There was no waiting at the dock: the police car and the ambulance drove right onto the ferry, bypassing a short queue of other vehicles. Ninety seconds later, the police and the ambulance reached the other side and rolled off the On Time, which then deadheaded back to Chappy so Taylor could cross next.

Once they, too, reached Edgartown, Annie braced herself as Taylor gunned the engine; they caught up with the ambulance before reaching the Triangle. Luckily, it wasn’t summer yet so the traffic was manageable. But the thought of tourist season began to bear down on Annie: what it might or might not bring. And, most of all, what would happen to Donna.

“Did your mother relapse?” Taylor said, and once again it took a few seconds for Annie to realize that “mother” meant Donna and not Ellen Sutton who’d been dead for years and whom Taylor hadn’t known, anyway.

“I don’t know.” She didn’t tell her Kevin’s suspicion.

“Kevin must be taking it hard.”

“He will if something’s gone wrong.”

Taylor nodded. She did not pry further, which caused Annie to feel more nervous about Donna’s condition. Annie knew practically nothing about any kind of cancer except the leukemia that her mother Ellen had had, and, of course, Murphy’s multiple myeloma. But ovarian cancer was a mystery to her. Except she now knew that Donna had lost her hair.

She hoped the EMTs hadn’t removed Donna’s wig while Kevin was there.

“I always believed that mothers and sons had a special bond,” Taylor continued as they chased the ambulance across Edgartown-Vineyard Haven Road, past the numbered streets from Twenty-First to First on the north side, some of which had names instead of numbers, though Annie did not know why.

“Kevin and Donna do have a special bond,” Annie replied.

“I wanted one with Jonas. But it didn’t work out that way.”

Annie tried to think of something kind to say, instead of asking Taylor to please be quiet so she could concentrate on what might be going on in the back of the vehicle ahead. Would Kevin text her if anything else happened?

She cleared her throat. “I’m sorry, Taylor. But have you heard from Jonas? Is he settled in . . . somewhere?”

“If he’s settled anywhere, it would be at his grandparents’ place in New York. He has no money of his own. But no, I haven’t heard a word.”

“I’m sorry, Taylor. I wish I could have helped.”

The ambulance turned right, down County Road; Taylor steered the pickup behind it. “You could start by finding out who that bone belongs to. I think Jonas became obsessed with thinking it’s his father. For some reason, he still thinks I might have killed the only man I ever loved. So, yeah. The sooner you find that out, the better. Though I don’t expect that if it’s him, they’ll be able to tell from half a skull that I didn’t push him.”