Gram and his mom were white, but he was black like his dad, and as much as he missed Gram, right now he missed his dad more. He’d been four when his dad died. His dad was a tower dog, the most dangerous job in the world, ask anybody, and he’d died saving this other guy who’d gotten stuck on this big cell phone tower up by Traverse Bay. It had been in the winter, a couple of degrees below zero, and there’d been a snowstorm. Toby would give everything he had—he would even cut off his arm or his leg—if that meant his dad could still be alive.

LUCY FOUND THE EXPENSIVE MOUNTAIN bike in the garage and a fancy sea kayak in the boathouse, both too new to be castoffs from the Remingtons. After discovering the journey into town wasn’t nearly as complicated as her first night’s wanderings had led her to believe, she used the bike for transportation, carrying the groceries she bought in her backpack. Charity Island was used to all types, and her orange dreads, nose ring, and combat boots didn’t attract much attention.

After a few days, she took the ferry to the mainland to get rid of her rental car. While she was there, she shopped for a couple of additions to her new wardrobe, as well as some incredible temporary tattoos.

By the end of her first week at the house, she’d cleaned the kitchen from top to bottom. Each time she entered, she hated the big table more. It was not only hideous and much too large for the alcove, but also painted an ugly shade of mint green that was supposed to match the walls but didn’t. She’d even baked a few loaves of bread.

Other than occasional glimpses of the twelve-year-old spying on her from the woods, she had no distractions, which made it the perfect time to start the writing project for her father’s book. Since she hadn’t planned to resume her lobbying work until September, she’d originally intended to begin working on it as soon as she got back from her honeymoon. Mat said he was fed up with other people defining Nealy’s legacy, and he believed future generations deserved a more personal history of the nation’s first female president.