Barefoot

ALSO BY ELIN HILDERBRAND

The Beach Club

Nantucket Nights

Summer People

The Blue Bistro

The Love Season

For Heather Osteen Thorpe: in honor of the dollhouse, the roller-skating shows, the Peanut Butter and Jelly Theater, the Wawa parties, and now, six kids between us. You are the best sister-friend a woman could ask for.

PART ONE

JUNE

T hree women step off of a plane. It sounded like the start of a joke.

Joshua Flynn, age twenty-two, native of Nantucket Island, senior at Middlebury Col ege, summer employee of the Nantucket Memorial Airport, where his father was an air traffic control er, noticed the women immediately. They arrived on a US Airways flight from LaGuardia. Three women, two smal children, nothing unusual about that, so what caught Josh’s eye? Josh Flynn was a creative-writing student at Middlebury, and his mentor, the writer-in-residence, Chas Gorda, liked to say that a writer smel s a good story in the air like it’s an approaching storm. The hair on your arms will stand up, Chas Gorda promised. Josh checked his forearms—nothing—and tugged at his fluorescent orange vest. He approached the plane to help Carlo unload the luggage. Josh’s father, Tom Flynn, would be at a computer terminal five stories above Josh’s head, occasional y spying out the window to make sure Josh was doing what he cal ed “a decent job.” Being under surveil ance like this provided as unsettling a work situation as Josh could imagine, and so in the two weeks he’d been at it, he’d learned to sniff for stories without giving himself away.

Two of the women stood on the tarmac. Josh could tel they were sisters. Sister One was very thin with long light-brown hair that blew al over the place in the breeze; she had a pointy nose, blue eyes, and she was visibly unhappy. Her forehead was as scrunched and wrinkled as one of those funny Chinese dogs. Sister Two had the same blue eyes, the same sharp nose, but instead of scowling, Sister Two’s face conveyed baffled sadness. She blinked a lot, like she was about to cry. She was heavier than her sister, and her hair, cut bluntly to her shoulders, was a Scandinavian blond. She carried a floral-print bag bursting with diapers and a colorful set of plastic keys; she was taking deep, exaggerated breaths, as though the flight had just scared her to death.

The third woman teetered at the top of the steps with a baby in her arms and a little boy of about four peeking around her legs. She had a pretty, round face and corkscrew curls that peeked out from underneath a straw hat. She was wearing jeans with muddy knees and a pair of rubber clogs.

The sisters waited at the bottom of the stairs for this third woman to descend. Heavy-breathing Sister reached out for the baby, shaking the keys.

“Come to Mama,” she said . “Here, Melanie, I’l take him.” In addition to the baby, Straw Hat held a package of Cheez-Its, a green plastic cup, and an air-sickness bag. She was two steps from the ground when the little boy behind her shouted, “Auntie Brenda, here I come!”

And jumped.

He was aiming for Scowling Sister, but in his excitement, he hurtled his forty-some pound body into the back of Straw Hat, who went sprawling onto the tarmac with the baby. Josh bolted forward—though he knew he wouldn’t be quick enough to save anyone. Straw Hat covered the baby’s head with her hands and took the brunt of the fal on her knees and her left arm. Ouch.

“Melanie!” Heavy-breathing Sister cried. She dropped the diaper bag and raced toward Straw Hat. The baby wasn’t making any noise. Neck broken. Dead. Josh felt his spirit trickle onto the tarmac as though he’d wet his pants. But then—a cry! The baby had merely been sucking in air, released now in heroic tones. The baby was alive! Heavy-breathing Sister took the baby and studied him for obvious injury, then shushed him against her shoulder. Scowling Sister approached with the perpetrator of the crime, older brother, clinging to her legs.

“Is the baby okay?” Scowling Sister asked. Her expression shifted from impatient to impatient and concerned.

“He’s fine,” Heavy-breathing Sister said. “Just scared.” She reached out to Straw Hat. “Are you okay, Melanie? Are you okay? Do you feel okay?”

Melanie dusted the tarmac grit off her face; there was a scrape on her elbow, some blood. The Cheez-Its blew off down the runway; the plastic cup rol ed to Josh’s feet. He picked it up, and the air-sickness bag as wel .

“Would you like me to get a first-aid kit?” he asked Melanie.

She put a hand to her cheek, and the other hand massaged her stomach. “Oh, no. Thank you, though. I’m fine.”

“Are you sure?” Heavy-breathing Sister said. “What about . . . ?”

“I’m fine, ” Melanie said.

“Blaine wil apologize,” Heavy-breathing Sister said. “Apologize, Blaine.”

“Sorry,” the boy mumbled.

“You could have hurt your brother. You could have hurt Melanie. You just can’t do things like that, sweetheart. You have to be careful.”

“He said he was sorry, Vick,” Scowling Sister said.

This was not joke material. The three women, col ectively, were the most miserable-looking people Josh had ever seen.

“Welcome to Nantucket,” Josh said, hoping his words might cheer them, though Carlo was always reminding him that he was not an ambassador. He should just tend to the bags; his father would be watching.

Scowling Sister rol ed her eyes. “Thanks a lot,” she said.

They should have driven to the island, Brenda thought as they climbed into a cab outside the terminal. She had been coming to Nantucket her entire life and they always drove, and then put the car on the ferry. This year, because of the kids and Vicki’s cancer and a desire to get to Nantucket as expediently as possible no matter what the cost, they had flown. They shouldn’t have broken with tradition in Brenda’s opinion, because look what happened—they were off to a horrible start already. Melanie had vomited the whole flight; then she fel , giving Vicki something else to worry about.

The whole point of the summer was to help Vicki relax, to soothe her, to ease the sickness from her body. That’s the point, Melanie! Now, Melanie was sitting behind Brenda in the cab with her eyes closed. Vicki had invited Melanie to Nantucket for the summer because Melanie had “problems.”

She was dealing with a “complicated situation” back in Connecticut. But it was also the case that Brenda’s company alone had never been enough for Vicki. Al their lives, al through growing up—whether it was camping trips, nights at the summer carnival, or church on Sunday—Vicki had brought a friend.

This summer it was Melanie Patchen. The news that Melanie would be joining them was sprung on Brenda at the last minute, giving her no opportunity to protest. During the limousine ride from Darien to LaGuardia, Brenda had heard about the “complicated situation”: Melanie and her husband, Peter Patchen, had been trying “forever” to get pregnant; they had, in the past calendar year, endured seven failed rounds of in vitro fertilization. Then, a few weeks ago, Peter admitted he was having an affair with a young woman from his office named Frances Digitt. Melanie was devastated. She was so upset she made herself sick—she couldn’t keep food down, she took to her bed. Then she missed her period. She was pregnant—and the “complicated” part of her “situation” was that she had left Connecticut without tel ing her husband that she was leaving, and without tel ing him she was pregnant. She was stealing away with Vicki and Brenda and the kids because she “needed time to think. Time away.”

Brenda had taken in this information silently but skeptical y. The last thing she and Vicki needed this summer was a stowaway from a complicated situation. Vicki had lung cancer, and Brenda had problems of her own. Earlier that spring, she had been fired from her teaching job at Champion University for sleeping with her only male student—and, as if that weren’t catastrophic enough, there were “unrelated” criminal charges pending, concerning a valuable piece of university-owned art. Sex scandal! Criminal charges! Brenda had gone from being hot property—a celebrated young professor, the It girl of Champion University—to being the subject of rumor and gossip. Everyone on Champion’s campus had been talking about her: Dr. Brenda Lyndon, who earned top teaching marks in the English Department her very first semester, had conducted an il icit affair with one of her students. And then, for a reason nobody could discern, she had “vandalized” an original Jackson Pol ock—a bequest from a gung-ho alumnus—that hung on the wal of the English Department’s Barrington Room. In addition to the mortifying shame of her relationship with John Walsh, Brenda had been forced to hire a lawyer she couldn’t afford to deal with the vandalism charges. Best-case scenario, Brian Delaney, Esquire, said, would be the university’s art restoration team deciding they could tinker with the painting, fil in the “divot,” make the painting as good as new. Worst-case scenario would be irrevocable damage. The university was stil looking into the matter.

Brenda had ostensibly come to Nantucket because Vicki had cancer and needed help. But Brenda was also unemployed, unemployable, and in serious need of money. Melanie wasn’t the only one who needed “time away” or “time to think”—Brenda needed it, too. Desperately. She had devoted her entire career to one narrow subject: Fleming Trainor’s novel, The Innocent Impostor. This little-known volume, published in 1790, had been the topic of Brenda’s dissertation and of the surprisingly popular seminar she taught at Champion. Since Brenda would be forever ostracized from the world of academia, the only way The Innocent Impostor could make her any money now—at least the kind of money she needed to pay a lawyer and / or a “hefty fine”—was if she used it in some unconventional, and un-academic, way. It was Brian Delaney, Esquire, who suggested Brenda write a screenplay. At first Brenda scoffed, but as Brian Delaney, Esquire, eloquently pointed out: Hollywood loves that old-time shit. Look at Vanity Fair , look at Jane Austen. The Innocent Impostor was so obscure it wasn’t even available on Amazon.com, but Brenda was desperate, not only for money, but for a project, something to work on. She batted the idea around for a while, and the more she thought about it, the less outlandish it seemed. This summer, if anyone asked her what she did for a living, she would tel them she was writing a screenplay.

The other reason that Brenda had come to Nantucket was that John Walsh was in Manhattan, and even in a city of eight mil ion people, Brenda felt his presence as acutely as if he lived on the other side of her exposed-brick wal . She had to sever ties with John Walsh no matter how strongly she felt about him, she had to flee the city of her disgrace, she had to help her sister. A summer on Nantucket was the answer al the way around, and the cottage that had belonged to Brenda and Vicki’s great-aunt Liv was, after three years, out of probate. The two sisters owned it now, official y.

The question wasn’t, why was she here? The question was, why wasn’t she happier she was here?

Brenda held the baby tightly on her lap and put an arm around her four-year-old nephew, Blaine, who was buckled in next to her. The cabbie said,

“Where to?” And Brenda said, “Shel Street, ’Sconset.”

Shell Street, ’Sconset: These were Brenda’s three favorite words in the English language. It had not slipped Brenda’s mind that one way to access a large sum of money was to sel out her half of Aunt Liv’s house to Vicki and Ted. But Brenda couldn’t bear to relinquish the piece of this island she now owned: half of a very smal house. Brenda gazed out the window at the scrubby evergreens that bordered Milestone Road, at the acres of moors held in conservation. She inhaled the air, so rich and clean that it worked like an anesthetic; Blaine’s eyelids started to droop.

Brenda couldn’t help thinking that Walsh would love it here. He was a man of the outdoors, being typical y Australian; he liked beaches and waves, open space, clear sky. He was at a loss in Manhattan, al that manufactured civilization baffled him, the subway suffocated him, he preferred to walk, thank you, mate. How many times had he traversed Central Park in a snowstorm to get to Brenda’s apartment? How many times had they met secretly in Riverside Park after class? Too many, apparently, and not secretly enough. One person had harbored suspicions, the wrong person, and Brenda’s career in academia was over a semester and a half after it began. She had been branded with the scarlet letter despite the fact that Walsh was thirty-one years old and Brenda herself only thirty. The situation at Champion had been such a hideous mess, the cause of such powerful shame, that Brenda had no choice but to end everything with Walsh. He wanted to come visit her here. It would be different, he said, out of the city. Maybe, Brenda thought. But not different enough.

Brenda was relieved that Aunt Liv wasn’t alive to witness her fal from grace. Aunt Liv, a celebrated professor of Russian literature at Bryn Mawr Col ege, had cultivated Brenda for a life in academia. She had served as a mentor and a role model. How many hours had they talked about Fleming Trainor—and Isaak Babel, Tolstoy, Solzhenitzyn, Dumas, Hugo, Whitman? How many times had they agreed there was no nobler pursuit than the study of literature, no better way to spend an evening than alone with Turgenev?

I was doing so well, Brenda thought. Until Walsh.

When Brenda thought of Aunt Liv now, the term “rol ing over in her grave” came to mind. So in some way this summer on Nantucket was about seeking atonement. Brenda wanted others to forgive and, more saliently, forget; she wanted to find some peace for her roiling conscience. Time to think. Time away. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, having Melanie around. Misery did love company.

Brenda checked behind her again. Now Vicki’s eyes were closed. She and Melanie were both asleep, and weirder stil , they were holding hands, like they were lovers. Brenda tightened her grip on the warm, doughy baby in her lap. She felt like a six-year-old, jealous and left out.

Victoria Lyndon Stowe had been making lists al her life. She attributed this to the fact that she was the firstborn, a classic type-A personality, something her parents did nothing but reinforce. Vicki is so organized, she never forgets a thing. As early as the fifth grade, Vicki wrote down what she wore to school each day so that she didn’t repeat an outfit. She made lists of her favorite movies and books. She made a list of what each friend gave her for her birthday, and she always wrote the thank-you notes in order so that she could check them off, boom, boom, boom, just like that. At Duke, there had been myriad lists—she was president of the Tri-Delts, the head of the Drama Society, and a campus tour guide, so there were lists for each of those things, and a separate list for her studies. Then, out in the real world, the lists multiplied. There were “single girl living and working in the city” lists, lists for her wedding to Ted Stowe, and final y the endless lists of a mother of young children . Schedule doctor’s appointment; return library books; save milk cartons for planting radishes; money for babysitter; playdate with Carson, Wheeler, Sam; call balloon man for birthday party; buy summer pajamas; oil the tricycle; have carpets cleaned in the playroom.

When Vicki was diagnosed with lung cancer, the lists came to a halt. This was her doctor’s suggestion, though Vicki initial y protested. Lists kept her world in order; they were a safety net that prevented important things from fal ing through. But Dr. Garcia, and then her husband, Ted, insisted.

No more lists. Let them go. If she forgot to pick up the dry cleaning, so what? She would undergo two months of intensive chemotherapy, and if the chemo worked as it was supposed to—shrinking her tumor to a resectable size—it would be fol owed by thoracic surgery in which they would remove her left lung and her hilar lymph nodes. Chemotherapy, surgery, survival—these things were too big for any list. And so, the lists had al been thrown away, except for the one Vicki kept in her head: the List of Things That No Longer Matter.

A brother and sister running across the street, late for their dentist appointments. A pretty skirt worn with the wrong shoes. Peterson’s Shorebirds. (There was a group of retired women in Darien who wandered the beach with this exact volume in hand. Vicki hated these women. She hated them for being so lucky—they didn’t have cancer, thus they had the luxury of spending precious minutes of their lives tracking an oystercatcher or a blue heron.)

Unfortunately for Brenda and Melanie, there were things about this summer on Nantucket that had initial y been placed on Vicki’s List of Things That No Longer Matter—such as whether Brenda and Melanie would get along, or whether al five of them would be comfortable in Aunt Liv’s summer cottage—but now it seemed like they might matter after al . Vicki’s so organized, she never forgets a thing. But the fact was, Vicki had forgotten the physical details of Aunt Liv’s cottage. When Vicki made the radical decision to come to Nantucket for the summer, her only thought had been of the comfort that Aunt Liv’s cottage, and Nantucket, would give her. Every summer growing up she had stayed in the cottage with her parents and Brenda and Aunt Liv. It was her favorite place, it defined summertime, and Vicki’s mother, El en Lyndon, had always sworn that any ailment in the world—physical or emotional—could be cured by a little Nantucket sand between your toes. Everyone else thought Vicki was crazy to go away for the summer, endangering herself even, but another thing that Vicki put on her List of Things That No Longer Matter was what everyone else thought.

Inviting Brenda to come along had been the obvious choice. Vicki needed help with the kids and getting back and forth to chemo, and Brenda, fired from Champion in a blaze of scandal with attendant legal trouble, was desperate to escape the city. It was summer, salvaged for both of them.

In the harrowing days fol owing Vicki’s diagnosis, they talked about reliving their memories from childhood: long beach days, catching fireflies, bike rides to Sesachacha Pond, corn on the cob, games of Monopoly and badminton, picking blackberries, twilight walks up to Sankaty Head Lighthouse, which spun its beacon like a cowboy with a wild lasso, picnics of bologna-and-potato-chip sandwiches, spending every day barefoot. It would be just the two of them, creating memories for Vicki’s own kids. It was a chance for Vicki to heal, for Brenda to regroup. They would fol ow their mother’s advice: Nantucket sand between the toes. It might cure anything: cancer, ruined careers, badly ended love affairs. Just the two of us, they said as they sat under the harsh hospital lights awaiting a second opinion. It would be a sister summer.

But how, real y, could Vicki leave her best friend behind in Darien—especial y with the monstrous news of Peter’s affair fol owed by an even bigger stunner (whispered, frantical y, at three in the morning over the telephone). Melanie was—after al this time, after so many costly and invasive procedures—pregnant!

Come to Nantucket, Vicki had said immediately, and without thinking (and without consulting Ted or Brenda).

Okay, Melanie had said just as quickly. I will.

As the taxi pul ed up in front of Aunt Liv’s cottage, Vicki feared she’d made a mistake. The house was smal er than Vicki remembered, a lot smal er. It was a shoe box; Blaine had friends with playhouses bigger than this. Had it shrunk? Vicki wondered. Because she remembered whole summers with her parents and Brenda and Aunt Liv, and the house had seemed, if not palatial, then at least comfortable.

“It’s darling,” Melanie said as she stepped out of the cab. “Oh, Vicki, it’s al that I imagined.”

Vicki unhinged the front gate. The landscapers had come, thank God. Melanie loved flowers. Pale pink New Dawn roses cascaded down a trel is, and the front beds had been planted with cosmos and blue delphiniums and fat, happy-faced zinnias. There were butterflies. The postage-stamp lawn had been recently mowed.

“Where’s the sandbox?” Blaine said. “Where’s the curly slide?”

Vicki produced a key from her purse and opened the front door, which was made from three rough-hewn planks and sported a brass scal op-shel knocker. The doorway was low. As Vicki stepped through, she thought of her husband, Ted, a hale and hearty six foot five. He had told her from the beginning that he was vehemently against her going to Nantucket. Did she real y want to spend al summer with her sister, with whom her relationship was spotty at best? And Melanie Patchen, who would be as needy as Vicki, if not more so? And did she real y want her chemotherapy

—the chemo that she was asking to save her life—to be administered at the Nantucket Cottage Hospital? Wasn’t that the equivalent of being treated in the Third World? What the hell are you thinking? he asked. He sounded confused and defeated. Ted was a hedge fund manager in Manhattan; he liked problems he could fel like trees, problems he could solve with brute strength and canny intel igence. The horrifying diagnosis, the wing-and-a-prayer treatment plan, and then Vicki’s wacko decision to flee for the summer left him confounded. But Vicki couldn’t believe she was being asked to explain herself.

It was, quite possibly, the last summer of her life, and she didn’t want to spend it in stifling hot Darien under the sympathetic scrutiny of her friends and peers. Already, Vicki’s circumstances were being repeated like the Song of the Day: Did you hear? Vicki Stowe has lung cancer. They’re going to try chemo first and then they’ll decide if it’s worth operating. They don’t know if she’ll make it. A steady stream of food and flowers arrived along with the offer of playdates. Let us take Blaine. Let us take the baby. So you can rest. Vicki was the new Darien charity. She couldn’t stand the casseroles or the cal a lilies; she couldn’t stand her children being farmed out like they were orphans. The women circled like buzzards—some close friends, some friends of friends, some women she barely knew. Ted didn’t get it; he saw it as outreach by a caring community. That’s why we moved here, he said. These are our neighbors, our friends. But Vicki’s desire to get away grew every time the phone rang, every time a Volvo station wagon pul ed into the driveway.

Vicki’s mother was the one who had suggested Nantucket; she would have joined Vicki herself but for an il -timed knee replacement. Vicki latched on to the idea, despite the fact that her mother wouldn’t be coming to help. Aunt Liv’s estate had been settled in March; the house belonged to her and Brenda now. It felt like a sign. Brenda was al for it. Even Vicki’s oncologist, Dr. Garcia, gave his okay; he assured her that chemo was chemo. The treatment would be the same on Nantucket as it would be in Connecticut, or in the city. The people in Vicki’s cancer support group, al of whom embraced holistic as wel as conventional medical treatment, understood. Enjoy yourself, they said. Relax. Play with your kids. Be outside. Talk with your sister, your friend. Look at the stars. Eat organic vegetables. Try to forget about fine-needle aspirations, CT scans, metastases. Fight the good fight, on your own terms, in your own space. Have a lovely summer.

