Between gaps in the mangroves, I caught ribbons of moonlight off the Gulf as the infantile strains of Jimmy Buffett followed us. I’d barely had a drink, but I felt almost giddy when Izzy Wilder tugged my hand toward the wide, white gazebo. 

We weren’t supposed to be there. The garden, with its nascent landscaping, lit only by the moon, was supposed to be off-limits to guests. But what Eva Iversen didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her. 

“It’s like the gazebo in Top Hat,” Izzy said, bounding up the stairs and performing a little mock-tap dance near the railing.

“Do that again,” I said, pulling out my phone. 

Izzy stopped. “Aw, Joey, no. Don’t.”

I hit record. “C’mon. Please?”

Izzy shook their head and sighed. “I hate when you record me,” they grumbled. I held my phone steady, trying to focus on Izzy in the dim light. The focus blurred back and forth as I caught a short clip of their little dance. Before I could get much, their hand was on my hip. 

“How about we dance now,” they said.

“But I can still hear Margaritaville.”

“Let’s pretend it’s something else. Pretend it’s As Time Goes By.”

Izzy had intentionally invoked our last movie night with that reference and I shivered. I let them twirl me around and step in the slow salsa moves they’d taught me, Izzy leading even though I was nearly a head taller, because they were so very good at it.

“So, is this like a date?”

Izzy spun me out and back, easily righting me when my feet didn’t immediately pick up the next steps. “You mean two people in the same place, at the same time, enjoying each other’s company?” They pulled me in tighter, silencing my response with a kiss that did exactly as intended. 

They moved us to the railing, and I felt the hard rub of Eva Iversen’s picture-perfect gazebo dig into the small of my back. Izzy deepened the kiss and I pushed aside my thoughts of Eva. Izzy’s hand had dipped under my shirt, and I wondered if we’d make good use of their suspender fetish when I heard the screaming. 

A woman—Pearl, I realized, a high drag version of Josephine Baker tonight in feathers and sequins—was in the garden about twenty yards away. At first I was confused: Izzy and I making out would hardly bother Pearl. But she wasn’t screaming at us. 

More people came. Folks from the tent moved toward Pearl, who’d balled her boa into her mouth and was crying around it. As Izzy and I joined them, I saw old Lionel Anders, a town doctor since my father was a boy, kneeling by Eva’s t-strap heels. 

“Call an ambulance,” she yelled to the nearest security guard and my mind adjusted to the impossible scene: Charlie Page was motionless on the ground, hips at an odd angle, eyes wide open in a soulless stare. 

Dr. Anders looked up. “It’ll be too late for that.”

Squirrel Toss

Two Weeks Earlier

They say cults flourish in isolation. That’s what I thought about as I crept up on the line of children in felt clamshell costumes, each clutching a limp, stuffed squirrel. 

“Get it, Tyler!” a barrel-chested man in a Squirrel Burger T-shirt and fluffy pink animal ears hollered at the boy at the start of the line. “Get that squirrel!”

Tyler, a flame-haired child with crooked glasses, stepped to the mark in the grass and sized up the green bucket strapped to the oldest oak tree on the island. He cast an anxious glance at the barrel-chested man with identical red hair I now realized was Squirrel Key Mayor Dill Thompson. 

“Tyler, you got this,” Dill said. “Just like we practiced at home.”

A menagerie of parents, town officials, and curious gawkers chanted: “Squirrel-y! Squirrel-y!” 

Tyler Thompson grimaced and adjusted his glasses. Hand clutching the tail of the grimy plush toy, he swung his arm in a circle above his head like a lasso and flung it backwards some twenty feet, nailing little Brittney Gomez in the face.

The crowd erupted with laughter; several adults scrambled toward the wayward squirrel and Brittney, now whimpering softly in the grass. Good thing they didn’t use real squirrels anymore, I thought.

