They leave the neighborhood of closely aligned houses and then are flanked on either side by a thick woods of palm and pine trees. He is aware of the ocean breathing close by again although he cannot be quite sure how; by now his senses have adapted to island life so that he is simply aware, as if the pulse between his feet and the ground changes when he is near the edges of the land. He has not been in such darkness since arriving on this island, where there always seems to be a light behind the sky.

“Park your bikes and be quiet,” Evona whispers.

“Why?”

“If you want to see the stars the best then we have to sneak out onto this beach where there are no lights. But it’s a private beach.”

“We can’t be breaking the law.”

“It’ll be fine, Asher,” she says. She sounds halfway put out by him and halfway amused. “I’ve done it a hundred times.”

“Come on, Dad,” Justin says, already walking toward the sound of the water. Asher’s eyes have adjusted to the darkness enough that he can at least make out his son’s shape in the front.

“I promise. We’re way down on the far corner of a big resort,” Evona says, and puts out her hand. Her face is touched by the shadows of palm leaves so that a thin, gray light shows only on her eyes and her outstretched fingers. “They’ll never know.”

Asher doesn’t take her hand and she withdraws it.

“It’s against the law,” he whispers.

Her eyes flare in the shadows. “Well, it ought to be illegal for them to fence in a wild thing. Sometimes the law isn’t right.” She turns and he follows her, mostly because Justin is already out of his sight. “Justin,” Asher hisses, trying to be quiet, but Justin doesn’t answer and after a few steps they have arrived at a chain-link fence where someone has taken wire snips to make an opening. Asher wonders if Evona has done this herself. He wouldn’t doubt it. She slides through like a child, then holds back the little flap of fence so Justin can ease through, too.

“Watch the ends, buddy,” she says in a quiet, tender way, and he knows for sure then that she was once a mother. Or perhaps still is. There is something in her words, in her body. “So you don’t get cut.”