The winter of the year I graduated high school, the Baumgartners went to Key West. When they came back, Mrs. Baumgartner swore she’d never do it again without help. Henry was seven and Janie was eight, and they were “too much of a handful,” she said. Just kids, I thought, but I wasn’t their parent-I was pretty much their playmate-so what did I know?

The next winter, Mrs. Baumgartner called and asked if I wanted to come with them-all expenses paid, over the Christmas holiday-a free trip to Key West! It took me about five seconds to say “Yes!” to that proposition. My parents hemmed and hawed about it, but I was over eighteen by then, and I could pretty much do what I wanted…technically. I finally got their blessing, packed my bags, and we were off to the land of sunshine and bikinis!

Up until then, I’d sort of thought of the Baumgartners as surrogate parents, but it was during the trip to Key West when things changed. The Baumgartners became more to me-much more-and that wasn’t all that changed. Everything changed that summer.

If I’d known… I don’t know. But I had no idea at the time how transformative the trip would be, then and even later in my life.

Chapter One

December in the Midwest wasn’t exactly tanning weather, and I wanted to come back and show off, sleek and brown as a seal. I had a bathing suit, of course, yellow and white, fairly respectable, since I was going to be taking the kids to the beach. It did have a bikini top but boy-shorts bottoms. I left the micro-suit at home. I figured Mrs. Baumgartner wouldn’t approve.

Shows you what I knew.

The morning after we arrived, Mrs. Baumgartner came out and joined me on the beach. I was supervising the kids, who were busy making some sort of sand castle-really, it was more of a sand village, as it already spanned half the beach! What I was really doing was trying to read a Nora Roberts novel while simultaneously working on my nonexistent tan, but I was bored.