Vicki had held Ted hostage with her eyes. Since her diagnosis, she’d watched him constantly—tying his necktie, removing change from his suit pocket, stirring sugar into his coffee—hoping to memorize him, to take him with her wherever she went.

I’ll miss you, she said. But I’m going.

The cottage had been built in 1803—back, Vicki thought, when life was both busier and simpler, back when people were shorter and held lower expectations. The cottage had original y been one room with a fireplace built into the north wal , but over the years, three “warts” had been added for bedrooms. Al of the rooms were smal with low ceilings; it was like living in a dol house. That was what Aunt Liv had loved about the cottage—it was life pared down, scaled way back. There was no TV, no answering machine, no computer or microwave or stereo. It was a true summerhouse, Aunt Liv used to say, because it encouraged you to spend most of your time outside—on the back deck overlooking the yard and garden, or down the street at ’Sconset’s public beach. Back in 1803 when the woman of the house had cancer, there were no oncologists or treatment plans. A woman worked right through it—stoking the fire, preparing meals, stirring the laundry in a cauldron of boiling water—until one day she died in bed.

These were Vicki’s thoughts as she stepped inside.

The cottage had been cleaned and the furniture aired. Vicki had arranged for al of this by telephone; apparently, houses that sat dormant for three years were common stuff on Nantucket. The house smel ed okay, maybe a bit too optimistical y like air freshener. The living room floors were made from wide, buttery pine boards that showed every scratch from a dragged chair, every divot from a pair of high heels. The plaster-and-wood-beamed ceiling was low, and the furniture was old-ladyish, like something out of a Victorian bed-and-breakfast: Aunt Liv’s delft blue high-back sofa, the dainty coffee table with a silver-plated tea service resting on a piece of Belgian lace. There were the bookshelves bowing under the weight of Aunt Liv’s summer library, there was the fireplace with mismatched andirons. Vicki moved into the smal kitchen, appliances circa 1962, silver-threaded Formica, Aunt Liv’s china, which was painted with little Dutch girls in wooden shoes. The caretaker’s bil was secured to the refrigerator with a magnet advertising a restaurant cal ed the Elegant Dump, which had been defunct for years.

The west bedroom was sunny. That would be Melanie’s room. Twin beds were made up with the pink-and-orange-striped sheets that Vicki remembered from her childhood. (What she remembered most vividly was staining the sheets during her first period. Aunt Liv had sensibly pul ed out the hydrogen peroxide while El en Lyndon had chirped with over-the-top sentimentality about how “Vicki is a woman now” and Brenda glowered and chewed her cuticles.) Vicki would take the largest bedroom, with the king bed, where she would sleep with the kids, and Brenda would sleep in the old nursery, a room just slightly bigger than Vicki’s walk-in closet at home. This was the room Aunt Liv had always occupied—it was cal ed the old nursery because both Aunt Liv and Vicki and Brenda’s grandmother Joy had slept in cribs in that room alongside the family’s baby nurse, Miss George, more than eighty years earlier. Once Aunt Liv had arthritis and every other old-person ailment, Vicki’s parents suggested she take the big bedroom—but that didn’t suit Liv. She stopped coming to Nantucket altogether, and then she died.

There was a flurry of activity as everyone piled into the house, dragging luggage and boxes. The cabbie stood by the car, waiting to be paid. That was Vicki’s department. She was going to pay for everything al summer. She was summer’s sponsor. She handed the kid twenty bucks. Enough?

He grinned. Too much. “Thanks, ma’am. Enjoy your stay.”

As the cab pul ed away, Blaine started to cry. Vicki worried that al the change would traumatize him; there had been a scene at breakfast when he’d said good-bye to Ted, and then he’d knocked Melanie off the airplane’s steps. He was acting out. It was three o’clock, and although he was outgrowing his nap, Vicki knew he needed some quiet time. She herself was bone weary. Just picking up her bag and walking five feet to the bedroom made her feel like she’d climbed Mount Kilimanjaro. Her lungs were on fire. She hated them.

Suddenly, Brenda made a noise even worse than Blaine’s whiny cry. She was moaning in that Oh no, oh no, no, the-world-is-ending kind of way .

What was it? A dead animal in the old nursery? A family of dead animals? Vicki lowered her bottom onto her bed’s squishy mattress. She didn’t have the energy to move, so she cal ed out, “What’s wrong, Bren?”

Brenda appeared in the absurdly low doorway of Vicki’s bedroom. “I can’t find my book.”

Vicki didn’t have to ask which book. This was Brenda, her sister. There was only one book: Brenda’s two-hundred-year-old first edition of Fleming Trainor’s The Innocent Impostor. This book, a little-known novel of a mediocre Early American writer, was the foundation of Brenda’s career. Brenda had spent six years getting her master’s degree and doctorate from the University of Iowa, she had written a dissertation and had part of it published in an obscure literary journal, and she’d landed the job at Champion University—al because of this book. The first edition was an antique, worth thousands of dol ars, Brenda claimed. She had owned it since she was fourteen years old, when she bought it for fifty cents at a flea market. The book was, for al intents and purposes, Brenda’s pet. She wouldn’t consider leaving it in Manhattan, where the subletter could get at it. It had traveled with them in a special briefcase—temperature and humidity control ed, the whole nine yards. Now it was missing.

“Are you sure?” Vicki said. “Did you check everywhere?” Despite the fact that Brenda’s missing book fel squarely onto Vicki’s List of Things That No Longer Matter, she tried to summon sympathy in the interest of getting things off to a good start. And crises of this nature were Vicki’s specialty. With the kids, her day was spent hunting for things: the other shoe, the bal that rol ed under the sofa, the pacifier!

“Everywhere,” Brenda said. It was amazing how quickly her demeanor had changed. She had been a bitch al day, but now that her book was missing, she was turning into the cake that someone left out in the rain. Her cheeks were blotching, her hands were twitching, and Vicki sensed tears weren’t far off.

“What if I lost the book?” Brenda said. “What if I left it at”—the next word was so awful, it stuck like a chunk of carrot in the back of her throat

—“LaGuardia?”

Vicki shut her eyes. She was so tired she could sleep like this, sitting up. “You carried it off the plane with you, remember? You had your little purse, and . . .”

“The briefcase,” Brenda said. She blinked rapidly, trying to fend off the tears. Vicki felt a surge of anger. If Brenda had been the one to get cancer, she wouldn’t have been able to deal. God never gives you more than you can handle—this saying was repeated with conviction at Vicki’s cancer support group—and that is why God did not give Brenda cancer.

Somewhere in the house, the baby was crying. A second later, Melanie appeared. “I think he’s hungry,” she said. She caught a whiff of Brenda’s desperate mien—the hands were stil twitching—and she said, “Honey, what’s wrong? What’s wrong? ”

“Brenda lost her book,” Vicki said, trying to sound grave. “Her old book. The antique.”

“That book is my life,” Brenda said. “I’ve had it forever, it’s priceless . . . okay, I feel sick. That book is my talisman, my good-luck charm.”

Good-luck charm? Vicki thought. If the book real y had supernatural powers, wouldn’t it somehow have kept Brenda from sleeping with John Walsh and ruining her career?

“Cal the airport,” Vicki said. She took Porter from Melanie and latched him onto her breast. As soon as the chemo started on Tuesday, he would have to be weaned. Bottles, formula. Even Porter, at nine months old, had a more legitimate crisis than Brenda. “I’m sure they have it.”

“Okay,” Brenda said. “What’s the number?”

“Cal information,” Vicki said.

“I hate to ask this,” Melanie said. “But is there just the one bathroom?”

“Quiet!” Brenda snapped.

Melanie’s eyes grew wide and Vicki thought for an instant that she might start to cry. Melanie was sweet and self-effacing to a fault, and she hated confrontation. When the whole ugly thing with Peter happened, Melanie didn’t yel at him. She didn’t break his squash racquet or burn the wedding photos as Vicki herself would have. Instead, she’d let his infidelity quietly infect her. She became sick and fatigued. Then she discovered she was pregnant. The news that should have caused her the greatest joy was suddenly a source of conflict and confusion. Nobody deserved this less than Melanie. Vicki had given Brenda a direct order— Be nice to her! —but now Vicki saw she should have been more emphatic. Really nice!

Kid gloves!

“Sorry, Mel,” Vicki whispered.

“I hear you,” Brenda said. Then, in a businesslike voice, she said, “Nantucket Memorial Airport, please. Nantucket, Massa-chusetts.”

“Anyway, yes,” Vicki said. “Just the one bathroom. Sorry. I hope that’s okay.” Vicki hadn’t poked her head into the bathroom yet, though she was pretty sure it hadn’t changed. Smal hexagonal tiles on the floor, transparent shower curtain patterned with red and purple poppies, toilet with the tank high above and an old-fashioned pul chain. One bathroom for a woman about to be served up a biweekly dose of poisonous drugs, a woman in the throes of morning sickness, a four-year-old boy unreliably potty trained, and Brenda. And Ted, of course, on the weekends. Vicki took a breath. Fire. She switched Porter to her other breast. He had milk al over his chin and a deliriously happy look on his face. She should have started him on a bottle weeks ago. Months ago.

“I’m going to unpack,” Melanie announced. She was stil wearing her straw hat. When Vicki and Brenda had arrived in the limo to pick her up that morning, she’d been in her garden, weeding. As she climbed into the Lincoln Town Car, clogs caked with mud, she said, “I should have left Peter a reminder to water. I just know he’l forget, or ignore it.”

“Your husband is stil living with you?” Brenda had said. “You mean to say you didn’t throw him out?”

Melanie had glanced at Vicki. “She knows about Peter?”

At that minute, Vicki’s lungs had felt like they were fil ing with swamp water. It went without saying that Melanie’s situation was confidential, but Brenda was Vicki’s sister, and the three of them were going to be living together all summer, so . . .

“I told her,” Vicki said. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Melanie said softly. “So I guess you know I’m pregnant, too?”

“Yeah,” Brenda said.

“I’m sorry, Mel,” Vicki said.

“I’m a dead end,” Brenda said. “Real y, I am. But if you want my opinion . . .”

“She doesn’t want your opinion, Bren,” Vicki said.

“You should tel the man to fuck off,” Brenda said. “Twenty-seven-year-old adventure girl, my sweet ass!”

“Brenda, enough!” Vicki said.

“Just please don’t tel anyone I’m pregnant,” Melanie said.

“Oh, I won’t say a word,” Brenda said. “I promise.”

A few minutes later, after enough time had passed for everyone in the limo to reflect on this exchange, Melanie had started vomiting. She claimed it was because she was sitting backward.

Vicki propped Porter up over one shoulder, and he gave a healthy belch; then he squirmed and let out a wet, vibrating gush from his rear. The tiny bedroom smel ed funky and breadlike.

Brenda poked her head back in. “They have the book at the airport,” she said. “Some kid found it. I told him I wouldn’t have a car until Friday, and he said he’d drop it by on his way home from work.” She grinned. “See? I told you the book was lucky.”

Josh Flynn didn’t have a mystical bone in his body, but he wasn’t insensitive, either. He knew when something was meant to be, and for some reason as yet unclear to him, he was supposed to be involved with the three women and two smal children he had singled out earlier that afternoon.

They had left behind a very important piece of luggage, and because Carlo had to leave early for a dental appointment, Josh was the one who fielded the phone cal and Josh was the person who was going to deliver the goods. A briefcase with a fancy dial next to the locks. If Josh had been writing a certain kind of novel, the briefcase would contain a bomb, or drugs, or money, but the other students in Chas Gorda’s creative-writing workshop found thril ers “amateurish” and “derivative,” and some nitpicker would point out that the briefcase never would have made it through security in New York. What was in the briefcase? The woman—and Josh could tel just from her voice that it was Scowling Sister—had sounded unnerved on the phone. Anxious and worried—and then relieved when he said that yes, he had the briefcase. Josh shifted it in his hands. Nothing moved; it was as though the briefcase were stuffed with wadded-up newspapers.

It was four-thirty. Josh was alone in the smal , messy airport office. He could see the evening shift getting to work out the open back door, other col ege kids who had arrived on the island earlier than he did. They were waving the fluorescent wands like they’d seen it done on TV, bringing the nine-seater Cessnas on top of their marks, staying clear of the propel ers, the way they’d al been taught in training. The evening shift was the best

—it was shorter than the day shift, and busier. Maybe next month, if he did a decent job.

Josh fiddled with the briefcase locks just to see if anything would happen. At the mere touch of his fingertips, the locks sprung open with a noise like a gun’s report. Josh jumped out of his chair. Whoa! He had not expected that! He checked the office. No one was around. His father worked upstairs through the evening shift. He always got home at eight o’clock, and he liked to eat dinner with Josh by eight-thirty. Just the two of them with something basic that Josh put together: burgers, barbecued chicken, always an iceberg salad, always a beer for his father—and now that Josh was old enough, a beer for Josh. Just one, though. His father was a creature of habit and had been since Josh had bothered to take note of it, which he supposed was at the age of twelve, after his mother committed suicide. His father was so predictable that Josh knew there was no way he would ever come down to the office, and his father was the only person he feared, so . . .

Josh eased the briefcase open. There, swaddled in plastic bubble wrap, was a heavy-duty freezer bag, the kind of bag fishermen down on the wharves fil ed with fresh tuna steaks. Only this bag contained . . . Josh peered closer . . . a book. A book? A book with a brown leather cover and a title in gold on the front: The Innocent Impostor. A novel by Fleming Trainor . After three years of literature courses at Middlebury, Josh’s knowledge of important writers was growing. He had read Melvil e, Henry James, Hawthorne, Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Jack Kerouac. He had never read—nor heard of—Fleming Trainor.

Josh stared at the book and tried to put it together in his mind with Scowling Sister’s panicked voice. Nope, didn’t make any sense. But Josh liked that. He closed the briefcase, locked it tight.

The briefcase sat on the passenger seat of his Jeep for the ride out to ’Sconset. Josh had lived on Nantucket his entire life. Because there was a smal year-round community, everyone had an identity, and Josh’s was this: good kid, smart kid, steady kid. His mother had kil ed herself while he was stil in elementary school, but Josh hadn’t derailed or self-destructed. In high school he studied hard enough to stay at the top of his class, he lettered in three sports, he was the senior class treasurer and did such a fine job running fund-raisers that he cul ed a budget surplus large enough to send the entire senior class to Boston the week before they graduated. Everyone thought he would become a doctor or a lawyer or a Wal Street banker, but Josh wanted to do something creative, something that would endure and have meaning. But nobody got it. Even Josh’s best friend, Zach Browning, had cocked his head and said, Do something creative? Like what, man? Paint someone’s portrait? Compose a fucking symphony?

Josh had kept a journal for years, in a series of spiral-bound notebooks that he stashed under his bed like Playboy magazines. They contained the usual stuff—his thoughts, snippets of dreams, song lyrics, dialogue from movies, passages from novels, the scores from every footbal , basketbal , and basebal game of his high school career, riffs on friends, girlfriends, teachers, and his father, memories of his mother, pages of descriptions of Nantucket and the places farther afield that he had traveled, ideas for stories he wanted to write someday. Now, thanks to three years under the tutelage (or “hypnosis,” as some would say) of Middlebury’s writer-in-residence, Chas Gorda, Josh knew that journal keeping was not only okay for a writer, but compulsory. In high school, it had seemed a little weird. Weren’t diaries for girls? His father had caught Josh a couple of times, opening Josh’s bedroom door without knocking the way he’d been wont to do in those days and asking, “What are you doing?”

“Writing.”

“Something for English?”

“No. Just writing. For me.” It had sounded odd, and Josh had felt embarrassed. He started locking his bedroom door.

Chas Gorda warned his students against being too “self-referential.” He was constantly reminding his class that no one wanted to read a short story about a col ege kid studying to be a writer. Josh understood this, but as he rol ed into the town of ’Sconset with the mysterious briefcase next to him, anticipating interaction with people he barely knew who didn’t know him, he couldn’t help feeling that this was a moment he could someday mine.

Maybe. Or maybe it would turn out to be a big nothing. The point, Chas Gorda had effectively hammered home, was that you had to be ready.

Nantucket was the dul est place in America to grow up. There was no city, no shopping mal , no McDonald’s, no arcades, no diners, no clubs, no place to hang out unless you were into two-hundred-year-old Quaker meetinghouses. And yet, Josh had always had a soft spot for ’Sconset. It was a true vil age, with a Main Street canopied by tal , deciduous trees. The “town” of ’Sconset consisted of a post office, a package store that sold beer, wine, and used paperback books, two quaint cafes, and a market where Josh’s mother used to take him for an ice cream cone once a summer. There was an old casino that now served as a tennis club. ’Sconset was a place from another age, Josh had always thought. People said it was “old money,” but that just meant that a long, long time ago someone had the five hundred dol ars and the good sense it took to buy a piece of land and a smal house. The people who lived in ’Sconset had always lived in ’Sconset; they drove twenty-five-year-old Jeep Wagoneers, kids rode Radio Flyer tricycles down streets paved with white shel s, and on a summer afternoon, the only three sounds you could hear were the waves of the town beach, the snap of the flag at the rotary, and the thwack of tennis bal s from the club. It was like something precious from a postcard, but it was real.

The address Scowling Sister had given Josh over the phone was Eleven Shel Street. The Jeep’s tires crackled over crushed clamshel s as he pul ed up in front of the house. It was smal , cute, typical of ’Sconset; it looked like the house where the Three Bears lived. Josh picked up the briefcase. He was official y nervous. The house had a gate with a funny latch, and while he was fumbling with it, the front door swung open and out came a woman wearing a pair of denim shorts and a green bikini top that shimmered like fish scales. It was . . . wel , Josh had to admit it took him a minute to get his eyes to focus on the woman’s face, and when he did, he was confused. It was Scowling Sister, but she was smiling. She was getting closer to him, and closer, and before Josh knew it, she was wrapping her arms around his neck, and he felt the press of her breasts against his grubby airport-issued polo shirt, and he smel ed her perfume and then he felt something unsettling happening—he was losing his grip on the briefcase. Or no, wait. She was prying it from his hand. She had it now.

“Thank you,” she said. “Thank you, thank you.”

“Uh,” Josh said. He took a few steps back. His vision was splotchy and green—green from the plot of grass in the side yard, green from the shiny material cupping Scowling Sister’s breasts. Okay, now, for sure, the hair on his arms was standing up. “You’re welcome.”

“I’m Dr. Lyndon,” Scowling Sister said, offering her hand. “Brenda.”

“Josh Flynn.”

“You’re such a dol to bring this by,” Brenda said. She hugged the briefcase to her chest. “I thought it was gone forever.”

“No problem,” Josh said, though it was more of a problem than he imagined. He was thrown into a frenzy by the sight of Scowling Sister. Her hair, which had been loose at the airport, was now held in a bun by a pencil, and little pieces fel down around her neck. She was very pretty. And pretty old, he guessed. Maybe thirty. She was barefoot and her toes were dark pink; they looked like berries. Enough! he thought, and he may have actual y spoken the word because Brenda tilted her head and looked at him strangely, as if to say, Enough what?

“Do you want to come in?” she asked.

Chas Gorda would have encouraged Josh to say yes. One way to avoid being self-referential was to open your world up, meet new people.

Listen, observe, absorb. Josh had never seen the inside of one of these little cottages. He checked his watch. Five o’clock. Normal y, after work, he went for a swim at Nobadeer Beach, and sometimes he stopped by his old girlfriend Didi’s apartment. He and Didi had dated al through high school, but then she had stayed on the island and Josh had left, and now, three years later, you could real y tel the difference. Didi worked at the admitting desk at the hospital and al she talked about was her weight and Survivor. If she had found an old book nestled in Bubble Wrap, she would have snorted and chucked it in the Dumpster.

“Oh-kay,” he said. “Sure.”

“I’l make us some tea,” Brenda said. But she was distracted by a noise, a computerized version of “Für Elise.” Brenda pul ed a cel phone out of her back pocket and checked the display.

“Oh, God,” she said. “I am not going to answer that.” She smiled lamely at Josh, and he watched the enthusiasm drain from her face. They were two steps from the door when Brenda stopped. “Actual y, everyone in the house is asleep.”

“Oh.”

“The kids. My sister. Her friend. And I’m not sure we even have any tea, so . . .”

