“I don’t know if it was his, but I think he would have mentioned that,” Mia said, her arms wrapped around her stomach, her fingers pressed into the bottom of her rib cage. Izzy hated this. Hated it. “He told us about the fight. And back to your original question, why would he have punched Asher?”

That had struck Izzy as strange. Cash had tossed it out like it was a reasonable expectation—hit his best childhood friend over a girl he barely knew and had no personal attachment to. “Can you explain that?”

“He was kind of . . .” Mia trailed off, her eyes unfocused. “Idealistic, I guess, is the right word. When he was younger.”

“Saw himself as a white hat riding in to save the damsel in distress?”

“You have to understand the way he was raised here,” Mia said, nodding. “I told you Earl was the de facto leader of the island and that it means more here than other places. I wasn’t exaggerating. He was responsible for essentially maintaining civil order on St. Lucy’s.”

“Judge, jury, and . . . ,” Izzy summarized.

“Not quite executioner, but nearly.” Mia huffed out a little breath. “Most people took disputes to him rather than going through any formal methods—he broke up bar fights, got the instigator to pay for the damages, things like that.”

“Was the first responder to a suicide pact between three teenagers,” Izzy said.

“Exactly.” Mia touched her nose, then pointed at her. Izzy didn’t know if she should be worried or relieved that she’d begun to pick up the rhythms of this place. “Cash was groomed into that position. So something like this—if Monroe was upset when she went to Cash, it might have seemed like the right thing to do to go talk to Asher.”

“And then things get heated, maybe Asher says some not-so-flattering things about our damsel, and our white hat hero throws fists,” Izzy said.

“Earl sees or hears about it, grounds Cash, and he can’t go to the lighthouse that night,” Mia finished for her. “Which was probably a good decision all around, to be honest.”

Izzy studied the scenario they’d just drawn out, looking for cracks. Mia seemed to be doing the same.

“You didn’t remember the fight because you don’t remember that day,” Izzy finally continued.

“But why would I have gone with them, then?” Mia said, her thumb finding her wrist like it so often did these days, the pad of it stroking over the scar Izzy knew was there. “What the hell was I doing there?”

The door slammed open down the hallway, and Mia visibly tensed. “Mama.”

“Oh, maybe she knows more.” Izzy snapped her fingers. Why hadn’t they asked her anything yet? Perhaps it was the weird undercurrent between the two women, the way their bodies were like similar magnets, always pushing away from each other no matter how much you forced them in close.