"Of course."

"Why 'of course'?"

"Because the houses share the beach. The little boys play out there. Build sand castles, splash in the ocean. I went out there yesterday and horsed around with them for a while." Dawson stopped and gnawed the inside of his cheek, refusing to say anything else until Headly supplied something more eloquent and intelligible than a grunted Huh.

After an extended silence, Headly asked, "Who do they look like?"

"Both have blue eyes like hers." The second the words were out, Dawson wanted to kick himself. Crossly, he added, "I don't know who they look like. They look like kids."

"Okay, no need to bite my head off."

"This is why I didn't tell you up front. I knew you'd pester me with questions."

"They could be Carl Wingert's grandkids. You don't expect me to be curious?"

Dawson didn't respond to that.

"What's she like?"

"She's-" A dozen adjectives crowded into his mind, but none he wanted to share with Headly. "Intelligent. Articulate. Assertive. Self-controlled. Guarded. Modest."

"You've just described my old-maid third-grade schoolteacher."

"All right, she's-" Desirable. Kissable. Fuckable.

"Fair of face," Headly said. "I've seen pictures."

"Then why ask me to describe her?"

"What's her mental state?"

"She's scared."

"Of you?"

"That he's alive."

"Jeremy."

"Yeah." Now he had no choice except to explain how he knew that. "I led her into casual conversation, learned a little about their life together." He gave Headly the gist of what had been said, and passed along what Amelia had told him about Jeremy's parents. "What has your pal Knutz uncovered about them?"

"Haven't heard back from him yet." He gave a snuffle of skepticism. "But, come on, a house fire that killed them both and destroyed all the family memorabilia?"

"I figured you'd find that a little too pat. I did. Knutz needs to check it out. A house fire with two fatalities must've made local news. Maybe there was a photo of Mr. and Mrs. Wesson in the newspaper obit. If they were in fact Carl and Flora, that means they've been dead for years, I'm on a wild-goose chase, your search is over, end of story."

"Not if their son faked his death and is still alive."

Dawson swore under his breath.

"Don't cuss at me," Headly said. "It's not a 'voila' idea. His wife-ex-wife-advanced it herself."

"No, I advanced it. She denied the possibility."

"But you said-"

"She protested too much."

"Huh. Indicating to you that the possibility has occurred to her."

"Yeah," he said around a sigh. "Under all her self-possession, I think she's scared shitless."

"Where'd you leave it?"

"With her afraid to think the unthinkable. But she's thinking it anyway."

"What's the atmosphere like between the two of you?"

"I won't count on a birthday card."

After a moment of thought, Headly said, "I'll check out the victims of that house fire myself. But it's Sunday of a holiday weekend. I don't know how far I'll get until everybody goes back to work on Tuesday. What are you going to do in the meantime?"

"Wait until court reconvenes. I'll stay and see the trial through to the verdict, I guess. After that, I don't know. Harriet keeps calling, but I don't answer. I may already be fired."

"May not be a bad thing."

"May not."

"How are you doing otherwise?"

"I got a lot of sun yesterday."

"Sleeping better?"

"The sound of the ocean has a lulling effect. Look, I'm down to one bar. If my phone cuts out..."

Headly gave another grunt that said he knew Dawson was skirting the issue, but he wasn't going to waste limited cell phone service beating a dead horse.

"Don't get mad if you can't reach me," Dawson said. "On my way from the mainland, the ferry captain told me that cell service on the island is unreliable on good days. When a storm blows in, forget it."

Shortly after eight o'clock that evening a lightning bolt knocked out the power in Amelia's house, plunging it into darkness.

"Mommy?" Grant said tremulously.

"It's okay." Her reassurance was drowned out by the booming thunder.

Fortunately they were all gathered around the kitchen table playing Chutes and Ladders. Had she and Stef not been within reach, the boys would have been even more frightened than they were. Grant left his chair and climbed onto her lap. Stef reached across the corner of the table and took Hunter's hand.

Amelia had thought the afternoon would never end. She'd managed to rinse the sand from Hunter's eye, but he'd squalled through the process. To soothe him afterward, she'd made him and Grant cups of cocoa and marshmallows.

Paintboxes and pads of paper were brought out, and those had kept them entertained for a while. Hunter painted a seascape featuring her, himself, his brother, Stef, and a tall, shirtless figure with shoulder-length yellow hair sticking out from a baseball cap.

"That's Dawson," he told her proudly. "I'm gonna paint a battleship and give it to him, too."

Not wanting to incite another trauma, she didn't tell him it was unlikely he would ever see his hero again.

She and Stef stretched dinner out for as long as possible, killing time until they could put the boys to bed. They had agreed to play one more round of the board game before taking them upstairs.

And now the lights had gone out.

