These are the usual details that Huck records, along with the credit card numbers or a notation that the client paid with cash. He used to include where the clients were staying on the island and how they’d heard about his charter, but then he decided it didn’t make any difference. Nearly everyone finds him one of two ways: word of mouth or the GD internet. Huck pays a computer whiz named Destiny over in St. Thomas to make sure that when someone types in deep-sea fishing and St. John USVI, the Mississippi is the first link to pop up. Destiny also runs the cards and sends Huck a brief text the night before a charter so he knows what he’ll be dealing with the following day.

What Huck doesn’t write down is the way that having Irene on the boat has changed the experience of going to work. Adam was good. Adam was great. He was technically sound with the rods and the gaff, he was excellent when driving the boat, and he was usually pretty friendly with the clients—some more than others, of course, but that’s true of Huck as well. Huck doesn’t need to be friendly; he’s the captain. His only responsibilities are keeping everyone safe and putting people on fish.

If Huck had any reservations about hiring Irene—and yeah, there had been a couple moments when he’d wondered if he was making a giant mistake—they were erased on the very first day. Irene showed up at the boat even before he did, bringing two cups of good, strong, black coffee and two sausage biscuits from Provisions. She was wearing shorts with pockets and a long-sleeved fishing shirt and a visor and sunglasses; her hair was in that fat braid of hers and she looked every inch like the fisherwoman of Huck’s dreams. He had forwarded Destiny’s text to Irene so she knew they were expecting three adults and one child from Calabasas, wherever that was, someplace in California.

“Los Angeles suburb,” Irene said. “The Kardashians live there.”

“I don’t know who that is,” Huck said gruffly, though he did, sort of, because he lived with a twelve-year-old girl.

The three adults turned out to be a gay couple, Brian and Rafael, and a drop-dead gorgeous Swedish au pair who wore only a bikini and a sarong. They wandered down the dock with an eight-year-old boy who was crying.

Irene looked at Huck and said, “We’ll stay inshore?”

I love you, Huck thought. “You bet,” he said.