c h a p t e r

1

IT’S A DRIZZLY SUNDAY MORNING, the day after  my twelfth birthday, and my family—such as it is—has arrived  at Swallowtail Island in the western end of Lake Erie. All six  of us stand on the foredeck of the ferry Niagara as it makes the  turn at the buoy marked R3 at the entrance to the harbor. My  ten-year-old sister Pip and I shiver in our thin cotton dresses,  our arms pocked with goose bumps, as the town comes into  view before us. Its two piers are like long arms reaching out  into the harbor to greet us (Pip’s interpretation), or to push us  away (mine). As the Niagara bullies its way down the narrow  channel, its bow pushing a wall of water, the previously unruffled surface is pulled and stretched like gray taffy. Moored  boats dance in our wake as we pass, bows and sterns rising and  dipping with each wave. Near the east shore a fleet of mallards steams south toward a dilapidated wooden dock, and above  me, a single gull cries, then swoops down to see if I have anything to offer it. Pogo, our English setter, “sets” beside me,  body quivering and tail high in the air. I reach down and stroke  the top of her head, but she doesn’t take her eyes off the gull  for a second. 

My heart leaps when we bump against the pilings at the  ferry dock and lines are made fast: we have arrived. Without  a word, Pip slips her tiny hand into mine; together our hearts  pound out a rhythm that I am sure can be heard over the whining engine and shouts of dockhands. 

Our stepfather, Thomas, gathers Pip and me along with his  own three boys—Blake, Nate, and Jack—with his long arms.  “Everybody ready? We should get a family picture. This is a  big—” 

“Let’s not,” I say. When I was five, and Pip three, our dad  died when the small plane piloted by his best friend crashed  into the Connecticut River a few hundred yards short of the  runway at Goodspeed Airport. That same summer, Thomas’s  wife was killed by a falling tree branch while she was jogging in Central Park. Four and half years later, Mom married  Thomas. They had been friends (nothing more, they both  insisted) in college and reconnected at a class reunion. So we  had kind of a Brady Bunch thing going for a couple of years  but then, three months ago, Mom died, and what was left?  Thomas and his kids, and then Pip and me. I don’t know what we are, exactly, but it doesn’t feel quite like a family. “C’mon, Lark,” Pip says, squeezing my hand. “We should.” I am saved from the indignity of a family selfie there on the foredeck by one of the ferry’s crew: “Okay, folks. Need to ask  you to move along.” 

We wind our way down the steep metal staircase and onto  the gangplank. When I reach the end, I hesitate before taking  the final step onto the worn wood planks of the pier but there  is, I know, no turning back. For the next seventy-two days  (yes, I’m counting) this is home. 

I’m not off the hook for that family portrait yet, though.  Thomas has already recruited a woman in a yellow slicker to  take our picture in front of a sign that announces “Welcome  to Swallowtail Island” and is busy composing the shot. “Lark,  since you’re the tallest, in the back with me and Blake.” 

I grunt and move into my assigned place. Sometimes it is  easier just to do what Thomas wants and get it over with.  The woman in yellow says, “Smile!” and I do my best to  provide something that at least resembles one. My teeth are  clearly visible, so that counts, right? 

With that little bit of torture out of the way, the other five  of us leave Blake, not quite fourteen, in charge of our bags  and the cage holding my budgie, Bedlam, and trudge toward  town to get our bearings and to find a ride to the house that  has been in our family since the 1920s, and where Mom spent  her summers as a kid. The last time I was here was the summer I turned ten, the same summer that Mom first got sick.  After that, it was like someone hit pause on our lives. For the  next two years, the only traveling we did was on I-95 between  Connecticut and Lenox Hill Hospital in New York.  

It was a lawyer who pressed play, calling us into his office  the week after Mom died to tell Pip and me that the house on  Swallowtail Island now belonged to the two of us.  

***

As we amble along Main Street, strangers in a strange (and  strangely quiet) land, a light, ground-hugging fog filters out the  town’s imperfections—the peeling paint, the cracked and frost heaved sidewalks, the shuttered storefronts—making it appear more charming than I remembered it to be. Slowly, though, the  fog lifts higher and higher, until it hovers just above the treetops, and the sun begins to peek between the maple branches, highlighting Swallowtail’s blemishes in a golden glow. But who am I to call out its flaws? I mean, it’s not like I’m  perfect—ask anyone. When Thomas first told us that we were  going to spend the summer on Swallowtail Island, it was his  idea that I start keeping a journal, to help me deal with “my  issues.” He first brought it up when Mom got sick but I wanted  nothing to do with it. “Trust me,” I said. “You really don’t want  to know what I’m thinking most of the time.” 