“That’s al right,” Josh said, backing away. He was disappointed, but also relieved.

“Another time,” Brenda said. “You promise you’l come back another time? Now you know where we live!”

Melanie would never complain out loud, not with her best friend so gravely il , but she felt like mold on the wal at a fleabag motel. Here, then, was a classic case of Be Careful What You Wish For. Her breasts felt like lead bal oons. They hurt so much she couldn’t sleep on her stomach, and yet that was her favorite position for sleep, facedown, without so much as a pil ow. Now she had to contend with new sleeping quarters, a sagging twin bed in this strange, sunny room that smel ed like artificial pine trees.

Al she had wanted was to get away—as far away as possible. When she was in Connecticut, facing the utter wasteland her life had become, moving to Pluto had seemed too close. But now she was at loose ends; from a distance, things somehow looked worse than they did when she was standing in the middle of them. And the bizarre, unfathomable fact was, she missed Peter.

Peter, Melanie’s husband of six years, was very tal for an Asian man. Tal , broad in the shoulders, startlingly handsome—people on the streets of Manhattan occasional y mistook him for the chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten. Melanie had met Peter at a bar on the East Side. Peter, at that time, had worked on Wal Street, but shortly after he and Melanie married he became a market analyst at Rutter, Higgens, where he met Ted Stowe, Vicki’s husband. Vicki and Ted were expecting their first child; they were moving to Darien. Melanie and Vicki became good, fast friends, and soon Melanie was pestering Peter about moving to Connecticut, too. (“Pestering” was how Peter described it now. At the time, to Melanie, it had seemed like a mutual decision to move.) Melanie wanted children. She and Peter started trying—nothing happened. But Melanie had fal en in love with a house, not to mention the green-grass-and-garden vision of her life in Connecticut. They moved and became the only young couple in Darien without children. At times, Melanie blamed her fertility problems on the suburb. Babies were everywhere. Melanie was forced to watch the strol er brigade on its way to the school bus stop each morning. She was confronted by children wherever she turned—at the Stop & Shop, at the packed day care of her gym, at the annual Christmas pageant of St. Clement’s Episcopal Church.

You’re so lucky, the mothers would say to Melanie. You’re free to do whatever you want. You can sit through dinner and a bottle of wine at Chuck’s without sixteen hundred interruptions, without all the silverware and half the dinner rolls ending up on the floor, without the waitstaff glaring at you like you’re something stuck to the bottom of a mortician’s shoe. The mothers were kind; they pretended to envy Melanie. But she knew that they pitied her, that she had become a woman defined by her faulty biology. Never mind that Melanie had graduated from Sarah Lawrence, that she had taught English to the hil tribes of northern Thailand after col ege; never mind that Melanie was an avid gardener and a dedicated power walker. When the other women saw her, they thought: That’s the woman who’s trying to conceive. The one who’s having difficulty.

Barren, maybe. Something’s wrong, poor thing.

Peter didn’t acknowledge any of this, and Melanie knew now, in the post-breakup where deep, dark secrets oozed out like sludge from the sewer, that he’d never cared whether they conceived or not. (No wonder she’d had such trouble! Everyone knew the game was 90 percent attitude, positive thinking, visualization.) Peter had tried to make her happy, and the best way he knew to do this, being a man, was to spend money on her in flabbergasting ways. Weekend trips to Cabo, the Connaught in London, the Delano in South Beach. An Yves Saint Laurent velvet blazer that had a two-month waiting list. A twelve-ounce black truffle flown in from Italy in a wooden box packed with straw. Orchids every Friday.

As the months of infertility dragged on, Melanie immersed herself in starting seeds, digging beds, planting shrubs and perennials, mulching, weeding, spending nearly a thousand dol ars on annuals and herbs and heirloom tomato plants. She let the two beautiful little girls who lived next door cut her tulips and hyacinths for their May baskets. She fed her hydrangea bushes clam necks from the fish market. A Saint Bernard would have been easier to take care of than the damn garden, Peter complained.

Peter had told Melanie about his affair with Frances Digitt on the way home from the Memorial Day picnic that Rutter, Higgens threw every year in Central Park. There were softbal , hamburgers and hot dogs, watermelon, egg-in-a-spoon races and water bal oons for the kids. It was a nice event, but Melanie had suffered through it. She and Peter had tried in vitro seven times with no results, and they had decided not to pursue any more treatment. It just wasn’t working. But stil people asked, “Any news?” and Melanie was forced to say, “We’ve let it go, for the time being.” Ted and Vicki had not attended the picnic at al because Vicki had just gotten her diagnosis confirmed with a second opinion from Mount Sinai and she didn’t feel up to seeing anybody. So Melanie fielded inquiries not only about her infertility but about Vicki’s cancer as wel . With the number of people pursuing Melanie and pinning her down in conversation, it would have been easier to hold a press conference.

On the way home, Melanie mentioned to Peter that the afternoon had worn her down, she hadn’t had much fun, probably because Ted and Vicki weren’t there.

“Life is too short,” Melanie said. She said this every time she thought of Vicki now. Peter nodded distractedly; Melanie intoned this sentiment so often, its meaning was diluted. But Melanie meant the words urgently: Life was too short to fritter away in a constant state of yearning, aching, wanting. Waiting for something to happen.

At Exit 1 on I-95, they hit traffic and Peter cursed and they slowed to a crawl.

Now’s the time, Melanie thought. And she said, “I think we should try again. Once more.”

She steeled herself for his reaction. He hadn’t wanted to pursue in vitro at al . There was something about it that felt forced to Peter, unnatural.

Melanie had pushed the issue not once, not twice, but seven times, promising that each round would be the last. And then, a few weeks ago, she had real y, real y promised; she and Peter had made a pact of sorts, sealing it with their first spontaneous lovemaking in nearly a year. Afterward, Peter talked about a trip to the Great Barrier Reef, just the two of them. They would stay at a resort that didn’t al ow children.

Melanie was ready for Peter to be annoyed that she was revisiting the topic yet again; she was ready for anger. But Peter just shook his head, and with his eyes on the bumper of the car in front of them, he said, “I’m involved with someone else.”

It took Melanie a moment to understand what he meant by “involved,” but even after the obvious occurred to her, she stil wasn’t sure. “Involved?”

she said.

“Yes. With Frances.”

“Frances?” Melanie said. She looked at Peter. He had drunk several beers at the picnic. Was he impaired? Should he even be driving?

Because what he was saying didn’t make any sense. “You’re involved with Frances? Frances Digitt?” Melanie could only picture Frances as she had just seen her—in a pair of red nylon running shorts and a white T-shirt that said Mad River Glen, Ski It If You Can. Frances Digitt was twenty-seven years old, she had a butch haircut, she was into al these extreme sports, like rock climbing and backcountry skiing. She had hit a home run during the softbal game and she ran the bases pumping her fist in the air like a sixteen-year-old boy. “You’re having an affair with Frances?”

“Yes,” Peter said.

Yes: They were having the sleaziest kind of office sex—in coat closets, in the deserted restrooms after hours, on top of his desk with the door closed and locked, in his swivel chair, Frances’s skirt hiked up, straddling him.

When they got home that night, Peter moved into the guest room while Melanie took a bath and cried. Peter did not move out—he claimed he didn’t want to, and Melanie couldn’t bring herself to demand it. They slept under one roof, in separate rooms. He was not wil ing to end his

“involvement” with Frances Digitt, not yet, he said, but maybe someday. Melanie was tortured by this. She loved the man, and he was using her heart for target practice. Most nights he came home, but some nights he cal ed to say he would be “staying in the city” (which meant, she could only assume, staying with Frances Digitt). He rendered Melanie powerless; he knew she didn’t have the courage to divorce him and take al his money, which was what everyone encouraged her to do.

When Melanie started feeling sick, she wasn’t surprised. Extreme emotional stress, she thought. Depression. She couldn’t keep food down. She would think about Frances Digitt and gag. She was overcome with exhaustion; she took three- and four-hour naps in the afternoons. Her cycle had been manipulated for so long with hormones that she didn’t notice when she missed her period. But then her breasts started to tingle and ache, and smel s she normal y loved—coffee, fresh sage from the garden—turned her stomach. She went to a drugstore three towns away, where nobody knew her, and bought a test.

Pregnant.

Of course, she thought. Of course, of course. She was pregnant now, when it no longer mattered, when it was a painful and complicated discovery instead of a joyous one. Melanie was aching to tel Peter. Every time she looked at him, she felt like she was going to burst with the news.

She thought he would be astute enough to figure it out on his own—because she rushed to the bathroom to vomit, because she slept al the time.

Peter either didn’t notice these obvious symptoms or he chalked them up to Frances Digitt–inspired melodrama. Melanie decided she would not tel Peter—she was resolved in this—until something changed. She wanted Peter to leave Frances Digitt because he loved her, Melanie, and not because there was now going to be a baby. A baby. Their baby. After al that trying, after al the needles, drugs, treatments, counting days, scheduling sex, it had happened on its own. Even Peter would be amazed, even he would shout with joy. But she couldn’t divulge the news yet. The pregnancy was her only currency; it was al she had left, and she didn’t want to share it.

So . . . get out of town. Go with Vicki—and her sister, Brenda—to an island thirty miles out to sea.

Melanie hadn’t told Peter she was leaving; he wouldn’t realize it until seven o’clock that evening when he found her note in an envelope taped to the door of the mudroom. He would be stunned by her departure. He would realize he’d made a horrible mistake. The phone would ring. Maybe. He would ask her to come home. Maybe.

But maybe he’d be happy she left. Relieved. Maybe he would count Melanie’s departure as his good fortune and invite Frances Digitt to move into their house and tend Melanie’s garden.

One bad thought was al it took. Melanie rushed to the communal bathroom and vomited bitter green bile into the toilet, which was spotted with urine because Blaine could not yet clear the rim. She pooled water in her hand and rinsed her mouth, glanced at her reflection in the brown-spotted mirror. Even the mirror looked sick. She stepped onto the rickety bathroom scale; if the thing were right, then she had lost three pounds since discovering she was pregnant. She couldn’t keep anything down, not ginger ale, not dry toast, but she kept at it, eating and vomiting, because she was hungry, ravenous, and she couldn’t stand to think of her baby starving and dehydrated, shriveling up like a piece of beef jerky.

The house was quiet. Vicki and the kids were sleeping, and Brenda was outside talking to . . . that handsome kid from the airport, the one who had offered Melanie first aid. It figured. Melanie hadn’t gotten the whole story about Brenda and her student, but it didn’t take a wizard to figure out that Brenda was a loose cannon. Promiscuous. Easy. Look at the way she was touching the kid’s shoulder, then shaking her boobs at him. And he was just a kid, in his twenties, though quite adorable. He had smiled at Melanie when he offered the first aid, like he’d wanted to help but wasn’t sure how. Melanie sighed. When was the last time Peter had smiled at her? She pul ed the shades against the sun. The only good thing about pregnant sleep was that she was too exhausted to dream.

Brenda was the only adult awake when the phone rang. She had cleared Aunt Liv’s tea set and al the ceramic knickknacks and enamel boxes from the coffee table so that she and Blaine could play Chutes and Ladders. The baby, meanwhile, would sit in Brenda’s lap for thirty or forty seconds, then climb over her folded knees like Hannibal over the mountains and he was off, crawling across the satiny floorboards, pul ing at lamps, fingering electrical cords, plugs, outlets. Somehow, while Brenda was teaching Blaine to count out spaces on the board, Porter put a dime in his mouth.

Brenda heard him gagging, and she picked him up and smacked him on the back; the dime went flying across the room. Blaine moved himself forward an il egal fourteen spaces, and Brenda, although desperate for the game to be over, made him move back on principle. He started to cry.

Brenda gathered him into her lap, and Porter crawled into the kitchen. At least he was too short to reach the knives. But then, as Brenda explained to Blaine that if he cheated at games no one would ever want to play with him, she heard a muffled thud that sickened her heart.

“Porter?” she said.

He gurgled happily in response.

Brenda slid Blaine off her lap. Aunt Liv’s banjo clock chimed; it was six-thirty. Vicki and Melanie had been in their respective rooms with the doors closed since three. Brenda would have welcomed three and a half quiet hours for herself—but she was not pregnant and she did not have cancer. Cancer, she thought. Did the word ever get less scary and horrible? If you repeated it often enough and understood it better, did it lose that Grim Reaper chil ?

In the kitchen, Brenda found her two-hundred-year-old first edition of The Innocent Impostor splayed on the floor like a dead bird. Porter sat next to the book, chewing on something. The cap to Brenda’s pen.

Brenda cried out. Gently, she picked up the book, amazed that as old as it was, it hadn’t crumbled into dust from the impact. She never should have taken it out of the briefcase—the book, like an elderly person, needed to be coddled. She smoothed the pages and swaddled it in its plastic cover, nestled it in the bubble wrap and locked it up, safe from grubby little hands. She plucked the pen cap out of Porter’s drooly little mouth and threw it, with some force, into the kitchen trash.

Her problems were smal beans, she reminded herself. In comparison, that was. She did not have cancer, she was not carrying her cheating husband’s baby. Out of three bad situations, hers was the least dire. Was that a blessing or a curse? I am grateful for my health. I will not feel sorry for myself. I am here to help Vicki, my sister, who has cancer. Two hours after the news of Brenda’s dismissal hit Champion’s campus, Brenda had received an e-mail from a col eague of hers at the University of Iowa. Rumor has it you’ve been axed, Neil Gilinski wrote. Rumor has it you committed the only sin that can’t be forgiven other than out-and-out plagiarism. Brenda’s heart had tumbled. The news of her disgrace had traveled halfway across the country in two hours. It might as wel have appeared on Page Six. But she would not feel sorry for herself. She would be grateful for her health.

“Auntie Brenda!” Blaine cal ed out. “Come on! It’s your turn!”

“Okay,” Brenda said. “I’l be right there.”

At that moment, the phone rang. The phone hung on the kitchen wal ; it was white, with a rotary dial. Its ring was cranky and mechanical: a hammer hitting a bel . The sound made Brenda’s breath catch. Fear seeped into her chest. Brian Delaney, Esquire, had already left two urgent-sounding messages on her cel phone. Call me, please. Dammit, Brenda, call me. But Brenda didn’t want—indeed, couldn’t afford—to cal him back. Every phone cal cost her a hundred dol ars. If Brian had good news, such as the art restoration professional at Champion had found no permanent damage to the painting in question and the English Department had decided to drop al charges, then he could leave a message saying as much. And if Brian had bad news, she didn’t want to hear it. Every time her cel phone rang, she prayed it would be Walsh. That it should be her lawyer added insult to injury. But the cottage’s ringing phone took Brenda by surprise. She had known the phone number at Number Eleven Shel Street since she was a little girl, but she hadn’t given the number to Walsh or to Brian Delaney, Esquire. Which meant it was probably her mother.

“Hel o?” Brenda said.

“Is my wife there?” a man asked. He sounded even angrier than Brenda.

How did people live without cal er ID? “Ted?” Brenda said.

“I said, is my wife there? This is the number she left on the note. A note! ‘Gone for the summer.’ What the hel ?”

“You mean Melanie?” Brenda said. She was impressed that Melanie had bolted with only a note.

“Yes, Melanie!”

“She’s here,” Brenda said. “But she’s not available.”

“What does that mean?”

“I can’t explain it any more clearly,” Brenda said. “She . . . is . . .not . . . available.”

“Put her on the phone,” the husband said.

“No,” Brenda said. She gazed at her briefcase and felt fresh relief that it hadn’t vanished into the purgatory reserved for lost luggage, and then she checked on Porter, who had found the other half of Brenda’s pen. His mouth was bleeding blue ink. “Oh, geez,” Brenda said. When she lunged for the pen, Porter crawled away and Brenda nearly yanked the phone off the wal . In seconds, Porter and the pen were inches from Vicki’s bedroom door. “I’m sorry,” Brenda said. She hung up on Melanie’s husband.

As she buckled Blaine and Porter into the double jog strol er, she wondered, Why isn’t there an Olympic crawling event for babies? Porter would win. Then she thought, Melanie’s husband sounded pretty damn entitled for someone who was having an affair.

“I’m hungry,” Blaine said. “When are we having dinner?”

“Good question,” Brenda said. She hadn’t eaten since Au Bon Pain in LaGuardia. There was no food in the house, and it was possible that Vicki might sleep until morning. Brenda ran inside and helped herself to forty dol ars from Vicki’s wal et—she’d earned it.

As Brenda pushed the strol er over the crushed shel s toward the market, she thought, I am helping my sister, who is very sick. Sick sounded better than cancer. People got sick al the time, and then they got better. Vicki is sick, but she will get better, and in the meantime, I will take care of everything. But Brenda feared she wouldn’t be able to handle it. She had visited with the kids often since the previous September, when she moved back east from Iowa City to take the job at Champion—but she’d never had both of them alone for three whole hours. How did Vicki do it—

one crawling al over creation, into everything, while the other one asked a hundred questions a minute, like, What’s your favorite number, Auntie Brenda? Mine is nine. No, actually, mine is three hundred and six. Is that more than fifty? How did Vicki keep her mind from turning into a bowl of porridge? Why had Brenda thought that spending the summer taking care of the children would be something she would excel at? What led her to believe that she’d have a single quiet hour to try her hand at screenwriting? Melanie had said she would pitch in, but look what happened—she’d nearly kil ed Porter coming off the airplane and then she dozed off like Sleeping Beauty. That left Brenda holding the bag. Brenda to cover the kids, Brenda to drive Vicki to chemo, Brenda to shop for the food—and cook? This was what Brenda had offered, earnest in her desire to redeem herself, to prove to her sister and parents that she was neither soft nor rotten, she was neither self-centered nor self-destructive. She was not a person who typical y broke rules or committed sins. She was a nice person, a good person. But real y, really, Brenda thought, it wasn’t as easy as that. She was soft; she was self-centered. And Vicki was asking too much of Brenda this summer; she wanted Brenda to be her wife, and what if Brenda couldn’t do it? What she craved the most right now was quiet, even the quiet solitude of her apartment back in Manhattan. But to free herself of the rent, Brenda had sublet the apartment to her best friend in the world, Erik vanCott, and his fiancée. Erik and Noel would be making love in the bed that had most recently been occupied by Brenda and Walsh. Brenda had an exquisite longing in her stomach that was unique to being separated from one’s true love. She could cal Walsh, she thought, palming her cel phone. But no. She wouldn’t pitch al of her resolutions into the trash can just yet. It was only the first day!

At the market, Brenda bought milk, bread, a log of goat cheese, some purple figs, a pound of gourmet butter (this was the only kind they had), a bunch of bananas, a pint of strawberries, a bag of Chips Ahoy!, and a pint of Ben & Jerry’s Phish Food. Thirty-five dol ars. Even Brenda, who was used to Manhattan prices, gulped. She gave the bag of cookies to Blaine, snatching one for herself first and one for Porter to gnaw on. As she was leaving the market, she noticed a bul etin board by the door. Yoga on the beach at sunrise, missing cat, room to share.

Yes, she thought.

She went back to the counter and borrowed an old flyer from the deli and a nearly used-up black marker. In streaky gray letters, she wrote: Babysitter wanted. Flexible hours, daily, in ’Sconset. Two boys, 4 years and 9 months. Experience required. References. Please call 257-6101.

She pinned it to the bul etin board in a prominent place, and then she strol ed the kids home with one hand and held the bag of very expensive groceries in the other. If Brenda had just a little assistance with the kids, she would be better able to help Vicki and she would be able to start her screenplay, which might possibly earn her money and keep her from being a financial burden to Ted and Vicki and her parents. A voice in Brenda’s head whispered, Soft. Self-centered.

Oh, shut up, Brenda thought.

That night at dinner—steak tips, a baked potato, iceberg salad—Josh told his father he was thinking of quitting the airport.

Tom Flynn didn’t respond right away. He was a quiet man; Josh had always thought of him as stingy with words. It was as though he withheld them on purpose to frustrate and annoy people, especial y Josh. What Josh realized was that in not speaking, Tom Flynn prompted other people—

and especial y Josh—to say too much.

“It’s boring,” Josh said. He did not share the story about the three women, the woman fal ing, the baby, the briefcase, or the delivery of the briefcase to ’Sconset, though Josh understood it was this incident that was causing him to think about quitting. “It’s pointless. I’d rather be doing something else.”

