“That speaks well of you; Lance is a good judge of talent.”

Stone shrugged.

“Well, if you’re going to be spending some time here, we’d better get you in the yacht club and the golf club. I’ll work with you, and we’ll bring your handicap down.” Rawls raised a hand and waved over two men who were standing in line for hamburgers. He introduced both men.

“I hear you’re Dick Stone’s cousin,” one of them said.

“That’s right.”

“How does that work? I thought I knew all of Dick’s family.”

“His father and my mother were brother and sister. I grew up in New York.”

“This your first time in Islesboro?” the other asked.

“No, I spent a summer up here with Dick’s family when I was eighteen.”

“Hey, I remember you,” the man said, laughing. “You’re the kid who knocked Caleb Stone on his ass.”

“I remember that, too,” the other man said. “It was the talk of the club for a week. Why did you never come back?”

“Caleb’s mother didn’t take the news as well as everybody else did. After that, I was persona non grata.”

“Welcome back,” the man said, then they excused themselves and went to get their food.

“Well done,” Rawls said.

“Well done what?”

“The tall guy was the commodore, and the other was the chairman of the membership committee. The commodore is on the golf club board, too. I’ll get forms and propose you today.”

“You think the business with Caleb will hurt?”

“Are you kidding? Everybody hated that kid; judging from their reaction, you were a hero.”

Stone glanced toward the door and nearly dropped his Coke. A ghost from his past had just walked in the door. He had a rush of déjà vu in which he and Dick were sitting in this club at this table when Dick’s brother, Caleb, entered the room. His gut tightened, just as it always had when Caleb was around, teasing and bullying the two younger boys. Now Caleb, aged twenty or so, was back, young again.

“What’s wrong?” Rawls asked.

Stone had trouble speaking. “Who is that?” And as he asked the question, he began to see double.

“Oh, those are the Stone twins, Caleb’s boys, Eben and Enos. I can never tell which is which.”

Stone breathed a little easier. “God, I thought I was going crazy for a moment; they’re both the image of Caleb at that age.”

“I guess they are, at that,” Rawls said.

The twins were loud, too, just like their father. They approached a table of teenagers, and the noise level went up with their arrival.

“I haven’t seen those boys since they were about twelve,” Rawls said. “I didn’t like them then; they were bullies, always picking on some younger kids. They’d double-team them.”