“It’s only about one hundred twenty-five acres. This man wants to build his own private retreat—you know: a house, pool, guesthouse, dock. We haven’t seen the full plans and we don’t know who he is. There’s a crumbling Colonial-Palladian house at the center of the island that the original owners built before the Civil War—it’s one of the very last of its type. Anyway, the developer wants to tear it down, build a replica on another part of the island.”

“And the land—what about the land?” Nick said.

“I got roped into this committee—the Oystertip Wilderness Protectors, OWP—by default. The others are botanists and naturalists and they’re the experts on the land. They’re doing everything they can to save it. They only came to me for my expertise with period-style houses. And I just can’t stand to see them tear it down. It makes me nauseous to think about it.”

“Who started this group—who’s in it?” Nick leaned closer and so did Amy.

He had to speak above everyone else as the kids, Phil, and Eliza began their own discussion—something about whether “skitter” was a real word and was there a dictionary in the house.

She glanced around the room and realized it was only Nick who was listening, who cared; she wanted to tell him all about it.

“The OWP is a group of students who believe there are enough endangered species on this island to get a protective grant from a Heritage Trust. They worked on this project for at least a year before I came on board. They’ve discovered that one of the things the Trust program protects is architectural gems—so that’s how I got involved.”

“They’re looking for a wildlife-refuge grant from Georgia?”

“No, and actually the island is in South Carolina—right over the Georgia border into the ACE Basin, where the Ashapoo, Combahee and Edisto rivers meet. The Heritage Preserve inventories, evaluates and then protects the most outstanding representatives of the state through the Trust. The OWP feels they have a good chance of the island becoming a Heritage Preserve. But we have to prove the island is both worthy and that the need is urgent because money is tight—there are about fifty million dollars’ worth of projects that deserve to be protected and only about two million dollars in the Trust right now.”

“Wood stork, osprey, peregrine, brown pelican, loggerhead are a few of the endangered ACE Basin species,” Nick said.

Eliza tuned back in, shivered and laughed. “Yeah, those and water moccasins.”

“Eliza, water moccasins are not endangered,” Nick said.

“Well, I wish they were extinct.” Eliza faked a shudder.

Amy looked at Nick and he smiled at her.

She placed her elbows on the coffee table. “I’m trying to stay out of that part—I’m just trying to prove that this house should be saved.”