Patsy looked at me with fear, her eyes blinking rapidly. She didn’t believe what I was saying, for the most part, but inside she knew what I was saying could be true. It could happen. Gavin was violent. Patsy was young. She’d had Emily when she was nineteen, and she was still naively hopeful, blaming herself. “I provoke him. I make him angry. But we make up. He doesn’t hit me very hard and he’s always sorry. Plus, this”—she waved at the bruise on her face—“doesn’t happen often.”

“It happens a lot, Mom,” Emily said. “He hits you and hurts you and you cry. You think I don’t hear you crying, but I do. It’s scary. He’s scary.” Emily burst into tears.

Patsy opened and shut her mouth.

“I hear it when you two are in your bedroom. I can hear you crying when he’s saying bad words to you. That’s why I pound on the door. To make him stop. I don’t like him, Mom. I don’t want him here.”

Patsy was shocked, but defeated, too, and infinitely sad. Gavin was a master manipulator, and Patsy had been alone and lonely and vulnerable for a long time. Sometimes he could be endearing, engaging, charismatic, and sensitive. Gavin had money. He bought her new clothes. They were conservative clothes, high necked because he said he didn’t like Patsy “looking like a sexy, dumb hippy” in her island clothes, but Patsy wore them anyhow. She went from embroidered, flowing, modern clothes, with necklaces and tight jeans, to high-necked sweaters in gray and white.

But she had a man! She had a boyfriend! Gavin would provide. He’d already told her that he would put Emily through college. She was not able to see the facts, though: The man hardly worked. How could he put anyone through college?

“How do you know he’s going to kill her?” Emily asked me, her voice weak and scared. “How?”

“Sometimes I can see the future.” I whispered the words, not wanting to tell my secret, but I had to tell them because Patsy was so nice and I didn’t want Emily to have no mother. “But don’t tell anyone. Please. It’s a secret.”

“No one can see the future,” Patsy said, but her voice wavered. “Don’t lie, Evie. That’s wrong. I’m going to talk to your mother about this.”

“Go ahead. She already knows. That’s why my parents keep trying to get you to break up with Gavin.” Her face went white. “Miss Patsy, he’s going to kill you. You have to break up with him. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. You can come and live with us until the chief can get rid of him and get him off the island. My dad is in the army and he has guns.”