Epilogue III: Ages 24 - 28
After JJ showed up in Egypt unannounced, Kie had a lot of questions. Turned out, he'd taken another stint on an offshore oil platform to save up money to come travel with her so they could be together, and he wasn't taking no for an answer.
When she asked where he wanted to go, he just shrugged and said he'd never been more than two hours past Outer Banks until today, so anywhere would do. So instead of taking on another village service project, Kie went off to see the world for the first time since she left home. Not to repair it, but just to enjoy it.
JJ in Paris turned out to be terrifying amounts of fun. Crude gestures were made with baguettes. Wrought iron balconies were climbed, and canal boats were joyridden.
He loved the art. He'd swagger into the museums, glaring at the guards like he was daring them to kick him out. With crossed arms and a backwards cap, he'd stare at the paintings for hours, or until Kie got too hungry. You never could tell what he'd like—it spanned every time period and technique, flitted unpredictably between artists. He never talked about the art, either. The only way she could tell what pieces he liked was when he'd stop moving and stare. Sometimes, when the guards weren't looking, he'd take a picture for Pope.
It was Pope who got the pattern, as his canny mind usually did. They're all soft, he said. JJ likes soft worlds.
They worked on farms all through Latin America, hitchhiked through southeast Asia, and hopped trains across Europe.
He seemed more at home in poor countries, like a true Pogue. He'd eat just about anything, sleep anywhere. When their conveyances broke down, as they so often did in the backcountry, he'd jump out and start working on the engine with their hosts, pointing and grinning and cursing like that crossed any language barriers. Even when he'd never seen the kind of vehicle they were riding in, he usually managed to hold his own.
Kids loved him. In every country, everywhere, and they were always riding on his back or eating his lunch.
Meanwhile, Pope and the academic world were having a love/hate relationship. He made friends, he got top grades, but once he entered grad school, something kind of…shifted. He wasn't the smartest person in the room anymore, and no matter how hard he worked, it didn't seem to be enough. He was still in the top 3%, then he slipped down to the top 5%. Then 10%. His hair started to fall out, and one day, he called JJ freaking out because he went to his house and he couldn't get his key to work. Turned out, it was the apartment he'd lived in when he was a junior in college. Hadn't lived there in years.
Kie and JJ flew from Jakarta to California and Pope spent a week in an inpatient psych unit and still ended that semester with a summa cum laude grade point average. JJ wasn't out of money yet, because they'd been hopping hostels and living cheap, but he and Kie didn't start traveling again. Just went back to the island until it was time for Pope to come home for summer break. They had the whole summer together, surfing and fishing and lazing on the beach. At first, they thought it was helping.
Then, one day they were out on the boat. Pope was staring up at the sky and he said, "Did you know if you weigh a body immediately before and after death, there's a difference in weight?"
"Yeah, I did," JJ said. "Twenty-one grams. Because you've been telling us weird body facts since I grew the first hair on my balls."
"That's supposed to be the weight of a soul, right?" Kie tipped down her sunglasses.
Pope just kept staring at the sky. "Sometimes, I feel like that part of me's already gone."
JJ and Kie looked at each other, uncertain. JJ pushed him off the boat, dunking him. "Pretty sure if you were missing your soul weight, you'd float better, bro."
Pope laughed and pulled JJ in after him, but Kie stayed on the boat, chewing on her bottom lip and watching them.
Later that night, Kie tugged him out of the bedroom at the Chateau, leaving JJ sleeping, and climbed the ladder up onto the roof. There was still a Christmas light or two left from when JJ's dad died and he decorated the whole place.
"You know, if school's making you this miserable, you can just stop."
"Then who would I be?" Pope looked over at her. "Like you said. I'd come home and run the marina and be a husband. I'd be my dad, not myself, not anything. And I'd have wasted all those years apart from you guys."
"The degree's not the point," she said. "It's just the carrot fate used to lure you into a more interesting life than you would have had otherwise. Think of all the things you never would have done, places you wouldn't have gone, if you wouldn't have gotten that dream in your head to be a forensic pathologist." She looked out over the sea. "But once you caught it, you'd realize it was just a fucking carrot. And then there'd be another one."
He blinked at her, his eyes tight like he was thinking it over.
"It's up to you, Pope," she said softly. "It's always been up to you. And no matter where you decide to go, you've got us."
He didn't say anything back.
