“First, we’ll have to dig a pit and then lay the wood. Then we’ll see. Fire’s nothing to be fooling around with.”

“We’d be really careful,” Ruth said. “You could stand right next to us.”

Footsteps sounded on the beach behind them, and Ruth turned to see Henry moving toward them. He was freshly shaved, wearing clean khakis and a white T-shirt that showed off the navy tattoos on his arms.

He was a tall man with a lean, muscled build, and his black eye patch and rawboned, deeply tanned features created a pirate’s image.

Once when Ruth had been washing dishes with Henry in the Seaside Resort kitchen, she’d asked him how he’d lost the eye. He’d plunged a greasy pan into the sink filled with hot, soapy water. “Lost it off the coast of Italy. A rocket hit the ship. Sent shrapnel flying, and I caught some in the face.”

“Did it hurt?”

“Not then. All I could think about was putting out the fire on the ship’s deck. And then I got to thinking that if I’d been three seconds faster, I’d have died, like the man in front of me.”

“He blew up?”

“He did.” His grip on the scrub brush tightened, and he dug deeper into the cooking grease still clinging to the pan.

“What happened next?” Ruth asked.

The muscle in Henry’s jaw pulsed as he rinsed the now-gleaming pan. His gaze settled on her as if judging the weight of his answer. “I put the fire out. That’s all I could do.”

She took the dripping pan and set it on the drying rack. “Weren’t you afraid?”

“Fear’s a waste of time, Ruth.” And then he grinned, winked with his remaining good eye as he reached for another pot.

Later she’d asked her mother about Henry and learned he talked to Daddy often late at night, when they sat on the back porch smoking cigars, sipping whiskey, and staring out toward the ocean.

“Your daddy keeps Henry centered,” Mama said.

“Who keeps Daddy centered?” Ruth asked.

“You and I do,” she said simply.

When a storm hit the area, there was no man more fearless than Henry. Last winter, when a vessel had radioed in a distress call, he’d realized they were close, so he took his own boat out into the surf. Word was Henry fought the high waves and winds, and when he found the boat, he climbed aboard and helped six sailors onto his vessel.

Put him side by side with ten other men in a log-chopping contest, and he’d win hands down. But there were times when Henry didn’t turn up like he was supposed to. It frustrated Mama, but Daddy always defended his younger cousin. “After what the man went through, he has a right,” Daddy said.