Tuck smoothed the take-out bag and produced a pen from his pocket, which he used to draw a map of Carson Cove, the important parts of town we couldn’t see from our window. A pathway along an icy pond. A bell tower rising up out of a garden where, Tuck told me, local kids went to get it on. He ran out again, for coffee, and came back holding two blue ceramic mugs, the liquid still steaming. “I’ll bring the cups back when we’re done,” he said. “The last thing you need right now is a paper cup.” We ate pastry, left over from the morning, so half price, and we sipped coffee and suddenly it was after eight and time for me to get in line for the ferry.

I felt strange leaving Tuck; we’d spent so many hours together. “Seven hours,” I said out loud, and then blushed.

“I know,” he said. “It’s been an unusual day at the old Carson Cove Information Booth.”

I thought of the information booths, his and mine, separated by a strip of cold, deep water.

“You know what would be fun?” he said. “To do this again, only leave the building.”

I laughed.

“Or you know what?” he said. “I could come over to Wolf Island.”

“Oh. Okay,” I said.

“To meet this dude,” he said.

“You’ll probably love him. Everyone does.”

Tuck walked with me to my car, staying close, like a bodyguard. When we reached the car, a seagull swooped near us, and Tuck lifted his arm, as if to shield me, but the bird hovered, staring at us with its black-bead eyes.

“This guy’s the reincarnation of my long-lost brother,” Tuck said.

“Learn his name.”

“His name is bird.”

“I’m beginning to think,” I said, “that the only way to escape your family is to move far away.”

“To another island?” Tuck said.

“Just far away, and never have kids and isolate yourself from everyone. That’s the only way to really escape your family.”

“Or just stop believing in this crap,” he said. “Just leave all this crap behind and live your life.”

I sat again on the upper deck of the ferry in the cold night wind. I couldn’t stand being indoors: the stuffy enclosed space, the windows with their warped views. I sat in the frozen air, under the dark sky and let myself be pulled back home. Gulls zipped past. I watched them watching me.

Bird, I thought, relieved to be able to name something.

Chapter 18

18