Tyler went to the back of the line and a girl twice his size in beaded braids—I recognized realtor Sally “Seabreeze” Simon’s kid Angela—stepped up to the mark. She underhanded her squirrel before the crowd had recovered from the Brittney Gomez incident and it sunk with a soft thump.

“That’s one!” Dill jumped up and pulled the mangled squirrel from the bucket. “Two more gets a prize.” 

Cool as a cormorant, Angela Simon sunk two more in rapid succession and the kids in line let out a collective groan. First kid to sink three squirrels got the pick of the prizes, and Angela beelined for the most coveted of all: a small electric scooter. 

I captured the thrill of her victory on my Nikon and rolled my eyes as Councilmember and Historical Society President Margery Trickle popped up out of nowhere in full resort wear to get in a shot with the kid. I’m sure Marge thought she’d make next week’s cover with that photo, but publisher Charlie Page would have other ideas. He wasn’t in the habit of giving his ex-wife free press.

That was Charlie’s problem. I had just enough time to get a few more quotes and head to the chowder contest at the marina before they announced the winners.

“Josephine!” 

Only a handful of people called me by my full name, and this gravelly voice did not sound like my grandmother. I shouldered my bag and turned around.

“I thought it was you when I saw that hat.” Ah, Gus Hickman, secretary of the Squirrel Key Historical Society and the local Toastmasters president. He was a talker, Gus. “Josephine, I’m sorry to interrupt, but I need to talk to you about a story.”

Gus was dressed in the uniform of white Floridian men of a certain age: sneakers and a stripped golf shirt tucked into pleated khaki shorts. I stepped away from the squirrel toss and pulled out my notebook. 

“OK, Gus, I’m all ears.”

“Ha! Just like Dilbert over there.” Gus guffawed and pointed to the mayor. “What even are those things?”

I grinned. There was no laugh quite like Gus Hickman’s—a donkey on helium. “I heard his husband couldn’t find the squirrel ears this year?” I shrugged. “I think they’re bunny ears.”

“Disgrace, is what it is,” Gus said with a chuckle. Gus was a goof, but a nice enough guy.

“So?” I waved my pen over the notebook. 

“Oh! Right.” Gus turned away from his inspection of the mayor. “Listen, we’re putting on a shindig in a few weeks and I was hoping we could get a little something in the paper.”

“You don’t say.” I suppressed a yawn. It wasn’t so much that the idea of the umpteenth square dance at the historical society bored me to my very soul—though it did. The event had been in the paper several weeks already. Towns of fewer than two thousand people tended to be slow in the news department; The Acorn publicized events months in advance. It was early spring and today’s Squirrel Toss BBQ & Clam Slam had been in print since Thanksgiving.   

“You know,” Gus continued. “The one we do every year?”

“Of course.”

“With the band.”

“Mmm.”

“And the auction?”

“Yes.”

“I just wondered if we couldn’t get something,” Gus hesitated, wiggled his head back and forth, “a little more? In the paper. Because this one’s going to be pretty special, Josephine.”

Please just say it. “Is that right?”

Gus Hickman surveyed the crowd with a paranoid gleam. “Well,” he said, quieter now, “I’m not supposed to tell anyone just yet…”

“Gus.” I checked my watch with an exaggerated wrist roll. I wasn’t an impatient person. It wasn’t possible to be a small-town reporter and also be an impatient person; shooting the breeze with folks was kind of the whole gig. But the clam chowder winners were about to be announced and, really, this whole conversation could be an email. 

“It’s just,” Gus continued, “I think people are going to be pretty excited when they hear this and I’d really like to get a better turnout this year.”

“Gus!”

“OK, OK, I’ll tell you!” The glee on his face made me think that possibly, just maybe, there really was something inordinately exciting about the historical society’s annual fundraiser. “This year,” he stage-whispered, “we’re switching venues.” 

My shoulders deflated. Not interesting, then. “Alright, well, why don’t you email me—” 

“Josephine!” His eyes darted to the crowd again and he lowered his voice. “No offense to the Legion Hall. It’s just, we’ve had another offer.” Gus’s eyebrows practically waggled off his forehead.

