There. That’s my message and my plan. And as the mid-August sun rises over the harbor, I’m somehow able to slip the note, unnoticed, into the slightly open crack of Lucky’s helmet compartment on his Superhawk … before rushing away.

Okay. It’s done. I did it.

It’s sent. My postcard from paradise.

Nothing to do now but wait …

Hours.

And hours.

For the longest work shift in the entire history of the world to end.

And when it finally does, I wish I had a little longer, because I’m terrified to face him. And terrified that he won’t show up. All the terrors, I have them. But I try my best to bottle them up, and with the sun warming my shoulders, I tell Mom and Evie where I’m going, cross the street toward the harbor, and head out to the southernmost point of Beauty.

The first few minutes of my walk, I toss looks behind me at the boatyard as the Karrases’ big boat crane gets smaller and smaller, hoping I’ll catch a glimpse of Lucky following me. But I don’t. Seagulls soar over dark blue water as the sky becomes purple around the horizon, and to my right, the warehouse buildings get farther and farther apart with more parking lots between them.

Then I see it, right where the rocky shore curves inward.

The end of the Harborwalk. The concrete just stops, and there’s a sign here that’s been vandalized. It’s so far away from the tourist area of town that no one’s bothered to clean it up. I step through a flimsy gate, shoes crunching over gravel, and I search the wooded area that fans out from the rocks on the shore.

I see the old pier first, almost lost under the waves that lazily crash over it. And there’s what I’m seeking. The old meeting place.

The North Star.

The abandoned cedar-plank building is easy to miss. Back in the 1940s or 1950s, it probably was a serviceable little boatshed, built to winter a fishing boat. Someone owned these woods—maybe they fished and hunted here, who knows. But the pier and the shed were lost to time long before Lucky and I found it.

And it looks like only two walls stand now, the two sides. The tree that was growing through the roof has fallen. Maybe taken by a storm. But the marker that provided the shed’s name is still hanging on one of the standing walls, an old tin sign with a faded blue star and two hand-painted words: NORTH STAR.

The first sign I ever photographed.