“Stay still or I’ll stick you again!”

With three pins held between her lips, Laire garbled the words, but her older sister Kyrstin understood her meaning and stopped wiggling.

“You’re so nasty when you’re workin’.”

Laire shrugged, pulling a pin from her mouth and securing the hemline she’d just painstakingly folded. The white satin was slippery under her nimble fingers, but the pins held it in place.

“Laire, when you goin’ to make me somethin’ pretty?” asked Isolde, Laire’s other sister, who, at forty-something weeks pregnant, sat like a beached whale on their father’s couch, flipping through a bridal magazine.

Laire turned to Isolde, giving her belly a dry look before raising her eyes to her sister’s face, a fair facsimile of her own. “When Junior’s finally here.”

“I’m sick of bein’ pregnant,” said Isolde, flipping a page. “I want to be hot again.”

Kyrstin looked down at Laire, and both girls snickered softly, prompting a dirty look from Isolde.

“Just you wait, Kyrstin,” she said, slapping her magazine down on the coffee table, which had been improvised from an old wooden crab trap with a piece of oval glass set on top. “I bet Remy knocks you up within a month.”

“No way,” said Kyrstin, puffing up the sleeves that Laire had copied from one of the dozens of magazines they’d bought at the Walmart in Jacksonville two months ago. “No offense, but I’m smarter than that, Issy. I got a prescription for the pill. And I’m usin’ it. I’m not ready to be a mom yet. No way.”

“Humph,” grunted Isolde, sitting up and placing her hands on her knees. “Then you’ll be an old mom with saggy boobs. See how you like that.”

“Speaking of boobs,” said Laire, standing up to check the bustline of the white dress. “Did yours grow a size since last month?”

Kyrstin narrowed her eyes. “Plannin’ a weddin’ is stressful. Remy’s mama is an out-and-out witch, and y’all know it.”

“That’s what you get for marryin’ a dingbatter,” said Isolde, hefting herself off the couch with a sigh. “Daddy got any tea, Laire?”

“In the fridge,” said Laire, plucking a pin from a plush tomato that she’d found in her mother’s abandoned sewing basket. She liked remembering her mother—who’d passed away ten years ago, when Laire was only eight—holding the tomato in her hands as she pinned Laire’s Halloween costume. You’re going to be the prettiest mermaid Corey Island ever saw, little Laire. She blinked back sudden tears and shouted over her shoulder to her oldest sister: “Don’t drink it all. Daddy’ll be home soon, and tired.”

Kyrstin pulled at the bodice of the dress as Isolde waddled to the kitchen. “Ain’t fair callin’ Remy a dingbatter. He and his been here for ten years or more.”

Laire laughed softly, shaking her head. Anyone who hadn’t lived on Corey for more than three or four generations was likely to be called a dingbatter or a woodser, and her sister knew it.

“Don’t listen to Issy,” said Laire, who loved her sisters despite their constant bickering. “She’s just big and ornery right now.”

“Please, Lord, let the baby come soon.”

“She’s due tomorrow,” said Laire. She tried to slip two fingers into the bodice, but it was too tight against her sister’s skin. “You want me to let this out or you want to lose a few pounds before July?”

“Only three weeks till the weddin’,” griped Kyrstin. “Best let it out.”

Laire nodded. “Take it off, then. Can’t pin it so close without makin’ you bleed, and there’s no time for more fabric if you stain it.”

Kyrstin huffed softly, stepping down from the milk crate she’d been standing on in the center of their father’s living room, and heading for the back hallway. Just before she disappeared, she turned to look at her little sister. “It’s a beautiful dress, Laire. Like a princess dress. You did a good job. Mama . . .” Her voice slid away, but she cleared her throat to find it again. “She woulda been real proud.”

The tears Laire had just fought back returned with a vengeance, and Laire swiped at her eyes, grateful for her sister’s kindness. “Think so?”

