Schneider hospital with LeeAnn when Rosie gave birth to Maia. He had been the third person to hold her, red and wriggling and utterly captivating. If Huck were very honest, he would admit to feeling a quick stab of disappointment that the baby hadn’t been a boy. Huck had imagined a grandson to take fishing. But Maia stole Huck’s heart that first moment in his arms, and he decided that she would make a better mate anyway. The men in LeeAnn’s family were either weak or absent. It was the women who were strong.

Maia blows her nose, gets a clear breath. Her face, which had been so radiant when she walked in, is now mottled, and, if Huck isn’t imagining it, her dainty features have instantly aged. She suddenly looks seventeen, or twenty-five.

“Helicopter,” Maia says. “So she was with my father. Is he dead, too?”

“Father?” Ayers says.

“Honey,” Huck says. “She was with her… her friend. The one who comes to visit.” The man’s name is Russell Steele. Rosie told Huck the guy’s name when he first came on the scene, a few months after LeeAnn died, but Rosie kept the relationship private. The fellow showed up one or two weeks a month, November through May; he had some big villa on the north shore. Huck had a pretty good idea which road it was, though he’d never been invited to the house and he’d never met the guy. Maia, he knew, went to the house sometimes when the man was on-island, though there were plenty of occasions when Rosie had asked Huck to cover so that she and her mystery lover could have some privacy.

Huck won’t lie: the arrangement had troubled him. He had expected at least an introduction. He had expected, if not a weekly barbecue, then an invitation for a beer. But Rosie had been both stubborn and contrite when it came to the Invisible Man. She was very sorry—and Huck could see on her face that the emotion was genuine—but she wanted to keep her relationship private. The island was small, she had been born and raised there, everyone had always been right up in her business, and she just wanted one thing that would not be discussed and dissected by the community at large.

Huck had suspected this was not how Rosie truly felt. He had suspected that her plea was on behalf of the Invisible Man.

Which meant, of course, only one thing: he was married. Or he was one of those bastards who had a girl like Rosie in every port. International finance was his business, Rosie said, which meant, of course, only one thing: he was also a criminal. You want an honest business? Go out on a boat, catch a fish, and eat it for dinner.

But the Invisible Man should not be confused with the Pirate, which is what Maia is now doing. The Pirate was some other white fella who came in on his buddy’s yacht, hot on Rosie—this was back when Rosie was cocktail waitressing at Caneel Bay—knocked her up and left without a trace. Rosie called him “the Pirate” because he’d stolen her heart.

And her dignity, LeeAnn had said privately to Huck.

Rosie had fallen hard for the Pirate in the four days they’d spent together. It had been over a long weekend—President’s Day in February. And then Maia had been born on November 15.

“If by ‘friend’ you mean Russ, then, yes, he’s my father. Was my father. Russell Steele. So they’re both dead?” Maia holds Huck’s gaze. “They’re both dead?”

“Yes,” Huck says. He wonders if there’s something he doesn’t know. He wonders if Rosie let the Invisible Man adopt Maia at some point over the years without telling anyone. Without telling him. He knows the Invisible Man pays for Maia’s expenses, including her tuition at Gifft Hill, but Huck had thought that was a gesture, possibly even a payment in exchange for Rosie’s discretion. Rosie still had a job, paid her own bills, lived under Huck’s roof whenever the Invisible Man was away, which was a lot. Had Rosie been hiding something that big? How had she pulled it off, legally, without someone in the courthouse in Charlotte Amalie blabbing? It eventually would have gotten back to Huck.

Impossible, Huck thinks. They must have just started calling this Steele fellow Maia’s “father.”

“So I’m an orphan,” Maia says. “I have no one.”

“You have me,” Ayers says. “You’re always going to have me.”

“And you have me,” Huck says. He gets down on his knees before Maia, which seems fitting because he has done nothing for the past twelve years so much as worship this child. He knows she’s too young to understand the quality of his devotion—and this is probably for the best. She doesn’t need someone to worship her. She needs someone to love her, clothe her, feed her, teach her right from wrong, someone to set limits and provide opportunities, someone to believe in her and be her champion.

And that person will be Huck. He will be her Unconditional. He will be her No Matter What.

BAKER

Anna did Baker a favor before he left. She filled a prescription of Ativan for his mother.

“I bet you she won’t take them,” Anna said. “But it’ll be good to have them just in case.”

It turned out Anna knew Irene better than Baker imagined. She did refuse the pills at first.

But Thursday night, when the sun is dropping like a hot coal into the Caribbean and Irene has refused Baker’s offer of dinner three times, she says, “I think I’d like to try sleeping. Can I see those pills?”

“Do you want the master bedroom, Mom?” Cash asked.

“Heavens, no,” Irene said. “I’ll take one of the guest rooms upstairs.” She offered them both a weak smile. “That’s what I am, a guest. A guest in your father’s house.”

Cash helped Irene get situated upstairs while Baker checked the contents of the kitchen. Paulette had said it was “well-stocked,” and she also said that she could arrange for a private chef if they so desired.

“No private chef,” Baker said. “I don’t think my mother wants any strangers in the house.”

“The landscapers are scheduled every Friday…,” Paulette said.

“Please,” Baker said. “If you would just tell everyone to give us our privacy for a week…”

“Of course,” Paulette said. “Call if you need anything.”

Now, Baker inspects the fridge and cabinets. “Well-stocked” is an understatement. The fridge is filled with steaks, hamburgers, pasta salad, deli meats, fresh vegetables, milk, eggs, and a giant bowl of tropical fruit salad. The bottom shelf holds four flavors of local beer. The cabinets contain enough pasta, cereal, and canned goods—including, curiously, six cans of SpaghettiOs—for a small family to survive a nuclear fallout. The SpaghettiOs remind Baker of Floyd, and he thinks to go out on the deck and call home, but honestly, the only positive thing about this whole surreal trip is that he’s able to leave his own problems behind. Or, rather, his “own problems” become what is happening here. His father is dead. Right? Baker hasn’t been able to feel the reality of Russ’s death, however, because nothing about this makes any sense.

Take, for example, the wine cellar. Russell Steele was a man who liked his Leinenkugel’s, his Bud Light, and his scotch. Baker has no memory of Russ ever drinking wine. Champagne, maybe, at Baker and Anna’s wedding. One sip. The person who liked wine in their family was Irene. She drank chardonnay from California. Her everyday wine was Kendall-Jackson, her favorite splurges Simi and Cakebread. Curiously—or not?—Baker had found one case of both Simi and Cakebread in his father’s wine cellar, almost as if he were expecting Irene to visit.

Cash comes down the stairs just as Baker is cracking open what he believes to be a well-deserved beer, and he reaches into the fridge to grab one for Cash. Cash takes it from him and nods toward the pool.

“She’s asleep,” Cash says. “The pill knocked her right out. Which is a good thing, because I need to talk to you.”

They go out to the swimming pool and sit with their feet in the shallow end. The gurgle of the fountain will drown out their voices in case Irene should appear.

“What is it?” Baker says.

“He had a mistress,” Cash says. “A West Indian woman. I found a picture of the two of them in the master bedroom.”

Baker takes a sip of his beer. It’s good, but not quite good enough to distract him from this crushing news about his father. Is nobody as they seem? Does everyone have nefarious secrets? Okay, obviously something was going on with his father, and it occurred to Baker that the “local woman” in the helicopter was, perhaps, a damning detail. But that was only a maybe. She could have been the pilot’s girlfriend, or a tour guide, or one of Russ’s clients.

“Let me see this picture,” Baker says.

Cash disappears into the house, returning with a framed photograph of Russ and a truly stunning West Indian woman, lying together in a hammock.

There is no misreading the photo.

What strikes Baker is how Russ looks. He’s wearing sunglasses so it’s a bit hard to tell, but the father Baker knows—the goofy midwestern salesman always ready with a quip or pun—has been replaced by a man who looks sophisticated, worldly, and most of all, confident. When Baker and Cash were growing up, Russ had been like nothing so much as a big, eager Saint Bernard who faced each day with the same quest for attention, love, reassurance. He had a list of DIY projects that he liked to tackle on the weekends. He would go in to wake the boys up on a Saturday morning, calling Baker “buddy,” and Cash “pal,” as he did their entire lives, but they wouldn’t stir. Russ would then take a seat at Baker’s desk and wait. When the boys finally woke up, he would jump up with a childlike enthusiasm. Baker understood his father’s eager-to-please, don’t-rock-the-boat attitude to be the result of his childhood. He had moved every eighteen months, and the quest to be found likable and to be included was constant. But Baker won’t lie. Both he and Cash found their father’s obsequiousness off-putting, nearly cringe-worthy. There were a lot of shared eye rolls.

Once Russ got his new job, he had a new luster, certainly; there was suddenly a ton of money. But Russ’s attention was still so intense—possibly even more intense because he was around less frequently—that sometimes Baker and Cash wanted to deflect it. They thought their father was a nice enough guy, but ultimately they preferred the cooler, more reserved presence of their mother.

This man in the photograph with the open-collared tomato-red shirt and the “I’ve-got-the-world-by-the-balls” smile is a stranger.

“Has Mom seen this?” Baker asks.

“No.”

“Good.”

Cash stands up. “I’m returning it to its hiding place.”

“Get two more beers,” Baker says. “Please.”

Baker grills up six cheeseburgers, and he and Cash fall on the food as they used to when they were teenagers—without thinking, without conversation. Then they sit, with their empty plates before them, staring at the twinkling lights of Tortola in the distance. Baker wonders if he should tell Cash about Anna. Cash is, after all, his brother, though they aren’t close; they don’t confide in each other. Baker has long viewed Cash as a little punk—that was definitely true all through growing up—because Russ and Irene coddled him. And he had spent his adult years freewheeling, which always seemed more like freeloading: sleeping on his buddies’ couches out in Breckenridge, teaching skiing for a pittance because the job came with a free season pass, living off the food that his roommates who worked at restaurants brought home.

Baker and his parents had been unimpressed. But then what did Russ go and do? He bought Cash a business! Handed him the keys to two outdoor supply stores! Baker had really kept his distance then, because the demonstration of blatant favoritism was so egregious. Baker had always been able to speak frankly with his father, and he nearly told Russ that sinking two hundred grand into any business Cash was going to run was as good as sending it to a Nigerian prince.

The only time in recent history that Baker had seen Cash in a more favorable light was when he had taken Anna to Breckenridge to ski, back when they were dating. Anna had been uncharacteristically effusive in her praise of Cash. She loved that he got them access to the back-of-the-mountain trails. She loved that he was dating the hostess at the hottest sushi restaurant in town and then scored them a table in the window at eight o’clock on a Saturday night.

Your brother knows everyone, Anna had said. He’s like the mayor.

Six months later, Baker had grudgingly asked Cash to serve as best man in his wedding.

“I really wish we had some weed,” Baker says now. “I need to relax. My heart has been racing since Mom called with the news. Maybe I should take one of Mom’s Ativans.”

Cash takes an audible breath, as though Baker has startled him out of a waking sleep-state. “Wait,” Cash says. “There’s more to the story about the woman Dad was seeing.”

“Right,” Baker says. He’d dropped the thread of their earlier conversation. The woman in the photograph.

“I asked Paulette about her,” Cash says. “The woman’s name was Rosie Small. There’s a memorial service being held tomorrow at the Episcopal church, followed by a reception at a place called Chester’s Getaway.”

Baker nods. Todd Croft arranged for Russ’s body to be cremated.

As for a funeral service… Irene wants to wait until they figure out what’s going on before they even tell anyone that Russ is dead. They can’t very well tell everyone they know that Russ was killed in a helicopter crash in the Virgin Islands when they have no answers to the inevitable follow-up questions. Baker has scoured the internet—there has been no mention anywhere of a helicopter crash in the Virgin Islands.

Baker notices Cash looking at him expectantly. “What?”

“We have to go tomorrow,” Cash says. “To either the service or the reception.”

“Why?” Baker says.

“To find out who this woman was,” Cash says.

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” Baker says. “What would that accomplish?”

“There are so many questions,” Cash says. “How did Dad meet her, how long have they been together…”

“Who cares?” Baker says. “Think about it: What is it going to benefit you or me to know the answers? She was a woman Dad was screwing down here. How will it help to know any more?” Baker leans in and lowers his voice. “How will it help Mom? The answer is, it won’t. We need to get Dad’s ashes and leave. Put this house on the market, if it’s even ours to sell.”

“Paulette said it was ours,” Cash says. “I’ll ask her to produce the deed. Mom will have to call her attorney and have him check Dad’s will. If Dad owns this house outright and the will leaves everything to Mom and the two of us, then it would be ours to sell.”

“You sound like Jackass P. Esquire,” Baker says.

“We need to find Todd Croft. See what he can tell us about Dad’s business. It wasn’t just a ‘boutique investment firm,’ Baker.”

No, Baker thinks. This became evident the second they pulled into the driveway of this house. This is a twelve- or fifteen-million-dollar property. If Russ did own it outright, then he was into something far bigger than he claimed to be. Shell companies, offshore accounts, hiding money, cleaning it, the things you see in movies. He had access to a helicopter.

“I really think we should leave things be,” Baker says.

“I don’t,” Cash says. “I’m going to either the service or the reception tomorrow and you’re coming with me. I’ll let you pick which one.”

“Reception,” Baker says. “Obviously. Because there will be alcohol.”

“People will be more likely to tell us things,” Cash says.

Things we don’t want to know, Baker thinks.

At one o’clock the next afternoon, they find themselves in one of the two gunmetal-gray Jeep Saharas that belong to their father, driving to a place called Chester’s Getaway off the Centerline Road.

They told their mother they were going on a top secret investigative mission.

“We can’t tell you anything else,” Baker said.

“I don’t want to know anything else,” Irene said. “Do what you have to do. I have my own list.”

Baker thought his mother looked marginally better. She had finally slept, for a full twelve hours, and then she’d eaten a few chunks of fresh pineapple and a bite of toast.

“What’s on your list?” Baker asked.

Irene blinked. “I’m going to call Ed Sorley, our attorney, and ask him to fax me a copy of your father’s will. I’m going to call Todd Croft and I’m going to call Paulette. I was in no shape yesterday to ask her any questions, but today I want to appeal to her, woman to woman.”

Baker kissed his mother on the forehead. She was a strong woman. She should be falling apart, but instead she had made a list.

“Call if you need us,” Baker said.

There are cars lined up for hundreds of yards before they reach the entrance to Chester’s and so they have to turn around, double back, and park at the end of the line. They arrive at Chester’s at the same time that a bus lets off a load of people—a mix of young and old, white and West Indian, most of them somberly dressed.

Chester’s is a two-story clapboard building set off the road and painted ivory and dusty pink. The parking lot has been taken over by a tent. Billowing out behind the tent are clouds of barbecue-scented smoke. Somewhere, a steel band is playing.

“It’s good that it’s crowded,” Cash says. “We won’t stick out.”

“Let’s get a drink,” Baker says. It feels wrong to be here. They didn’t know Rosie Small. They are the sons of her lover, the man who was taking her to Anegada, and who was indirectly responsible for her death. Surely there are people in attendance—possibly a lot of people—who believe Rosie’s death is Russ’s fault.

The place is too packed for there to be any kind of receiving line, thank God, which was another reason for avoiding the service. Cash seems to think everyone here is just going to offer up all kinds of information, but Baker isn’t so sure.

Baker asks a gentleman in a fedora where the bar can be found and the gentleman says, “Drinks inside but you got to pay. Food outside is free. Pig roast and all the sides, including Chester’s johnnycakes. You ever had Chester’s johnnycakes?”

Baker sidles away without answering. “The bar is inside,” he says to Cash.