I took a deep, steadying breath as I watched him eyeballing passersby like they were Stasi informants. “Gus, bud, unless you know who’s about to win the chowder challenge—”

“I do not,” he said seriously. “But I do know where we’re having the fundraiser and it’s going to be… at the Hardwick.”

I blinked as my brain caught up to this news. The Hardwick renovation. It was a pretty big deal for a town that made an event of tossing stuffed squirrels. I had been after that story—any story about it—for months. We’d only managed photos of scaffolding around the historic inn’s crumbling millwork, along with details of the town permits. Nothing, really. The lack of information about whatever was happening at the Hardwick in a town so small would be impressive, if it weren’t so frustrating.  

Set on an expansive section of waterfront, the Hardwick was one of the first great Victorian homes on an island known for them, built when the Florida railroad boom made Squirrel Key’s bountiful clam harvest available to the mainland. Originally the home of one of the town founders, it’d spent most of its hundred-and-forty-year history as an inn. Officially owned by the Iversen Corp, which maintained the grounds and just enough of the facade to avoid codes violations, the old building was really derelict. A fact I could attest to personally.

Of course, everyone had an idea of what it should be. Council tried to buy it; protestors occasionally demonstrated in front of it when rumors of a tear-down surfaced. For years, the historical society talked about moving their museum there, but the building’s condition and isolation made that a non-starter. Folks barely visited the museum as it was, in a small cottage on Squirrel Key’s main street. Not to mention the fact that the Hardwick simply wasn’t for sale. Not publicly, at least. 

But someone was restoring the Hardwick. Or doing significant work on it. I was as curious as anyone. I’d parked out front, even snuck a peek through the scaffolding a few times, trying to chat up the tight-lipped workers who were in and out of the property six days a week. No one had much to offer in the way of what and when, much less who and why. 

“Have you talked to someone at Iversen Corp?” I asked, now a bit more interested in Gus’s “shindig.” I’d left at least a dozen messages at various office numbers.  

“Well,” he said, eyes still scanning the crowd, “not exactly. But we put out a request for donations for the auction. And then I got a call from Eva Iversen.”

Gus Hickman grinned at me like he’d just dropped a mic. 

Chapter 2 – Fire Up the Google Machine

“Oh, ha ha,” I snorted, slipping my notebook back in my bag. “Good one, Gus. You almost had me there.”

Eva Iversen was arguably the most famous member of a family that amounted to Florida royalty. Iversen Corp—headed by Eva’s grandpa, the Danish magnate Gunnar Iversen—owned much more than the dilapidated Hardwick Inn. Iversen Citrus was global, and Iversen Corp also had media holdings across the southeast, including a controlling interest in The Gulfcoast Tribune, the largest daily paper in the region. They were headquartered about thirty miles away, in Iversen, naturally, a town founded by Gunnar’s grandfather.

Like most folks in the area, I usually had a carton of Iversen OJ in my fridge, and up until a few months ago, that’s most of what I knew about them. On the hunt for leads about the Hardwick, though, I’d gone down the rabbit hole of Iversen family history. 

Gunnar and his wife Helene were born in Denmark. They immigrated to the States soon after they married and took up the growing family citrus business already established in Florida; their children and grandchildren had grown up mostly in places like East Hampton and Palm Beach. Since the 90s, Iversen Corp had also been amassing a real estate portfolio and had developments from Miami to Hong Kong. It was a family business, but not exactly a mom-and-pop. 

I’d pulled up all the photos. Eva’s mother Lily, a bottle-blonde, former B-movie actress, was now the face of the company’s charitable branches. She was all over the place, dripping in ball gowns and jewels. Eva’s grandfather Gunnar, the sedate CEO of the whole enchilada, peered indifferently from podiums and commissioned portraits, while Eva’s father Carl and her brothers had company titles, but looked more like playboys. 