“Know so,” said Kyrstin with a sad smile. “I’ll be right back.”

Laire watched her go, leaning down to pick up the crate and put it in the closet beside the front door. The grit of salt and sand under her bare feet reminded her that she still needed to vacuum the house before her father returned home from a long day of crabbing. She pulled the old Electrolux from the closet and dragged the fabric-wrapped cord to the wall, plugging it in. She attached the nozzle to the hose and turned it on, pushing it back and forth over the frayed, faded welcome mat just inside the door as she pondered whether or not Remy and his family should still be called dingbatters after a decade on the island.

As a tenth-generation Corey Islander, Laire Cornish was about as “old Corey” as they came, and she had the accent to prove it. Her mother, who’d taken some classes in hospitality and tourism at Carteret Community College, had made certain her girls were aware of the Corey brogue, and took steps to mitigate it in their speech with non-islanders. Islands like Corey, Harkers, and Ocracoke in the Outer Banks of North Carolina, had been settled by the English hundreds of years ago, but had remained largely isolated thereafter, which meant that the accent and speech patterns had never really changed from what one might have heard from sailors in the 1700s. Laire couldn’t count the number of times tourists had asked her if she was Australian or Scottish. She wasn’t, of course. But her accent, a mix of Elizabethan English and American Southern, made for a highly unusual combination that wasn’t always understandable by dingbatters and woodsers.

As the gravelly sound of vacuumed-up sand and salt faded away, she finished the carpet quickly and turned off the old machine.

“You’re good to Daddy, Laire,” said Isolde, who stood in the kitchen doorway holding a glass of sweet tea on top of her rounded belly. “How’s he feelin’ lately?”

Their father, who had suffered a mild heart attack just after Christmas, was back at work again, crabbing with his brother and nephew, just like nine generations of Cornishes before them.

“Okay, I guess,” she said. “I make him eat oatmeal every morning.”

“He hates it?”

Laire smiled. “Of course.”

“He eats it?”

“With grumbles.”

“Mama would’ve . . .”

Just like Kyrstin, Isolde’s voice trailed off, like talking about their mother was something they shouldn’t do. Or maybe, thought Laire, it just hurt too much.

Isolde, who was twenty-four, had gotten married to her high school sweetheart, Paul Hyde, last summer and discovered she was pregnant three months later. It was the way on Corey Island to marry and have kids young, but Laire suspected it was extra hard for her sister to be without a mother now.

Laire put the vacuum away and turned to her sister. “It’s okay to talk about her, Issy.”

“What good is it?” asked Isolde, sniffling before taking another sip of tea. “Won’t bring her back.”

“I miss her too,” said Laire, holding her sister’s familiar green eyes, feeling jealous of her sister’s memories and wishing she would open up and talk about their mother more.

“Here it is!” said Kyrstin, holding the wedding dress carefully across her forearms as she reentered the living room.

Laire took the dress and sat down on the brown plaid couch, shaking out the bodice to figure out where to open the seams as Kyrstin took the tea from Isolde’s hands and finished it up.

“You know what I think, Issy?”

“Tell me, Kyrs.”

Laire looked up at the pair of them and rolled her eyes. From the singsong tones of their voices, she knew what was coming.

“Now that our little Laire is a high school graduate, I think it’s finally time for her to figure out when she’s gonna let Brodie into her shorts.”

“Poor Brodie,” said Isolde with a snicker.

Kyrstin giggled. “You holdin’ out on us, Laire? You got someone else in the wings?”

Laire pulled on the left side seam harder than she should, making several beads scatter to the carpet, then looked up at them. “You’re a couple of jackasses, is all I know.”

“Ooo! Testy!” said Isolde, turning to Kyrstin. “Go get me more tea. You drunk all of mine.”

“Get it yourself,” said Kyrstin. “I want to know when Laire’s settlin’ down.”

Never, she thought, leaning forward to open the sewing box on the coffee table and pull out a seam ripper to help her finish the job.