“Real y?” Tom Flynn said. He cut into his wedge of iceberg lettuce. Always with dinner they had iceberg salad. It was one of the many sad things about Josh’s father, though again, Josh couldn’t say exactly why. It was his refusal to deviate, his insistence on routine, the same salad winter, spring, summer, fal . It was tied to the death of Josh’s mother eleven years earlier. She had hanged herself from a beam in the attic while Tom was at work and Josh was at school. She hadn’t left a note—no hint or clue as to why she did what she did. She had seemed, if not overly happy, at least steady. She had grown up on the island, she had gone away to Plymouth State Col ege, she had worked as an office manager for a construction company. She had few close friends but everybody knew her—Janey Flynn, nee Cumberland. Pretty lady, runs the show at Dimmity Brothers, married to Tom who works out at the airport, one son, good-looking kid, smart as a whip. That was his mother’s biography—nothing flashy but nothing sinister either, no quiet desperation that Tom or Josh knew of. And yet.

So at the age of twelve Josh was left with just his father, who battled against his anger and confusion and grief with predictability, safety, evenness. Tom Flynn had never yel ed at Josh; he never lost his temper; he showed his love the best way he knew how: by working, by putting food on the table, by saving his money to send Josh to Middlebury. But sometimes, when Josh looked at his father, he saw a man suspended in his sorrow, floating in it the way a fetal pig in the biology lab at school floated in formaldehyde.

“Yeah,” Josh said. “Wel , I don’t know. I don’t know what I want.” Josh wished he had taken a job off-island for the summer, at a camp in Vermont or something. He liked kids.

The phone rang. Josh finished off his bottle of Sam Adams and went to answer it, since, invariably, it was for him.

“Josh?” It was Didi. It sounded like she was a couple of drinks ahead of him. “Wanna come over?”

“Come over” meant sex. Didi rented a basement apartment in a house on Fairgrounds Road, less than a mile away. The apartment was al hers and Josh liked the privacy of it, though it was always damp, and it smel ed like her cat.

“Nah,” he said.

“Come on,” she said. “Please?”

Josh thought of Scowling Sister in the green shimmery bikini top.

“Sorry,” he said. “Not tonight.”

T he duck-breast sandwich with fig chutney wrapped in white butcher paper from Café L’Auberge on Eleventh Street. Spinach in her teeth. The smell of a new car. Blaine’s preschool field trip to the dairy farm. Colleen Redd’s baby shower. The baseball standings.

At the end of every winter, Vicki became restless, and this past April the restlessness had been worse than ever before. The skies in Darien were a permanent pewter gray; it rained al the time; it was unseasonably cold. Vicki was trapped in the house; the baby stil nursed six times a day and wouldn’t take a bottle, which limited how much Vicki could get out alone. Some days she stayed in her yoga pants until Ted got home from work.

She tried to enjoy the quiet rhythm of her days—her kids would only be little once—but increasingly she dreamed of a change in her life. Returning to work, maybe? She had graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Duke, after al , and at one point had entertained thoughts of going to law school. She craved something private, something entirely her own. An affair, maybe? She’d heard her friends whisper about similar longings—their biology was to blame, a woman hit her sexual peak in her thirties, it was their situation: a husband, smal children. Wouldn’t it be nice if there was someone tending their every need for a change? Suddenly, men everywhere looked good to Vicki—the mechanic who worked on the Yukon, the boys at the gym, the new associates, just out of business school, at Ted’s office. Vicki needed something else in her life, otherwise she would turn into one of these women with too little to do who slowly lost her mind. She felt combustible, like she might burst into flames at any moment. Her anger and her desire scared her. She began to feel a tightness in her chest, and then the tightness, if she wasn’t imagining things, became a pain. She was short of breath. One morning, she woke up huffing like she did when she was in the basement doing laundry and she heard Porter on the baby monitor and she raced up two flights of stairs. Something was wrong with her.

Vicki’s disdain of doctors and hospitals was legendary. In col ege, she contracted a bladder infection that she left untreated, and it moved to her kidneys. She was so sick, and yet so averse to going to the doctor, that her roommates took her to the infirmary while she was asleep. Years later, when she had Blaine, she arrived at the hospital forty minutes before he was delivered and left twenty-four hours later. And yet that morning, she drove right to the ER at Fairfield Hospital. What is wrong with me? Why can’t I breathe?

At first, the doctors thought she had walking pneumonia, but the X-ray looked suspicious. An MRI revealed a mass in Vicki’s left lung the size of an apple. Subsequent tests—a PET/CT scan and a fine-needle aspiration—confirmed that this mass was malignant, and it showed suspicious cel s in her hilar lymph nodes. She had robust stage-two lung cancer. She heard the oncologist, Dr. Garcia, say the words “lung cancer,” she saw his melancholy brown eyes swimming behind the lenses of his thick glasses—and yet Vicki assumed it was some kind of joke, or a mistake.

“Mistake?” she’d said, shaking her head, unable to come up with enough oxygen to say anything more.

“I’m afraid not,” Dr. Garcia said. “You have a four-centimeter tumor in your left lung that is hugging the chest wal , which makes it difficult to remove. It looks like the cancer may have also spread to your hilar lymph nodes, but the MRI didn’t detect any additional metastases. A lot of times when the cancer is this far along it wil turn up elsewhere—in the brain or the liver, for example. But your cancer is contained in your lungs and this is good news.” Here, he pounded his desk.

Good news? Was the man stupid, or just insensitive?

“You’re wrong,” Vicki said. It sounded like she meant that he was wrong about the “good news,” but what she meant was that he was wrong about the cancer. There was no way she had cancer. When you had cancer, when you had an apple-sized tumor in your lung, you knew it. Al Vicki had was a little shortness of breath, an infection of some sort. She needed antibiotics. Ted was sitting in the leather armchair next to Vicki, and Vicki turned to him with a little laugh. Ted was a powerful man, big and handsome, with a crushing handshake. Tell the doctor he’s wrong, Ted! Vicki thought. But Ted looked like he had taken a kick to the genitals. He was hunched over, and his mouth formed a smal O. Tell the doctor he’s wrong, Ted! Vicki did not have cancer, technical y or otherwise. Who was this man, anyway? She didn’t know him and he didn’t know her. Strangers should not be al owed to tel you you have cancer, and yet that was what had just happened.

“I have children,” Vicki said. Her voice was flat and scary. “I have two boys, a four-year-old and a baby, seven months. You would have a hard time convincing them or anybody else that their mother having lung cancer is good news.”

“Let me tel you something, Victoria,” Dr. Garcia said. “I’m a pulmonary oncologist. Lung cancer is my field, it’s what I do. And if you take al the patients I’ve seen in the past fourteen years—let’s say, for the sake of argument, a thousand patients—I would put you smack in the middle. It’s a chal enging case, yes. To give you the best shot at long-term remission, we’l try to shrink the tumor with chemo first and then we’l go in surgical y and hope we can get it al out. But ful remission is a viable outcome, and that, Vicki, is good news.”

“I don’t want to be a case,” Vicki said. “I don’t want you to treat me like your nine hundred and ninety-nine other patients. I want you to treat me like the mother of two little boys.” She started to cry.

“Many of my other patients had children,” Dr. Garcia said.

“But they’re not me. My life is valuable. It’s real y fucking valuable. My children are young. They’re babies.” Vicki looked to Ted for confirmation of this, but he was stil incapacitated. Vicki wiped at her eyes. “Am I going to die?” she asked.

“We’re al going to die,” Dr. Garcia said.

Just as Vicki was about to tel him to stuff his existential bul shit, he smiled. “The best thing you can do for yourself,” he said, “is to keep a positive attitude.”

Positive attitude? But that, in the end, was how he had won Vicki over. Dr. Garcia was the kind of oncologist who used phrases like good news and positive attitude.

She went for a second opinion at Mount Sinai right after the initial diagnosis, at Ted’s insistence. That appointment was with a female oncologist named Dr. Doone, whom Vicki had immediately renamed Dr. Doom because she wasn’t nearly as upbeat about Vicki’s chances of recovery as Dr. Garcia. Dr. Doone basical y told Vicki that IF chemo shrank the tumor in her left lung such that it receded from the chest wal (which, tone of voice conveyed, was doubtful), then POSSIBLY a pneumonectomy would solve the problem IF THERE WERE NO ADDITIONAL METASTASES.

It’s not the tumor in your lungs that’s the problem, Dr. Doone had said . It’s where that tumor came from. It’s where that tumor is going. She made a comment about Vicki being FOOLISH to pursue treatment in the BOONDOCKS. Dr. Doone felt Vicki should be treated at Mount Sinai—but since Dr. Doone herself had enough cancer patients to fil ten city buses, Vicki should accept as a HUGE FAVOR a referral to Dr. Martine, an oncologist at Sloan-Kettering who also happened to have been Dr. Doone’s roommate at Columbia Physicians and Surgeons.

No, thank you, Vicki had said. I’m sticking with Dr. Garcia.

And Vicki understood at that point that Dr. Doom wrote her off. As good as dead.

Vicki had two days until her chemo started. Two days until the doctors cut into her chest to instal a port through which they would pump her ful of poison twice a week for the next two months. It was, Dr. Garcia assured her, nothing to get frantic about. The problem was, the chemo wouldn’t cure her cancer. It would merely discipline it. Vicki could feel the mean-ass, dumb-shit little cel s throwing a beer bash, doing the bump and grind and drunkenly copulating and reproducing as she lay in bed trying to breathe, with Porter hiccupping at her side . I have a malignant tumor in my lungs.

Lung cancer. She could say it in her mind and out loud, but it didn’t seem true. It wasn’t even a kind of cancer that made any sense. Breast cancer made sense, and Vicki irrational y wished she had breast cancer. She was a thirty-one-year-old nonsmoking mother of two. Give me breast cancer! Lung cancer was for old men, two packs a day for twenty years; it was for John Wayne. Vicki laughed joylessly. Listen to yourself.

The traffic on I-95, a sale on beef tenderloin at Stew Leonard’s, the United States’ involvement in Iraq. Powder-post beetles in the attic. Swim lesson sign-ups. Collecting pinecones for Christmas wreaths. Chapped lips. Uncut toenails. Pollution in the Hudson. Duke, once again, in the men’s NCAA basketball finals.

The chemo regimen consisted of two drugs: gemcitabine and carboplatin. Vicki could barely pronounce the names, but she was wel versed in the possible side effects: weight loss, diarrhea, constipation, nausea and vomiting, fatigue, confusion—and she would, most likely, lose her hair.

She had to stop nursing and she might become sterile. It was enough to bring her to tears—she had cried many silent hours when Ted and the kids were asleep, when the dark house seemed as terrifying as death itself—but the chemo was nothing compared to the pneumonectomy. The surgery blocked Vicki’s path; she couldn’t see over, around, or beyond it. If the chemo worked as it was supposed to, they would operate at Fairfield Hospital in early September. Dr. Emery, thoracic surgeon, Dr. Garcia attending. Two resident surgeons, five OR nurses, six hours, the removal of her left lung and the hilar lymph nodes. Who survived a surgery like that?

Oh, lots of people, Dr. Garcia said. Every day. And it has to be done, obviously. If you want to live.

But it was as though he were asking Vicki to pass through a tunnel of solid granite, or travel into outer space and back. Impossible to come to grips with. Terrifying.

Vicki could have lain in bed al day, obsessing about her cancer, dissecting it until it was in ten or twelve comprehendible pieces, but the curse and the blessing of her present situation was that there was no time. She was in Nantucket with two children to look after, a household to run—and a sister and a best friend who were, after being together for less than twenty-four hours, arguing.

Vicki heard them in the kitchen—strained pleasantries that quickly turned bitter. By the time Vicki wrapped herself in her seersucker robe, col ected Porter, and made it out to the kitchen, she had pieced together the gist of the argument: Peter had cal ed the night before, but Brenda had neglected to give Melanie the message.

“You were asleep,” Brenda said. “You’d been asleep for hours.”

“You could have left a note,” Melanie said. “Slipped it under my door. Because now he won’t answer his cel phone. He’s furious with me.”

“He’s furious with you? ” Brenda said. “That’s rich. You’l pardon me for saying so, but I don’t understand why you care. The man is cheating on you.”

“You know nothing about it,” Melanie said.

Brenda sliced a fig in half and tried to feed it to Blaine, who “yucked” and clamped a hand over his mouth.

“I know nothing about it,” Brenda agreed. “I didn’t write a note because I was busy with the kids. We were on our way out to buy groceries. You were asleep. Vicki was asleep. I was left to captain the ship by myself and I . . . just forgot. Honestly, it flew out of my mind.”

“I hope you didn’t tel him I was pregnant,” Melanie said.

“Oh my God, of course not.”

“Or even hint at it. I don’t want him to know. And I mean that.”

“I didn’t hint at anything. I was very vague. I didn’t even tel him you were asleep. Al I said was that you were unavailable. You should be thanking me. I did a great job.”

“Except you didn’t tel me he cal ed.”

“I had my hands ful !”

“Bren,” Vicki said.

Brenda whipped her head around. When she did that, her hair was a weapon. “Are you taking sides?”

There can’t be any sides this summer, Vicki thought. I am too sick for sides. But she knew it would be fruitless. There was Brenda, her sister.

There was Melanie, her friend. They didn’t have a single thing in common except for Vicki. Already Vicki felt herself splitting down the middle, a crack right between her diseased lungs.

“No,” she said.

Vicki had come to Nantucket with the hope of re-creating the idyl ic summers of her youth. Had those long-ago summers real y been idyl ic? Vicki remembered a summer with one hundred mosquito bites, and another summer, or maybe the same summer, when she had a gnat trapped in her ear overnight, and one year Vicki fought with her father about long-distance phone cal s to her boyfriend Simon. But for the most part, yes, they had been idyl ic. Vicki and Brenda left school and friends behind in Pennsylvania, so the summers had starred only them and, in a hazy, paral el adult world, their parents, Buzz and El en, and Aunt Liv. The sand castles with moats, the smel of a real charcoal barbecue—it had al been real. And so, even as Melanie pouted on the living room sofa and Brenda huffed around the kitchen—they were like boxers back in their corners—Vicki peeled a banana, eyed the sunlight pouring through the cottage windows like honey, and thought: It’s a beach day.

This sounded like a simple idea, but it took forever to get ready to leave. The children had to be changed into bathing suits and slathered with lotion. (Skin cancer!) Brenda found plastic sand toys, bleached white by the sun, in a net bag in the shed. The toys were covered with years of dust and cobwebs and had to be rinsed with the hose. Then, lunch. Vicki suggested, for the sake of ease, picking up sandwiches at Claudette’s, but Brenda insisted on a picnic hodgepodged together from the bizarre ingredients she had brought home from the market: bread and goat cheese, figs and strawberries. At the mention of these provisions, Melanie gagged and ran for the bathroom. Vicki and Brenda listened to her throwing up as they folded the beach towels.

“Try not to upset her,” Vicki said.

“She’s pretty sensitive,” Brenda said.

“She’s going through a lot,” Vicki said.

“You’re going through a lot,” Brenda said. She stuffed the towels into a mildewed canvas tote that had belonged to Aunt Liv. “What are we going to do on Tuesday, when I take you for your port instal ation? The doctors said it would take al morning. There is no way she can handle both kids by herself al morning.”

“Sure she can.”

“She cannot. I could barely do it myself. And, I hate to bring this up, I mean, I’m happy to help with the kids and al , that is why I’m here, but I was hoping to get some work done this summer. On my screenplay.”

Vicki took a breath. Brenda was so predictable, but maybe only to Vicki. Vicki heard Ted’s words: Your sister says she wants to help, but she won’t help. She’ll be too busy reading to help. That was how it always went. When Vicki and Brenda were children, Brenda had been excused from al kinds of chores—setting the table, folding laundry, cleaning her room—because she was too busy reading. Even if it was only the newspaper, when Brenda was reading, it had been considered sacrilegious to ask her to stop. Buzz and El en Lyndon had done a thorough (if unintentional) job of labeling their girls: Vicki was the go-getter, organized and hardworking, whereas Brenda had been blessed with the kind of rarefied genius that had to be coddled. Although Brenda was only sixteen months younger than Vicki, nothing was expected of her. She and her “great mind” were tiptoed around like a sleeping baby.

Melanie came out of the bathroom, wiping at her lips. “Sorry,” she said. “Can I just have a piece of bread, please? With nothing on it?”

“Sure,” Brenda said. “My pleasure.”

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

Okay, Vicki thought . Okay?

The morning sparkled. Vicki, Brenda, and Melanie rambled down the streets of ’Sconset toward the town beach. Vicki was carrying Porter, who kept sticking his hand into her bikini top and pinching her nipple. She had tried to give him a bottle that morning, but he threw it defiantly to the floor.

Then he lunged for Vicki, fel out of the high chair, and bumped his head on the table. Tears. The subsequent fussing over Porter made Blaine irate

—he proceeded to march out the front door and urinate on the flagstone walk. Lovely.

Vicki removed Porter’s hand from her breast. “Sorry, buddy.” Brenda was up ahead schlepping the beach bag with towels and lotion, the net bag of plastic sand toys, the cooler with lunch and drinks, two beach chairs, and the umbrel a. Melanie was wearing her wide-brimmed straw hat and carrying a leather purse. Brenda had caught Vicki’s eye when Melanie emerged with the purse as if to say, Who the hell takes a purse to the beach? As if to say, I’m loaded down like a camel traveling across the Sahara and she’s got a little something from Coach? Vicki almost suggested Melanie leave the purse behind—there was nothing to buy—but she was afraid she’d scare Melanie away. Melanie hadn’t even wanted to come to the beach; she’d wanted to stay in the cottage in case Peter cal ed.

Melanie was also attempting to hold Blaine’s hand. She grasped it for five seconds, but then he raced ahead, into the road, around the corner, out of sight. Vicki cal ed after him and removed Porter’s hand from her breast. So much of parenting was just this mind-numbing repetition.

They al fol owed Brenda on a shortcut: between two houses, along a path, over the dunes. They popped out a hundred yards down from the parking lot, away from the clusters of other people and the lifeguard stand. Brenda dropped al her stuff with a great big martyrish sigh.

“I hope this is okay,” she said.

“Fine,” Vicki said. “Melanie?”

“Fine,” Melanie said.

Brenda set up the umbrel as and the chairs, she stuck Porter in the shade next to the cooler, she spread out the blanket and towels and handed Blaine a shovel, a bucket, and a dump truck. He dashed for the water. Melanie pul ed one of the chairs into the shade and took off her hat. Porter crawled over to the hat and put it in his mouth. Melanie made a sour face. Vicki snatched the hat from Porter and he started to cry. Vicki dug through the beach bag and handed Porter a spare pair of sunglasses. Immediately, he snapped off one of the arms.

“Great,” Brenda said. “Those were mine.”

“Oh, sorry,” Vicki said. “I thought they were an extra pair.”

“They were my extra pair,” Brenda said.

“I’m sorry,” Vicki said again. “He was eating Melanie’s hat. He’s like a goat.”

“Wel , we can’t have him eating Melanie’s hat, ” Brenda said. “It’s such a beautiful hat! Better he should break my sunglasses. Look at them, they’re useless.”

“Were they expensive?” Vicki asked. “I’l replace them.”

“No, no,” Brenda said. “I don’t want you to worry about it. They’re just sunglasses.”

Vicki took a deep breath and turned to Melanie.

“What do you think about the beach?” Vicki said. She wanted Melanie to be happy; she wanted Melanie to love Nantucket. She did not want Melanie to think, even for a second, that she had made a mistake in coming along.

“Do you think Peter’s trying to cal ?” Melanie said. She checked her watch, a Cartier tank watch that Peter had given her after the first failed round of in vitro. “Should I cal him at work? He goes in sometimes on Sundays.”

He doesn’t go to the office on Sundays, Vicki thought. He’s just been telling you he goes to the office when really he spends Sundays with Frances Digitt making love, eating bagels, reading the Times, and making love again. That was what a man who was having an affair did on Sundays; that was where Peter was this very second. But Vicki said nothing. She shrugged.

Brenda cleared her throat. “Vick, are you taking the other chair?”

Vicki looked at the chair. Brenda had hauled it; she should sit on it.

“No. You take it.”

“Wel , do you want it?”

“That’s okay.”

Brenda huffed. “Please take it. I’l lie on my stomach.”

“Are you sure?” Vicki said.

“Sure.”

“Should I cal Peter at work?” Melanie said.

More breathy-type noises from Brenda. She pul ed out her cel phone. “Here. Be my guest.”

