Barefoot

“Not real y,” Josh said. Tom Flynn wasn’t much for beach picnics. Josh did, however, have memories of Sunday afternoons at the beach when he was younger. His parents and a whole group of their friends congregated each week out at Eel Point. There were twenty or thirty kids, Wiffle bal games, charcoal barbecues with hamburgers and hot dogs. His mother, in particular, had seemed to enjoy these Sundays—she sat in her chair with her face raised to the sun, she swam twenty lengths of the beach, she helped Josh and the other kids col ect horseshoe crabs, and she even pitched a few innings of Wiffle bal . At five o’clock she pul ed a bottle of white wine from the depths of their icy cooler and poured herself some in a plastic cup. Every week, she insisted they stay until sunset.

We have to enjoy it now, she’d say. Before winter comes.

“Do you know how to drive on the beach?” Melanie said. “I’d get stuck.”

“I can drive on the beach,” Josh said. He kept his tire pressure low and put his Jeep in four-wheel drive; most of the time, it was as easy as that.

“Years of beach parties.”

“Sounds like fun,” Melanie said. She smiled at him in a way that seemed to mean something. Josh felt his face growing warm and he looked at the kids. Porter was asleep already and drooling, and Blaine was getting that zoned-out look that came right before sleep. They weren’t going to make one minute of the beach picnic.

Josh was relieved when Melanie turned her head away. Ted gunned the motor and sailed up over the big, bumpy dune. The car lurched and rocked; everyone pitched forward, and at one point, Josh was bounced right out of his seat. Melanie grabbed on to the back of Vicki’s seat with one hand and clenched her midsection with the other.

“Hold on!” Ted cal ed out, and he whooped like a cowboy.

Josh shook his head. Tourists, he thought. Summer people. It would serve Ted right if he got stuck in the soft sand, if he had to cal on Josh to save his ass. But then Josh remembered that the picnic was supposed to be for Vicki’s sake, and when he checked, Vicki was smiling. Ted careened down the smooth backside of the dune onto the beach, where he wisely placed the Yukon in the existing tracks. Melanie turned around and grinned at Josh.

“Look at the water,” she said. “I can’t wait to swim. Wil you come in with me?”

“Oh,” Josh said. “Wel , I didn’t bring my suit.”

“Who needs a suit?” Melanie said, and she laughed.

“Right,” Josh said. He glanced at Brenda, but she was stil mooning out the window. It began to feel suspiciously as if he’d been asked along this evening as Melanie’s date. Was that what Ted thought? Did that explain the cold reception? Melanie was stuck to Josh like gum on his shoe; he was a sitting duck, wedged in the back between the kids.

Melanie must have sensed his discomfort because she said, “I’m sorry. I’m bugging you.” Her face got the same sort of crumpled expression that she had when Josh first saw her coming off the airplane. The expression addled Josh. It reminded him that she’d been abandoned, somehow, by her husband, even though she was pregnant. It made him want to help her, cheer her up. She was a nice woman and very pretty, but he didn’t want anyone to think . . .

“You’re not bugging me,” Josh said. “I’m just hungry.”

“Oh, me, too,” Melanie said. “The smel of the lobsters is driving me crazy.”

“I want a marshmal ow,” Blaine said.

Vicki piped up from the front. “After your hot dog.”

Blaine rested his head against Josh’s shoulder.

“He’s going to sleep,” Melanie said. “Vicki, do you want Blaine to sleep?”

Vicki turned around. Her eyes softened, and if Josh wasn’t mistaken, they were shining with tears.

“Look at my beautiful boys,” she said.

Instinctively, Josh mouthed, Don’t cry.

That was al it took: Tears dripped down Vicki’s face. Josh checked on Porter, who was mercilessly working his pacifier. Josh felt the bristle of Blaine’s hair under his chin and relished the warm, heavy weight of Blaine’s head on his shoulder. Look at my beautiful boys. Then he realized Vicki meant the three of them. She was gazing at them mournful y, and Josh wondered if his mother had looked at him in such a way in the weeks before she kil ed herself. He wondered if she had ever looked at him and questioned her decision to leave him. Just thinking this bugged him. He wasn’t used to thinking about his mother at al , but being around Vicki, he couldn’t help it. She looked like a foreigner in her scarf; her face was so thin, her eyes bulged. She’s vanishing, Josh had written in his journal the night before. By the end of summer, she’ll be gone.

Melanie took Vicki’s hand. Brenda stared out the window at the waves breaking, the plovers and oystercatchers pecking at the sand. She was either oblivious, Josh thought, or purposeful y trying to distance herself from the melancholy nature of this beach picnic. Josh was relieved when Ted banked a hard right and backed the Yukon up to a perfect stretch of beach.

