“I don’t need your permission to stay out late. I’m a grown-up,” I said. “Aren’t I?”

“It doesn’t matter how old you are, you have to treat your family with respect. That’s one thing I know.”

I knew that on the other side of the bathroom door, Eliot Moniz was ringing the bell for highest tipper of the night, and there was beer in bright bottles, and rows of liquor, and seats made of old barrels, and lobster nets on the walls. All manner of comforting things on the other side of the door. Familiar streets running down to the ferry landing. The information booth, a little nut in the center of the island. One gull asleep on a streetlamp. A seal on a rock. Dinghies and dories wobbling in the cold water, their reflections like twins just beneath the surface.

“The thing is,” I said to Cole, “we aren’t family.”

I looked up at the small, high bathroom window for a glimpse of the night outside, but instead of dark sky or stars or any other comfort, I saw a sleek dark head, the flash of a face. Floating for a moment, then gone.

“Did you see him?” I said, and Cole looked at me strangely.

“Who?” he said. “How much have you had to drink?”

“This has nothing to do with drinking.”

I reached out and touched Cole’s arm, felt the muscles. Tried to circle his wrist with my fingers. The skin inside his wrist was the same baby-skin as Eddie’s, soft as milk. I lay my fingers in his palm, and his hand closed reflexively around them.

“Let’s go,” he said, and led me out into the bar and then outside.

The rain had stopped, but the beach air was charged with electricity, as if the storm were pausing to gather strength. I got the feeling someone was behind us. When I looked there was no one, but I felt a presence. I heard breath.

“Don’t you hear that?” I said.

I held my jacket closed around my throat. Then there was a sudden absence of noise, as if whoever—whatever—had frozen, stopped moving, stopped breathing.

I imagined my mother stepping out of the shadows, see-through but comforting.

“Yes,” she’d say. “It’s me.” And then what would she tell me? Take care of your brother. Take care of the house. Don’t forget Baby B. Don’t forsake him.

What about the letter? I wanted to shout at her.

But no one stepped out of the shadows. No one was there. Only Cole.

I moved toward the water. The air smelled like rain. I heard far off a low rumble. I loved a storm. A storm brought wondrous things to shore, and the morning after a storm was always a morning of discovery. I kicked off my shoes and stepped into the sea.

“Not really a good time for swimming,” Cole called to me.