Previous
Intro
Carl Matt’s home life is chaotic. He and his siblings—older sister Sarah and younger brother Harley—each have a different father. The siblings’ mother, Kerry, regularly takes what her children call “holidays,” abandoning them for days at a time while she takes a break from her maternal responsibilities. When Carl is 15, one of those holidays unexpectedly stretches into weeks and then into months. In December, Sarah sends Carl and Harley to visit their Aunt Beryl in Wattle Beach before flying off to Europe to start a new life of her own.
Aunt Beryl leaves Carl and Harley to their own devices while she spends her days at the bowls club or with her boyfriend, Bruce, a tow truck operator with questionable business practices. Ten-year-old Harley starts running with a pack of local boys, but Carl struggles to connect with other teens, notwithstanding the obsession he develops with a local girl named Maddie Duncan. When Maddie gets drunk at a New Year’s Eve party, her boyfriend, Nathan, denies responsibility for her. Carl steps in and helps Maddie’s friend Justine take the incapacitated Maddie back to Justine’s house.
When it becomes apparent that neither Kerry nor Sarah is coming to reclaim Harley and Carl, Beryl enrolls both boys in local schools, but she forces Carl to drop out and find work after he turns 16 and ages out of the welfare system. This is much harder than Carl anticipates, in part because the Matt family has an unsavory reputation around Wattle Beach, especially in relation to the Duncans.
When Carl meets Joy Duncan by chance, she pays him for an afternoon’s work building an enclosure for an injured osprey she’s rehabilitating. When she learns that Carl is a Matt, she explains that the strife between their families goes back decades. When Skip Duncan cost Dessie Matt, Carl’s grandfather, his job, Dessie retaliated and, in the process, caused an accident that seriously injured Skip, leaving him with a permanent limp.
Now, Skip runs one of the two barges that ferry passengers—a few locals but mostly campers and day trippers—between Wattle Beach and nearby Bede Island. His business is on the verge of failure, however, as he and the other barge engage in a price war. Despite Skip’s hatred of the Matts, Joy convinces him to provisionally hire Carl. And Carl’s strong work ethic and the innovative ways he finds to attract customers soon earn Skip’s grudging respect.
But Harley’s misbehavior and Beryl’s ongoing threats to kick him and his brother out vex Carl. When Harley gets suspended and Beryl responds by chaining him up in the house like a dog, Joy offers to keep an eye on him while Carl is at work. Under her gentle, loving care, Harley quickly loses his tough edge and begins to settle down. Soon, Joy and Skip are offering to foster Harley until Kerry returns.
In April, Harley is involved in a boating accident and nearly becomes lost at sea. Skip and Carl rescue him after everyone else has given up hope. Soon afterward, Joy invites Carl to join her, Harley, Maddie, and Justine in releasing the osprey. On their day trip, Carl finds himself effortlessly becoming friends with Justine and Maddie. The friendship comes too late, in a way: Joy, wanting Maddie away from Nathan’s bad influence, is sending Maddie to live with her sister, Helen, in the same city where Carl grew up.
When Carl shows up at the going-away party Justine throws for Maddie, he discovers that he has become something of a hero. The other teens are interested in his work on the barge, and they’re impressed by the role he played in Harley’s dramatic rescue. Even better, Justine makes it clear that she has a romantic feelings for him.
But things soon come crashing down around Carl. First, Beryl tells him the whole story of the Duncan-Matt feud. In fact, Dessie didn’t just disable Skip: he also killed Skip and Joy’s 10-year-old son, Graham. Then, the other barge’s owners start playing dirty. Soon, Skip has almost no customers left, and he decides to sell the barge. Carl feels like he and Skip have lost, and he resents Skip for giving up hope.
A few days later, however, Carl and everyone else learn that developers are planning to build a bridge from the mainland to Bede Island. Someone tipped Skip off, allowing him to sell before his barge was a complete liability. In the end, it’s the other barge that loses since all the money its owners—a man named Lovell and, it turns out, Beryl’s boyfriend Bruce—put into winning the war was effectively for nothing. Bruce and Beryl flee town, and Joy invites Carl to live with the Duncans, at least until they can find his mother.
Carl isn’t ready to face the truth about his mother, whom he fears has not returned because she doesn’t love him and Harley. But Joy convinces him to visit the Missing Persons Bureau in the closest city. There, Carl finds Kerry in a file of photographs of unidentified and unclaimed bodies, and he finally accepts the truth that his mother is dead. Angry and broken, he considers running away from his pain. But then he realizes that his best chance of happiness is with people who love him, so he takes Joy up on her invitation.
