Jim had shown him a couple of crabs mating, too—he called them doublers—and that was just too much. The guy crab just climbed aboard the girl, tucked her under him, and swam around like that for days.

Seth figured they had to like it.

Ethan had said the crabs were married, and when Seth had snickered, he lifted a brow. Seth had found himself intrigued enough to go to the school library and read up on crabs. And he thought he understood, sort of, what Ethan meant. The guy protected the girl by keeping her under him because she could only mate when she was in her last molt and her shell was soft, so she was vulnerable. Even after they’d done it, he kept carrying her like that until her shell was hard again. And she was only going to mate once, so it was like getting married.

He thought of how Cam and Miss Spinelli—Anna, he reminded himself, he got to call her Anna now—hadgotten married. Lots of the women got all leaky, and the guys laughed and joked. Everybody made such a big deal out of it with flowers and music and tons of food. He didn’t get it. It seemed to him getting married just meant you got to have sex whenever you wanted and nobody got snotty about it.

But it had been cool. He’d never been to anything like it. Even though Cam had dragged him out to the mall and made him try on suits, it was mostly okay.

Maybe sometimes he worried about how it was going to change things, just when he was getting used to the way things were. There was going to be a woman in the house now. He liked Anna okay. She’d played square with him even though she was a social worker. But she was still a female.

Like his mother.

Seth clamped down on that thought. If he thought about his mother, if he thought about the life he’d had with her— the men, the drugs, the dirty little rooms—it would spoil the day.

He hadn’t had enough sunny days in his ten years to risk ruining one.

‘‘You taking a nap there, Seth?’’

Ethan’s mild voice snapped Seth back to the moment. He blinked, saw the sun glinting off the water, the orange floats bobbing. ‘‘Just thinking,’’ Seth muttered and quickly pulled in another buoy.

‘‘Me, I don’t do much thinking.’’ Jim set the trap on the gunwale and began culling crabs. His leathered face creased in grins. ‘‘Gives you brain fever.’’

‘‘Shit,’’ Seth said, leaning over to study the catch. ‘‘That one’s starting to molt.’’

Jim grunted, held up a crab with a shell cracking along the back. ‘‘This buster’ll be somebody’s soft-shell sand-wich by tomorrow.’’ He winked at Seth as he tossed the crab into the tank. ‘‘Maybe mine.’’