Lucas tipped his head back and finished his beer. For some reason neither of us wanted to go to bed. We sat on the porch until the grainy light of dawn made visible the dock and the jetties and the boats in the bay. I looked at Lucas and felt a deep ache in my chest—love swelling to enormous proportions inside my ribs. I loved him so much. I wanted to give him everything he wanted. A brother returned from the dead. Our parents, too. If I’d known how to do it, what to sacrifice, I would have without hesitation.

It was ironic that our parents had decided to have children so they wouldn’t be alone when they were old. It turned out they didn’t need to worry about growing old at all. Dad had a heart attack when we were in seventh grade. Mom died eight years later from breast cancer. Ever since, just Lucas and me. Alone on the island, alone in the big house they bought for us and Baby B.

Early light crept into the porch where we sat, lighting up the table and chairs, the wicker sofa, chenille blanket, potted plants. Everything was in place, but everything felt different. Bhone Bay was out there doing what it always did, tide creeping out, revealing damp raw sand, black seaweed. The red houseboat was anchored where it always was. The light was the same light. The sound of the bay was the same sound.

But we felt different now, already revised in some indefinable way. How amazing the change one day can bring, one chance meeting. Or—maybe it wasn’t so amazing. After all, we’d spent a lifetime longing for something—or someone—we could never have. That longing had created a space in us, in our lives. And Cole, in ways I didn’t yet understand, seemed to fit into that space, filling it like a missing puzzle piece.

Chapter 4

4

Our relationship with Baby B had been complicated, and it changed over time like any relationship, but one thing remained constant: he was always real to us. We knew about him as soon as we were old enough to know anything. We had four photos of Baby B, but only one of the three of us together, the ultrasound photo, which my mother had stuck up on the fridge with magnets. She used to point to the little beans and say, “There you are, and there you are, and there’s Baby B.”