“Here we are!” Ted boomed.

An hour later, Josh felt better, not least of al because Ted, maybe in an attempt to foster male bonding, or maybe as part of an evil plan Josh had yet to figure out, had offered Josh three ice-cold bottles of Stel a, al of which Josh accepted, and drank, happily. They were drinking and fishing.

Ted was fascinated by the bel s and whistles of the new fancy-schmancy fishing rods he’d brought from New York and he wanted to show them off to Josh. Blaine had revived enough to ask Ted, five hundred times in ten minutes, when he was going to catch a fish. “Catch a fish, Dad. I want to see you catch a fish.”

“You bet, buddy,” Ted said. He fiddled with the reel, attached a twenty-dol ar lure, and cast out, the line making a satisfying whizzing noise and then a plop as it landed. Ted looked to Josh.

“Go for it, man.”

“Catch a fish, Josh,” Blaine said. “Are you going to catch a fish?”

Josh hesitated. The rod felt sleek and expensive in his hand; it was the Maserati of surf-casting rods. Ted probably thought Josh was nervous about handling such fine equipment. Josh was nervous—but only because anyone who lived here knew that you could catch a bluefish with a hickory stick and a piece of string. Josh was nervous because he didn’t want to show Ted up by catching the first fish. And so, he stood there with the rod in his hands.

“Do you need help?” Ted asked.

“Yeah,” Josh said. “This rod is like nothing I’ve ever seen.”

Ted beamed and reeled his line in. Nothing.

“Here,” he said. “Let me show you.” He took Josh’s rod. “Hey, would you like another beer?”

Brenda had promised Vicki she would tend to al the details of the picnic, but she was happy when Vicki’s old desire to be 100 percent in charge resurfaced, like something that washed up on the beach. Vicki laid the blanket down ( No sandy feet on the blanket, please! ) and unfolded chairs.

She set out the boxed dinners, plastic utensils, and a tal stack of napkins, which she weighted down with a rock. She poured a glass of wine for Brenda, a smal one for herself, and she cracked open a ginger ale for Melanie. She sank into a chair looking almost relaxed, but then she stood again, rummaged through the back of the Yukon, and returned with two citronel a tiki torches, which she stabbed into the sand and lit up. She sank into her chair again. Her chest was heaving; she was winded by just that much activity, but the chemo was clearly working, Brenda thought, because this was more than she’d done in weeks.

Brenda and Vicki and Melanie touched glasses, and as they did so, Brenda heard everything click into place. The chemo was shrinking Vicki’s tumor; she was getting better. Melanie had shed her woe-is-me attitude, she’d stopped vomiting and moaning about her marital troubles; she acted, at least half the time, like a nice, normal human being. And Brenda had written the first scene of her screenplay the previous morning, while drinking a decadent Milky Way coffee at the Even Keel Cafe. It was the scene where Calvin Dare and Thomas Beech meet up in front of the tavern, with nothing more in common than two people parking next to each other outside of a Chili’s restaurant—and lightning strikes and Calvin Dare’s horse bucks and whinnies and kicks Thomas Beech between the eyes. Men pour out of the tavern to tend to Beech—one of them a doctor, who proclaims Beech dead. The scene was five pages long, which meant, according to the Screenwriter’s Bible, it would last five minutes, and Brenda thought it was pretty good.

She tried to analyze the day’s success. Maybe she should abandon the beach and do al of her work at the Even Keel Cafe with the aid of a Milky Way coffee. Maybe it was the community nature of the cafe that had helped—there were other people sitting in the dappled shade of the cafe’s back deck who were reading the paper, sketching, breezing through paperback novels, typing on their laptops. Maybe Brenda—like Hemingway, like Dylan Thomas—would do her best work in public places. However, deep down, Brenda suspected that it was the stolen nature of those two hours that transformed them. She was supposed to be somewhere else. She was supposed to be in the waiting room of the hospital’s Oncology Unit praying for her sister’s recovery. She had set aside those two hours—three, if you counted the driving—to be of service to her sister. The fact that Vicki had unexpectedly granted her leave gave those two hours a rarefied quality. What Brenda had thought was, I’d better not waste them.

And, like magic, the words had come. The pages had fil ed.

As happy as Brenda was about writing the first pages of her screenplay, she stil felt a twinge of guilt about abandoning Vicki. True, there was no reason for Brenda to sit in the waiting room while Vicki received her treatment; however, not being there felt like she was shirking her duties.

Yesterday was the one and only time. She would never leave Vicki again.

