As we pass, Matthew gives a rote wave to the truck, thinking it’s just John. I would wave back if I didn’t suspect he’d find a way to twist the gesture into an insult.

I’d like to say I’ve given up trying to figure out why Matthew Clare has despised me from the day Hugh first brought me to this island, but the annoying, sticking-point thing of it is: Matthew may not be a ball of sunshine, but he is nice and good and helpful and completely beloved here. He’s the one who fixes people’s bird feeders if they fall down in a storm, delivers grocery orders to elderly neighbors, stops to pet cats, and checks on the goats. He’s, by all measures, lovely. And he hates me.

I try not to think about him. It should be easy enough when he’s not around, but every so often, I remember it so vividly, as if I were right back there in that church—the glare he’d fixed me with when Hugh introduced us and I tried to offer condolences, as if I’d spat at him. That glare has evolved as the years have worn on, but it’s never lessened in intensity.

It shouldn’t bother me as much as it does. It’s not like this is a first. I’ve never been like Becca, my neon-shiny sister, a magnet for friends. Mom told me often enough how unlikable I am—a taker, a killer—and I learned to shrink, to be uncontroversial, to go unnoticed. Even here, tucked away, that’s how I operate. And still, I’ve offended him somehow, the man everybody sees as the best of us.

God, it gnaws at me.

The road sinks lower, curving back around toward the shore. I lean past Emma, searching for Hugh and Charlie, but I only see my husband with his back turned, his elegant hands tangled in his gray-flecked hair, then gesticulating, then back in his hair. He’s got his sleeves rolled up, holiday ready. Maybe Charlie’s already on board, flipping switches he’s not supposed to touch.

“Suh-moke,” Emma says.

“Sure enough.” John chuckles, amused by her growing vocabulary, but his eyes aren’t laughing.