“It’s not for me,” he said. “It’s for you. I’m not going to read  it. You’re right—I don’t want to know what you’re thinking.  But it’s good for you to know, and sometimes the only way to  do that is to write it down.”  

“What’s supposed to go in it?” I asked.  

“Whatever you want. What you’d like to say out loud but  don’t—that is, if there is anything that fits in that category.  You’re a very observant person. Unusually so, I’d say. But you’re  so much more than a mere observer. You’re constantly gathering  and analyzing data, plugging it into your own formula of how  the world works. You’re a born scientist. On top of that, you have  a baloney detector that would make Holden Caulfield proud.  So, observe. Gather. Rant. Draw pictures if you want. There’s no rules unless you make them. Marcus Aurelius wrote in the morning.  

Seneca did it at  night.” 

Thus began  the unvarnished journal  of Meadowlark  

Elizabeth Heron 

Finch. I know,  

right? Twenty-nine  

letters, not count 

ing that hyphen. (“A  

perch for the two  

birds,” Mom  

explained.) My sister’s is almost as bad: Sandpiper Alanna  Heron-Finch. When my mom, Kate Heron, met my dad, Marc  Finch, they decided that the bird thing was fate, so when we  came along, they “had no choice” but to keep the ball rolling.  By the way, no one calls us by our real names, ever. I’m Lark  and she’s Piper or, most of the time, just Pip.  

For the moment, there’s only one rule when it comes to my  story: I promise to be honest. Otherwise, what’s the point?  But I should probably clarify: Just because I promise not to  lie doesn’t mean that I’m going to tell the entire truth. I’m not  one of those people who is determined to share every unspoken thought with the world and I don’t want to be. Here’s the  God’s Honest Truth about me: There are places in my own  brain that, when I make a wrong turn and accidentally end up  there, I turn around and get out as fast as I can. No need to  go poking around places like that—who knows what I’ll find. 

***

Further west on Main Street, the town starts to perk up. No  cars or motorcycles are allowed on the island, so it’s not unusual  to see horses and buggies sharing the road with electric golf  carts and bicycles. To Pip, who has taken riding lessons at a  stable in Chester for the past two years, horses are the best  thing about the island. She loves them beyond all reason, and  once prepared a PowerPoint presentation to convince Thomas  to buy her one. I think they’re very pretty, but the GHT (God’s  Honest Truth) is that I can do without them. A twenty-year old palomino tossed me out of the saddle at summer camp  a few years ago, and I swear he looked back and laughed at  me when I hit the ground. And seriously, have you seen those  teeth? I’ll take a bicycle, thank you very much. 

We stop in front of the old-fashioned drugstore where  we arrange for a wagon to take all of us and our stuff to the  house. The boys go inside with their dad while Pip and I  stay out on the sidewalk. She wanders a few doors down to  pet a horse that is harnessed to a small, Amish-style buggy  while I peek through the front window at a stack of the local weekly newspaper, the Swallowtail Citizen. The headline reads  “Tragedy Strikes Swallowtail 75 Years Ago,” and next to it is a  grainy black-and-white photo that takes up the top right quarter  of the page. It shows the wrecked hull of an old-school wooden  speedboat—like something from an old movie. There are several ragged holes across the bottom of the boat, the largest a  good three feet long. Not all of the article is visible through the  glass, but I’m able to read enough to learn that the writer is convinced that the speedboat crash that killed Albert Pritchard was  no accident and that it was probably also connected to the death  of the town’s most important citizen, Captain Edward Cheever.  Pritchard was Cheever’s lawyer, and was returning from visiting  friends in Leamington, Ontario, when he plowed into the rocks  known as Ada’s Reef just west of Swallowtail Island. When I’ve  read as far as I can through the drugstore window, I go back  to the top where I see that the article was written by Nadine  Pritchard—Mom’s oldest friend and the main character in just  about every story from her childhood.  

“Pip, you have any money on you?” I ask. “I need fifty cents  for a paper.”  

“What? No. It’s back in my bag. Come and look at this  horse. Isn’t he beautiful?” 

