Vovó was nauseated too, but for a different reason. One I wasn’t supposed to know about.

“It will only worry your mother,” Dad explained to me firmly, looking sharply in the rearview mirror after we dropped Vovó off at the doctor’s. “She’s having a hard time as it is.” Hahd. Heavy on his accent. Which I knew meant he was worried.

“It will be fine,” Grandpa said stoutly. “Your Vovó, Glaucia, she has been fighting germs her whole life.”

But this needed more than Clorox and Comet, of course. Vovó got sicker, and the story for Mom was that she was working longer hours—that’s why she wasn’t coming by as much, looked a little thinner, and I stopped being worried and got scared.

So I told Mom. It felt like she started crying then and cried for the rest of the summer.

It was the angriest I’ve ever seen Grandpa. He threw a pan—he never did things like that—his eyes as wide with shock as my own when it hit the floor, eggs and linguica spattered everywhere. And yelled at me, all these words I’d never heard, strung together in ways I couldn’t understand. Except for that phrase, because it wasn’t the last time I heard it. “Histórias de outras pessoas.” Other people’s stories—Mom would say it later, when Nic and I scrambled to pass on some bit of Seashell gossip, some nugget of information to talk about at dinner. Deixe que as histórias de outras pessoas sejam contadas por elas—are their own to tell.

Grandpa reaches out for me now, nudges his knuckles beneath my chin. Once, twice. But I don’t nod back. I feel a little sick. We’ve never brought that up. The whole topic, my part in it, ended when he threw the pan. Or later that evening when he bought me an ice-cream cone, cupped my chin in his hands and apologized, then said, “We will not speak of it again.”

“Pfft,” he says now, thrusting his hand rapidly through the air as though shooing away flies. “Enough. Enough of the long face. Here, querida.” He hunches back on his hips, reaching into his pocket, pulls out his customary roll of bills, held together with a rubber band—the wallet is only for pictures—extracts two fives and hands them to me. “Go out with the young yard boy. Be happy.”

“What about the Rose of the Island?”

“To grow in the salt and the heat and the wind, very tough, island roses.”

“You sound like a fortune cookie, Grandpa.”

His eyes twinkle at me, and his broadest smile flashes. “Rose is strong, Guinevere. With other things not known for sure, I would rely on that. And here is your boy now.”

Grandpa waves enthusiastically at Cass, strolling up with his hands in his pockets, as if flagging down a taxi that might pass him by. He makes a big production of ordering Cass to sit down on the steps, inspecting his blisters, then punching him on the shoulder with a wink. “Take the pretty girl and go now.” As we walk away, he calls one last phrase after us. “Even though they look like that, eu a deixo em suas mãos.” Heh-heh-heh.

What? I trust her in your hands?

Oh God. What happened to the knife salesman?

“You sure you don’t know any Portuguese?” I ask.

“We really have to work on your greetings, Gwen. ‘Hey there, babe’ would be a lot better.”

“I’m not going to call you babe. Ever. Answer my question.”

“Nope. All I got was that he sounded happy. Phew. Thought he might have heard”—he jerks his head in the direction of the Ellington house—“the Henry Ellington story. Almost got you in big trouble there.”

I’m so grateful that this story is mine right now that I turn, pull him close so quickly, I can hear a startled intake of breath, see a little spot he missed on his chin shaving, see that the base of his eyelashes are blond before they tip dark. “I’d say you’re worth the risk.”

“Forget what I said. Your greetings are great. Perfect.”

I’m just about to touch my lips to his when I hear a loud “None of that funny business here!” and realize we’re in front of Old Mrs. Partridge’s yard. Where she’s also standing, rooting through her mailbox impatiently.

I try to move back, but Cass’s hand snakes behind me, holding me in place. “Good evening, Mrs. Partridge.”

“Never mind that, Jose. None of this in a public street.”

“Not the best spot for it,” Cass allows. “But it’s such a beautiful summer afternoon. And look at this girl, Mrs. Partridge.”

“Look at this girl somewhere else,” she says crossly. But there’s just a shade of amusement in her voice and she leaves without further harassment.

I stare after her, amazed. “How did you do that?”

“She’s only human. Seems kind of lonely,” Cass says. “Now, where were we?”

* * *

Friday, early evening, we take the sailboat out again, anchor in Seldon’s Cove and are lying, Cass’s head on some seat cushions and a life jacket, mine on his chest, the thrum of his heartbeat in my ear. Since Seldon’s is protected by two spits of land encircling it in a C, the motion of the water is gentler than in open water, as though we’re being rocked in a giant cradle.