She was proud of herself, however, for pul ing together this beach picnic. The sun hovered over the water, there was a warm breeze, the waves washed over the sand in a rhythmic, soothing way. Down the beach, Ted and Josh and Blaine, bathed in the last rays of golden sunlight, cast their lines out into the water. They were like characters from a storybook. If this only lasted an hour or two, Brenda thought, that was okay. Walsh loved to point out the way Americans rushed from one thing to another. For people like Brenda, he said, happiness was always just around the bend; he accused her of being incapable of sitting back and enjoying a moment. And he was right. Now, Brenda tried to push every thought out of her mind except: Please let Vicki enjoy this.

There was shouting from down the beach. Brenda leaned forward in her chair. Someone had caught a fish.

When Josh felt a tug on his line, his gut reaction was excitement. Then, he thought, Oh, shit. He had no choice but to reel the fish in, even though Ted and Blaine hadn’t yet realized he had a bite. Oh, wel , Josh thought. It was just a fish. It wasn’t as though God had tapped Josh on the shoulder and declared him the superior man. As Josh’s line tightened, he heard Ted shout, “Whoa! Josh has something! Look, buddy, Josh has a bite!” Ted didn’t sound angry or jealous at al ; he sounded as excited as a little kid.

Blaine jumped up and down. “Pul it in, Josh! Pul it in!”

Josh cranked the reel; the expensive rod bent like a rainbow, and Josh thought, Lord, please do not let the rod snap. No sooner had he thought this than the fish rose from the water, twisting and wriggling. Bluefish. Big one.

Ted was on top of the fish as soon as it hit the sand. He stood on the flapping tail and pul ed a tape measure from his shorts pocket. “Thirty-four inches,” he said. Josh wondered if this was the start of some sort of competition. Would Ted now try to catch a bigger fish? Would they make this about size in some pseudo-Freudian way? But then Ted held the end of the tape measure and dropped the spool end like a yo-yo. “They threw this in for free at the tackle shop,” he said. He yanked the lure from the fish’s mouth with a pair of pliers. He was deft and confident in al of this, which was a good thing because bluefish have a mean mouthful of teeth and Josh had seen plenty of people, including his father, get bitten.

“Look at that, buddy,” Ted said to Blaine. He sounded as proud as if he’d caught it himself.

Blaine watched the fish do a dance across the sand. Ted slapped Josh on the back, and Josh felt the offer of another, celebratory beer on its way.

“Are we going to keep it?” Blaine asked. “Are we going to eat it?”

“No,” Ted said. He picked the fish up by its tail. “We’re throwing her back. We’re going to let her live.”

Vicki drank her three sips of wine and poured herself three more sips. Ted, Blaine, and Josh sauntered toward them, their rods slung over their shoulders. Blaine trumpeted the news: “Josh caught a fish, a real y big fish! Dad unhooked it and threw it back!” The way the facts were relayed, both Ted and Josh sounded like heroes, and Vicki was relieved.

“Let’s eat,” she said.

They al sat on the blanket or in chairs and dug into their boxes. Ted started tel ing Josh a story about a boat he’d sailed from Newport to Bermuda the summer after he graduated from col ege. Brenda tried to entice Blaine into eating lobster.

“Look, Josh is eating it.”

Blaine considered this for a second, then turned his nose up. He plopped in Vicki’s lap, and his weight nearly crushed her. She gasped; Ted stopped talking and looked over.

“I’m fine,” she said.

Blaine ate Vicki’s biscuit and her corn on the cob. Porter was stil asleep in the back of the car, and Vicki was about to ask Melanie to check on him—but when she looked at Melanie, Melanie was transfixed by . . . Vicki fol owed Melanie’s gaze and then, inwardly, groaned. Melanie was staring at Josh in a way that could only mean one thing. Do not judge, Vicki told herself. After al , she was a woman who had skipped chemo. Stil , Vicki hoped she was imagining things, and if she wasn’t imagining things, if Melanie did harbor some sort of fascination with Josh, then Vicki hoped it was short-lived, a phase, like with the kids. Once Vicki made up her mind to worry about it, it would be over.

“Brenda?” Vicki said. “Would you check on the baby?”

Brenda rose. Melanie continued to stare at Josh with a vague smile on her face. Possibly she was fol owing Ted’s story about running aground on the Outer Banks, but Vicki kind of doubted it.

“Josh?” Vicki said. “Would you mind digging a hole for the fire?”

“I’l help!” Blaine said.

“I’l help, too,” Melanie said.

“Not you, Mel,” Vicki said. “You relax.”

“Is there firewood?” Josh asked.

“Yes,” Melanie said. “Brenda stole four pal ets from the Stop and Shop.”

