The Six Rules of Maybe

over the years.
    I was lucky to even find a parking space. People came in droves to “whale watch,” but whale watching was no different from fishing—a lot of waiting, little or no outcome usually, and the hours the whales appeared were the ones when visitors from Michigan or California were having cocktails at the Lighthouse or sleeping in their down beds at Asher House B & B, dreaming of raspberry scones. I didn’t think whales liked to be watched. They liked their privacy. Their appearance was a favor, and they gave that favor to only a few.
    I grabbed my camera from underneath the seat of Mom’s car, headed down the windy path to the beach. God, I loved that smell—the briney water and the tang of salt, odd ropes of slick seaweed thick with the odor of the oldest and deepest parts of the ocean.
    Some stupid kid in cartoon swim trunks was throwing rocks at bored seagulls, and two teen boys I didn’t recognize were swimming where they shouldn’t be. A young woman with short, short hair picked her way along the rocks, looking for treasures. I wished I lived right there on the beach. Every day, you could see what the ocean brought you. I made my own way, my palm finding familiar flat places on which to balance. I climbed up my favorite rock and sat.
    I lifted my camera to my eye, played around with different shots, took a few that weren’t really any good. The book from Jesse sat in the bag beside me, and I thought about opening it, cracking the shiny cover of that book and sniffing deeply, exploring its contents. But instead, I took a breath and let Point Perpetua settle inside me, and when I did, it was Hayden I kept seeing—sitting beside me that day, his head tilted up to the sun, his eyes closed, wearing his favorite green T-shirt. The way he rested his forearms on his knees, the ease he had with his body, the strength you sensed in his man hands and in his shoulders … A man seemed a fine thing to curl up against. A man could seem like shelter.
    It felt like a decision, to keep that bag closed, with the book tucked forever inside. And I guess it was.

Chapter Twenty-two
    T he Martinellis’ house sold in two weeks. On the second Saturday in July, Yvonne Yolanda came back with her real estate lady hair and real estate lady high heels and tacked a SOLD sign on, placing it at a triumphant diagonal. We didn’t know who had bought the house, but I did see a motorcycle there a couple of times, the same one, I was almost sure, that belonged to the driver who had so loved Jeffrey and Jacob’s purse trick. I also saw an old pea-soup-green Chevy Nova parked behind the Pleasure Way once or twice. A woman with long black-gray hair and a long skirt and beaded bracelets got out and spent some time looking around the backyard. She looked like the woman who sold her handmade jam at the Sunday market.
    I didn’t see Mr. or Mrs. Martinelli to ask, but I did see Kevin Frink. It was a hot, hot day. I was in the backyard on the lawn chair reading The Psychology of Love , when I heard my name called. Ijumped—saw Kevin Frink’s face from the nose up, looking over our back fence.
    “Kevin!”
    He’d surprised me. I clutched my beach towel to my chest, covered up my body in my bathing suit. Good thing Zeus was with Hayden, or he’d have gone nuts. Zeus could be a good guard dog, even if his alarm buttons were sometimes hard to understand. He’d snarl at a large package but sometimes ignore the doorbell. He disliked certain people for his own reasons.
    “I need your help,” Kevin said.
    I tossed on my T-shirt, unlatched the gate, and let him in. I’d thought he looked bad the last time I saw him, but now he looked worse. The weight that he seemed to have lost was back on, and a roll of stomach pushed against his T-shirt. You could almost see the frantic shoving of potato chips and ice cream and melting cheese that lay there, the impossible, anxious hunger. A small gathering of chin hairs had been allowed to grow too, an uncontrolled faction, a splinter group maybe; if he ignored them, they might attempt takeover. His skin looked white and fleshy, an underground kind of pale. It made you think of night creatures with scared pink eyes.
    “What’s going on?” I said. “Wait, do you want something to drink, maybe? Lemonade? Something?” It was strange to have Kevin Frink in my backyard. I thought of the crime books, a killer disguised as a delivery man. Maybe I shouldn’t have offered to get him lemonade.