Josephine presses her lips together in a way that lets Irene know she’s growing suspicious. Still, her fingers fly across the keyboard. She slows to punch the Social Security numbers in carefully, then waits for the results. Blood pulses in Irene’s ears, and her shearling coat feels like it’s made of lead.

“I don’t see another account under either name or Social,” Josephine says. “Nothing’s coming up. Would you like me to call over my branch manager?”

“No, thank you, that’s okay,” Irene says. “For all I know, the account I’m thinking of could be at a different bank altogether.”

Josephine tilts her head. “A different bank?”

Irene backs toward the door. She can’t get out of there fast enough. “Well, like I said, it’s my New Year’s resolution to get organized.”

“All righty!” Josephine says. “Good luck with that.”

Ayers

Huck has asked Ayers to help him go through the things in Rosie’s bedroom during the week, while Maia is at school. Ayers doesn’t make it up to the house on Jacob’s Ladder until the Thursday before the Martin Luther King Day weekend.

“I’m sorry I didn’t come sooner,” Ayers says. “My life just got really busy all of a sudden.”

“Don’t apologize,” Huck says. “You have two jobs, and now that you’re back with Mick, I’m sure he wants your attention as well.”

Ayers sighs. She is back with Mick and he does want her attention. He admitted that seeing her with Baker (Mick calls him “Banker”) drove him crazy with jealousy, and he vowed not to let anything—or anyone—get between them again. Since they’ve been back together, Mick has stopped by La Tapa at the end of Ayers’s shift each night and walked her to her truck before heading back to Beach Bar until closing. He’s abandoned his usual ritual of late-night drinks at the Quiet Mon and instead drives straight to Ayers’s apartment in Fish Bay, where he spends the night. When Ayers works on Treasure Island, he meets her at the customs dock at four o’clock with a pineapple-banana smoothie from Our Market. On the one day off they’ve had together so far, Mick borrowed his boss’s boat and they cruised all the way up the north shore to snorkel at Waterlemon Cay. They spotted three basking sharks and two spotted eagle rays. Mick is as much of a snorkel-nerd as Ayers. When they saw the second spotted eagle ray rippling along the sandy bottom, Mick dived down and undulated right along top of it. When he and Ayers surfaced a few moments later, he pulled off his mask and grinned like a kid with a shiny new bike, and Ayers felt a wave of the familiar adoration. This was her guy.

They’d left Waterlemon and headed to Gibney for an hour on the beach. When Ayers’s stomach started to rumble, they climbed back into the boat and tied up to the dock at Caneel Bay. They strolled hand in hand, salty and sandy, to the Beach Bar, where Mick ordered a bottle of Moët, the conch fritters, and four sushi rolls.