His overriding memory of growing up there was plotting his escape. Once he finally managed to leave, he’d never looked back except for occasional visits to his parents. Every time he came home, he counted the minutes until he could leave again. This would be his longest stay since he turned eighteen and left for college. Mac wondered how long it would take before he was chomping to leave again.

Salt air, diesel fuel and rotting seaweed—the aromas of home—filled Mac’s senses and turned his stomach. He hated the smell of rotting seaweed.

“Come on back with me,” Joe said.

At the ferry’s stern, Mac watched as Joe used a combination of engine power and bow thrusters to efficiently turn the ferry in the tightest imaginable space and back it into its berth. “You make that look so damned easy.”

“It is easy—especially when you’ve done it a thousand or two times.”

Once the ferry was docked, they stood at the rail and watched the throngs of trucks, cars and tourists disembark from the day’s first boat to Gansett.

“I still spend Friday and Saturday nights on the island during the summer,” Joe said as Mac gathered up his stuff. “Come on by the Beachcomber if you feel like grabbing a brew or two.”

“I’ll do that.” Mac shook Joe’s hand. “It’s good to see you, man.”

“Been too long.”

“Yeah.” But as Mac took a long look at the bustling town of Gansett, he decided it hadn’t been nearly long enough.

Carrying his oversize backpack, Mac navigated the crowds on his way to Main Street. He stopped to let a family on bikes pass and continued up the hill, mesmerized by the frantic activity.

To his left, in neat, orderly rows, cars, vans and passenger trucks waited to back onto the nine a.m. ferry for the fifty-minute return trip to mainland Rhode Island. Joe’s employees moved like a well-oiled NASCAR pit crew, offloading cargo from the arriving ferry and reloading the next boat. The island relied on the ferries to deliver everything from food to mail to fuel to milk. During the summer, when the island’s thirty restaurants and bars operated at full tilt, each ferry brought new shipments of beer, wine, liquor, fresh seafood, potatoes, vegetables and linens.

A forklift carrying a pallet of soda came within inches of running into Mac.

“Sorry, man,” the operator called out with a smile.

Mac waved to the driver. He cleared the cargo area and fixed his gaze on the Beachcomber, the iconic building that anchored the town. The quacking horn of a Range Rover painted yellow and tricked out like a duck—complete with a bill affixed to the hood—caught Mac’s eye. Laughing at the JSTDKY license plate, he stepped off the curb onto Main Street.

A searing pain stabbed through his left leg, sending him sprawling into the street.