I looked at him. The sun shone through his hair. His face was wide, happy. He was like a puppy wagging his tail. I thought he was beautiful. Every time I saw him I wanted to touch his hair. But there were other things, too. When I came over on the ferry, he would leave work to sit with me, walk right out, leaving the other employees staring after him. When I asked about his job, he shrugged. Didn’t matter. Who cares. Once he was drunk when I arrived, and his coworkers raised their eyebrows in a way that meant as soon as we walked out they were going to talk about him. I liked him drunk. He was sweeter than ever, even sentimental. “You’re so pretty,” he said that day. His long arms and legs seemed longer. Once he told me he’d gotten some mushrooms and asked if I wanted to take them with him. I declined. More than once we passed women on the street who looked at him and then me with a kind of vicious chill.

“Old girlfriend?” I asked.

“Not exactly,” he said. “Just a...friend.”

I thought I understood why he enjoyed being part of the investigation, why he was curious about Cole and Lucas, how fun it must have been to be on the edge of something dark, something scary. Safe but thrilled. That was fine with me. I appreciated his company and his help. But when he asked about the island... Well, there were things I didn’t want to share. Even my loneliness was private.

“Another time,” I told Tuck, about the island. “Soon, okay?”

I stood on the deck of the boat in the wind, watching Carson Cove get tiny as we chugged toward the island. The boat was almost empty. I made myself stand on the deck and look down into the water. I don’t know what I wanted to see or feel. Certainly, I thought about the baby. But I imagined it was me under that water.

Chapter 22

22

November was gray and silver: water, sand, branches, sky. Tuck called to tell me that he’d heard back from the school, the police department, and the library of Lindenberg. No one recognized Cole.

“That can’t be true,” I said. “Are we at a dead end?”

“We have to keep trying,” he said.

I went to the Grendles again, one afternoon when thunderclouds were gathering in blooming masses over the water. The weight of water in the air and quiet in the house made me feel like a spinning top, unable to be still. I stepped out into the chilly yard. I picked up a rake, then leaned it on the house again. I wanted to do something, to make a list, solve an equation, answer a question. Finally, I marched across our yard and into the Grendles’.