“I’m not sure,” Irene says.

Huck comes to check on them. “Tarpon, from the looks of it,” he says. “Big one.”

Sure enough, a little while later, Niles Goshen reels in a tarpon that is a big fish by anyone’s standards.

“I didn’t think it was the season for tarpon,” Irene says.

“It’s not, really,” Huck says. “But once in a while, the universe throws you a favor.”

They’re going to take the tarpon home. Huck gives Galen the card of a taxidermist who can stuff and mount it. Galen looks relieved and defeated. Altar is either asleep or pretending to be asleep behind her sunglasses.

Galen pulls Irene aside. “You have a good man there,” she says, nodding at Huck. “It’s clear how much he cares about you. I hope you don’t take that for granted.”

Irene can’t think of how to respond. He’s not my man? We’re not together? I’m just the mate on his boat? What if Irene were to tell Galen that, back on the first of the year, she had been a married magazine editor living in Iowa City, but then her husband was killed in a helicopter crash, and his secret life was revealed. Galen wouldn’t believe it. But if she did believe it, she might understand that everyone has her baggage and her sad stories. What differentiates people is how they choose to deal with them. Irene has done pretty well, she thinks, assuming the FBI aren’t waiting on the dock when they get back.

“I take nothing for granted,” Irene says.

On the way back to Cruz Bay, the sky darkens and there’s one loud thunderclap, followed by a torrential downpour. Irene hands the Goshens a couple of waterproof ponchos to hold over their heads; they are squeaking and squealing like they’re going to melt. As Irene stands under the canvas Bimini with Huck, she catches sight of Niles kneeling on the bow. His arms are open, his head back. He’s embracing the earth and all of her aspects.

It’s just rain, he seems to be saying. I will survive it.

The Goshens disembark early—they’ve barely been on the water for two hours—and Irene feels a strange melancholy, watching them go. She realizes she’ll never know what happens to the Goshen family. Will Altar have her birthday party? Will Niles live to be an adult? Will he hang the tarpon he caught off the coast of St. John in his home and gaze on it with pride in his fifties, in his sixties? Irene will be forgotten, lost, as soon as tomorrow or the next day. He will never know how hard Irene was rooting for him.

“Wow,” she says to Huck. She’s wet—and cold for the first time since she’s been here.

“D,” he says. “For difficult.”

“There’s no charter tomorrow, correct?”

“Correct,” Huck says. “You get a day off, unless something comes up at the last minute, which has been known to happen.”

Irene nods and wraps her arms around herself. She’s shivering.