I wanted to, if only for the air-conditioning and because I knew he would order me whatever I wanted from room service. But then it occurred to me that Russ might have been after sex and sex alone; maybe he saw me as a girl in a port, an island wife. I was nobody’s island wife.

“No,” I said. “I’m sorry. You’re married.”

He nodded. “That I am.”

It pained me to hear him say it, but it also gave me resolve.

“Please don’t come back here,” I said. “Unless you get divorced and you have bona fide legal documents to prove it. It’s difficult for me to see you.” I spread my hands across my stomach. “I had feelings for you.”

“Had?”

“Had, have, it doesn’t matter because you don’t live here and you aren’t mine.”

“I’d like to support the baby,” he said.

“I received money already,” I said. I wasn’t sure if this would come as news to him or not.

He said, “Todd showed me your e-mail last week. He told me he sent you money back in May. He told me he came down to Carnival in July and that he checked in on you and that his hunch was correct: you were pregnant. The instant he told me, I made plans to come down here. I’m here only to see you, Rosie.”

Todd Croft had come during St. John’s Carnival and had spied on me? I didn’t like that one bit.

Russ had found out only last week?

“I have everything I need,” I said. “But thank you.”

“You don’t have to forgive me but you do have to let me support that child,” Russ said.

“I don’t, though,” I said, and I walked out of the restaurant, past the Sugar Mill, and into the parking lot, where I climbed in my car and cried.

The following week, a package arrived containing five thousand dollars in cash. An identical package came the week after that. And the week after that.

October 29, 2006

Today at 5:09 a.m., Maia Rosalie Small entered the world weighing six pounds and fourteen ounces and measuring twenty inches long. She is the most beautiful creature I have ever laid eyes on.

The nurse brought me a form to fill out so she could make the birth certificate. On the line where it asked for the father’s name, I wrote Unknown.

November 1, 2006

Maia is three days old. Today, I sent an e-mail to Todd Croft at Ascension letting him know that I’d had a baby girl and that her name was Maia Small.

September 4, 2012

Today is Maia’s first day at the Gifft Hill School. She marched into the classroom, head held high, shoulders back, with barely a wave to me and Mama and Huck, all of us standing in the doorway, watching her go.