“It’s hot,” Cash says. He’s pink in the face and sweating. He chose to wear a long-sleeved plaid shirt and a pair of jeans. Baker is in khaki shorts and a navy polo. They both look… well, the word Baker wants to use is white… he doesn’t mean Caucasian, exactly, but rather pale and out of place, like they’ve just parachuted in from the North Pole. Only half the people here are West Indian, but the other white people here look tan, weathered, well-seasoned.

The inside of Chester’s is mercifully cooler, and Baker immediately feels better because the bar is the kind Baker would seek out if he had time to seek out bars. There’s a long counter, a few tables, a sticky concrete floor, and a room through the back that has a pool table and a dartboard. Chester’s Getaway has clearly seen dramas more interesting than the one he and Cash are presently living, or at least Baker would like to believe this. Two TVs hang over the bar, but they’re both shut off. The line for a drink is three deep, and Baker decides to exercise his privilege as older brother.

“You wait,” he tells Cash. “I’m going to wander.”

“Wander where?” Cash says. “There isn’t room to think in here, much less wander.”

“Over there,” Baker says. He nods vaguely in the direction of an easel displaying photos. Celebrating Rosie, it says in bubble letters across the top. Baker hands Cash a twenty, since his brother is perpetually low on money. “And get me two beers, please, when it’s your turn.”

Cash shrugs and tries to shoulder his way closer to the bar. Meanwhile Baker shuffles over to the sign and the photos, wondering if there are any photos of Rosie Small with their father. There’s a woman standing next to the easel behind a small table where she’s encouraging people to sign the guest book.

“Hello,” she says to Baker. “Would you like to sign the guest book?”

Baker’s mouth falls open. It’s not just that he’s unsure of what to say—No, the answer to her question is definitely no, he does not want to sign the guest book—it’s that she is the prettiest woman he has ever seen. Ever. She has blond ringlet curls and a smile like the sun. She’s a natural beauty, and above and beyond that, she looks nice.

Anna is striking, certainly. There have been times in the past eight years when Baker hasn’t been able to stop staring at her. But this woman affects Baker differently. She’s lightly tanned, with freckles across her nose. She wears no makeup. She has blue eyes and straight white teeth. She wears five or six silver bracelets and a simple black jersey dress that clings to her slender frame. Looking at her fills Baker with wordless joy. She looks like hope.

I’m in love with you, he thinks. Whoever you are.

“Sure,” he says. “I’d love to sign the guest book.”

He accepts the pen from her, wondering what name he can possibly sign. He stalls by locking eyes with her and saying, “Can I get you a drink or anything? You seem to have pulled the short straw, being stuck back here in the corner.”

“Oh,” she says. “It’s fine. Chester is keeping me in rum punches.” She holds up a plastic cup containing an inch of watery pink liquid, a maraschino cherry, and an orange slice. “He’ll be back soon, I’m sure.” She sets down the cup and offers a hand. “I’m Ayers Wilson, by the way. I was Rosie’s best friend.” She tilts her head. “I don’t think I recognize you. How did you know Rosie?”

“I… uh… I didn’t, really,” Baker says. “I came with someone who knew her. My brother. He’s at the bar, getting me a beer, I hope.”

Ayers laughs. “Nice brother,” she says. “How did he know Rosie?”

“Um…,” Baker says. “He worked with her.”

Ayers’s eyes widen. “Really?” she says. “Who’s your brother? Is it Skip? Oh my God, that’s right, Skip’s brother from LA, right? But, wait… he’s… she’s transitioning to a woman. That’s not you, I take it.”

“No,” Baker says. Just like that, he’s been caught. “Actually, my brother is at the bar, but he didn’t work with Rosie.”

Ayers shakes her head. “Don’t tell me,” she says. “You guys are crashing, right?”

Baker sighs. “Kind of.”

“Here on vacation, saw the crowd, smelled the pig roast, and figured why not?” Ayers gives him a pointed look and he feels like an idiot. Before he can decide if he should tell her who he really is, she shrugs. “I honestly don’t blame you.”

“You don’t?” Baker says. “I didn’t want to come. My brother insisted.”

“I’m actually happy to meet a complete stranger who has nothing to do with any of this,” Ayers says. “Half the women here are pissed that I’m doing the guest book instead of Rosie’s third cousin or Maia’s preschool teacher, and as if that’s not bad enough, over there in the doorway are my ex-boyfriend and the tramp he left me for.”

Baker looks toward the doorway and sees a chunky guy with a buzz cut and a woman in her twenties who has seen fit to come to a memorial reception without either washing her hair or wearing a bra.

He turns back to Ayers. He’s still holding the pen.

“Just write your name,” Ayers says. “I’ll remember you as the crasher and that’ll cheer me up.”

“Okay.” Baker says. He writes: Baker. Then he hands the pen back to Ayers.

“Baker,” she reads. “Well, Mr. Baker, it was nice meeting you.”

“Baker is my first name,” he says.

“Gotcha,” Ayers says. “You’re afraid to write your last name in case I call the police? Or do you go solely by your first name, like Madonna and Cher?”

“The latter,” he says. She’s flirting with him, he thinks. He stands up to his full height and squares his shoulders.

“Do you want to come outside with me and have a cigarette?” she asks. “Or are you horrified by a woman who smokes?”

He would follow her to East Japip to drink snake venom, he thinks. He answers by scooting the table aside so she can step out. “Lead the way,” he says.

She navigates around the crowd to the back of the tent, where a West Indian man with an orange bandana wrapped around his head is tending to the pig. There’s a rubber trash can filled with beer and ice. Ayers grabs two, then says to the man, “You forgot about me, Chester. I’m taking these.”

Chester waves his basting brush in the air. “Okay, doll.”

Ayers leads Baker to the edge of the parking lot, where there is a tree with a low branch big and sturdy enough to sit on. Ayers pulls a pack of cigarettes out of a little crocheted purse that hangs across her body and lights up. “I’m horrified by people who smoke,” Ayers says. “But my best friend just died and so I’m going to give myself a pass for a while to indulge in some self-destructive behavior.” She hands the cigarette to Baker. “Want to join me?”

“Sure,” he says. He inhales and promptly coughs. “Sorry, I’m out of practice. I haven’t had a cigarette since I was fourteen years old standing out in back of the ice rink. It’s been only weed for me since then.”

This makes Ayers laugh. “So where are you visiting from, Baker?”

“Me?” he says. “Houston.”

“Houston,” Ayers says. “Never been. Are you a doctor? You look like a doctor.”

No, he nearly says. But my wife’s a doctor.

“I’m not a doctor,” he says. “I used to trade in commodities but now I’m kind of between jobs. I do some day-trading and I’m a stay-at-home dad. My son, Floyd, is four.”

“Floyd,” Ayers says. “Cool name.”

“It’s making a comeback,” Baker says. “Your name is pretty cool.”

“My parents are wanderers,” Ayers says. “They travel all over the world. I was named after Ayers Rock in Australia, which is, apparently, where I was conceived. But since then the rock has been reclaimed by the Aboriginals and now it’s called Uluru. And so I am now politically incorrect Ayers.”

“It’s pretty,” Baker says. You’re pretty, he thinks.

“So what brings you down here?” Ayers asks. “Vacation?”

How should he answer this? “Not a vacation, exactly,” he says. “I’m here with my mom and my brother.”

“Family reunion?” Ayers asks.

“I guess you could say that.”

“Are you married?” Ayers asks. She blows out a stream of smoke and looks at him frankly. Something inside of him stirs. Someday, he thinks, he will be married to this girl right here, Ayers Wilson. And they will remember this, their very first conversation, sitting on a low tree branch outside Chester’s Getaway during the funeral reception for her best friend, who also happened to be Baker’s father’s mistress.

“I was,” he says. “I mean, technically I still am. But my wife found a girlfriend. She announced two days ago that she was leaving me for her colleague, Louisa.”

“Ouch,” Ayers says.

“Don’t feel sorry for me,” Baker says. “It’s nothing compared to what you’re going through.”

“That’s right,” Ayers says. “Thanks for reminding me.”

“I heard your friend was in an accident,” Baker says. He wants to tell her who he is, but he’s afraid she’ll run off and he’ll never see her again. “What was she like?”

“Rosie? She was… she was… she just was,” Ayers says. “You know how sometimes people just click? And there’s no reason for it? Rosie and I were like that. I met her working at La Tapa.”

“La Tapa,” Baker says.

“It’s the best restaurant on the island. When I first got to St. John, it was the only place I wanted to work, but places like that can be hard to break into. I was very lucky to get hired and even luckier that Rosie took me under her wing. Rosie was a local, she’s born and raised here, her parents were born and raised here, and her grandparents. There was no reason for her to befriend me, some white chick who shows up for the season to get in on the good tips, then leaves. But Rosie was nice to me from the very beginning. She was protective. She showed me where the quiet beaches were, she introduced me to a guy who sold me a pickup truck for cheap, she took me to Pine Peace market and introduced me to her mother and her stepfather and just generally treated me like a long-lost sister.”

“Wow,” Baker says. He’s moved by this and he wants to ask some strategic follow-up questions. Was she seeing anyone? Had Ayers known Russ? But at that moment, Baker looks up and sees Cash headed toward them, holding two beers in each hand.

Baker shakes his head at Cash in an attempt to convey the very important message: She doesn’t know who we are! But Cash looks too hot and pissed-off to care about secret codes.

“Why the hell did you vanish like that?” Cash asks. “You expected me to find you all the way over here?”

“That’s my fault,” Ayers says, dropping the butt of her cigarette into her now empty beer. “I led your brother astray. Sorry about that.”

Cash hands Baker two of the four beers and takes a long swallow of one of the beers he’s holding. He seems like he’s making an effort to regroup. “It’s fine,” he says.

“Cash, this is Ayers Wilson,” Baker says. “Ayers is a friend of the deceased…”

“Best friend,” Ayers interrupts. “Your brother admitted that you two are crashing.”

“Um… yeah,” Cash says.

“It seems like there would be better ways to spend your precious vacation days than attending a local funeral lunch,” Ayers says. “Though Chester’s barbecue is pretty good.”

“Vacation days?” Cash says, and he gives Baker a quizzical look.

Ayers takes the awkward moment of silence that follows—during which Baker is silently imploring Cash to just go with it—as an opportunity to stand up. “I should get back to my post,” she says. “And back to my grief, although God knows that’s not going anywhere.” She offers Baker her hand. “Thank you for allowing me to escape for a few minutes. Maybe I’ll see you again before you leave.”

“I hope so,” Baker says. “What’s the name of the restaurant where you work?”

“La Tapa,” she says. “Right downtown, near Woody’s.”

“Woody’s of the infamous happy hour,” Baker says.

Ayers touches a finger to her nose. “You got it. And hey, go get yourself some barbecue. Anyone gives you trouble, tell them you’re with me.” She vanishes back into the crowd.

“What was that?” Cash asks, once she’s gone. “You told her we were on vacation?”

But Baker is too lovestruck to answer.

IRENE

She’s relieved when the boys leave the villa because she needs time and space to think, really think, and she needs room to process. There are two weighty issues Irene has to deal with. One is Russ’s death, and the other is his deception.

Because this house, this island, is a very large, very real deception. Russell Steele, Irene’s husband of thirty-five years, is a liar, a schemer, and most likely a cheat. Irene doesn’t know what to say—words fail her, thoughts fail her, and the boys seem to expect both thoughts and words, some expression of pain, some expression of anger. But Irene is so befuddled she can’t yet identify pain or anger. Her interior life is a barren wasteland.

She thinks back to the woman she was before, even hours before that blood-chilling call from Marilyn Monroe. She had been consumed with her problems at work, the demotion, the magazine moving off in a flashy new direction without her. She had gone to dinner with Lydia. Lydia had said, You wouldn’t understand because you have Russ, who dotes on you night and day. Irene had deflected the statement, saying, When he’s around. But she had thought, then, that Lydia was right: Irene did have a doting husband and she didn’t properly understand what it was like to be alone.

Irene Hagen first met Russell Steele at a bar called the Field House during Irene’s senior year in college when the University of Iowa played Northwestern in a snowstorm and that snowstorm turned into a blizzard and I-80, which led back to Chicago, was shut down, effectively stranding all of the Northwestern fans in Iowa City. There had been a rumor circulating among Irene’s sorority sisters at Alpha Chi Omega that the Northwestern boys were looking to hook up simply so they would have a place to sleep that night.

Only a few minutes after Irene heard this rumor, she felt a tap on her shoulder. “My name is Russell Steele,” Russ said. “Would you allow me the honor of buying you a drink?”

Irene had scoffed. The guy was cute—brown hair, brown eyes, hooded Northwestern sweatshirt, clean-cut, her father would have said—and he had a beseeching look on his face, but Irene suffered no fools.

“No, thanks,” she said, and she turned back to her friends.

Russell Steele had walked away. The jukebox, Irene remembered, was playing “Little Red Corvette,” and Irene and her friends had stormed the dance floor. When they returned to their spot at the bar, there was a drink waiting for Irene. At that time in college, she drank something called a Lemon Drop, because she had an idea that vodka was less fattening than beer. Vanity came at a price: Lemon Drops at the Field House cost five dollars, a relative fortune.

“From that guy, over there,” the bartender said. “The enemy.”

When Irene looked, Russ waved.

He had stayed on the other side of the bar the rest of the night, and when it was time to go home, she had gone over to thank him for the drink.

“You didn’t have to do that,” she said.

“I know,” he said. “But you’re pretty and a way better dancer than all your friends.”

“You’re only saying that because you want a place to sleep tonight.”

“I’m saying it because it’s true,” Russ said. “I’ll be fine on a park bench tonight.”

Irene had sighed. “You can sleep on the floor of my room,” she said. “But I want you out by nine and if you touch me, I’ll call security.”

“Deal,” Russell Steele said.

Russ had spent the night on Irene’s dorm room floor—she had grudgingly given him one of the blankets and pillows from her own bed—with his arms crossed over his chest, like he was sleeping in a coffin. It was weird, Irene had thought, but also sort of endearing. At nine the next morning, when he was on his way out to catch his ride back to Evanston, she gave him her phone number. She figured she would never hear from him again, but he had called that very night, and the next day, he sent a bouquet of white calla lilies. He had noticed a poster of white callas on Irene’s dorm room wall.

Because you love callas and because I love you. That was what the card on the flowers said that had arrived on New Year’s Day. Russ had been dead by the time those flowers arrived.

Irene thinks back on her marriage. Had she ever had reason to doubt Russ’s honesty, or his fidelity? No. Russ’s dominant trait had been one of utter devotion; he had never been one to flirt with other women. If Irene complimented a certain woman’s figure or sense of style, Russ would say, “I didn’t notice.” And Irene believed him.

There was a way in which their marriage had been divided in half. The first half of their marriage, they had been normal, hardworking midwesterners, trying to raise two boys. Russ had his job selling corn syrup, and Irene was a full-time mother who picked up freelance editing work once the boys were in school. They lived in a nondescript ranch on Clover Street, a cul-de-sac east of the university, close to the high school. Irene won’t lie: those had been lean years. She might even characterize them as tough. If Irene and Russ wanted to do anything fun or special—even a night out to dinner at the steakhouse in the Amanas—they had to budget. When Irene’s minivan died, they had to ask Russ’s mother, Milly, for a loan.

When Russ got the job offer from Todd Croft, it had seemed nothing short of a miracle, or like God’s benevolent intervention finally lifting them up. Suddenly there was money—so much money! They were able to send Baker to Northwestern without taking out any loans. Then they were able to buy the fixer-upper of Irene’s dreams on Church Street. A scant year after Russ got this new job, Irene was offered a full-time editorial position at Heartland Home & Style. Between the renovation and the new job, she had been so consumed, so busy, that she had barely taken notice of the dark side of their good fortune: Russ became less like a man she was married to and more like a man she dated whenever he was in town. But she had liked that, hadn’t she? It had been nice to have Russ out from underfoot, to have freedom and autonomy when it came to making decisions about the new house, which was especially sweet since she no longer worried about their finances. Irene had been complicit in the change to their relationship; she had preferred their new situation to the slog of everyday married life. Irene’s friends and coworkers asked why Irene never joined Russ on his business trips. He was in Florida, right? Didn’t Irene want to enjoy the sun?

