As the ferry docked, the horn sounded, vibrating through Kate, a hot flush breaking out between her breasts. Sister Ruth closed her puzzle book and slapped it onto the dashboard. “Feel like coming for the walk?”

Kate slammed the driver’s door closed behind her. As she followed Sister Ruth across the gravel of the slipway toward the pier, her legs threatened to give way. She hadn’t felt this nervous since her last blind date—a set-up orchestrated by her sister with a woman who, at twenty-five, was five years Kate’s junior. It hadn’t worked out. It should have, there was no reason for it not to, but it hadn’t.

It was the smaller of the two ferries this morning—the passenger ferry, not the much larger twelve-car ferry that always made the final ten p.m. stop en route to the more populated East Island. The bay was mapped like a wishbone—Melbourne at the pinnacle, Mornington and Portarlington at each point. Lords and East Islands sat between the stems, but unlike East Island, Lords was connected to Portarlington by a two-kilometre, stone causeway that stretched into the bay. Kate rarely crossed the convict-constructed causeway—her family lived on the opposite side of the bay, and taking the car ferry directly from Lords to Mornington was much quicker than taking the causeway and driving two hours via Melbourne around the bay—but most of the students caught buses across the causeway each morning, only a handful taking ferries from Mornington. St. Joan’s heavily relied on the causeway—when the causeway was occasionally closed due to an exceptionally high tide, the ferries had to work double time to ship the cohort back to Portarlington. Thankfully, the ferries were always at their beck and call—if the sisters planned on going into Mornington on a weekday to visit St. Gerard’s, the local church, they’d phone ahead to request the car ferry stop via Lords Island to pick them up with the van.

This morning, as Kate had assumed, the passenger ferry was stopping at Lords Island just for Tilly. Colin, the deckhand, hauled himself onto the pier, securing the lines to the dock cleats as he tied off, crisscrossing the ropes to get the right angle. A second later, a slender figure appeared in the doorway, steadying herself on the doorjamb of the cabin as she tugged a large suitcase behind her.

She traced her tongue over her dry lips. It was Tilly, undoubtedly. A dress, buttoned to her collarbone—almost matronly. A dark, delicate plait flying across her back as she accepted a helping hand up onto the pier, thanking the deckhand as he lifted two suitcases and a cabin bag onto the planks.

Her stomach flipped as an invisible rope pulled tight between them and, for the first time in twelve years, Tilly looked her way.

Chapter Two

Desperate to avoid looking into the rear-view mirror, Kate focused on the road ahead. From the seat behind the driver, Tilly rambled on and on as she answered Sister Ruth’s question about resigning from her position as head of the history department at St. Matthew’s. Like a snap of electricity, Kate felt Tilly’s closeness as she leaned forward to repeat part of her answer for Sister Ruth.