Melanie took the cel phone, set it in her lap, and stared at it.

Vicki heard a shout. She looked down the beach. Someone was waving at her. No, not at her, thank God. She settled in the chair.

“Wil someone keep an eye on Blaine?” Vicki asked. “I’m just going to close my eyes for a minute.”

“I’d like to try and write,” Brenda said.

“I’l watch him,” Melanie said.

“You’re not going to cal Peter?”

“No,” Melanie said. “Yes. I don’t know. Not right now.”

Vicki closed her eyes and raised her face to the sun. It felt wonderful—sun on her face, her feet buried in the Nantucket sand. It was just as her mother had promised. The sound of the waves lul ed Vicki into a sense of drowsy wel -being. Was this what it was like when you died? Or was it completely black, a big nothing, oblivion, the way it was before you were born? She wanted to know.

“How long have you noticed this shortness of breath?” Dr. Garcia asked. They were in his office, which was bland and doctorish: medical books, diplomas, pictures of his family. Two children, Vicki noted. She liked Dr. Garcia more for the picture of his daughter dressed up as a dragonfly for Hal oween.

“I’ve had tightness in my chest, a little pain for a week or two, since Easter, but I didn’t think anything of it. But now, I can’t get air in.”

“Do you smoke?”

“God, no,” Vicki said. “Wel , I tried a cigarette when I was thirteen, outside the ice-skating rink. One puff. I smoked marijuana in col ege, three, maybe four hits altogether. And for two years I had a Cuban cigar once a week.”

Dr. Garcia laughed. “Cuban cigar?”

“It was a poker game,” Vicki said.

“The MRI shows a mass in your lung.”

“A mass?”

“It looks suspicious to me, but we’re going to have to take a cel sample to figure out what it is. It could simply be a water-fil ed cyst. Or it could be something more serious.”

Vicki felt her stomach rise up in revolt. She spotted a trash can next to Dr. Garcia’s desk. Something more serious? Do not, she implored herself, think about the children.

“We’l do it now,” Dr. Garcia said. “When I saw your scan, I blocked off time.”

It sounded like he expected Vicki to thank him, but it was al she could do not to spew her breakfast al over his desk.

“It could just be a water-fil ed cyst?” she said. She held out hope for a juicy bubble of stagnant liquid that would just pop!—and dissolve.

“Sure enough,” Dr. Garcia said. “Fol ow me.”

“Vicki! Vicki Stowe!”

Vicki looked up. A woman was waving at her. It was . . . oh dear God, Caroline Knox, an acquaintance from Darien. Caroline’s sister, Eve, had been in Vicki’s Lamaze class when Vicki was pregnant with Blaine. Eve had brought Caroline as her partner a few times, and somehow Nantucket had come up—that Vicki stayed with Aunt Liv, that Caroline owned a house and came for the summer with her husband and kids. A few weeks ago, Vicki bumped into Caroline Knox in the parking lot of Goodwives, and Caroline asked Vicki if Vicki was going to Nantucket, and Vicki, not wanting to discuss the only topic on her mind that day, which was her cancer, had, without thinking, said, Yes, we’ll be there on June tenth. To which Caroline had replied, Oh, us, too! We must get together! Vicki had agreed, though real y, if she and Caroline Knox didn’t get together in Darien, why would they get together on Nantucket?

Vicki pushed herself up out of the chair. Porter had crawled off the blanket and was sitting in the sand chewing on the handle of a plastic shovel.

“Hi!” she said, trying to muster enthusiasm at the sight of Caroline Knox, who, Vicki noted, looked very matronly in her black one-piece suit. And she’d cut her hair short. Not even forty and she looked like Barbara Bush. “Hi, Caroline!”

“Hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii,” Caroline squealed. “Vicki, how are you? When did you get here?”

“Yesterday.”

“We’ve been here a week already. It’s heaven on earth, don’t you think?”

Vicki smiled.

“When is Ted coming?” Caroline asked.

“Friday. He’s driving up with the car.”

“Wel , we should have dinner while it’s just us girls. Are you free on Wednesday?”

“I’m free . . . ,” Vicki said.

“Oh, good!”

“But I start chemo on Tuesday, so . . .”

Caroline’s face stopped its smiling. “What?”

“I have lung cancer,” Vicki said. She felt mean dropping it on Caroline this way, in front of Brenda, who had just scrawled two lines on her yel ow legal pad, and Melanie, who was stil staring at the phone in her lap. But Vicki enjoyed it, too, making Caroline Knox uncomfortable, watching her grope around for something to say.

“I had no idea,” Caroline said. “Eve didn’t tel me.” She dug her toe in the sand and the flesh of her thigh wobbled. “You know that Kit Campbel ’s father had lung cancer last year, and . . .”

“Yes,” Vicki said, though she had no idea who Kit Campbel was. “I heard al about it.”

“So you’re getting chemo here? On the island?”

“At the hospital,” Vicki said, in a voice that ended the topic. “Caroline, I’d like you to meet my sister, Brenda Lyndon, and my friend Melanie Patchen.”

Caroline shook hands with Melanie. “Patchen, you say? Are you related to Peter?”

“He’s my husband,” Melanie said. She squinted. “Why? Do you know him?”

“He plays squash with my husband, Edgar, at the Y,” Caroline said. “I didn’t realize Peter was married. For some reason, I thought he was single.”

It’s official, Vicki thought. I hate Caroline Knox.

Brenda shifted on her towel, though she made no move to acknowledge Caroline’s presence. Despite their mother’s best efforts, Brenda had the manners of Attila the Hun. When Brenda spoke, she said, “Vick, where’s Blaine?”

Vicki looked at the water. Blaine had been digging a hole just beyond where the waves broke so that the hole fil ed with water. That was what he’d been doing when she shut her eyes. But when she looked now, she saw the shovel, the pail, the truck, and the hole—but no Blaine.

Okay, wait. Vicki checked the perimeter of where they were sitting. He was behind them—no. He was . . . where was he?

“Mel?” Vicki asked. But Melanie looked even paler and more panicked than Vicki. You were watching him, right? Vicki thought. You said you’d keep an eye on him. Melanie stood up. Her left foot crushed her straw hat, and Brenda’s cel phone fel into the sand.

“Oh, God,” Vicki said. She jogged to the shoreline. Her insides twisted up in preliminary panic, and she felt her lungs tighten. “Blaine!” she cal ed out. She looked to the left, to the right, and then al the way back to the dunes. Was he hiding in the dunes? Brenda grabbed her arm.

“It’s okay. Do not panic. Don’t panic, Vick. He couldn’t have gone far.”

“Did he go in?” Vicki said. The surface of the water was calm; smal waves broke at her feet. She waded in up to her knees, scanning the dappled surface of the water. The only thing she had to worry about was Blaine under water. “Blaine?” she cal ed out, looking for air bubbles.

“Blaine?” Blaine could swim a little bit. If he were drowning, he would have splashed and made a fuss; Melanie certainly would have noticed. If there was an undertow here, and sometimes there was, he would have cal ed for Vicki. She would have heard him cal ing out.

“Blaine!” Brenda shouted. She turned back toward the beach. “Blaine Stowe! Where are you? Are there footprints? He was right here a second ago, wasn’t he?”

Was he? Now Vicki couldn’t remember if she’d seen him digging at al . But his toys were here. She’d had her eyes closed, she’d checked on the baby, she’d been thinking about Dr. Garcia, she’d assumed Melanie was watching Blaine. But then Caroline came.

“He’s here somewhere,” Vicki said. “He has to be here.”

“Of course,” Brenda said. “Obviously. We’l find him.”

“I’l go to the left,” Vicki said, though there was no evidence of humanity to the left—no people, no footprints, nothing but five or six plovers pecking at the sand. “I’l go to the right, I mean. You check the dunes. He probably had to go to the bathroom. Mel can stay with the baby.”

“Is everything al right?” Caroline cal ed out.

“I lost my son!” Vicki said in a lighthearted way. She didn’t want to sound too frantic in front of Caroline. She didn’t want Caroline to think that she’d actually lost Blaine—because what kind of mother took her eyes off her child when that child was playing at the water’s edge? “He must have wandered away!” She waved at Caroline as if to say, You know how kids are, always putting the fear of God into you, as she speed walked down the beach. She couldn’t go as fast as she wanted; she was wheezing already, and her heart was gal oping at an unsafe speed. Do not panic, she thought. He’s here somewhere. She would find him any second, she would flood with relief. He’s okay, he’s right here . . . he just . . . but no, she didn’t see him anywhere. Not yet . She was approaching the main section of ’Sconset Beach, just thirty or forty yards away from the parking lot entrance. There were people here—families, couples, col ege girls lined up on a blanket. Vicki hurried to the lifeguard stand. As long as Blaine wasn’t in the water, he was safe. Why, oh why, hadn’t they sat between the two red flags? They were so far down that the lifeguard would never have noticed Blaine drowning.

“Excuse me,” Vicki said.

The lifeguard didn’t remove her eyes from the water. She was a chunky girl in a red tank suit; she had a sunburn on her cheeks that had peeled, revealing raw pink skin underneath . Skin cancer! Vicki thought.

“My son is missing,” Vicki said. “He’s four years old. We’re sitting down there.” She pointed, but the lifeguard did not move her eyes. “He was wearing a green bathing suit with green frogs on it. He has blond hair. Have you seem him? Did he wander by, maybe?”

“I haven’t seen him,” the lifeguard said.

“No?” Vicki said. “Is there anything you can do to help me find him?”

“You’re sitting beyond the flags?” the lifeguard asked.

“Yes.”

“I have to keep my eyes on the people who are in the water between the flags,” the lifeguard said. “Lots of times kids just walk away and get lost.

Maybe you can ask some of the folks sitting nearby if they’ve seen him. I can’t leave my post to help. I’m sorry.”

Vicki studied the other families, the other children, many of them Blaine’s age. The families reminded Vicki of herself and Brenda and her parents and Aunt Liv, sitting on the beach every single day, happy as larks, swimming, sunning, eating, sleeping in the sun. She had never gotten lost; Brenda had never gotten swept away by the undertow. They had been like the kids in front of Vicki now: whole, happy, in one piece. Blaine was someplace else, an unknown place. What if they couldn’t find him? Vicki would have to cal Ted—though there was no way she could tel him Blaine was gone; that was just not acceptable . Three grown women on the beach, one of them his own mother, Ted would say. How did he slip away?

Why wasn’t anyone watching? I thought Melanie was watching! I asked her to watch! I closed my eyes for . . . three minutes. Maybe four. Vicki felt like col apsing in a pile on the sand . Okay, fine, she told God, or the Devil, or whoever listened to pleas from desperate mothers. Take me. Let me die. Just please, please let Blaine be okay.

“Please,” she whispered. “Please.”

“Vick!”

The voice was far away, but Vicki heard it over the roar of anxiety in her ears. She turned and saw a woman in a green bikini waving her arms.

Brenda. Vicki al owed her hopes to rise a little bit. She saw a figure under the umbrel a—maybe a little boy wrapped in a towel? Vicki got closer, running, walking, stopping to control her breathing. Vicki saw Brenda on her cel phone. The “figure” under the umbrel a was just a towel hanging from the cooler. Vicki burst into tears. How many hundreds of hours in the past month had she spent wondering: What could be worse than lung cancer? What could be worse than chemotherapy? What could be worse than having my chest sliced open, my ribs spread, and my lung removed? Wel , here was the answer. This was worse. Blaine was missing. Where was he? Every molecule in Vicki’s body screamed in chorus, Find him, find him! Porter was crying. Melanie was rocking him, but he pitched forward toward Vicki.

Brenda said, “I checked the dunes. He’s not there. Your friend left. She real y wanted to help us look, but she had a tennis lesson at the casino.

She suggested I cal the police, so that’s what I’m doing.”

“I am so sorry,” Melanie said. She was weepy, though not actual y crying. If it had been Brenda, Vicki would have lost her temper, but this was Melanie, her dear, sweet, heartbroken friend. Kid gloves! Vicki thought. Melanie had a lot on her mind; Melanie could not be held accountable.

“It’s okay,” Vicki said.

“It’s not okay,” Melanie said. “You asked me to watch him, and I was thinking about something else. I didn’t even see him leave.”

“Did you see him go into the water?” Vicki asked. “Did you see him swimming?”

“No,” Melanie said. “I don’t think so. I don’t know. I was thinking about Peter, and . . .”

Brenda held up a finger and gave the 911 operator the information: four-year-old boy, blond, green bathing suit, ’Sconset Beach north. Missing for . . . twelve minutes. Only twelve minutes? Vicki could easily dissolve, but no, she was going to be strong. Think! she urged herself. Think like Blaine. Porter was screaming. Vicki took him from Melanie. She recal ed the day before, Melanie fal ing from the steps of the plane. Melanie had been anxious, tired, sick, distressed, and wearing those ridiculous gardening clogs. She’d had her hands ful , and Blaine had knocked her over.

Yesterday was not Melanie’s fault. Porter reached inside Vicki’s bikini top and pinched her nipple. Her milk came in. She hugged Porter and whispered, “We have to find your brother.”

Brenda hung up with the police. “They’re sending a squad car,” she said. “And a guy on a Jet Ski.”

“Do they think he’s in the water?” Vicki said.

“I told the police the last place we saw him was at the water’s edge.” Brenda glared at Melanie. “Right?”

Melanie made a retching noise. She bent in half and vomited into the sand. She staggered toward the dunes. Vicki fol owed her and gently touched her shoulder. “I’l be right back, okay?” Brenda had checked the dunes, but maybe not closely enough. Blaine might have found a nest of some kind, or maybe he had to go to the bathroom. She hobbled through the dunes, looking for a little boy crouched in the eelgrass. Porter held on tight, one hand locked on Vicki’s breast, which was leaking milk. Her bikini top was wet, and milk trickled down her bare stomach. The path through the dunes funneled her between two private homes and then back onto the street, where a squad car waited, lights flashing. Vicki pried Porter’s hand from her breast, and he started with fresh tears. Milk was leaking everywhere; Vicki needed a towel. She needed to wean the baby. She needed to find her child! Her exuberant, out-to-conquer-the-world firstborn. Would he have come this far by himself? Of course. Blaine was afraid of nothing; he was impossible to intimidate. Ted loved this about him, he encouraged Blaine’s fearlessness, his independence—he fostered it! This was Ted’s fault. It was Melanie’s fault. She said she would keep an eye on him! Ultimately, however, Vicki blamed herself.

The policeman was a woman. Short, with a dark ponytail and eyebrows that met over her nose. When Vicki approached, she said, “You’re the one who cal ed?”

“I’m the mother,” Vicki said. She tried to wipe the milk from her stomach, pul her bikini top so that it lined up evenly, and comfort her screaming baby. Al this disarray, a missing child . . . and I have cancer!

“Where did you last see your son?” the policewoman asked.

“He was on the beach,” Vicki said. “But now I’m wondering if he didn’t try to walk home by himself. Or to the market. He knows there’s ice cream there. Could we get in your car and drive around to look for him?”

“The fire department sent a Jet Ski,” the policewoman said. “To check the waters.”

“I don’t think he’s in the water,” Vicki said. What she meant was: He can’t be in the water. If he’s in the water, he’s dead. “Could we just go in your car?”

The policewoman murmured something into her crackling walkie-talkie and indicated with a tilt of her head that Vicki and Porter should climb into the back. As soon as Vicki was sitting down, she latched Porter onto her leaking breast. The policewoman caught a glimpse of this and her eyebrows wiggled like a caterpil ar.

“Do you have children?” Vicki asked hopeful y.

“No.”

No, Vicki thought. The policewoman—Sergeant Lorie, her ID said—had no children, thus she had no earthly clue how Vicki teetered on the brink of insanity. Twelve minutes, thirteen minutes . . . surely by now Blaine had been missing for fifteen minutes. Sergeant Lorie cruised the streets of

’Sconset, which were only wide enough for one car. They were bordered on both sides by cottages, privet hedge, pocket gardens. Where would he have gone? Vicki thought of a fireman on a Jet Ski discovering Blaine’s body floating a hundred yards offshore—and then pushed the image away.

Take me, she thought. Do not take my child.

Sergeant Lorie pul ed up in front of the ’Sconset Market.

“Do you want to run in?” she asked Vicki.

“Yes.” Vicki unlatched Porter from her breast and threw him over her shoulder. He let out a belch. Sergeant Lorie murmured something else into her walkie-talkie. Vicki hurried into the market. She checked aisle by aisle—cereal, crackers, biscotti, chips, jasmine rice, toilet paper—she checked around the smal deli case and the soda coolers, behind the spinning book racks, and then, final y, the only place Blaine would logical y be

—the ice cream counter. No Blaine.

A young girl wearing a green canvas apron poised her ice cream scoop in the air. “Can I help you?” she said.

“Have you seen a four-year-old boy in here by himself? Blond hair? Green bathing suit?”

“No,” the girl said. “Sorry. I haven’t.”

“No,” Vicki said. “Of course not.” She zipped back outside to the police car. “He wasn’t there,” she told Sergeant Lorie. “Let’s try Shel Street.”

They drove to Shel Street slowly—Vicki checking in every yard, in every climbable tree—but when they got to Aunt Liv’s cottage, the gate was shut tight and so was the front door to the house. Vicki knew Blaine wasn’t inside. Okay, that was it. She was free to flip out—to pul her hair and scream and pound the re-inforced windows of the police car until they shattered. He was in the water.

“What would you like to do, ma’am?” Sergeant Lorie asked.

“Let’s go back to the beach,” Vicki said. Brenda and Melanie had probably found him.

They drove back to the spot where the squad car had waited initial y and Vicki hopped out. Her lungs ached. She pictured her tumor glowing hot and red like an ember. Did things like this real y happen? Did a woman get lung cancer and then lose her child? Did this much bad luck visit one person? It shouldn’t be al owed. It wasn’t al owed.

On the beach, a crowd had gathered—Caroline Knox had re-appeared, and the lifeguard was there, as wel as the col ege girls who had been snoozing on the blanket, and some members of the previously happy families that had been frolicking on the beach. Everyone was gathered in a loose knot, though some people stood at the water’s edge or waded in, kicking up the sandy bottom. A teenaged boy veered around with a mask and snorkel; the Jet Ski zipped back and forth, making smal , predictable waves. Vicki was astonished at the gathering—part of her was embarrassed. She hated to draw attention to herself; she felt like tel ing everyone to go back to their business, Blaine was just hiding in the dunes, pushing things too far, he didn’t know any better, he was only four years old. There were other mothers in the group—Vicki picked them out—

women with the worst kind of sympathy stamped on their faces. I can’t imagine . . . thank God it’s not my . . . why on earth wasn’t she keeping an eye on . . .

Brenda was in the center of things; it looked like she was organizing search parties. One for the beach to the left, one for the dunes. Melanie stood at the edge of the crowd, rubbing Brenda’s cel phone like it was a rabbit’s foot. Caroline Knox saw Vicki and rushed over.

“I feel awful,” Caroline said. “This is my fault. If you hadn’t been talking to me . . .”

“Did you see him playing?” Vicki asked. “Do you remember seeing him playing by the water? Blond hair, green bathing suit?”

“That’s the thing,” Caroline said. “I don’t remember.”

Vicki heard a motor approaching—three policemen on ATV’s came sledding over the sand. These were summer cops, teen-agers, basical y, in fluorescent yel ow shirts, with Ray-Bans and walkie-talkies.

“We’re here to help,” one of them said. He was the alpha dog, with linebacker shoulders and dark movie-star hair.

“I’m his mother,” Vicki said, stepping forward. She pried Porter’s hand from her breast once again, and he started to cry. “His name is Blaine.

Blaine Stowe, he’s four years old.”

“Blond hair, green bathing suit,” the policeman said.

“Yes,” Vicki said.

“We’l find him,” the policeman said. He was al of twenty years old, but the sunglasses and the walkie-talkie gave him a cocky self-assurance.

“Please,” Vicki whispered.

Brenda said, “We’l go this way, then,” and she headed off to the left. A second group went to the right. Some people, seeing the police, wandered back to their camps. When the cops gunned their motors and left to search, the area cleared out, leaving Vicki, Melanie, and Caroline Knox. Vicki felt deserted; she couldn’t stand being stuck behind to wait, and certainly not in present company. Blaine had been missing for thirty minutes at least. She would check the dunes herself. She took the cel phone from Melanie. “You stay here and hold down the fort,” Vicki said. “I’m going to look.”

