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she. Or maybe with a different kind of wife he would be quiet and let her talk. I pictured Zina and me exchanging looks at things they said to each other. But whatever happened between them Zina would remain my stepsister. Or would she? Those were my thoughts as I waited for Father to get back.
    He walked in as I was rummaging through the refrigerator.
    “Any news from upstairs?”
    “Maybe we should go up and see,” I said.
    “Let’s fix something to eat, and I’ll take it up.”
    We made sandwiches. Father put two on a tray with glasses and a bottle of wine. He held the tray on his hand above his head and mounted the stairs like an actor playing a waiter.
    He came right down. “I left it outside the door. Where’s Blackheart?”
    “Asleep on the porch.”
    “He’s partial to sandwiches.”
    “Did Mother lock the door?”
    “Yup, but I have a plan. Let’s eat first.”
    “What did you think of those visitors?” I said.
    “You were on their boat. What did you think?”
    “They were okay. Do you think they’re interested in Zina and Mrs. Mertz?”
    “Romantically, no.”
    “Why not?”
    “That’s just what I think.”
    His plan worked. We took the ladder from under the east porch, put it against the house, and he climbed through the bedroom window. Mother screamed, but before long she was laughing. He really was an expert. I wondered if I’d ever be able to do that with women.

6
A Warning
    NEXT MORNING THE sky was pale blue and cloudless, the ocean green and clear near shore and blue-black far out. A snappy breeze blew in from the bay over the Point and into the sea, keeping the water smooth and the breaking waves small and tight. It was a nifty day for sailing.
    There were four houses on the Point if you count our house and the guesthouse as one. The house nearest the mainland was a snug little shack belonging to Mr. Strangfeld, who had been living there alone since before World War II. The older he got the more we wondered how he managed in the winter. He had electricity but no phone. If he had gotten into trouble, there wouldn’t have been much he could doabout it. Every spring when we opened the house we half expected to hear that he had died, his flesh stripped by rats.
    He made his living from the Pointers. He drove his beach buggy past the house every morning about eight. If we wanted a ride to the mainland we planted a green flag in the sand and he picked us up. It was the only way to get off the Point by land. He did it rain or shine as long as anyone was left. He performed two other services. We all had wells, but the water was brackish. Mr. Strangfeld delivered ten-gallon bottles of drinking water from the mainland. When we wanted one we left the empty in front of the house and he changed it for a full one. Also, he kept an eye on the houses during the winter to see they hadn’t been burgled, blown down, or washed away. I don’t know how much we Pointers paid him, but it was enough for his taxes, electricity, and food. We could have had our own beach buggies, but we felt to deny Mr. Strangfeld any part of his income would have endangered his survival.
    Bone Point stretches six miles north-south along the mainland, with the end of the Point to the north, the ocean on the east, and the bay on the west. By Grandfather Michael’s day Bone Point was an island, but it must have been a peninsula once, when it was named. During World War II the Army Engineers built a causeway from the southern endto the mainland. The town, with a population then of seventy thousand, was about three miles to the north. What Mr. Strangfeld did was drive us to the base of the Point, over the causeway to the mainland, where you could take the coastal rail line one stop into the center of town. We kept our car at the station and usually drove into town alongside the railroad.
    Father went in that morning, so I gathered up my courage and invited Zina to sail. She was so beautiful in her candy-striped bathing suit that