The third year she asked Marshall to take the week off, and he had agreed. The weather change shifted the moods of both Bree’s girls as well. They were weepier, more temperamental. They missed their dad more. They had a week off called “winter break,” for all the high was getting close to eighty. He decided that they all needed to opt out of the endless spring.

In Bonaire it felt like summer. Peyton was calmer and A-C was kinder, watching palm trees sway in the breezy brightness. All four of the kids loved the big iguanas who lived by the villa’s private pool. One was out basking near the deep end that afternoon, sunning himself fearlessly as the girls floated nearby, his weird, floppy toes splayed and his chin up.

The girls were tired from scuba, all three drifting on bright floats. Purple, yellow, blue. Trey had been an avid diver. He’d always meant for his kids to learn. Bree was making good on that. Of all of them, Marshall probably loved scuba most, even though with four ladies and five heavy dive bags, he got stuck with most of the gear rinsing.

It was nice to have the option to take up such an expensive sport. To be able to say, Fuck it, the weather changed and we feel sad—let’s go to the Caribbean. Bree had said yes immediately. No thinking. Just, Yes, let’s do that. As if it were a reasonable plan to on the spur of the moment buy seven business-class tickets, rent a five-bedroom villa, pay for diving lessons and equipment.

Marshall had wondered if in another decade or so he wouldn’t blink at an unplanned, unsaved-for vacation.

It was a good problem to have. He was getting used to it. He didn’t really need to work, actually, but God, he loved his job. With Bree he had real backup. She and Cara were thick as thieves. She looked at his girl and she saw Betsy, same as him. There was no reason not to do the thing he loved. So detectives earned a little less money than lead investigators at tier-one law firms. Really not an issue these days.

The girls chatted lazily on their floats. Peyton in the middle, buffering. Two divas under one roof was a lot of divas, and the more Cara came into her mother’s sly and sparkling beauty, the more she held her own with A-C.

He was glad the diving tired them out. The cast list for Chicago, Junior, the high school’s spring show, had landed while they were at the airport. Cara had been cast as Roxie Hart, the part A-C had gone after, while A-C was Velma Kelly, the part Cara wanted most. The girls were juniors, and they’d won the lead roles over quite a few disgruntled seniors. They ought well be damn happy. And they were happy. Mostly. Just there was a lot of side-eye happening on this trip.

That was the downside, he thought. To the money. What they needed, they already had, pretty much on tap. Most of what they wanted, they got. They thought the world was like that. Shocking how fast Cara had come to think the world was like that. He and Bree were working on it.

He sat beside his wife, both of them dangling their feet in the bright blue water. They were holding hands, on and off, but they kept having to let go to stop Robbie from drowning himself. The little rat kept lunging off the pool steps. Whoever was closer would leap down and drag him back. He trusted his water wings too much. He trusted the whole damn world too much.

On the other hand, his trust was kind of lovely.

He went again, and Bree leaped after him. Robbie was positive, with the willful surety of three-year-olds, that he could swim all the way to the deep end and join his sisters on their colorful floats.

“Stay on the steps,” Bree said again, dragging him back.

He crunched his whole face up and said his favorite word. “No! I wanna go to da floaps!”

The last word devolved into a howl. Marshall got up and lifted him out in one smooth move and carried him away from the pool. Bree’s mom had come along to babysit while they dove each morning. Now she was in the shade of the villa’s long porch, reading her book. Marshall toted his son, writhing and protesting, back to her.

He plunked Robbie down on the lounge chair by Shelly Ann and said, “Time out, kiddo.”

Robbie hurled himself prone, weeping dramatically.

Marshall turned to Shelly Ann. “Can I top you off?”

“It’s just juice!” she said.

“I know.”

“It’s not even one o’clock.”

Vigilant as ever. No way she would drink with the kids in the pool. Even with Marshall and Bree right there.

“Five minutes,” Marshall said to Robbie, who responded by savagely kicking the cushions.

Marshall left him to seethe at the terrible injustice and got a couple cans of Modelo from the patio’s mini-fridge. He brought them back poolside and handed Bree one, sitting next to her, close. She popped hers open and then took his hand.

On the patio Robbie let out a heaving, dramatic sigh. They exchanged smiles.

“So this is three,” Bree said.

“Oh, yeah,” he agreed.

They sat watching the girls drift, holding hands and drinking their cold beers, until it got quiet. Marshall glanced back.

Robbie had forgotten he was in time-out. He was trying industriously to open A-C’s water bottle. He was always like this, busy and engaged and into things, his brow furrowed with concentration. He was like his father, for all that he called laid-back Marshall “Daddy.” A-C and Peyton called him Marshall, of course. He loved Bree’s girls, deeply, and they loved him, but they were Trey’s. It would be disrespectful to try to bust that up by asking them to call him “Dad,” like Cara did.

But Marshall had saved Robbie’s life. He and Bree had come through those long two days together, and in the end he’d pulled the baby from that horseshoe of explosives and set him in his mother’s arms. Perhaps it had been a kind of birth.

Marshall was the only father Robbie would know; Robbie was the only son he’d have. He and Bree had decided it would be hard enough to blend the kids they had, especially since some people, Bree’s in-laws, for example, thought their quiet wedding came a little soon.

Marshall had been pretty absolute and medical about it. The day of the procedure, he’d thought, I am a man who will have one kid. He’d been okay with it. Robbie had snuck up on him, and Cara had confided that Robbie didn’t feel like a step. For as much as he looked like Trey’s small clone, thick and sturdy, with that same round face and snub nose, Robbie belonged to all of them.

A-C had moved her float to the center, and now she and Cara started singing. Harmonizing. Peyton, he knew without looking, would be rolling her eyes. The song was a Roxie-Velma duet from the upcoming show, which meant they would practice it over and over until Peyton lost her mind. The two songbirds were really wailing, Cara’s dusky brown leg hooked over A-C’s longer, paler leg as they sang, asking each other again and again if things were good, or great, or swell. And then they sang the kicker, a repeated line about how nothing could ever stay the same.