“Yeah, he’s great,” I say, handing her Pogo’s leash. “Hold  Pogo for a sec. I’m going inside. Don’t go anywhere.” 

Thomas is on his way out the door as I open it. “We’re all set,”  he says. “The wagon’ll be here in a few minutes. Supposedly.  

Where’s Pip?” 

I nod in her direction. 

“Oh, right. Horses.” 

“Can I borrow fifty cents?” 

“Sure.” As he digs two quarters out of his pocket and holds  them out, I realize he already has a copy of the newspaper in  his other hand. 

“Oh. You already . . . that’s what I was gonna buy.” He hands me the paper, along with a five-dollar bill. “Get  some drinks for you and Pip. This may take a while. Remember  the last time? The guy showed up an hour late and then he  blamed us. Said we were in the wrong place.” 

Thomas is right. Everything on Swallowtail Island takes a  while. Our house is only a couple of miles from the drugstore, but by the time we pick up Blake and the bags and clippity-clop our way there, winding through the streets of downtown and  then north on the unpaved Captain’s Road, a good hour has  passed. I don’t mind; the sky has cleared up and I’m lying back  with my head on my duffel, reading the rest of Nadine’s story  about the speedboat crash and ignoring the locals who stop to  watch us go by, some of them shaking their heads and muttering about “summer people.” 

Shortly after we pass the protected cove known to the locals  as “the little harbor,” we come to a fork in the road.  

“That’s our house!” Pip cries, pulling me up by the arm to  make me look at the carved wooden sign pointing to “The  Roost.”  

The driver makes the turn and we wind down a long, dusty  drive bordered by cornflowers and Queen Anne’s lace with  Pip still gripping my arm and vibrating with excitement. As  for me, I’m acting nonchalant, but inside I have to admit that  I’m incredibly curious if nothing else. I can’t deny that I still  haven’t wrapped my head around the idea that the Roost actually belongs to Pip and me, and no one else. It sounds like  something from an old novel. 

Around one final bend, and the house and barn come into  view.  

“Here we are,” the driver says, making a wide turn in the  yard. 

We’re still moving, but Pip stands, so now it’s my turn to hold her arm so she doesn’t do a face-plant into the dirt. Her  mouth falls open, and she shakes her head in disbelief. “It’s so  beautiful! It seems like forever since we were here.” Sometimes two years is forever. 

The house has definitely suffered a bit from neglect in  the two years since our last visit, not that it was in perfect condition then. It’s kind of New England-y looking,  like our house in Connecticut, except that the Roost’s siding and trim are badly in need of a paint job, and quite a  few shingles are either missing or crooked. But the yard is  neat and freshly mowed, and somebody has trimmed the  shrubs around the house. With the exception of a couple of  broken windowpanes, the barn—classic red with a gambrel  roof, and surrounded by a good-sized fenced pasture—is in  excellent condition.  

The wagon shudders to a stop and all five of us kids (and  Pogo) hop off, ready to explore, when Thomas predictably holds  up a hand. “Wait. Everybody stop right where you are. Let’s get  the bags off the wagon and then . . . we need a picture.”  

Five groans. Maybe six—I swear Pogo joined in. She is  ready to chase something—anything.  

“Man,” I say, hanging my head. “You’re killing me.” He grins and lines us up with the house in the background.  The wagon driver takes the picture, then climbs back aboard  and waves goodbye. “Give me a call if you need a ride anywhere,” he says. “Number’s on the card.” 

Thomas thanks him, then says, “Now, maybe one of just  Lark and Pip. It is their house, after all. The rest of us are their  guests.”  

“Can I be opening the door?” Pip asks. “Where’s the key?”  “Here you go,” says Thomas, tossing her a red rabbit’s foot  with one brass key dangling from the chain.  

She opens the door and then assumes a car show–model  pose, pointing to the opening as a small bird flies out, missing  her head by inches. Pip holds a hand to her heart. “Omigosh.  That scared me!”  

“Are you done?” I ask Thomas, so flustered by the bird that  he drops his phone. 

“He probably came down the chimney,” he says. “Your mom  mentioned something about that. Anyway, I got the picture, so  we can go inside.” 

“Probably a swallow,” Pip suggests as we crowd through the  narrow door. “The island’s named after them, there’s so many  here. I think it’s a sign that we’re going to have a great summer.” 

“‘One swallow does not make a summer, neither does one  fine day,’” says Thomas, mysteriously. We all ignore him as we  do whenever he says something strange, so he adds, “Aristotle  said that.”  

