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once a week—had an office and equipment for them. It was a working settlement. Grandpapa still grows most of his own food. Say, I know you won’t feel like cooking after moving all your gear into the cottage. Why don’t you join me for dinner at the inn tonight?”
    Liz hesitated for a moment. During the past two months she had become accustomed to refusing contact with anybody, hiding away while she healed. “Thanks,” she said finally. “I’d like that.” It was time she came out of hiding.
    “There’s Greyfield Dock,” Germaine said. “We’ll be ashore in a few minutes. How long you down for?”
    “I don’t know,” Liz said honestly. “Ray wants a collection of photographs for a book about the island. As long as it takes, I guess.”
    “It’s about time he did that book; he’s been talking about it long enough. I reckon I’ll sell a ton of them at the inn.” A single-engine airplane appeared, low in the sky, and flew in two tight circles over the island.
    “We’ve got a grass strip on the island,” Germaine said. “The odd guest flies in, buzzes the inn, and we meet him.”
    The
Aldred Drummond
began a turn toward the slip.
    “Better saddle up, I guess,” Germaine said. “Come for a drink about six. Dinner’s at seven-thirty.”
    “See you then,” Liz replied, climbing into the Jeep.
    The barge eased up to the bank and dropped her gate. Germaine drove the van ashore, and Liz followed in her vehicle. Greyfield Inn appeared on her left, a graceful mansion in the colonial style, with a broad, high front porch. Giant live oaks spread their long limbs over the lawn before it, dipping to the ground, their Spanish moss dripping from every branch. Germaine stopped the van and waved Liz alongside.
    “You know the way?”
    “Not exactly.”
    “Go out through the main gate and follow the road north. A couple of miles along, you’ll come to a big, open field—that’s the airstrip. A big house called Stafford is right next to it. Just past the strip, you turn right and, after about a quarter mile, bear right at the fork. Stafford Beach Cottage is at the end of the road.”
    “Thanks,” Liz said, and drove toward the gates. She edged over to allow a beat-up old pickup truck to pass, headed toward the inn. The driver was a tiny, very black, old man with a fuzz of white hair. His chin was tilted up so that he could see over the wheel, and that and his intense concentration gave him an arrogant look.
    She started north on a good dirt road, flat and straight. Palmettos occasionally brushed the Jeep’s doors, and a forest of pines and live oaks occupied both sides of the road. She had gone less than a mile when, suddenly, a buck deer sprang out of a thick bunch of palmettos on her left, cleared the road with a single bound, and disappeared into equally thick palmettos on the other side. She had come within an ace of hitting it. She drove on, a hand clasped to her breast. The open field appeared as advertised, and she was in time to see a Cessna rolling down the runway, using less than half of it to get off the ground.
    The airplane turned north over the beach, gaining altitude. Liz had always wanted to learn to do that. One of these days, she thought.
    She passed Stafford House, found the road to her right, then bore right again at the fork. She came around a corner, and the house sat before her, under a huge live oak, nearly in the dunes. The single-story cottage was covered with weathered cedar shingles, and the trim was a freshly painted white. The beach must be only yards away, she thought; she could see birds wheeling low in the sky, just beyond the dunes. She turned the Jeep around and backed it up to the steps to the house.
    Anxious to see her new home, she trotted up the front steps and emerged onto a wide deck. From here she could see across the dunes to the sea. The beach stretched away into the distance, north and south, not a soul on it. She tore herself from the view, fumbled for the key,