“I’l come with you,” Caroline said.

“No, no,” Vicki said. “I’l go myself.”

“I’l carry the baby,” Caroline said.

“We’l be fine,” Vicki said.

“This is al my fault,” Melanie said. “Oh, Vicki, I am so, so sorry.”

“It’s okay, Mel,” Vicki said.

“No, it’s not okay! I should have been . . .”

But Vicki didn’t have time! She turned and hurried for the dunes.

It was hot in the dunes, and Porter’s head drooped. He made a sucking noise against Vicki’s shoulder.

“Blaine!” Vicki shouted. “Blaine Theodore Stowe!”

It went on like this for fifteen minutes, thirty minutes, an hour. Vicki searched every inch of the dunes; they al looked the same, white bowls of sand crowned with eelgrass. Vicki got lost herself a couple of times; she had to climb into the eelgrass (which was just crawling with ticks, she knew) to get her bearings. She cal ed Blaine’s name until she was hoarse. She wandered back out to the street, al the way down to the market, al the way over to Shel Street. No Blaine. Vicki returned to the beach. She was parched, pain seared her lungs; she col apsed on a beach towel under their umbrel a. Porter had fal en asleep. She laid him down and hunted through the cooler for water. Even if Blaine were alive, he would be thirsty by now, and hungry. Wherever he was he would be afraid, crying, alone.

Caroline Knox was gone—to her tennis lesson, Vicki thought angrily, though she was relieved. Melanie lay facedown on a towel, her face buried.

“I have to cal Ted,” Vicki said. “I don’t know what else to do.”

“This is al my fault,” Melanie said. “I am going to be a terrible mother.”

“No, Melanie,” Vicki said. “Do not say that. Do not think that.”

Vicki dialed home. Ted had promised to clean the attic and get someone to check for powder-post beetles. He would see Brenda’s cel phone number on the cal er ID, but he would have no idea what Vicki was about to tel him.

Four rings, then the answering machine picked up. Vicki’s own voice—happy, unconcerned—a voice from another time, before today, before her diagnosis. “You have reached the Stowe residence . . .” The message played in one ear, and in the other ear, Vicki heard the growl of the ocean, like some kind of animal ready to attack. The growl grew louder—something about the sound made Vicki turn. Just as Ted snapped the receiver up, saying in a breathless voice, “Sorry, I didn’t hear the phone. Hel o?” Vicki saw the ATV, the smug Top Gun smile of the summer policeman, and two little hands clasped around the policeman’s waist. She heard Melanie shriek. And then—a wave from the back of the ATV, like Blaine was the mayor in a parade.

“Mom!” he cried out. “Look at me!”

When Vicki woke up from her nap, Porter’s hand was on her breast and Blaine was curled under her left arm. They had fal en asleep immediately upon returning home from the beach; Vicki hadn’t even bothered to rinse off their feet, and now the sheets were sandy. The room was dark, though Vicki could see golden sunlight in the living room. She eased out of bed, then stood over her children and watched them sleep. In ninety harrowing minutes, her world had shattered and then, like magic, been made whole again. Blaine was alive and wel ; he’d wandered al the way down the beach throwing rocks into the water. He’d walked wel over a mile, the policeman said, but he didn’t seem upset or worried in the slightest.

“I’ve never seen such a brave kid,” the policeman had said. “And he’s got quite an arm. The Red Sox should sign him now.”

The tops of Blaine’s shoulders were sunburned. When he climbed off the ATV he suffered through Vicki’s whimpers and sobs of relief and the tightest hug of his life; then he showed her a handful of shel s and asked for his milk. Now, even with robust stage-two lung cancer and thirty-six hours until chemotherapy, Vicki felt like the luckiest woman on earth.

She tiptoed out and shut the door so the boys could sleep awhile longer. Melanie’s door was closed. She had slinked off once they reached home, apologizing again and again, until it was like a joke she’d told too many times. Vicki had done the best she could to assuage Melanie’s guilt, but she knew Melanie would flagel ate herself just the same. It’s my fault. I should have been . . . Vicki considered tapping on Melanie’s door. Don’t worry about it. You have enough on your mind as it is. Everything turned out okay. Vicki put her ear to the door and heard nothing. Melanie was probably asleep.

A note on the kitchen table said, Gone writing! From Brenda. Predictable. Brenda swore up and down that this summer would be about helping Vicki, but Vicki knew better. She flipped Brenda’s note over and started to make a grocery list. She wanted to walk to the market to get food for a proper dinner. They couldn’t continue to eat like French col ege students.

The phone rang, loud and grating. Vicki leapt to answer it before it woke the kids or Melanie.

“Hel o?”

A young female voice said, “I’m cal ing about the ad.”

“Ad?” Vicki said. “I’m afraid you’ve got the wrong number.”

“Oh,” the girl said. “Sorry.” She hung up. Vicki hung up.

A few seconds later, the phone rang again.

“Hel o?” Vicki said.

“Hi,” the girl said. “I dialed real y careful y. 257-6101? The help wanted? For the babysitter?”

“Babysitter?” Vicki said.

“For the two boys in ’Sconset?” the girl said. “I live in ’Sconset and my parents want me to get a job this summer.”

“We don’t need a babysitter,” Vicki said. “But thanks for cal ing.”

“Too bad,” the girl said. “It sounded perfect for me. Not too hard or anything.”

“Thanks for cal ing,” Vicki said. She hung up. The house was silent. Vicki’s brain started to fizz and pop. Babysitter, two boys in ’Sconset, this number? Brenda had placed an ad for a babysitter and hadn’t checked with Vicki? And hadn’t breathed a word about it? Vicki flung open the fridge, hoping to find a cold bottle of wine. No such luck. She wasn’t supposed to drink anyway. What did Dr. Garcia say? Water, broccoli, kale, watermelon, blueberries, beets. But wine wasn’t cigarettes. Vicki opened the cabinets, marveling at her sister’s gal . She was farming out her own nephews!

The front screen door slammed. Vicki looked up. There was Brenda, looking like a supermodel in her bikini top and jean shorts. Holding a yel ow legal pad. It was her “screenplay”—a screenplay based on a book that only six other people in the world had ever read, a screenplay that had no prayer of ever being produced. And yet this endeavor was more important to Brenda than caring for Vicki’s children.

“What’s the face for?” Brenda said.

“You know what it’s for,” Vicki said.

Melanie could hear Brenda and Vicki fighting in the living room even as she lay across her supremely uncomfortable mattress with a down pil ow over her head. Her leg was throbbing; somehow in the midst of al the commotion over losing Blaine, she had acquired an angry sunburn. Her stomach was sour—she had kept nothing down al day, not even plain bread. And her heart was broken. Melanie pictured it as an apple: sliced down the middle, then into quarters, cored, skinned. She deserved it al , and worse. Yesterday she had fal en while holding the baby, and today she had failed at the simplest child-related task. Will someone keep an eye on Blaine? Make sure he doesn’t die, or vanish. But even that had proved too much. Before Peter announced his infidelity, before Melanie learned of the living being inside of her, she had held great visions of herself as a mother. She would buy only wooden toys and only organic produce, she would spend hours reading colorful children’s books with strong messages bought only from independently owned bookstores. She would never yel , never condescend, never pick a pacifier up off the floor, lick it and put it back into her child’s mouth. She was going to do it right. She certainly never imagined getting so caught up in the disintegrating state of her marriage that she lost track of a child completely, that she couldn’t say for certain whether or not that child had wandered away or drowned. It was, Melanie decided, al Peter’s fault, but the result of this thinking only intensified her urge to speak to him. It was almost a physical need, more pressing than being hungry or thirsty. She needed to talk to Peter the way she needed oxygen.

Since she returned home from the beach, she had cal ed him six times at the office, and al six times she had gotten his voice mail. His voice sounded cruel y jovial. “Hi! You’ve reached the voice mail of Peter Patchen, senior analyst for Rutter, Higgens. I’m either on the phone or away from my desk, so please leave a message and I’l cal you back. Thank you!”

The first message that Melanie had left was at 1:28 PM: Peter, it’s me. I’m on Nantucket with Vicki. I’m staying for the summer, unless you give me a reason to come home. What I mean is, I’m not coming home until you end things with Frances. Okay. Call me. You can call me at the number I left earlier, which is 508-257-6101—or you can call me on this cell phone, which belongs to Vicki’s sister. The number is 917-555-0628. I’d like you to call me, please.

She had lain facedown on the bed and waited until the banjo clock chiming in the living room announced two o’clock. Melanie had left her own cel phone in Connecticut specifical y so Peter couldn’t reach her and so she would be less tempted to cal him. Ha. She cal ed back. Peter, please call me. My numbers, once again, are . . .

She had cal ed four other times at half-hour intervals, and on the quarter hour, she cal ed him at their house, where her own voice greeted her.

“You have reached the Patchen residence. We are unable to take your cal . Please leave a message and your phone number and we wil cal you back.” Melanie left no message. She cal ed Peter’s cel phone and was shuttled immediately to voice mail.

Peter, it’s me. And then, in case he didn’t recognize her voice, she said, Melanie. Please call me at 508-555-6101. Or you can call me on this phone at . . . She cal ed the cel phone three more times and hung up each time.

Surprise! The phone rang. Melanie’s heart leapt. She studied the number on the display. It was an unfamiliar Manhattan number. The display said Walsh, J.

“Hel o?” Melanie said.

“Brindah?”

Deflation. Disappointment. Not Peter.

“No, I’m sorry. This isn’t Brenda.”

“Vicki?”

“No,” Melanie said. “This is Melanie. I’m a friend of Vicki’s.”

“Oar right.” The voice was beefily Australian. “Is Brindah available?”

Melanie listened. Out in the living room, the fight continued. Never met such a selfish . . . the world doesn’t revolve around . . . “She’s not available this very second.”

“No worries. Would you tel her Walsh cal ed?”

“I wil ,” Melanie said. She paused. Was this the student? He sounded rather old to be the student, but then again, Melanie knew nothing about the student except that he was, in fact, Brenda’s student. “Do you want to leave your number?”

“She has the number. Leaving it again would be pointless.”

Pointless, Melanie thought. She had left her number again and again, as though it were the lack of a number that was Peter’s problem.

“I’l have her cal you,” Melanie said in an authoritative voice, as though she had the power to make Brenda do a single thing. “I promise she wil cal you. You can count on me.”

Walsh laughed. “Wel , I thank you, Melanie.”

“You’re welcome,” Melanie said.

Walsh hung up. Melanie hung up. The cal had only lasted a minute and three seconds, but Melanie felt better. She felt less isolated somehow, knowing that this person Walsh was in New York City trying to reach Brenda. But she also felt pointlessly jealous. Men loved Brenda. Even the young stud policeman had been unable to take his eyes off of her. Melanie sucked in the stale air of her room. She should open the window. But instead she dialed Frances Digitt’s apartment. She didn’t even need to check her book for the number; she had it memorized. Frances Digitt answered on the second ring.

“Hel o?”

Melanie wasn’t worried about cal er ID since she was using Brenda’s phone. She hung on for a minute, listening for Peter. Was he there? What she heard was a dog barking (Frances Digitt had a chocolate Lab) and what sounded like the basebal game on TV. Dog, basebal . Of course. The irony of the situation was that Frances Digitt was not a woman who had ever threatened Melanie, or any of the other wives at Rutter, Higgens; she was the opposite of a bombshel . She was the girl who beat the boys in races in gym class, the one the boys forgot come seventh grade when al the other girls developed breasts. Frances was smal and boyish. She was, Melanie reflected, the only kind of woman who could survive the locker-room miasma of Peter’s office: She was the little sister, but smart as a whip, she knew the market, she did her research, she organized the office footbal pool and the brackets for March Madness. Everyone assumed she was a lesbian, but Melanie had seen it al along—she was too cute to be a lesbian! She had a certain recklessness that might translate to her being a dynamo in bed. It made Melanie sick just to think about it. She hung up, then pressed Brenda’s phone to her pounding heart. She dialed Frances Digitt’s number again.

“Hel o?” Now Frances Digitt sounded irked, and Melanie thought, You have no right to sound irked. If anyone should sound irked here, it’s me.

Thus prodded, she said, “Is Peter there?” It was more a question than a request for his presence on the phone, and Frances, predictably, paused. No need to ask who was cal ing, no need to play games, or so Frances ultimately decided, because she said, “Yes. He is.” She set the phone down a bit too firmly on what Melanie pictured as her cheap, shoddily assembled plastic-laminate-over-plywood side table from IKEA.

People in their twenties had no taste.

“Hel o?” Peter said, sounding wary.

“It’s me,” Melanie said. And then, in case he stil didn’t get it, she said, “Melanie.”

“Hi,” Peter said—and this was the syl able that squashed Melanie’s heart once and for al . He sounded uninspired, uninterested; he sounded caught. Melanie felt like his truant officer, his Sunday school teacher, his dentist.

“I’m on Nantucket,” she said.

“I know.”

“For the whole summer.”

“So the note said.”

“Do you want me to come home?” she asked.

“What kind of question is that?” Peter said.

It was the only question that mattered. She had left because she wanted time to think, but as it turned out, al she could think about was Peter.

She had wanted to get away, but now that she was away she wanted, more than anything, to be home. I’m pregnant, she thought. You have a child in this world and you don’t even know it. Keeping this from Peter was cruel, but was it any worse than what Peter was doing?

No! He was at Frances’s apartment. They were fucking! Melanie felt sick. She was going to . . .

“I have to hang up,” she said.

“Okay,” he said.

Melanie stared at the dead phone. She retched into the plastic-lined trash can at the side of her bed. Nothing came up. She was vomiting bad air, her own sadness, Peter’s rejection. Out in the living room, Brenda and Vicki were stil fighting. Something about a babysitter. Something about Brenda’s screenplay, a total sham, then something about their parents, that’s the way things always are with you! Then Melanie heard her name, or rather, what she heard was the absence of her name: a repeated “she,” a repeated “her.” It was Brenda in a stage whisper: You want her to take care of the kids and look what happened! I understand she has shit to deal with, but we all do. You’re sick! I refuse to spend the summer accommodating her! I just don’t get it! She’s one more person to take care of! Did you think of that before you invited her along? Did you?

Melanie staggered to her feet and began tossing her belongings into her suitcase. She was going home. It had been an impulsive decision to come, and now she realized that it was a mistake.

She tiptoed to the bathroom for her toothbrush. They were stil at it. It would be better for Brenda and Vicki to spend the summer alone, working through their issues. Melanie didn’t have a sister; she knew nothing about it, but it seemed like hard work.

Everything fit into her suitcase except for her straw hat. It was mangled from when she’d stepped on it at the beach, and she was tempted to leave it behind. It was a present from Peter last spring on her birthday; it was wide-brimmed and old-fashioned, but she loved it. It was her gardening hat. She put it on, tying the satin ribbon under her chin, then zipped her suitcase and looked around the room. This room was witness to her startling decision. She would go home and confront Peter in person. She would tel him she wanted an abortion.

She slipped into the living room. Brenda and Vicki were gone. Melanie heard them somewhere. Out back. One of them was in the outdoor shower. They were stil arguing. Before Melanie walked out the front door, she scribbled a note and left it on the kitchen table: Call John Walsh!

Strangely, John Walsh was the only person Melanie felt responsible to. She would cal Vicki later, once she was safely home and there was no chance of Vicki talking her into staying.

Melanie extended the handle of her suitcase and tried to rol it down the shel -lined street. Shel s caught in the wheels, and the suitcase jerked to a stop. She decided it would be easier to carry the suitcase, though it was heavy and she bent to one side in a way that couldn’t have been good for the baby. Abortion, she thought. After al she’d been through. Seven times her hopes had been dashed at the sight of her own blood. Seven times she had failed; success had come unbidden, when she no longer wanted it.

She made it to the rotary, where she found a cab waiting. Thank God! She climbed in and said, “Airport, please.”

It was Sunday at five o’clock, and every plane back to New York was booked and overbooked. When it was Melanie’s turn in line, she pushed her ticket across the counter, her spirits temporarily buoyed by the business of getting home—until the woman working the US Airways desk pushed the ticket right back.

“We have nothing tonight,” she said. “And nothing tomorrow until three o’clock. I’m sorry.”

“I’m happy to pay the change fee,” Melanie said. “Or go standby, in case someone doesn’t show.”

The woman held up a piece of paper crowded with names. “This is the waiting list. You’d be number one sixty-seven.”

Melanie stuffed her ticket into her purse and dragged her suitcase to a bench. The predictable thing would be for her to cry. She was about to start down that hackneyed road when she noticed someone walking toward her. A kid in a fluorescent orange vest. The one who had offered her first aid when she fel down the stairs. She smiled at him. He came right over.

“Hi,” he said. He grinned. “Did you have a nice trip?”

“Very nice,” Melanie said.

“That was a joke,” he said. “‘Trip,’ you know? Because you fel down.”

Melanie felt her cheeks burning. “Right,” she said. “Wel , as it turned out, that wasn’t the stupidest thing I did this weekend.”

The kid tugged at his vest and scuffed at the floor with his sneaker. “I didn’t mean you were stupid,” he said. “I was just trying to . . .”

“It’s okay,” Melanie said. She touched her elbow. It was stil tender, and yet with al that had happened, she had forgotten about it. “I’m Melanie, by the way.”

“Josh Flynn,” he said. He looked at her suitcase. “Are you leaving tonight? You just got here.”

“I was supposed to stay longer,” Melanie said. “But I have to get home.”

“That’s too bad,” Josh said. “Where do you live?”

“Connecticut,” she said. “But, as it turns out, I can’t get a plane tonight. They’re al sold out. I was just gathering my wits before I grabbed a taxi back to the place I’m staying.”

“You’re in ’Sconset, right?” Josh said. “I can take you home. I just finished my shift.”

“Don’t worry about me,” Melanie said. “I’l take a cab.”

“It’s no problem for me to give you a ride,” Josh said. “I even know which house. I was there yesterday to drop off a briefcase.”

“Right,” Melanie said. She eyed her luggage. She was so devoid of energy, she wasn’t sure if she could even get herself to the curb. “I hate to impose.”

“It’s on my way home,” Josh said. He picked up her suitcase. “Please. I insist.”

Melanie fol owed him out to the parking lot, where he threw her luggage in the back of his Jeep. The Jeep had an inch of sand on the floor, and the passenger side was strewn with CDs. Melanie slid into the seat, stacking the CDs in her lap. Dispatch, Offspring, Afroman. She had never even heard of these bands. She felt old enough to be his mother.

“Sorry the car is such a mess,” Josh said. “I didn’t know I’d have female companionship.”

Melanie blushed and straightened the edges of the CDs so that they made a perfect cube. Female companionship? She felt like a hooker. Then she caught sight of herself in the mirror. Her straw hat made her look like the Farmer in the Del ; it made her look like Minnie Pearl or some other character from Hee Haw. She took off the hat and set it in her lap as Josh buckled himself in, swiped at the dust on the dashboard, and turned down the radio. He stretched his arm over to Melanie’s seat as he craned his neck to check behind him before backing out. His hand was resting an inch or so above her head. She could smel him. He was very handsome— hot, someone younger would have said—but he was just a child. How old?

she wondered.

“Do you live here?” she asked.

“Born and raised,” he said. “But I go to col ege. Middlebury, in Vermont.”

“Good school,” Melanie said.

“I’l be a senior,” he said.

So that made him around twenty-one, Melanie thought. Maybe twenty-two. Which was how old she’d been when she’d met Peter.

They pul ed onto the major road. Josh’s window was unzipped and air rushed in as they sped toward ’Sconset. Melanie rested her head against the seat and closed her eyes. There was something therapeutic about this ride. I feel okay, Melanie thought. Right this second I feel okay. How can that be?

She turned to face the wind. Josh’s brown hair ruffled up like a rooster’s comb. In her lap, the brim of her hat flapped.

“How do you like your job?” she asked.

“I hate it,” he said.

“That’s too bad.”

“Truly,” he said. “My father’s an air traffic control er. He sort of got me in there.”

“Oh,” Melanie said.

“I’m going to quit anyway,” Josh said. “Life’s too short.”

“I agree. That is, basical y, my mantra. But wil your father be mad?”

“He’l be mad,” Josh said. “But he can’t stop me.”

“Al right, then,” Melanie said. The road stretched out before them; to the left, across the moors, was a lighthouse, and beyond that, the ocean. “It’s beautiful here.”

