Maia takes a seat at the table. “So you guys can’t stay there anymore?”

The toaster dings. Huck pulls butter and jam out of the fridge and sets them on the table along with the plate of eggs and toast. “I have to get ready,” he says, and he disappears down the hall, leaving Irene to explain the unexplainable.

“We can’t,” Irene says. Cash called his friend Tilda and spent the night at her house. Irene asked Cash to call Baker and let him know what had happened. Baker was planning on moving down to the island from Houston with his son, Floyd—though these plans will certainly have to change. Hopefully, Baker hasn’t done anything that can’t be undone. “The villa belongs to the government now. Because Russ…your dad…he owed the government money for taxes, and since he’s not here to pay them, the FBI took the house instead.” This isn’t quite true, but it’s close enough.

“So none of us can stay there?”

“No,” Irene says. “They let me leave with only one suitcase. Just my clothes. So the stuff in your room…might be difficult to get back.”

Maia’s fork hovers over her breakfast. She looks so much like Russ’s mother, Milly, in that moment that Irene wants to hug her. Those eyes. Milly’s eyes.

“Are you guys leaving, then?” Maia asks in a wavering voice.

“Oh, Maia,” Irene says, and her eyes fill with tears. “No? I don’t know? The FBI also took my house in Iowa City.”

“They did?”

“They did,” Irene says. She can no longer stand, she’s shaking too badly, so she takes the seat next to Maia. “That house is what’s called a Victorian, and it had been a dream of mine since I was a young girl to restore and live in a real Victorian house. When Russ and I were first married, I kept clippings in a file folder of paint colors I liked, sofas, wallpaper, old sinks, light fixtures, doorknobs.”

“Like Pinterest?” Maia says.

“Yes, like Pinterest,” Irene says. “And once Russ…your dad…took the job down here, I had the money to buy a real Victorian house in a style called Queen Anne, which has elaborate gingerbread fretwork trim…” She looks at Maia. “Do you know what that is?”

Maia shakes her head.

“It looks like a house in a fairy tale, with a deep front porch and a turret and some stained-glass windows.”

“Cool,” Maia says. Irene thinks maybe Maia is indulging her, but it is cool.