Never, never, never, never, never.

The word circled around and around in Laire’s head like a promise, like a vow.

I am never “settlin’ down” on Corey Island and having half a dozen kids with a local boy before I hit thirty. There’s a whole wide world out there, away from here, away from Corey, away from the Outer Banks, and I intend to see it.

“. . . touch your boobies, huh, Laire?”

She looked up from the dress in her lap. “What?”

“Brodie told Remy you let him touch your boobies. After the prom.”

Laire’s face flushed with heat as she blinked at her sister. “That’s a lie!”

Yes, she had gone to the high school prom with Brodie Walsh, but that was it! The second he’d tried to kiss her, she’d clocked him in the nose and run home. Touched her boobies? Hell, no! They’d never even kissed!

Kyrstin shrugged, but her eyes were merry. “Why would he make it up?”

To trap me, thought Laire, shoving the white fabric off her lap and standing up. She turned away from her sisters, looking out the picture window over the couch. Their father’s one-story, two-bedroom house was directly on the water, and she looked out at the harbor, seething. Fishing boats, coming in from a long day of catching or crabbing, pointed toward Corey Island. One of those boats was her father’s. Had he heard this rumor that she’d let Brodie touch her intimately? She sucked in a horrified breath.

Her father was a strict, religious, old-school islander. He loved his girls more than anything, but he was proud and he wouldn’t stand for that sort of loose talk unless it included some sort of respectable commitment between the participants—a commitment Laire didn’t want from Brodie or any other island boy.

“It’s a lie,” she said again.

It wouldn’t be the first time a local boy had compromised the reputation of an island girl to push her into a relationship. But damned if Laire would let it happen to her.

“Well, I think Brodie’s cute. Filled out real nice. And his daddy’s boat is newer than most of the—”

“No!” growled Laire, still staring out the window. I don’t want to be trapped here forever!

“Little Laire better get off her high horse,” advised Isolde, her voice taking on an edge. “Eighteen years old and never had a boyfriend. You could do a lot worse’n Brodie.”

Damn Brodie Walsh to hell and back!

With twenty-one kids in the entire high school and only six in Laire’s graduating class, the pickings for a prom date had been slim. Not to mention, she mostly looked at the island boys, whom she’d known since infancy, like a bunch of jerky brothers. At least Brodie, whose mama was the daughter of the pastor, seemed to have some manners. At the time, she had considered him the least disgusting of her choices, but now? Gyah! She could just kill him for spreading rumors about her when she’d kept her reputation lily-white for eighteen long years.

Laire looked over her shoulder, shooting her oldest sister a dark look. “I didn’t let him touch me. There’s no understanding between us. It’s a lie and that’s that.”

“Hope Daddy don’t catch wind of it then,” said Kyrstin, giving Laire a shit-eating smile over the rim of her tea.

They don’t understand, thought Laire, crossing to the front closet to grab a hanger for the dress. They think it’s a game.

She hung the dress carefully on the bar, at the back of the closet, behind Mama’s old winter coat, and closed the door. She’d work on it later. She didn’t trust herself with the delicate material and beadwork right now. Her hands were shaking with fury.

She loved her sisters, but they were both content to marry local boys and be fishermen’s wives. They’d have a bunch of kids—the eleventh generation of Cornishes—who would grow up together here on Corey, which had a static population of just under nine hundred souls. Isolde and Kyrstin would end up running Bingo Night at the United Methodist Church and rope the altar with fir greens at Christmastime. On their tenth anniversaries, their husbands would take them on a big weekend to Raleigh or Myrtle Beach, and they’d talk about it for decades after.

Remy took us on down to Myrtle, but I felt fair quamished by all the lights and smells.

You want t’talk smells? she imagined Isolde exclaiming. It’s right yethy in Raleigh with all the bus fumes!

