A fter Andersen’s boat left, I went to the foot of the pier and waded through the ankle-deep water to shore. I found Savannah in the middle of the clearing with Alberto and the dogs.

The boy was throwing sticks for Finn and Woden to fetch. Finn was better at the game than Woden, who liked to hang onto the stick and play tug-of-war instead of dropping it at the thrower’s feet.

“Are y’all hungry?” I asked.

“I am,” Savannah replied. “How about you, Alberto?”

“I guess so,” he replied, shrugging his shoulders.

Then let’s go up to the house and have lunch,” I offered. “When I was your age, I was always hungry.”

He frowned up at me, his brows knitted in thought. “I don’t remember anything before they took me to the hospital. But I’ve been hungry since I woke up there.”

I noticed that he spoke quite clearly and used proper grammar. That was unusual in kids today. Wherever he came from, someone had taken the time to teach him well.

That made me think of something else. It was April. He should have been in school. Savannah had home-schooled Flo. They’d called it boat-schooling. I made a mental note to make sure that there was learning material on Ambrosia if he was still with us at the end of the week.

Alberto didn’t pay a lot of attention to the salad. He nibbled on some carrot sticks and tried a couple of slices of cucumber. But after I showed him how to crack open the big crab claws, he murdered half a dozen of them.

“Did you call Chyrel?” Savannah asked, as Alberto and I helped move the plates and utensils to the sink.

“Yeah, she said she’d call Julie and ask her what size Trey wears. They’re about the same size.”

“How long am I going to be here?” Alberto asked.

I knelt down and looked him in the eye. “Here on our island?”

He nodded.

“Just tonight, for now. In the morning, we’re going for a boat ride.”

“Like in the police boat? They let me turn the lights on.”

“My boat’s a lot bigger,” I said. “And Savannah’s boat is even bigger than mine.”

His eyebrows shot up. “Really?”

I grinned. “Yeah, really. And both boats even have two bedrooms, a kitchen, and everything like a house.”

I could see in his eyes that he was struggling to comprehend. I didn’t know much of anything about amnesia. I often wondered why a person afflicted with it could talk, since that was something learned over time. I assumed all memory wasn’t lost.

Did Alberto even know what a bedroom and kitchen were?

“Want to go see them?” I pointed toward the stairs. “My boat’s just down there.”

“You boys go ahead,” Savannah said. “It’ll just take me a few minutes to finish up here.” She scraped all the shells into a small pot and handed it to me. “You can dump these while you’re down there.”

I rose and went with Alberto to the steps, where I flicked on the lights for the dock area below the house.

Alberto scooted down ahead of me but stopped halfway.

“Whoa!” he exclaimed again, gazing at all the polished fiberglass and chrome rails.

He hurried to the bottom of the steps and stood alongside the Revenge , looking up at her high bow flare. “Maravillosa ,” he breathed, scanning the length of the forty-five-foot hull.

I dumped the shells from the pot and left it at the foot of the stairs. Then I led him to the stern and helped him over the gunwale into the cockpit.

“This is my fishing boat,” I said, then pointed at the fighting chair in the middle of the cockpit. “And that’s called a fighting chair. It’s where the fisherman sits to catch the really big fish.”

He looked up at me, quizzically. “How big?”

“Bigger than you,” I replied. “Sometimes bigger than me.”

I opened the door to the salon, and we went inside.

Alberto stood just inside the hatch, looking around. The interior of the Revenge often left visitors speechless. It was done in light maple and holly, with tons of natural lighting.

Even though Alberto didn’t have anything to reference the experience to, I could see that he was awestruck.

“This room is called a salon,” I said. “Sort of like a living room in a house. And what we call a kitchen in the house is a galley on a boat.” I went past him to the refrigerator and opened it. “Care for a juice?”

“Yes, please,” he replied.

Good manners, too.

I gave him one of Jimmy’s mango juice bottles. He thanked me and struggled to open it. Finally, he looked up to me for help. I twisted the cap off and handed both back to him.

“Always recap a drink when you’re on a boat,” I said. “They’ll spill pretty easy.”

He took a swallow and licked his lips, then recapped his juice.

“Come on down here,” I said, flicking on the lights to the passageway and leading the way.

Opening the first hatch on the right, I turned on the light. “Up in the house, you’d say this is a bathroom.”

