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could not offer her any paid work. If you have
children, they could enroll in the local Catholic school,
which is small but good, or I could arrange for private
tutoring at a reasonable cost.
    If this interests you, please write me or call collect
at (607) 555-3334. There is no formal schedule, but I would
like to get to work on this as soon as possible.
    Thank you for your attention to this matter.

    Sincerely,
    Woodrow Wilson Moreland, M.D.

    Slow pace of life; nothing in the letter indicated
professional challenges, and any other time, I might have written
back a polite refusal. I hadn’t done long-term therapy for
years, but forensic consultations kept me busy, and Robin’s
work as a builder of custom stringed instruments left her
little free time for vacations, let alone a four-month idyll.
    But we’d been talking, half jokingly, about escaping to
a desert island.
    A year ago a psychopath had burned down our home and
tried to murder us. Eventually, we’d taken on the task of
rebuilding, finding temporary lodgings at a beach rental on
the far western end of Malibu.
    After our general contractor flaked out on us, Robin
began overseeing the project. Things went well before
bogging down the way construction projects inevitably do.
Our new home was still months from completion, and the double
load finally proved too much for her. She hired a fellow
luthier who’d developed a severe allergy to wood dust to
oversee the final stages, and returned to her carving.
    Then her right wrist gave out—severe tendinitis. The
doctors said nothing would help unless she
gave the joint a long hiatus. She grew depressed and did
little but sit on the beach all day, insisting she was
adjusting just fine.
    To my surprise, she soon
was,
hurrying to the sand
each morning, even when autumn brought biting winds and iron
skies. Taking long, solitary walks to the tide pools,
watching the pelicans hunt from a vantage point atop the
rocky cove.
    “I know, I know,” she finally said. “I’m surprised,
myself. But now I’m thinking I was silly for waiting this
long.”
    In November, the lease on our beach house expired and
the owner informed us he was giving it to his failed-screenwriter
son as an incentive to write.
    Thirty-day notice to vacate.
    Moreland’s letter came soon after. I showed it to Robin,
expecting her to laugh it off.
    She said, “Call me Robin Crusoe.”

Chapter
    4
    Something human woke her.
    People arguing next door. A man and a woman, their
words blunted by thick walls, but the tone unmistakable.
Going at each other with that grinding relentlessness that
said they’d had long practice.
    Robin sat up, pushed her hair out of her face, and
squinted.
    The voices subsided, then resumed.
    “What time is it, Alex?”
    “Five-forty.”
    She took a long breath. I sat down on the bed and held
her. Her body was moist.
    “Dinner in twenty minutes,” she said. “The bath must be
cold.”
    “I’ll run another.”
    “When did you get up?”
    “Five.” I told her about the lizard. “So don’t be
alarmed if it happens again.”
    “Was he cute?”
    “Who says it was a he?”
    “Girls don’t peep through other people’s windows.”
    “Now that I think about it, he did seem to be ogling
you.” I narrowed my eyes and flicked my tongue. “Probably a
lounge lizard.”
    She laughed and got out of bed. Putting on a robe, she
walked around, flexing her wrist.
    “How does it feel?”
    “Better, actually. All the warm air.”
    “And doing nothing.”
    “Yes,” she said. “The power of positive nothing.”
       
    She slipped into a sleeveless white dress that showed
off her olive skin. As we headed for the stairs, someone
said, “
Hello
there.”
    A couple had emerged from next door. The woman was
locking up. The man repeated his greeting.
    Both were tall, in their forties, with short-sleeved,
epauletted khaki ensembles. His looked well worn, but hers
was right out of the box.
    He had a red, peeling nose under