“I did not steal them,” Brenda said. “I do not steal things. They were left out by the Dumpster.”

“How’s the baby?” Vicki said. “Is he stil asleep?”

“Yes, he’s fine,” Brenda spat. “I know you al think I’m a thief. I am not a thief.”

“You robbed the cradle,” Ted said.

“Ted!” Vicki said.

Over Blaine’s head, Brenda shot Ted the finger.

“Lovely,” Ted said.

“Thanks a lot,” Brenda said to Melanie, “for bringing it up.”

Vicki took a breath. She’d suspected things would explode one way or another.

Melanie rol ed her eyes and stood next to Josh as he shoveled sand. A wailing noise came from the car.

“Ted?” Vicki said. “Wil you . . . ?”

Ted was already up. He returned with a very cranky Porter. “I can’t find his bottle.”

“But you did pack it, right?”

“Right,” he said uncertainly.

“Oh, Ted,” Vicki said. “Please don’t tel me . . .”

“Vicki . . . ,” Brenda said.

“What?”

“Don’t do that armchair Napoleon thing.”

“What armchair Napoleon thing?”

“You just sound a little bossy is al . A little dictatorial.”

“Josh?” Vicki said. “Do I sound dictatorial to you?”

“You have him digging ditches,” Brenda said.

“A hole,” Vicki said. “For the fire. So we can roast marshmal ows.”

“I want a marshmal ow,” Blaine said. “Mom told me if I ate . . .”

“So we can have a nice time!” Vicki said. She could hear herself above Porter’s cries; her voice was loud and frustrated. “So we can have a bonfire and enjoy the evening.”

“Vicki?”

The sun was setting over the water; it was a melting, golden blob. Vicki stared at the backlit figures of Josh digging the hole and Melanie standing beside him and Brenda with her hands on her hips declaring she was not a thief and Ted rocking Porter and giving him a bottle (that he found who knows where). They were, al of them, familiar to her. This scene was so familiar to her that she felt she had witnessed it before—and she had, maybe, in her mind’s eye, when she’d imagined what this picnic might be like. They were having this picnic for her—to get her out—but there was also a summer-of-final-wishes element to it, a desire on everyone’s part for this to be a perfect beach picnic, memories of which Vicki could take to her grave. So although the bickering was unpleasant, Vicki was glad they were letting the fantasy go and being themselves.

But then something odd happened. Brenda and Josh and Ted froze, they became perfectly stil . Why? Vicki realized there was someone else among them, a foreign presence, the owner of the voice that had just spoken her name. Vicki? The voice was curious and kind, but with deep, authoritative undertones. She knew that voice, but how?

“Vicki Stowe?” the voice repeated. “Is that you?”

In general, Vicki hated to be recognized in public. (She thought back to the god-awful scene on the beach with Caroline Knox.) She didn’t like to be caught unawares, and whoever was standing before her now—it looked like a man, in waders, with a fishing rod—was interrupting her family picnic and had, on top of that, interrupted a family squabble. Who knows what this person overheard and what this person now thought of them?

Vicki squinted. The sun was behind the man’s head, radiating like a halo. “Yes,” Vicki said.

“It’s Mark.”

“Mark?”

“Dr. Alcott,” he said.

“Oh!” Vicki said. She leapt out of her chair. “Hi!” Once she stood, she could see him clearly: It was Dr. Alcott, but in his waders and Atlantic Cafe T-shirt and Red Sox cap, he was unrecognizable, and although she knew his first name was Mark, she had never once cal ed him that. Vicki wondered if she should shake his hand, and as she was wondering this, he leaned forward and kissed her cheek, and Vicki felt like she had just been kissed by a new boyfriend in front of her parents. Ted and Brenda and Melanie, and even Josh, were watching this exchange like it was something that was being shown on TV. None of them knew who Dr. Alcott was—not even Brenda had met him—and she was just about to make the introductions when she remembered about the previous morning. She had skipped chemo—and now here was Dr. Alcott, appearing out of the blue to blow the whistle on her. To inform her family that she was sabotaging her own care. To tel them that Vicki didn’t give a shit if she got better or not. At the very least, Dr. Alcott would ask Vicki where she’d been, and she would have no good answer; she would be forced to confess the truth in front of everyone. I skipped. The prospective humiliation of the moment was enough to leave Vicki temporarily tongue-tied.

Dr. Alcott took a step toward Ted and said, “Hi there. I’m Mark Alcott, Vicki’s doctor.”

“Aha!” Ted said. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. I’m Ted Stowe.”

The men shook hands.

Vicki, realizing she had to take control of the conversation, jumped in. “And this is my sister, Brenda. My friend Melanie Patchen, and our . . .

friend Josh Flynn. And my sons, Blaine and Porter.”