Irene used to answer, “I’ll join him one of these days! I just need to find the time.”

Deep down, she knew she should have been asking Russ questions: How did he like the new job? What were its downsides, its challenges? She should have kept track of where he was on certain days, who his clients were. She should have made plans to travel with him. But she didn’t. And that’s really all she can say: she didn’t.

And so, as much as Irene wants to believe that Russ was an evil, deceptive charlatan with unfathomable secrets, she understands that she is partly to blame.

She is disturbed that Todd Croft made the unilateral decision to cremate Russ’s body. He should have asked her permission. He should have given Irene control.

Baker spoke to someone at border control and discovered that because the crash happened in British waters, the British authorities—Virgin Islands Search and Rescue (VISAR), in conjunction with Her Majesty’s Coastguard—needed to give the FAA the authority to investigate the cause of the crash. But there were loopholes and regulations, as with any bureaucracy.

“I can’t tell if they’re giving me the runaround or if it’s just a lot of red tape,” Baker told Irene. “I haven’t talked to the same person twice, so I don’t have an ally. I did find out that the pilot’s name is Stephen Thompson and he was a British citizen. The helicopter apparently belonged to him. So it’s a British helicopter with a British pilot that crashed into British waters.”

They are essentially being held hostage here as they wait for the ashes and the findings from the crash-site investigation. The only upside is this gives Irene time to do some detective work. She sits down at the desk in Russ’s study. There is nothing in any of the drawers but pens and some paper clips, nothing on the shelves but one lonely legal pad. Someone came in and removed everything else.

The phone on Russ’s desk works, and once the boys have left, Irene dials the 305 number that Marilyn Monroe called from on Tuesday night. Area code 305, she now knows, is Miami. This, at least, makes a certain kind of sense.

The phone rings three times and Irene’s stomach clenches. She will demand to talk to Todd Croft. She deserves answers. She deserves answers! What kind of business was Russ involved in? What was going on down here? She fears Todd won’t tell her.

The phone clicks over to a recording, telling her that the number she has dialed is no longer in service.

No longer in service.

Somehow, Irene isn’t surprised.

She tries Paulette’s cell phone next but is shuttled right to voicemail. There’s a magnet on the refrigerator from the real estate company that provides a phone number.

A woman answers on the first ring. “Afternoon, this is Welcome to Paradise Real Estate, Octavia speaking. How can I help you?”

“Yes, hello,” Irene says. “May I please speak to Paulette Vickers?”

“Paulette is out of the office today, I’m afraid,” Octavia says. “Would you like her voicemail?”

“It’s urgent,” Irene says. “Is there any way I might speak to her in person?”

“I’m afraid not,” Octavia says. “She’s at a funeral. I don’t expect her back in the office until tomorrow morning.”

Funeral, Irene thinks.

“Okay, Octavia, thank you very much,” Irene says, and she hangs up.

Funeral for the local woman, Irene thinks. The local woman who was in the helicopter with Russ and the British pilot, Stephen Thompson, flying at seven o’clock in the morning from St. John to an island in the British Virgin Islands called Anegada. Who was this local woman?

Irene isn’t naive. There is no possibility that Russ lived in this house by himself, without a companion, without a woman. Irene thinks back to the day before, when Cash was searching the master bedroom. He told Irene he’d found nothing, but Irene knew he was lying.

Winnie comes banging into the study, panting and wagging her tail, sniffing at Irene’s knees. Irene rubs Winnie’s soft butterscotch head and says, “Come with me.”

She and Winnie enter the master bedroom, and Irene says, “What are we looking for, Winnie? What are we looking for?” She stands in the middle of the room and inhales, trying to divine something, anything, using her intuition. Someone came through the house and cleared it out, sweeping away all of Russ’s dirt.

But something—Cash had found something. He had that expression on his face, feigned innocence, like when he used to hide his one-hitter in his varsity soccer jacket, and years before that when he finished an entire box of Girl Scout cookies—Caramel deLites—by himself and then stuffed the box deep in the trash.

Stuffed the box deep in the trash.

Irene looks around the room for hidden nooks and crannies. She checks the drawer of the nightstand: empty.

She sees Winnie nosing the bed. Is she picking up a scent? Winnie seems pretty interested, nearly insistent, her nose working into the gap between the mattress and the box spring.

“What are you doing?” Irene asks. She lifts the white matelassé coverlet—she has to admit there is a freshness to the decor of this house that is a nice alternative to the heavy, dark furnishings of home—and slips her hand under the mattress. Bingo. She feels the edge of something.

She pulls out a frame. A photograph.

Oh.

Oh no. God, no.

Irene sits on the bed, her hands shaking.

The photograph is of Russ with a beautiful young West Indian woman. They’re lying in a hammock, their limbs intertwined. The woman’s skin is the color of coffee with cream, and next to her Russ is golden, glowing. He looks healthy.

He looks happy.

Irene lets out a moan. She can’t believe the agony she feels. Russ had another woman, a lover. More than a lover: Irene can tell from the ease and familiarity of their pose, from Russ’s smile, from the woman’s eyes shining. They were together, a pair, a couple. They were in love.

Irene wants to smash the glass. She wants to go onto the balcony and throw the offending photograph as far as she can into the tropical bushes below.

But she needs it. It’s evidence.

Irene is mortified to think that Cash has seen this photo, this proof of his father’s secret life. It conveys failure—on Russ’s part, certainly, but also on Irene’s part. She wasn’t sexy, desirable, or enticing enough to have kept her husband happy at home. This photograph is proof.

Irene screams until she feels her voice reach its ragged edge. It feels so indulgent, so childish, but it’s also the release she’s been waiting for. Russ was cheating on her, living with someone young and beautiful, having sex with her, laughing with her, kissing her, eating meals with her, curling up in a hammock with her, falling asleep next to her. For how long? For years, Irene has to assume. Every single time he told her he was “working” in Florida or God knows where else, he was here, in this house, with this woman. The depth of Russ’s lies takes Irene’s breath away. Hundreds of lies, thousands of lies. He had professed his love for Irene daily, every single time she spoke to him on the phone. He had told her he loved her so often, she had stopped hearing it. She thinks of the airplane he hired to drag a banner around Iowa City on her fiftieth birthday. At the time, Irene had been embarrassed by that blatant show of devotion. What she hadn’t realized, of course, was that Russ was trying to compensate. He hadn’t hired the airplane because he loved Irene and wanted everyone to know it; he’d hired it because he felt guilty.

And did this woman know? Irene wonders. Did she know that Russ was married and had two sons? Did she know that he lived in a Victorian house in Iowa City, Iowa? Had Russ shown her pictures of Irene? It’s too heinous to contemplate. Irene cries, she wails, and Winnie starts to bark, but Irene can’t stop. She’s grateful that the boys are gone so she can just let go. She was such a trusting fool.

She thinks back on the many hours that she spent comforting Lydia when Lydia found out that her husband, Phil, philandering Phil, was cheating on her. Phil worked as the head of security for the University of Iowa. One night, he answered a call from a freshman named Natalie Mercer, who was receiving calls on her dorm room phone. The caller kept saying he was watching her, he could see what she was wearing, he was coming to get her when she least expected it. Irene could remember Lydia relaying these terrifying details to her, back when Natalie Mercer was a faceless university student. Phil ended up catching the guy, a doctoral candidate in psychiatry, of all things. He was expelled from the school and this was, in theory, a happy ending. Peace was restored; Phil was a hero. But then, over a year later, when Lydia sensed the temperature of her marriage cooling to a suspicious low, she did some snooping—and what did she find? Phil’s cell phone documenting a lurid affair with Natalie Mercer that dated all the way back to the day Phil caught the caller.

Irene remembers feeling disgusted with Phil, but also—in her most private thoughts—a bit incredulous that Phil had been conducting an affair for over a year and Lydia hadn’t noticed.

Compared to what Russ has done, Phil having an affair with a student seems almost quaint.

Irene and Russ were married at the First Presbyterian Church in Iowa City in 1984, when they were fresh out of college. They had been together for a scant year and a half, since that football game in the blizzard. Russ’s father, the navy pilot, was dead by then, but Milly was there to represent the family. Milly and Irene had hit it off from the moment they met. Because Russ had grown up in so many places, he didn’t have any longtime childhood friends or neighbors or members of the community attending the wedding, the way Irene did. He had Milly and Milly’s two sisters—Bobbie and Cissy, whom Russ called “the aunties”—and there were also a bunch of Russ’s friends and fraternity brothers from Northwestern. Nothing about Russ’s background had seemed unusual, and certainly not sinister.

Irene and Russ had said their vows and kissed at the altar. There had been a reception at the Elks Lodge, where they ate filet mignon and cut the cake and danced to “Little Red Corvette,” and then after the reception, Irene and Russ ran through a shower of rice to get to the getaway car. They drove to the Hancock House, a bed-and-breakfast in Dubuque, Iowa, where they were given a suite with a library, and a claw-foot tub in front of a fireplace in the bathroom, and it was in this moment that Irene fell in love with the style and decor of Queen Anne houses. She said to Russ, “I want us to live in a house just like this one.”

Russ had laughed nervously. They were renting a one-bedroom apartment in University City. They were kids. They had, Irene sees now, barely known each other then, the newly minted Mr. and Mrs. Russell Steele.

Irene had grown to know Russ the only way it could be done—by putting in the time. She had learned how Russ liked his coffee, how he liked his eggs, the way he brushed his teeth, the sound of his snoring, the habits of other drivers that made him angry, the actors he admired and found funny, the way he whistled “Penny Lane,” only that song, when he was doing small home improvement projects. Irene knew his shoe size, his jacket size, his waist and inseam measurements. She knew how he had voted in every election. She knew his first, second, and third favorite flavor of ice cream. She knew he would get forty pages into a book and then abandon it, no matter how good it was. She knew that he had spent his childhood as a constant outsider because he moved so often. She also knows he never felt like his father loved him. Russ’s father was a military man, a fortress, with a mind and heart that were impossible to penetrate. Irene knew that, because of his father, Russ had never wanted to serve in the military. In fact, if Irene were to disclose Russ’s biggest secret, it was that he had sabotaged his chances of getting into the US Naval Academy by intentionally missing his interview.

That, as it turns out, was not his biggest secret.

Irene howls. There are so many thoughts that pierce her, not least of which is her own blindness, her own myopia, her own pathetic, middle-class, middle America view that marriages are meant to last forever, through the bad times, through the boring times. They were Russ and Irene Steele, parents of Baker and Cash, owner of the stunning Victorian on Church Street. They are good, God-fearing, straightforward people. Not people with scandalous secrets.

Finally, Irene stops crying. She wears herself out. She must have worn Winnie out as well, because Winnie has fallen asleep in a sunny spot on the floor.

Irene regards the photograph. Russ has a lover, an island girl. It seems less awful than it did forty minutes earlier. One thing Irene has learned in her fifty-seven years is that no matter how hideous something seems at first, with the passing of time comes habituation and then acceptance. What Irene is living through now is abhorrent. But the world is filled with deceptions and betrayals—nearly every life has one—and yet the sun still rises and sets, the world continues on.

She sits up. The water out the window seems to wink at her, and not in a wicked, I-seduced-your-husband sort of way but in a benevolent way.

What did Paulette say? Eighty steps down to a private beach. Okay.

Irene decides to go barefoot. The stone steps turn to wood, they meander down the side of the hill until the vegetation clears and Irene steps onto a tiny, perfect crescent of white sand beach. The sand is like sugar, like flour, like talcum. She stoops to pick some up and rub it between her fingers. Is it real? Yes.

There are three teak chaises on the beach with bright orange cushions. Irene tries to imagine Russ lying on one of these chaises, with his girlfriend next to him. And who would the third chaise be for? she wonders.

Today it’s for Irene. She lies back in the sun, absorbing the heat, which feels like a miracle after the icy winds of Iowa City. She can’t stay here long, just another minute; wrinkles are multiplying on her face by the second, she’s certain. Her breathing is almost back to normal. Her eyes are sore but dry.

Russ had a lover.

Deep breath.

Okay.

Irene gets up and walks to the water’s edge. The color is halfway between blue and green; it’s not a color found elsewhere in nature, except, in rare and wonderful cases, in people’s eyes. Tiny waves lap at her feet. The water is soft and just cool enough to be refreshing. When Irene had packed, back in Iowa, the idea of bringing a bathing suit had briefly crossed her mind, part of some kind of mental checklist, but she hadn’t been able to imagine circumstances in which she would want or need one. She looks both ways. This beach is secluded from view. There are a few boats on the horizon, but no one can see her here.

Irene shucks off her clothes and stands naked on the beach. Is she invisible? She feels quite the opposite. She feels exposed. Let the world see her drooping breasts, the dimpling at her thighs, the cesarean scar eight inches across her lower abdomen.

She steps into the water and all she can think is how good it feels, the coolness enveloping her. She swims out a few yards.

This is the same water that claimed Russ. Russ is dead. That’s the next fact Irene has to grapple with. He’s gone. He’s never coming back. She will never see him again. She can’t ask him why he did what he did, where she went wrong, where they both went wrong. She can’t scream at him and he can’t apologize. There is nowhere to put her fury, no one to answer the question of why.

Irene lies back in the water, floating, looking at the cloudless bluebird sky, and thinks, really thinks, what it was like for Russ in that helicopter. Irene has never been in a helicopter, but she has a vague notion that it’s loud. Russ was probably wearing a headset. Did he see the storm approaching? Did he see flashes of lightning or hear thunder? Was he scared? When the helicopter got hit, did it go into free fall? Was it terrifying? Did Russ have a second or two when he knew they were plummeting, when the earth was getting closer and closer? Did his heart stop? Did he have any thoughts? Did he think about Irene and the boys? And what about impact? Did he burst into flames? Did he lose consciousness? Did he drown?

Irene sets her feet on the firm, sandy bottom and wades toward shore, until her toe hits something solid. She bends down and picks up a smooth gray rock the size of an egg. She drops the stone from hip-height into the water and watches it sink.

Russ’s body had been lying at the bottom of the sea like that rock.

Her heart shatters. The tears she cries now aren’t of anger or indignation but of pure sadness. Russ is dead and the woman, his lover, his love, is dead. Dead. Never coming back.

I will forgive them, Irene thinks. I will make myself forgive them if it’s the last thing I do.

Irene dries off in the sun, puts her clothes back on, and faces the eighty steps she has to climb to get back to the villa.

The woman in the photograph is young, thirty or thirty-five. She must have family, parents. And Irene is going to find out who they are.

AYERS

She wakes up the morning after the funeral hungover, no surprise there. She has to go back to work at La Tapa at four o’clock and she’s due to crew a BVI charter on Treasure Island the next day. Her best friend is dead but that doesn’t change the fact that Ayers has bills to pay.

Maia, she knows, has bravely decided to go back to school on Monday. Gifft Hill is nurturing, a nest, and all of Maia’s friends are there. Her teachers will care for her and keep her busy. If she needs to take a break, she’ll take a break. If she needs to cry, she’ll cry. There’s no point staying home to wallow, Maia said, sounding a lot older than twelve.

There’s no point staying home to wallow, Ayers thinks, and so she ties up her hiking boots and throws a couple bottles of water and a baggie of trail mix into her small pack and she climbs into her truck.

She drives down the Centerline Road past mile marker five and parks. She’s going to hike the Reef Bay Trail today, all the way down and all the way back up. It’s not her favorite hike on St. John—it’s popular and sometimes overrun with tourists—but it has the payoff of the petroglyphs carved into the rocks at the bottom of the trail, and today Ayers wants to put her eyes on something that has lasted three thousand years.

