Della spit half a saltine into her lap.

“A cousin of Jane’s,” Shreave added.

His impulsive burst of candor made it official: Like a lizard, he’d shed his old skin. He felt like dancing on the table.

“This is not funny,” his mother wheezed. She couldn’t picture her chronically unmotivated son as a philanderer.

“If you tell Lily,” Shreave said, “I’ll never forgive you.”

The waiter brought their sandwiches. Della tidied herself and said, “Well, does this girl at least look like Jane?”

“More like Bridget. Only taller.”

“You got a picture?”

He shook his head. “I meant what I said-if you rat me out, you’ll be sorry. Everybody’s got ugly little secrets.”

Della didn’t need her son to spell it out. She had cheated on her last husband, Frank Landry, with one of the hospice workers who’d been caring for him in the final days. If the incident were made known, it would surely incite Landry’s grown and highly litigious offspring. There were still a few bucks kicking around probate that Della had no wish to forfeit.

She said, “Of course I won’t say a word. But seriously, Boyd, where are you headed with this thing?”

“To happiness, Mom. Where else?”

He bit into the jerked chicken and smiled, pearls of mayonnaise glistening on his chin.

While Fry scrubbed the kayaks, Honey Santana sat down to write a letter to the Marco Island Sun Times about what had happened to Louis Piejack. One of Honey’s past therapists had told her to do this whenever she got worked up. The therapist had said writing was a healthy and socially acceptable way of expressing one’s anger.

So far, Honey had gotten forty-three letters published in thirteen different newspapers, including the Naples Daily News, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune and the St. Petersburg Times. Once she’d almost had a letter about the Alaska oil drilling printed in USA Today, but the editors had objected to a sentence suggesting that the president had been dropped on his head as a child.

Honey kept scrapbooks of all her newspaper letters, including the 107 that had been rejected. Sometimes she felt better after writing one; sometimes she felt the same.

To the Editor:

Regarding today’s front-page article about the violent assault on Mr. Louis Piejack, I certainly agree that the perpetrators of this act ought to be pursued and brought to justice.

However, as a former employee of Mr. Piejack, I feel obliged to point out that his own conduct has occasionally bordered on the criminal, particularly the way he treats women. I myself was the victim of both verbal and physical abuse from this man, though I derive no pleasure from his current troubles.

Perhaps during his long and excruciating recuperation, Mr. Piejack will take a hard inward look at himself and resolve to change. As for the unfortunate mix-up during the reattachment surgery on his fingers, Mr. Piejack should be grateful to have all five, in any order, considering the places he has put them.

Most sincerely,

Honey Santana

Everglades City

She slipped the letter into an envelope and affixed three first-class stamps, even though it was traveling only thirty miles up the road.

Fry came indoors and flopped down in front of the television.

“Did you ask your ex-father if you can stay there?” Honey asked.

A sour glance was the boy’s only response.

She said, “Sorry. I meant your ‘dad.’”

“Not yet, but I will,” Fry said.

“Be sure to tell him it’s just for a few days.”

“Mom, chill, okay? It won’t be a problem.”

When the local news came on, Honey sat down beside her son to watch. The lead story was about a red tide that had killed thousands of fish, the majority of which had inconsiderately washed up to rot on the public beach in Fort Myers. The tourists were apoplectic, while the Chamber of Commerce had been scrambled to Defcon Three crisis mode. A video clip showed acres of bloated fish carcasses on the sand, pallid beachcombers fleeing with towels pressed to their noses.

“Look, it’s the seafood festival from hell!” Fry said.

His mother frowned. “That’s not funny, young man. We’re poisoning the whole blessed planet, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

Fry didn’t want to get her fired up, so he said nothing.

The last story on the TV news was about a missing Wisconsin salesman named Jeter Wilson. After a night of partying at the Hard Rock Casino, he’d announced that he was driving alone to the Seminole reservation in the Big Cypress Swamp. Wilson’s family back in Milwaukee hadn’t heard from him in days, and it was feared that he’d dozed off and run his rental car into the canal somewhere along Alligator Alley. A search was under way, and in the meantime the Hard Rock had provided a photograph of the missing man, taken at the hotel bar. In the picture, Jeter Wilson’s ample lap was occupied by a full-lipped woman wearing a blue-sequined halter, whom the TV reporter identified as a “local part-time masseuse.”

Fry said, “What kind of a touron would go straight from the casino to an Indian reservation?”

“He’s a salesman,” Honey Santana said. “He probably wanted to sell them something-like we haven’t done enough harm to those poor Seminoles.”

“Poor? They’re rakin’ it in big-time off the gambling.”

Honey thumped her son on the head and ordered him to go Google the name Osceola and write a four-hundred-word essay about what he learned. Then she changed into some cutoff jeans and went outside to wait for the mosquitoes.

She was conducting an experiment based on information supplied by the night cashier at the Circle K, an amiable older gentleman who’d grown up in Goodland. When Honey had told him of her upcoming ecotour, the man had advised her to pack plenty of bug repellent in case the wind died and the temperature got warm, which could happen even in the heart of winter. He’d also counseled her to stop shaving her legs, explaining that hair follicles served as a natural obstacle to the hungry insects.

Honey had never heard this theory. Being somewhat vain about her legs, which often drew whistles when she jogged along the causeway, she was reluctant to relax her grooming habits. Moreover, it was possible that the guy at the Circle K was conning her, and that he was just some crusty old degenerate who had a thing for hairy women.

Still, Honey couldn’t summarily discount his advice. She’d listened to enough lore about the ferocity of Everglades mosquitoes to desire every possible advantage when kayaking through the Ten Thousand Islands with Boyd Shreave.

So as a scientific test she’d decided to let the hair on her right leg grow, and to observe the buggy response. She sat barefoot on the steps of the double-wide and wiggled her toes enticingly. On a yellow legal pad she noted that it was dusk and dead calm, and that the air temperature was a mild seventy-one degrees. The middle bars of a Tom Petty song, “Breakdown,” kept cycling through her head, although she didn’t write that in the bug journal.

The first mosquito showed up at 6:06 p.m. and alighted on Honey’s left knee, where she swatted it dead. Soon a second one arrived, and then a full airborne battalion. By the time Fry emerged with his essay from the trailer, Honey’s tan legs were covered with black-and-red smudges.

His face pinched with worry, Fry peered at his mother in the light from the open doorway. Eagerly she told him about the experiment, declaring: “See, there’s no damn statistical difference! Eleven bites on the shaved one and eleven bites on the unshaved one-I’m keeping a chart.”

Her son nodded uncomfortably.

“But maybe I should wait,” Honey said, running two fingers along her right shin. “It’s just a stubble now. Maybe it’s gotta grow in thick and curly before it works.”