Irene leans in to Huck. “They’re fighting back there.”

Huck nods to let Irene know he’s heard her, but he doesn’t seem to care. Maybe he’s thinking about Agent Vasco. Or, more likely, he’s trying to pick a good spot to anchor and cast. The engine noise makes most conversations impossible and yet the mother and daughter’s discussion has escalated to a screaming match. It’s impossible to ignore them.

“I’ll just ask Dad to pay for it, then!”

“Be my guest! See how far that gets you!”

“…bitter because Misty is way cooler than you…”

“Misty is twenty-six years old. She should be cooler than me…”

“I’m calling him now and telling him to book me a plane ticket home. I don’t want to be here! The only reason we’re here is because of Niles!”

“…selfish little…”

“…I have children, I’m going to love them all equally…”

“…sick, Altar…”

“I don’t care!” Altar screams. “I hate you and I hate Niles!”

Finally, Huck leans over to Irene. “I know it’s difficult, but you have to let them go. They obviously have things to work through.”

Irene wipes away the tears that are rolling down her cheeks. She’s crying for them but also for herself and for all families that have been broken.

Turns out, she’s not as tough as she thought.

When it sounds like Galen and Altar might actually come to blows—Galen grabs Altar’s phone and holds it over her head, threatening to throw it overboard—Irene moves up to the bow with two light tackle rods. She touches Niles on the back.

When he turns to see Irene holding both rods, his face lights up. Irene feels more tears building behind her eyes but she’ll be damned if she’s going to cry in front of Niles.

This last round of chemo is either going to put him in remission or it isn’t.

It’s going to put him in remission, Irene thinks. And right now, she’s going to put this kid on a fish.

A higher power must be with them because on his third cast, Niles gets a bite, and Irene can tell just by the bow of the rod that it’s something big—but what? There aren’t too many big fish to be found inshore, at least not that Irene has experienced firsthand.

Niles has a natural instinct for what to do. He reels with surprising tenacity and lets the spool go when the fish runs. He keeps the rod tip up and the handle pressed into his jutting hipbone. “What’s it gonna be?” Niles asks.

“I’m not sure,” Irene says.

Huck comes to check on them. “Tarpon, from the looks of it,” he says. “Big one.”

Sure enough, a little while later, Niles Goshen reels in a tarpon that is a big fish by anyone’s standards.

“I didn’t think it was the season for tarpon,” Irene says.

“It’s not, really,” Huck says. “But once in a while, the universe throws you a favor.”

They’re going to take the tarpon home. Huck gives Galen the card of a taxidermist who can stuff and mount it. Galen looks relieved and defeated. Altar is either asleep or pretending to be asleep behind her sunglasses.

Galen pulls Irene aside. “You have a good man there,” she says, nodding at Huck. “It’s clear how much he cares about you. I hope you don’t take that for granted.”

Irene can’t think of how to respond. He’s not my man? We’re not together? I’m just the mate on his boat? What if Irene were to tell Galen that, back on the first of the year, she had been a married magazine editor living in Iowa City, but then her husband was killed in a helicopter crash, and his secret life was revealed. Galen wouldn’t believe it. But if she did believe it, she might understand that everyone has her baggage and her sad stories. What differentiates people is how they choose to deal with them. Irene has done pretty well, she thinks, assuming the FBI aren’t waiting on the dock when they get back.

“I take nothing for granted,” Irene says.

On the way back to Cruz Bay, the sky darkens and there’s one loud thunderclap, followed by a torrential downpour. Irene hands the Goshens a couple of waterproof ponchos to hold over their heads; they are squeaking and squealing like they’re going to melt. As Irene stands under the canvas Bimini with Huck, she catches sight of Niles kneeling on the bow. His arms are open, his head back. He’s embracing the earth and all of her aspects.

It’s just rain, he seems to be saying. I will survive it.

 

The Goshens disembark early—they’ve barely been on the water for two hours—and Irene feels a strange melancholy, watching them go. She realizes she’ll never know what happens to the Goshen family. Will Altar have her birthday party? Will Niles live to be an adult? Will he hang the tarpon he caught off the coast of St. John in his home and gaze on it with pride in his fifties, in his sixties? Irene will be forgotten, lost, as soon as tomorrow or the next day. He will never know how hard Irene was rooting for him.

“Wow,” she says to Huck. She’s wet—and cold for the first time since she’s been here.

“D,” he says. “For difficult.”

“There’s no charter tomorrow, correct?”

“Correct,” Huck says. “You get a day off, unless something comes up at the last minute, which has been known to happen.”

Irene nods and wraps her arms around herself. She’s shivering.

Huck notices and holds his arms open.

She stares at him.

“I’m just offering you a hug,” Huck says. “That was tough on you and the news I greeted you with was no picnic either.”

Irene takes a tentative step toward him. He wraps his arms around her. It has been…well, a long time since a man held her like this. Russ, before he left for his “business trip” after Christmas? Had he hugged Irene or kissed her goodbye?

No, she remembers. She had been in Coralville returning some Christmas presents for Milly. She had been angry at Russ for leaving over the new year, and as punishment, she had denied him a proper goodbye.

She tries to remember what Christmas had been like. It was just the two of them in the morning in front of the tree, opening gifts. They had talked to each of the boys on the phone and they had joined Milly for the Christmas lunch served at Brown Deer.

Had they been intimate? Had they hugged and kissed? They’d held hands, she remembers, during the Christmas Eve service at First Presbyterian.

That had been nice, Irene supposes, but it hadn’t offered the comfort or the rush of this hug. Irene fits into Huck’s arms perfectly. His body is solid and warm. Can she trust him? She feels like the answer is yes—but she would have said exactly the same thing about Russell Steele. She would have said Russ was beyond reproach.

“Let me take you to dinner tonight,” Huck says in her ear. “Maia is with Ayers and I have an idea. We’ll go over to St. Thomas.”

St. Thomas is bigger, and they can be anonymous. For some reason, this suits Irene better than being seen out in Cruz Bay, where everyone knows Huck and might guess who Irene is.

“Okay,” she says.

 

Irene meets Huck back at the dock at six thirty. He told her to dress up and so she’s wearing a spring-green linen sheath with a belted middle, a dress she bought for Baker’s high-school graduation thirteen years earlier—right around the time that Russ met Rosie, although she tries to put this thought out of her mind.