"Everything's fine," she said brightly. "There's a flashlight in that big bottom drawer." She tried to get up, but Grant clung to her. "No, Mommy, hold me." She carried him with her and got the flashlight from the drawer. She clicked it on. "See? This is an adventure. Grant, you can help me check the fuse box. Maybe the lightning just tripped the breaker switch."

But after she flipped every switch with no success, Grant said dolefully, "The 'lectricity isn't working."

"No it's not, but we have flashlights."

She went through the house collecting them. But they had to use them continually in order to keep the boys' fear of the storm at bay. Soon the flashlights began to weaken and then to go out one by one.

"I've just used our last two batteries," she confided to Stef. "We'll need more before morning."

"Maybe Bernie has some to spare."

Amelia went to the window above the sink and looked out. "His house is completely dark. He's probably sleeping."

Hesitantly, Stef said, "We have another neighbor."

Amelia looked toward Dawson's house. "His piece-of-crap car isn't there," she muttered. With unreasonable annoyance, she asked, "Where could he be on a night like tonight?"

Stef offered to start gathering up candles.

She had to take their only remaining working flashlight with her, leaving Amelia and the boys huddled around the kitchen table in the dark. She suggested they see how many rounds of "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" they could sing before Stef returned, but their voices faltered each time the kitchen was filled with a silvery flash of lightning and a cannon blast of thunder.

After several minutes, Stef returned to the kitchen with four tapers and three votives. Putting a match to a vanilla-scented candle, she said cheerfully, "It'll start to smell good in here."

With the candle lit, Amelia switched off the flashlight. Grant whimpered. "Turn it back on."

"We need to save the batteries, sweetheart."

He lay his cheek against her chest.

Hunter said, "He's such a baby."

"Hunter."

"I'm not a baby!"

Amelia ran her hand over his hair. "Well, it's bedtime anyway. After you close your eyes and go to sleep, you won't even realize it's dark. And when you wake up-"

"No!" he wailed. "I don't want to go to bed without a light on."

Amelia had hoped in vain for a miracle, but apparently she wasn't going to get one. "I have to go to the village for batteries."

But when she tried to get up, Grant began to cry and cling to her. "No, Mommy! Don't leave."

"It only makes sense that I go," Stef said.

"It makes no sense at all. I've been driving on this island in storms for years. It can be tricky if you don't know the road well. Sometimes it floods."

"I've driven it enough times to become familiar. Besides, I don't think our two boys here would let you out of their sight." Amelia acknowledged the rationality of Stef's going. Reluctantly she agreed.

Stef got her purse and Amelia's car keys.

"While you're there, get some nonperishable food items, too. We may not have a fridge and stove for a while. If lines are down, it takes a while to get repairmen out here. They restore service on the mainland first."

"If you think of anything else, call me." Then, checking her cell phone, Stef said. "If you can. Right now, I'm not getting a signal."

A half hour passed, during which Amelia told every silly "Knock-Knock" joke she knew, and which the boys had already heard dozens of times. She told them the story of "The Three Little Pigs" and then devised a contest to see who could huff and puff the best. Neither of the boys got into the game.

After another thirty minutes, she called Stef's phone. It went straight to voice mail.

The storm continued to rage without any sign of letting up. The boys grew increasingly anxious, in part because they sensed her own mounting nervousness. She was near her wit's end by the time she heard the utility-room door burst open, bringing a gust of wind in with it.

"Thank God," she breathed. "Stef?"

But it wasn't her nanny who stepped into the kitchen, dripping water, his hair plastered to his head.

"Dawson!"

Her boys, who'd been competing for space on her lap, abandoned her and ran to him, wrapping their arms around his legs and impeding his progress. He looked at Amelia through the wavering candlelight. "I was on my way home and noticed that your house is dark."

Hunter tugged on the hem of his shirt to get his attention. "The lights went out, and Grant was afraid, but I wasn't. I got sand in my eye, but it's out now. I painted you a battleship."

Grant, not to be outdone, informed him that candles make things look wavy. He added a hand gesture to demonstrate.

Hunter spoke over his brother. "Mom said if we'd go to bed and close our eyes, we wouldn't know it was dark, but I think we would."

"And she told us today that if we didn't stop whining, she was going to pull her hair out, but she didn't."

Dawson smiled. "Well, that's good. She's got such pretty hair." He brought his gaze back to Amelia, who had stood up to face him, rebuking herself for being relieved and glad to see him.

"Thank you for stopping. We're okay. Just waiting on Stef to get back from the village. She went for supplies."

"I just came from there. I doubt she'll get back anytime soon, if at all. The power is off everywhere. Only the store and Mickey's have generators. People are hunkering down in one or the other. I hope she does. The road is virtually impassable."

"I've tried calling her, but-"