He swallowed and pulled back on the throttle, letting the boat putter closer, and then killed the engine completely so he could drift the final yards up to the Winder docks. Instead of reaching for the boat line to help, the boy stood there engrossed in his phone—not that BobDan expected much else. Once he got the boat properly tied off and secured to the piling, BobDan stepped off onto the dock and reached his hands to the sky, stretching out the tight muscles hugging his spine, which seemed to grow tighter by the day. Then he reached in his back pocket for his pack of Winstons, shook out a cigarette, lit it, and inhaled deeply, before acknowledging the boy. “Well, if it isn’t Bob Woodward himself.”
The boy glanced up from whatever life-wasting app he’d been scrolling through. “Actually, my name’s Anders.”
BobDan rolled his eyes heavenward and let out a long exhale of smoke, his breath whistling lightly between his lips. His anxiety at a reporter coming to the island was lessened by the fact that at least this one wasn’t very bright.
“I mean, I know who Bob Woodward is,” Anders said quickly. “I just realized I’ve never properly introduced myself.”
“You’re doing one of those iPod things, huh?”
Anders cleared his throat. “A podcast. Yes, sir.”
“On climate change?”
Anders nodded. Mumbled something.
“Speak up, boy. I can’t hear you.”
Anders shook his head. “It’s not important.”
“That’s prolly true,” BobDan muttered, and then louder: “Well, boat’s not leaving for another twenty minutes.”
“Yes, I just—”
“So why don’t you make yourself useful.” BobDan nodded at the day’s cargo—a dozen cardboard Chiquita banana boxes holding the week’s grocery orders for the island. Things they couldn’t get at the general store, like kitty litter, fruit, any flavor of Utz potato chip besides plain. Apparently grocery delivery was the next big thing on the mainland—BobDan thought it was ironic that Frick Island had been doing it decades before anyone else.
He looked back up at Anders and noticed the boy hadn’t moved.
“Well, go on.”
“You want me to . . . load those up on the boat?”
“No, I want you to perform all five acts of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”
Anders blinked.
“Yes!” BobDan growled. “I’d like you to load those on the boat.”
Anders blinked again. “Will you knock ten dollars off the ticket price?”
BobDan took a small step backward. He appraised the boy once more, seeing a glimmer of something he hadn’t noticed on the boy before. He nodded. “Deal.” And then he watched, amused, as the boy, scrawny as a toothpick with even fewer muscles, sweated and strained as he lifted the first box—filled with Lady Judy’s fifty-pound bag of birdseed. He groaned and grimaced under the weight, and nearly dropped it twice, but he didn’t give up. And BobDan had to admit: If nothing else, the boy was persistent.
Chapter 11
Piper sat in Tom’s easy chair in their small den, mumbling under her breath as she eyed the opposite wall and cataloged each and every insect housed in the fourteen shadow boxes that spanned it. It was a meditation of sorts, something she did when she was thinking or bored or just needed a reminder that the world could be constant at times. Familiar. It was also a memorization exercise to test her brain—to make sure she didn’t forget.
She started with the beetle family: the acorn weevil, Conotrachelus posticatus; the banded net-wing beetle, Calopteron discrepans; the broad-necked root borer, Prionus laticollis; and so on, always pausing when she got to the northeastern beach tiger beetle. One of the quickest beetle species on earth (it actually ran so fast it went blind), it was the first bug Piper added to her collection when she moved to Frick Island. But the insect was now considered endangered in Maryland, and though Piper knew the one that she trapped years ago was of little consequence to why they were now endangered, she still got a pang of guilt for taking it from its natural habitat.
She continued naming the insects one by one, even though she knew she should get up. She needed to shrug off her pajamas and pull on a T-shirt and shorts and go to the wildlife center, where Bill Gibbons would be expecting her, but motivation had been a hard thing to come by recently.
As she was trying to force energy into her legs, the trilling of the phone in the kitchen gave her the last burst she needed to finally stand. She reached the phone on the third ring and picked up.
“Hello?”
“Pipes!”
“Mom!” Piper was flooded with relief at hearing her mother’s voice, mixed with a twinge of sadness. “Thank you for calling me back.”
“Sorry it took so long. I’ve been out in the field all week.”
“And how is the Gold Coast of Australia?” Piper asked, putting on the happiest voice she could muster. Her mom had moved there right after Piper graduated from high school—and Piper had only seen her once since, when she flew in for her and Tom’s simple wedding ceremony a little more than a year ago.
“A mess. Flooded again.” Only her mother could talk about devastating natural disasters with an edge of excitement in her voice.
Piper paused and narrowed her eyes at the pewter wall clock. “Wait—isn’t it the middle of the night over there?”
“Early morning. Four a.m. Wanted to input this latest data before heading back out today.”
Piper rolled her eyes. Her mother would work twenty-four hours a day if she could; and sometimes did.
“Tell me, what’s going on with you? Three messages—must be important.”
“Remember that stack of blueprints you had made—for the living shoreline and jetties project?”
“Of course.”
“Where are they?”
“Why? Did the town change their minds? Is there funding?”
Piper hesitated, not quite sure how to explain why she needed them. “Not exactly.”
“Piperrr . . .” Her mom drew out her name. “What are you up to?”
“Nothing.”
“Don’t ‘nothing’ me.”
“Just—do you know where they are?”
“Hmmm . . . I think I gave them to Bill. If he didn’t toss them, they’re likely somewhere in that disaster of a storage room he calls an office.”
“Oh, good. I’m headed there now.”