“I have a—for lack of a better word—an island, just off the coast of Maine.”
I blinked. “An island?”
“Yeah.”
“You have an island?”
“I have an island.”
He looked back at me, the corner of his mouth shifting—not quite a smile, but the expression of a man who had watched this particular penny drop before and had never tired of it.
“How does a thirty-year-old have an island?”
“Twenty-three, actually, when I bought it.” He leaned against the counter, his posture loosening, settling, like a man handed a subject he knew how to hold. “The county seized it for back taxes. The previous owner died without heirs, and the property sat in administrative limbo for about six years. Two hundredacres of rocky shore and pine trees that nobody wanted. It was listed for next to nothing at a tax auction.”
“Define ‘next to nothing.’”
“Forty thousand dollars.”
I opened my mouth, then closed it again.
“SEAL deployment pay accumulates when you have zero expenses and nowhere to spend it,” he said. “No rent, no car payment, no—” He gestured vaguely at the general concept of civilian life. “Just tours. Consecutive tours. So the money added up, and when I came across that listing, I figured it beat spending it on a truck I’d never be home to drive.”
“So you bought an island instead.”
“I bought an island instead.”
Footsteps in the hallway. Lily and Fiona appeared in the kitchen doorway.
“Did he just say he owns an island?” Lily looked between us with the alert, assessing expression that meant she’d caught the tail end of something and intended to catch the rest.
“Apparently,” I said.
“Like—a whole island?”
Finn rubbed the back of his neck. “It’s not what you’re picturing. No resort, no beach chairs. Two hundred acres of dense forest and decent farmland on a rock in the Atlantic with a dock I built myself and a compound I put together over seven years, every rotation home.”
“What kind of compound?” Lily stepped closer to the map, head tilting as her eyes tracked across it.
“It’s a main cabin with four outbuildings, all constructed to withstand nor’easters, featuring reinforced walls and steel-core doors. Power comes from solar and wind, backed up by a diesel generator. The root cellar is currently stocked for one person for over two years, so we’d need to recalculate for four. There are also two greenhouses.” He paused. “I used to have chickens,ducks, goats, pigs, two cows, and a bull. They’re likely gone by now, with no one to tend them.”
He tapped the map, indicating a cluster of small islands off the Maine coast. “It’s right here. Far enough offshore that you need a proper boat and the skill to operate it, but close enough that supply runs to the mainland were manageable.” He glanced up. “Before.”
“But won’t the island have the same problem?” Lily asked, her voice echoing my own unspoken worry. It was the same familiar frequency I’d recognized for years, as she articulated the questions I hadn’t yet formed. “Those things are everywhere. What makes a small island different?”
“I’m the only person who’s ever lived there,” Finn explained. “No residents, no population, no infrastructure that would have attracted anyone or anything. The surrounding islands are the same—just uninhabited rock and trees. The nearest populated landmass is about fifteen nautical miles southeast, and even that’s barely a village. Maybe two hundred people in a good year.”
He paused.
“Or it used to be.”
The implication settled over the kitchen, understood by everyone, with no one rushing to break the silence it left.
“I won’t guarantee anything,” he said. “I won’t insult you by trying.” He held my gaze, not as a challenge, but as a plain fact delivered to someone he’d decided deserved the unvarnished truth.
I genuinely hated how much I respected that.
“So, how do we get there?” I crossed my arms, unintentionally mirroring his posture. “Because the streets aren’t exactly conducive to a straightforward road trip.”