Eva, the raven-haired “rebel” of the family, was mostly absent from these familial collages, but she was hard to miss. I knew she’d had a part in a hit ensemble TV show as a teenager, along with supporting roles in a few big movies—she was a Bond girl in last year’s film. But then came the inescapable news of a high-profile relationship with a man deemed, a decade ago, the “Sexiest Alive,” and it seemed like Eva’s face was everywhere for a while. A recent picture showed her presenting an Emmy in a skin-tight red dress. None of that helped my search for leads on the Hardwick, but it had passed the time. 

“Josephine, I am serious!” Gus stage whispered. 

“Oh sure, Gus,” I laughed. I pulled my sun hat down over my mop of auburn curls—my fair, freckled skin burned faster than a Hot Pocket stuck in a toaster—and started toward the marina. “Let me know when Beyoncé starts her term on council, will ya?” 

Gus gaped as I slipped through the crowd. “I have a voicemail!” he hollered.

“Good for you!” said a man wearing a foam clam hat. 

“I hate those!” said a woman smoking a cigarette. 

I paused and closed my eyes. Dang it, Gus. I was definitely missing the chowder challenge results. Hopefully someone got a picture. And saved me a bowl. 

“Let’s hear it then.” Small lizards skittered off the sidewalk as I walked back and held out my hand. Gus offered the phone, in a green Squirrel Key High Fightin’ Squirrels case.

“Just press the play butt—”

“I know how it works, Gus.”

The call was from an area code I didn’t recognize, but that didn’t mean anything. I held the phone an inch from my ear as the message began.

“Hi, this is Eva Iversen.” Huh. “I’ve been renovating the old Hardwick Inn on Squirrel Key.” What. “I saw the news about your benefit in the little newspaper and wondered if—well, this is kind of last minute, I guess—but I wondered if you might be interested in a… mutually beneficial change of venue? Please call me at your earliest convenience…” 

“Gus,” I said as I handed the phone back, “on the very slim chance that was not a prank call, I’m going to need you to give me that number.” 

**

Celebrity culture wasn’t really my thing, and I hadn’t delved too deep into Eva Iversen in my digging into Iversen Corp. From the looks of it, she hadn’t lived in Florida for years. But after Gus’s little bombshell, I decided I better fire up the Google machine before the Monday news meeting at the paper. 

Eva wasn’t an elite mega-celebrity, but her star was definitely rising. And her time on the hit teen show Master Classstill generated a lot of love online. There were fan accounts, YouTube clips of Eva on red carpets, at fashion shows, playing inane truth-or-dare-style games on MTV. Apparently MTV was still a thing.

More interesting was Eva’s Wikipedia entry where I discovered she was thirty-five years old and had graduated magna cum laude with a degree in art history from Wellesley. Not exactly vapid nonsense, but considering Eva’s career so far, probably a waste of her family’s money. A closer look at her socials revealed nothing very recent. The last photo with the actor boyfriend was eight months prior, at a benefit in New York. It wasn’t impossible, according to the internet, that Eva Iversen was currently renovating a derelict Victorian inn on a tiny mudflat island off an underdeveloped corner of Florida coast. But it was ridiculous.  

From the rocking chair on my front porch, I picked up my phone and hovered over the number Gus had given me. It was still early. Why not?

The call went to voicemail after five rings—a generic message. I swallowed the last of my Nut Island NA just before the beep. 

“Hello, this message, uh, is for Eva… Iversen?” I winced and shook my head. Get it together, Stevens. “Anyway, I’m a reporter with The Acorn newspaper in Squirrel Key—I guess you’ve heard of it?” Slight dorky chuckle. “I’m doing a story on the Hardwick renovations and I was hoping to… include your voice in the piece. We’d really hate to go to press without you.”

There, I thought as I hung up. Of course I was bluffing about “going to press.” I didn’t have a story to print. Whoever got that message might not be impressed, but if they were willing to talk to Gus Hickman, maybe I’d get a call, too.  

