Duncan didn’t move, but his eyes asked the question he didn’t say. It was at that precise moment that Cody realized he didn’t want to get into the details with his master chief or anyone else. What was he going to say anyway? “We used to be friends until she took my heart and sliced it in two like a slab of beef on the butcher block”?

He’d gotten over this a long time ago. Why would he even think of bringing it back up now?

But it was more than that, wasn’t it? It was more than their silly teenage romance gone wrong. It was everything else that had happened between them and how it changed both of their families forever. That was a little more difficult to get over.

The chief scribbled something on a scrap of paper and handed it to him. “This is her address.”

“You have it memorized?”

“I looked it up while you were daydreaming,” Duncan said. “Get some rest, and I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Cody didn’t bother protesting. He walked out of the man’s office and down the hall, aware of the quiet murmurs that followed him as he went. It was as if nobody had ever saved a person from the ocean before. He knew that wasn’t the case. But he supposed it would never get old to hear a story of how one person put their life on the line to save another person.

Maybe the world needed those stories to combat the stories where people purposely hurt each other every day. He should be proud to be a part of the good—why did it make him feel self-conscious?

Outside, Cody got in his Jeep and started the engine. Would Duncan ever find out if he skipped a visit to Louisa? He unfolded the piece of paper and read the address his chief had scrawled on it.

12 North Road.

Cody’s eyes focused, then unfocused as he stared at the handwritten address. Surely it was a mistake.

His mind whirled back years. Decades. And somehow, if he really concentrated, it felt like yesterday.

It was the summer he would turn ten. They’d been vacationing in Nantucket since he was a baby, and Dad’s investments were paying off, thanks to Mr. Chambers, who’d taught Cody’s father how things in the financial world worked.

That summer when they arrived on the island, Cody expected to join Louisa and her family at their big cottage on the water, the one her family had inherited from her grandparents. That’s the way it had always been. Their family took one side of the cottage, and Louisa’s family occupied the other side. The house was big enough, and nobody ever got in anyone else’s way.

It was the perfect setup. At least, he’d always thought so.