It was physically difficult to leave the island. Everything just seemed to speed up off island, everything in me: my pulse, my breathing, my racing thoughts. I don’t even know when it started. After my mother died, I guess.

It was hard for me to leave the island, but it made me angry to hear Lucas say it like that, in that tone of voice. As if I were the one crippled by anxiety issues. As if he were the one who had to look after me.

After the 12:30 boat lumbered away, a front swept in, and the air turned soft, cool, and gray, and the sudden change in weather changed my mood as well. I settled down, quieted.

It started to rain, and you should have seen how sad the tourists were. They wanted sunshine! They walked around wearing clear rain ponchos and blank expressions.

All afternoon the rain drummed on the roof of the information booth. When I ran into the post office for the mail, inside there were five buckets set up to catch the drips coming through the roof, and they, too, made a cacophonous drumming. The postmaster was also the leader of a bagpipe band. They sometimes practiced behind the post office, as they were doing now, crammed together under a little back awning, the melodies of the bagpipes flocking over the water.

The sound of the instruments seemed to tug at my memory, nostalgia rolling through me like the fog over the water. I felt closed in, claustrophobic. I was wearing a big plastic poncho I got from Jim Cardoza, but by the time I got back to the office, my legs were soaked. Jim handed me a towel and I handed him the mail.

“I can’t stand the feeling of wet jeans,” I said.

Jim nodded sympathetically.

“Do you have a blow-dryer?” I asked.

He didn’t, but he looked around anyway, as if one could materialize from looking. I sat in a chair by the window and patted my legs with the towel. The sound of the rain overwhelmed all the other sounds, so the few people I saw outside seemed to be in a silent movie.

“Forget the blow-dryer,” I said. “I might run home early today, if that’s okay with you, Jim.”

“In the rain?” he said. “Better wait until it dries out.”

But I was out the door already. I was running through the wet sand, out of breath. I didn’t stop until I reached the Island Inn.