Joe took a long drag off his trademark clove cigarette and flicked the ashes out the open doorway. “Go where? Do what?”

“Those things are gonna kill you,” Mac said, nodding to the cigarette.

“No faster than working twenty hours a day is gonna kill you.”

“Touché,” Mac said with a chuckle.

“Are you planning to tell mama bear about your night in the hospital?”

“Hell no! She’d freak out all over me. That’s the last thing I need.”

Joe laughed. “What’s it worth to ya?”

Mac shot him what he hoped was a menacing scowl. “You wouldn’t dare.”

“So what happened?”

“The doctors said it was an anxiety attack—too little sleep, too much work, too much stress. They ordered me to take at least a month off to recover.”

“How’d your partners take that news?”

“Not so well. We’re busier than hell, but they’ll handle it until I get back.” Mac and his partners owned a company that reconfigured Miami office space for new tenants.

“And your girlfriend? Roseanne, right?”

“My ex-girlfriend. We decided to cool it for a while. And then I got the email from my mother about my dad selling McCarthy’s. . . I told my mom I’d help him fix the place up a bit.”

“I still can’t believe that.”

Mac shrugged. “He can’t work forever, and none of us want to deal with it.”

“How’s your sister doing? I haven’t seen her in a while.”

Despite the nonchalant question, Mac knew there was nothing nonchalant about his friend’s feelings for Janey. “Still carrying that torch?”

Joe shrugged. “I’ve yet to meet anyone I like better.”

“She and David are engaged, man. Might be time to move on.”

“Maybe.” He flashed the grin that had made him popular with the girls in high school—not that he’d noticed after he gave his young heart to Janey McCarthy. “She’s not married yet.”

“Joe—”

“I’m not going to show up at the wedding in a gorilla suit and cart her off or anything.”

Mac studied the expression on his friend’s face: staged indifference mixed with wistfulness. “That sounds a little too well planned.”

“No worries, I don’t own a gorilla suit. I am thinking about getting a dog, though.”

Mac laughed at that because Janey worked for the island’s veterinarian.

Joe steered the one hundred ten-foot ferry past the breakwater to the island’s South Harbor port.

Mac watched the town of Gansett come into view—the bustling port, the white landmark Beachcomber Hotel with its clock tower and turrets, the Victorian Portside Inn, the strip of boutiques and T-shirt shops, the South Harbor Diner, Mario’s Pizzeria and Ice Cream Parlor where Mac stole his first kiss from Nicki Peterson in eighth grade.