Chapter 3 – Way to Bury the Lead

By noon on Monday, I did not have a call from anyone about the Hardwick. Certainly not from Eva Iversen. I hadn’t expected much, but I was surprised by my disappointment as I climbed the stairs to The Acorn’s office downtown. 

Housed, like a lot of Squirrel Key businesses, in a Victorian two-story, this one was a fading green and yellow with a wide, wrap-around porch. Charming, if you didn’t notice that the porch swing was broken, most of the screens were missing, and that whatever had passed for a front garden was now mostly patches of carpetweed and dog fennel.

I stepped through the reception area of The Acorn a little late for the weekly writers’ meeting. No doubt our publisher, Charlie Page, would still be scrubbing the sleep out of his eyes and the vodka off his breath in the bathroom. 

“Hey, Jo,” said the frizzy blonde who’d worked the counter since I was a kid.

Rita Pullman had lived in Squirrel Key for decades, but like a lot of folks, she was from somewhere else. She still had a hint of her Wisconsin accent, and all that Midwestern kindness. She’d brought me a casserole a day for two weeks when my father died. 

“Howdy, Rita.” I slipped the dozen donuts I’d brought, still smelling like the oven at Pearl’s, on the counter. “What’s up?”

“Oh, you know, sweetie.” Rita eyed the box and pulled at the flaps. “Nothing but the usual.”

I leaned to look at the phone messages pinned to the board while Rita dug into the donuts. Bob Peabody, a local curmudgeon, had called for Charlie. Probably something or other about chickens. I’d been out to his property two weeks ago while he moaned and pointed out non-existent holes in his neighbor’s fence. “That,” he’d said, “is where they’re getting through.” There was no law in Squirrel Key that said you had to restrain your chickens, but his neighbor—Izzy Wilder, owner of the Oarn’t You Glaad Paddle Shop—was already yelling back over the fence. “Damn it, Bob!” they hollered. “You know I don’t let the girls out without watching ‘em!”

I’d waved Bob off, and not just because of my current situationship with Izzy. If I could get a decent shot of Bob with a chicken, I’d do it. But I wasn’t about to mediate between feuding neighbors. Especially those two. “Take it up with the council, Bob.”

“But Joey!” Bob had been incredulous as I hopped back in my car. “Just goes to show you,” he’d griped. He didn’t think I heard him when he muttered, “Not a thing like her father.” 

I wasn’t sure what old Peabody thought I could do for him, really, but he was dead wrong about Jack Stevens. He’d never have bothered himself about a chicken.

Rita was well into a grape jelly donut by the time I turned back around. “Anything for me, Reet?” 

“Ah.” She swiped a bit of glaze on a finely embroidered handkerchief and peered over her glasses at the board. “No, honey.”

I usually preferred not to have messages, but I did want that Hardwick story. Eva Iversen? In Squirrel Key? At this rate, Gus Hickman would announce it to the world before I got an answer. I gripped my Pan Paddlers travel mug and headed to my fourth coffee of the day.

“Hey, Coop.” I nodded to our graphic designer. Cooper was in his late forties and wore cargo shorts and a Miami Dolphins sweatshirt to work every day. Every day, no matter the time of year. He was about the least friendly guy I’d ever met in the town. He gave a surprising half-wave as I walked by. Must have smelled the donuts.

At some point in The Acorn’s sixty-four-year existence, somebody dubbed the meeting room in the back of the house “the Hollow.” Having grown up here, I was a little tired of the town’s communal tendency to make everything about squirrels. Or clams. But I did sometimes smirk at the idea of a press room being “hollow.” Bob Peabody would love it. 

The Hollow was its usual barren space today: metal folding chairs, a wooden table littered with half-filled notepads and old coffee rings, with one wall swallowed by a scribble-covered whiteboard. Since our perky college intern had left the month earlier, it was just me and James Newell on the news beat. Somehow, story meetings still sometimes took hours.