I close my eyes, see the sun glow orange-red through my lids, feel Cass’s thumb, the skin healing but still rough, trace up the side of my arm, sweep back down, then along the line of my other arm. I start to squirm, ticklish.

“Steady. I’m mapping you,” he says, close to my ear, moving his touch to my jawline, then along my lips to the little groove above them.

“Useless fact,” I say. “That’s called a philtrum.”

“Useful fact,” Cass counters. “Maps came before written language.” Now he’s tracing the line of my chin. Under my ear, down, sweeping back. My chin? Not anywhere anyone has been interested in before. I’m resisting the urge to grab his hand and put it somewhere more risky.

“I’ve heard of math geeks, but map geek is new.”

“Maps are the key to everything,” he says absently. “Gotta find your direction.” He clears his throat. “Hey, Gwen? I know that guy—the one who was at the house with Mrs. E.’s son. Spence’s dad buys old paintings and stuff from him.”

“Is he a sleazebucket?” I ask. “Because I think Henry Ellington might be.”

The whole story, what I’ve seen, what I think I know, comes tumbling out—

Except. The check. Burning a hole in my pocket. A cliché I wish were true—that it would just ignite, drift out as ashes, blow away over the ocean, instead of lurking in the pocket of whatever I was wearing that day. Because I never did—I never threw it out.

“Would you tell? If you knew a secret that could hurt someone you cared about?”

Cass’s brow furrows. For a second his fingers tighten on my chin.

“Ow,” I say, surprised.

“God, sorry. Cramp. You mean, you mean if I were you? About this?”

“If Mrs. E. were your grandmother or something and you saw what was going on?”

He looks past me, out at the water for a moment as though reading the answer from the waves. “Hm. Tough one. It’d be a different situation then—family instead of someone you work for. ‘Not my place’ and all that crap.”

“Uh-oh,” I say, smiling at him. “You’re admitting you have a place. Seashell’s brainwashed you at last, Jose.”

“This is my place.” He settles his head more forcefully on the cushion, nestles my head more firmly onto him. “Right here.”

As if I’m a destination he’s reached, searched for. The X on a treasure map. “Cass . . . does this mean . . . Are we . . . ?”

My words are coming slowly, not just because of the lazy afternoon, the lullaby rock of the water, but because I have no idea which ones to use. I’m fumbling with how to put it, what to ask, hoping he’ll somehow read my mind, fill in the blanks—

“What’s Nic afraid of, Gwen?”

“Um, Nic? Not much. Why?”

“Because he’s doing the same thing with swim practice you were doing about tutoring me. And I know in his case it’s not fear of succumbing to my deadly charm. I keep texting him to set up a time when we, he and Spence and me, can get on with it. We need to practice as a team, the three of us. He keeps blowing me off. Spence too. But I can deal with Chan. I need you for Nic.”

“It’s really important to Nic. Getting the captain spot.”

“That’s why I don’t get the blow-off. It’s important to all of us. Nic has no monopoly.”

“But he needs . . .” Here I falter, stumbling on the old lines. Nic needs it more. If he falls or fails, there’s no safety net. But then there’s Cass’s brother Bill, saying how Cass has to work harder, how he won’t come out of things smelling like a rose.

His voice roughens, less drowsy. “Speaking of what matters, in case you haven’t figured it out—this does. Us. To me, anyway. Your cousin and I are not going to be blood brothers. My best friend may not be your favorite person. Fine. But no more reversals of fortune—not with you and me.”

He says this last sentence so forcefully, I’m a little stunned. When I don’t answer instantly he moves to sit up, looks me in the eye. “What?”

“So are we . . . ?” Dating? A couple? Together? “Seeing each other? It’s not that you have to take me home to your family or—”

Cass groans. “Are all island girls this crazy, or did I luck out?”

I sigh. “Well, you know. Picnic baskets.”

“Gwen. I mean this is in the nicest possible way. You will never be a picnic. Which is one of the things I lo—” He stops, takes a deep breath, starts again: “Can we just put the whole picnic basket thing away with the lobsters? For the record, to be clear, we’re doing this right.”

“The man with the maps.”

He shakes his head, moving to his feet, tipping back against the railing of the boat so he can pull out the lining of first one of his pockets, then the other, then extend his open palms. “Map free. Know what that means? Need SparkNotes? You’re my girlfriend, not my picnic basket, or any other screwed-up metaphor.”