And all the other women organizing bins of clothes at the village secondhand shop for the annual sale would tut and nod in agreement: Off-island might be interesting for a visit, but Corey was home.

And the thing is?

It was a good life. A respectable life. A fulfilling life. Hell, it had been her mother’s life, and Laire loved her mother more than anyone else in the world, living or dead.

But it just wasn’t the life Laire wanted.

She had a very different plan for her future, and it included being part of the off-island world. Specifically, the world of fashion.

Not only had Laire made Kyrstin’s wedding dress from scratch, but last summer she’d made Isolde’s as well. Her passion for clothes had started when she was nine or ten, after her mother had passed. Her sisters had had no interest in their mother’s old Singer sewing machine, but Laire, who’d spent many happy hours listening to it hum, had found profound comfort in teaching herself how to use it. She imagined her mother’s fingers on the bobbin, threading the needle, lining up the presser foot on a seam, and felt her presence keenly.

By age twelve, she was making shorts and blouses for herself and her sisters. And by fifteen, she was being asked to help classmates with prom and graduation dresses. Now, at eighteen, she had as many as five or six jobs at a time, making dresses, shorts, pants, and blouses for friends and family on the island, in addition to outfitting herself, Kyrstin, and all of her sister’s bridesmaids for the July wedding.

And one day? Well, one day she wanted to make it up north to the Parsons School in New York City or RISD in Rhode Island. She wanted to go to college for fashion design and learn from the best. She wanted to start her own line of clothes, inspired by the greens and blues of the water and sky on Corey. She wanted her own house that didn’t smell like crabs, with carpets that weren’t perpetually covered in a gritty dust of dried salt and sand. She wanted a different life than Corey Island could ever hope to offer.

That said, college didn’t come cheap. She figured she had three or four years of clothesmaking to go before she’d be able to swing the first-year tuition, even with financial assistance. And working on free jobs, like her sister’s wedding, did nothing to further her cause.

She looked up to find her sisters staring at her.

“So?” asked Isolde. “What’re you goin’ to do about Brodie?”

“I’ll march over to his house, and I’ll stand there in his driveway, and I’ll call him out as a liar for the whole island to hear,” she said, raising her chin.

Isolde gasped. “You will not make a scene, Laire Maiden Cornish.”

“Oh, yes, I . . . I goddamn fucking will!”

Laire’s use of the word fuck made her sister’s eyes wider than a full moon over the Sound. They were not the sort of family who used curse words beyond an occasional damn, ass, or hell.

“Better not kiss Daddy with that mouth!” exclaimed Kyrstin, shaking her head in disapproval.

Isolde shoved the tea at Kyrstin and placed her hand over her belly as she took an angry step toward Laire. “I don’t want my baby hearin’ that kind of filthy talk. I’m goin’ home.”

“Good.” Laire put her hands on her hips. “Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out!”

Isolde had just gotten to the front door as it swung open, and there, taking up the entirety of the doorway with his maple-tree strength and brawn was their father, Howard “Hook” Cornish, the best crabber in the Outer Banks.

“Where y’all off to now, Issy girl?”

Isolde leaned up on tiptoe and kissed her father’s whiskered cheek. “Laire’s in a mood, and Kyrstin drank all your sweet tea. See you tomorrow for services.”

“Amen,” said Hook, calling after her. “Take care, now. Y’all keep my grandbaby safe, hear?”

“I hear!” came Isolde’s muffled reply as she stomped out of the house and started her car.

Hook turned to his remaining daughters, giving Kyrstin an annoyed look. “Y’all drank all my sweet tea, huh?”

“I’ll go make more, Daddy,” said Kyrstin with a sheepish smile, taking her empty glass into the kitchen.

“Yeah,” he drawled to himself, “but it’ll be from powder, I s’pose.” He turned to Laire, scanning her face with his sharp blue eyes. “And you’re in a mood? What for?”

Laire shrugged. “Issy’s the one in a mood.”