The first time she hiked this trail, nearly ten years earlier, she was with Rosie. It was their first date.

As Ayers starts down the path, she remembers Rosie asking her, So what’s your story, anyway? Where are you from and how did you end up here?

As always, Ayers had hesitated before answering. She envied people who had grown up someplace—Missoula, Montana; Cleveland, Ohio; Little Rock, Arkansas. Ayers had been homeschooled by her parents, both of whom suffered from an acute case of wanderlust. She had lived in eight countries growing up and had visited dozens of others. To most people, this sounded cool, and in some ways, Ayers knows, it was cool, or parts of it were. But since humans are inclined to want what they don’t have, she longed to live in America, preferably the solid, unchanging, undramatic Midwest, and attend a real high school, the kind shown in movies, complete with a football team, cheerleaders, pep rallies, chemistry labs, summer reading lists, hall passes, proms, detentions, assemblies, fund-raisers, lockers, Spanish clubs, marching bands, and the dismissal bell.

What had she told Rosie? She had told her the unvarnished truth.

My parents were hippies, vagabonds, travelers; we lived out of our backpacks. My father did maintenance at hostels in exchange for a free place to stay, and my mother waited tables for money. We lived in Kathmandu; in Hoi An, Vietnam; in Santiago, Chile. We spent one year traveling across Australia, and when we finally got to Perth, my parents liked it so much I thought we would stay, but then my grandmother got very sick so we went back to San Francisco, where she lived, and I thought we would live in San Francisco because my grandmother left my father money—a lot of money. But the only thing my parents ever wanted to do with money was travel, and so we moved to Europe—Paris first, then Italy, then Greece. We were living in Morocco when I turned eighteen and I had applied to college without their knowledge—Clemson University in South Carolina—and I got in and I went, but I had to pay for it all myself and I worked two jobs in addition to studying, which left me no time for fun. I hated it in the end and so I dropped out and started working the seasonal circuit. I spent my summers in New England—Cape Cod, Newport, the Vineyard—and winters in New England. I spent last winter in Aruba and a guy I met there told me about St. John. So here I am.

Holy shit, Rosie had said.

I know, Ayers said. I know.

Ayers makes it to the bottom of the hill in no time. The trail is steep and rocky but well maintained and shaded by a thick canopy of leaves all the way down, though the sun streams through here and there in a way that turns the air emerald. Ayers is so dehydrated from the night before that she sucks down her first bottle of water in one long pull. She should have brought more than two bottles. What was she thinking? She considers her trail mix. She hasn’t eaten much of anything since hearing the news; not even Chester’s barbecue appealed to her.

Rosie is dead. When Ayers gets to work at four, Rosie won’t be there. Her name will be off the schedule. There will be a new hire by Monday. At La Tapa, Rosie is replaceable. But not with Ayers.

Ayers hikes up to a small outcropping of rocks to see the petroglyphs. They’ve had rain recently—the thunderstorm that killed Rosie—so the markings in the stone are easy to see. Ayers gets up close and focuses on them. So old. So permanent. Ayers could leave St. John today and come back in fifty years and they would still be here.

Rosie had a tattoo of the petroglyph above her ankle that Ayers had always admired. Get one, Rosie had said. We can match. But Ayers had felt funny about appropriating the symbol as her own. She hadn’t grown up here; she had merely shown up here. She somehow didn’t think she had earned it.

Maybe now, though.

One of the rogue thoughts Ayers has entertained in the past few days is that of leaving. Without Mick and without Rosie, she wondered, what’s the point?

The point, she supposes, is that St. John is as much of a home as she has ever had.

Besides, there’s Maia to consider now. Ayers can’t leave Maia. If Ayers is going to make a change, it should be the opposite of leaving. She needs to stay here through the year—endure the hot summer, pray through hurricane season.

There’s only one other person at the petroglyphs, a guy with bushy blond hair and a gorgeous golden retriever. He looks like a hard-core hiker: he’s wearing cargo shorts and a pair of Salomon boots. He’s studying the petroglyphs with an intensity that discourages conversation, but the dog runs right over to Ayers and buries her nose in Ayers’s crotch.

“Aw, sweetheart,” Ayers says. She pries the dog’s snout from between her legs.

“Winnie!” the hiker calls out. Ayers looks up and he smiles. “I’m sorry. I sent her to finishing school but still she has no manners.”

“Not a problem,” Ayers says. “That’s the most action I’ve gotten in weeks.”

The hiker blushes and Ayers congratulates herself on being truly inappropriate. Then she takes a closer look at him. She has seen this guy before, but where?

“Do I know you?” she asks.

“No, I don’t think so,” the hiker says. “I just got here a couple days…” His voice trails off. “Oh, wait.”

Wait, Ayers thinks. She assumed he’d come into the restaurant or maybe even been a guest on Treasure Island, but no, she met him yesterday, at the reception. “Yeah,” Ayers says. “I… you… were at Chester’s, right? With…?”

“My brother,” the hiker says. “Baker.”

“Right,” Ayers says. “Baker.” She had liked Baker. He was super-handsome, tall, charming. She had thought maybe she had actually met a man at Rosie’s funeral reception. She had thought maybe he’d been a gift from Rosie.

But Baker was a tourist and Ayers tried to stay away from tourists. This was advice she had received from Rosie. Thirteen years earlier, Rosie had hooked up with a guy who sailed in on a yacht, stayed for four days, and then left. The Pirate, she called him. She had never seen him again. He was Maia’s father.

“Anyway, I’m Cash,” the hiker says, offering his hand. “As in Johnny.”

“Ayers,” she says. “As in Rock.”

“And this is Winnie,” Cash says. “As in the Pooh.”

“So you found the petroglyphs,” Ayers says. “What about Baker? He didn’t make it?”

“He’s not much of a hiker,” Cash says. “He was by the pool when I left.”

“Pool?” Ayers says. “Where are you guys staying? The Westin? Caneel?”

“Villa,” Cash says.

“Nice,” Ayers says. “North shore?”

“I’m really not sure,” Cash says. He whistles to Winnie. “We should get back, though.”

“Are you catching the boat?” Ayers asks. “Or hiking back up?”

“Hiking back up,” Cash says. “I didn’t realize there was a boat.”

“You have to set it up with the park service,” Ayers says. “Or maybe it picks up at certain times. I used to know, but I’ve forgotten.” She shakes her head and, much to her chagrin, she starts to cry. “My best friend died a few days ago in a helicopter crash. That party you and Baker stumbled upon was her funeral reception…”

“I know,” Cash says. He’s carrying a small pack and he pulls out a navy bandana and an ice-cold bottle of water. He offers both to Ayers.

She accepts them gratefully. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I heard it would be like this. You’re fine one minute and not fine the next. It’s just… I came down here to see the petroglyphs because Rosie loved them. She had this tattoo…” Ayers struggles for a breath. “She was just so pretty and so cool, such a good friend, my only friend, really, the best friend I’ve ever had. My parents… we never stayed anywhere. I would make a friend in Chiang Mai or Isla Holbox and then we’d leave…” She wipes her eyes with the bandana and takes a much-needed swig of water. “I’m babbling. This awful, horrible thing happened and now I’m bemoaning my entire existence.” She tries to smile. “And you’re a complete stranger.”

“It’s okay,” Cash says. “Believe me, I understand being shell-shocked.” He looks like he might say more but instead, he shakes his head. “It’s just… I do understand.”

That’s not likely, but Ayers isn’t going to argue. “Do you want to hike back up together?” she asks. “I have to get back, too. I have work at four o’clock.”

“Sure,” Cash says.

“Good,” Ayers says. “I’m also worried about passing out on the way back up. I only brought one other bottle of water.”

Cash grins. “Ah, the truth comes out. You need me to keep you alive.”

He’s cute, Ayers decides. Not rock star handsome like his brother, but cute. Compact, strong, sturdy.

But again, a tourist.

They start back up the trail, Cash leading, Winnie at his heels, Ayers following. Up is way harder, her hangover is gripping her head like a tight bathing cap. She has to stop and when Cash turns around to check on her—he’s very sweet to do so—he stops, too.

“You seem like a pretty experienced hiker,” Ayers says.

“I live in the mountains,” Cash says. “Breckenridge, Colorado. Being at sea level is new for me. Honestly, I could probably go forever without getting tired. It’s amazing how nice life is with an adequate supply of oxygen.”

“Yeah,” Ayers says. “I guess I take it for granted.” That wasn’t always the case, though. She and her parents had trekked to Everest Base Camp when Ayers was thirteen. The air in the Himalayas was thin; Ayers had crazy dreams that she still remembers to this day. She and her parents spent weeks hiking in Patagonia as well. She remembers sinking to her knees in scree, scrabbling over rocks, jumping down into her father’s arms off a high ledge, eating ramen noodles cooked over a camp stove for days on end, waking up at three in the morning to see the sunrise set the Torres del Paine on fire. When they finally came out of the mountains, they stayed in a town called San Carlos de Bariloche, where they took hot showers and ate a breakfast of pancakes drizzled with chocolate sauce and a big bowl of fresh, ripe strawberries.

“So do you ski?” Ayers asks Cash. He’s too far ahead for casual conversation, but Ayers wants him to know she’s a normal person and not just some emotional basket case.

“I do,” he says. “Do you?”

“I do. Haven’t been in a while but my parents and I lived in Gstaad one winter so I got pretty good. I miss it.” She gazes up into the trees. “You might not think it living here, but sometimes I really miss the snow.”

“I’ve only been here three days and I miss it,” Cash says.

“So you live in Colorado and your brother lives in Texas?” Ayers says. “And you’re here for a family reunion?” She’s proud of herself for remembering.

“Family reunion?” Cash says. “Is that what Baker told you?”

Is that what Baker told her? Yes, she’s pretty sure that’s what he said. “Um…?”

“I guess it is a family reunion of sorts,” Cash says. “He’s right.” With that, Cash seems to pick up his pace and Ayers takes the hint: he doesn’t want to talk. Fair enough. She should conserve her energy and use it for making it up the hill.

This had been a stupid idea.

Once they reach the road, however, Ayers drinks the last of her water and eats a handful of the trail mix and immediately feels a sense of accomplishment. She didn’t stay home and wallow. She hiked the Reef Bay Trail, wildly hungover.

“Want some trail mix?” she asks Cash.

He helps himself to a handful. “Thank you.” He seems to perk up a little as well. “I don’t want to pry, but your friend who died… do they know what happened?”

“Helicopter crash,” Ayers says.

“I heard that,” Cash says. “But do they know why? Or where she was going?”

“She was going over to Anegada for the day with her… boyfriend. The helicopter got struck by lightning.”

“They both died?” Cash asks.

Ayers nods. “And the pilot.”

“Do they know anything about the boyfriend?” Cash asks. “Does he have a family?”

“I don’t care about the boyfriend,” Ayers says. “At this point, I wish Rosie had never met him.” Her voice is sharper than she meant it to be. “I’m sorry, bad topic. Listen, how long are you here?”

Cash looks at the ground. “Another couple of days, I guess,” he says.

“Well, if you’re free tomorrow, I’m crewing on a boat called Treasure Island, and we’re going on a day trip to the British Virgin Islands—the Baths on Virgin Gorda, snorkeling, lunch on Cooper Island. It’s fun and I can bring you as my guest. Do you have a passport?”

“I do,” Cash says. “I’m embarrassed to admit that I thought I might need it to come here. I wasn’t sure. This trip was kind of thrown together at the last minute.”

“If you have a passport, then you should definitely come,” Ayers says. “Have you ever snorkeled before?”

“I haven’t,” Cash says. “I want to. But my mother might need my help tomorrow.” He bends down to pat Winnie’s head.

“Well, if you decide you want to come, just bring your passport and wear a bathing suit and come to the dock right across the street from Mongoose Junction at 7:30 tomorrow morning. I’ll take care of everything else.”

“Okay,” Cash says. “I’ll think about it.” He waves as he leads Winnie back to his Jeep.

He’ll think about it but he won’t do it, Ayers knows. He thinks she’s nuts.

And he’s probably right.

CASH

There’s no way Cash is going on a snorkeling trip to the BVIs, and yet he keeps thinking about Ayers and about the invitation.

Ayers is pretty, there are no two ways about it, and she was out hiking by herself, which turned Cash on in a big way. He had thought Denver and Breckenridge would be filled with women who loved the outdoors—who liked to hike and cross-country and downhill ski—and whereas that was sort of true, none of the outdoorsy women Cash had met had struck a chord with him.

None of them had been anything like Ayers.

And Winnie had been crazy about her. A good sign.

Cash doesn’t tell Baker or his mother where he’s been or who he’s seen, and they don’t ask. His mother had taken the other Jeep and gone into Cruz Bay—for what reason, Cash couldn’t imagine. She sure as hell wasn’t shopping for silver bracelets or bottles of rum. And Baker was being positively useless. He’d made two or three calls to the British authorities before declaring himself stonewalled, and so he’d spent the day “waiting for callbacks,” which meant sitting by the pool, staring out at the spectacular view. He didn’t even seem sad to Cash. Or maybe he was sad and just hiding it—which is exactly what Cash is doing. Cash wants to cry—to put his fist through a wall or break a vase, he wants to lose his shit, exorcise the bad feelings. But the problem is that his emotions are muddy. He’s not purely sad about losing his father. Nor is he purely angry that his father was a wizard of deception. His feelings are a toxic combination of both, and to head off an explosion or tantrum, he is utilizing good, old-fashioned denial. Hence the hike today.

Cash takes an outdoor shower. The walls are encrusted with shells—conch, whelk, cowrie—and there’s purple bougainvillea draping in overhead, and the water is hot and plentiful, and Cash has a view of the water. He decides it probably qualifies as the best shower he’s ever taken. He gets dressed as the sun sets, then he offers to grill up some steaks.

Irene says she isn’t hungry. “I think I’ll go up to bed.”

“Do you want me to call Milly, Mom?” Cash asks. “Just to, you know, check in?”

Irene turns around on the stairs and gives Cash a plaintive look. “Would you mind?” she asks. “I can’t lie to Milly. I just can’t do it. You know, she did a good job with your father. This isn’t her fault. I don’t ever want you to think that.”

“I don’t think that,” Cash says. “Dad was a grown man.”

“I’m beginning to wonder,” Irene says.

“I’ll call Milly,” Cash says.

He dials the number for the Brown Deer retirement community, but the nurse who answers in the medical unit tells him that Milly is too weak to talk.

“What do you mean too weak?” he asks. “Is everything okay?”

“She’s ninety-seven years old,” the nurse says. “Her body is shutting down.”

“Well, right,” Cash says. “I know, but…”

“Call back tomorrow, Mr. Steele,” the nurse says. “Until then, enjoy your vacation.”

Cash and Baker eat steak and potato salad out on the deck. Cash knows he should tell Baker he saw Ayers, and he should tell Baker about Milly not being strong enough to come to the phone, and he should really tell Baker about losing the stores. But before he can broach any of these topics, Baker says, “So Mom told me she has a meeting tomorrow.”

“A meeting?” Cash says. “With whom?”

“She wouldn’t tell me,” Baker says. “She came back from town and when I asked how it went she said it was productive and that she has a meeting tomorrow.”

“What time?” Cash asks.

“In the morning,” Baker says. “She wasn’t sure how long it would take.”

“Are you worried?” Cash asks.

“No,” Baker says. “It’s Mom.”

Right, Cash thinks. They have never had to worry about Irene in the past. But now… things have changed, haven’t they?

“What are you doing tomorrow?” Cash asks.

“Same thing I did today,” Baker says. “Waiting for the phone to ring, but it’s Sunday so I’m sure nothing will happen. I would like to get out tomorrow night, though. What do you think about that? I want to eat at La Tapa.”

“La Tapa?” Cash says.

