"Holy shit, Effy," Kate said, her voice hushed. What she knew about Tony was pretty limited, mostly things she'd been told by Effy or heard in passing through other people, but she still felt sort of sick at the thought. That wasn't the sort of thing that happened all the time and it wasn't the sort of thing you often heard about people recovering from.

"He was okay?" she asked slowly, watching the curve of Effy's shoulders just in front of her in the canoe. "I mean... you took care of him and he was okay?"

Briefly, she tried to imagine herself in the same situation, taking care of Marshall like that and she had to shake it away almost as soon as she began. The bee sting had been bad enough. Even that had sent her to pieces -- though the bout of island honesty hadn't helped much -- and she didn't ever want to think of anything worse happening to him.