Goody for him, I think. 

“It’s a good thing we got here when we did,” says Jack, eight,  the youngest. “That poor bird would have starved to death.”  Jack worries about things like that. He’s the kind of kid who shoos ants out of the house instead of killing them.  “Are you sure it wasn’t a bat?” asks Nate, who is two days  older than Pip, a difference that he never lets her forget. “I hate  bats.”  

I set the newspaper and my backpack on the kitchen table.  “It wasn’t a bat. They only come out at night . . . when they  turn into vampires.” I whisper into his ear: “And go searching  for the blood of little boys. Especially little boys with brown  eyes and curly hair.” 

Pip stands in the middle of the kitchen, hugging herself as  she takes in the whole scene. “It’s exactly the way I remember  it.” She runs to the hallway closet, opens the door, and then  points at pencil marks on the wood trim inside with a squeal.  “They’re still here!” 

“Why wouldn’t they be?” I ask. “You think someone’s going  to break in here and erase them?”  

“I know, but it’s Mommy! Katie, age five! She was so little!  Here she is at ten, the same as me.” She backs up against the  wall and looks at me. “Who’s taller?”  

I lean in for a closer look. “Looks like a tie.”  

“No, it’s not,” says Blake. “Pip’s—”  

“Exactly the same height,” Thomas cuts him off with a  wink. 

Blake takes the hint. “Oh . . . yeah. You’re right.”  Pip’s face lights up even brighter. “And then she grew all the  way to . . . here! Do you think I will, too?”  

“Definitely,” I say as I wander through the kitchen door into  the wallpapered dining room and through that into the living room—my living room, I think to myself. A wide staircase  divides the rest of the downstairs into two large rooms, the  “official” living room with its stiff, rather dated furniture, and  the room that Mom called the bird room, with walls of book shelves and a small loft (reached by a ladder) in the bay that  juts out toward the lake. (This might be the place to say that  Mom, no doubt inspired by the family name, became a professor of ornithology at a university that everyone has heard of.)  Anyway, the reason it’s called the bird room is obvious: Resting  on tables and shelves, hanging from wires, perched on curtain  rods, sitting on the molding above doors and windows, and  everywhere else you look are birds of every shape and size. A  life-sized great blue heron in bronze anchors one end of the  fireplace mantel, at the other is a mounted tree branch with a  variety of carved and brightly painted finches (a gift from Dad  to Mom on their wedding day). 

Something about not seeing the house and especially this  room full of memories for a couple of years gets to me. I feel my  legs getting a little wobbly, so I settle into a chair before I do  a face-plant onto the hardwood. Pip and the boys are running  around—why are they screaming, anyway?—but I stay in the  chair for a long time, composing myself.  

Eventually, Thomas finds his way to the bird room. “There  you are. I wondered . . . are you okay? You look a little peaked.”  

“What? I’m fine,” I say, almost believing it myself.  “Oh. Geez. This room . . . I’d forgotten . . .” He looks a little  weak in the knees, too, and he steadies himself with one hand  on the mantel. He reaches up with his other hand and runs it  down the neck of the bronze heron, turning his face away from  me. When his shoulders start to tremble, I feel like I’m intruding on a private moment and decide to busy myself by airing  out the room. I head to the far end of the room, where I push  aside the curtains and turn the cranks to open the windows  wide. As a faint breeze begins to replace the stuffy, stale air,  Thomas wipes his eyes and forces a smile.  

“Good idea,” he says. “Let’s open all of them. Then everybody out to the front yard.” 

I grab Bedlam’s cage from the kitchen and race up the stairs,  taking a sharp left into the room that Pip and I share. Both  upstairs bedrooms have views of the lake, but the one on the  left is smaller and has a pair of matching twin beds, while the  one on the right has two sets of bunk beds for the three boys.  Pip, a step behind me, runs straight to the French doors that  take up much of the front wall and throws them open. Her  hands cup her face as she steps out onto the narrow balcony  that runs the width of the room and looks out at the western  end of Lake Erie, letting the wind tousle her hair. “I feel like  I’m dreaming. It’s too perfect. I’m afraid I’m going to wake up  and it’ll all be gone.” 

I set Bedlam on an end table and pinch Pip gently on the arm. “There. See? It’s real. It is weird. . . . I mean, it feels  like—” 

“—like home? For me, too!” 

