Margaret’s favorite kind of story is military moms and dads who come back and surprise their children at school. Margaret cries every time. But she knows Lee wouldn’t ask her back for that reason. “What is it, Lee?”

“The weather.”

Ahhh, right. Margaret does love a good weather story.

“Hurricane Inga, down in the Caribbean, is shaping up to be an event. It’s aimed at Antigua and Barbuda right now and will likely hit the Virgin Islands after that. St. Thomas, St. John, Tortola, Virgin Gorda. This is a hundred-year storm, Margaret.”

“Like Katrina?”

“Like Katrina, yes.”

Margaret experiences a surge of excitement so powerful, it’s almost sexual. “What about Dougie? He already fancies himself the next Jim Cantore, and I don’t want to steal his thunder…so to speak. Send Dougie.”

“Dougie won’t go,” Lee says. “His wife is due to have their first baby tomorrow. So he’s going to man the anchor desk on this coverage, and when I asked him who he thought I should send down in his place…”

“He said me?”

“He said you.”

“Even though I retired four years ago.”

“He said you.”

Margaret inhales, exhales, looks at herself in the mirror. They’re sending her into a war zone, essentially, so there won’t be any hair or makeup, which means the entire country will become acutely aware that Margaret is rapidly closing in on sixty-five. It’s flattering; hell, it’s an honor—not only for Margaret but for every woman of a certain age—to be chosen to cover this. Just being asked makes Margaret realize she does miss it.

“When do I leave?” she asks.

“When can you be ready?”

Margaret calls Drake at the hospital from her car service to Teterboro. CBS is sparing no expense—she has her driver, Raoul, back, and she’s flying down on the CBS jet because commercial flights have been canceled.

Drake isn’t happy. “I thought this part of our lives was over.”

“So did I,” Margaret says. She realizes she sounds giddy.

“Please be safe, Margaret,” Drake says. “I need you.”

Four hours later, Margaret lands at the Cyril E. King Airport in St. Thomas. The weather is surprisingly clear and sunny, and the island pops with all the bright colors that one expects from the tropics—emerald green, turquoise, coral, and near-blinding white. Margaret didn’t tell Lee or Drake this but she has been to the Virgin Islands before. She and her first husband, Kelley Quinn, came for a week’s vacation back when Patrick was three years old and Kevin just a baby. They stayed at the Maho Bay campground in a “cabin” with a canvas roof. Kelley filled a dark rubber bladder with water from the pump and left it in the sun to warm up for a “sun shower.” It had been rustic, funky, unbearably hot, even more unbearably buggy—Kevin’s pale, chubby baby body had been an all-you-can-eat buffet for the mosquitoes—but Margaret had loved every minute of it. Even when they found a scorpion in Kelley’s shoe. Even when they got lost on a hike to Ram Head in the scorching heat with Kevin strapped to Margaret’s chest. They spent luxurious afternoons lying under a cluster of palm trees on Trunk Bay, where Kelley rented one mask and snorkel and the two of them took turns marveling at the manta rays and the schools of brilliant fish.