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very much hope so.”
    Then I waited for him to go. He didn’t. “So, to explain a bit about the island,” he started, as if he were answering my question anyway, and then, just like that, he marched off straight into the lecture I’d been hoping to sidestep by not asking about Jessie. Mags had a word for this type of person—a MEGO, as in My Eyes Glaze Over. And Hugh was a total MEGO, right up there with Mags’s gramps and my dentist, Dr. Ogilvy.
    Now I stood in faint despair as he went on and on and on. “Little Bly, you’ll find, is an idyll for the loner … and there’s plenty to do … Isa needs structure and play … friends her age and the like.”
    “Yep, her dad already told me all this.” Untrue, but I’d have figured out Isa and Little Bly on my own, eventually. Still he kept going. My eyes were more glazed than a box of Dunkin’ Donuts. Why wouldn’t he leave me alone already? Finally, perhaps daunted by my unrelenting silence, Hugh decided to wrap it up.
    “At any rate, her father asked me to pay this visit. We’ve been friends since boyhood.”
    “Then it’ll be easy for you to narc on me, if I’m not doing my job right.”
    That did it. Even the bristles of Hugh’s beard seemed to stiffen. “Why, Jamie, it’s not my intention to make you feel mistrustful,” he said. “I simply want to underline—please don’t encourage Isa’s wilder bursts of imagination. It’s hard for her to distinguish reality from her flights of fancy. Be my scout. If anything troubles you, I’ve left my phone and email with Connie.”
    “No problem.” I nodded. Go scout yourself, Doc. “Thanks for that. Night.”
    The twins always joked about my problem with authority. Maybe it was because I was the youngest. Maybe it was because I was me. But it wasn’t my job to be Hugh’s anything. So he could forget that.
    The cicadas were loud out here, and the air was delicious, carried in on the hush of wind through long grass. Alone, I tucked deep into a wicker chair, listening to it snap and crunch as it adjusted to my body.
    “Ever get the feeling you’re being watched?”
    I startled. Milo must have crept outside through another door to come around from the other side of the porch. He was smoking a cigarette, and my nostrils flared with desire to light up my own, though now it didn’t seem appropriate. I was relieved when he didn’t offer me one, but instead strolled to the railing and swung up. Elevated and looking down on me, he seemed to be enjoying himself, and I was sure he was flexing his thigh muscles for my benefit.
    “As a matter of fact, yes,” I said after a moment. “It’s spooky here. Boo! Everyone’s watching. The madwoman in the lighthouse is crying for her husband’s ship to come in. Out in the ocean, we’ve got the mermaid who wanted to be a human. Anyone else?”
    “Uh-huh,” Milo answered, a smile playing at the edges of his lips. “You’ll see.”
    “Are you warning me?”
    His smile faded. “I guess I am.”
    I didn’t like the look on his face. I changed subjects. “So why’d they kick you out, camper boy?” I asked. “What’d you do? Hijack a canoe? Cheat in the potato-sack race?”
    “Let’s just say … when I’m bad, I’m bad. I was never gonna stick. Dad won’t be surprised when he finds out. He’s just like me.”
    Any reaction other than blasé would put me at a disadvantage, so I dismissed Milo with a flick of my hand. “You’re like him, you mean. He came first. And if you’re such a rebel, answer me this—could you jump off those rocks at the halfway point up to the lighthouse?”
    He frowned. “If I wanted to spend the summer in a full-body cast.”
    “So, no way, nohow?”
    “Eh. You’d have to know the water inside out. It’s got different depths, depending on the tide. I mean, I’d never do it. So you can cross it off your au pair worry list.”
    “Kiddo, I’m not babysitting you, just your sister. Go jump off a cliff all day