She forged ahead. “Anyway. Bob Herbert is the best on the island, and he can tow you to his shop. I’ll call him for you. But I don’t know if he’ll have a timing belt for a ’95 Le Baron in stock. He might have to get it off-island, order it for delivery. It could be a couple of days.” She looked back at the road. They passed a young couple on rental bikes with big wicker baskets bobbing. They wore sunglasses, no helmets, and the girl had blond hair that swung back and forth as she pedaled.

“Just my luck,” said Anthony. “Stuck in a place with no timing belts.” Joy rolled her eyes. Nobody was stuck on Block Island; people, in her opinion, should feel lucky to be here. But just as she’d known plenty of alcoholics in her life, she’d known plenty of people who considered Block Island second-rate. Lesser.

When Joy was a girl, growing up in a crowded three-bedroom apartment in Fall River (one bedroom for her parents, one for her four brothers to share, if you can believe it, and the smallest one for her), she’d craved space more than anything else. Everything was so crowded in Fall River—the smells from people’s cooking intermingled, cars parked so close to one another that their bumpers kissed, tempers wound around each other like snakes. It never ceased to amaze Joy that here she could look out from every edge of the island and see nothing but land, space, and water. Long ago she had promised herself that she’d never take it for granted, and she never did. “Well,” she said, “in the island’s defense, a ’95 Le Baron is not exactly common these days.”

She cut across Old Town Road. Traffic! She should have stayed on West Side the whole way.

Her passenger didn’t seem to have heard her last sentence. “What’s that line for?” he asked, looking out his window. “Is that a food truck?”

“Oh, come on,” said Joy. “Are you kidding me?” The line for the Roving Patisserie was even longer than it had been the other day, and she didn’t think they were giving out anything for free this time. These were paying customers, wallets at the ready.

“What’s it sell?” asked Anthony.

“Nothing,” said Joy quickly. “Just some silly . . . promotional thing. Nothing important.” But she slowed down, because from the back she thought she saw . . . no, it couldn’t be . . . yes, it was. Maggie and Riley, heads tipped close to each other, probably bent over some Instagram video of a kiwi growing inside a banana or something. “No way,” she breathed. Maggie was a customer of the Roving Patisserie. Not only that, she’d left Joy Bombs before Joy had given her permission.

“What?” asked Anthony.

Pickles, sensing drama, lifted her ears.

“Nothing,” said Joy. She shook her head, hoping to dispel the sight. Maybe she’d imagined it, after all. Then her phone buzzed. She glanced down. Can I eat at Rileys after I babysit. Maggie. She sighed. She looked again at her passenger and thought about the artichokes. Maybe . . .