“Do you remember that girl, Ayers?” Baker asks. “From the reception?”

Cash’s heart starts bobbing up and down. Yes. Ayers. Yes. He tries to keep his expression neutral. “Yeah, why?”

“She works there,” Baker says. “And I want to see her again.”

“See her why?” Cash asks.

“Because she was Rosie’s best friend,” Baker says. “She has information.”

Cash clears the plates. Ayers was Rosie’s best friend and she possibly does have information, but Cash gets a very strong feeling that that isn’t why Baker wants to see Ayers again.

You’re married! He wants to snap. To Anna!

But instead, Cash makes a decision. He’s going to the British Virgin Islands tomorrow.

Cash avoids group tours for a reason: they turn even the most authentic experiences into a Disneyland ride. It’s unavoidable, he supposes. This tour company, Treasure Island, which takes a group of twenty people on a three-stop adventure to another country, needs to make the experience safe and user-friendly. And fun!

“Most of all,” Ayers says over her headset microphone to the assembled group, after explaining where the life preservers are kept, how to disembark at the Baths of Virgin Gorda (they have to jump off the boat and swim to shore), and how to defog one’s mask for maximum snorkeling visibility, “we want you to have fun. In that spirit, the bar is now open. Come get your painkillers.”

Painkillers, Cash thinks. If only. And yet he finds himself shuffling to the bar behind a big fat guy in a HARLEY-DAVIDSON OF SOUTH DAKOTA t-shirt. There’s nothing wrong with this guy or any of the other couples or families aboard the boat, except that they are taking up Ayers’s time and attention. It’s like she’s running a day care, Cash thinks. Everyone has questions: What if they aren’t a strong enough swimmer to make it to the shore in Virgin Gorda? Will there be gluten-free options at lunch? Is it true that the Baths have been spoiled by too much tourism? Will there be sharks? What about barracudas?

Ayers answers all the questions, and Cash surreptitiously hangs on her every word while he sips his painkiller (it’s rum, cream of coconut, pineapple juice, and orange juice, with nutmeg on top). He had to go online and look up what the Virgin Gorda Baths even were—when Ayers said it yesterday, he pictured a cavernous building populated by overweight Slavic men—so he knows it’s a rock formation that has created various “rooms” that can be toured. After the Baths, they’re stopping at Cooper Island for lunch, and on the way home they’ll snorkel at a spot called the Indians.

“How’re you doing?” Ayers has caught him back in line for a second painkiller; the first one went down way too easily on an empty stomach, and he knows that after his second, he should avail himself of the fresh sliced papaya, watermelon, and pineapple as well as a piece of the homemade banana coconut bread. Otherwise he’s going to be one of the people who doesn’t make it to shore.

When is the last time he’s done any real swimming? he wonders. Junior-year gym class at Iowa City High School?

“I’m good,” he says. He knows he should engage some of his fellow adventurers in conversation—there’s a gay couple about his age who look nice—so that Ayers doesn’t think he’s a snob or socially awkward. Cash has been too busy feeling jealous about Ayers’s relationships with her two male crew members: James, the captain, and Wade, the first mate. James is a West Indian guy built like a Greek god and Wade must be a retired Hollister model. Both of them call Ayers “baby,” and when Cash first arrived at the dock, he saw Ayers and James hugging, but then he realized James was offering his condolences. Still, Cash is discomfited by the physical attractiveness of the crew; it seems designed to make Cash and his fellow adventurers feel unremarkable.

“I’m sorry I don’t have time to chill with you right now,” Ayers says. “It’ll be different on the ride home.”

“No worries,” Cash says. “I’m a big boy.”

Ayers gives him a nice smile, one that targets his heart. Has he ever reacted this way to a woman? Geez, not since ninth grade with Claire Bellows, who ended up being his girlfriend all through high school until she went off to Northwestern, where she proceeded to hook up with Baker. His own brother. That had been devastating, Cash won’t lie, and it had led to Cash hating Baker and being very mistrustful of women. Since then, Cash’s romantic life has consisted of weeklong hookups and one-night stands, usually with the women he was teaching to ski.

Cash takes his second painkiller to the upper deck and chooses a seat near the gay couple. The sun feels good, and there is something about being out on the water that reminds Cash of standing at the top of a mountain. It’s elemental, he supposes, communing with the earth. Ayers, over her headset microphone, gives the group some background history—the Danish settlers, the sugar plantation, the slave revolt in which African slaves from St. John swam to the British Virgin Islands to freedom. She points out Lovango Cay, where there used to be a brothel for pirates—the pirates called it “love and go,” which was then shortened to Lovango; everyone laughs at that story. Ayers shifts her focus to Jost Van Dyke, home of the world-famous bar the Soggy Dollar (Cash has never heard of it), then to Tortola, on their left, and the “sister islands”—Peter, Norman, Cooper, Salt, and Ginger—on their right. Cash goes downstairs for another painkiller, and when he comes back up to the deck, he says to one of the members of the male couple (tall, balding, pale), “So is this your first time to the BVIs?”

“Affirmative,” the other man (short, dark) says. “Chris’s parents just bought a timeshare at the Westin so we thought we’d come down to see what the fuss is about. How about you?”

Cash needs to pick a story and stick to it. “Here for a week with my mom and my brother. Family reunion.”

Chris says, “Did they come with you?”

“No,” Cash says.

“My kind of family reunion!” the short, dark-haired guy says, and the three of them do a cheer.

Thanks to another painkiller or three (Could Cash really have had five drinks already? It’s not even ten in the morning), the morning passes quickly, with soft, blurred edges. Once they reach Virgin Gorda, Cash’s anxiety about jumping off the boat and swimming to shore melts away. He’s an athletic guy, in good shape—that should count for something—and sure enough, he makes it with ease. Ayers leads the tour through the Baths. They’re not like anything Cash has ever seen: huge granite boulders that form a series of rooms and formations with shallow pools of warm turquoise water in each. They start out viewing the Whale Gallery—a rock that looks like an orca shooting out of the water—then move on to the Lion’s Den and Moon rock. Cash’s favorite room is called the Cathedral because of the way the light reflects off the water, spangling the rocks with color and making it look like stained glass. Ayers not only offers charming commentary, she is attentive to the older and less agile members of the group who have difficulty negotiating the rough-hewn wooden steps and squeezing through narrow passageways. Cash helps out wherever he can, offering his hand and allowing a little girl, five or six years old, to jump down into his arms. He feels like a Boy Scout, but then again, he was a Boy Scout.

Ayers whispers in his ear. “Want a job?”

Does he want a job? Only five days ago, Cash made what he thought was a major life decision to return to the mountains. Now his father is dead and Cash’s “life,” or what’s left of it, has been turned on its head. What remains that is solid and reliable? Winnie. His mother. In a pinch, he supposes, his brother. There’s nothing to stop Cash from moving down here and working for Treasure Island. He could live in his father’s villa. As outrageous as the thought is, it holds appeal. He realizes that Ayers is only kidding, but what if she’s not kidding?

He’s drunk, he needs to slow down, but when Chris and Mike ask him if he wants to join them for a beer—there’s a bar at the exit of the Baths, of course—he says yes.

He has never before seen the appeal of day-drinking. Lots of people drink while skiing; many, many folks choose to do two or three runs and then hit the bar. Cash likes his daytime hours to be productive, and so he saves his drinking for the evening, which is probably a legacy of his strait-laced midwestern upbringing. Now, however, he understands how liberating it is to get intoxicated while the sun is out. It feels decadent in the best possible way. The world seems alternately kind, forgiving, absurd, and hilarious.

“You can’t drink all day if you don’t start in the morning,” he says to Chris and Mike. “Am I right?”

They leave Virgin Gorda and motor to Cooper Island, where there is an eco-resort with a restaurant that serves large groups like theirs. Cash orders the blackened fish sandwich with fries, and Chris and Mike do likewise. They inform Cash with a certain solemn righteousness that they’re pescatarians, which Cash hears as “Presbyterians,” and he says, “I’m Presbyterian, too, though I hardly ever go to church anymore.” This statement cracks Chris and Mike up and Cash is nonplussed until they explain that pescatarian means they eat only fish—no meat or chicken. Then Cash dissolves into laughter that he can’t recover from. Every time he lifts his head to take a breath, he doubles over again.

“You look like you’re enjoying yourself,” Ayers says. She lifts Cash’s rum punch and takes a discreet sip. “I’m not supposed to imbibe until after the snorkeling.”

Cash tries to sober up a little. He introduces Chris and Mike to Ayers, and then their food arrives and it turns out there’s a fish sandwich for Ayers as well, which she douses with hot sauce.

“God, I love”—Cash stops. He nearly says, “you,” but he catches himself—“a woman who enjoys spicy food.”

“Rosie loved spicy food,” Ayers says. “And she could cook, too. She made the best jerk chicken. Mmmmmm.”

Cash knows he should capitalize on the topic of Rosie, since Ayers brought her up, but he’s too intoxicated to think it through strategically and he feels it would be awkward to include Chris and Mike in the conversation and rude to exclude them. He takes a bite of his own sandwich. It’s delicious.

Food, he thinks. He needs food.

After lunch, they head to the Indians, three rock towers jutting from the sea, where they anchor to snorkel. Cash is feeling slightly more in charge of his faculties after eating, but he continues to drink because he doesn’t want to risk becoming hungover.

Ayers puts her headset microphone back on and explains the rules of snorkeling—where they can go, where they can’t go, what they can expect to see. “This is the best snorkeling in the Virgin Islands,” she says. “You’ll see it all—parrot fish, angel fish, spotted eagle rays, sea turtles, maybe even a basking shark. The sharks aren’t dangerous to humans, but I’d advise you to leave them alone nonetheless. The only thing you need to worry about is the fire coral—it’s easily identifiable by its bright orange branches—and if you rub up against it, you will develop a very painful burning rash. The other danger is sea urchins. The sea urchins have sharp black spines. Please do not touch or, God forbid, stand on any of the coral. James and Wade and I aren’t just here to make a buck, people. We’re here to educate you about the natural beauty of these islands and to spread awareness about just how precious and unique this eco-system is.”

I love her, Cash thinks. She’s everything he has ever wanted in a woman.

Once Cash is in his flippers, with his mask secured around his head and his snorkel poised a couple inches from his mouth, he feels like a world-class fool. Does everyone else feel this way? People seem excited, maybe a little anxious—there’s nothing like jumping into shark-infested waters to inspire camaraderie—but generally the mood is positive, expectant.

It’s all Cash can do not to just leap off the side of the boat rather than wait his turn to go down the ladder. Once he’s in the water, he should be fine. He thinks back on the hundreds of people he has taught to ski. He recalls one girl in her twenties—a nanny for one of the fancy families with a house on Peak 7—who stared right into Cash’s eyes and with the purest fear Cash has ever witnessed said, “I’m terrified.”

And guess what? She had made it down the mountain just fine.

Cash waits his turn behind Chris and Mike, who look like frogs that mated with ducks, and then he lowers himself down the ladder into the turquoise water. He fits the snorkel into his mouth, takes a few breaths—all clear—and then lowers his head and swims behind his fellow adventurers.

How to describe what he sees?

He can’t believe it’s real. There’s an entire universe under the surface of the water. The coral—purple, orange, greenish-yellow—are like buildings or mountains. Fish are everywhere: The parrot fish are shimmering rainbows, there are black angelfish with electric blue stripes, schools of silvery fish that are as flat as coins, all of them swimming along, pecking here and there at the coral. It’s astonishing that all this exists in pristine condition and that regular people like himself, without skills or specialized knowledge, can observe it. Why isn’t everyone in the world talking about how remarkable this is? Why isn’t a snorkeling trip to the Indians number one on everyone’s bucket list? He’s drunk, yes he is, but he’s also blessed with a brand-new clarity. He is alive, on planet Earth, experiencing a natural wonder.

He lifts his head. Above the surface, life is the same. There’s the coast of St. John in the distance, there’s the boat a few hundred yards away. Cash likes the way his flippers give him buoyancy. He’s barely treading water but he has no problem staying afloat.

Suddenly, there’s someone next to him in a black mask. It’s Ayers, he realizes. She’s wearing a green tank suit, very simple and, on her, incredibly sexy. She takes his hand. They’re holding hands? Or no, she wants him to swim alongside her. She wants to show him something. What? They swim for what seems like a while—away from everyone, away from the boat—then she points. On the smooth, sandy bottom, Cash sees a gargantuan silver platter with wings that ripple. It’s a manta ray, gliding elegantly along the ocean floor. It’s huge, way bigger than Cash expected.

Ayers stops to tread water and Cash does the same. She removes her snorkel.

“That’s Luther,” she says. “He’s the biggest ray in the VIs. Five feet, two inches in diameter. He lives out here.”

“Luther is… wow,” Cash says.

“Let’s follow him” Ayers says.

They trail Luther for a while, then Ayers makes a sharp turn—she must have seen something—and Cash kicks like crazy in an attempt to keep up. She’s chasing what looks like a shark—it’s sleek, silver, menacing. She takes off her silver hook bracelet and waggles it at him and he comes charging for it, then Ayers yanks it away and he darts past her.

Cash lifts his head. “What are you doing?”

She laughs. “Barracuda,” she says. “A baby. He’s harmless.” She swims back in the direction of the boat and Cash follows.

They’re back on the boat, headed home. Cash is bone-tired but energized. What a great day. What a transformative day. He’s a convert: he loves the tropics.

“You’re allowed to drink now, right?” Cash asks Ayers. She nods and he grabs two rum punches from the bar and follows her to a bench on the shady side of the wheelhouse. The shade is a relief. He might be a convert in his heart and mind, but his skin is still that of his Scottish and Norwegian ancestors. He has been reapplying sunscreen every hour, but he’s still pretty sure he’s going to have a wicked sunburn.

He hands Ayers a rum punch and they touch cups. Ayers is wearing silver-rimmed, blue-lens aviators and her feet are resting up on the railing. She looks exhausted.

“To a job well done,” Cash says. He takes a sip of his drink, his twentieth of the day. “You know, it’s not so different from my job as a ski instructor.”

“Aside from being completely different, not so different at all,” she says. Together they look at the tired, sun-scorched, happy people below them on the deck—some snoozing, others forging bonds that will last all the way to the bar at Woody’s, or the rest of the week or a lifetime. Cash has Chris’s and Mike’s numbers and promised to call them if he ever finds himself in Brooklyn, which secretly he hopes he never does.

Ayers sucks down the rum punch and seems to both relax and pep up. “You liked it, right?”

“Loved it,” he says. “Can’t thank you enough.”

“Well, you basically saved my life yesterday by sharing your water. And you gave me your bandana. And you were nice to me when I was sad.”

“Like I said, I understand.”

Ayers leans her head on his shoulder. At the same time that he’s experiencing pure ecstasy at her touch, he realizes she’s crying again.

He hands her his damp cocktail napkin; it’s all he has. “I’m happy to give you my shirt,” he says.

She laughs through her tears. “I’m sorry,” she says. “It’s all lurking there, right below the surface. But I have to sublimate it. This job requires me to be peppy. I’m not allowed to be a human being, a thirty-one-year-old woman who lost her best friend.” She sniffs and wipes at her reddened nose with the napkin. “At my other job it’s different, because Rosie worked there with me, so we all lost her and every single person on the staff knows how close we were, so even though I have to smile while I’m serving, when I need a break I can hide in the kitchen and cry and do a shot of tequila with the line cooks.”

Cash feels a surge of jealousy about the line cooks. He wants to ask if Ayers has a boyfriend or is married. He could be getting carried away for no reason. But instead, he asks if Ayers has a picture of Rosie.

“A picture of Rosie?” Ayers says.

“Yeah,” Cash says. “I’d like to see what she looks like.” It has occurred to him since their conversation yesterday that Ayers’s friend Rosie might not be the same woman in the photograph with Russ. It would be better, so much better, if Rosie Small weren’t Russ’s lover. They would both still be dead, but maybe just friends or colleagues. It would be so much easier.

