“Yeah, it’ll be visible from space.”

Then he grabs my sleeve and says, “C’mon. Let’s go look at my new house.”

As we climb the steps to the porch, we hear Gusty talking from inside. He uses Ronan’s name and Ronan freezes.

“Oh, the fishing life,” Gusty says. “Of course I miss it. I miss it every day.”

Ronan scrunches his eyebrows and drops his chin a bit. Listening.

“I fell in love with it when I was twelve years old. Even when the catch is bad and the weather is brutal. Even when the work is scarce and the government regulations tie you up. There isn’t anything better in the world than being on the ocean . . .”

Ronan’s chin drops even more.

“Nope,” his dad continues. “There’s only one thing on this whole planet that could have made me leave fishing . . . that kid out there. You know, he’s the best thing that ever happened to me, Henry. We’re gonna fix this place up. I’m going to make it good for him and me.”

I smile big, but Ronan’s expression isn’t like that. Squinting, he smiles without showing any teeth and lowers his jaw. He exhales as he drops his shoulders, like he’s just unloaded a heavy weight. He curls forward a bit and turns to look at me. “Delsie. Did you hear that, Delsie?”

“I did, Ronan.”

He bites his lip and then breaks into a big smile and looks up at the sky before straightening his back and taking a giant leap up onto the porch. We step into the house, and the place looks like the destruction after a storm. Along with curtains of cobwebs. We leave footprints in the dust. There’s a hole in both the wall and the ceiling, and the wallpaper is curling and brown.

“Hey, I love what you’ve done with the place.” I laugh.

Ronan’s voice cracks. “I think it’s absolutely perfect.”

“It is, Ronan. It really is.”

“Let me show you around,” Ronan says, running into the kitchen. He points to a huge puddle on the floor. “We have our own pond. Big enough for a boat.” He spins and points at a stove with the oven door hanging off. “And as you can see, it features a stove that will cook if we light the whole thing on fire and cook hot dogs and marshmallows on sticks.”

We laugh.

He shows me his room. “My dad let me have the biggest bedroom. And look how the drawers are already in the wall. Isn’t that cool?” His face brightens. “Oh! And my dad says that my avó is coming to see the house and meet me. I can’t believe it.”

We are interrupted by the sound of Saucepan Lynn hooting and hollering outside, so we run to join her. She gazes up at the tree and folds her arms. “Well,” she says, “this tree is completely overdone. Magnificent. Just what I would expect from a couple of crepe flippers.”