But he got better and better all summer and when fall semester started again, he went. At the end of the summer, Kie just…didn't buy another plane ticket. Instead, she started arguing with her dad about how to run the Wreck. Her mom invited JJ over all the time to prove how cool she was now with Kie's relationship.
JJ went back to the oil rigs, one more time. Kie threatened to break up with him if he didn't quit, basically every time a hurricane blew through, but he made it home okay, and he bought a fishing boat the day after he got back. John B quit his job, jumped on the boat, and never looked back. Some years they made money, some they didn't.
The first year on the fishing boat, they always had a huge cooler full of beer, as much as they could drink, and both their bellies started straining their tee shirts. Sarah teased them so mercilessly that JJ bet John B he could lose the weight first and then they were out running together every morning before light. Even with all the running, John B's belly never quite disappeared, and he started calling it his little Burrito Baby. They finally lost the weight when they took the beer cooler off the boat and only drank when they finished for the day. John B and Sarah started trying to have a baby, and after Sarah B's first miscarriage, John B stopped the burrito baby jokes.
Kie still travelled, sometimes. Hopping off to France for a cooking class or Singapore for a sustainability seminar. Out to California for a few weeks here and there to keep Pope company. She put a couple of trips on the credit card one spring when it seemed like the gold was THISCLOSE to coming through. When it didn't, she slowly paid them back off and learned to save up for her trips instead. The Wreck opened a location on the mainland, and Kie's parents moved over to run that one, leaving the Kildare Island location for Kie. Her mom had always wanted to live on the mainland, anyway.
Kie had been gone on one of her longer trips when things changed again. Five weeks that time, in Morocco. She was waiting on the dock, her hair flickering in the wind, when the fishing boat came into sight.
They named it the Lazy J, though both John B and JJ swore it was the other one who was the lazy end of the J. It had special nets designed to minimize bycatch—to keep other animals from being caught up in their nets—and she knew that was for her. When they cruised into the harbor, JJ was steering with his knee and massaging John B's shoulders while he sat on the ground, which was how she knew something was up. When JJ saw her, he nudged John B, who got up and grabbed the bow line. They cruised up to the dock, waving, and John B jumped to the boards with the light step of someone who grew up on boats.
"Hello, gorgeous." JJ grabbed one of the overhead hoists and swung himself ashore, catching her hand and twirling her before he pulled her in, burying his face in her hair and inhaling. "New tattoo?"
"How the hell can you tell that from across the bay?"
"I can smell it on you." He winked. "Like sex. Now lemme see."
She lifted her wrist and showed him the twist of ink, all sea creatures caught up in smoke, and he kissed it. She'd been collecting tattoos for years but each new one never seemed like part of her until JJ had seen it.
"Didn't know you were coming back today, or I would have had my secretary clear my appointments." He dropped his head to nibble at her neck. "Another one," he murmured, just for her. "They're not telling anyone because they don't want to talk about it."
Her heart sank. Poor Sarah B. It had been three this year alone, and the last miscarriage landed her in the mainland hospital for days. They weren't supposed to be trying again, yet.
JJ twirled her again. "I got to run, but why don't you stay and help this lazy asshole unload the fish? We caught lots and his arms are pretty puny these days. He could use a hand with the heavy lifting."
John B lifted a middle finger his way and pulled Kie into a hug with his other arm. "How's Egypt this time of year?"
"Morocco," she corrected. "And it's incredible."
They unloaded most of the fish, talking about fishing and storms and nothing, before she finally gave in and asked. "So is Sarah…" Kie touched his arm, her eyes sad.
John B closed his eyes. He tried to say something, but it just squeaked a little and he stopped trying to talk. Shook his head.
"John B…" She pulled him behind a stack of crab pots and wrapped him in her arms. He was so big, filled out a lot from his teen days and even taller than he'd been then, but his head still drooped right down to her shoulder when he was sad. She held him as tight as she could. She couldn't imagine how they did it, with just two of them to shoulder the pain. With her boys, when two of them were fighting, or not doing well, the third always managed to rally, no matter what. It had been so long she couldn't really remember how two-person relationships could stand on their own the way they did.
"I'm losing her," John B rasped. "She can't eat, can't stop thinking about it, blaming herself. The doctor said we shouldn't have been trying in the first place. She just…wouldn't stop bleeding. After."
