Once Keats was no longer in school, the two of them had time to renovate the cottage together, on top of the handyman work elsewhere on the island. They worked long, happy days together, sometimes on the same project if it required two sets of hands, and sometimes Joe would send his son out on house calls that he knew Keats would be able to manage on his own. Keats was capable, and a handsome and affable young man. He was quickly accepted by the homeowners’ community. He and his father were known all across the island for their professionalism, friendly service, and reasonable rates.

Several years after Joe and Keats moved to Fripp Island, Keats met Roxie at a golf tournament. She was competing in the under-thirty women’s division, and Keats was caddying for a woman whose toilet he had unclogged the day before. (Caddying was a great way to make a hundred bucks for a few hours of easy work, if his father didn’t have other projects lined up for him.)

Wearing a T-shirt advertising an angry band, frayed denim cutoffs, and flip-flops displaying silver stacks of toe rings, Roxie looked like she hailed from a different planet than the other women on the course. She was also bored and playing terribly; she had by far the worst score of all the competing women. She struck up a conversation with Keats on the fifth hole, introducing herself and commenting on the humidity. He asked where she was from, and she said Boston. She asked if he’d been, and he said he’d never gone north of North Carolina or south of South Carolina. This stunned Roxie, who had been to Cancun and Hong Kong and the south of France and all over Europe three or four times, at least that many times to Hawaii, and she’d recently spent her birthday weekend in Key West, although she didn’t mention any of this to him.

Keats said he liked how she had dyed the tips of her long blond hair blue. She said she used Kool-Aid to do it, and her mother kept threatening to cut it off in her sleep, like Samson and Delilah.

The two of them chatted in the sun and in the shade and then in the clubhouse when the tournament had ended.

Keats wasn’t like the guys from Roxie’s high school, who were all hair gel and dirty magazines and Lacoste polos. Keats had gentle eyes and a shy way of talking to her, head bowed and voice so soft, almost like he hoped she wouldn’t catch every word.

He was eighteen years old at the time. He had never been on a date. Roxie was a sophomore in high school, and she’d had sex with two boyfriends, although neither of the relationships had lasted more than a month.

Roxie asked him which part of the beach he liked to hang out at, and at what time of day, and Keats described his favorite part of the island to her and said he was usually there around four o’clock in the afternoon, unless he was on a house call.