He looked up at me with recognition in his eyes. “What’s it called on a boat?”

I smiled. He was a bright kid. “It’s called the head.”

Turning, he opened the hatch on the opposite side and looked in. The guest stateroom had three single beds. The two lower ones could slide together to create a double, with a pull-down, Pullman-style berth above.

“What’s this room called?” he asked, stepping inside.

“When you’re aboard, we’ll call this Alberto’s stateroom.”

His face turned up, glee in his eyes. “Really?”

“Really,” I replied with a grin.

His face fell slightly. “When I was in the hospital, they asked me my name and I couldn’t remember. Then they started calling me Alberto.”

“That was the name that was carved into the wood on the boat we found you on. They said you had a pocketknife, so we guessed you’d put the name there—Alberto Mar.”

His face contorted, as if trying to force a memory.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “It’ll come back to you. Did the hospital give you your knife back?”

He shook his head.

“Follow me,” I said, moving forward and opening the door to the master stateroom.

“Wow!” he exclaimed again. then looked up at me and smiled. “This is Jesse’s stateroom?”

“And Savannah’s,” I replied, moving toward the small dresser below the washer and dryer combo.

I opened the drawer and dug through my clothes until I found what I was looking for.

“Here,” I said, extending it to him. “A man should always have a knife. You never know when you’ll need one.”

The Schrade Old Timer had been Pap’s and he’d given it to my dad. When Dad died, Pap gave it to me.

“Take very good care of that until we get yours back, okay?”

“I will,” he said, turning the knife over in his hands. “I have a question.”

“What is it?”

He looked aft through the open hatch. “I didn’t see a steering wheel up there. How do you drive this boat?”

Steering wheel?

I wondered if Andersen had told him what that was while allowing Alberto to turn on the lights. Or did amnesia only affect personal memories? Could his knowledge of what a steering wheel was, have come from a memory of riding in a car with his parents?

I made a mental note to find out more about what memories amnesia erases.

“You’re a very observant young man,” I said. “Follow me.”

He put the knife in his pocket, and we retraced our steps through the salon. Once out in the cockpit, I pointed up the ladder just to port.

“Up there’s the bridge,” I said. “That’s where you drive from.”

“Can we go up there?”

“Sure. Just be careful on the ladder. Whenever you’re on a boat, especially when it’s underway, you should always maintain three points of contact. If you’re lifting a foot to climb a ladder, both hands should hold onto something. When you move a hand, both feet should be standing on something.”

He went up the ladder awkwardly, consciously keeping three points of contact with it.

When we reached the bridge, he went straight to the helm.

“What’s that?” he asked, pointing at the cover over the large chart plotter.

I removed it and turned the unit on. “This is like a map. Do you know what a map is?”

“To show you where you’re going?”

So, it seemed that not all memory was lost when a person developed amnesia. Basic things were retained. He’d seen a map before, maybe in school.

Or maybe Andersen had explained what the chart plotter on the patrol boat was, as well as the steering wheel.

“Exactly,” I replied. “But instead of street names and towns, this one shows how deep the water is and where land is.”

I turned on the other electronics and even turned on the ignition, but didn’t fire the engines up. He asked a lot of questions. Smart ones.

Footsteps could be heard on the stairs.

“Sounds like the admiral is coming down for an inspection,” I said.

“The admiral?”

“I’m the captain of the boat, but Savannah’s the admiral. She outranks me. That means she’s my boss.”

“How come?”

Another good question.

“You’ll understand later,” I said.

“When I get my memory back?”

I laughed. “No, probably not until you’re a few years older—when you have a girlfriend.”

“Ahoy,” Savannah called out.

I looked over the side. “Up here.”

I felt the boat move and knew that Finn or Woden, or more likely both, had jumped over the gunwale into the cockpit. The boat moved again as Savannah came aboard.

“Y’all get back,” I heard her say as she started up the ladder.

Alberto looked up at me, standing next to him at the helm. “Who’s she talking to?”

“The dogs,” I replied, as Savannah joined us.

“Can they come up here?”

“No,” I replied. “They’re not very good at going up a ladder and even worse going down.”

“Teaching him to dive next?” Savannah asked, parroting my earlier question when I saw the fish ID book on the nightstand.

I grinned down at the kid. “No, we haven’t gotten to that yet.”