“It’s okay—it’s fine.” A moment passed. The silence resumed. The Jeep bumped along. Finally her passenger spoke again. “Thanks for the ride,” he said. “I really appreciate it. I didn’t know what I was going to do, all the way out there, with a dead phone battery.”

“No problem,” said Joy. “I was heading this way anyway.” This was a lie; she’d been heading to Stevens Cove to walk Pickles, and after that she was going to head back to the shop. Maggie was helping out until eleven a.m., and Joy had told her that after that she was free to go to her mother’s helper job.

“Really?”

“Sure.” No. Corn Neck Road was about as far from Stevens Cove as you could get and still be on the island. “I’m Joy, by the way. I guess I should have mentioned that.” She turned onto West Side Road and gestured toward the back of the Jeep. “And you’ve already met Pickles.”

“Hey, Pickles,” said the man cautiously.

“You can pet her. She’s really friendly.”

“That’s okay.”

“Not a dog person?”

“No.” A pause. “I wanted one, when I was a kid. But I never had one.” His face twisted. Then he said, “I noticed your license plate. What’s it mean?”

“Oh,” she said. “I wanted it to say JOY BOMBS. That’s the name of my bakery. Because my name is Joy. But it was too many letters, so I couldn’t have the O. I mean, I guess I could have picked another letter to leave out, but the O made the most sense.”

“Okay,” he said.

After that he said nothing, so Joy waited a beat and asked, “And you are . . . ?”

“Oh. Anthony.”

More silence enveloped them: this one seemed deeper, more complicated than the first, and Joy decided not to worry about it and instead spend some time appreciating the view. They were surrounded by farmland now, with the ocean barely a blue slash in the distance.

Joy’s thoughts trotted toward dinnertime. Dinner by Dad’s last posted recipe had been a broken artichoke heart salad with pasta puttanesca, but she didn’t know if she felt up to dealing with artichoke hearts. Maggie had a mature palate and an adventurous attitude; even so, artichokes were a lot of work. But then she thought of what Dinner by Dad always said—a good meal was almost always worth the effort it required—and she’d already bought all of the ingredients. She’d wrangle the artichokes.

Just when it seemed the silence might crack under so much pressure, the man—Anthony—spoke again. “How do you know so much about timing belts?”

Joy flicked on her turn signal, turned onto Center Road. “My dad owns an auto repair shop,” she said. “Off-island. My brothers worked in the shop, and in high school I worked the phones, but every now and then they’d let me help out back there.”

She felt him hesitate, even bristle. This was common—a man did not like to depend on a woman for car advice, she’d learned that years ago. But clearly he didn’t know a broken timing belt from a broken heart.