When I reach the pier, the ferry is still tied securely to its mooring, and the sign on the gate reads closed for weather. But nearby, a fellow’s bustling about a smaller, nimbler boat, preparing it to launch. I call out and the man turns, and right away I see from Leo’s face that he’s heard about the reporters gathered at the airfield, and not only has he heard the news but he’s holding me responsible.

“Where do you think you’re going?” I yell.

Leo turns away and ducks into the deckhouse. I climb off the bicycle and jump over the railing.

“Don’t you dare ignore me! I need to find her right now!”

“You don’t have the right!”

“I have every right! You lied to me! About your father and Irene!”

He flinches at that. “Because I had to! Irene told me to. And it turns out we were right. Now beat it.”

“Where are you going?”

“To Ki’ilau!”

“In this weather?”

“Yes, in this weather!” He reaches for the rope that secures the boat to the piling. “Irene took off from the airfield almost an hour ago.”

“And how the hell do you know she went to Ki’ilau?”

He doesn’t answer that, just unwinds the rope and prepares to cast off, and a terrible feeling takes hold of me, fear and also anger. A clatter of metal sounds behind me, and Sophie Rofrano’s urgent voice. She leaps off a bicycle and runs up the dock to the railing.

“Leo! What’s happened?”

“Sophie! Jesus. Thank God.”

“What’s wrong? Where’s Irene?”

“She’s flown to Ki’ilau,” Leo says. “And she’s taken the kids with her.”

The kids.

To be clear, I don’t give a damn about Irene Lindquist at the present moment, clinging to the railing of Leo’s boat as we tear across the water. I don’t care whether she cracks up in this tempest or does not, whether she lives or does not. My anger toward Irene has returned at full force, so thick and bubbling it may blow at any second.

But the kids.

About a quarter mile out, the squall starts to die away, but the sea remains rough. Nobody speaks. Leo’s busy keeping the ship on the right side of the ocean’s surface. As for Sophie, she’s as keen as I am. Her delicate profile points into the wind. Her teeth are bared. You get the idea she relishes this struggle, man against nature, and who would have thought that petite, elegant Sophie Rofrano was a fighter? But Sophie was the one who wrangled me aboard, Sophie was the one who took Leo by the shoulders and insisted that Janey Everett was friend, not foe.