“Quite a group,” Dr. Alcott said.

“Yes,” Vicki said. She fingered one of the tails of her scarf. Small talk! she thought. Smal talk might save her. “You’re fishing?”

“You bet.”

“Josh caught a fish,” Blaine said. “A big one. And Dad threw it back.”

“Good,” Dr. Alcott said. “Great. It’s a beautiful night.”

“Beautiful,” Vicki said. “We had lobsters.”

“Yum,” Dr. Alcott said. He eyed Ted’s fishing rods, poking out of the sand. “Those are some real beauties.”

“Thanks,” Ted said. He grinned. “We might try again in a little while.”

There was a beat of silence, then another beat. Vicki panicked. She was not a trouper, she was not a star patient—she was a fraud! Dr. Alcott had tracked her down, al the way out here on the far edge of the island, to cal her bluff. “Okay, wel ,” she said. “Don’t let us keep you from your fishing.” She cast around for someone safe to look at and came up with Melanie. “Dr. Alcott loves to fish.”

Melanie widened her eyes and nodded in a good approximation of interest.

“Okay,” Dr. Alcott said. He took a breath and seemed about to add something else. No! Vicki thought. He smiled at her blandly, and Vicki realized then that he didn’t know she’d skipped chemo. Didn’t know or didn’t remember . . . or didn’t care? “Good to see you. Nice to meet al of you.”

“Likewise.” Ted shook Dr. Alcott’s hand again.

“Bye,” Vicki said. She sat back down and exhaled as Dr. Alcott strol ed off down the beach. She knew she should feel relieved—she’d dodged a bul et—but instead, she felt hol ow. Here she was stil alive, stil among them—and yet, already forgotten.

Josh had thought that once they got back to Shel Street, he would be free to go. But everything had to be taken out of the car: the cooler, the chairs, the trash bag, the sleeping kids—and Josh offered to help. It was easy work, especial y since Ted Stowe insisted they do it with the aid of yet another beer, Josh’s sixth or seventh of the night. The beach picnic had been a success, or almost: There had been the fishing, the sunset, the lobsters—and later the fire and s’mores for Blaine. Melanie had made a big deal about going swimming in the dark. She’d changed into her suit behind the car and, despite protests from Vicki and Ted and Brenda, al of whom were pretty sure she would drown, charged into the water. She was gone al of thirty seconds before she returned, curled into herself, shivering and dripping. Josh handed her a towel, and he found himself gazing at her body—her breasts, the stil -smooth plane of her stomach, bare in the bikini, her curly hair hanging in dark corkscrews around her face.

Looking at Melanie that way had been careless, the result of too many beers too fast. The problem, Josh realized later, was that Melanie saw him looking, and that was al the confirmation she needed to move forward.

The moving forward happened after the remains of the picnic were tucked away, after the Stowes and Brenda had said good night, after Josh, too, had said good night, thank you for inviting me, nice to meet you, Ted, see you Monday, Boss. Josh tripped as he headed down the flagstone walk. After six or seven beers, he thought, he shouldn’t be driving, especial y since the police loved to sit on Milestone Road picking off young drunk kids just like him. So he sat in his Jeep for a minute, searching through the console for his tin of Altoids, wondering if it was only his imagination or if the surprise appearance of the doctor had changed the night. Because after Dr. Whatshisface wandered away, Vicki clammed up, she burrowed into her chair and gave everyone the silent treatment. Everything had been going real y wel up until then, but the doctor’s visit seemed to cast a shadow over things, reminding Josh and everyone else that Vicki was sick. For whatever reason, Josh thought again about those Sundays on the beach with his parents. If Josh went to Eel Point tomorrow, there would be a different group of parents playing with their kids. His parents’ circle of friends had disbanded right after Josh’s mother died—not because of Janey Flynn’s suicide, maybe, but more likely because the kids were al older by then and asking to go to the big-surf beaches. But there was definitely a sense of loss, of an era passing.

We have to enjoy it now, his mother said. Before winter comes.

Those Sundays were over and done with, and hence at that moment they seemed unspeakably precious to Josh, as precious as his mother’s lost love. Josh felt this so fervently, and he’d had so much to drink, that he thought he might cry. But then there was a tap on the Jeep window, frightening Josh. He yelped and put his hand to his heart like a woman.

It was Melanie.

He rol ed down the window. “Jesus,” he said. “You scared the shit out of me.”

She didn’t apologize or ask what he was stil doing there. “Want to go for a walk?” she said.

“A walk?” he said, like she’d suggested a trip to outer space. It wasn’t particularly late, maybe ten o’clock, and he was, at this point, too intoxicated to drive to the end of the street, much less home. A walk wasn’t a terrible idea.

