From the first night on, every creak of that very creaky old house might be him or one of his buddies coming back for more, or for worse. Obviously the crooks had been keeping tabs during the renovation and just waiting until there was enough loot to make breaking in worthwhile.

I made my living traveling, leaving town for about one week every month, seven nights when Sandi would have to come home to an empty house on a dark downtown lot where she could never be sure there wasn’t someone lurking. The thought of that pissed me off so much that every evening for two weeks after the burglary I walked the downtown streets with a pair of heavy work gloves in my back pocket—I didn’t want his blood literally on my hands when I beat the bogus tuberculosis out of him.

I never found him, but there wasn’t a single night spent in that house over the following six years when he wasn’t there in spirit, as the outside lights were turned on, the windows and doors double-checked, the new alarm armed, and the big dog put on duty.

WE BOUGHT PROPERTY ON Orcas Island after a single hearts-and-minds-winning visit in 2002. Each subsequent summer vacation was filled with our ideal outdoor lifestyle—kayaking, boating, scuba diving, hiking—and an expanding circle of local friends. Orcas became our sanctuary.

We’d wrap up last-minute job details, hassle through airports and across 2,600 cramped sky miles, battle the traffic up I-5 out of Seattle to the ferry terminal… and then exhale. The ferry ride offered a leisurely segue from mainland madness to the evergreen air of the San Juan Islands that demanded you take deep breaths. Some 750 islands, rocks, and reefs make up the San Juans. Ninety-seven of them have names, and Orcas has most of the superlatives: largest island, tallest mountain, deepest fjords. It’s a place where green meets blue, forests flow into the sea, and mountains climb into the sky, all within the intimate embrace of an island.