"I thought you went to that fertility clinic. All last summer's profits…they couldn't do anything?" She dug her hand through her hair. If only the gold would come through. Rich people never had fertility problems for long. They could pay for treatments, adoptions, anything.
"My sperm is fine," he said bitterly. "And her eggs are fine or I couldn't keep getting her pregnant, putting her through this. She just can't carry to term. Stuff keeps going wrong. Last time, they said we barely had a two-percent chance."
"Why didn't you call me, John B?" She brushed his hair out of his face. "There's no reason Sarah B should go through all that, not when your baby has a safe, warm home anytime it needs one."
"What?" He lifted his head, confused. She took his hand and laid it on her stomach, just over her belly button. And smiled.
"Healthy as a horse. Least I can do for the woman who taught JJ to voice-email."
He just stared, his mouth falling open and tears standing out plain in his eyes.
She didn't wait for him to process, because really, it was already decided. She pulled him back toward the boat. "Now let's sell these fish to Ginny so we can go talk to Sarah B. We've got a baby to plan."
When he took her home to tell Sarah what Kie had offered to do, his wife cried. Kie was reaching to hug her when Sarah whirled on John B.
"Did you ask her?" She grabbed his shirt. "You swore you wouldn't ask her, we made JJ promise."
His jaw flexed, and he looked at the ground. "She's my best friend, Sarah. I would never ask her for something that might make her feel guilty if she didn't want to give it. Not that. What if—" He turned away, staring toward the sea.
"What if she's like me?" Sarah whispered.
He nodded, and it was a long moment before he looked back to Kie. "What if it hurts you, too?" he choked out, and Kie remembered hours in waiting rooms with him, the blood on the car seat, the first time.
"It won't!" she rushed in between them. "Hey, hey, I've had malaria, dengue fever, a tapeworm…every time doctors say the same thing. Healthy as anyone's ever been, never seen anybody recover so fast." She smiled. "I told Pope once, some things are just the carrot used to lure you to a more interesting fate." She flicked John B's hat brim. "Maybe ugly old John B here was just the carrot to make sure I'd be around someday to help your baby get its start on this world."
Sarah coughed, clutching her chest as fresh tears started to leak from her eyes, and Kie pulled her into a hug. "You're tired, sweetheart," she murmured. "Let me take it from here. I've got this."
JJ had said he had an appointment, but when she found him, he was just drinking beer on the back dock of the marina with Big Heyward. His eyes snagged on Kie's face when she walked in, studying her more intensely than usual. "You offered, didn't you?"
Her eyebrows jumped. "Wait, did you know…"
"I know you," he said. He didn't blink, and it wasn't until now that she saw how bloodshot his blue eyes were. Like John B hadn't been the only one crying out on the boat today. "You know if I could do it myself, I would."
She caught her breath. "I've got to tell Pope. Do you think he's going to be weirded out at me carrying John B's baby?"
JJ smiled and kissed her on the cheek. "He knows you, too, babe."
Three weeks later, JJ was gone and Kie was on the phone to Pope.
"I'm going to kill him. He can't just risk his life to solve all our problems!"
"Kie…look at it from his perspective."
"You mean the perspective from where he can see the knife coming down on him? As I kill him? I told that jerk I'd leave him if he ever went back to those goddamn oil rigs. He was lost at sea, Pope. And to go now, when we all need him the most?"
Pope sighed. "You're not going to like this."
"Pope Heyward, don't you even try to tell me it's a guy thing."
"It is! You're doing the biggest possible favor you could ever do for Sarah and John B, kind of saving their lives, Kie." Pope paused. "Look, don't tell him I told you this, but John B was going to try to come out and visit me, secretly get a vasectomy on the trip so he could heal up before she found out. But she found the papers in his sock drawer. Sarah won't stop trying, and he's afraid she won't live through another one."
"I know." Kie stared up at the ceiling, blinking rapidly. "He told me."
"So you know JJ would sell his own bones right now to help, but he can't. And you're about to be carrying another man's child, which is, you know, weird for a guy. Paying for the in vitro is something he can do."
"We can get the money for in vitro some other way," Kie insisted. "Or we can…you know, do it the cheap way."
"Don't try to tell me you don't throw up in your mouth a little bit at the idea of turkey bastering our buddy's sperm into you," Pope said flatly. "Not even you are that good of a person."
