“Hey,” a voice says. “You okay?”
It’s Tilda, walking off the dock with Olive at her side.
Before Swan can think it through, she says, “I was just in the trailer showing Duncan my marketing ideas. He told me he hired me because I was hot, a dime, and then he touched me inappropriately.”
Tilda’s eyebrows shoot up above her sunglasses. She places a hand on Olive’s back, and Olive stands still as a statue. When Tilda opens her mouth, no sound comes out.
Swan drops her head into her hands. On top of everything else, she has to be the one to let Tilda know that her boyfriend is a predator.
“Oh, Swan,” Tilda says. “Do you think maybe you misunderstood? Dunk can be a little familiar, that’s his personality, that’s how he was raised back in Australia, I think, but I’m sure he didn’t mean anything by it.”
This is so textbook! Nobody ever believes the woman! “Listen to me, Tilda. He leaned against me in a suggestive way and put his hand on my back, and when I moved away, he started to massage my shoulders. He…grazed my behind.”
“Swan,” Tilda says. She’s shaking her head when she should be either hugging Swan or storming into the trailer to kick Dunk in the nuts.
“Tilda,” Swan says. She understands denial. Swan willfully ignored her husband’s gambling problem for fourteen years. But how about some solidarity here?
“I’ll ask Keith to run you back to Cruz Bay,” Tilda says. “Thanks for coming over.”
Irene Steele and Captain Huck Powers are living together, and Irene is back working as the first mate on the Mississippi. Irene is logging her days on the water, and as soon as she has three hundred and sixty, she’ll take her captain’s test. Huck thinks it’s a great idea. He even goes to St. Thomas to look at the boat Irene inquired about.
The boat is in good condition and the seller is motivated; he’s leaving the Virgin Islands altogether at the beginning of June. Huck advises Irene to make an offer of forty thousand.
“I don’t have forty to spend,” she says.
“How about we split it?” Huck says. “Add it to the fleet. It needs work, which I can do myself. And then once you get your captain’s license, we can run two boats, the Mississippi and the Angler Cupcake. God knows we have enough business.”
More than enough, Irene thinks, with a growing number of women-only charters. All it took was a few complimentary trips. The first of these was for Baker’s school-mom friends Swan, Bonny, and Paula. The three of them took pictures with the fish they caught and posted them on Facebook and Instagram. Next, Huck and Irene invited Joanie’s mom, Julie Judge, and her three sisters out on the boat, and they all posted pictures. And finally, they had a paying charter for a young woman named Gretchen Gingerman who came with her mother. It turned out that Gretchen had met Cash on her previous visit to St. John, a trip that had gone badly, and it was only because of Cash that Gretchen gave the island another try, with a different travel partner.
Gretchen’s post brought in a flurry of business, including a bachelorette party. Six beautiful young women, five in matching pink T-shirts and one in a white T-shirt and a short white veil, all in great spirits thanks to a thermos filled with cosmo punch and a playlist of Lizzo and Billie Eilish. They caught a couple of small wahoo, which elicited high-pitched shrieks, and they took fifty million pictures, including one with Irene. All of the girls loved Irene, she was “such a beast,” and when they were older they were going to do something “sick” like move to the Virgin Islands to work on a fishing boat.
The bachelorette party tipped extremely well but when the women got off the boat, Huck turned to Irene and said, “I can’t wait for you to get your captain’s license so I never have to do that again.”
It all sounds rosy on the Huck-and-Irene front—until the story that united them rears its ugly head. Todd Croft is brought up on four charges of first-degree murder thanks to the evidence that Marilyn Monroe presented. (In addition to the three murders we all suspected he was behind, we learned Todd had also killed Oscar Cobb. Sure enough, once Marilyn Monroe had voiced her suspicions, traces of Oscar’s blood were found all over the stern of Bluebeard.) Somehow Todd’s lawyer cuts a deal. Todd pleads guilty to one charge of second-degree murder and three charges of manslaughter and pays fines of nearly four hundred million dollars. He’s sentenced to twenty-two years in federal prison. With good behavior, he could be out in eighteen.
Both Huck and Irene are aghast. Four lives violently snatched away, and the guy gets only twenty-two years? It’s the money, Irene thinks. The territory wanted Todd’s money. Either that or he agreed to talk to the Feds about some of his clients—which may end up getting him killed.
“I’ll tell you who will be waiting for him the day he gets out,” Huck says. “Me.”
Irene squeezes Huck’s hand. The estates can sue for reparations in a civil case. Natalie Key is asking for two million dollars on behalf of Russ and ten million on behalf of Rosie. Stephen Thompson has a brother who lives in London, but the brother won’t sue because he wants “nothing to do with the whole sordid mess.”
Huck and Irene have decided not to even think about the possibility of that money. Instead, they focus on their daily blessings. Irene receives boxes filled with her clothes—most of which she’d forgotten she owned—as well as her books and kitchen implements. When she pulls her food processor out of the box, she says, “The cooking in this house is about to improve.”
“How can you improve on perfectly grilled fish?” Huck asks. “How
