She moved back and looked down at Thea. "Hoagie, something awful's happening—it's been happening—and I don't know what it is. Now it's hit Thea too." She faced him. "Am I bad luck?"

"She'll be all right, Ellen. It's a thing that children do...."

She glanced at him. "Do you have children?"

He was silent for a moment. "I had a daughter."

"Had?"

He only shrugged. "That's not our problem, is it? Thea is. And, no, you're not bad luck."

"I'm not sure you understand."

"Then tell me."

She told him of the sharks, and Brody's heart, and how Sean had died.

He nodded. "That was bad luck, but you aren't." He gazed away over the ocean. Thunder rumbled to the east. "Damn! If only I had deicers, I'd sneak under that stuff to Nassau and come back with some help."

"No. You mustn't take a chance."

They stood silently for a long, long while. "Luck always changes," he said finally, "at the tables and in life."

"Mine hasn't." She looked out at the water. "It's something I feel... a menace—since Brody helped kill the first shark. And then there was the other... as if we were under a curse." She shook her head. "Oh, hell! I must sound crazy."

He put his arm around her shoulders and hugged them for a moment. She would have been affronted if it hadn't felt so good. "Accidents simply happen, don't they?" he murmured. "And that's life."

Ellen looked out at the water. A gust rattled the palm trees. She saw Thea's tricycle blow over on the path. Only a few short hours ago she'd thought these islands so benign!

She shivered and looked at him. "Hoagie, suppose that shark was no accident? Suppose it came for Sean?"

"Come off it now, Ellen. It's all chance." He told her that he had a lad in his squadron in the Falklands who attracted ground-to-air missiles as a honeysuckle bloom attracted bees.

"And he survived"—Hoagie smiled—"and lives in a lovely little cottage now in Devon-by-the-sea. Good luck, bad luck, neither one forever. I believe in luck. Now you must do the same."

Ellen could not keep the panic from her voice. "I think that shark's connected to Thea. I feel it deep inside. And I know that shark will keep coming and coming, till my family's gone and I'm completely mad."

He smiled at her. "Come on now, Ellen. Steady, right?"

"Papa Jacques," Thea said quite clearly from the bed. "Papa Jacques?"

Ellen returned in a flash to the bed. Thea's body had been rigid. Now it began to writhe. But the eyes were open again and staring. "The baka... the baka... Papa Jacques?"

Ellen took her hand. It was as rigid and cold as stone.

"Thea, darling, look at me."

The eyes stayed fixed, a thousand miles away. "Deenie, get Papa Jacques? The baka got in me...."

"What's a baka?" she whispered to Hoagie. "Hoagie, what's she mean?"