Roxie found him at his favorite spot at four o’clock the next day. He was throwing a tennis ball into the water for a little brown puppy to fetch. He waved when he spotted Roxie approaching, her rolled-up towel tucked under her arm. She wore a black bikini and round wire-rimmed sunglasses.

“Cute dog,” she said.

Keats said, “His name’s Leo.”

They went for a swim together, then Roxie spread her towel out next to his. They chatted and laughed and tousled with Leo as the afternoon became evening.

Roxie was due back at her house for dinner with her parents at seven, but she said she’d try to come to the same beach at the same time tomorrow. She asked for Keats’s phone number, and gave him hers.

The next day, they fished off Pritchards Island, scoped out some gators in the marsh near Gram’s Diner, then got milk shakes.

The day after that, Keats was tied up with a house call until the evening, but he invited Roxie to join him for a fire on the beach around sunset.

On the final day of Roxie’s vacation, her parents were registered to participate in a couples golf tournament, so she invited Keats to come to their house, where she wanted to make a few mixed drinks with her mom’s gin while her parents were away.

Keats drank a beer or two with his dad now and then, but Joe drew the line at underage liquor, so Keats let Roxie mix up the drinks. Roxie said she had been doing this for years. They took their gin and tonics out to the pool and went for a swim. Keats told her he was pretty sure he’d replaced the pool filter at this house the previous summer. Roxie made him laugh with her impression of a dolphin, and they had a handstand competition.

She went to make a second round of drinks.

When she returned, Roxie said she was sad she had to leave the island the next day. She slipped into the water and blew bubbles to the surface. When she came back up, Keats said, “Me too.”

After they had finished their cocktails, Roxie took his hand and led him out of the pool and inside, to her bedroom.

She hesitated for a moment, looking incredulous when he told her he’d never even kissed a girl. They couldn’t go all the way, she said, because she didn’t have condoms, but they could do other things.

Roxie’s parents had gotten into it on the ninth hole at the tournament. Her mother went to the clubhouse and ordered a triple vodka soda, and her father stormed straight back to the house by himself.

He found Roxie and the maintenance boy in bed together, and Keats wasn’t even one foot out the door before Roxie’s father was on the phone with his attorney up in Boston, then with the local police department.

Despite Roxie’s tears and rage and threats and protestations, her father moved forward with the statutory rape charge.