I hurried along the beach to the landing, the sky above me pearly like the inside of a shell. The red houseboat rocked lazily in the bay. A white egret was stalking in the shallow water, and cormorants perched on every rock, turning their heads one by one to watch as I walked by. Their necks bulged as if they’d swallowed a string of beads. They threw their heads back and the beads slid deeper.

Wolf Island was smaller and plainer than Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket. We were the girl-next-door island. No gingerbread houses. No bakery with a line around the block by eight in the morning. No kitschy restaurants that sold more T-shirts than food. Clara Day Street was only a few blocks long, and most of the stores were for us, not the tourists: grocery store, dry cleaner, pharmacy, Mady’s Diner, One Eyed Jack’s, Island Pie. The high school, community hall, and post office were at one end of the street in old slanty buildings. The ferry came in at the other end. From the information booth, I could see all of it, every gray and shingled roof, every widow’s walk and weathervane. Roses climbed up all the fences. Gulls circled overhead, their wings vanishing into the sky.

Instead of going straight to my information booth by the docks, I went into the Ferry-All office building on Clara Day Street where Jim Cardoza, my boss, was working at his desk, surrounded by picture after picture of his daughter Mary-Ann, who had moved to New York and never visited.

“What’s going on?” Jim said. “Why are you late?”

“Long story,” I said. “Lucas was out late, and I—”

“Is he sick? Why was he out so late?” Jim’s mother had died suddenly a year ago, and he was sure disasters were about to befall everyone he knew.

“You worry too much,” I said.

“There were people here at nine,” he said. “You missed everyone.”

We glanced out the window. The landing looked like a ghost town. It looked the way it looked in winter. We shivered. And then we laughed. Jim’s laughter sounded very much like crying.