“So promise me this one thing. Won’t you?”

“All right,” Jane had said, “fine. For you, I promise I won’t ever turn down an invitation to Tu Reviens. Why are you awake anyway?”

“Strange dreams,” she’d said. Then, a few days later, she’d left on an expedition to Antarctica, gotten caught too far from camp during a polar blizzard, and frozen to death.

Kiran’s invitation brought Aunt Magnolia near in a way that nothing else had in the four months since.

Tu Reviens. You return.

It’s unsettling, to be so far from home—all her usual anxieties lifted, only to be replaced with new ones. Does Kiran’s father even know Jane is coming? What if she’s just a third wheel once Kiran meets up with her boyfriend? How does a person act around people who own yachts and private islands?

Standing in the lounge of The Kiran, the rain falling in sheets outside, Jane tells herself to breathe, slow, deep, and even, the way Aunt Magnolia taught her. “It’ll help you when you learn to scuba dive,” Aunt Magnolia had used to say when Jane was tiny—five, six, seven—though somehow, those scuba lessons had never materialized.

In, Jane thinks, focusing on her expanding belly. Out, feeling her torso flatten. Jane glances at the house, floating above them in the storm. Aunt Magnolia never worried. She just went.

Jane suddenly feels like a character in a novel by Edith Wharton or the Brontës. I’m a young woman of reduced circumstances, with no family and no prospects, invited by a wealthy family to their glamorous estate. Could this be my heroic journey?

She’ll need to choose an umbrella appropriate for a heroic journey. Will Kiran think it’s weird? Can she find one that isn’t embarrassing? Teetering across the lounge floor, opening one of her crates, Jane lights upon the right choice instantly. The petite umbrella’s satin canopy alternates deep brown with a coppery rose. The brass fittings are made of antique parts, but strong. She could impale someone on the ferrule.

Jane opens it. The runners squeak and the curve of the ribs is warped, the fabric unevenly stretched.

It’s just a stupid, lopsided umbrella, Jane thinks to herself, suddenly blinking back tears. Aunt Magnolia? Why am I here?

Patrick sticks his head into the lounge. His bright eyes flash at Jane, then touch Kiran. “We’re docked, Kir,” he says, “and the car is here.”

Kiran sits up, not looking at him. Then, when he returns to the deck, she watches him through the window as he lifts wooden crates onto his shoulder and carries them onto the dock. His eyes catch hers and she looks away. “Leave your stuff,” she says to Jane dismissively. “Patrick will bring it up later.”

“Okay,” Jane says. Something is definitely up with Patrick and Kiran. “Who’s your boyfriend, anyway?”

“His name is Colin. He works with my brother. You’ll meet him. Why?”

“Just wondering.”

“Did you make that umbrella?” asks Kiran.

“Yes.”

“I thought so. It makes me think of you.”