“But the fact of the matter is, this last time, Lord Treadway told him if he ran, he wasn’t welcome back on Lute. If you leave, don’t come home. Told him right there in front of all of us at the Dane’s Head. And what did he do? Heard his father was dead and came straight back with not one word of apology. Hugh thinks he can share in the spoils and not the sacrifice of this place, and I’m sick of it. I’m done making excuses for him.”

I inhale, with effort. It’s all I can do. There’s so much I didn’t know. That his last conversation with his father was a fight. That last time wasn’t the first time he’d missed the Day, that he’d found a way to be off Lute every Day since Andy died. That there was an Andy to mourn in the first place. I feel like I’m trying to keep my footing as waves buffet me.

“I’ll let the folks back in the village know about the dinner.” Matthew marches past me and back up the gravel drive before I can attempt another word.

I’m alone for the moment. I don’t hurry home. I wade down the path, filing away everything I’ve just heard.

The night I met Hugh, he’d seemed strangely familiar, but it took two rounds of drinks in an upper-deck lounge to realize why. I saw his face reflected in the dark ship window, and a memory connected.

When I was twelve, we were traveling across Florida to see Gran, and we stopped off at a Shell station. Mom went inside to pay, and Becca started laying into me—I was being too quiet or not quiet enough—so I went outside and paced, waiting, breathing in gasoline fumes. I walked by what I’d thought was an empty parked car and peeked in, the way kids do, and a man stared back from the driver’s seat. He looked almost terrified at the sight of me, but he kept staring, unblinking, like he was daring himself. And of course, I got rattled, hurried back to the car. I had the sense that something very wrong had just happened. When we got to Gran’s, the six o’clock news was on, and there he was, his mug shot. The police were looking for him.