Brian had borrowed a boat from a friend to get there, and he pulled up to Bernie’s dock, which was almost hidden among the bald cypress trees that grew out into the water. There was a narrow path to the boathouse, but otherwise the island was almost overgrown with cypress trees and loblolly pines. The trees towering above them were nearly taller than the island was wide.

“Oy!” Bernie shouted.

Harper shielded her eyes from the bright sunlight that managed to break through the foliage, but she couldn’t see Bernie anywhere.

“Bernie?” Brian asked. He climbed off the boat first, onto the dock, then helped his daughter do the same.

“I thought that was you coming ’round there,” Bernie said, and Harper finally spotted him trotting down the path and waving his hand. “I wasn’t expecting company today, but it’s a nice surprise.”

“I tried calling,” Brian said, “but the number didn’t work. Do you still have a phone out here?”

Bernie waved it off. “The storms were always taking it out, so I just got rid of it.”

“We aren’t intruding, are we?” Harper asked as she and her father walked down the dock to meet Bernie. “We don’t want to bother you.”

“Bother? Ha,” Bernie teased in his cockney English accent, “it’s never a bother getting a visit from a pretty girl such as yourself.” He winked at her then, making Harper laugh. “And your old man ain’t so bad, either.”

“So how have things been, Bernie?” Brian asked.

“Can’t complain, though I still do.” Bernie turned around to start leading them from the dock and gestured widely to the trees around them. “Come on. I’ll show you what I’ve done with the place. Things have changed since you’ve been here last.”

Nothing looked all that different to Harper as she followed Bernie up the worn path toward his house. Everything still smelled of pine and creeping Charlie, just the way she remembered it. As Bernie and her father talked about all the things they’d been up to over the last year or so, Harper wandered more slowly behind them, admiring the place from her childhood.

Since she’d been about twelve or so—the age at which her father started feeling safer about leaving her home alone in charge of Gemma—they’d come out to stay with Bernie less and less, but before that, it had been a home away from home.

Harper was certain that if she looked, she’d find the fort she and Gemma had built out of branches and old wood in the back, behind Bernie’s cabin. They’d secured it with nails and wood, and Bernie had promised to leave it for them always.