When all the others left the lighthouse for the night, the “crew” of four adjourned to the kitchen for a beer. It was pleasant sitting around the table talking casually, but Hubbard pointed to the moonlight streaming through the cracked, dusty window. “How about a walk before we turn in?”

Outside, Elizabeth hesitated, but let him take her elbow and steer her away from Craig and Bonnie, who headed toward a bank of sand dunes fringed with salt spray, roses, and plume grass. Elizabeth noticed approvingly that Bonnie seemed to be enjoying Craig’s company. And vice versa. A summer romance could be pleasant, she thought, recalling how Craig had been her vacation companion when she was just becoming aware of boys. Craig had grown into a fine, strong man, as she always knew he would. Maybe it was too bad that Bonnie Taylor was so clearly headed for a law career and not marriage to a Portuguese fisherman. It was hard to know where the best chances for happiness really existed these days.

Meanwhile, Peter Hubbard brought her back to her own interests. He was asking her about Yarkie, and that was eminently safe for conversation. Just because the moonlight was invitingly romantic on the sand and the waves, Elizabeth was glad there was Yarkie to talk about. Hubbard was saying he needed to know details of the island’s flora and fauna before he started his work.

She answered enthusiastically, starting with the formation of the Cape by glacial moraines. The glacier had left a fairly flat surface of meadows and green marshes into which fingers of ocean reached on the eastward side and fingers of blue water on the bay side. “On Yarkie,” Elizabeth added, “we have a lot of what Cape Codders call ‘kettle holes.’ Some of them are shallow, but the glacier dug some very deep.” She mentioned one near Woods Hole that dropped one hundred twenty feet.

Hubbard nodded. “I’ve heard of that one, but I didn’t know that’s what they called it.” He repeated, “Kettle holes.” He smiled. “People think we Californians have colorful language, but it’s nowhere near yours in New England.”

Without warning, he dropped to the sand and tugged Elizabeth down beside him. For a moment, she thought he was about to put his arm around her, and she was prepared to pull away, but the man was only reaching for his pipe. When he motioned to the moon and the sea it was to talk about the weather, not romance. “It’s so calm and clear,” Peter Hubbard said. “Is it really going to storm tomorrow?”

Elizabeth was relieved to talk weather. She pointed up to some very high clouds, just a few, but the harbingers. “That’s the start, right there.”

“Hard to believe.” His eyes dropped from the starlit sky to her face. “Like the way you have changed, Elizabeth,” he said as he had earlier that day.