“OK, gang.” Charlie herded us into our seats. He rubbed the space between his eyebrows and slumped into his usual chair, the only remotely comfortable spot in the room. He looked up with tired eyes. “We need to make this a quick one today.”

Newell snorted and I regarded him evenly. He was not a handsome guy, Newell. He was thin and pasty, nearing forty with a high receding hairline, but he did have a certain diplomatic charm. He dressed well, for one thing. That seemed to either impress people or put them off but, for the kind of stories Newell covered—mainly Town Hall and business stuff—his wardrobe probably worked for him. Our beats didn’t cross very often, but I’d butted heads with him on occasion because Newell also served as The Acorn’s de facto editor. Charlie, as he reminded us daily, had his “hands full keeping this paper afloat, people.”   

Newell had been on the job since long before I’d started. After college in Gainesville, I’d managed to escape Squirrel Key for another three years; I was in Spain, writing for a travel blog when my father died and then I was back. I’d started writing for the paper almost by accident when Charlie needed what he called a “fluff beat” writer. I figured it was something to do while I sorted out the estate.  

At first, it was a slog: book clubs, bake sales, bland ribbon-cuttings. And all the old faces that had known me my whole life. But, when I was writing about them, most people didn’t care that I was the old mayor’s daughter, that I had been nothing but trouble as a teenager. People were mostly interested in their own stories. And it turned out, I liked writing them. So, Charlie got a reporter he could count on—at least for the time being—and I got to fade into the background and tell other people’s stories while I figured out what to do with the rest of my life. 

That, I realized, had been almost three years ago. 

Why was I still here? I hadn’t done anything with my family home. Or the memory minefield of stuff—mostly my father’s—that lived inside of it. I’d been in a sort of limbo, one foot in and one foot out of this town, dreaming of lazy afternoons in Spain while covering swap meets at the Senior Center. There were plenty of reasons for me to go, and only one reason for me to stay. But that one was kind of important: Gram wouldn’t live anywhere else.

When I refocused, Newell was droning on about the week’s council meeting. Honestly, the guy was perfect for this job. Who else would care so much about millage rates? Certainly not Charlie. I watched his eyes sag and knew we were about two seconds from a change of subject.

“Joey,” he cut in. Newell’s hands paused in midair. “What’s going on with the Hardwick?”

I shook myself and blinked. “The Hardwick?” I debated relaying my latest bit of news. I really wanted to at least get a call back before I mentioned it to Charlie. “Nothing verified yet. I mean, that I know. Still working on it.”

Charlie groaned. “Jo, every single person in this town has asked me about the Hardwick.” He leaned over the table, staring hard with those bloodshot eyes. What was left of his dyed-black hair gleamed bluish in the fluorescent light. “There has got to be someone who knows what’s going on. What about the workers?”

“I told you already,” I said. “They’re some out-of-town crew. The contractor said they couldn’t tell me anything. Non-disclosure agreement.”

“Non-disclosure!” Charlie scrunched up his face. He was right. It was possible no one in the history of Squirrel Key had ever signed an NDA. In a town where gossip spread like crabgrass, it seemed pointless. “What the hell for? Are they building an underground bunker?”

“I mean, it would be an engineering marvel, at least.” Seriously, in a mudflat? 

Charlie sighed. “I don’t know what I pay you for.”

“Comic relief?”

Newell snorted. Charlie eyed him. “What about council? They have to know something.”

“All the permits are in place, for once. Nothing out of the ordinary.” Newell shrugged.

This was not news to any of us. The whole discussion had been repeated almost verbatim over the past few months. It was frustrating to not get a story in a town where anyone knew everyone’s business.

“OK, there is one thing, maybe,” I relented. “I saw Gus Hickman at the Squirrel Toss and he got an unusual call.”

Charlie made a “keep talking” gesture. 

“It’s probably a prank.”

Newell rolled his eyes. “Are you going to tell us or do you want to hear about the millage rate again?”

“He got a call from someone claiming to be Eva Iversen. She said she was the one renovating the Hardwick and wondered if they wanted to change the venue to the inn for the SKHS fundraiser.”

