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ingredient in agricultural chemicals.”
    Oh, dear God. Most of the island had been used for agriculture in “the old days.” These people really were going to scrape off the entire surface of Joyeuse Island, then charge her for the cost of incinerating the dirt.

Chapter Nine
    Joe sat in Emma’s kitchen, which was tastefully decorated in serene shades of blue and yellow. Her lovely face, too, was serene. The window over her sink looked out on the Gulf of Mexico. A breath of wind stirred its waters, spreading ripples of turquoise all the way to the horizon. Emma was one of those people who could make you feel good by being herself, yet here Joe sat, intending to bring up two subjects that would make Emma feel bad. He felt like a clueless oaf.
    Speaking of clueless oafs, she opened the conversation with a question about the most clueless oaf of all. “So how’s your dad?”
    Was she asking because she cared about Joe and his fractious relationship with Sly? Or was she asking because Joe’s dad had been obviously and publicly hitting on this very dignified woman? His father liked women and women liked him, but Emma wasn’t just any woman. Joe imagined that the goddess of trees would look like Emma, tall and straight-backed, with skin the color of seasoned mahogany. Sly Mantooth looked like a long-haul trucker with a history of forgetting to come home when his wife needed him.
    â€œMy dad is the same dose of bad news that he’s always been. Why do you even let him talk to you?”
    â€œI like your dad. He’s going to take me fishing this afternoon.”
    Joe did not know this, despite the fact that Sly could only keep this date with Emma if he had the use of Joe’s john boat.
    â€œYoung man, if I could handle Douglass Everett all those years, I can certainly handle your father. He’s smooth, but he ain’t that smooth. If he wants to get me out of this house and show me a good time, I will let him do it and I will smile the whole while. I am bored. I am lonely. And if you’re going to start telling me what to do, you’re going to feel the rough side of my tongue.”
    Joe said the only thing that a man raised by his mother could say to a lady who had said her piece. He said, “Yes, ma’am.”
    Emma had started their conversation by bringing up one of his two difficult topics—his father—then demolishing his arguments against Emma spending time with Sly before Joe even got a chance to put them into play. Joe’s father might not be all that smooth, but Emma was.
    Joe caved. He left the subject of his father and moved on to his second conversational topic.
    â€œWho is Oscar, why was my wife talking about him yesterday, and how come you know about him and I don’t?”
    ***
    Faye watched Nadia use a trowel to scoop dirt into a jar with her customary precision. The dirt, enclosed by the hyper-clean jar, was destined for Nadia’s floating laboratory.
    This time, Nadia was sampling for arsenic and arsenic only. She had already found the limits of the kerosene contamination. The spot of fuel-tainted soil was only a few feet across, and it penetrated only a few inches into the soil. In other words, the tank had not been sitting there leaking for years and years. Faye was the one who had poked a hole in it, so she was solely responsible for any kerosene contamination that she had caused. Fortunately, there didn’t seem to be a lot of it, and it didn’t seem to have reached the groundwater.
    The arsenic, however, showed a different pattern. The levels were high enough to be worrisome. There was no identifiable source. And the contamination was more widespread. Even non-chemist Faye could tell that these were bad things.
    Gerry had made Faye’s problem visible by sticking red surveyor’s flags into the spots where Nadia had collected contaminated samples that tested positive for arsenic. While waiting for the next batch