She gagged. "Oh god, don't even make me think about it. Besides, with in vitro, we can use Sarah's egg, so it'll be her baby. Otherwise, it's me and John B's baby and that's wrong in so many ways I can't even."
Pope snickered. "Neither can JJ. Which is why he needs to be the one who pays for the procedure to put their embryo in your uterus. Let him do this, Kie. For all of us."
"If he dies out there—"
"You know, I hate to be the one to say it, but despite assumptions that he's mortal and fallible, all scientific evidence suggests the boy is unable to be killed."
Kie tried to get an I-was-right admission out of Pope three months later when a storm collapsed part of the off-shore oil rig on top of JJ. But the argument lost its savor after the wife of one of the men he saved came by to thank Kie personally.
And two months later, he was out of the hospital and home and Kie was carrying John B and Sarah B's baby.
Sarah cooked every meal for her, was constantly trying to make pregnancy easier on Kie. But it was JJ whose hands rubbed away her backaches, who teased her out of her hormonal funks. Who stopped drinking along with her so she wouldn't feel left out, and talked to the baby every night as they lay in the hammock, his hand with its old rosary bracelet resting on her belly as it grew. JJ who held her hair when she had morning sickness and mixed her ever-weirder concoctions of ginger and raw eggs and Chinese herbs until they found one that made her stop throwing up. JJ who took her out on the boat so the waves could rock her to sleep when she had insomnia. And JJ who was there holding her hand when she was gritting her teeth through the contractions, in the twenty-third hour of labor after John B had fainted twice and Sarah was laid out with a panic attack at the guilt of all the pain she couldn't bear for her.
It was JJ who moved into John B and Sarah's spare bedroom with her when Baby B was still nursing. JJ who refereed the worst of the arguments between her and Sarah B about what the baby should eat, and what diapers to use, and when to put her to bed. And it was JJ who held Kie when she cried, every night after they moved back to the Chateau without the baby.
And six months after that, when she couldn't stop the crying, it was JJ who took her to California.
"It's so cool of you guys to come visit so soon after I was just home all summer," Pope said, bright-eyed as he walked them up the driveway.
"Board shorts and a Baby Bjorn never looked so good," JJ rumbled. "Not sure Bug's feet hit the floor all summer."
Pope scoffed. "I hardly even got to see that baby. Every time I picked her up, one or the other of you would want to have sex."
"Maybe if you would have worn a shirt when you held the baby, you wouldn't have had that problem," Kie suggested.
"It was summer," Pope said. "You never wore a shirt, either. So how long can you guys stay?"
"Yeah, uh…" Kie glanced at JJ, not sure how exactly they were supposed to be introducing this news. But he was busy unlocking the door, and then Pope was roaming around inside.
"Wow, this Airbnb is nice! How'd you find a short term rental this close to campus?"
"Isn't short-term," JJ said, solving Kie's dilemma without hesitation. "And it's a good thing you like it because we live here now."
Pope's jaw dropped.
"Just until you graduate," Kie clarified. She crossed her arms and bit the inside of her lip. They'd talked about this a million times, all through undergrad and then three excruciating years of grad school. They knew all the reasons why they'd always decided not to do it.
"But it's only one more year," Pope said faintly, blinking over and over again like that might make things appear clearer. You have the fishing boat, and the restaurant, and the baby, and you can't just uproot your lives for me. This is my thing. You have your things. That's what we agreed."
"Your hair is falling out," Kie said. "They've upped your meds three times. You have a literal ulcer." She moved forward and wrapped her arms around Pope's waist. "You're not doing okay. We gave seven years to all those other things. We've been apart for too long. And besides…" Her voice cracked. "Baby Bailey B needs a little time with just her parents without her Auntie Kie around making shit complicated."
JJ's hand came up to her shoulder. "Kie, nobody said that. Nobody asked you to leave, or to spend any less time with her, or not to love her."
"This isn't entirely about that. I'm fine, really, just a little emotional." She let go of Pope and wiped at her eyes. "The distance will help me reset. But this is mostly about Pope. We would have been here last year if Sarah B hadn't been so frantic about letting me out of her sight during the pregnancy. We'd already started to plan the move, the last time you were hospitalized."
Pope opened his mouth, then closed it when no sounds came out. His head fell forward on his neck and he reached for them, all three coming together in a messy hug, but it was Kie who started to cry first.
