This is as close as we have ever come to talking about it.

Another memory of that long-ago summer, nine years ago, the year Cass’s family was on the island.

It was one of those New England years of weird weather.

Hurricane season runs from June to November here, and it’s usually a non-event. Something brews off the coast of Mexico, blows out to sea long before it hits us here. Marco and Tony watch the path on the Weather Channel, field the calls from summer people, stand ready to block shore-facing windows with plywood. We year-rounders don’t worry so much, knowing our low-crouching houses are hunkered down to survive storms, outlast anything. But that year, Seashell was moody. Unpredictable. Currents and squalls from every different direction. There was a lot of heat lightning at night, rolling thunder that tumbled over the island like an angry warning, but came to nothing in the end.

Nic and I had the run of the island that summer. We were seven and eight. Marco and Tony hired us to catch blue crabs off the creek bridge to sell, hooking them with bent-out safety pins, piling our catch into Dad’s emptied-out plastic ice cream buckets, but that was pretty much the only structured activity.

We could climb onto the Somerses’ boat and jet off when we wanted to. We could have sand fights with Vivie at the beach.

Work on swimming out to the boat float, then the breakwa-ter, our biggest goals. Dad was at Castle’s 24/7 . . . he’d just extended the hours. Mom was newly pregnant, with Em, nauseated most of the time. If we left her a box of saltines and a stack of books, cheap and stained from the library or a yard sale, we could go off until sunset.

Vovó was nauseated too, but for a different reason. One I wasn’t supposed to know about.

“It will only worry your mother,” Dad explained to me firmly, looking sharply in the rearview mirror after we dropped Vovó off at the doctor’s. “She’s having a hard time as it is.” Hahd.

Heavy on his accent. Which I knew meant he was worried.

“It will be fine,” Grandpa said stoutly. “Your Vovó, Glaucia, she has been fighting germs her whole life.”

But this needed more than Clorox and Comet, of course.

Vovó got sicker, and the story for Mom was that she was work-ing longer hours—that’s why she wasn’t coming by as much, looked a little thinner, and I stopped being worried and got scared.

So I told Mom. It felt like she started crying then and cried for the rest of the summer.

It was the angriest I’ve ever seen Grandpa. He threw a pan— he never did things like that—his eyes as wide with shock as my own when it hit the floor, eggs and linguica spattered everywhere. And yelled at me, all these words I’d never heard, strung together in ways I couldn’t understand. Except for that phrase, because it wasn’t the last time I heard it. “Histórias de outras pessoas.” Other people’s stories—Mom would say it later, when Nic and I scrambled to pass on some bit of Seashell gos-sip, some nugget of information to talk about at dinner. Deixe que as histórias de outras pessoas sejam contadas por elas—are their own to tell.

Grandpa reaches out for me now, nudges his knuckles beneath my chin. Once, twice. But I don’t nod back. I feel a little sick. We’ve never brought that up. The whole topic, my part in it, ended when he threw the pan. Or later that evening when he bought me an ice-cream cone, cupped my chin in his hands and apologized, then said, “We will not speak of it again.”

“Pfft,” he says now, thrusting his hand rapidly through the air as though shooing away flies. “Enough. Enough of the long face. Here, querida.” He hunches back on his hips, reaching into his pocket, pulls out his customary roll of bills, held together with a rubber band—the wallet is only for pictures—extracts two fives and hands them to me. “Go out with the young yard boy. Be happy.”

“What about the Rose of the Island?”

“To grow in the salt and the heat and the wind, very tough, island roses.”

“You sound like a fortune cookie, Grandpa.”

His eyes twinkle at me, and his broadest smile flashes. “Rose is strong, Guinevere. With other things not known for sure, I would rely on that. And here is your boy now.”

Grandpa waves enthusiastically at Cass, strolling up with his hands in his pockets, as if flagging down a taxi that might pass him by. He makes a big production of ordering Cass to sit down on the steps, inspecting his blisters, then punching him on the shoulder with a wink. “Take the pretty girl and go now.”

As we walk away, he calls one last phrase after us. “Even though they look like that, eu a deixo em suas mãos.” Heh-heh-heh.

What? I trust her in your hands?

Oh God. What happened to the knife salesman?

“You sure you don’t know any Portuguese?” I ask.

“We really have to work on your greetings, Gwen. ‘Hey there, babe’ would be a lot better.”

“I’m not going to call you babe. Ever. Answer my question.”

“Nope. All I got was that he sounded happy. Phew. Thought he might have heard”—he jerks his head in the direction of the Ellington house—“the Henry Ellington story. Almost got you in big trouble there.”

I’m so grateful that this story is mine right now that I turn, pull him close so quickly, I can hear a startled intake of breath, see a little spot he missed on his chin shaving, see that the base of his eyelashes are blond before they tip dark. “I’d say you’re worth the risk.”

“Forget what I said. Your greetings are great. Perfect.”

I’m just about to touch my lips to his when I hear a loud “None of that funny business here!” and realize we’re in front of Old Mrs. Partridge’s yard. Where she’s also standing, rooting through her mailbox impatiently.

I try to move back, but Cass’s hand snakes behind me, holding me in place. “Good evening, Mrs. Partridge.”

“Never mind that, Jose. None of this in a public street.”

“Not the best spot for it,” Cass allows. “But it’s such a beau-tiful summer afternoon. And look at this girl, Mrs. Partridge.”

“Look at this girl somewhere else,” she says crossly. But there’s just a shade of amusement in her voice and she leaves without further harassment.

I stare after her, amazed. “How did you do that?”