Joe Firestone put up his house as collateral in order to afford a decent attorney for his son’s trial.

Keats was arrested and pled no contest, of course; Roxie was fifteen years old at the time of the incident, and he was eighteen.

He was given a light sentence on account of Roxie’s refusal to participate in the trial, and after multiple appeals she made directly to the judge, attempts to intervene on Keats’s behalf. Keats was able to avoid prison by agreeing to a stint on probation, and his name would be placed on the sex offender registry for eight years.

Joe Firestone was relieved that his son could avoid jail time, but he ended up losing the cottage as a result of the financial burden caused by the whole ordeal. Once the house was gone, the only affordable rental he could find on the island was a tiny loft apartment above the garage of a homeowner for whom they had worked for many years. It was too small for two grown men, but they made it work.

Business suffered. People looked at them differently.

A year or so later, before Keats had turned twenty, Joe was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and he was gone within months.

Roxie battled her father every step of the way. She wasn’t able to prevent him from bringing charges against Keats, but she swiftly began the process of legally emancipating herself from her parents. She remained in touch with Keats in the time following the incident, despite a court order that they have no contact until she turned eighteen.

She begged Keats for his forgiveness long after he’d assured her that it wasn’t necessary.

She loved him. Somehow, and she didn’t know if she would ever be able to understand this fully or accept that she was deserving, but somehow, amid all of this, Keats had started to love her, and he kept on loving her too.

Roxie returned to Fripp Island midway through her senior year of high school, as soon as the legal emancipation process was complete. She didn’t have her diploma or a penny to her name.

She moved into the loft with Keats and got a job at Gram’s Diner.

They kept to themselves, knowing how people talked.

Keats didn’t get nearly as many calls as he and his father had prior to the incident, but he still found a fair amount of work through a few loyal homeowners who gave him the benefit of the doubt, despite having heard the rumors. Between his handyman jobs and Roxie’s tips from Gram’s, they made enough to keep up with the rent on the loft, the utilities, groceries and food for Leo, and the occasional night out in Beaufort, and whatever was left they put into savings. Their goal was to have two thousand dollars saved by the time they left Fripp Island for good.

Roxie learned what sort of meals she could make for under five bucks for the two of them: spaghetti, bologna on Wonder Bread, casseroles of hamburger and potato. Fish and crab they caught themselves and ate with melted margarine, a slab off the brick-sized block of the cheap stuff, which was slick and yellow as an egg yolk. They ate ice cream that came in a bucket.