"I'm not okay," she finally whispered, into the warm huddle of her husbands.
"Me, neither," Pope admitted, his voice wobbly. "I just didn't want to ask…I couldn't let you…"
JJ just held them both tighter. "Hey, fuck the past. We're here now. And we're not giving up shit, Pope. John B's lazy ass needs to figure out how to run that fishing boat without me so he appreciates everything I do when he isn't looking. And Kie's here doing a class, so it's not wasted time anyway. Sustainable sourcing for seafood restaurants, gonna get some kind of hippie star system for the Wreck. Put it on all the eco-tour maps. You don't have to worry, anymore, and you can quit your extra job. I'll take care of all the bills, and Kie's grant is covering her school. I'll do the dishes, and she taught me how to cook. Only things you have to do until the end of the year are study and fuck." He grinned brilliantly. "Basically, the two things that come most naturally to you. Have your mental health back up and purring in no time."
"How are you…" Pope pulled back. "The fishing boat is all the way back home. How can you just cover all the bills?"
He shrugged. "Got a job at the surf shop down the coast. Teaching advanced lessons."
"And…" Kie prompted, a smile breaking through her sniffles.
"And some people want to take my picture now and then when I'm surfing the break." He shrugged. "No skin off my ass."
"He's modeling," Kie corrected. "For a surfboard company and a swimwear company, both. He got a fucking agent."
JJ snorted. "Some dude at the surf shop gave me a number to call and that guy got me twice as much money. Love to see the guy haggle with Ginny at the docks. Agents are the best."
"JJ…"
"No need to get all emotional, Pope." JJ winked. "I've always been pretty. Might as well do it for money. I'm gonna to get the rest of our shit out of the car." He sauntered away, messing up his hair as he went.
Pope looked to Kie, then back to the door. "Is he really…all this…for me? Leaving the Outer Banks. Modeling. Learning to cook?"
"For us," she said, and her eyes started to glimmer again. "I'm so tired, Pope. I just…can't take one more year without us together."
He reached for her, and by the time JJ came back inside, they were locked together like they might not be able to let go, not anymore.
That next day, at twilight, she slipped through the open glass door to find JJ smoking on the patio. They hadn't even gotten to the reunion sex before Pope started crying until he could hardly breathe, then fell asleep and slept for twenty hours straight on JJ's shoulder. It was the longest she'd ever seen him be still in his entire life. He refused to get up and leave Pope. Kie brought him food twice, but drew the line at bringing in a pee bottle, which is what had finally managed to part the two.
She checked her phone, glancing for the third time at the last picture Sarah posted of Baby B. No new texts since this morning. Of course there wouldn't be, because they were the parents. They didn't need her help to raise their child. Baby B was too young to even realize she was gone.
She clicked off her phone and stuffed it in her pocket, crossing her arms tightly. She was in California now. Everything would be different here, fine. Everything would be fine.
JJ passed her his beer, the liquid sloshing quietly. She took a long sip, even though it tasted bitter after so many months without while she was pregnant and then breastfeeding. He exhaled a slow cloud of smoke out into the sky.
"Sometimes," he said without looking at her. "You do something for someone because you love them. And it fucks you over a whole lot harder than you thought it would. But you take the hit for them anyway."
She looked up sharply. He'd limped for four months when he came back from the oil rig, after it collapsed on him when he was earning the money for her in vitro procedure. But she had an idea that wasn't what he was talking about.
"Did you know?" she said finally, because she'd wanted to ask for months. "That it would be like this for me to give them the baby?"
JJ nodded, his jaw flexing. "Figured it, yeah. But I knew, if I tried to tell you that, you'd do it anyway."
She looked down. "I would have. But now, actually feeling how bad it is…I don't know, JJ. I don't know if I could have done it if I knew it would be like this."
"I could have stopped it." His lips twitched, jaw worked. "I almost asked John B not to tell you they were still having miscarriages, because I knew you'd offer. Sarah, too. She told us straight up we weren't allowed to ask you, made us swear. But I knew nobody would have to ask. I could have told John B not to talk about the miscarriages to you at all. He would have protected you, we both would. Could have been his pain instead of yours."
His eyes were glittering, and he turned his head so the single tear that slipped loose was on the side far away from her. She saw anyway.