He looked out the window as she pulled out of the driveway, kicking up gravel with her tires. “Might be. But she’s big as a house, Laire. Cut her some slack.”

He was right. She was big as a house, with a mother-in-law who was loving but demanding, and no mother of her own to lead her through the terrifying mystery of childbirth.

“I’ll do that,” she said. “You mommucked, Daddy?”

Mommucked was an islander word meaning “dead tired.” It was the sort of word her mother would have reminded her not to use off-island, but here, at home, it was the right word.

“Aye-up. Went through a thousand pounds of bait, and I cracked my back hookin’ a buoy. Long day.” He had taken off his knee-high rubber boots and yellow all-weather coveralls on the porch, but his jeans were filthy and he smelled strongly of fish and the sea. Right yethy.

As though he could read her mind, he chucked her under the chin and grinned. “Best shower before that tea.” He turned toward the hallway that led to the bathroom and two bedrooms, then pivoted back around with a low groan. “Ah. Shoot. Almost forgot. Got a delivery to make over in Buxton.” His lips pursed after a long sigh. “But my tired’s got tired.”

“Buxton?” said Laire, perking up as she pictured the castle-like summer homes of the superwealthy who lived a short ways up the coast.

Buxton, like Frisco, Avon, Rodanthe, and Nags Head, was where millionaires from Raleigh, Charlotte, and even faraway places like New York City, spent their summers. It wasn’t an area that Laire had gotten to see up close very often, but the few times her father had taken her on a delivery, she’d been fascinated by a totally different world so close to home.

“Aye-up.” He put one hand on his hip and rubbed his forehead with the other. “Guess I’ll shower later. Gotta take six crates of blues to a house up there.”

“You’re tired,” said Laire. “I could help. I don’t mind doin’ it for you.”

Her father looked up. “You’re a girl. How’re you goin’ to haul six packed coolers from the dock up to the house?”

“Daddy,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest and fixing him with a no-nonsense glare. “I been hoistin’ crates o’blues since I was littler’n the one inside Issy.”

Her father cocked his head to the side and took a long look at her, then chuckled. “Fair enough. I guess you have, at that.” He checked his watch. “It’s three now. Promised delivery for four thirty.”

“Then I’ll get going,” said Laire, her heart thumping with urgency and excitement. “Sound side or ocean side?”

“Sound. Place called Utopia Manor,” said her father, who explained the exact location of the house and that the blue crabs he’d caught today had been promised for a party that evening.

From his instructions, she knew approximately where she’d find the house. “Dock the boat and walk around to the front door?”

Her father shook his head. “There’s a kitchen entrance on the left side of the house. Caterer’s from the Pamlico House. Lady named Judith Sebastian in charge. Find her first, then bring up the coolers. They prepaid.” He raised his chin and looked stern. “No takin’ tips, now.”

“No, Daddy,” she said. “Anythin’ else?”

“That’s it.” He grinned at her, his tanned, weathered face handsome, even after a long day and covered all over with salt-and-pepper whiskers. “You’re a good girl, li’l Laire.”

“You take a nice hot shower and don’t worry about a thing. I’ve got it covered.”

Racing to the room she still shared with Kyrstin, Laire tugged off her white shorts and pulled on a pair of jeans. Earlier, she’d twisted her strawberry blonde hair into a messy bun, but now she brushed it out and secured it into a neat ponytail. She swapped her gray Corey HS T-shirt for a black, long-sleeved, button-up shirt she’d made for herself, and paired it with a black patent-leather belt. Plucking her shiny black Wellies from the back of her closet, she pulled them on over her jeans, up to her knees. Checking out her reflection in the mirror, she decided that she looked as fashion-forward as possible for someone hauling crates of fresh crab, and ran back down the hall.

Sparing a moment to wave good-bye to Kyrstin, she grabbed the spare boat keys from the hook in the kitchen and sailed out the door.