“No, that wouldn’t be a good idea.” He threw back his head and laughed. “But I don’t think they’d know. You could get in and out through a window.”

“Oh, they’d know. They would definitely know. They’re watching us like hawks, trying to find any excuse to get us off their—”

“Asses.”

“I was going to say ‘backs.’ ”

“I’m sure you were.”

He laughed and tousled her hair, rested his hand on her cheek.

Revvy rounded the corner to the house. “Found another dead loggerhead.” He shook his head.

Nick jerked his hand away from Amy’s face. “Show us.”

They followed Revvy to the thin stretch of east-side beach that faced the sea. Waves beat upon the sand with the hypnotic voice of the incoming tide. White foam coated the end of each wave, coming to rest on the sand as a reminder—a wispy memory of what just reached the shore, then retreated. Just like Nick, she told herself. Let this wave pass.

Nick followed Revvy to what Amy thought was a large rock, but it was a barnacle-encrusted turtle shell, large enough to be a tabletop.

Nick bent down and picked up the turtle’s head, pulled it back to expose its craw. Revvy pulled a hunting knife from his back pocket and sliced open the gullet. Sand, gray shrimp and a long piece of string fell to the sand. Amy turned her head and attempted not to gag in front of these two naturalists, who considered this study as routine as building a sand castle.

Revvy and Nick flipped the great turtle over.

“I don’t see any signs of disease,” Revvy said. “It’s hard to tell without a full autopsy—but nothing obvious.”

“Probably got caught in a shrimper’s net,” Nick said.

Revvy groaned. “When will the shrimpers ever believe us?”

Nick and Revvy dragged the turtle carcass to the sea and let it catch a wave to its original home. Amy wanted to help, but she only watched this man, this man who used his hands to study nature and marine life as easily as he tousled her hair and touched her cheek. She knew the danger in thinking about him like this, but like an echoing refrain from a sad song one can’t help but listen to, she watched and felt him.

As the turtle shell bobbed like a floating rock, then sank to the unseen ocean floor, she asked, “Aren’t they on the endangered list? Something that could get the island a Heritage Trust?”