Irene opens her eyes. Where is she?

There’s a blue windowpane-print bedsheet covering her. She’s on a couch. Her neck complains as she turns her head. There’s a kitchen, and on the counter, a bottle of eighteen-year-old Flor de Caña.

Huck’s house.

Irene sits up, brings her bare feet to the wood floor. A suitcase with everything she owns in the world is open on the coffee table.

She hears heavy footsteps and then: “Good morning, Angler Cupcake, how about some coffee?”

She drops her face into her hands. How can Huck be thinking about coffee? Irene’s life is…over. This time yesterday she’d been steady and stable, which was no small feat considering only a little over a month has passed since her husband, Russell Steele, was killed in a helicopter crash and Irene, who’d believed Russ was in Florida playing golf and schmoozing with clients, discovered that Russ had a secret life down here in the Virgin Islands complete with mistress, love child, and a fifteen-million-dollar villa. Irene handled that news pretty damn well, if she does say so herself. Another woman might have had a nervous breakdown. Another woman might have set the villa on fire or taken out a full-page ad in the local paper (in Irene’s case, the Iowa City Press-Citizen) announcing her husband’s treachery. But Irene adapted to the shocking circumstances. She found that she liked the Virgin Islands so much that she’s returned here to live—maybe not forever, but for a little while, so she can catch her breath and regroup. Just yesterday she was looking around Russ’s villa, thinking how she would redecorate it, how she might turn it into an inn for women like herself who had survived cataclysmic life changes.

Just last night, Irene felt like a teenager falling in love for the first time because, in a plot twist that happens only in novels and romantic comedies, Irene has developed feelings for Huck Powers, the stepfather of Russ’s mistress. The universe did Irene “a solid” (as Cash and Baker would say) when she met Huck. He’s an irresistible mix of gruff fisherman, devoted grandpa, and teddy bear. What would Irene’s situation look like if she hadn’t become friends with Huck? She can’t imagine.

But entertaining notions of a love life is a luxury she can no longer afford. Last night, FBI agents seized Russ’s villa. It’s now the property of the U.S. government.

If Irene was painfully honest with herself, she would admit that, once she got down here, she’d realized there was no way the business Russ had been involved in was aboveboard. From the minute Irene set eyes on it, the villa had a bit of a magic-carpet feel: Was it real? Would it fly?

It was a tropical…palace. Nine bedrooms, each with its own en suite bath. The outdoor space featured an upper pool and a lower pool connected by a curvy slide, a hot tub dropped into a lush gardenscape, an outdoor kitchen, a shuffleboard court (which Irene had never used), and, eighty steps down, a small, private sugar-sand beach (which she had). The view across the water to Tortola and Jost Van Dyke was dramatic, soaring. The villa was so over-the-top luxurious that Irene was able to get past the fact that it had been the home of Russ and his mistress, Rosie, and their daughter, Maia. She had been looking forward to putting her own stamp on the place—choosing lighter, brighter fabrics, redoing a bathroom in an under-the-sea theme for her four-year-old grandson, Floyd, creating a custom window seat where she or Maia could read or nap.

The far bigger, more devastating development is that, as Agent Colette Vasco of the FBI informed Irene, the authorities were, at that very moment, also seizing her home on Church Street in Iowa City, an 1892 Queen Anne–style Victorian that Irene had spent six years renovating. The Church Street house is Irene’s home. It’s where her photo albums, her cookbooks with the sauce-splattered pages and handwritten notes, her clothes, her teapot, and her Christmas ornaments are. She has the idea that maybe, with luck, some of these items might be returned to her, but how is she to accept the loss of, say, the third-floor landing, paneled in dark walnut with the east-facing stained-glass window, or the mural of Door County on the dining-room walls? Those “moments” in her house are priceless and irreplaceable. Irene thinks longingly of her amethyst parlor, the velvet fainting couch, the absurdly expensive Persian rugs, the Eastlake bed in the Excelsior suite, the washstand, the sepia-toned photograph of Russ’s mother, Milly, as a child in 1928.

Thinking about that photograph brings Irene to her feet.

Huck, it turns out, has been watching her every move. “Coffee?”

She casts her eyes around the room and finds her phone plugged into the far wall. That’s right; Irene remembers being methodical about packing her suitcase and double-checking for essentials like her phone charger. Agent Vasco had looked on suspiciously, as though she thought Irene might try to slip in a stash of cocaine or blocks of hundred-dollar bills.

When Irene got to Huck’s house, they each did a shot—or two? three?—of the Flor de Caña, and Irene only barely recalls plugging her phone in before sleep. She remembers so little about the end of the night that she supposes she should be grateful she woke up on the sofa and not in Huck’s bed.

He’s a gentleman.

“I need to make a phone call,” she says. “Do you have any…aspirin?” She points to her head. “Good morning,” she adds, because she has learned the number-one rule of the Virgin Islands: “Good morning,” “Good afternoon,” or “Good evening” begins every conversation.

“Two aspirin coming right up,” Huck says.

“Three,” Irene says. Four, she thinks. “Please.”

“The best reception is out on the deck,” Huck says.

Irene slips through the sliding glass door, going from the pleasant air-conditioning of Huck’s house (though she gathered last night that he turned it on only because she was there) to the mounting heat of the day. Her phone says seven o’clock, which means it’s five o’clock in Iowa City.

Five a.m. Will Lydia be awake at five a.m.? She is going through menopause and complains that now she never sleeps, so maybe. Even if she is asleep, Irene needs to wake her up. Dr. Lydia Christensen is her best friend; she claims she is there for Irene no matter what. The bonds of best-friendship get tested infrequently, especially as Irene prides herself on being self-sufficient.

Today is a different story.

“Hello?” Lydia says. She’s laughing. Irene hears the whisper of bedsheets and, in the next instant, a deep male voice. This would be Brandon the barista, Lydia’s new boyfriend. Irene doesn’t want to imagine what the two of them are doing up so early.

“Lydia, it’s Irene.” She stops herself. “Good morning.”

“Irene?” Lydia says. “Is everything okay? Did something happen? Something else?”

“Yes,” Irene says.

Lydia is there for Irene no matter what. No matter that it’s five a.m., no matter that it’s negative ten degrees with the wind chill in Iowa City, no matter that Irene interrupted pillow talk. Lydia and Brandon are going to put on their parkas and drive directly over to Church Street to see what’s what. She’ll call Irene when she gets there.

Inside, Irene accepts the three aspirin and a glass of ice water. The Flor de Caña bottle has been tucked away and in its place is a cup of coffee that Irene understands is for her. There are eggs cooking on the stove.