“I was going to say that it feels like, I don’t know, when I  walked in here I almost expected to see Mom there on the bed,  sitting up with a book on her lap. It’s stupid.” 

Pip launches herself at me, throwing her arms around my  neck. “It’s not stupid. Don’t say that. She is here . . . kind of.  This was her room when she was a little girl. And remember,  she used to say she thought it was haunted. Maybe—” 

“OUT-RAAA-GEOUS!” Bedlam cries. It’s his favorite  word.  

“I agree with Beddie,” I say. “Mom was teasing us. There’s  no such thing as ghosts. So, which bed do you want this year?”  The two beds are identical, with white-painted headboards and  footboards, but every summer we came to the island, I gave Pip  first choice. Most kids would probably pick one side and stick  with it, but not Pip. And she always had a very specific reason  for her choice. Two years ago, she picked the one on the right  because she insisted that it was better for viewing the moon.  

She spins, twisting her lips as she considers this Very  Important Decision. She raises an index finger slowly, moving  back and forth between the two before stopping at the bed on  the left. “That one.” 

“You’re sure.” I look up to admire the mobile that the wind  from the open doors has set in motion. Not surprisingly, it’s made up of eight different species of birds, all with wings  extended as if they’re flying.  

“Ummm . . . yes. Positively. My Misty poster is going right  here next to me. And I can keep my books on the table.” Pip  has all of Marguerite Henry’s Misty of Chincoteague books, and  has read each one at least a hundred times. When I suggested  that perhaps she didn’t need to bring them all with her—after  all, we’re just staying for the summer, I said—she looked at me  as if I’d grown a second head.  

“Girls!” shouts Thomas from the front yard. “Come on  down!”  

Pip waves at him from the balcony. “Can we stay here forever?” “How about we have some lunch and talk about that later,”  answers Thomas. When we come out the sliding glass door at  the front of the house, he is sitting on a plaid blanket in the  front yard, unpacking a cooler packed with sandwiches and  cans of soda. “Turkey on the left, ham on the right. Everyone  grab and go. Lark, will you open that bag of chips, please?” “What kind of soda is there?” asks Jack, excited because he  usually isn’t allowed to drink it.  

“Any flavor you like . . . as long as it’s orange,” says Thomas.  “If you don’t like it, blame Nate—he picked it out yesterday. By  the way, people out here don’t call it soda. It’s pop.” The way he  says it sounds like paaap.  

Jack looks at him as if he thinks his leg is being pulled.  “You’re teasing.” 

Thomas holds up a hand. “Ask Lark.”  

When Jack looks to me for confirmation, I nod. “He’s right,  Jack. You don’t remember, ’cause you were so little the last time  you were here. Wait till you meet some of the local kids. They  all have a funny accent.” I choose a turkey sandwich and sit  on the low brick wall at the front edge of the property. The  Roost sits high up on a rocky point of land above the lake, and  directly below me, small waves break on a narrow beach that is  strewn with driftwood and seaweed.  

Jack joins me on the wall and holds out his hands. “Kate  used to hold on to me so I could look out over the edge.”  I set my sandwich down and grip his wrists tightly. “You  okay? I can’t believe Mom let you do this when you were six  years old.” 

“It’s not that scary,” said Jack. “Dad! Can I go down to the  beach?” 

“Not now,” says Thomas. “You’ll have plenty of time for that  later. We have lots to do today. We need to unpack, and make  beds, and figure out what we’re going to eat. I’ll ride into town  for a little shopping, assuming that the bikes are still in the  barn. And the tire pump. Volunteers to join me?”  

“I’ll go!” Jack says.  

“I appreciate the offer, Jack, but it’s a long ride,” Thomas  says. “Why don’t you stick around and explore the house?  Blake, how about it?”  

Blake mumbles, “All right, I’ll go,” through a mouthful of  sandwich. 

“Great. Thank you,” says Thomas. “You can pick what you  want for dinner.” 

“Gee, I wonder what that will be,” I say, knowing full well  that it’s going to be chicken of some kind. Blake would eat  chicken every meal of every day if he could. I swear the kid’s  growing feathers.  

“Whose house is that?” Jack asks, pointing to the beautiful— and enormous—Victorian cottage half a mile north, perched on  a rocky cliff much higher than the one we’re standing on. “It’s  like a mansion.” 

“Some sea captain,” I say. “It’s a museum now.” 

