“That tight community forces everyone to be kind of in tune with each other,” Mia said. “Say someone gets sick. On the mainland, it’s not a big deal. But here, one person has the flu, that could wipe out the island. And what if it’s the plumber on the same day a pipe bursts in Sammy’s office. A few other people could probably do a quick patch job but not enough to really fix it. Then someone has a heart attack, but the doctor’s office is flooded because someone sneezed on someone at the wrong time.”

They sat with that for a minute.

“People learn each other’s rhythms here, better than on the mainland,” Mia said, wondering if she was making any sense at all. “They notice a cough days earlier, or a pregnancy, or who’s sleeping with who, because no matter how small that thing might seem, it affects everyone else’s survival.”

“Your mama is worried about you,” Izzy said, like she actually understood.

Mia shrugged. “She’d know if Twist’s death was because of a fight. But she warned me to be careful. Which means she thinks he was killed because of whatever he was working on.”

“Then there’s a good chance that’s true, right?”

“Yes,” Mia answered quietly, admitting it to herself fully for the first time. It was why no one was acting all that worried about a possible murderer on the loose; it was why Mama still hadn’t been locking all their windows, which is how the intruder had gotten in last night. People weren’t worried, because they knew the target had been Robert Twist.

The lights shivered again, went out, came back. They stared at each other across the expanse of the table while they waited to see if this was the time the power would give up. When it stayed on, Izzy glanced over at the bullet that was still lodged in the kitchen’s doorframe.

“She was right to be worried, I guess,” Izzy said. “But our visitor last night was probably Ellen.”

The waitress had watched them with haunted eyes as they’d zipped into the jackets earlier, leaving Mia wondering if she was running a risk–benefit analysis on fleeing from the island. “She could have been playing us.”

“Just now?”

Mia nodded.

Izzy pursed her lips; then her face relaxed. “Do you think she was?”

“No,” Mia said, quietly.

“Me neither,” Izzy said with a big, dramatic sigh. “Which means we should probably keep going through these, huh?”

They both looked down at the pile of notebooks they’d picked up off the floor after last night’s scuffle. When Mia just grimaced, Izzy leaned forward, grabbed one of them, and tossed it to Mia.

“Down the rabbit hole we go.”

A frustrating hour of jumbled words later, Mia dropped the notebook she’d been working on into her lap. “Theo.”