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the school," Angus said. "I remember that real good. You yelled at everybody and made them stop."
    Maddie’s smile faded. She felt something clench vaguely inside her.
    Outside the school? It occurred to her that she must have attended the one with the blue roof that she and Josh had passed that day. She had probably done so for . . . what? Four or five years? She scowled. For the first time it seemed odd to her that she hadn’t recognized that place at all.
    Well, of course she didn’t. She didn’t remember her parents, didn’t remember living on the island with them, either. She had been young when they’d left, and the end of her time there had been traumatizing and abrupt.
    She didn’t remember because she had never come back. But she did remember Angus.
    She wondered just how many people really had very specific memories of their early childhood if they left a place young and never went back. Maddie raked her hands through her hair.
    "It was a long time ago," she finally murmured.
    "You were five," Angus answered, obviously still thinking about the rocks. "You were in kindergarten."
    "Was I?"
    "Whenever I saw you after that, I knew nobody was going to make fun of me if you were with them."
    "Well, that’s good."
    Angus stood up suddenly. "I should go home."
    He startled her, but she stood up again as well. "Do you live around here?" she asked.
    "Inside."
    "Inside where?"
    "Inside The Wick." He frowned. "You know where."
    Her stomach squeezed again.
    "Can I come back?" he asked suddenly.
    "Sure." He really was . . . sweet. Then she had another thought. Here was one person who might not expect too much from Josh under the current circumstances. Maybe Angus would be good for him.
    "Do come back," she urged. "But during the day. Then you can meet my little boy."
    "That would be good." He was already walking off into the dunes to the north of the house. But suddenly he stopped and looked back at her. "You got real pretty, Maddie."
    It was said so simply and innocently, it warmed her in a spot deep inside.
    "Thank you," she said softly, but he was already gone.
    He was her first visitor, but not her last. Maddie had just chased Josh into the tub the next morning when someone began banging at her front door. She warned Josh not to stand up and hurried to answer it.
    It was a woman.
    Maddie looked out at her vacantly. Her first reaction was a stirring of purely feminine ego and jealousy. The woman was gorgeous, with an exotic, maybe Mediterranean look. She had long, thick, dark hair, the perfect color of mahogany. She had faintly almond-shaped eyes, and they were nearly black as well. She was delicate and fine-boned . . . beautiful. She was the kind of woman who could make most other women feel large and klutzy by her mere presence, and Maddie was no exception.
    "Who are you?" she asked dumbly.
    "Gina Gallen." The woman grinned. "Can I come in?"
    "Uh, sure."
    Maddie stepped back from the door. Gina swept past her, eyeing her a little too closely as she did. She was watching her with the same look Cassie Diehl had given her the previous day.
    "What can I do for you?" Maddie asked warily.
    Gina Gallen held out a bakery box. Until that moment, Maddie had been distracted enough that she hadn’t even noticed that the woman was holding it.
    "I’m sort of a goodwill, welcome-to-the-neighborhood ambassador," Gina explained. "Except, I mean, this isn’t my neighborhood. I don’t live on The Wick. But nobody else up here is likely to stop by and welcome you home."
    Angus had, Maddie thought. And Angus’s eyes hadn’t darted around, looking for ... something.
    "Josh, you keep sitting down," she called down the
    hallway again, and moved to take the box from the woman.
    Gina scooted ahead of her, trying to peer down the hall. "Cassie said you had a little boy."
    "That’s right." There was a sticker on the top of the box that said Lucisano’s. It was tied up neatly with a string. "You didn’t have to go to this trouble."
    "No