The Guardian

He dived on the unsuspecting Maybelline and caught her in a possessive embrace. “You’re a spy!” he informed the startled dog. “I got you!”

Maybelline sighed, martyrlike, and let him wrestle her to the ground. Kate stared down at the boy in shock. “Charlie! Where’s your shirt?”

He had been wearing a shirt only a moment before, she was certain of it. Now his thin, white back was as bare as Hawkshaw’s tanned one.

“Charlie, Charlie,” Kate said, pulling him off the dog. “I asked you—where’s your shirt?”

“I don’t remember,” he said carelessly. He picked up a stick and aimed it into the trees like a gun. “Bang!” he yelled. “Stick ’em up—you’re under arrest!”

Kate knelt before him and pushed the stick down firmly. “Why?” she said, very clearly, very carefully. “Why did you take off your shirt?”

“I don’t have a shirt because I don’t need one,” Charlie said, echoing Hawkshaw exactly. “This is the Florida Keys. It’s warm all year.”

She looked back toward the deck and saw the boy’s polo shirt lying inside out on the bottom stair. He had stripped it off and tossed it aside.

“Charlie,” Kate said firmly, “you have to wear a shirt. You’ll get a sunburn—a bad one.”

“I don’t need one,” the boy repeated stubbornly. “This is Florida.” He adjusted the cap again and looked up at Hawkshaw with shining eyes. “I like Florida better than I did,” he said.

Hawkshaw put his hands on his hips. “Charlie, your mother’s right. Put your shirt back on. Go on. Do it.”

Charlie stood, his face indecisive for a moment. Then he brightened and said, “Okay.” He dashed away and ran back to the stairs. He struggled with his shirt and at last got it on, but inside out.

Kate dropped the dog’s leash, rose to her feet and gave Hawkshaw a sarcastic look. She strode to where Charlie twisted and wriggled. She pulled the shirt off and then expertly put it on him again, right side out.

He jammed the hat back on his head and ran over to Hawkshaw. “I got my shirt on, see?” he said eagerly.

Hawkshaw nodded, keeping his face impassive. “That’s good,” he said. “A boy should mind his mother.”

Kate picked up Maybelline’s leash. She made her voice controlled, almost frosty. “You were going to give us the safety tour, Mr. Hawkshaw?”

“Yes,” Hawkshaw said. “Now the Keys are a special environment. This island we’re on—”

“We’re on an island?” Charlie interrupted, tugging at Hawkshaw’s bare knee. “An island? Where’s the ocean?”

Hawkshaw pointed between the trees. “Over there,” he said.

“I can’t see it,” Charlie almost wailed in disappointment. “Where?”

Hawkshaw hoisted him up easily, so the boy’s head was as high as his own. “Over there. See it?”

“Oh,” Charlie said with disappointment. “I thought it’d be bigger.”

Hawkshaw laughed. “It is bigger. You can’t see much of it from here, that’s all.”

“Can we go closer?” Charlie begged.

“Sure,” Hawkshaw said. “Why not? You better ride on my shoulders. There’s poisonwood between here and there. You’ll have to learn how to identify it, stay away from it.”

“Poisonwood?” Charlie asked, charmed at the exotic and dangerous sound of it.

“Yeah. I’ll show you.” Hawkshaw let the boy settle on his shoulders. He turned to Kate, who stood, holding the dog’s leash and eyeing him warily. “You should come, too,” he said. “You need to learn these things.”

“Then by all means,” she said with a shrug, “let the lesson begin.”

For the first time, he smiled at her, the barest curve at one corner of his lip. He seemed to be saying, You have a problem with this, lady? He moved off through the trees, Charlie on his shoulders.

She felt a strange, primal emotion surge deep within her, a feeling so foreign that at first she didn’t recognize it. And when she recognized it, she was ashamed.

Even when her husband had been alive, Charlie was very much her child. Since Chuck’s death, it had seemed like her and Charlie, the two of them, together against the world. She was used to being the most important person in the boy’s life.

Now, in a matter of moments, he had fallen under the spell of Hawkshaw—Hawkshaw, of all people. And Kate, suddenly relegated to second place in the boy’s regard, was shocked to feel the sting of jealousy.

CHAPTER FOUR

IN HAWKSHAW’S BOYHOOD, Cobia Key had been wild and solitary, and it had suited him; he had been wild and solitary himself.

Now he felt the slight weight of the boy on his shoulders and remembered being carried by his own father the same way in this same place. He remembered how his father had introduced him to this mysterious land that could be at once both beautiful and fearful.

The famous Keys highway had run through Cobia to end in Key West, its tipsy and not quite respectable final destination. But in those days hardly anyone stopped in Cobia, for it seemed there was nothing to stop for.

But the island had its inhabitants. They were few but hardy, independent souls who relished Cobia’s privacy and its isolation for their own reasons, sometimes legal, sometimes not.

Over the years, while Hawkshaw had been gone, the edges of Cobia’s splendid loneliness had been eaten away. The highway through it now sported an ugly restaurant, an uglier motel, and a small but hideous strip mall.

A new housing subdivision had grown up along the open water, concrete dwellings colored in pastels like different flavors of ice cream. They looked as if they were made for mannequins, not people, and Hawkshaw didn’t like them.

He was glad that here, in the backcountry, the wilderness remained, and so did the loneliness.

He walked across the weedy yard, conscious that the loneliness was violated now by the boy and his mother. He was an unwilling host, and they were his unwilling guests.

He might begrudge their presence, but he would have to make the best of it. He would begin by pointing out the boundaries and setting the rules. The woman beside him walked gingerly and so did the basset hound, like the city creatures they were.

“There,” Hawkshaw said to Charlie. He pointed at a tall, spindly tree on the opposite side of the tidal stream. “That’s a poisonwood tree. You don’t want to touch any part of it or put it in your mouth. You have to memorize how it looks, the big shiny leaves, the black splotches on the bark.”

“Wow,” Charlie breathed, clearly awed. “Will it kill you?”

“No, it’s more like poison ivy. But it makes some people pretty sick,” said Hawkshaw. “So steer clear of anything that looks like it. That’s an order.”

Kate Kanaday shifted uneasily and gripped the dog’s leash more tightly. “Snakes,” she said. “There are snakes here, aren’t there?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Hawkshaw said. “Coral snakes. And cottonmouths. And rattlesnakes.”

“Rattlesnakes—that’s awesome,” Charlie said. “Can we catch one?”

“No, you certainly can’t,” Kate said. “If you see a snake, don’t even think of touching it—run.”

Hawkshaw glanced down at her. Her pallor clearly marked her as an outsider to this world of perpetual summer. But the sunshine did dazzling things to her hair, making it glint with live sparks of red and gold.