This get-together had a couple of things going for it. People wanted to see Denny’s new wife, and it was held in the lodge within hailing distance of a fully stocked bar.

As Anna wriggled into her chair, Denny Castle and his wife entered the front door, triggering desultory applause. A handful of lodge guests joined in and the sound swelled to a respectable level.

As the popping of hands thinned, and Butkus began another story of how it used to be, Patience took the bride’s arm with a natural hostess’s charm and walked her and Denny across toward the party.

Denny’s wife was five five or six with narrow shoulders and disproportionately wide hips. Lusterless brown hair fell from a center part to below her waist. Her round face was expressionless behind oversized red-framed glasses. As she pulled out the chair next to Ralph, Anna noticed how gnarled and scarred her hands and forearms were. She had seen those blue-black marks before. Looking into the glare of the electric candles, she tried to smooth her mind so the memory would come. After a moment’s teasing, it rose to the surface. She’d seen the scars on the arms of a hitchhiker she had given a lift from Santa Barbara to Morro Bay. The man had been an abalone diver. The scars were from where the shells had cut.

“This is the new Mrs. Castle,” Patience introduced her. “Jo.”

So, the bride, Jo, nee God knew what, had opted to be known as Mrs. Denny Castle. Anna thought it an odd choice for a woman with her master’s degree in freshwater biology, and the diving scars to prove it. That bit of information Anna had picked up from a Resource Management memorandum. Funded by the park, Jo Castle would spend the summer researching pollution in ISRO’s inland waters. Originally she had applied to do her Ph.D. thesis on how much impact sport fishing was having on the island’s lake trout population.