Rebel Island (Tres Navarre #7)(75)

And yet…It was still there. It probably looked more now like it did three hundred years ago, when Cabeza de Vaca was shipwrecked nearby and hunted for lizards with the locals.

The ferry rose and fell on the waves.

“According to the EMT,” Maia said, “I’m due any minute. He was amazed the baby held out through the weekend.”

“Tough kid,” I said.

She kissed me. “Tough parents.”

We watched the island disappear. It didn’t feel like the final goodbye I’d imagined. If the island really was Garrett’s now, I might be forced to come back someday, but that didn’t bother me. I wasn’t so much worried about the things I was leaving behind. I was more interested in what I was going back to.

“I might take a PI case once in a while,” I said. “If the right one came.”

Maia raised an eyebrow. “If it didn’t interfere.”

“It would depend on the case,” I said.

“Oh. Naturally.”

She tried to hold a poker face as long as possible, but finally a smile made its way to the surface. “You almost made it seven months. Not bad.”

“Oh, be quiet.”

“Hey, when we broke up, you stayed away from me a whole year. Should I be insulted?”

“I shouldn’t have brought this up until we were closer to the shore. Twenty minutes trapped on this ferry with you. Gonna be a long ride.”

She kissed me again. Between us, the baby kicked. It felt like a tiny reminder, the kid telling me, Get a grip, Dad.

“Not such a long trip,” Maia promised. “Tell me what you want to do first when we get home.”

And so we sat together in the stern of the ferry, and we talked about the future.