“So, do you think I should give it to another agent?” asked Marlin when Al, looking a bit wild-eyed, had answered the door yet again.

“I’M WORKING!” roared Al.

“WELL, SO AM I!” roared Marlin, who always gave as good as she got.

Al was about to go inside when Marlin calmed down and said, “Do you think it’s ever going to get published? EVER?”

Al stopped and looked thoughtful. “Well, you never know about the vagaries of publishing houses but I’d say it has a shot. It seems like a good book to me. Nothing out there quite like it as far as I can see.”

“Yeah, but are you just saying that to make me feel better?”

“Marlin,” said Al with increasing impatience, “you may not be able to count on me for much but you can depend on me to tell you the truth. Who told you earlier that sending it in over the transom to Random House was going to get you nowhere when everyone else just wanted to make you feel good by saying the book would be published. WHO?”

“You,” said Marlin in a small voice.

“Well then!” barked Al, and slammed the door in her face.

Fiona smiled as she returned to the porch and witnessed this transaction. Al’s shouting and blustering no longer bothered her. How had it happened, she wondered, that in the few months they had lived on Pine Island he had become part of them? His quirks and qualities had blended in with their own so that shouting “WHAT!” was part of the makeup of their entity. The one they were all together. She still believed she could save them through the force of her determination. Charlie still always had one eye out for danger. Natasha still floated through life alive in the moment without any thought to what might happen next and Marlin’s feet were still planted firmly on the ground but now they had Al, who blustered and roared but always told the truth, no matter how painful. And like all their qualities, good and bad, Fiona would not change his now that he was part of them. She would not know who she was, before without the three of them, but now without the four.

“Fiona!” roared Al from the trailer steps. “I’ve had so many interruptions I need to work through dinner. I’ll need supper in the trailer.”

“Yes, sir, right away, sir,” muttered Fiona.

She sighed and put down her book. Sometimes Al joined them for dinner but more often he chose to have it in the trailer as he worked. She could hear Marlin checking things in the oven and she went inside to put Al’s supper in a food container. By the time she got it out to him he was back inside typing at his computer. He answered the door looking half crazed and handed her the empty, dirty food container from the night before.

“You know,” said Fiona, “the least you could do, if we’re taking you your dinner, is to wash out the food container before returning it.”