Once the boat was out of the harbor, he let Toby take the wheel. Eventually they passed around the south end of the island. When they were closer to shore, Toby got his rod and began to cast, with Mike giving him pointers. Lucy went over the other side to swim and to not think about Panda.

The next few hours passed pleasantly, but the fish weren’t biting, and eventually Toby gave up and went in to swim himself. As Lucy lounged on the deck, she realized her initial impression of Mike had been wrong. He wasn’t a phony at all. Instead, this good-looking, gregarious salesman was one of those people who genuinely looked for the best in everyone, even the sixteen-year-old who’d rear-ended his Cadillac the previous week while texting his girlfriend. “All teenagers do stupid things,” he said as they bobbed at anchor while Toby snorkeled. “I sure did my share.”

She smiled. “You’re too good to be true.”

“Afraid not. Just ask Bree.”

She couldn’t come up with a polite way of saying that Bree never mentioned him, but Big Mike wasn’t quite as clueless as he seemed. “She hasn’t told you about me, has she?”

“Not really.”

He unzipped a soft-sided cooler he’d brought with him. “I grew up on this island. Except for college, I’ve lived here all my life.” They bounced on the wake of a passing speedboat. “My parents were drunks—couldn’t help themselves—and I was a big, clumsy island oaf with no idea how to make friends.” He took out a bag of sandwiches from the island deli and set it on a table built into the deck. “Bree was one of the summer kids. Every year I’d count the days until she and her brothers arrived. They were great guys, exactly the kind of kid I wanted to be. Always knew exactly what to say, always fit in. But mainly it was Bree I waited for.”

He pulled a bottle of sauvignon blanc from the cooler and picked up a corkscrew. “You should have seen her then, so full of life, always laughing, not tense and sad like she is now. Instead of walking from one place to another, she danced.” He pulled the cork. “Star, Toby’s mother, was supposed to be the most beautiful girl on the island, but when Bree was around, I couldn’t look at anybody else, even though I knew she was way too good for me.”

“She is not.” They hadn’t seen Toby climbing up the swim ladder that hung over the stern, the snorkel mask on top of his head.

“She’s had a hard time, Toby,” Mike said as he filled a plastic cup with wine and handed it to Lucy. “You need to look at things from her viewpoint.”