Charlie’s head shot up. “What?”

“Way to bury the lead, Stevens,” said Newell. 

“I can’t confirm anything! Gus said he talked to her. He said it was legit, but he gave me the number, and no one’s called me back.”

“When did you call?” Charlie asked. 

“Saturday night.”

“For God’s sake, call again!”

“I will, but—”

“Joey, if Eva Iversen is behind the goddamned Hardwick and we don’t get the story before that idiot Gus Hickman tells the world I swear to God—”

“OK! I know, I get it. I’m on it.”

One thing Charlie and I had in common: we both hated getting scooped. And staying ahead of Squirrel Key gossip was a full-time job. 

“When is the fundraiser again?”

“Two weeks.”

“If that place is going to be ready for a big event in a few weeks… when was the last time you went by?”

“It’s been a little while, but last weekend the scaffolding and tarps were still up, same as always.”

Charlie stood and looked at the flashy gold watch he sometimes wore. “I have to go to a meeting,” he said, and leveled me with his bulldog stare. “I want you to go over there right now and don’t leave until someone—anyone!—talks to you.”

Chapter 4 – Picture a Haunted House

It was the kind of day that made suckers move to Florida: a cool seventy degrees with a cloudless blue sky, the time of year when all the bougainvillea in town burst in a riot of orange, red, and pink. My mother’s favorite. I passed row after row of them as I drove with the top down on my 1984 midnight blue Mercedes 380SL. My father’s pride and joy. It still only had about thirty thousand miles on it; the tan leather was immaculate. I tried not to be as proud about it as my father had been, but it was hard. 

I heard a long whistle as I parked her in the sand lot by the boat ramp.

“Damn, Joey, that is a sexy car.” Izzy Wilder stood next to their kayak trailer with a paddle in each hand. 

“Iz, you’ve been in this car a million times.”

“Well, it’s been a while.” Izzy gave me a pointed look from under the dark shock of hair that hung in their eyes. They really were more attractive than anyone had the right to be in a bright blue tank top that showed off tanned, muscled arms. I shook my head. Charlie might be the boss, but I doubted there was anything at the Hardwick that couldn’t wait an hour. And I wasn’t in the habit of breaking promises to Izzy Wilder.

Izzy’s Pan Paddlers had organized a beach cleanup—well, a mangrove cleanup; Squirrel Key didn’t really have a beach. Thick shoes to combat the razor-sharp oyster beds—or better, kayaks and canoes—were standard equipment. I reached into the backseat for the hip-high waders I’d fished out of the garage that morning. Like a lot of things I technically owned, they had been my father’s. 

I adjusted the brim of my hat and pulled on the immaculate boots; I guessed the old man used them maybe once, probably for a photo op just like this. The boots were a little too tall, even for me, and I walked awkwardly toward Izzy. 

“Like you don’t know how to find me,” I said to them. Funny cause it’s true, I thought. The ball was always in their court. I’d made it clear I’d give up my infrequent and often-disastrous dating for Izzy; they made it clear that wouldn’t be necessary. Izzy was just not one to be tied down. Figuratively, at least. 

Camera in hand, I turned to some familiar faces in the cleanup crew.

“Howdy, Mike,” I said to a big man in a mesh crop-top and cargo shorts. He looked up from his patrol with a pool skimmer. 

“Joey Stevens,” he grinned. “Gonna take some pictures?”

“Sure thing.” I lifted my camera and got him just before his smile faded. 

“Not me!” he protested. “Get some of the kids.”

I looked out at the inlet that separated most of Squirrel Key from the mainland. Mangroves grew in snarled bunches, popping up into patchy islands that gleamed in the afternoon sun. As they filtered water from the Gulf and local runoff, their roots were a sieve for trash of every kind. It could get kind of nasty. The whole community was grateful to folks like Izzy for organizing the monthly cleanups. 

