Standing just outside the diner was a man everyone on the island called the-man-with-the-cat. He was middle-aged, tired-looking and bony. His particular craziness had to do with his cat, who he draped over his shoulders and took with him everywhere: down the aisle of the supermarket, into the post office, on his bike. Once I saw him teaching her to swim. Also, he introduced the cat as his wife.

Now he was sipping coffee from a paper cup, and his cat was wrapped around his neck like a fox fur collar. He looked me over as I approached, and I nodded.

“I see you found your child,” he said.

“What?”

“You’ve got your child,” he said, enunciating as if I were stupid.

“I don’t have a child.”

“You think I can’t see her? She looks just like you!”

“This is Cole,” I said.

“Have you met my wife?” he said. Then he bowed his head gravely and said, “Good day,” while the cat scrambled to stay aboard. He walked away with stiff precision, as if he were on a balance beam.

“Holy shit,” Cole said. “That guy is crazy.”

“Right,” I said. “You’re our dead brother, but he’s the crazy one.”

The diner was full of the same fishermen that hung out at One Eyed Jack’s every night. I saw Sebastian, who was my favorite of the old fishermen, because he seemed wholeheartedly sad about something, but he was also kind, and his sadness made him familiar to me. They hunched over their coffee the way they hunched over their beers. Today it was quiet. No laughing and clinking bottles. No talking. Maybe everyone was sleepy, or maybe without alcohol they couldn’t think of anything to say.

We sat at a table in the back of the room. The waitress, Diane, brought us coffee and pancakes. She was another islander I’d known my whole life. She used to be young and pretty. Now she was old and pretty. The fishermen looked at her gratefully when she refilled their mugs. No one looked at Cole or me, and I felt chastened. This breakfast ritual had existed for a long time and I hadn’t been part of it. How many other secrets had been kept from me on the island?

Cole shook a packet of sugar into his coffee. He kept shaking it long after the last of the sugar crystals had dived into the mug.

“Now will you tell me about my mother?” I asked.

“This is what I’ll tell you,” he said. “And when I’m done talking, you can stop asking, because I won’t say another word. I don’t like to be badgered. I did know your mother. Okay? We met because—we’d both suffered a loss. And she recognized something in me—or we recognized something in each other. We felt we belonged together.”