An Island of Her Own

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I was drowsing a hundred yards off the Boca Grande beach when I heard a female halloo above the gentle surf sound. I rolled off my back and squinted through the hot November sunlight. I didn’t recognize the girl on the beach until I saw the old red pickup parked next to my jeep, and then I knew it was Mary Dawes, so I swam in with more eagerness than I was willing to let her see.

She is one of those rangy redheads with a lot of drive and independence. She owns a swampy little twenty-acre island down in Pine Island Sound, with an ancient cottage on it and a slightly less elderly guest cottage. When her grandfather’s estate was divided among a whole platoon of heirs, she got the island. It has a good artesian well on it, but there’s no phone and no electricity, so it is more primitive than most people will put up with.

Mary is a junior partner in a New York industrial-design firm specializing in consumer packaging. It is a high-pressure operation and she is supposed to be good at it. A couple or three times a year she comes down to the island, where she can work without any interruption.

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