Laughter stole its way from Oliver’s throat. “I suppose He didn’t mean for our lives to be so tidy. Even so, a bit tidier just now wouldn’t go awry. I can’t . . .” Lose her. But he couldn’t say it. Putting words to the fear lent it credence. Gave it weight.

He wouldn’t give that fear any more weight than he already had, just by thinking of it.

Enyon didn’t ask him to finish his sentence. “Do you think she took the ferry? There’s a world of possibilities as to where she is if she did.”

He couldn’t discount the possibility. She could have sailed toward Tresco just to make sure no one was watching, stowed the boat somewhere, and then secreted her way back to Hugh Town. “I spoke with the captain, and he didn’t remember seeing her. But you know Beth. When she doesn’t want to be noticed, she isn’t.”

Enyon chuckled. “Oh yes, I’m well aware.”

Oliver let the tug of a smile have its way with his lips. “Do you remember the time we all decided we’d brave a night in King Charles’s Castle? And she—”

“Aye, I remember.” Enyon gave his shoulder a shove. “And I don’t need you imitating yet again my shriek when she jumped out at me, thank you very much.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” Though his lips nearly pulled back to disobey his claim. He settled for another laugh instead, and then a few paces of quiet.

Over and again he’d taken this band about his chest to the Lord. Begged Him to watch over Beth as Oliver couldn’t do. Begged Him to touch Mamm-wynn and keep her healthy. Begged Him to somehow put to rights whatever had gone wrong.

He closed his eyes for a moment, just to be. Here. Now. With his best friend at one side and the ocean at the other. The beach beneath his feet. Home stretching up above him. To feel the rhythms that hadn’t changed, despite all that had.

Oliver. He could imagine his name in the breeze—and he always heard it in Mamm-wynn’s voice, in that way she’d whispered it when he was just a boy, standing on the bluff overlooking the shore. He’d gone out in a huff, angry that his parents hadn’t taken him with them to the mainland when they went to check on Truro Hall. And his grandmother had come out to soothe him.

“You don’t belong there,” she’d murmured, taking his slight shoulders in her still-strong hands and meeting his gaze, holding it. “It’s here you belong, Oliver Tremayne, as surely as your father and his father and his before him. Listen—listen to the wind. Do you hear that? It knows you, lad. The islands know your name, as they know all of us who love them. Be content.”