Tim hadn’t fully understood why Carson wanted him at our wedding in the first place, but I saw now his hunch was spot on. Tim grew up to become a cop. An upstanding person who did the right thing. And Carson was afraid. The wedding invitation was a pseudo peace offering, a false message to Tim that Carson had changed. With it, virtuous boy that Tim was, he wouldn’t dream of disrupting our relationship.

But introduce a high-pressure case, throw in our recent spat over taking the job—a job Carson knew McIntyre and Tim both supported—and Carson’s confidence in his plan had waned. He’d spent the whole day picturing Tim and me on the island, engaged in interviews he knew would push me to the limits of my rusty capabilities. It was Carson who’d treated me, and if I lost my shit his role in my recovery was bound to come up. From his perspective, I was playing detective with a man from his past who, with enough coercion, might actually, finally, get angry enough to snap. Carson had been right to worry after all.

“I have to go.” There were alarming sounds coming from the parlor, a noise like chair legs scraping the floor and raised voices, I wasn’t sure whose.

“Yes. Good. McIntyre said she hopes to get a boat out to you in a matter of hours. It’s about time that woman started doing her job. Until then, I want you to remember your breathing exercises and—”

“I’m not leaving the island, Carson. I’m leaving you.”

Saying it out loud was easier than I thought. I didn’t allow myself to think about the real-world implications—the call to my parents telling them the man they’d come to think of as their son-in-law and I were through, the e-mail to the wedding planner Carson hired explaining we wouldn’t need her services after all. When I spoke those words, all I thought about was Tim in his teens. A boy who hadn’t yet started to lift weights and didn’t realize he possessed all the strength he’d ever need. His eyebrows would have looked even more absurd on a thinner face. They would have hovered in bewilderment over the things Carson asked him to do. Carson, who was sharp and bold and knew, even then, he had a special sway over people in this world. How Tim contained his feelings of betrayal and anger, I’ll never know. What I did know was I could never marry a man who took pleasure in his power to inflict so much pain.

Carson tried to reason with me. I knew better than to listen. Just like Tim, I didn’t need him anymore. The sad thing is, neither of us ever did.

I had just ended the call when the kitchen lights flickered. A sound cleaved the silence, the noise like a bolt of electricity zipping along a wire, and the lights went out for good. I spun around to face the kitchen windows. In the distance, through the rain and far off on the shore, a tiny orange flash, and then another. Transformers blowing on the mainland, knocking out the power to the village. Wherever it was, the transformer feeding electricity to Tern Island had failed, too.