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       Prologue

      “SOMETIMES I WONDER what really happened to them.”

      Kieran Quinn stared down at the section of weathered bright wood that he’d just sanded. He and his three brothers had had this same conversation over and over again during the past two years. And try as they might, they never came up with any answers to their questions.

      The facts were simple. Their parents, Jamie and Suzanne Quinn, had been lost at sea, their boat disappearing somewhere between Seattle and the South Pacific. No one knew what happened, only that they were gone forever. Two years was a long time, but to Kieran, it felt like yesterday.

      “Someday, I’m going to take this boat and try to find them,” Dermot announced.

      Though his twin brother had always been a dreamer and an optimist, Kieran had been given the practical genes in the pair. Dermot spent his allowance like he had a bottomless piggy bank. Kieran saved every penny. Dermot was the first one to jump, Kieran always looked very carefully before leaping. Dermot saw the possibilities in every situation while Kieran saw the pitfalls.

      Kieran glanced over at the section of teak that Dermot had been sanding. It was rough and uneven. Even at work, Dermot favored speed over quality. But then, the four brothers were all different. It was hard to believe they came from the same parents.

      Cameron, the eldest, was quiet and creative, so clever that he immediately knew exactly how to get a job done. Their baby brother, Ronan, was sensitive and compassionate, the kind of kid who stuck up for the underdog. Yet their brotherly bonds were unbreakable. They always stood together.

      He and his brothers were in the process of restoring an old 22-foot sloop that had been abandoned at their grandfather’s boatyard. Though their grandfather insisted that they were too young to take it out on their own, that didn’t stop them. They’d been working on it for nearly a year, after school and on weekends, and had hoped to put it in the water to celebrate Cameron’s fourteenth birthday.

      “I used to think about it all the time,” Cameron murmured. “Now, it just makes me sad. We’re never going to figure it out.”

      “It makes me mad,” Dermot said. “Why didn’t they wait for us? Maybe if we’d been along, things might have been different.”

      “You really think so?” Ronan asked. Since the accident, any mention of sailing made the youngest Quinn uneasy. He had stubbornly refused to set foot on a boat, making family sailing trips with their grandfather impossible.

      Kieran felt a mixture of both—anger and sadness. Their lives would have been so much different had their parents lived. Instead of just surviving their grief, they’d be laughing and loving and enjoying every day. He’d seen each of his brothers change in significant ways, but he’d felt the change in himself the most.

      He’d become cautious and careful. He wasn’t willing to take any chances. He preferred his life to be perfectly ordered, so he knew exactly what to expect from day to day. He did his homework early, he completed his chores without complaint and he avoided conflict at every cost. It was hard to know what turns life would take, but Kieran did all he could to anticipate the future.

      He didn’t want to be unprepared again. Two years ago, he and his brothers had gone to the marina to wave goodbye to their parents. Their father had told Cameron to watch over his younger brothers and their mother had kissed them each goodbye, her eyes filled with tears. None of them had ever anticipated what was about to happen. Nor could they have been prepared for it even if they had.

      When Jamie and Suzanne Quinn were a week late for their arrival, the boys and their grandfather were concerned but not worried. Many things could delay a trip seven days—broken rigging, the doldrums, a torn main sail.

      But when a week stretched into two weeks and then a month, everyone was forced to face the truth. Something bad had happened. After a year, a funeral was held. The boys filled a single empty casket with memories of the parents they’d lost.

      To help them deal with their grief, Martin Quinn put the boys to work at the boatyard. “Work will soothe a troubled mind,” he told them. “Work will make you strong.”

      Martin had used work to get over his own grief many years before, when their grandmother had died in childbirth. Martin had come to the U.S. from Ireland two years later, a widower with his young son, hoping to make a new life for himself away from a homeland that held so many sad memories.

      Dermot sat down next to Kieran and grabbed a worn piece of sandpaper. “I know they’re dead. But what I really want to know is why.”

      “When we finish this boat, you can sail it across the ocean and find out,” Ronan said.

      Kieran drew a sharp breath. “This boat will never get out of the marina without sails. Where are we going to find the money to buy those?”

      Cameron sat back on his heels. “We can maybe find something used. Still, we’re all going to have to pitch in some cash.” He looked at Dermot. “How much do you have saved?”

      Dermot shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe twenty dollars.”

      “Ronan?”

      “One-hundred-seventy dollars,” the nine-year old said.

      “Jaysus,” Cameron muttered. “You’re like a little squirrel.”