"I think about that all the time, about maybe if I hadn't left you two alone to talk that day, Bug wouldn't exist. She'd have died like all their other babies, Sarah's body rejecting her so she didn't have a safe place to grow. I knew she'd be safe with you, like all of us. Pope, John B, Sarah B. None of us would have made it through all this shit, all these years, if it weren't for you."
"JJ…" She took his cigarette and put it out, then pulled him to her so he was kneeling beside her chair, his head cradled against her belly.
There was dampness in the fabric now, and she knew she wasn't the only one crying.
"I'm going to be okay, JJ." She looked out at the sky, at the sun setting over the sea instead of the mainland. How everything seemed like a mirror image of back home—almost the same, but backward. "It was my decision, not yours, and it was the right one. Better I hurt a little now, better that little girl grows up with too many people that love her than that she never grew up at all, and John B and Sarah never got the family they wanted. They're great parents."
"You would hav—"
"Don't." She cut him off.
He sat up and looked at her. "Would you ever…I mean, do you ever think about kids? With us?"
She cupped a hand over her stomach, remembering all the nights when it had still been full and round and JJ's hand had rested there with hers.
"Yeah," she said with a catch to her throat. "Someday."
Right now, it hurt too bad not to be able to cross the room and check on Baby B whenever she wanted. She couldn't imagine her heart being able to hold another baby, not yet. She glanced back toward the bedroom, where Pope was still sleeping exhaustedly.
"Thank you for putting all this together, for Pope."
Except when she looked back, it wasn't Pope that JJ was watching with shadows in his eyes. But she knew, even if he didn't yet, that this was exactly the right life for her. Even when it hurt.
It wasn't okay overnight, not even after she moved to California. But over time, being back with both her boys was exactly what she needed to fill the cracks in her heart.
They all started to laugh more often, she checked her phone for pictures a little less. Pope's hair stopped falling out. JJ got visible abs for the first time since high school, which he attributed to all the sex. Except Kie saw him doing sit ups before they all got up every morning and she suspected it was because the modeling paid better than his other jobs. JJ had never quite shaken off that mercenary streak he'd had, even after the fishing boat started raking in more than both families needed.
They bought their first house when they moved back to the island after Pope's graduation. Neither property to either side of John B and Sarah B's place was for sale, so they ended up three docks down, but everyone used JJ's dock to tie up all the boats because it was biggest. The group of them had their eye on a piece of land with its own little bay, but Old Man Neidermeyer didn't want it developed while he was living. He had it written into his will to sell to them once he died, though.
They still had the Chateau. JJ redid all the wiring that kept blowing the breakers, Kie redecorated, and she and Sarah B retreated there whenever they needed a break from the baby, or the boys. Fortunately, JJ never seemed to need a break from the baby. Not even once there were two of them, then three, then four.
After Kie gave birth to their third little boy, Sarah was still hoping she'd try just one more time for a girl playmate for Baby B—who was still called Baby B even though she ruled her troupe of little boy cousins with an iron fist. Kie put her foot down, and the next weekend, both Pope and JJ were icing their vasectomy incisions with matching bags of frozen peas.
There were some arguments when Kie started a nonprofit to put in a fishing preserve. And even more when it went through and that cut the Lazy J's fishing waters in half, but two years later, the rebound from those rejuvenated waters led to bumper fishing crops and suddenly, their bank accounts were overflowing as fast as their nets.
Pope commuted to work in the coroner's office on the mainland, where he was still close friends with the boss he'd met at that long-ago conference. Every morning when he left, he would get the ferry operator to blow the foghorn so everyone in the marina would shout "John B!" and Kie would laugh and laugh.
The gold came through two days after they paid off their house.
They all said they should have a party, but it was right in the middle of the busy crawdad season, so it got put off. But then it was crabbing season, and then Christmas. It was good to have the gold. More paperwork than they'd expected. More headaches with where to put it and how to deal with the insane taxes and how much to give away and to who. People they didn't know that well started hanging around and asking them for loans and inviting them to fundraisers.
They talked about buying bigger houses, going full Kook, but nobody felt like having those kind of neighbors. JJ swore he got hives just at the thought of driving past that welcome fountain into the Figure 8 every night. Besides, they were still waiting on Old Man Neidermeyer to pass along and leave them their bay.
Pogue Bay, they'd already renamed it in their minds. Until then, their houses three docks apart were, they decided, the best place on the island. The best place in the whole wide world.
The End