The pine-salt air felt so good to breathe. The tide was high, the water calm, baby waves lapping at the edges of the cove, the wind rustling the long grass of the meadow. From somewhere in the woods, Boomer barked twice.

I’d miss the houseboat, that was for sure. But Poe had been isolated enough, and even if Collier Rhodes would let me buy this place (and if I could afford it), it was too isolated for my niece. Jim Ivansky, the nice Realtor, had found a house in town for me. Something permanent. My furniture, so carefully and joyfully chosen, was waiting, and Poe and I could buy new stuff, too. It would be our house. Our home.

God. My muscles were definitely seizing up now. I let myself into the houseboat, put my bag on the counter and found myself face-to-face with Luke Fletcher.

He was high. Pupils like pinpricks, a muscle in his face twitching. With one hand, he was scratching his arm.

In the other hand was a knife. The big knife for chopping vegetables.

For a second, all I saw was white. My mind emptied completely. I was just gone in a wave of fear so big and absolute that there was no room for anything else.

And then I was back, in my kitchen, wearing my running clothes, feeling the gentle rock of the houseboat.

With a knife-wielding junkie.

“What can I help you with, Luke?” I asked. My voice was calm.

“Where do you keep your prescription pad?” he asked.

“At the clinic. What have you taken?” My legs felt wriggly with adrenaline.

“I need something. Vicodin. You got Vicodin?”

“I don’t keep drugs here. Are you okay? Do you want me to call Sully?”

Wrong thing to say. He started tapping the knife tip against the counter. “Do you want me to call Sully?” he mimicked, same as he used to. “You think you’re so special, don’t you? You think I’m stupid. You think you can steal my family the way you stole my scholarship?”

“Oh, Jesus, not that again.”

“Fuck you.” He gave a little lunge forward, knife pointed at me, and the fear flashed, lighting up all the old hurts. I might’ve flinched, and I was definitely trembling now.

“I could kill you, you know,” he said with a mean smile. “Bash your head in and dump you in the water and everyone would think you were a big fat bitch who fell.”

“I guess that’s possible.” Ironically, I felt a flash of pity for Luke, this golden boy turned nothing.

“You’re not staying here. You’re not taking my brother and Audrey and brainwashing them. You stole enough from me. Get out on the dock, you fat bitch. Time for you to go.”

Something snapped inside me.

The fear was gone, and in its place was molten fury.

“I didn’t steal anything. I earned that scholarship. And I did something with it. I’m a doctor, you piece of shit. I help people. You were on the road to destruction long before you lost that scholarship. And you’re right. It was yours to lose, and you lost it. You could’ve gone to another school, but you decided to get high and crash your car, and it was Sully who paid the price. Take a hard look around, Luke. You’re a pathetic junkie living off his brother’s generosity. So stop whining and get off my boat.”

This time, he did lunge, and I jerked away, but not fast enough for a meth-stoked addict. He looped a strong arm around my neck and held me against him, knife at my ear. His breath was foul.

Poe. Mom. Lily. Sullivan. Audrey. Xiaowen.

Luke wrangled me out the door, so he could bash my head in on the dock, I guessed. Unfortunately, I had a problem with that plan.

The second we were on the dock, I elbowed him in the stomach, bit his arm as hard as I could, turned and heel-palmed his face, feeling the crunch of cartilage as I smashed his nose. He yelped and fell back onto the dock, and I stomped on his nuts as hard as I could, getting a scream.

Guess that self-defense class had been worth every cent.

Then there was a blur of black and brown and a snarling so ferocious, for a second I thought it was a bear.

But it was Boomer, who sank his teeth into Luke’s arm and shook it so hard Luke looked like a rag doll. The Dog of Dogs. I watched for a second, then said, “Boomer! Off!”

He obeyed, a meaty growl in his throat, his teeth exposed. “Don’t move,” I said to Luke. His sleeve was wet with blood. Kinda hard to feel bad about that. “Boomer, good boy. Good boy. Stay.”

Going inside, I took my phone out of my bag and dialed 911, asked for cops and an ambulance. Then I got my first-aid kit.

After all, I was a doctor.

Epilogue

A year later, Poe got her driver’s license, and we threw a celebration party, since it had been her third try. Mom and Donna, Sullivan and Audrey, Xiaowen and Richard (Georgie, the hotel owner, turned out to be gay).

We’d decorated in yellow and crimson—Gryffindor colors, of course. Streamers dangled from the porch, and we had Harry Potter paper plates and napkins. Reading Harry Potter had been my one requirement for Poe to live with me, I’d said, and she grudgingly opened the book, only to fall under its spell immediately. Like the rest of the world, thank you very much.

Poe’s other friends were here, too—Bella Hurley, daughter of the former Cheeto Carmella Hurley, and Henry McShane, who had a huge crush on her, as well as six or seven kids from the track team, as Poe had taken up running. So had Audrey. She’d shot up four inches this past year, now that her Cushing’s disease was cured, and dropped a lot of weight. She was happy and lovely, and I adored her. I wouldn’t be surprised if she was in line to win the Perez Scholarship, her grades were so good.

Even Teeny Fletcher was here. She’d finally acknowledged that Luke had crossed the line. And yeah, she’d be my mother-in-law pretty soon. We’d never be best friends, but we could get along.

I’d thought Sully might kill Luke that day. Somehow, he’d gotten there before anyone else and had started beating his brother to a pulp until I forced my way in between them. Between Sullivan and Boomer—and me—Luke had hardly been a threat at the moment.

Luke was now in jail and sober, too. Sully said if he saw his brother on the island, he’d drown him himself.

But late one night as I sat out on the deck alone, I realized something.

If Luke had killed me that day, I would’ve died not on a dirty street in Boston, wondering about who’d take care of my dog, but with a heart full of love for Poe, my mom and this place. I would’ve died full of color, not grayness—the blue sky, the deep green of the pines, the mercurial colors of the ocean, the pink-and-apricot sunsets. I would’ve died knowing what it was like to be loved by a truly good man.

“You’re the bravest person I know,” Sully had said to me that day, and he held me for a long, long time. His eyes were wet when he pulled back.

The bravest person. I’d take it.

A roar of laughter came from the porch where the teenagers had settled. My niece’s hair was pink now, and it suited her. Our eyes met, and her smile was everything.

Lily was still in jail. Poe talked to her almost every week; Lily had been better about calling. My sister wouldn’t talk to me on the phone, but that was okay. I’d talked to the prison doctor about medication, and she said she’d work figuring out the right balance of medication and therapy for my sister. Otherwise, I stayed out of it, realizing Lily needed to find her own way.

I sent her a picture of the carving.

Nora and Lily, together forever.

And we were together, more now than in the past two decades, because Lily was with me in the form of her child. I didn’t know what would happen when she got out...but you never knew what life held. I had never expected to be back here, after all.