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of her stride, the silken sand between her toes. The knowledge that she was equally at home in water and on land never failed to delight her.
    Lena felt a wave of gratitude wash over her, and she closed her eyes for an instant. She thanked the tides for delivering her to this place and time. She gave thanks for her mother’s love and tenacity. She acknowledged the blessing of her talent and reminded herself that it was art that had paid for her happiness. Art had allowed her toserve as caretaker of Moondance Beach, a place where land, sand, and sea converged, which was all she’d ever wanted.
    Lena opened her eyes, smiled to herself, and whispered into the wind, “Thank you for bringing Duncan home alive.”
    She grabbed the towel from a piece of driftwood and wrapped her naked body in warm cotton. Lena slipped into a pair of flip-flops and climbed the wooden access stairs, crossed the dune, and went into her backyard. What stretched before her wasn’t one of the carefully manicured lawns of the South Shore. Her acreage was windswept and wild, pathways of sandy soil snaking through saw grass, cinnamon fern, bayberry, heather thistle, and blue iris. Beech, pine, and oak trees hunkered low to the ground, stunted by the ocean winds. And at the top of the rise, facing the beach, was her home and studio.
    Lena’s mother had recently asked if she didn’t get lonely “rattling around” in such a big place. Lena couldn’t help but laugh, since she’d lost track of the number of times she’d tried to convince her to share her new home with her. Imelda Silva always dismissed the idea.
    “Stop worrying about me,
menina
. Maybe it’s time for you to start caring for a family of your own.”
    “Maybe it’s time for you to retire.”
    The last time they’d had this conversation, they’d been seated on the first-floor deck in the early evening, watching the sunset and enjoying a bit of her mother’s favorite sherry. They got together for dinner about once a week, and Lena enjoyed spending time in the kitchen with her mother and talking until dark—even if nothing was ever resolved.
    “You know I can’t leave Rowan and Ash now that the baby has come. Serena is attached to me, and Rowan needs me.”
    “Be reasonable,
Mãe
. You’ve hardly had a day off since you came to this island twenty-four years ago. You deserve to enjoy yourself.”
    “I do enjoy myself! I enjoy working. Keeping busy makes me happy. If I retire, I will dry up and blow away. What will be my purpose?”
    Lena had sighed as she’d placed a hand over her mother’s. “Your purpose would be to relax and share in my success. We could travel. We could even go back to the Azores if you’d like.”
    That got her mother’s attention. She shot Lena her trademark stink-eye, an expression reserved for things related to her mother’s place of birth, Lena’s Portuguese-American father, and his family in Rhode Island, where Lena had been born. In other words—anything having to do with the past she had left behind.
    Her mother shook her head and turned down the corners of her mouth. “You know there is nothing for us over there. We are Americans. We are
Bayberry Islanders
.”
    The evening ended with the usual kisses on the cheek and a stalemate. Lena watched her mother drive off toward Shoreline Road, glad she had kept her snarkier comments to herself. Her mother didn’t need to hear that Rowan and Ash could afford to replace her a hundred times over at the Safe Haven. She would have been hurt, since she considered herself a member of the family, not the bed-and-breakfast’s director of housekeeping and head cook. Lena knew the Flynns considered her family, too, and had since the night Imelda Silva and herseven-year-old child had shown up on the mansion’s doorstep just as hail had begun pounding down.
    “Would you by any chance need a housekeeper?” her mother had asked that night so long ago. And the rest was fate.
    Lena shook her head to clear