In Carson Cove later that week, Tuck and I sat on the sand again. His scarf flapped in the wind, and I took the edge and tucked it into the collar of his coat. Felt the warmth of his throat, the secret edges of his collarbone.

“So now there are two things to solve,” I said. “What happened to Colin, and who Cole is.”

“And how they’re connected,” Tuck said.

“Exactly. I feel like he has something to do with it. Like he’s responsible for Colin drowning. But that’s crazy, right? He was a baby then, too.”

“So what’s the plan now?” Tuck asked. “Back to Vermont?”

“This is like step one of phase one of even being a normal human being,” I told him. “I can’t go to Vermont, probably ever. I’m going to grow old and be an ancient recluse on the island, and kids are going to call me a witch and dare each other to knock on my door and run away. No, I can’t go to Vermont. I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

He took up a handful of sand and let it trickle between his fingers. “Then we start the investigation here,” Tuck said. “Get a picture of him and email it around. You know, do you know this man? That kind of thing.”

“We? It’s your investigation now, too?”

“Yeah!” he said. “I want to learn his name.”

“You don’t even know him.”

“For you, though,” he said.

We looked out across the water, and pretty soon the ferry rounded the corner, getting bigger and bigger as it slid into the harbor.

“Get a picture,” Tuck said as I walked onto the ferry. “Email it to me. Then you don’t have to worry about you-know-who finding it.”

I did get a picture—on our birthday. Our birthday fell at the very beginning of November. It was the season of wind. Winds that met and tangled over the harbor, winds that whipped the bay into a frenzy of waves with little whitecaps, like invisible egg beaters, frothing up a meringue.

The night before our birthday, with wind moaning in the rafters, I took out the present I’d gotten for Lucas, wrapped it, and set it on the kitchen table. I stood alone for a minute, looking at the wrapped package, the color of the paper, so strange and sad in the darkness of the night. I looked at the package and listened to the wind and felt suddenly dizzy with sadness. What was happening to us? The life we loved?

When I came down in the morning, tired and on edge from the wind and my own uneasy thoughts, there was another, tiny package on the kitchen table, and Lucas was standing by the stove with a spatula and pancakes sizzling. I felt moved by the sight of him, grateful and heartbroken all at once.