Ayers pulls out her phone. “Here,” she says. “She’s my screensaver.” She hands Cash the phone.

On the left is Ayers in a canary-yellow bikini on a beach next to a tree that supports a tire swing. On the right is Rosie, the same woman in the photograph with Cash’s father. She’s wearing a white bikini and beaming at the camera.

“She’s really pretty,” Cash says. “Though not as pretty as you, of course.”

“Oh, please,” Ayers says. She tucks her phone back into the pocket of her shorts. “You know, I want to apologize about being short with you yesterday… when you asked about Rosie’s boyfriend.”

Cash holds his breath. We don’t have to talk about it, he wants to say. When he’d registered for the trip, he’d been glad that Wade was handling the paperwork and not Ayers, because he didn’t want Ayers to see his last name and make the connection.

He needs to tell her who he is, but he doesn’t want her to know who he is. And he certainly can’t tell her now, while she’s at work.

“You don’t have to apologize…”

“He was rich,” Ayers says. “Some rich asshole who showed up every couple of weeks and completely monopolized Rosie’s time, but that wasn’t the problem. The problem was that he had this shroud of secrecy around him. They’d been together for six years and I’d never met him. And I was her best friend. The first few years I accused her of making him up, that’s how bad it was. But he was always giving her things—silver bracelets, money, a new Jeep. He almost never left his property, and they never entertained or invited anyone over.”

“Maybe he was hiding something,” Cash says. “Maybe he was married.”

“Maybe?” Ayers says. “Of course he was married. But the one time I brought it up, Rosie flipped out and wouldn’t speak to me for three days. So that was the last time I mentioned it. She was two people, really: a very strong and independent woman, on the one hand—feisty, fierce, even. But when it came to the Invisible Man, she was a goner. She was so… blinded by him. So… in love, I guess you’d have to say.”

“Well, then,” Cash says. “He couldn’t have been all bad.” He tries a smile. “Right?”

HUCK

On Sunday, Huck cancels both of his charters. He’ll reschedule them for the following week. Today, he just wants to go out on the water by himself, maybe see if there’s any truth to Cleve’s school-of-mahi story. He still has the coordinates written down, saved from New Year’s Eve.

Back when Rosie was alive.

It’s a cruel trick of the world, a person alive and well one minute, thinking harm will never come her way, and then dead the next.

Huck doesn’t get as early a start as he would have liked, because he has to drive Maia over to Joanie’s house. They are planning on starting a bath bomb business. They want to make bath bombs in tropical scents and sell them to tourists.

“Are you sure you don’t want to come fishing?” Huck asks. Her company is the only person’s he would relish, and he worries that Maia is returning to her regular twelve-year-old routine too soon. Tomorrow, Monday, she’s going back to school.

“I’m sure,” she says.

Huck reminds himself that everyone processes loss in his or her own way. After LeeAnn died, Huck had gone through a rough patch—smoking and drinking, and spending one regrettable night with Teresa, the waitress from Jake’s, who everyone knew had a sleeping-around problem. And Rosie had handled LeeAnn’s death by meeting, and then shacking up with, the Invisible Man.

He’s going to let Maia be. If she wants to start a bath bomb business with Joanie, then Huck will be their first customer.

But today he’s going fishing. And he’s going to catch something, damnit.

He loads up The Mississippi with light tackle and his trolling rods, a chest of clean ice, a second chest that holds water, a case of Red Stripe, and two Cuban sandwiches from Baked in the Sun, plus one of their “junk food” cookies—the thing is loaded with toffee, pretzels, and potato chips—because those were Rosie’s favorite. He’s about to untie his line from the dock when he hears his name being called. His proper name.

“Mr. Powers? Sam Powers?”

He looks up to see a woman marching down the dock, waving her arm like she’s trying to hail a cab. She’s slender, with pretty hair—one fat chestnut braid hangs over one shoulder. She’s wearing round sunglasses, so he can’t get a good look at her, but as she grows closer he sees she’s older than he originally thought, and her expression can only be described as All Business. That, combined with the fact that she’s calling him “Mr. Powers” makes him feel like he’s about to be reprimanded by his high school English teacher. What was her name? Miss Lemon. Miss Lemon had once caught Huck writing dirty limericks. Instead of tearing up the page, as he expected her to, she had insisted he go in front of the class and read them aloud.

Good old Miss Lemon, responsible for the most humiliating moment of Huck’s young life.

And now here comes Miss Lemon reincarnated, although a sight better-looking. The original Miss Lemon, appropriate to her name, had a pucker face.

Reincarnated Miss Lemon marches right up to the edge of the dock. Huck has the line in his hand. All he needs to do is unloop it from the post and putter away. She can’t very well follow him.

“Are you Sam Powers?” she asks.

“Technically, yes,” he says. “But people call me Huck.”

She nods once, sharply. “So I’ve heard. Mr. Powers, do you have a minute to talk? It’s important.”

Does he have a minute to talk? No. It’s nearly nine o’clock now. He’s going offshore, a forty-five-minute trip. He has to be back here by four thirty at the latest to pick Maia up from Joanie’s by five. He wants to fish all day. To fish all day, he has to leave now. It’s important, the Reincarnated Miss Lemon says, and he somehow knows this isn’t a matriarch disgruntled by his postponed charters. This woman’s face holds a certain tension in it that Huck recognizes. He has an idea, but he hopes to God he’s wrong.

He cuts the motor, then offers the woman his barracuda hand. She takes in the sight of his half-missing pinky but doesn’t flinch, which he supposes is a good sign.

“You want me to get into your boat?” she asks.

“You want to talk?” he asks.

She removes her sandals without being asked—she must be a boat person, how about that—and she takes his barracuda hand and nimbly descends into the bow.

Huck flips open the cooler. “I have water and I have beer.”

“Nothing,” she says. “Thank you.”

Huck goes to reach for a water for himself when she speaks up. “Actually, a beer. Thank you.”

Huck’s eyebrows shoot up, but the Reincarnated Miss Lemon doesn’t notice. Her eyes are scanning the dock. Who’s watching? Well, the answer to that is: no one and everyone. The taxi drivers—Pauly, Chauncey, and Bennie—are lined up across the street from the cruise ship dock. Huck flips the top off two Red Stripes; he isn’t about to let a lady drink alone, and if she needs a beer, then he probably does as well.

Huck hands the Reincarnated Miss Lemon a beer. “What can I do for you, Ms….?”

“Steele,” she says. “Irene Steele.”

Huck closes his eyes a beat longer than a blink. Irene Steele. His bad feeling has been proved correct.

“I guess that answers my question,” he says. He offers Irene Steele one of the cushioned seats in the cockpit. He’s a bit concerned about who will hear what; acoustics over the water are funny. He sits down a respectful distance away but leans in. It could still be an ex-wife, he thinks. Please let it be an ex-wife.

“Russell Steele was my husband,” Irene says, immediately dashing Huck’s hopes. “And I understand that you’re the father of Rosie Small. Who was my husband’s mistress.”

Huck flinches at the word “mistress,” although he realizes she could have chosen worse.

“I’m her stepfather,” Huck says. “Was her stepfather. I married her mother, LeeAnn, nearly twenty years ago. LeeAnn passed five years back.”

“But you’re still close with Rosie? Were close with her? She lived with you?”

“You did your research,” Huck says. “How did you find this out?”

“It wasn’t easy,” Irene says. “I don’t know anyone here except for Paulette, from the real estate agency…”

Paulette Vickers, Huck thinks. He saw her at the funeral and the reception yesterday, but then again, he saw everyone.

“… but Paulette was out of the office yesterday.” Irene pauses. “So I had to ask around, which didn’t yield me much until I found the woman who sells mangoes next to Cruz Bay Landing.”

“Henrietta,” Huck says.

Irene shrugs. “She gave me the basics. When I asked if the girl who died had parents, she told me your name and the name of your boat and that you tied up here most mornings.”

“I’m sorry about your husband,” Huck says. He’s not, though—not sorry one bit that sonovabitch is dead. He only cares about Rosie. But before Huck can tack on any more insincere statements, Irene says, “No, you’re not. Nor should you be. You can tell me the truth, Mr. Powers.”

“The truth?” Huck says. “I don’t like being called ‘Mr. Powers.’ Also, I’m grieving just like you are and I plan to take today out on the water by myself so I can fish and drink beer and gaze off at the horizon and wonder what happens when we die.”

“So you’d like me to leave?” Irene says.

Pretty much, Huck thinks. But he’s too much of a gentleman to say it. “I’m just not sure what you want from me. I probably know as much as you do about what happened. They were traveling by helicopter from here to Anegada in the BVIs.”

“Why?” Irene says.

“Day trip?” Huck says. “Anegada is pretty special. It’s nothing more than a spit of pure white sand, really. It has a Gilligan’s Island feel to it. There’s almost nothing there, a few homes, a couple of small hotels, a few bars and restaurants, a native population of flamingos…”

“Flamingos?” Irene says flatly.

“And lobsters,” Huck says. “Anegada is famous for its lobsters. So my guess is they were on a day trip. Go over, see the birds, walk the beach, eat a couple lobsters, fly home. People do it. I’ve done it. Of course, most people take a boat.” He finishes his beer and deeply craves a cigarette. He needs this woman off his boat. He stands up, takes Irene’s empty bottle from her, and throws both bottles in the trash. Hint, hint. What else could she possibly want to ask?

“Did you know Russ?” Irene says.

“No,” Huck says, clearly and firmly. “Never had the pleasure. Rosie was… protective, I guess you’d say. I knew the guy existed, knew he had money… and a villa somewhere…”

Irene laughs. “Villa.”

“I’ve never seen it, was never invited, don’t know the address. Rosie kept all that private. She told me his name once, long ago. But after that she referred to him only as the Man and everyone else on this island refers to him as the Invisible Man. Because no one ever saw him.”

“The Invisible Man?” Irene says. “That’s ironic. I could have called him that as well.” She stands up and Huck fills with sweet relief—she’s leaving!—but then she opens the cooler, takes out another beer, and hands it to Huck.

He can’t decide whether to laugh or cry. He needs to go. He wants to fish.

“Can we finish this conversation another time?” he asks. “I want to fish.”

“Take me with you,” Irene says. “I can pay.”

“I had two paying charters today that I canceled,” Huck says.

“But those people weren’t me,” Irene says. “They weren’t the widow of your stepdaughter’s lover.”

Huck’s head is spinning. He needs a cigarette and it’s his boat, goddamnit, so he’s going to have one. He opens Irene’s beer and lights up.

“Do you fish?” he asks. “Where are you from?”

“Iowa City,” Irene says.

Huck chuckles. “I doubt you’re built for a day offshore.”

“I most certainly am,” Irene says. “I used to go fly-fishing with my father on a lake in Wisconsin. He called me…” She pauses as her eyes fill. “He used to call me Angler Cupcake.”

Angler Cupcake: Huck hasn’t heard that one before.

“I’m sorry,” Irene says. “I don’t mean to horn in on your day of solitude and reflection. It’s just that I could use a day like you’re about to have myself. Fishing, drinking beer, gazing at the horizon and wondering what happens when we die.”

Go to the beach at Francis Bay, he wants to tell her. Drive out to the East End—no one is ever on the East End. Hike to Salomon Bay. Sit at the bar at the Quiet Mon. St. John has lots of places to hide.

But instead he says, “You really think you can handle this?”

“I know I can,” she says.

“Okay, then.” Huck starts the engine and unloops the rope and steers them out into the harbor. There’s instantly a breeze, and between the wind and the noise of the motor, the need for conversation evaporates. Still, Huck looks at Irene Steele, his stowaway, the wife of Rosie’s lover—what the hell is he doing?—and says, “Angler Cupcake, huh?”

“I guess we’ll see,” she says.

Huck captains The Mississippi offshore to the south-southeast toward the coordinates Cleve gave him. Irene “Angler Cupcake” Steele is lucky, because the water is glass and the boat might as well have a diamond-edged hull. The ride is smooth and easy—and despite having an unwanted, unexpected passenger, Huck relaxes. Is he surprised this woman found him? He is. But then again, he isn’t. He had guessed that she existed, though he never spoke the words out loud. He thought maybe a few months from now, someone from the secret life of the Invisible Man might surface.

Or was this the Invisible Man’s secret life?

Yes, Huck thinks.

He might ask Irene some questions. Maybe by learning about Russell Steele, he’ll learn about Rosie. But Huck knew Rosie. He knew Rosie. She fell in love with a man who had a wife elsewhere and now that wife was here on Huck’s boat, expecting Huck to answer questions like he owes it to her.

Does he owe it to her? That’s not a question he wants to explore right now.

He’s less bothered by her presence than he ought to be. Why is that? Because she’s hurting, too. Because she lost someone at exactly the same time he did, and so she also must feel like the gods have her by the head and toes and are wringing her out.

But enough. It’s time to fish.

As Huck nears the coordinates Cleve gave him, he slows down. A little ways off he sees something floating on the water and directs the boat over until he can see what it is. A rectangular cut of carpet. Huck bends over to grab it.

“Someone tossed that?” Irene asks.

“Someone left it,” Huck says. “As a marker. This is where the fish are. Or were. There’s no telling now. I heard this back on New Year’s Eve.”

“Before,” Irene says.

They’re in the same emotional space. There’s no way to think of New Year’s Eve except as before.

Huck nods and grabs a rod for Irene and one for himself. He checks her lure and her line and hands it over.

“You know how to cast?” he says.

“Of course,” she says.

“Would you like a beer?”

“If you’re having one,” she says.

Well, it’s his day and he is having one. He happens to believe that beer brings the fish. He flips the cap off two Red Stripes and places one in the cup holder next to Irene’s left hip. Then he retreats to the other side of the boat and discreetly watches Irene.

She lifts the beer to her lips and takes a nice long swallow. Then she holds the line, flips the bale, and executes a more than competent sidearm cast. Wheeeeeeeeee! The line flies.

Beautiful, Huck has to admit. He hasn’t seen a woman—hell, a person—cast like that since… well, since he’s not sure when.

Nearly as soon as she starts to reel the line in, her rod bows.

“Fish on,” she says. Her voice is calm and assured. Most women—hell, people—get a fish on and they shout like God lost a tooth. The rod is really bending; there’s a fish on and it’s big. Huck gets a rush. He has been skunked since Halloween. He’s ready—more than ready.

“You want help with that?” Huck asks.

“Not yet,” Irene says.

“Come sit in the fighting chair,” Huck says. “I think you’re going to need it.” He leads Irene over to the chair and gets her situated, pole in the holder. Meanwhile, she’s doing just the right thing, letting the fish take some line and then reeling when the fish rests. Huck would normally be offering verbal instructions, but Irene is making every move at just the right time. He can’t be accused of “mansplaining,” which has earned him the silent treatment from both Rosie and Maia in the past.

Huck moves Irene’s beer to where she can reach it and she does, at one point, take a quick swig, then gets back to reeling. She is one cool customer. Likely she has a monster on the other end of her line, and Huck has seen men twice her size give up on light tackle. It’s difficult by anyone’s standards.

“You’re doing great,” Huck says. He feels strangely useless, the way he felt at Rosie’s bedside when she was giving birth to Maia. “Just let me know if you need help.”

“I’m fine,” Irene says.

She is fine, releasing, then reeling in, two steps forward, one step back, which is what a fish like this takes, and she doesn’t seem to be losing patience. Fifteen minutes pass, then twenty. She’s getting more aggressive with her reeling, which is what he would have advised. The fish is getting tired.

“Anyone else would have handed the reel over by now,” Huck says.

“I doubt that,” Irene says.

“I only meant to say you’re doing well,” Huck says. He can’t believe it, but he thinks of the Invisible Man, Russell Steele. You have a wife who fishes like this and you cheated on her?