Josh didn’t answer, and Melanie chastised herself for saying something so obvious. He probably heard it from tourists al the time: how lovely, how quaint, how pristine, how beautiful. She tried to think of something witty to say, something bright, something that would make him think she was

. . . cool. She had never been cool in her entire life, and she certainly wasn’t cool tonight. But she wanted Josh to believe she was worthy of the ride.

“I just found out I’m pregnant,” she said.

He looked at her quizzical y. “Real y?”

“Yeah.” She stared at her knees. She would never make it in the CIA. She had just shared the strictest secret with someone she barely knew. “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t tel anybody.”

He seemed puzzled by this, and Melanie would have laughed if she didn’t feel like such a horse’s ass. Who would he possibly tel ?

Stil , he humored her. “My lips are sealed, I promise,” he said. “You know yesterday, when you fel ? I thought your friend sounded pretty concerned. Overly concerned—about you, not her baby.”

“She worries about me,” Melanie said.

“Right,” he said. “But I wondered if there was something else going on. Something no one else knew about.”

“Oh,” Melanie said. “Wel . . . yes.” She looked at him. “You have a good memory.”

“The three of you were hard to forget,” he said.

When the Jeep pul ed up in front of the cottage on Shel Street, Melanie’s spirits flagged. She didn’t want the ride to end; she didn’t want to have to face Vicki and Brenda like a child who had run away from home. Josh yanked the brake and hopped out of the Jeep to retrieve Melanie’s luggage.

“Thanks for the ride,” Melanie said.

“My pleasure.”

Melanie reached for the suitcase, and their hands touched on the handle. We’re touching, she thought. One second, two, three. Did he notice?

He didn’t move his hand. Slowly, Melanie raised her eyes and thought, If he’s staring at me, I won’t be able to bear it.

He was looking at the cottage. Melanie let her breath go. She felt like a thirteen-year-old.

“Wel ,” she said. “Thanks again.”

“Right,” Josh said. “So, I’l see you, I guess. Good luck with everything.” He smiled at her.

“Thanks,” she said. “You, too.” She smiled back. She smiled until he climbed into his Jeep and drove off. Then she took a deep breath. The air smel ed like steak on a charcoal gril , and miraculously, she felt hungry.

As she rol ed her suitcase down the flagstone walk, she met Blaine. His hair had been wetted and combed and he wore a fresh blue polo shirt.

“Where were you?” he demanded. The inquisition starts, Melanie thought. But then Blaine’s face broke open into genuine curiosity and, if Melanie wasn’t mistaken, a little bit of conspiracy. “Were you lost?” he whispered.

“Yes,” she said. “I was lost.”

That night, after dinner (cheeseburgers, Ore-Ida onion rings, iceberg salad), Josh drove to Didi’s apartment. She had cal ed during dinner and asked him to come over. He said no. When he sat back down to his father’s silence, Josh felt he had to explain. “That was Didi. She wants me to come over. I said no.”

Tom Flynn cleared his throat. “Dennis told me he saw you giving a girl a ride home tonight.”

“Huh?” Josh said, then he remembered Melanie. “Oh, right.” How to explain the “girl” Dennis was referring to was an airline passenger who was much older than Josh, and pregnant to boot? How to explain that he had driven her home in an attempt to catch another glimpse of Scowling Sister, who was another woman out of his league in every respect? “That was nothing.”

Tom Flynn cut his iceberg salad, took a bite, wiped ranch dressing from his chin. Drank his beer. The phone rang again. Again, Josh rose to answer it. Melanie had told him she was pregnant, but she hadn’t seemed happy about it. In fact, she had seemed gloomy. But she was too old to have gotten knocked up. Josh hadn’t thought to check if she was wearing a wedding ring. He wasn’t doing a very good job observing or absorbing.

“Hel o?”

“Josh?”

“What?” Josh said in an aggravated whisper.

“I real y want you to come over. Real y. It’s important.”

“You’ve been drinking,” he said.

“Just wine,” Didi said. “Please? Come over. I have something to tel you.”

She had something to tel him. This was how it always went, since the end of sophomore year in high school when they’d started dating. Didi took everyday truths and twisted them like a kid with taffy until they were soap-opera dramas. Her doctor told her she was anemic, her brother threatened her with a carving knife because she borrowed his favorite sweater and got makeup on it, her father’s friend Ed Grubb pinched her ass

—al these became reasons why Didi needed consoling, protecting, and extra heaps of attention from Josh.

“What is it, Didi?” he said.

“Just come,” she said, and she hung up.

Josh sat back down at the table. He stared at his onion rings, which had grown cold, limp, and soggy. “Sounds like I’d better go,” he said.

At nine o’clock, when Josh pul ed into Didi’s driveway, the sun was just setting. Summer, he thought. Drag-ass summer.

He could hear the music from fifty yards away: Led Zeppelin. This was not a promising sign. He approached the stairs down to Didi’s basement apartment in what might be considered a stealthy way and peered into the living room window, which was at ankle level. Didi was dancing on her coffee table wearing only a red negligee, waving around a glass of white wine so that it sloshed everywhere. During their senior year in high school, Josh’s friend Zach had referred to Didi as Most Likely to Become a Pole Dancer, and although at the time Josh had been obligated to punch Zach in the gut, watching her now, he had to agree. Didi had been a better-quality person when Josh was dating her, or so it had seemed. She was a cheerleader, she was on student council, she’d had lots of girlfriends with whom she was constantly conferring—by passed notes, in the bathroom, at sleepovers on the weekends. She had been fun—not as smart as Josh, maybe, not “academical y oriented,” not exactly the kind of girl Josh’s mother would have wanted for him in the long run, but perfect for high school.

They had broken up the first time a few weeks before Josh left for col ege. Tom Flynn had been away, in Woburn, renewing his control er’s certification, and Didi had spent the night at Josh’s house. It started out as a very pleasant playing-house fantasy—they ordered pizza, drank Tom Flynn’s beer, and rented a movie. Then they brushed their teeth and climbed into bed together. In the middle of the night, Josh awoke to find Didi sitting on the floor by the side of the bed, reading through Josh’s journal with a flashlight. They broke up that night—not because Josh was pissed at her for invading his privacy (though he was) but because Didi had either hunted for or stumbled across the pages in the journals that were dedicated to her. In these pages, Josh wrote about how needy Didi was and how he wished she would “locate her center” and “operate from a place of security.” Didi took enormous offense at these statements. She threw the journal in Josh’s face and stormed out of his bedroom, slamming the door, only to return a few seconds later, claim her overnight bag, and then slam the door again.

A little while later, Josh found her downstairs at the kitchen table, crying, with another of Tom Flynn’s beers open in front of her. He went to her and held her, marveling at how his writing about how needy she was had made her even needier. She was terrified to let him go away to col ege.

You’ll forget all about me, she said, and he did not refute this, because Didi represented the things about high school that he wanted to leave behind.

That their relationship had endured three years hence—at least in its sexual aspect—was beginning to discourage him. Dealing with Didi was like Josh’s job at the airport, it was like his living on the island at al —too safe, too predictable, too familiar. And yet he had never been able to shake her. She made herself available, and Josh could never quite turn her down.

Josh knocked on the door. The music switched to Blue Öyster Cult. Didi had a drinking problem, Josh decided, in addition to a self-esteem problem. He knocked again. No response. He was about to escape when the door swung open. Didi grabbed Josh by the shirt col ar and dragged him inside.

They started kissing on the couch. Didi’s mouth was hot and sloppy, she tasted like cheap wine, and Josh tried to ignore the feeling of yuck that crept over him. Lola, Didi’s vicious cat, was lurking around somewhere—Josh could smel her, and the sofa was covered with her orange fur. Josh closed his eyes and tried to lose himself. Sex, he thought. This is only about sex. He reached up inside Didi’s negligee. She had put on weight since high school, and whereas once her stomach had been smooth and taut, it was now fleshy, and her thighs were heavy and dimpled. Josh could not get excited; in fact, the longer they kissed, the more depressed he became. He tried to think of Scowling Sister, but the face that came to his mind was Melanie’s. Okay, weird. She had a pretty smile and a perfect ass, but real y, was he demented? She had told him she was pregnant!

Josh pul ed away from Didi.

“I’m not into this,” he said.

At this announcement, she bit his neck and sucked. She was trying to mark him as her own. There had been so many hickeys in high school, his teachers had looked at him sideways. He pushed at her.

“Didi, stop.”

She persisted, in what she wanted him to believe was a playful way, her forehead boring into his jaw, her mouth like a Hoover on his neck. Josh took hold of her shoulders and pried her off. He got to his feet.

“Stop it, I said.”

“What?” Didi lay splayed across the disgusting sofa looking very much like a half-opened Christmas present in her red satin. Her makeup was smeared around her eyes, and one of the slinky shoulder straps had slid off her shoulders and threatened to expose her breast.

There was a bloodcurdling shriek. Josh jumped. Lola stood, back arched, on the top of the recliner.

“Okay, I’m out of here,” Josh said.

“Wait!” Didi said. She gathered Lola in her arms.

“Sorry,” Josh said. “This isn’t working out for me.”

Didi slugged back the rest of her wine and trailed Josh to the door. Didi draped Lola over her shoulders like a fur wrap. “We’re stil friends, right?”

Josh paused. He didn’t want to say yes, but if he said no there would be a barrage of sad-sack nonsense and he would never escape. “Sure,” he said.

“So you’l lend me the money?” she said.

This was another classic Didi trick: to refer to something completely out of the blue as if it were an already decided-upon fact.

“What money?”

“I need two hundred dol ars for my car,” she said. “Or they’re going to repossess it.”

“What?”

“I’m a little behind on my bil s,” Didi said. “I bought some summer clothes, my rent went up, my credit cards are maxed . . .”

“Ask your parents for the money,” Josh said.

“I did. They said no.”

“I don’t have two hundred dol ars,” Josh said. “Not to spare, anyway. I have to save. Col ege is ex-pen-sive.”

“I’l pay you back at the end of the month,” Didi said. “I promise. Please? I’m in real y big trouble. Would you drop it off at the hospital tomorrow?

I’m there eight to four.”

“I work tomorrow.”

“What about Tuesday, then?” Didi said. “Tuesday’s your day off, right?”

Josh let his head fal forward on his neck. How did things like this happen? He should just say no and leave.

“If you lend me the money, I’l leave you alone forever,” Didi said. “I swear it.”

This was as blatant a lie as was ever spoken, but it was too tempting to ignore.

“You’l stop cal ing?” he said.

“Yes.”

“And you’l pay me back? By the first of July?”

“With interest,” Didi said. “Ten dol ars interest.”

Josh managed to get himself on the opposite side of the door. Lola scratched at the screen.

“Fine,” he said. He was absolutely certain he would never see the money again, but if he could get Didi out of his life once and for al , it was a smal price to pay. “I’l see you Tuesday.”

According to Aunt Liv, there were only three kinds of women in the world: older sisters, younger sisters, and women without sisters. Aunt Liv was a younger sister like Brenda; Aunt Liv’s older sister, Joy, had been Brenda’s grandmother. Joy was prettier, Liv always thought, and luckier. They both got jobs working at a fabric store during the Second World War, but for whatever reason, Joy was paid a nickel more per day. The owner was sweet on her, Liv said, even though I was the one who made him laugh. Joy then married a boy from Narberth named Albert Lyndon, and they had four children, the oldest of whom was Brenda’s father, Buzz. Liv, meanwhile, inherited her parents’ stone house in Gladwyne, she attended Bryn Mawr Col ege, she taught literature there for years. She read, she lavished her nieces and nephews with attention and love and money, she kept meticulous documentation of the family history. Aunt Liv was the only person Brenda had ever confided in about Vicki because she was the only person Brenda knew who would understand.

I spent my whole growing-up thinking Joy was born a princess and I was born a scullery maid, Liv said. But then I realized that was my own delusion.

Brenda had cherished those words at the time of their delivery (Brenda was ten, Vicki eleven), but there were no delusions about what was happening in Aunt Liv’s cottage this summer. Brenda was not only serving as Vicki’s scul ery maid, but also as her nanny and her chauffeur.

Because Vicki had cancer! If Brenda wanted to throw a pity party for herself, she would be the only one attending. More than once already, Brenda had sat on her bed in the old nursery, hoping to absorb some of Aunt Liv’s strength, patience, and kindness.

On Tuesday, Brenda drove Vicki to chemotherapy in the neighbors’ ancient Peugeot with the kids strapped into the backseat. Taking the kids had not been in the original plan; however, over the weekend, one thing had become clear: If the children were left in Melanie’s care, they would die in a kitchen fire or drown drinking from the garden hose. Melanie was going to stay home and “rest,” she said—and if she attempted another escape and was successful, so much the better in Brenda’s opinion.

Brenda tried not to appear martyrish in her role as servant, because she knew this was exactly what Vicki expected. They had argued about Melanie on Sunday afternoon. Brenda expressed her discontent while Vicki made what Brenda could only think of as the “she’s becoming our mother” face. Brenda couldn’t stand that facial expression, and yet she sensed she would see a lot of it this summer. In the end, however, Vicki had

—surprise!—agreed with Brenda, and apologized. Melanie probably shouldn’t have come. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but maybe we were hasty. I’m sorry. Yes, we’ll look for a babysitter, and no, you won’t get much of your screenplay written until we do. Brenda had been impressed by Vicki’s admission of her own poor judgment. It was, in thirty years of sisterhood, unprecedented. Vicki was always right; this was a fact of her birth. She had been born right—as wel as pretty, talented, intel igent, and athletic; she was a model daughter, a natural-born leader, the gold-medal/blue-ribbon winner in whatever she did, a magnet for girlfriends and boyfriends alike. She was the sister people preferred. Again and again and again while growing up, Brenda had screamed at her parents: How could you do this to me? They had never once asked her to define the “this”; it was understood. How could you make me follow Vicki? Only sixteen months apart, they were constantly compared, and Brenda constantly found herself coming up short.

People are different. El en Lyndon had been tel ing Brenda this for thirty years. Even sisters were different. But, as Aunt Liv was quick to point out, El en Lyndon was a woman without sisters. El en Lyndon had grown up with three older brothers, and the fact that she had given birth to sisters in rather rapid succession left her perplexed, as though she had brought home not children, but rather a rare breed of chinchil a. Brenda thought her mother the loveliest of women. She was stylish, cultivated, and impeccably mannered. She was educated about art, poetry, and classical music. On the one hand, it seemed El en had been born into the world to be the mother of girls: to orchestrate the tea parties, buckle up the patent leather shoes, read A Little Princess aloud, and procure tickets to the Nutcracker. But on the other hand—and here was the one thing Brenda and Vicki had always agreed upon—she had no idea what it was like to have a sister. El en understood nothing of hand-me-downs; she didn’t know what it felt like to walk into a classroom and watch the expression of delight on a new teacher’s face when she learned that she was blessed with another Lyndon girl this year! El en, Brenda was sure, knew nothing of insidious jealousy. She would be appal ed to learn that the deepest and darkest secrets in Brenda’s life al somehow related to her envy of Vicki.

Vicki teased Brenda al the time about her devotion to The Innocent Impostor, but that book, discovered at the tender age of fourteen when Brenda was in danger of being crushed under the toe of Vicki’s Tretorn sneaker, had served as Brenda’s life raft. It gave her a focus, an identity.

Because of that book, Brenda became a reader, a critical thinker, a writer, an American literature major in col ege, a graduate student, a doctoral candidate, a doctor, a professor, possibly the foremost authority on Fleming Trainor in the world. And now that Brenda would never be able to teach the book again, and would never be able to write about it with any hope of being published someplace even remotely legitimate and scholarly, she was forced to commit a transgression (seen by some academics as even more egregious than the ones she’d already committed) and commercialize the novel. Take it public, as it were. She would write a screenplay for The Innocent Impostor. Brenda vacil ated between thinking this was a bril iant idea and thinking it was completely inane. She wondered: Do al bril iant ideas seem bril iant from the very beginning, or do they seem far-fetched until they come into clearer focus? Brenda had first considered writing the screenplay for the novel (or “treating it,” as they say) back in grad school, when she was dirt poor, subsisting on green tea, saltines, and ramen noodles, but she had dismissed the idea as crass and ridiculous. She was, like every other academic worth her salt, a purist.

Now, however, Brenda tried to convince herself that the novel was perfect for Hol ywood. Set in eighteenth-century Philadelphia, the book told the story of a man named Calvin Dare, whose horse kil s another man, Thomas Beech, by accident. (The horse kicks Beech in the head while the two men are tying up in front of a tavern during a lightning storm.) Calvin Dare, through a series of careful y disguised coincidences, proceeds to become the deceased Beech. He applies for and is given Beech’s old job; he fal s in love with Beech’s bereaved fiancée, Emily. He becomes a Quaker and joins Beech’s meetinghouse. The book was unsatisfying to some critics because of its blissful ending: Dare marries Emily, produces healthy and loving children, and is happy in his work. Dare suffers no qualms about how he moved into Beech’s life as though it were an abandoned house, fixed it up, and made it his own. Brenda had spent the greater part of six years parsing the book’s definition of identity and holding the implied messages of the book up against colonial, and modern, morality. If you didn’t like your life, was it okay to become someone else? What if that person was dead? Brenda had often felt like a lone traveler on the icy plateau of this topic. There was nobody else who cared. But that might change if The Innocent Impostor were produced. She, Dr. Brenda Lyndon, formerly Professor Brenda Lyndon, would be acknowledged for unearthing a lost classic; and more important, she would be forgiven.

And yet, even with redemption almost within her grasp, doubt plagued her. Why waste her time on an idiotic project that was destined to lead nowhere? The answer was, she had no other options. She wished again and again that her academic career had not been so gruesomely derailed.

Even with mil ions of potential dol ars in her future, Brenda dwel ed on the “if onlys.” If only she hadn’t answered her cel phone the night John Walsh first cal ed, if only she’d warned Walsh not to show his midterm paper to anyone, if only she hadn’t lost her temper with Mrs. Pencaldron and thrown a book at the painting, if only she’d exercised a modicum of common sense . . . she would stil be a professor. Professor Brenda Lyndon. Herself.

Her first semester at Champion had gone beautiful y. Brenda was awarded the highest teaching rating of any professor in her department, and these ratings were published in the campus newspaper for al to see. Some said it was because Brenda was new blood, a professor half the age of anyone else in the department, and with such unusual subject matter (Champion was the only university in the country teaching Fleming Trainor).

Brenda was attractive to boot—slender, with long hair, blue eyes, Prada loafers. Some said the English Department offered no competition. The rest of the faculty were dinosaurs, wax dummies. Whatever the reason, Brenda blew away the other professors in her department, not only in the numerical ratings, but with the anecdotals. Engaging, absorbing . . . we hung on every word . . . we carried the discussion into the quad . . . we were still talking about the reading at dinner. Dr. Lyndon is available and fair. . . . She is everything a Champion professor should be. The Pen & Feather ran a front-page feature on Brenda the fol owing week. She was a celebrity. She was part Britney Spears, part Condoleezza Rice. Each of Brenda’s much-older col eagues—including the department chair, Dr. Suzanne Atela—cal ed to congratulate her. They were envious, though not surprised. That’s why we hired you, Dr. Atela said. You’re young. You have a passion for your subject matter that we outgrew long ago.

Congratulations, Dr. Lyndon.

Brenda had bragged to her family at Christmastime; she had bought a bottle of expensive champagne to celebrate, drank most of it herself, and then blew her own horn. My students like me, she said as they al sat around the harvest table in Vicki and Ted’s dining room eating the impeccable meal that Vicki had prepared entirely from scratch. They love me.

These words took on a mortifying nuance second semester, when Brenda’s class consisted of eleven females and one male, a fox in the henhouse, a thirty-one-year-old sophomore from Fremantle, Australia, named John Walsh.

I love you, Walsh said. Brindah, I love you.

In the passenger seat, Vicki coughed. Brenda peeked at her. She was pale, her hands were like restless birds in her lap. I am driving my sister to chemotherapy, Brenda thought. Vicki has cancer and might die from it.

Today, Vicki was having a port instal ed in her chest that would al ow the oncology nurses to thread a tube into her vein and administer the poison. Instal ing the port was outpatient surgery, though the hospital told her to expect a three-hour visit. Brenda was supposed to take the kids to the playground, buy them an ice cream at Congdon’s Pharmacy on Main Street for lunch, and be back at the hospital in time to pick up Vicki and get Porter home for his afternoon nap. Vicki had made it sound al nice and neat, the perfect plan, but Brenda could tel that Vicki was nervous.