“Not just any sea captain,” says an unfamiliar voice. “Captain  Edward Cheever.” 

We all spin around to find a man in starched khaki pants  and a matching safari shirt with its short sleeves rolled right  to his shoulders, the better to show off his impressive biceps  and tattoos on both forearms. His steel-gray hair is cropped  short and perfectly flat on top, as if it were done with a lawn  mower—and he looks hard-boiled enough that it just might  have been. I have a vague memory of seeing him before. It  must have been three or four summers back, before Mom and  Thomas got married, when he stopped by the house after a bad  storm to see if we were okay. Just like that time, he seems to have just appeared out of thin air—none of us saw him coming  and then there he is, standing three feet away. The only thing  missing is the puff of smoke.  

“Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you,” he says in response to our  blank stares and open mouths. He approaches Thomas and as  they shake hands, Thomas winces a little. “Don’t know if you  remember me. Les Findlay. Live down the road a bit. Saw you  pass by and thought I’d stop and say hi.” 

“Right. Les. I’m Thomas. Emmery. Sure, I remember you.  Good to see you again. Been a couple of years.” 

“Miss Pritchard told me you were coming. Told me about  Kate. A real shame. My condolences. Always liked her.  Anyway, Miss Pritchard asked me to get everything ready for  you. Said you were planning to spend the summer.” 

“She was Mommy’s best friend when they were kids,” Pip  says. “She’s at a horse show—that’s why she didn’t meet us at  the ferry.” 

“Coming back on the last boat tonight, I believe,” says Les.  With a nod at the folded copy of the Citizen on the blanket,  he adds, “I see you’re catching up on all the local news. That’s  quite a story Miss Pritchard spins.” 

I lift the paper and point to the picture of the destroyed  boat. “The man who got killed—was he related to Nadine? She  doesn’t say, but he has the same last name.” 

“Sure is—was. Albert Pritchard was her grandfather.”  

Thomas looks over my shoulder at the front page of the paper. “Wow. That must have been some crash.”  Findlay points to the house we’d been looking at when he  mysteriously appeared. “Look to the left of the museum, couple  of hundred yards. See that buoy? That’s where the wreck happened. Ada’s Reef, it’s called. Named after Captain Cheever’s  daughter. Or maybe his daughter was named after it—I for get. Nasty rocks a few inches below the surface. Pritchard’s  boat was fast, a double-cockpit Hacker, nineteen forty. He was  probably going fifty when he hit ’em.” 

Sunlight is sparkling on the water, and I squint for a better  look at the buoy. “The buoy has a light on it, right?” I say. “A  red one.” 

“That’s right. Flashes every second.” 

I let that sink in. “Was it—the light—there when the crash  happened?”  

Findlay nods, and the corners of his mouth turn up ever so  slightly. “I see where you’re going. Folks’ve been asking that  question since the night of the crash: What was he doing on the  wrong side of that buoy on a calm night? He knew the waters  around the island like the back of his hand. Don’t make sense.”  

“I guess that’s why it’s still selling newspapers,” says Thomas.  “People love a good mystery. Lark here is really good at solving  them.” 

As Les Findlay talks, Jack zeroes in on his tattoos and follows every movement of those muscular forearms. Eventually,  he works up the courage to ask, “Were you in the navy or something? Is that why you have a tattoo of a ship?”  

Findlay holds out his right arm for all of us to see. “It’s not  a ship. It’s a PBR—a kind of patrol boat. I took one up the  Mekong River in Vietnam back in sixty-seven, sixty-eight.  Funny thing is, when I left there, I swore I’d never set foot on  another boat. Said I was gonna move to Montana, as far from  the water as I could find. But here I am living on an island  and runnin’ a work boat—even kinda looks like the PBR. Only  difference, most days nobody’s shooting at me. I work down  the marina, sorta semi-retired now. Life’s funny, I guess.” He  pauses, looking as if he has something to add, but gives up with  a shake of his head. “I’ll leave you folks to your lunch now. You  need anything, you know where to find me.”  

Actually, I’m thinking, We don’t—“down the road a bit” isn’t  exactly precise now, is it? 

Findlay tips an imaginary cap and disappears into the brush  as quickly and as silently as he’d appeared.  

“Most days?” I say when he’s out of sight.  

“What do you mean?” Thomas asks.  

“What he said. Most days nobody’s shooting at him. So, like,  some days they are?” Maybe Swallowtail Island isn’t as peaceful  as it seems.