Huck should cast his own line, he knows, but he’s vested in this fight and wants to see it through. Irene lets the line go and then she reels with a grunt—she’s human, after all—and just like that, Huck sees the flash of gold fins beneath the surface.

“Here we go, baby,” he says. “Don’t give up now. Bring him in.”

Irene lets out a moan that sounds like a bedroom noise, and Huck won’t lie, he gets a bit of a rise. But no time to dwell on that, thank God, because here’s the fish. Huck grabs the gaff and leans all the way over the side of the boat to spear the fucker and hook it up over the railing onto the deck of The Mississippi, where it flops around, making a tremendous ruckus. It has gorgeous green and gold scales, Huck’s favorite color in the world, and the protruding forehead of a bull fish.

“Mahi mahi,” he says. “I’d say twenty-five pounds, maybe forty inches long.”

Irene takes a sip of her beer. “Can we eat it?”

“For days,” Huck says. Without thinking, he raises his hand for a high-five and Irene slaps his palm, square and solid. He grabs her hand.

“Congratulations,” he says. “That was some skillful rod work there, Angler Cupcake.”

Irene looks at Huck and she breaks into a smile and then so does Huck, and for one second, they are two people standing in the tropical sunshine while one hell of a majestic fish flops at their feet. For one second, they forget their hearts are broken.

It doesn’t end there—no, not even close. Huck puts the bull on ice and then casts his own rod, and Irene casts again, and they both get fish on. Two more mahi. Again, they cast. Huck gets a hit right away, Irene a few minutes later. Two more mahi. Irene asks if there’s a head and Huck says, “There is down below. No paper in the bowl, please.” Irene comes up a few minutes later, pops the top off a Red Stripe, and casts a line. She gets a fish on.

It’s insane. Insanely wonderful. They have six mahi, eight, twelve. Huck brings in a barracuda, which he throws back, and Irene brings in a mahi that has been bitten clean in half.

“Shark,” Huck says. He unhooks the half fish and throws it back.

“Oh yeah?” Irene says. He thinks maybe he scared her, but she casts another line.

Fourteen, sixteen, seventeen mahi.

Thank you, LeeAnn, he thinks. For the past five years, every time he’s caught a fish, he’s thanked his wife, because he believes she’s helping from above. Silly, he knows.

They take a break and Huck offers Irene one of the Cuban sandwiches, which she accepts gratefully. He thinks maybe they’ll talk, but Irene takes her sandwich to the bow of the boat, on the side with the shade, and Huck lets her be. He does wonder what she’s thinking about. Is she contemplating the horizon, wondering what happens when we die?

He would like to explain to her how extraordinary today is. Seventeen mahi! Maybe she understands, or maybe she thinks fishing with Huck is always like this. At any rate, she returns to the stern, pulls a bottle out of the water, and casts a line.

At three thirty, he tells her it’s time to go.

“Yes,” she says. “I’m sure my sons will be wondering about me.”

Sons? he thinks. She has sons. He wants to ask how many and how old they are—but there isn’t time. He has to pick up Maia. Today has been magical, nearly supernatural, and restorative the way he’d hoped. But unfortunately, real life awaits.

Forty-five minutes later, he pulls up to the dock by the canary-yellow National Park Service building. He ties up and offers a hand to help Irene out of the boat.

“Oh wait,” he says. “I owe you some fish.”

“Don’t worry about it,” she says.

“No, no,” he says. He doesn’t have time to fillet any right now, and he can’t very well hand her a whole mahi. “I could drop some off at your villa tomorrow. Or we could meet somewhere in town?”

“You don’t have to give me any fish,” Irene says. She takes a deep breath. “I can’t believe how therapeutic today was. I managed… somehow… to step out of myself. And it’s because you let me tag along. So I’m grateful. I will forever remember today and your kindness.”

It sounds like she’s saying good-bye, and Huck rejects this for some reason. “Are you… leaving? Soon? Leaving the island? Heading home?”

“At some point, I guess,” Irene says. “I have a life at home. A job, a house, and Russ’s mother, Milly, is still alive and I’m her… contact person, her point person, the one who makes decisions for her. My sons have lives as well. We can’t stay forever. But we’re still waiting for the ashes and for a report from the authorities about what exactly happened…”

“Bird got struck by lightning,” Huck says.

“I guess they need to confirm that,” Irene says. She presses her lips together, and Huck sees her fighting tears.

“Listen, what if we met in town sometime tomorrow? We could grab a drink and I’ll bring you a bag of mahi fillets.” Tomorrow’s Monday, and it’s also the night of the Gifft School’s annual overnight field trip to the Maho Bay campground. They’ll sleep in tents and tell ghost stories. Maia had said she still wanted to go, and Huck wasn’t particularly looking forward to a night alone.

“You said you’ve never been to the villa,” Irene says. “Is that true?”

“That’s true,” Huck says. “I don’t even know where it is.”

“I don’t know where it is, either,” Irene says. “But why don’t you bring some of that fish over tomorrow evening and we can grill it. I’ll figure out the address and I’ll text you. You do text, right?”

“Of course I text,” Huck says. “I have a twelve-year-old granddaughter.”

Irene stares at him a second and then pulls out her phone. “Give me your number,” she says.

Huck watches Irene walk away. She’s not a bad-looking woman, not bad-looking at all, and, boy, can she fish. If she were anyone else—anyone else—Huck would ask her out. As it is, they have a sort-of date tomorrow night.

If she remembers to text him.

Which she probably won’t.

Why would she?

She might, though, he thinks. She just might.

BAKER

Both his mother and his brother return to the house in the late afternoon. Both are sunburned, and they won’t tell him where they’ve been. Baker has been home, lying by the pool, waiting for his phone to ring with some news about… about anything. He’s called VISAR and gotten transferred three times, so he’s had to leave messages. Then he called the Peebles Hospital on Tortola, hoping they could give him some information about Russ’s ashes, but the woman he spoke to, Letitia, said she didn’t have any bodies by the name of Russell Steele.

“Really?” Baker asked. “It’s my father… he was in that helicopter crash off Virgin Gorda on New Year’s Day.”

“I was off last week for the holidays,” Letitia said. “All I can tell you, sir, is that name is not in the hospital database.”

“The contact name might have been Todd Croft,” Baker said. “Would you mind checking Croft?”

“Not a problem,” Letitia said. He heard her typing. “I’m sorry, I don’t have that name in the database, either. You might check with the Americans.”

Baker called the Hurley-Davis Funeral Home in St. Thomas and spoke to Bianca, who was even less helpful.

“I’m looking for my father’s remains. His name was Russell Steele. He was killed in the helicopter crash north of Virgin Gorda on New Year’s Day.”

“Virgin Gorda?” Bianca said. “You’ll need to call Peebles Hospital, then. On Tortola.”

Baker had hung up, confused and agitated. He tried the number his mother had for Todd Croft next, but it was out of service. Next he went to his laptop to look up the Ascension website, but the site wouldn’t load. Baker couldn’t figure out if his service here on the island was the problem or if something was wrong with the website. He googled the names Russell Steele and Todd Croft—his Google worked, so it wasn’t the service that was the issue—but none of the hits matched the men Baker was looking for. He tried Stephen Thompson next—there were probably only fifty or sixty thousand people in the world with that name—so he refined it by adding pilot and British Virgin Islands, but that was a bust. There was a Stephen Thompson, Esquire, listed in the Cayman Islands—not exactly pay dirt, but Baker had nothing else to go on, so he called the number listed on the website and that number, too, was out of service.

Coincidence? Baker wondered. Or was this Stephen Thompson the same Stephen Thompson who piloted the helicopter? It was beginning to feel like someone was trying to erase the whole situation.

Before Baker could explore further, Anna texted, asking Baker when he was coming home. Floyd misses you, she wrote. Baker wanted to respond that Anna would be well served to put in some quality time with Floyd now that she was going to be a single parent. But instead, Baker channeled his best self—which was easier when he remembered how he felt when he’d set eyes on Ayers—and he said, Things here are still in flux so I’m not sure. Tell Floyd I love him.

To which Anna responded not Ok (her go-to) but rather, Do you think you’ll still be there on Wednesday?

Yes, he said. Definitely yes. If you need a sitter, call Kelsey.

Don’t need a sitter, she said.

Yeah, right, Baker thought. In his ruminations about Anna and Louisa, he has naturally wondered how long they’ve been together, and when it started, and what their plans for the future entail. They’ll become a regular lesbian couple, he supposes, if two in-demand cardiac surgeons count as regular.

His pain and shock have been ameliorated by his own experience. When he set eyes on Ayers, he knew instantly it was love. Why shouldn’t that have been true for Anna? She might have been discussing a case with Louisa when she realized: This is who I want.

Cash and Irene head off to opposite parts of the house to shower. Neither of them had expressed any interest in dinner, and frankly, they had both seemed kind of off, almost as if they’d been drinking.

Well, fine, Baker thinks. Clearly they aren’t a bonded band of three in their grieving. If his mom and brother can go out on their own, then so can he. He grabs one of the sets of Jeep keys. He’s going to dinner at La Tapa.

Baker heads to town slowly—the steering wheel is on the left, like at home, but here everyone drives on the left instead of the right—and the roads are steep, hilly, and poorly lit. Once he gets to town, he finds that the streets are alive with people out enjoying their Caribbean vacation. Baker has an urge to grab a father walking through Powell Park holding his wife’s hand while he carries a little boy about Floyd’s age on his shoulders. Do you know how lucky you are? Baker wants to ask. Baker’s envy isn’t limited to just that one guy. Everyone who isn’t mired in an emotional crisis should be grateful. Baker, while he was at the playground with Floyd on Tuesday afternoon, should have been grateful, instead of bemoaning the state of his marriage. Why hadn’t he been grateful?

La Tapa is easy to find. It’s right next to Woody’s, which has a crowd of post-happy-hour revelers still hanging out front. Baker parks the Jeep up the street and heads back to the restaurant. His emotions quickly shift from self-pity to nerves. It’s been a while since he’s pursued anyone romantically. But he’s an okay-looking guy, maybe a little soft around the middle, thanks to life as a stay-at-home dad and all the late-night ice cream, but he can shed the weight with some exercise. He’ll go for a run tomorrow, he decides.

He steps down into a tasteful, rustic dining room. The place is charming, with its candlelight and white linen tablecloths, rough-hewn wooden bar and fresh flowers. And it smells so good—rich, layered scents of butter and roasting meat and herbs.

Baker takes an empty seat at the end of the bar closest to the kitchen, next to where the waitstaff come to pick up their drink orders. Ayers, where is Ayers?

“Hey, man, welcome to La Tapa,” the bartender says. “My name is Skip. Can I get you something to drink?”

Baker has become a big fan of the St. John beers but he opts for a vodka tonic. He’s out of the house, this place is really nice, and he’s going to act like an adult. His drink comes and he peruses the menu, using his peripheral vision to look for Ayers. There’s a tall, slender girl with cropped dark hair hanging at the service station, flirting with Skip the bartender, and there are two male servers. But Baker doesn’t see Ayers.

“Can I get you something to eat?” Skip asks.

Baker scans the menu. It all looks delicious, but he can’t begin to think about food until he finds Ayers. He’s in the right place: she said La Tapa, and she asked him to stop by…

“What’s good?” Baker asks helplessly. If she’s not here, he should leave and come back tomorrow. He’ll bring Cash with him.

“The mussels are the best in the world, and the mahi was just caught today, if you like fresh fish,” Skip says. “It’s done with braised artichokes and a thyme beurre blanc.”

Baker raises his head to look Skip in the eye. “Is Ayers working tonight, by any chance?”

Skip’s eyebrows shoot up. “Ayers? She’s off tonight. It’s Sunday night—she works on Treasure Island on Sundays. She’ll be on tomorrow night. Do you want me to leave her a message?”

“No, no…”

Skip leans over the bar and lowers his voice. “I hear you, man, she’s really hot. A little psycho, but all chicks are psycho. She sometimes comes in here on her night off for a glass of Schramsberg, so you might want to stick around.”

Baker’s heart is buoyed even as his mind is racing. Stay or go? Stay, he thinks. She sometimes comes in here on her night off for a glass of the whatever. But what does Baker’s new best friend, Skip, mean by “a little psycho”? There’s a mom named Mandy at the Children’s Cottage—Baker’s school wives call her “psycho” because she’s obsessed with the Houston Astros, especially Justin Verlander. She wears Astros merch every single day, and she got a vanity plate for her Volvo that says JV-35. Maybe Skip tried to put the moves on Ayers and she turned him down, so he has categorized her as “a little psycho” to soothe his bruised ego. Guys do that. For instance, Baker might be tempted to call Dr. Anna Schaffer “a little psycho” for leaving him for Louisa, even though Anna is the most mentally stable person Baker knows.

Maybe Ayers has foibles—of course she does, everyone does. Baker vows he will love her foibles.

“I’ll have the mussels,” Baker says. “And the mahi, at your suggestion.”

“Good man,” Skip says. The tall, short-haired girl comes back, and Skip says, “Hey, Tilda, this guy is here to see Ayers. Is she coming in for a nightcap, do you know?”

Tilda turns to stare down Baker. She shakes her head in disbelief. “You do realize that Ayers’s best friend died, like, five days ago, right?”

“Uh,” Baker says. “Right…”

Tilda snarls at Skip. “And no, I don’t think Ayers is coming for a nightcap, since that was only something she did when Rosie was working!” Tilda’s voice is so loud that the entire restaurant grows quiet.

Skip pours Tilda a shot of beer, and without a word she throws it back and storms off. A few seconds later the restaurant returns to its normal decibel level and Skip leans forward.

“Sorry about that, man. That’s Tilda for you. She’s a little…”

“Psycho,” Baker says. “Got it.”

The mussels arrive, they’re outstanding, the best Baker has ever had, and then the mahi comes and it’s even better, fresh and moist, just cooked through, perfectly seasoned, and the sauce is so sublime, he’s light-headed.

But no Ayers.

“How was your food?” Skip asks as he clears the plates.

“Unbelievable,” Baker says. “So good that I think I’ll be back tomorrow night with my brother.”

“Cool, man,” Skip says. “I’ll save you guys two bar seats, and, hey—I don’t do that for just anyone.”

“That’s great, thank you,” Baker says. He pays the bill and leaves Skip a very, very generous tip—nearly 40 percent—because he can’t risk Skip telling Ayers that a guy came in looking for her who seemed a little…

The next morning Baker gets up early to go for a run. He was an athlete in high school, the classic three—football, basketball, and baseball—and when he got to Northwestern, he played on his fraternity’s intramural teams. In Chicago, he belonged to Lakeshore Sport & Fitness, where he went mostly to meet women. He hasn’t done much in the way of exercise since moving to Houston. There was one ill-advised 5K in Memorial Park; he thought he was having a heart attack—a great irony, because Anna was supposed to come cheer him on, but she’d been called in to work, so one of his thoughts as his vision went black and he stopped dead in his tracks, bent over his knees, was that at least Anna was in a position to save his life.

But today, Baker decides, will be different. Today he is motivated. He has a mission: he is going to sweep Ayers off her feet. He laces up his sneakers and heads out to the end of his father’s driveway.

While he feels okay running down his father’s shaded road, when he gets to the bottom and turns right, he’s in the sun and it’s immediately uphill. As if that isn’t bad enough, a large open-air taxi comes blazing around a blind corner, nearly forcing him over the guard rail down the side of the cliff to the sea. Baker breaks stride to flip the driver off.

Ayers, he thinks. He keeps going, shoulders back, spine straight, face stoic. The sun is broiling, it’s hotter than Houston in August, and suddenly he feels last night’s vodka tonics and mussels and mahi churning in his stomach. The hill grows steep. Baker sets his gaze three feet ahead of his stride—otherwise he’ll give up.

