He glanced down at her and squeezed her hand. Good. She didn’t have to spell it out that he was the reason she was unsure. Trudy was part of it, too, of course, but Frank played an increasingly large part in her uncertainty. It was so foreign to her—to have a man factor into a decision about her life. It had never been that way for Violet. Trudy, sure. She was the beauty, the desired one. Not just by boys and men but by everyone—friends, teachers, anyone with a camera. Since she was thirteen, Trudy had been quantifying and estimating herself based on how she was perceived, mostly by the opposite sex. Violet had always had complete freedom in her decisions. At least as it pertained to men.

And now here she was with a chance to go somewhere she’d always wanted to go, while doing the thing she loved to do, and she was waffling.

She kicked the sand with her toe, causing a cloud of it to fly back against their shins in the breeze.

“I think you should go for it.”

“You do?”

“I do. Turn it in Monday and see what happens. If you get in, you’ll go and study and learn. Then you can come back and tell me all about it.”

Relief etched itself across her face in the form of a wide smile. She stopped and threw her arms around his neck. “Who knows?” he murmured into her ear. “Maybe I’ll get some time off and I can come visit while you’re there.”

“I’d like that very much.”

He put a gentle finger on her chin. “And I like you very much, Violet Figg.” Her heart pounded but she didn’t speak. “Where did you come from? You just walked into my life and changed my whole world.”

“Actually, I think you walked into mine.”

He chuckled. “Regardless, I don’t think I’ll ever be the same.”

* * *

Frank’s cane stabbed the sand with each step he took, and Violet was momentarily flustered, having nearly forgotten that it was decades later, and the man next to her was no longer the young, sure-footed, rookie policeman he’d been back then. And she was no longer the fresh-faced, ambitious young woman she’d once been.

Next to her Frank made a mark on his clipboard, then lowered it to his side. “I have some questions, if you don’t mind.”

She paused to steady herself. To ground herself in the here and now. “I’m surprised. You seem to have caught on to everything quickly.”

“I don’t mean about the surveys. I mean about you.”

“Oh.” She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. She’d left her visor at home, thinking it’d be cloudy all morning, and her hair, no longer rich brown but mousy gray, tickled her cheek.

“It’s been so long. I’m curious about you. About your life.”

Violet swallowed hard and adjusted her backpack on her shoulder. “What do you want to know?”

“Did you ever make it down to the Keys?”