Josh looked at the house. It was dark, the door was shut tight.

“They’ve al gone to bed,” Melanie said.

He heard conspiracy in her voice and he knew right then that agreeing to a walk with Melanie meant agreeing to some whole huge other thing that he wasn’t sure he was ready for. She was ten years older than he was, she was pregnant, she was married, but overriding these compromising circumstances was the fact that the hair on his arms was standing up. Listen. Observe. Absorb. This was, he sensed, part of the story of his summer. He was supposed to walk with Melanie. He opened the car door and stepped out—and because there was no use pretending that it would happen any other way, he took Melanie’s hand and they headed down Shel Street.

She was his second choice. As Melanie and Josh meandered down the narrow streets of ’Sconset along the short picket fences, past the tiny, ancient, rose-covered cottages—many of them dark, but a few here or there with a light on and one place ablaze with the end of a party—Melanie forced herself to acknowledge this fact: Josh had wanted Brenda first. And it was only because of Brenda’s inexplicable devotion to her former student John Walsh that Melanie was now holding hands with Josh. Holding hands with Josh! The children’s babysitter! It was funny and ridiculous and impossible to comprehend now that it was actual y happening—and yet this was what she had wanted. This was what she had secretly hoped for, never once al owing herself to believe that it would ever come to pass. But here they were. Josh seemed to know where they were going. He led her past the tennis club, then through an arched opening in a pruned hedge. Suddenly they were in front of . . . a church. The ’Sconset Chapel, a shingled Victorian with white trim and a bel tower.

“There’s a garden in the back,” Josh said. “With a bench. We can sit.”

“Okay,” Melanie said. It was the cutest church in the whole world—something out of a storybook—and yet, she hesitated. Churches meant weddings and weddings meant marriage and marriage led Melanie right back to thinking about Peter.

So it was that they sat on the bench in the church garden—with Josh holding Melanie from behind—while Melanie told Josh a little something about her marriage.

What she chose to tel him about was Peter’s office Christmas party the previous December. It had been in the city, al the way down on Elizabeth Street, at a restaurant cal ed Public. Public was both hot and cool at the same time; it was so cool, they hadn’t even bothered to decorate for the holidays.

Strange place for a Christmas party, Melanie murmured to Peter as she handed her fur wrap to a six-foot hostess.

Don’t start, Peter had said. I’d like to try and enjoy myself.

“Peter was good at making me feel like a shrew,” Melanie told Josh. She knew now that if she’d been even half paying attention, she would have seen the demise of her marriage at that party instead of floundering through five subsequent months and accidental y getting pregnant. She had gotten her period the day before the party, heralding failure for IVF round number five. It was another F on her body’s report card. Everyone in Peter’s office knew Peter and Melanie were trying to have children, hence Melanie expected an evening of inquiring glances and indirect questions.

She didn’t want to be there and Peter knew it. Melanie went directly to the long slate bar for drinks; she ordered two glasses of champagne for herself and a Stoli and tonic for Peter. She drank one of the glasses of champagne straight down, then tried to locate Peter in the crowd. She got caught talking to Peter’s boss’s wife for a while, then she saw Vicki waving from a corner of the room. Vicki was wearing a slinky red top and gold, dangly earrings; her hair was up. She had been gorgeous before she got cancer—gorgeous and fun and kindhearted and the world’s greatest mother. She was the only person at the party, in the world, that Melanie could stand to be with. Melanie remembered excusing herself from the conversation with Cynthia Brenner and heading over to the safety of the space next to Vicki Melanie told Vicki about failed round number five. I’m being betrayed by my own body, she said, and then she’d started to cry.

Vicki whisked her into the ladies’ room, where the two of them sat on a velvet divan and finished their drinks. When they emerged, they bumped into Peter. He was standing near the emergency exit—Melanie remembered his face bathed in the red light of the exit sign in an otherwise dark alcove—talking to Frances Digitt. Frances Digitt was dressed in the suit she’d worn to work, a dark suit with a short skirt—and over the suit she wore a fleece vest. She looked like an executive for Field & Stream.

Melanie thought nothing of the sight of Peter and Frances together. She was more concerned with having to answer Frances’s questions about the latest round of IVF. Frances showed enormous interest in the Patchens’ quest for a baby; her sister, Jojo, in California was going through the exact same thing, or so she claimed. And, too, Melanie felt embarrassed about being caught emerging from the ladies’ room with Vicki. This was one of the antisocial behaviors Peter always accused her of after an office party: You snuck off to the bathroom with Vicki like the two of you were in junior high.

