Beau gives a gruff laugh and goes back to staring at the bobber on the end of his line. The joke is that I can afford to pay a person to fish for me while I pretend to be a fish voyeur. So could Beau. We could hire a whole crew. How times have changed.

“Goddamn it,” Beau says. “This thing is fucking with me.”

“What thing?” I peer over the railing at the bobber. “You’re not getting bites. There’s nothing down there.”

“Mind your own business.”

“Why are we out here? We don’t need fish to survive. This ship has a couch we could be sitting on.”

“Go sit on it, then. I’m going to catch something.” He furrows his brow and concentrates. A breeze comes up from the water. The ocean still smells the same. The sun feels the same on my skin. We’re the ones who are different now. Eben Cape stayed the same while our lives rearranged themselves like portable sets. He and Paige were trapped together on the island of Coach House. Then Jane came along. And then, to everyone’s surprise, Emily Rochester. Now everything’s in a new place.

In my opinion, which hasn’t been humble for a very long time, Beau Rochester takes things too seriously. I’ve known him long enough to know he’ll never stop. Acceptance is the first step toward being friends with a guy like that. You’re not going to change him. You can only watch him try to catch a fish on a nice-as-hell boat.

Prepare to be disappointed, though. He almost never catches anything these days. He’s more patient in some ways since he had custody of Paige, but less patient in others. He’s always impatient to get back to Jane, for instance. There were times in our past that we’d go out on a Friday night and come back home on a Tuesday. Beau would never agree to be away from Jane that long.

Only way he’d ever do that is if she asked him. I don’t think she would.

How long have I been away from Emily? A day? Probably can’t count it as “being away” when we’re not together. Emily wouldn’t want that, anyway.

Unless she would. I’ve never met a woman more in need of a shoulder to cry on. I wouldn’t go so far as to say she needs a partner, though. Emily’s tackling her newly resurrected life with grim determination. She’s writing that damn memoir with the kind of focus that I think most people would envy. In my business, when someone writes a book, it’s cause to throw a party and get drunk on champagne. Emily works on it like she’s going into battle.