Ayers, he thinks. Do this for Ayers. He hears three low resonant notes, like a foghorn. He raises his face to see an enormous water truck barreling down the hill toward him. He jumps aside.

That’s it, he thinks. He’s done. He turns around.

He gets lost walking back. How can he be lost when he’s only been on one road? His father’s driveway is hidden and unmarked, but Baker has been able to find it when he’s driving because it’s a few yards after the utility pole, which has two yellow stripes. Where is that pole? Baker can’t tell if it’s in front of him or behind him. He didn’t bring his phone; he has sweat in his eyes.

A small lizard-green pickup truck pulls up next to him.

“Are you lost?” a woman asks.

“Maybe?” Baker says. He wipes the sweat off his face with the bottom of his t-shirt and starts to laugh in a way that he knows makes him sound unhinged. But really, what is he even doing here? And then it hits him: his father is dead.

He starts to cry.

“Baker?” the woman says.

Baker’s head snaps up. He looks through the open passenger window to the driver’s side. It’s not some random woman in a funny truck. It’s Ayers.

No, he thinks. Not possible. But yes, it’s her, and she’s even lovelier than he remembers. Her hair is in a messy bun; she’s wearing a loose tank top and yoga pants and he can see she’s driving in bare feet. Bare, sandy feet.

“Hey,” he says, wiping at his eyes. “How are you?”

“Surviving,” she says. “Listen, can I give you a ride somewhere?”

“Oh… no,” Baker says. “I’m good. I was just heading back from a run and I seem to have gotten turned around, maybe. Or maybe not. I’m not sure. But I’ll figure it out.”

“You sure?” Ayers says. “I just took yoga on the beach at Maho and I don’t work until four. I have plenty of time to take you wherever.”

“I’m okay,” Baker says. “Thanks, though.”

“Was it you who came in to La Tapa last night?” Ayers says. “I must have just missed you. Skip said you’d been in.”

“Oh… yeah,” Baker says. “Yeah, that was me. Food was fantastic. Thanks for the recommendation.” He realizes he sounds like he’s trying to get rid of her—and he is trying to get rid of her. He can’t believe she caught him here, now, in his weakest moment. On top of everything else, his bowels are starting to rumble. He needs her to move on. Why her, of all people? Did he conjure her by saying her name so many times in his mind? Or are there really only five people on this island?

“You’re welcome,” Ayers says. “Hey, are you sure you’re okay?”

Baker straightens up against the troublesome clenching in his gut. He tries to look like the world conqueror he wants her to believe he is. “I’m great, thanks. Hey, listen, I may…” He wants to say he may come to the restaurant again that night with Cash, but at that moment a taxi pulls up behind Ayers and the driver lays on his horn.

“Okay, bye!” Ayers says, and she drives off.

It takes him a while but eventually he finds the pole with two yellow stripes and the nondescript dirt road that is his father’s. When Baker finally makes it home, he’s depleted, physically and emotionally. What must Ayers think of him? He’s going to have to roll into La Tapa that night and be his most impressive self.

He enters the kitchen to find his mother standing in front of the open refrigerator, sniffing the container of pasta salad, and he’s transported back a decade or so.

“Mom?” he says. He’s surprised to find her in this posture; his mother has expressed no interest in food the entire time they’ve been here.

Irene straightens up and closes the fridge. She has an inscrutable expression on her face. Baker almost feels like he caught her at something.

“I have to ask a favor,” she says.

He goes to the sink for water. “Anything,” he says. “What is it?”

“I need you and your brother to go out tonight,” she says. “I have a dinner guest coming at seven and I’d like privacy.”

Baker takes a second to process this. She has a dinner guest coming? It must be Todd Croft, he thinks. Who else could it possibly be? His mother doesn’t know anyone around here. He realizes her request is fortuitous. Now Baker and Cash can go to La Tapa by themselves without seeming like they’re ditching her.

“You got it,” Baker says.

His mother appears relieved, not only at his answer but also because he hasn’t asked any follow-up questions. She has a secret, he thinks. She knows something she isn’t telling them. Which leads him to the nagging guilt he feels because he hasn’t told his mother about what’s happening with Anna. It seems inconsequential after everything that’s happened.

His mother goes back to rummaging through the fridge, inspecting this and that.

“Oh, look,” she says. “Camembert.”

Baker handles the news of Irene’s surprise dinner guest far better than Cash. Cash barely manages to conceal his indignation. Baker has to admit that it is a little disconcerting to see his mother wearing a black gauzy sundress, her hair freshly washed and combed out long and loose (honestly, he can’t remember the last time he saw it out of its braid). The dress isn’t anything new, he doesn’t think, more like something she would wear when she and Russ used to entertain the Dunns and the Kinseys by the pool back in Iowa City.

Baker watches Irene bury a bottle of Cakebread chardonnay in an ice bucket. There’s no mention of how twisted it is that Russ kept Irene’s favorite wine—a case of it—in a house that she knew nothing about. She bids both boys good-bye with a kiss, seeming like a subdued version of her former self. But it’s clear she wants them to leave. It’s quarter to seven.

As soon as Baker and Cash get in the Jeep, Cash explodes. “What the hell is going on? Cheese and crackers? Wine? And did you see what she was wearing? And what’s with the secrecy? She won’t tell us who’s coming for dinner?”

“It must be Todd Croft,” Baker says. “Right? It has to be. Which is good, because he’s been unreachable and the Ascension website is down. Something weird is going on.”

“Then why not just tell us that?” Cash says. He’s on his way to a five-flavor freak-out, which is how their father used to describe Cash’s tantrums growing up. It makes no sense that Cash—who doesn’t have an ambitious or competitive bone in his body, who skis for a living—is so high-strung emotionally, while Baker, who thrives on pressure and tension, tends to be pretty sanguine no matter what. And yet that’s the way it is. Maybe Cash inherited more of their hotheaded Scottish ancestors’ blood and Baker the sangfroid of the Norwegians. Maybe Cash was treated differently growing up because he was the “baby.” Maybe it’s simply one of the unsolved mysteries of human nature: how two siblings, born of the same parents and raised in the same house, can be complete opposites. Cash is clearly bent out of shape by Irene’s behavior, whereas Baker doesn’t care. What he does care about—immensely—is seeing Ayers.

Maybe Baker is just painfully self-absorbed.

“Do you trust Mom?” Baker asks.

“Yes,” Cash says. “But then again, I trusted Dad…”

Baker cuts him off. “We’re talking about Mom. You trust her. Do you think she’s likely to do anything rash or self- destructive?”

“No,” Cash says.

“No,” Baker agrees. Irene Steele is the epitome of level-headed competence. Her behavior today harks back to her actions on Thanksgiving Day of his senior year at Northwestern, when he brought home his friend Donny Foley, from Skagway, Alaska. Baker and Donny had been in the front yard of the Steeles’ Victorian playing the traditional game of tackle football with Cash and a few of the neighbors. Donny took a hard hit and started screaming that his shoulder was dislocated. Irene had come flying out of the house in her apron—she was cooking a turkey with all the trimmings for twenty people—and with one strong twist, she had popped Donny’s shoulder back in place. The entire episode took all of thirty seconds, but his mother’s composure and swift act would be forever emblazoned in Baker’s mind.

His mother is, in today’s parlance, a badass.

If she wants privacy for dinner, it’s for a good reason.

“… but I trusted Dad not to do anything rash or self-destructive, and look what happened!” Cash shouts these last three words, and, as usual when confronted with Cash’s episodes, Baker shuts down. He won’t say a word until they get to dinner.

But Cash’s words echo in Baker’s mind. I trusted Dad not to do anything rash or self-destructive, and look what happened.

Look what happened.

At La Tapa, Baker and Cash take the seats at the corner of the bar that Skip has reserved for them. Skip lights up as though Baker is an old friend and offers a fist bump.

“Hey, man, back again, two nights in a row, now that’s an endorsement, if ever there were one.” He leans in. “And Ayers is here, man, you’re in luck.”

“Great,” Baker says, and he immediately breaks into a light sweat. There’s a guy with a guitar in the corner crooning Cat Stevens, and because of the live music, the restaurant is really crowded, much more crowded than the night before. Where is Ayers? Baker casts around, then sees her pulling a cork from a bottle of red wine for a middle-aged couple on the deck under the awning. Her hair is up and she’s wearing the black uniform shirt with the black apron over it. She is… breathtaking. There’s no other word for it.

“Hey, man, I’m Skip.” Skip offers Cash his hand, and Baker says, “I’m sorry. This is my brother, Cash.”

Skip asks Cash where he’s from and Cash says Breckenridge, Colorado, and it turns out that Skip was a snowboarder in Telluride in his former life. Cash says (as Baker knows he’s going to), “To hell you ride! No way, man!” And then they’re off and running, talking about how Peak 7 compares to Senior’s as Baker sits anxiously by, wondering when he can reasonably interrupt to ask Skip for a vodka tonic.

He feels a hand on his back.

“Hey,” Ayers says. “You came!” She looks genuinely happy and surprised, and Baker experiences a surge of pure love like a sugar high or a hit of nicotine—but then Ayers turns her attention to Cash. “Hey, stranger!”

Cash stands up and gives Ayers a hug—more like an overly familiar, overly affectionate squeeze—and Baker is confused. He recalls introducing Cash to Ayers at the reception briefly, but had they said anything more than hello?

Ayers looks at Skip. “Buy these two a round on the house.” She points to Cash. “Painkiller, extra strong, for this guy.”

Cash laughs. “No, thank you.”

“Aw, come on,” Ayers says. “How about a rum punch, Myers’s floater?”

“Stop!” Cash says.

Baker is lost. What is going on here? He’s about to ask when Ayers rests a hand on his bicep. Involuntarily, he flexes.

“Are you feeling better?” she asks.

“I… uh, yeah, yes,” Baker says.

“If you want to run, you should drive to Maho. There’s a four-mile loop to Leinster Bay. Skip can draw you a map, can’t you, Skip?”

“On it,” Skip says.

“Gotta get back to work,” Ayers says. “Say good-bye before you leave.”

“Thanks for the drink,” Cash says. Then to Skip he says, “Don’t listen to her. I’ll have a beer. Island Hoppin’ IPA is fine.”

“Did you go out on Treasure Island?” Skip asks.

Cash nods. “Yesterday. Poisoned myself.”

“That happens,” Skip says. “Did you go to Jost?”

“Baths, Cooper Island, the Indians.”

“Next time, you’ve got to go to Jost,” Skip says. “You haven’t lived until you’ve had a painkiller at the Soggy Dollar.”

Baker says, “I’ll have a vodka tonic, please.” He pauses. Then, at the risk of sounding like a douche bag, he says, “Pronto.” He’s failed: He sounds like a douche bag. But he’s learning that Skip is a talker and easily distracted. And Baker desperately needs a drink if he’s to process what he thinks is going on.

Skip slaps the bar. “Pronto.”

The drink does arrive pretty much pronto. Baker takes a long, deep sip before he turns to his brother, who is doing his best to look nonchalant—twirling his beer bottle, humming along to the guitar player, who is doing a fair rendition of “Promises,” by Eric Clapton.

“Do you mean to tell me that’s where you were yesterday?” Baker says. “You went out on Treasure Island? You went on a trip to the BVIs?” Baker lowers his voice and moves in on Cash. “Our father is dead. I sat home waiting to hear from Her Royal Highness’s blasted coast guard or what have you. I called the crematorium trying to track down the ashes, and you’re out getting drunk on a pleasure cruise?”

“Yep,” Cash says. A smile is playing around his lips and Baker wants to punch him. He was out all day on a boat with Ayers, getting drunk, getting cozy. Baker’s question is: How did Cash even know Ayers worked on Treasure Island? He hadn’t been around for that part of the conversation. Was it just dumb luck—Cash needed something to do, stumbled across Treasure Island, and recognized Ayers? Or is something more going on? Baker knows that Cash has long wanted to get back at him for hooking up with Claire Bellows at Northwestern. Baker had bumped into her at a Sig Ep party when he was a junior and she was just a freshman. Quite frankly, Claire had thrown herself at Baker. She had drunkenly confided that the entire time she’d been with Cash she had harbored a painful crush on Baker. Baker had pretended to be surprised by this admission, although he had certainly noticed all of the moony looks and the way, whenever Irene had invited Claire to stay for dinner, she had always chosen the seat next to Baker and “accidentally” bumped knees with him under the table. When Baker saw her at Sig Ep, he had spent a few minutes deliberating with his conscience. Could he screw Claire Bellows? He wasn’t a complete asshole, and he did love his brother, deep down. But Claire’s fawning attention and the number of beers Baker had drunk that night won out. He had taken her back to his room. In the morning, consumed with guilt, she had called Cash.

Cash had been pissed enough to threaten getting on a bus from Boulder to Chicago and showing up to kick Baker’s ass.

Baker had laughed and said, “I can’t help it if chicks like me better, dude.” He had meant this as a kind of apology, but Cash had taken it as exactly the opposite. Things between them had never been the same. Baker thought, Fine, whatever. He wished they were closer or at least on less prickly terms, but they were adults—or at least Baker was, with a house and a wife and a child. Cash was still a punk, mooching off their father’s magnanimity, and apparently still a sore loser. It could be that Cash has been waiting all these many years to get back at Baker.

“Really,” Baker says now. “How did all that come about?”

“Ayers invited me,” Cash says.

Baker finishes the rest of his vodka tonic in one swallow, then holds his empty glass up to Skip, and Skip says, “Pronto, man, as soon as I finish with the sixteen orders from the service bar,” a response Baker knows he deserves.

“Invited you when?” Baker says.

“When I bumped into her hiking,” Cash says.

“Hiking.”

“Winnie and I hiked the Reef Bay Trail on Saturday,” Cash says. “And we came across Ayers by the petroglyphs, crying and nearly out of drinking water.”

“Stop,” Baker says. He can all too easily picture the scene. Winnie probably approached Ayers; Cash was fond of letting his dog introduce him to women. And then Cash wooed her by being his well-prepared Boy Scout self. “Just so we’re clear on this, I’m going to ask her out.”

“What?” Cash says. “You can’t ask her out. You’re married.”

“I…” Baker realizes he hasn’t told Cash about Anna, so he most definitely sounds like a world-class jerk. “Anna and I have separated.”

“What?” Cash says.

Baker can’t explain right now. And he can’t wait another twenty minutes for a drink. And he can’t sit and eat a meal with his brother, who has seen Ayers two of the past three days and now has his own private jokes with her.

Baker stands up. He sets the Jeep keys next to Cash’s beer. “I’m out,” he says.

He expects Cash to protest, but all Cash says is, “Good.”

Baker weaves between tables as the guitar player croaks out “Thunder Road.” Baker scans the restaurant and sees Ayers taking an order out on the deck. He stands a few feet behind her until she finishes and then he whispers her name.

She spins around. “Oh, hi,” she says. “Are you leaving?”

“I only came for a drink,” he says. He squares his shoulders. “Listen, turns out I’m here for a couple more days. I’d love to take you out.”

“That’s sweet,” Ayers says. “But I’m pretty busy. I work two jobs and I have…”

“When are you free?” Baker asks. “I can do lunch, I can do dinner…”

Ayers chews her bottom lip and peers into the restaurant. Is she looking at Cash? he wonders. That’s just impossible.

“Seriously,” Baker says. “I can do breakfast or late drinks. Or late dinner. How about tonight, after you get off?”

Ayers looks hesitant. She’s wavering. There’s no way she’s into Cash; Baker rejects the very idea.

“Please,” he says. “Just tell me what time.”

“Ten o’clock,” she says. “I’ll be done by ten and we can go to De’ Coal Pot. They serve Caribbean food.”

“Perfect,” Baker says. “I’ll be back at ten.”

Ayers nods and hurries inside, and Baker watches her go.

Just please don’t invite my brother, he thinks.