“Now, if I’d been paying attention,” Melanie said to Josh. “If I had seen past the end of my own nose . . .”

“He was having an affair with her?” Josh asked.

“Oh, yes,” Melanie said. “Yes, he was. He stil is.”

“Stil is? Even with . . .”

“He doesn’t know I’m pregnant.”

“He doesn’t? ”

“Nope.”

“How come you haven’t told him?”

“Ugh. Because he doesn’t deserve to know.”

Josh squeezed Melanie. It was exactly what she needed—a person to console her, a young, handsome, male person. She twisted around so that she was facing him. He was looking very serious.

“What?” she said.

“This is weird,” Josh said. “Can we please just acknowledge how weird this is?”

“Why is it weird?” Melanie said. She knew why it was weird but she wanted to hear him say it.

“You’re married,” he said. “You’re pregnant. I know you’re pregnant but your own husband doesn’t even know.”

“You don’t have to worry about Peter,” she said.

“I’m not worried about Peter,” Josh said. “I’m worried about what everyone is going to think. Vicki. Ted.”

“They’re not going to think anything,” Melanie said. “Because they’re not going to know.”

“They’re not?”

“They’re not.”

“Oh,” he said. “Okay.” He exhaled and seemed to relax a little bit. He was drunk, or nearly so. Whatever happened tonight happened tonight—

and that would be the end of it. Okay? Melanie asked herself. Okay. She kissed him, and this seemed to catch him off-guard, though what were they doing on a bench in the church garden if they weren’t planning on kissing? It only took a second or two for Josh to get it, and then it was as if Melanie were a car he decided he wanted to drive after al . The kissing, which Melanie had intended to keep sweet and soft, turned into something faster and more urgent. Josh ran his hands up and down her back, then up and down her back inside her shirt, and Melanie, who hadn’t kissed a man other than Peter in nearly ten years, couldn’t keep herself from wondering if this utterly intoxicating foreignness was what Peter experienced when he was with Frances Digitt.

Josh’s youth was apparent in many ways. He was strong, forceful, intense. (With Peter, at the end, physical contact had been like work, like a duty—he complained of this and she’d felt it, too.) Josh fondled her tender breasts, he chewed on her earlobe and whispered into her ear, “God, you are so amazing.” Amazing? Melanie thought. Me?

But when Josh moved his hands down over her stomach, he pul ed back, like he was afraid he might burn himself. Melanie took hold of his hands and tried to place them on her midsection, but he resisted.

“It’s okay,” she whispered.

“It is?” he said. He al owed her to press his hands to her bel y, but stil she sensed reluctance. What was she doing, forcing a drunk col ege student to acknowledge her budding pregnancy?

“Relax,” she said. “It’s okay.” She should just let it go, she realized. Let him take what parts of her he wanted and choose to ignore the parts that lay outside his comfort zone—but if they were to go any further, Melanie wanted him to accept her as she was. Thirty-one years old. And pregnant.

It occurred to Melanie for a second that maybe Josh wasn’t mature enough to handle this, maybe he didn’t want to handle a woman like her, with baggage, emotional and physical. She was his second choice for a reason. How could she blame him for wanting Brenda, who was not only beautiful but also unencumbered? How could she blame him for wanting some easy girl his own age that he met at a bar or a bonfire instead?

It seemed like they stayed in that moment for a very long time—with Melanie holding Josh’s hands to the life inside of her—enough time for Melanie to travel down the road of insecurity and doubt, enough time for her to reach the conclusion that she’d made a mistake. She let Josh’s hands go—in fact, she pushed them away—feeling stupid and foolish. She had been wrong to pursue him; she had been wrong to put any stock in her own kooky, adolescent feelings.

Josh separated from her. She heard him inhale, as if in relief of being cut free. But what Josh did next was so unexpected, it took Melanie’s breath away. He lifted up her shirt and lowered his head. He pressed his face to her bel y, and he kissed her there, like it was the most natural thing in the world.

S leep.

Vicki left a note. Gone for a walk, it said. To Sankaty Light.

She couldn’t sleep—or rather, after the beach picnic she fel asleep like a rock sinking to the bottom of a riverbed and then she awoke with a jolt.

She lifted Ted’s arm and looked at his watch: 1:00 AM. Vicki’s head was buzzing; she was wide awake. The room was dark, the house quiet except for Ted’s gentle snoring. Vicki flipped over and caught sight of the Styrofoam head, the wig, the ghoulish face, Daphne, and it freaked her out. She rose from bed, picked the head up, and set it in the back of the closet. In the morning, it was going to the dump.

