Caitlin pointed to two breaks in the water, covered with a handful of trees. “I like the little islands.”

“You do have a dark side.” He pointed back to the shore. “We started at Riddle Point, which is a cool enough launch for a beginning, but you picked the one spot on the lake with a literary name. Cemetery Island.”

“Better not be any ghosts,” she said, tapping on her folder. “I brought my own.”

She told him about her failed attempts to read through the contents and her impromptu traffic stop with Mary.

He received the report with the solemnity of a soldier being handled a folded flag, then produced a pair of joints. “Before we begin, might I offer nature’s psychologist?”

“Let’s share,” she said. “Your stuff knocks me off my feet.”

He sparked the first, offered it over. “When was the first time you got high, Caitlin?”

“High school.” She took a drag. “Classic peer-pressure situation.” She handed the joint back. “Two hours later my father picked me up from the principal’s office. I hadn’t been able to get a full sentence out since my first toke, which was a big deal. I’m a bit of a talker. Dad was a cop, so he took me to the Hollywood station and walked me desk to desk, made me tell everyone he could find that drugs were for losers, laughing his butt off the whole time.”

Scott exhaled with a chuckle. “What’d your mother say?”

She went with a variation of the answer she’d given Lakshmi. “There wasn’t a mother figure in the picture in those years. What about your first time?”

“In Nam. Pot was the only way I could sleep without nightmares.” He sent the weed back her way, then raised her folder from his lap. “I’m ready to face your ghosts, if you are.”

Caitlin took another hit. Always a chance that her high could go south, that she’d end up in the middle of a lake, paranoid and miserable, but Scott’s pot hadn’t failed her yet. She exhaled and nodded.

He opened the folder. Like handing a story in to an editor, Caitlin’s urge to watch him read hit strong.

He glanced up and caught her gaze. “I’ll give it a look and we’ll talk after.”

She swallowed and reached for her phone. “No worries.”

He gave her a hard stare. “What are you doing?”

“I still haven’t heard from Lakshmi.”

“And you won’t,” he said. “No signal out here. Phones scare the fish. Enjoy nature’s majesty.”

She turned away, watched a heron dip under the surface, then lost herself to faraway sounds. The rolling knock of an unseen woodpecker, the flap of a duck’s wings launching into flight, the slight lap of the water against the hull.

Minutes later, Scott tapped her shoulder. “All done.”