Rosie had been in this exact same predicament. No, Rosie had had it worse. Rosie found herself pregnant by a man she thought she’d never see again. She’d kept the baby—and who was that baby now? It was Maia, the most wonderful human Ayers knew. Didn’t Ayers want a Maia of her own? A child who was wise and sweet and smart and funny? A child who would love her the way that Maia loved Rosie?

Theoretically, yes; Ayers wanted children. She had always pictured herself with children, and she even knew what kind of mother she wanted to be—the kind of mother who dressed up with her kids for Halloween, the kind of mother who let the kids have hot fudge sundaes for dinner on their last day of summer vacation. She wanted to be a Scout leader. She wanted to be fun and involved and reliable, a buoy during the unpredictable currents and undertow of growing up.

Just like everyone else, she wanted to be exactly like and completely different from her own parents.

Oh, jeez, Ayers thought. She had to tell her parents the news. But first, she would need to find them.

Treasure Island was fixed, but Ayers couldn’t handle an all-day boat charter either physically or mentally. She called Whitney in the office and told her that she needed some time off—a couple of weeks, she thought, but maybe longer.

“But you’re not quitting on us, right?” Whitney said. “No pressure, girlfriend, but you’re the heart and soul of this operation. Cash is good but he’s brand-new.”

“I’m coming back?” Ayers said. “I mean, I’m coming back. Of course I’m coming back.”

At La Tapa, Ayers was shaky and sweaty and distracted. Tilda covered for Ayers’s lethargy and her mistakes. Tilda thought the problem was Mick, both the broken engagement and his weeklong sit-in at Cruz Bay Landing. It had become a thing. Mick had been going to work, but directly afterward, he sat at the bar at CBL with the ring in front of him and Gordon tied to his bar stool, and he drank. He was there on his days off as well, from open to close. Tourists had started posting pictures of #heartsickmick with the beer and the ring box in front of him and Gordon snoozing dutifully at his feet.

Mick had managed to make the breakup all about himself; he’d cast himself as the victim, and he’d gotten his own hashtag in the process. Meanwhile, Brigid was still working at the Beach Bar and not at Island Abodes like Mick had promised, so frankly Ayers didn’t care if 60 Minutes came to do a segment about his broken heart—Ayers wasn’t going back.

“I feel bad for the guy,” Skip, the La Tapa bartender, said at the end of service. “I’m going over to have a drink with him.”

“Birds of a feather,” Tilda murmured.

Ayers needed to confide in someone—and that someone should have been Baker. However, on Wednesday afternoon, Ayers got a text from Cash, and the next thing she knew, she had offered to adopt Winnie for a while because Tilda’s fancy, type A parents didn’t “do dogs.”

This, at least, felt right. It was the least she could do after abandoning Cash on Treasure Island. It would also be nice to have a warm body around, one who wasn’t going to ask her any questions.

Ayers had picked Cash up from the boat and driven to Peter Bay to collect Winnie. Ayers had never been to Tilda’s fancy, type A parents’ villa before—she had never been to any of the homes in Peter Bay; it was exclusive, private, gajillionaire territory—and when she drove down the steep chute of Tilda’s driveway, she got vertigo. It felt like they were driving off a cliff into the sea.

Whooooooo! When Ayers parked, her heart was slamming against her chest.

She watched Cash as he strode into the house.

Uncle Cash, she thought. My baby’s uncle.

She was about to leave—she had Winnie’s leash in one hand and her bowl in the other—but then…then she blurted it out. Without intention, without planning, without warning.

I’m pregnant.

“Whoa!” Cash said.

“It’s Baker’s,” Ayers whispered.

Cash’s eyes bugged. “It is?”

Ayers nodded.

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“You haven’t told my brother yet, have you?”

Ayers shook her head. The mere thought made her want to hurl. She’d inhaled the scent of the frangipani bushes that surrounded Tilda’s fancy, type A parents’ villa. She needed to get out of there. The last thing she wanted was for Tilda to come home and ask what was wrong.

“I haven’t told anyone,” Ayers said. “Not even my parents.”

“That explains your leave of absence.”

“Just for a couple weeks,” Ayers said. “Until I get a better grip on things.”

“I’m sure it seems scary,” Cash said. “But I’ll help. We’ll all help. Baker has his flaws, but he’s an excellent father.”

Ayers wasn’t ready to hear this; she wasn’t even sure she was going to go through with it. “Don’t tell a soul,” she said. “Not Tilda, not your mom, not Baker.”

“Are you kidding?” Cash said. He bent down to rub Winnie’s head. “I’m giving you my best friend. The last thing I’m going to do is cross you.”

“Thank you.”

“I’m here,” Cash said. “And you know what? I’m psyched.”

To track down her mother and father, Ayers clicks on the Wandering Wilsons Facebook page. Her parents share a cell phone and they call her when they’re in a place with reliable service, which isn’t often. Ayers’s parents—Phil Wilson and Sunny Ray—have never married, though they’ve been together for thirty-five years. Each refers to the other as “my partner,” and they call each other “my love.” Their relationship is nontraditional—and enviable. They have a shared vision of seeing the world on its own terms, abiding by the old adage “Take nothing but photographs, leave nothing but footprints.” Phil and Sunny met during a semester abroad in the Canary Islands in 1984; Phil was at Berkeley, Sunny at the University of Wisconsin. After that semester, they both dropped out and hopped on a freighter headed for Portugal, starting a life of wanderlust that has continued to this very day. Ayers’s earliest memories are of walking between her parents down the dusty streets of one foreign country or another, the smell of diesel fuel, the sound of unfamiliar languages. Phil was the navigator; he had the map. Sunny was the ambassador; she did the talking, learning the words for Hello and Thank you in the language of every place they visited. They stayed in hostels or cheap hotels, Ayers and her parents sometimes all sharing a bed. They cooked in communal kitchens, showered in communal bathrooms. They slept on trains. They hiked and camped, snorkeled, tubed, zip-lined, canoed, rafted, spelunked. They shopped at local markets, napped in botanical gardens, hopped on and off the goat-and-chicken bus, lit candles in churches, swam with dolphins and whale sharks, ate from street carts, bathed in hot springs, climbed to the scenic lookout at the crack of dawn, rode the elephant or donkey or camel, awoke to the call of the muezzin from the local mosque, swapped paperbacks, hand-washed their laundry and hung it to dry stiff as cardboard in the baking sun. As soon as they stayed somewhere long enough to feel comfortable, they packed up and moved on. Ayers had seen it all: the Pyramids, the Taj Mahal, Torres del Paine, the Galápagos, the northern lights, the Monteverde Cloud Forest, the Amazon River, the fjords, the glaciers, the mountain ranges, the deserts, the lakes, all of the oceans.