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wall or buckle her knees or make her weep.
    But had she seen Rick’s face? She couldn’t remember. She had glimpsed a flash of tan skin, broad shoulders, brown hair. It could have been anyone, couldn’t it?
    Not with those eyes. The instant she saw them, everything had swept over her. Their meeting on a beach, their brief passionate romance, their wedding, the little house where . . .
    She sat up and clapped a hand over her mouth. Make it go away. Make the memories leave me alone. Tears squeezed from the corners of her eyes. She blotted them with the sheet.
    It’s okay, Jessie. It’s okay.
    The words Rick had whispered in her ear that afternoon in Zanzibar held the same deep tones she remembered so well. It’s okay, Jessie. He had called her by his special name. Jessie. So it was him. It was Rick McTaggart, and she couldn’t escape.
    Worse, even worse, he had picked her up and cradled her against his chest. She had felt the hard roundness of his biceps beneath her hand. She had rested her cheek on his shirt—warm khaki cotton, brown buttons, a pocket with a pen, a small spiral-bound notebook, a pair of sunglasses. And she had smelled him. Rick.
    No one else smelled like Rick McTaggart—like salty sea air, sunshine, tanned male skin, and freedom. No one else walked like him, with that confident stride, shoulders thrown back, purpose in every step.
    No one else called her Jessie.
    She flopped back on the bed and pulled the sheet over her head. Make him go away. Don’t let me ever have to see him again. The cry from her heart was meant to be a prayer, but she hadn’t talked to God in so many years she wasn’t sure she remembered how. And she wasn’t sure he would want to listen. After all, ten years ago she had been so angry with him . . . raging and crying and begging . . . and finally turning her back on him.
    Well, who wouldn’t? No one wanted a God who would allow trouble like Rick McTaggart to invade. Jess had always believed God was sort of like Hannah. Benevolent, protective, loving. If she’d been around at the time, Hannah would never have let Rick McTaggart near Jess. Of course, Jess probably would have made her own choices anyway. Terrible choices. Horrible mistakes.
    “God, if you’re out there anywhere,” she whispered into the silence of her room, “if you care about me at all, please fix this. Please help me get through this. Heal the brokenness inside me so I don’t have to feel so awful anymore. I’m choking from it. I’m dying inside. Please just fix it!”
    She doubted her prayer had the power to break through the thin web of mosquito netting, let alone find its way to God. Feeling empty and cold in spite of the hot night, she lay on the bed and listened to the surf until sleep took her.

    Just after sunrise, the roar of truck engines brought Jess bolt upright in bed. Had every car on the island of Zanzibar lost its muffler? She threw off the sheet, pushed out from under the mosquito-net canopy, and padded onto the balcony outside her room.
    The horrendous sound came from the driveway just below. As Jess leaned over the stone railing, the ruckus stopped. Two khaki green trucks left over from some military campaign sat basking in an aura of diesel fumes. Two men jumped out of the first truck; three exited the second. Without preamble, they began hauling machinery, hoses, metal chests, and ropes from the truck beds and depositing them on the verandah of Uchungu House.
    “I hope she’s got eggs today.” One of the men whisked off a battered white hat and bellowed at the house. “Hey, Miriamu! We’re ready for breakfast.”
    Four of the visitors were Africans—shirtless wiry men who wore ankle-length skirts of native fabric wrapped around their waists and small white caps perched on their heads. The man who had hollered was white, bald, and he sported a paunch the size of a small beer keg. Barely visible beneath his girth was a tiny blue swimsuit. His thongs flipped on the crunchy gravel