Hank didn’t respond this time, hoping to let the silence work for him. He heard birds outside—common seagulls—and the rhythm of the ocean, the whoosh of the wind, and all at once his own life seemed very far away. The pace of the campaign, the constant questions and careful consideration of every word he said, the burning desire to commit himself to doing what he could as a legislator. It wasn’t that he could be himself here—he was himself on the campaign trail, too. He saw no point in pretending to be someone he wasn’t. But out here, with Antonia, the “doing” part of his life didn’t seem to matter so much. He remembered walking the long stretches of Cape Cod beaches as a kid, unaware of the hours ticking by.

But Antonia was obviously caught up in his intrusion into her escape here, into making sure he didn’t stumble on whatever it was she was hiding from him. She zipped up her backpack and shoved it under the table, as if she’d marked her territory.

She sat on a chair that looked as if it’d been smuggled out of a sixth-grade classroom from the 1940s and twisted her hands together. “You meant it, didn’t you? If I refuse to leave, you’d stay here with me.”

“I make it a point to mean most things I say.” He shrugged, trying to take any pompous note out of his words. “It’s just easier that way. I never was any good at bluffing.”

“It’s what you leave unsaid—never mind. I’m in a profession where I have to watch my tongue, too. Mean what you say, say what you mean. But you never know what the other person’s hearing, do you?”

“Do you have a problem with someone, Antonia?”

But she seemed preoccupied, staring at her hands as if he hadn’t spoken, then jumped to her feet and walked out onto the small front porch. Hank didn’t follow her. He remained standing in the middle of a thin rug and watched her through the window as she whipped her beach towel off the rail, tossed it over one shoulder and came back inside. “It’s raining. I wonder if it’s because of the hurricane.”

Hank had seen enough fear in his military career to recognize it in someone else, especially someone as unaccustomed to experiencing fear as Antonia was. She was used to being the calm one in the room, the physician who had to concentrate on treating the patient in front of her—who saw fear in others but who couldn’t let it affect her. She had a job to do, and her patients counted on her to do it.