I waded into the murky depths, camera strapped firmly across my chest. The days were starting to warm up, and I was glad I’d thrown on a thin cotton Veruca Salt T-shirt that morning, even if it was black. Never wear a white shirt to a water event. I’d learned that the hard way.   

I scanned the earnest group of mostly teens and college kids still not too jaded to participate in these kinds of “hippie activities,” as my father called them. I noticed our resident high school swimming champion Sage Keegan in a rainbow kayak about ten feet away and smiled. She was a total ham. Exactly what I needed. 

“Hey, Bri,” I called holding up the camera. “Give me a smile!”

Bri whipped around at the sound of her name. She held up a huge bag of dripping garbage, flexing her bicep and grinning like a movie star.

“Perfect,” I said under my breath. “And thank you.”

I sloshed in the bayou muck for another thirty minutes, half-heartedly snapping shots of kids with bags of cigarette butts and plastic bottles. And more than a few of Izzy directing traffic with those gorgeous arms. But Sage had just won regionals; I knew exactly what shot Charlie would pick. I got a few quotes from Izzy and a promise to “hang out” soon and wandered back to my car. It was time to go see about an actual movie star. 

**

My father was mayor of Squirrel Key for all my childhood and into my teens. He was an estate lawyer, but his real passion was politics. He loved being the mayor. He loved the power, such as it is in a small town, and he really loved the attention. He was a handsome widower with a young daughter, which he used unfailingly to his advantage. I remember being paraded around—literally: I was Little Miss Squirrel Plum Fairy in the Christmas parade three years in a row whether I liked it or not. 

My father had a warm hug and a smile for what seemed like anyone, but Jack Stevens was not a warm man. Not to me, anyway. If it hadn’t been for my grandmother—whose house I spent most of my weekends in—it would have felt like I had no family at all.

At home, I had a string of nannies—babysitters, really—until I was fourteen. Then the old man and I were like ships in the night. I started getting into trouble, not because I was really a troublemaker. I was just good at getting caught. Dumb kid stuff like spray painting derelict boats, sneaking cigarettes out of the machine at the Mexican restaurant, breaking into abandoned buildings. One of those buildings, and the place where Sergeant Oakley caught me for a fourth time and finally hauled me down to the station, was the old Hardwick Inn. 

Picture a haunted house: a creaking, moldering, three-story Queen Anne-style mansion with a turret, broken sash windows, rotten floorboards, an overgrown yard; creepy, gnarled old oaks in front. That’s the Hardwick. Or it was. Now imagine you’re a teenager, one of two dozen or so with nothing to do in a tiny town and the same dumb bored kids to do it with. Of course you’re going to sneak in with bottles smuggled from your parents’ liquor cabinet. Of course you’re going to dare each other to spend the night/graffiti the walls/slide drunkenly off the slick cedar shingles onto an old mattress you found in the mangroves. Haunted Hardwick was a rite of passage for kids at SKey High. I was fascinated by it. And I thought I knew its secrets.

But that was then. 

As I pulled around the gravel drive to the newly resurrected Hardwick, I realized I had never really seen her. Not like this. The tarps and scaffolding that had obscured the building for over ten months were mostly removed now, offering a glimpse of a place out of time. In all the years I’d known her, the Hardwick had been a weathered brown and gray. Now, she gleamed in a sleek, almost modern Florida teal, with restored millwork that popped in bright white with turquoise accents. New cedar shingles on the roof glinted in the sunlight, and a deep blush pink defined the edges of the windows, gables, and widow’s walk. It looked like South Beach puked on the Haunted Mansion and it should have been hideous. It was not. 

I’d shucked my funky waders back at the cleanup and stashed them in the trunk, but I still had a whiff of mudflat about me, and my shirt stuck to the seat when I got out of the car. I hadn’t thought that through. I didn’t even have hand sanitizer. But I didn’t expect to see anyone other than a tight-lipped worker. 

I certainly didn’t expect to find Eva Iversen eyeing me from the front porch.