When other people got nervous, they tightened up, they became high-pitched and strained. Vicki was like this normal y. When she got addled, she became floppy and indecisive. She was al over the place.

Brenda pul ed into the hospital parking lot. As soon as she shut off the engine, Porter started to cry. Blaine said, “Actual y, I want to go home.”

“We’re dropping Mom off, then we’re going to the playground,” Brenda said. She got out of the car and unbuckled Porter, but he screamed and thrust himself at Vicki.

“Give him his pacifier,” Vicki said flatly. She was eyeing the gray-shingled hospital.

“Where is it?” Brenda said.

Vicki rummaged through her bag. “I can’t find it right this second, but I know it’s here,” she said. “I remember packing it. But . . . maybe we should run home and get another one.”

“Run home?” Brenda said. “Here, I’l just take him.” But Porter kicked and screamed some more. He nearly wriggled out of her arms. “Whoa!”

“Give him to me,” Vicki said. “I may be able to nurse him one last time before I go in.”

“But you did bring a bottle?” Brenda said.

“I did,” Vicki said. “This is going to be known as extreme weaning.”

Brenda moved to the other side of the car and set Blaine free from his five-point harness. A person had to have an advanced degree just to operate the car seats. “Come on, Champ.”

“Actual y, I want to go home. To my house. In Connecticut.”

“Actual y, you have no choice in the matter,” Vicki said in a stern voice. “Mommy has an appointment. Now hop out.”

“Here,” Brenda said. “I’l carry you.”

“He can walk,” Vicki said.

“No,” Blaine said, and he kicked the seat in front of him. “I’m not getting out.”

“After we drop Mom off, we’re going to the playground at Children’s Beach,” Brenda said.

“I don’t want to go to the beach! I want to go to my house in Connecticut. Where my dad lives.”

“We should have left him at the cottage,” Vicki said. “But I couldn’t do that to Melanie.”

Brenda kept quiet. She was not going to be predictable.

“I’m taking you to get ice cream for lunch,” Brenda told Blaine. “At the pharmacy.” This was the ace up her sleeve, and she was dismayed to have to throw it so early, but . . .

“I don’t want ice cream for lunch,” Blaine said. He started to cry. “I want to stay with Mommy.”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Vicki said. “Can we just get inside, please? Blaine? Wil you help Mommy out here and come with me inside?”

Blaine shook his head. Strains of “Für Elise” floated up from Brenda’s purse. Her cel phone.

“That’s probably Ted,” Vicki said.

Brenda checked the display, thinking, Yes, it’s probably Ted, but hoping it was Walsh. The display said, Delaney, Brian. Brenda groaned. “Shit,”

she said. “My lawyer.” She shoved the phone back into her purse and, fueled by her anger at the cal , barked at Blaine, “Let’s go. Right now.”

Reluctantly, Blaine climbed into Brenda’s arms. She gasped; he weighed a ton.

“I want to stay with Mommy,” he said.

If only the university officials could see me now, Brenda thought as they walked through the sliding doors into the bright chil of the hospital. They would have mercy on me. Anyone would.

They slogged toward the admitting desk, where a busty young woman waited for them. She had blond hair held in a very sloppy bun with what looked like crazy straws, streaky blusher on her cheekbones, and breasts that were shoved up and out so far it looked like she was offering them up on a platter. Didi, her name tag said.

“Victoria Stowe,” Vicki said. “I’m here for a port instal ation.”

“Righty-o,” Didi said. She had long painted fingernails with rhinestones embedded in them. Brenda wanted to whisk the girl home and give her a makeover. Pretty girl, bad decisions. Didi slid some forms across the desk to Vicki. “Fil these out, insurance information here, signature here, initials here and here. Sign this waiver, very important.” She smiled. She had a lovely smile. “It’s so you can’t sue us if you die.”

Brenda took a long, deep drink of the girl’s cleavage. Could she buy the girl some tact?

“I’m not going to die,” Vicki said.

“Oh, God, no,” Didi said. “I was only kidding.”

In the waiting area, they found a row of chairs in front of a TV. Sesame Street was on, and Porter became entranced.

“Go,” Brenda said. “Get it over with. Go now while we’re calm.” Blaine emptied a tub of Lincoln Logs onto the polished floor.

“I can’t,” Vicki said, sitting down. “I have al these forms to fil out.” As she said this, the forms slid off her lap and fanned out al over the floor.

Suddenly, a nurse appeared. “Victoria Stowe?”

Vicki bent over, scrambling to pick up the forms. “I’m not ready. Were these in any special order?”

“Bring them along,” the nurse said. “You can fil them out upstairs.”

“Yes, yes, yes,” Didi cal ed out. “Go now, or you’l back everything up.”

Vicki remained in her seat. She looked at Brenda. “Listen, there’s something I want to ask you.”

“What?” Brenda said. Vicki’s tone of voice made her nervous. Brenda traveled back twenty-five years: Brenda was five years old, Vicki was six and a half, the two of them were playing on the beach on a cloudy day in matching strawberry-print bikinis and yel ow hooded sweatshirts. There was a bolt of lightning, then the loudest crack of thunder Brenda had heard either before or since. Vicki grabbed her hand as the rain started to fal .

Come on. We have to run.

Until the obvious differences between them emerged, they had been raised as twins. Now, Brenda felt a fear as strong as Vicki’s own. My sister!

Fifteen years ago, when Brenda had spent her study hal s as a library aide and Vicki was student council president, who would have guessed that Vicki would be the one to get cancer? It didn’t make any sense. It should be me, Brenda thought.

“Mom?” Blaine said. He knocked over his log cabin running to her.

“If you can be strong and go with that nurse, I wil take care of things here,” Brenda said. “The kids wil be safe. They’l be fine.”

“I can’t go,” Vicki said. Her eyes fil ed with tears. “I’m sorry. I just can’t.”

“Victoria Stowe?” the nurse said.

“They need you in pre-op,” Didi said. “Otherwise, I swear, things wil get backed up and I wil get blamed.”

“Go,” Brenda said. “We’l be fine.”

“I want to stay with Mom,” Blaine said.

Vicki sniffled and kissed him. “You stay here. Be good for Auntie Brenda.” She stood up and crossed the room stiffly, like a robot.

“Vick?” Brenda said. “What did you want to ask me?”

“Later,” Vicki said, and she disappeared down the hal .

An hour passed with Brenda feeling like a broken record. How many times had she suggested they leave—to go to Children’s Beach, to get ice cream at the pharmacy?

“With sprinkles,” she said. “Please, Blaine? We’l come back and get Mom in a little while.”

“No,” Blaine said. “I want to stay here until she comes back.”

Porter was crying—he’d been crying for twenty minutes, and nothing Brenda did made him stop. She tried the bottle, but he wouldn’t take it; he spiteful y clamped his mouth shut, and formula ran al over his chin and the front of his shirt. His face was red and scrunched, tears squeezed out of the corners of his eyes; he threw back his head and wailed. Brenda plopped him down on the floor, put an orange plastic goril a in front of him, and hunted through Vicki’s bag for the goddamned pacifier. Porter shrieked and threw the goril a in anger.

Brenda pul ed out a box of Q-tips, two diapers, a package of wipes, a Baggie of Cheerios crushed into dust, a set of plastic keys, two Chap Sticks, a box of crayons, a sippy cup of what smel ed like sour juice, and a paperback cal ed When Life Becomes Precious. Vicki could go on Let’s Make a Deal with what she had in her bag, and yet there was no pacifier. Brenda checked the side pocket—the bottle was in there, and aha!

Under the bottle, squashed at the very bottom of the pocket and covered with lint and sand, was the pacifier.

“I found it!” she said. She brandished the pacifier for the girl behind the desk, Didi, as if to say, Here is the answer to all my problems! Brenda stuck the pacifier in Porter’s mouth and he quieted. Ahhhhh. Brenda sighed. The room was peaceful once again. But not a minute later, Porter threw the pacifier across the room and started with fresh tears.

“Blaine?” Brenda said. “Can we please go? Your brother . . .”

“There’s a soda machine at the end of the hal ,” Didi said.

Brenda stared at her. Soda machine? She had two tiny children here. Did the girl think her problems could be solved with a can of Coke?

“We’re not al owed to have soda,” Blaine said.

Didi stared. “Maybe you could use a walk.”

The girl wanted to get rid of them. And could Brenda blame her, real y?

“We could use a walk,” Brenda said. “Let’s go.”

She carried Porter, who was whimpering, down the polished corridor. Cottage Hospital, she thought. The kind of place where they fixed up Jack and Jil after they fel down the hil . Nothing bad happened here. Vicki was somewhere in the cottage hospital having her port instal ed. For chemotherapy. For cancer.

It should be me, Brenda thought. I don’t have kids. I don’t have anybody.

Before she got the teaching job, Brenda had never seen Champion University, except in photos on the Internet. She had taken a virtual tour like a prospective student and checked out the neo-classical buildings, the geometric lawns, the plaza where students sunbathed and played Frisbee. It looked, while not bucolic, at least sufficiently oasis-like, a real col ege campus in the melee of Manhattan. But at the start of second semester, in January, the blocks of Champion University were gray and businesslike. This only served to make the English Department, with its Persian rugs and grandfather clocks, its first-edition Henry James in a glass museum case, seem more inviting. Mrs. Pencaldron, the department’s supremely capable and officious administrative assistant, had rushed to make Brenda a cappuccino, something she did for professors currently in her favor.

Welcome back, Dr. Lyndon. How was your break? Here is your class list and the syllabus. I had them copied for you.

Brenda reviewed the syl abus. They would start by reading Fleming Trainor, and then they would compare and contrast The Innocent Impostor with the works of contemporary authors: Lorrie Moore, Richard Russo, Anne Lamott, Rick Moody, Adam Haslett, Antonya Nelson, Andre Dubus.

The reading list was so delicious, Brenda wanted to eat it with a knife and fork. There’s a wait list for your class, Mrs. Pencaldron said. Thirty-three people long. In the fall, Dr. Atela wants to add another section. Does she? Brenda had said. The department chair, Suzanne Atela, was only five feet tal , but she was exotic and formidable. She was a native of the Bahamas and had cocoa-butter skin without a single line of age, although Brenda knew her to be sixty-two years old, the mother of four, the grandmother of fourteen. She had published copiously on the literature of the Beat generation, and there were rumors she had slept with one of the minor players, a cousin of Ginsburg’s, which seemed fantastical to Brenda, but who knew what the woman was like when she took off her harlequin glasses and unpinned her hair? Her husband was a handsome Indian man; Brenda had never met him, though she’d seen a photograph of him wearing a tuxedo, on Suzanne Atela’s desk. Suzanne Atela was formidable only because she held Brenda’s future, and that of every other untenured professor in the department, in her tiny, delicate hands.

Brenda surveyed her class list. Upon initial inspection, it looked as though she had struck gold. It looked like she had gotten a class of only women. This was too good to be true! Brenda started amending the reading list in her mind—with a class of only women, they could attack Fleming Trainor and the problem of identity with a gender slant. Just as Brenda started scribbling down the titles of some real y incendiary feminist texts, her eyes hit on the last name on the list: Walsh, John. Sophomore.

Mrs. Pencaldron had tapped on Brenda’s office door. “There’s been a change, Dr. Lyndon,” she said. “You’l be teaching your seminar in the Barrington Room.”

Brenda grinned stupidly even as she crumpled her list of incendiary feminist texts and threw it away. First the cappuccino, then a mention of teaching two sections next year, and now the Barrington Room, which was the crown jewel of the department. It was used for special occasions—

department meetings, faculty luncheons—and Suzanne Atela taught her graduate students in that room. It had a long, polished Queen Anne table and an original Jackson Pol ock hanging on the wal .

“The Barrington Room?” Brenda had said.

“Yes,” Mrs. Pencaldron said. “Fol ow me.”

They made their way down the hushed hal way to the end, where the door, dark and paneled, loomed with importance.

“Now,” Mrs. Pencaldron said, “I’m required to go over the rules. No drinks on the table—no cans, no bottles, no coffee cups. The room must be opened and locked by you and you must never leave the students in the room alone with the painting. Capiche? ”

“Capiche, ” Brenda said.

Mrs. Pencaldron gave Brenda a long, unwavering look. “I mean it. That painting was bequeathed to the department by Whitmore Barrington and it is worth a lot of money. So, for that matter, is the table.”

“Gotcha,” Brenda said. “No drinks.”

“None whatsoever,” Mrs. Pencaldron said. “Now, let me give you the security code.”

After Brenda had practiced locking and unlocking the door and setting and disarming the alarm with a long, complicated security code, Mrs.

Pencaldron left Brenda to her own devices.

“I hope you realize, Dr. Lyndon, what a privilege it is to teach in that room,” she said as she walked away.

Brenda pitched her cappuccino cup into the trash, then organized her papers at the head of the Queen Anne table and took a second to consider the painting. El en Lyndon was a great appreciator of art, and she had passed this appreciation on to her daughters with museum trips that started as soon as Vicki and Brenda were out of diapers. But real y, Brenda thought. Real y, really—wasn’t the Pol ock just a mess of splattered paint?

Who was the person who designated Pol ock as a great artist? Did some people see beyond the splatter to a universal truth, or was it al just nonsense, as Brenda suspected? Literature, at least, had real meaning; it made sense. A painting should make sense, too, Brenda thought, and if it didn’t make sense, then it should be pretty. The Pol ock failed on both fronts, but there it hung, and Brenda, despite herself, felt impressed.

It was at that moment, of Brenda feeling impressed but not knowing why, that a man walked into the room. A very handsome man with olive skin and dark eyes, close-cropped black hair. He was Brenda’s age and as tal and strapping as a ranch hand, though he was dressed like John Keats, in a soft Burgundy sweater with a gray wool scarf wrapped around his neck. There was a pencil tucked behind his ear. Brenda thought he must be a graduate student, one of Suzanne Atela’s doctoral candidates, perhaps, who had wandered in accidental y.

“Hi?” she said.

He nodded. “How you going?” He had some sort of broad antipodean accent.

“This is the seminar on Fleming Trainor,” she said. “Are you . . . ?”

“John Walsh,” he said.

John Walsh. This was John Walsh. Brenda felt her good sense unraveling in her brain like a bal of yarn. She had not prepared herself for this—a man in her class, not a boy. He was beautiful, more beautiful than the girl-women who came streaming into the Barrington Room after him like rats fol owing the Pied Piper.

Brenda wiggled her feet in her Prada loafers and stared down at her scrumptious syl abus. Day one, minute one: She was attracted to her sole male student.

Once everyone was settled, she cleared her throat and checked for cups and cans, bottles of water. Nothing. Mrs. Pencaldron must have screened everyone at the door. “I’m Dr. Brenda Lyndon,” she said. “Please cal me whatever makes you most comfortable, Dr. Lyndon or Brenda.

We are here to study Fleming Trainor’s novel, The Innocent Impostor, and to compare and contrast Trainor’s concept of identity with those of contemporary authors. Was everyone able to get the books?”

Nods.

“Good,” Brenda said. She stared at her hands: They were scaly with dry skin, and trembling. She needed a spa treatment. She made a mental note to cal Vicki as soon as she got home. “Your assignment for Thursday is the first ten chapters of the book, and I’d like you to have the second half done by next Tuesday.” She waited for the inevitable protests, but she only met with more nods. There was a woman in a wheelchair, a black woman with a short Afro, an Indian woman with fingernails the color of red currants. The other girl-women were varying shades of winter pale with light hair, dark hair, purple hair. And then there was John Walsh, whom Brenda did not look at. “Here is your syl abus.” She closed her eyes for a moment, savoring the whisper of the papers being passed around. “You’l be graded on two papers, one at midterm and one at the end of the semester. You’l also be graded on your contributions to the discussion, so please notify me if you’re going to miss class. My office hours wil be Thursday from nine to eleven.”

Brenda gave the class her cel phone number. She glanced at John Walsh and was both elated and mortified to find he was programming her number right into his phone.

She asked the students to go around the room and say their names, where they were from, and one thing about themselves. She started at the opposite side of the room from John Walsh on purpose—she started with the girl named Amrita from Bangalore, India, who told everyone she took the class because she’d seen that Dr. Lyndon had been given the top teaching marks last semester in the Pen & Feather.

“I’ve been here three years,” Amrita said. “I’ve encountered many bril iant minds, but I’ve yet to find one decent teacher.”

Amrita was blatantly brownnosing, but Brenda was too preoccupied by John Walsh’s unsettling presence to take the bait.

“Thank you,” Brenda said. “Next?”

The girls continued, and Brenda, half listening, made notes by each name. Jeannie in the wheelchair was a Democrat from Arkansas; Mal ory and Kel y were fraternal twins: Mal ory wore cat’s-eye glasses, and Kel y, with the purple hair, played a minor role on the soap opera Love Another Day. There were three girls named Rebecca; a girl from Guadeloupe named Sandrine, who played guitar in a band cal ed French Toast; the black woman, Michele Nathans, had just returned from a semester in Marrakech; short, squat Amy Feldman was a Japanese major and a sushi aficionado who also admitted, after prompting from one of the Rebeccas, that her father was the president of Marquee Films; and the last girl, named Ivy, announced that she was from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, and a lesbian.

Was everyone extra quiet after this announcement, or was it just Brenda’s imagination? Maybe they were, like Brenda, waiting to hear what John Walsh would say.

Slowly, Brenda turned to look at John Walsh, praying she would keep her composure. At the top of her class list, she wrote: Call Vicki!

John Walsh had removed the pencil from behind his ear, and was turning it slowly in his hands. He raised his eyes to the girl-women and Brenda.

“I’m John Walsh,” he said. “Most people just cal me Walsh. I’m from Western Australia, a town cal ed Fremantle.” He tapped his desk with his pencil. “So . . . you probably notice I’m a bit older than your average col ege sophomore.”

“Yes!” In alarm, Brenda looked at the Jackson Pol ock painting, as though it were the painting that had spoken and not her. She waited for the girl-women to giggle, or whisper, but there was silence. Maybe they could teach her how to keep her act together.

“I did my freshman year at the University of W.A.”—this he pronounced dubya-aye—“and then I got caught up with a bit of the wanderlust. I dropped out of school. I traveled around the world.”

Brenda knew she should keep her mouth shut, but that was proving impossible. “Around the world?” she said.

“To Thailand and Nepal and India, up through Afghanistan and China into Russia. I’ve been to the Middle East, Jordan, Dubai, Lebanon. And then there was one year in Britain, where I worked at a pub. I spent some time on the continent in Germany, Belgium, Italy, France, Spain, Malta, the Canary Islands, Iceland . . . until I got to New York, when I ran out of money.” He stopped. “I’m talking too much, right?”

Right, thought Brenda. Al of the incendiary feminist texts she had ever read would say: Just because you’re the only man in the room does not mean that your life has been more interesting, more authentic, or more worthy than the rest of our (female) lives. But Brenda didn’t want him to stop.

For starters, she loved the sound of his voice. It was so . . . masculine. Part Crocodile Dundee, part Crocodile Hunter. Did the other women want him to stop? Brenda quickly surveyed the room. The women had the same expression of placid interest they’d had since they arrived. Wel , except for Amrita, the brownnoser. She was agog over Walsh, leaning toward him, nodding. Brenda took this as a sign.

“Go on,” Brenda said.

“From there it gets complicated. I needed a job; I met a bloke at Eddie’s down in the Vil age whose uncle had a construction company and I started working for him, but that got old right on so I thought, the only way I’m going to get anywhere is to go back to school. So here I am, a thirty-one-year-old sophomore.”

“Wel ,” said Brenda. Thinking: He’s older than I am! But he’s a sophomore in college. He’s my student! “Thank you al for sharing. Does anyone have questions about the course or the syl abus? The assignments?” She paused. Nothing but polite stares. “Okay, then, I think we can cal it a day.

Please read to chapter ten by Thursday.”

She watched as the girl-women col ected themselves and left the room—some alone, some chatting. Jeannie buzzed out in the wheelchair. A cel phone rang—one of the Rebeccas. She said, “Hel o? Yeah, I’m out.” As though she’d been in prison. Was it that bad? Had Brenda seemed anything like the person who’d taught last semester? Brenda was so preoccupied with her thoughts that she didn’t realize John Walsh was stil sitting. When she saw him, she jumped.