Nina turned, and looked at her sister. “It’s Madeira. I’ve always wanted to live in Madeira in a tiny house on the water, the kind of place where you only go into town once a week to buy food. I’d love to be somewhere where no one knows who I am or who my dad is and no one has my posters on their wall and I can eat anything I want to. And I can cut all my hair off if I feel like it and maybe be a gardener or a landscaper. Something outside. Where no one knows I was married to Brandon. And when the waves are good, I’m always in the water.”

Kit saw it in perfect Technicolor. The thing they could all do for Nina.

• • •

Mick knew that if he really loved his kids, he would leave them alone. That seemed easy, that seemed doable. He thought of it as his own redemption.

And so, as he made his way up the steps, he decided he’d hug each of them, give them his direct phone number, tell them he would be there if they wanted to go get lunch, and then get in his Jag and drive away.

He turned to Casey, just as his feet hit the grass, and he said, “I’ll take a paternity test. If you want. Just let me know.”

Casey, still finding this night beyond belief and sad and a tiny bit thrilling, smiled at him. Then, just in case he was her father, she grabbed his hand and squeezed it.

• • •

As the family came up to the lawn, the remaining cops shined their lights on the faces of Mick and his five children. And it was then that, for one of the first times in their lives, they saw why it’s good to have Mick Riva as your father.

They all went inside and, after ten minutes of smiles and handshakes and autographs and polite laughing at inane stories, the cops resolved to be on their way.

“We had some arrests,” Sergeant Purdy said. “Nobody you’d miss, I can’t imagine. Vandals, really.”

Nina wasn’t sure what to say to that and she wondered who the cops had arrested. “Thank you, Officers,” she said. She showed them to the front door.

Then she turned and looked at her family. Her brothers had blood crusted on their faces, her sister had a hickey—what?—and there were two more bodies than there’d been at the beginning of this whole thing.

“All right,” Mick said. “I believe this is my cue to leave.”

He entertained the fantasy that someone might try to stop him. He wasn’t too surprised when no one did.

He hugged his sons first, and then his possible daughter, and then the one with the big mouth, and then as he got to the front door, the one who had saved the family he had started.

“Thank you,” Mick whispered in her ear as he pulled Nina to him. “For the person you’ve been your entire life. And all that you’ve done.”

And then, before Nina could even realize she was crying, he was gone.

Nina sat down on the steps facing the door and her brothers and sister sat down next to her.

“You OK?” Hud asked.

Nina looked up at him, so many feelings dancing around inside her, out of the grasp of words. “I mean …” she said and then gave up.

“Right,” he said.

“Me, too,” Kit added.

“Yeah,” Jay said.

Casey stood by the door.

Hud looked at her there, alone and unsure, on the threshold. “Come on, sit down. I don’t care who your dad is. You’re one of us.”

Kit scooted over to make room. And when Casey sat down next to Nina, Jay squeezed her shoulder. Nina patted her knee.

She needed someone to love her. And they could do that. That would be very easy for them to do.

June was gone. Yet here she was, living on through her children.

6:00 A.M.

It took exactly fifty-two minutes for them to convince Nina to leave. The five of them were all standing around the island in the kitchen, eating from the cracker tray.

Kit pitched the initial idea. “What if you just left and went to Portugal right now?”

Hud was silent. Casey wasn’t sure what to say. And Nina dismissed it over and over again.

Until Jay started echoing Kit.

“It’s not actually that crazy, Nina,” he said. “You don’t want to live here. Especially now. You don’t want to be with Brandon. You don’t want all the attention. You don’t want any of this and you also don’t want to have to explain yourself to everyone. So leave. Don’t tell anybody. Just go.”

“You’re saying I leave my things, my bank account, my house. And no one will have any idea where I am?” Nina said.

“I mean, that’s not exactly what we are saying,” Hud said.

“Brandon will know where I am, won’t he? So he’ll still be a problem. People still know who Dad is. Everyone is going to know I got cheated on. Everyone’s gonna know my husband left me for Carrie fucking Soto.”

“Can I just say …” Casey stepped in. “That she seems like, as my mother used to say when she was really mad, a real asshole?”

“Yes, you can,” Nina said. “Yes, you can say that.”

Kit saw then that there was a version of Nina—the nice girl who always said the nice thing—who was gone. And there was a slightly new Nina—who agreed when someone said the woman that fucked her husband was an asshole. And Kit thought, for both the old Nina and this new Nina, she wanted Portugal.

“Will you just listen to me?” Kit said. “It’s actually pretty simple.”

“OK,” Nina said, exasperated. “Go ahead.”

“We don’t want people tracking you down. We want them to leave you alone. So we make it really ambiguous. You leave now. The party got out of control. I’m sure it will be in the papers. And people will think you ran off with someone or something.”

“Or that I died.”

“I mean, maybe,” Hud said, conceding the unlikely possibility.

“So, fine,” Kit said. “People say you died. Who cares? That just means they will leave you alone. We know you’re not dead. We’ll tell Mick you’re not dead. I can tell Tarine or whoever you want. We’ll tell anyone that will keep the secret. But then you take some cash, you drive to the airport, and you get a one-way ticket to Portugal. Get yourself a small house. Or whatever. See if you like it. If you don’t, then you’ll come home. And if you do, then stay as long as you want. And we will come visit you. All the time. And no one would even question it because the surfing is great there. Hud and Jay would probably go all the time anyway for surf shoots and shit. I’ll tag along. We will see you all the time. We will come stay with you for weeks sometimes. We’ll always be in your hair.”

“I can’t leave,” Nina said. “I can’t leave you all. You …” Need me.

“No,” Kit said. “Not anymore. We love you and we want you around. But, Nina, you don’t need to take care of us anymore.”

“She’s right,” Hud said. “Kit’s right.”

And that is when Nina started to wonder if this wasn’t such a crazy idea. She started to wonder if she could just go. It felt daring to even imagine.

“Kit’s right. You should go, Nina,” Jay said. “It’s totally not like you to do it. And that’s exactly why you have to.”