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to wait for the early arrivals. In a matter of moments, Liz caught the first scent of the sea. It was always fresh. As she took the last turn, she glanced idly in her rearview mirror. Odd, she thought—hadn’t she seen that little blue car yesterday? But when she swung into the hotel’s parking lot, it chugged past.
    Liz’s arrangement with the hotel had been of mutual benefit. Her shop bordered the hotel’s beach and encouraged business on both sides. Still, whenever she went inside, as she did today to collect the lunch for the fishing trip, she always remembered the two years she’d spent scrubbing floors and making beds.
    â€œ Buenos días, Margarita.”
    The young woman with a bucket and mop started to smile. “Buenos días, Liz. ¿Cómo està?”
    â€œ Bien. How’s Ricardo?”
    â€œGrowing out of his pants.” Margarita pushed the button of the service elevator as they spoke of her son. “Faith comes home soon. He’ll be glad.”
    â€œSo will I.” They parted, but Liz remembered the months they’d worked together, changing linen, hauling towels, washing floors. Margarita had been a friend, like so many others she’d met on the island who’d shown kindness to a young woman who’d carried a child but had no wedding ring.
    She could have lied. Even at eighteen Liz had been aware she could have bought a ten-dollar gold band and had an easy story of divorce or widowhood. She’d been too stubborn. The baby that had been growing inside her belonged to her. Only to her. She’d feel no shame and tell no lies.
    By seven forty-five, she was crossing the beach to her shop, lugging a large cooler packed with two lunches and a smallerone filled with bait. She could already see a few tubes bobbing on the water’s surface. The water would be warm and clear and uncrowded. She’d like to have had an hour for snorkeling herself.
    â€œLiz!” The trim, small-statured man who walked toward her was shaking his head. There was a faint, pencil-thin mustache above his lip and a smile in his dark eyes. “You’re too skinny to carry that thing.”
    She caught her breath and studied him up and down. He wore nothing but a skimpy pair of snug trunks. She knew he enjoyed the frank or surreptitious stares of women on the beach. “So’re you, Luis. But don’t let me stop you.”
    â€œSo you take the fishing boat today?” He hefted the larger cooler and walked with her toward the shop. “I changed the schedule for you. Thirteen signed up for the glass bottom for the morning. We got both dive boats going out, so I told my cousin Miguel to help fill in today. Okay?”
    â€œTerrific.” Luis was young, fickle with women and fond of his tequila, but he could be counted on in a pinch. “I guess I’m going to have to hire someone on, at least part-time.”
    Luis looked at her, then at the ground. He’d worked closest with Jerry. “Miguel, he’s not dependable. Here one day, gone the next. I got a nephew, a good boy. But he can’t work until he’s out of school.”
    â€œI’ll keep that in mind,” Liz said absently. “Let’s just put this right on the boat. I want to check the gear.”
    On board, Liz went through a routine check on the tackle and line. As she looked over the big reels and massive rods, she wondered, with a little smirk, if the lawyer had ever done any big-game fishing. Probably wouldn’t know a tuna if it jumped up and bit his toe, she decided.
    The decks were clean, the equipment organized, as she insisted. Luis had been with her the longest, but anyone whoworked for Liz understood the hard and fast rule about giving the clients the efficiency they paid for.
    The boat was small by serious sport fishing standards, but her clients rarely went away dissatisfied. She knew the waters all along the Yucatan Peninsula and the habits of the