“I know,” said Joy. “But I want to know where you’re sitting. I want to be able to picture you.”

Maggie rolled her eyes.

Joy got Maggie settled into a seat, and then she hugged her goodbye, and then Maggie hugged Pickles, and then Pickles licked the side of Maggie’s face. Maggie was a tremendous hugger, always had been: enthusiastic without being needy, confident while still being warm. Now the hugs, if they came, came intermittently, no rhyme or reason to them, like shooting stars or thunder.

Joy didn’t like leaving Maggie like this. She knew that Dustin and Sandy and Tiki would be meeting Maggie on the other end, at Perrotti Park in Newport, to take her home for the next forty-eight hours. To their home, she corrected in her head. Because Maggie’s home was with Joy, in the little cottage with the crooked kitchen. But what if Sandy caused some delay that made them late for the ferry? What if Tiki had a dirty diaper or a temper tantrum or did that thing that two-year-olds sometimes did where they went boneless when somebody tried to pick them up? It could be really difficult to get a boneless child into a car.

“It’s okay, Mom,” said Maggie. “I’ve been on this ferry a million times.”

“But not as much as the Point Judith one.”

“It’s the same thing.”

“It isn’t. It’s a whole different dock! What if you get lost?”

Eye roll from Maggie, the second of the day. (Joy thought with trepidation of Madison Blevins.) “I’m not going to get lost,” Maggie said. “There’s only one way down from the boat.”

Joy put her hand on the purple streak in Maggie’s hair. “I thought you said this washed out, by the way. It sort of seems permanent.”

“I did? I said it washed out?”

“You definitely did.”

“Hmmm. That’s really weird. I don’t remember saying that.”

By now many of the ferry seats were claimed. There were families and young day-trippers and people with large suitcases who were either leaving for or returning from longer vacations, and Joy realized that she’d better get off the boat before it departed with her on it, because wouldn’t that be a hoot, for her to come off the ferry in Newport with Maggie, Pickles prancing between them. Wouldn’t Dustin and Sandy love that.

“Make sure your dad calls me,” she said. “The minute he has you in his possession.” While she understood on an intellectual level that Dustin had grown up and matured in the years since their marriage had ended, and while she understood too that with an upgraded wife (skinnier, and definitely taller than Joy) and a toddler in his life he was probably a responsible person who wasn’t likely to lose Maggie, and while she further understood that part of the reason Dustin had moved to Rhode Island was to nourish and water the dormant relationship with his eldest daughter, she still felt the finger of worry leaving a bruise on the tender underside of her arm. “The second he has you,” she said. “I mean, before you even get in the car, you have him call me.”