She sighed. “Not that it’s any of your business, Anthony Puckett, but I’m on a bike ride.”

“Where? I’ll meet you.”

“I’m halfway around the island. You’ll never catch me.”

“So wait for me.”

She huffed and sighed again. “I don’t know if I want to see you. I’m pretty sure I don’t.”

“But I want to explain things to you. Where are you really? You can’t avoid me forever.”

“I bet I can.”

“You can’t.”

“I’m at the end of Corn Neck Road,” she said finally.

“At the lighthouse? At Settlers’ Rock? Where?”

“Fine,” she said. “We may as well do this now.” This was the Portuguese side of her talking, a lifetime of brawling brothers who poured their emotions out like milk from a pitcher. “I’m at the parking lot before the lighthouse.” She had leaned her bike against the sign that said WELCOME TO THE BLOCK ISLAND NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE and was standing with her arms folded, looking out at the Sound.

The parking lot was almost full, but nobody was around. Everybody must be walking out along the rocks to the lighthouse.

When she saw the Le Baron coming down the road she walked closer to the water. Let him come to her.

“Hey,” Anthony said as he approached her, wobbling over the stones that covered the beach. His gray T-shirt had a stain on the front of it, and his hair was blowing in the breeze off the Sound. Joy tried to fixate on the T-shirt and not on the hair; she used to love seeing Anthony’s hair messy like that. Used to: it was already in the past. She wished her heart could hurry up and be finished breaking so it could start to repair.

She pointed toward the lighthouse and said, “Did you know that in 1831 a schooner wrecked on Sandy Point here?”

“No.” If Anthony was taken aback by the unexpected history lesson, he didn’t show it. “I didn’t. Joy—”

“The ship was called Warrior. Can you imagine it? Twenty-one people died. Not too far from where we’re standing now.”

“No . . .”

“Do you even know how Block Island got its name?”

“I guess I don’t.” He didn’t seem to be getting the extent of her anger.

“Typical,” she spat. “Most people who come here don’t bother to find out. This island was charted by the Dutch explorer Adriaen Block. Did you know that the Narragansett tribe first called it ‘Manisses’?”

“I didn’t.”

“That name translates to ‘Island of the Little God.’”

“Okay. That’s very interesting, Joy—” He put a hand out as though to touch her, or calm her, but she backed away.

“And, yeah, the sunsets are amazing and the beaches are fun and the cocktails are really good, but you people, you people who come and then leave again, you don’t realize that there’s a whole history here. You don’t realize that you leave your messes behind for the rest of us to clean up. You come from outside, and you change what’s here, and then you leave again, like it’s nothing.”