“Low tide. No surf,” Cass says, close to my ear. “If you trust the water, it holds you up. We’re both here. This’ll be fine.”

He counts down as Emory takes a deep breath, squints, concentrating hard on the water. “It’s a bird. It’s a plane. It’s . . .”

My little brother has the noodle clamped tightly under his arms, ends sticking out on either side like wings, his eyes seri-ous, focused on the horizon. He turns and flashes me a grin, a broader one at Cass, then shouts, “It . . . I . . . Superman!” He launches himself, rockets into the world with a squeal.

And he is fine. Bobbing up a second later, shaking the water out of his hair.

Giggling. He throws his arms out in a Victory V, which sends him sinking below the surface again. Then pops back up, still laughing, and starts heading for us.

I make a move toward the edge of the float, Cass catches my elbow. “He can do it himself.”

He can. Em kicks in that overly splashy way little kids have, spiraling his arms back to the wooden ladder, anchoring it with his feet, clambering up. He splats the noodle onto the float, unself-conscious, confident. “I Superman,” he repeats, the S sound coming out perfect, beaming, showing every one of his teeth.

Em jumped off and swam back to the raft at age eight— just like Nic, Viv, Cass, and me. The only milestone he’s hit exactly on time.

Cass relaxes now, tension I didn’t even read before suddenly gone, tan legs hooked over the pier, dangling toward the water, slanting back on his elbows. Emory does the same, kicking his feet, splish, splash, smiling from ear to ear.

I take in a long deep breath, as though I’m about to jump into the water myself. But instead, I look at my brother, lying flat on the float now, little-boy straight, arms against his sides, still grinning. I look at Cass, eyes tipped closed, drinking in the sunlight. It glimmers off his hair and the drops of water on his shoulders. From here, if you look far to your right, you can make out the shadow of Whale Rock, the long grass that leads up to the Ellingtons’, the curve of Seashell around the bend of the island to where you can’t see anymore.

Where you look. When you leap.

More to life than mastodons.

Chapter Thirty-one

“This is what comes after Tess?”

I rouse myself from the sleep I’ve fallen into on the glider during Mrs. E.’s nap to find Cass standing over me, holding one of her racy books. This particular cover features a man wear-ing an eye patch and all too little else, and a stupefied-looking woman in an extremely low-cut dress that he’s clearly in the process of lowering farther. They are, of course, standing on a cliff. In a brewing thunderstorm.

“I’m not at all sure this is physically possible,” he muses, squinting at the cover.

“Which part? Her breasts?” I sit up to scrutinize the book.

“No, I wasn’t thinking of those, but now that you mention it . . . anyway . . . where’s his hand?”

“Isn’t this it?” I point.

“I thought that was her, er—”

“No, it’s his hand. I’m sure.”

“Then what’s that?”

I peer at the book cover. When you examine it closely, she does indeed appear to have too few appendages and he too many.

“Stand up,” Cass directs. “If I put one hand here on your shoulder, and then you sort of collapse back, like she’s doing— farther, Gwen—I’d need to have a hand right here on your back so you wouldn’t fall off that cliff. But instead, his other hand is all over her tits . . . so why doesn’t she hurtle to her death?”

“Tits, Cass? Ew.”

“I know. There are no good words.”

“Maybe she’s a gymnast with superior muscle control.”

“She’d have to be in Cirque de Soleil to manage this. See, if I take away this hand, you—”

I fall back on the glider with a rusty clang of springs.

“—wind up exactly where I want you.”

I’m not someone who forgets where I am. But I have not spent any time lying on a gently swinging glider on a porch by the sea kissing a beautiful boy. Don’t think. All my focus, every thought, narrows to this moment, the soft sounds we’re both making, a few squeaks from the glider springs, the whole world faded to background music.

Until—“What in the name of God is going on here?” and Cass, scrambling, slides off me, landing on his butt and looking up at Henry Ellington with the same stunned expression I must wear.

Behind him is Gavin Gage, his face poised, neutral. Henry, however, is a thundercloud. An apocalyptic thundercloud turn-ing darker and darker red. Cass moves in front of me. I shove my shirt back down. He starts to say, “This isn’t what it—” then falters because that’s one of the lamest lines ever, right up there with “It didn’t mean anything” and “We can still be friends.”

He switches to, “It’s my fault.”

“Where’s my mother while all this is going on?”

I hop up next to Cass and hurriedly explain, face flaming, that it’s okay, she’s napping.

Which makes things worse.

“If this is your idea of what’s acceptable while a helpless old woman is resting—in her own house—on my dime, you are very much mistaken.” Then: “Who the hell are you?” to Cass.

“Uh—the yard boy.”

“Not anymore,” Henry returns succinctly. “Nor will your dubious idea of caretaking be needed from now on, Guinevere.”

His mouth is screwed up in a line, he’s ramrod straight. If he were a teacher in an old-fashioned book, he’d be hauling out a ruler to rap us across the knuckles.

Anger rises in me, steam in a kettle edging toward a boil.

“Henry, maybe we should all take a moment and calm down,” Gavin Gage interjects unexpectedly. “Back when you and I were their age—”

“That’s not the issue here,” Henry barks. “Take whatever you brought with you and get out.” His voice is softer now, but no less deadly. “You’ve abused my trust, and the trust of a helpless woman. There will be consequences beyond the loss of your jobs, I assure you.”

I hate that he can do this. And he can. And with an impact far beyond this small island. My mind flicks fast. I think of our first “conversation”— itemized—his veiled threat. His muted discussion with Gavin Gage on the other side of the kitchen door. The way he folded that check and held it out to me, set it down on the counter like the ace of spades. And I can’t do it—I can’t keep my mouth shut, I— “Listen,” I start, “what makes you think you—”