He came closer, and she knew he meant to kiss her. It was okay. He was a matter-of-fact man; she believed in his moral compass, in his sense of right and not-right. He took her chin and kissed her with the same deft skill that he did everything else—slip an egg out from underneath a hen, bruise a basil leaf and inhale its scent. He kissed her goodbye, a key turning in a lock.

“I don’t want you to fret about this,” he said.

But both of them knew she would.

THE CHIEF

The freezer at the Juice Bar went on the fritz. It was such a sophisticated machine that they needed a team of NASCAR mechanics to fix it, and so Kacy had the night free from work. She had volunteered to take the twins out to Tom Nevers for the carnival, a shabby slice of mainland American life visited upon their beloved island for ten days. The carnival meant neon lights, rickety rides, rigged games with rinky-dink prizes, and heart-stopping, teeth-rotting fare such as cotton candy, fried dough, corn dogs, and sausage grinders. The twins had been begging to be subjected to the depravity of the carnival for nearly a week (Drew and Barney had apparently already been twice), and the Chief was relieved when Kacy said she would take them. Andrea could not handle the manic chaos of the carnival, and the Chief felt he had put in enough carnival hours with his own kids. He gave Kacy eighty dollars, told her not to let the twins eat too much sugar, and wished her well.

He then called Andrea to see if she wanted to go out to dinner, just the two of them. Somewhere nice. The Straight Wharf?

She said no. She was exhausted. (From doing what?) She was going to take advantage of the peace and quiet by going to bed early.

The Chief was deflated. He was, if he could just say it, lonely. There had always been the specter of his own grief floating around somewhere, and he acknowledged it now. He, like Andrea, missed Tess, but he also missed Greg. Greg, despite his faults, had been his friend. The friendship had been uneven, sure. The Chief was the police chief, and Greg had been a rock star. Morally, they were a heavyweight and a lightweight, a total mismatch. But the Chief had loved Greg anyway.

If they still lived in the Before and the Chief found himself stranded at work without options or obligations, he would have wandered over to the Begonia, taken a seat at the bar, hammed it up with Delilah, ordered a bleu burger with extra onions, and listened to Greg play a set. It was, in the Chief’s opinion, a nearly perfect way to spend an evening.

He couldn’t handle the Begonia now: no Greg, no Delilah, Faith with her smothering concern, the grating Irish trio onstage. He had a pile of backlogged work on his desk, the result of his preoccupation with the details of the accident, his distracted frame of mind, and the extra hours he had to devote to Andrea and the twins. He should stay and work. He would ask Freda, the evening dispatcher, to pick him up a burger from the Begonia, even though Freda was unfriendly, and especially so when she felt like she was being treated like a secretary or an errand girl. He would have to ask nicely.

At nine-thirty he was still at his desk, the burger, fries, and double dill pickles demolished. He had eaten three Rolaids and was two thirds of the way through his stack of paperwork. The attendant feeling of relief and accomplishment was keeping his melancholy at bay. He wouldn’t even have realized it was as late as nine-thirty—his office was a concrete bunker, without windows—had Dickson not knocked on the door, making the Chief look up. Dickson had that goddamn look on his face.

“What is it?” the Chief asked.

“April Peck is here,” Dickson said. “She got called in by the bouncer of the Rose and Crown for trying to pass off a fake ID.”

The Chief fell back in his chair. “Jesus.”

“I dealt with her. She said she got it somewhere online, couldn’t remember the name of the site. I fined her three hundred bucks, took the ID, threatened to suspend her real driver’s license. She said she wanted to talk to you.”

“To me?”

“To you.”

“Jesus,” the Chief said.

“Normally I would have told her no. Normally I would have slapped her with a ninety-day suspension for trying to go over my head. But then I wondered if maybe you wanted to question her.”

Question her. Dickson understood more than the Chief wanted him to. The Chief’s stomach squelched. He’d eaten all that food and he hadn’t moved a muscle. And he was nervous.

“Send her in.”

Dickson opened the door and poked his head out into the hallway. “Hey, Dancing Queen,” he said, “the Chief has agreed to see you.”

April entered, resplendent in some kind of sparkly black-and-silver disco dress and silver stiletto heels. Her hair was up. She wore reddish black lipstick. She looked twenty-five, not eighteen.

“Miss Peck,” the Chief said.

“You can call me April,” she said. She offered her hand. “I feel like I know you.”

“Do you?” the Chief said.

“Yes,” April said. She sat demurely, thank God, with her legs angled to the side. “Greg used to talk about you all the time.”

The Chief quietly burped up Roquefort and onions. “Greg?” he said.

“Greg MacAvoy.”

The name reverberated against the concrete walls of the Chief’s office. April’s face was open; her eyes were wide and innocent. She did not look like a kid who had just been booked for identity fraud. Was she drunk? She had been steady on the stilettos. Was she a good actress? Or maybe the three-hundred-dollar fine and the fact that she might not be able to drive for the rest of the summer didn’t bother her. Who was he kidding? If they took her license, she would drive anyway.