It was disorienting to see Lucas talking with a stranger, Lucas who sometimes couldn’t even say hi to Eddie, or the Grendles, or Jim Cardoza, people he’d known his whole life. I felt dizzy, as if the room were tilting around me.

“I’m always up for a story,” Cole said, sitting at the table. Lucas popped the tab on a PBR and set it in front of Cole.

“I need to sit, too,” I said, and they pulled out a chair for me.

We were up all night, and the biggest surprise of all was that Lucas talked most of that time. It was as if something had come uncorked, and stories were pouring out of him.

“His name was Colin,” Lucas said. “I mean even your name is similar.”

“That’s just a coincidence,” I said.

“Did you feel anything?” Lucas asked me. “When you first saw each other, I mean? Did you have any idea?”

“I did,” the stranger said. “I felt something right away.”

“Of course I didn’t feel anything,” I said. “Because there’s nothing to feel.”

“Don’t worry,” Lucas said. “She’s always like this at first.”

“Like what?” I said. But I knew what he meant. Practical—trying to tether him to earth. He resented that. But look what happened when I slipped up, when I forgot myself for one night, tried to bring a stranger home. It was like I was pretending to be someone else, someone without responsibilities. Look how that worked out. I felt my heart beating, felt warmth crawling up the back of my neck, sweat prickling my scalp.

Just before sunrise, Cole went away down the chilly beach promising to come back later that day. Lucas and I stood on the screened-in porch, watched him disappear down the shore. Just before the second jetty, he stopped and found a stone in the sand, skipped it even though it was too dark to see its skittering path through the water.

“Did you see that?” Lucas said.

“It doesn’t mean anything. A lot of people skip stones.”

“In that exact place?”

As long as I could remember, Lucas had stopped at the second jetty to skip one stone. For good luck. For Baby B. I never knew why he did it. But in my memory, I could see him at all these different ages, five years old, ten years old, eighteen, twenty-five. That same flick of the wrist. Stone after stone.