The boys were sleeping on their mattress on the floor. They were on their backs, their heads together at the top of the mattress. Blaine had an arm flung protectively across Porter’s chest . They were sleeping with just a sheet, which was now bunched down by Blaine’s ankles. Vicki stood at the foot of the mattress, watching them. Because it was so warm, Blaine slept in only short pajama bottoms and Porter in just a diaper. Their torsos were perfectly formed—Blaine lean and muscular, Porter chubby with baby fat—and their skin was milky white; it glowed. Vicki could pick out a pattern of poison ivy on the back of Porter’s leg, she could discern a juicy new mosquito bite on Blaine’s forearm. Their dark eyelashes fanned out against their cheeks; Blaine’s eyelids were alive with movement underneath. What was he dreaming about?

There was, she decided, no more beautiful sight than her children sleeping. She loved her sons so profoundly, their perfect bodies and al the complexities each contained, that she thought she might explode. My children, she thought. They were bodies that had come from her body, they were a part of her—and yet she would die and they would live.

Vicki had entered into motherhood whol y unprepared. She had woken up confused when the nurse brought Blaine in to feed on the night he was born. The reality had sunk in, gradual y, over the past four and a half years. This child is my responsibility. Mine. For the rest of my life.

Being a mother was the best of al human experiences, and also the most excruciating. Getting the baby to nurse, getting the baby to eat solids, getting the baby to sleep, the teething, the crying, the crawling, into everything, can’t take my eyes off him for a second, a whole rol of toilet paper stuffed into the toilet, the first steps, the fal ing, the trips to the emergency room ( Does he need stitches? ), the Cheerios that stuck together and nearly choked him, the weaning from the breast, the bottle, the pacifier, the grating squeal of Elmo’s voice, the first playdate, the hitting, the grabbing, the first word, Dada (Dada?), the second word, mine, the earaches, the diaper rash, the croup. It was a constant drone, al day, every day, occupying Vicki’s hands, her eyes, her mind. Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Who did she used to be? She couldn’t remember.

Vicki used to think that Blaine was born for her mind and Porter was born for her heart. Blaine was so damn capable, so independent, so smart.

Before Vicki was diagnosed, he had taught himself to read, he knew his states and state capitals ( Frankfort, Kentucky), and he kept a list of animals that were nocturnal ( bat, opossum, raccoon). A day with Blaine was one long conversation: Watch me, watch me, watch me, Mommy, Mommy, Mommy. Will you play Old Maid? Will you do the puzzle? Can we paint? Do Play-Doh? Practice numbers and letters? What day is today? What day is tomorrow? When can Leo come over? What time is it? When is Daddy coming home? How many days until we go to Nantucket? How many days until Porter’s birthday? How many days until my birthday? Blaine’s favorite time of day was story time, and better than the stories Vicki held in her hands, he said, were the ones in her mind. He loved the story of the night he was born (Vicki’s water breaking unexpectedly, ruining the suede Ralph Lauren sofa in their pre-kids Manhattan apartment), he liked the story of the night Porter was born (her water breaking in the Yukon on her way home from dinner in New Canaan; Ted drove like a banshee to Fairfield Hospital, and Vicki delivered in time for Ted to get their babysitter home before midnight). But Blaine’s favorite story was about how Vicki had punched Auntie Brenda in the nose when Auntie Brenda was a newborn, freshly home from the hospital, and how Auntie Brenda bled, and Vicki, feeling scared of what her mother would say, locked herself in the bathroom, and a fireman had to come get her out. As Vicki watched Blaine sleep, she realized she hadn’t told him any real stories in a long time—and what was worse, he’d stopped asking for them. Maybe someday she’d tel him the story of how she had lung cancer and they came to Nantucket for the summer and she got better.

What was he dreaming about? A bike without training wheels, a scooter, a skateboard, bubble gum, a water pistol, a pet? These were the things he wanted most, and he made Vicki set timelines. Can I have a hamster when I’m six? Can I have a skateboard when I’m ten? Blaine wanted to be big, he wanted to be old; this had been true even before Josh came into the picture, and now, of course, Blaine wanted to be exactly like Josh. He wanted to be twenty-two, he wanted a cel phone and a Jeep. Vicki always told Blaine that the day he became a teenager was the day her heart would break, but now she thought that if she lived to see Blaine turn thirteen, she would count herself the luckiest woman alive.

The other morning, Vicki had awoken to find Blaine standing by her bed, a silent sentry. She smiled at him and whispered, Hey, you. Blaine pointed to the corner of his eye, he pointed to the center of his chest, and then he pointed to Vicki, and Vicki did the best she could to keep from crying. I love you, too, she said.

And then there was Porter, her baby. She missed him so much. He’d stopped nursing, and suddenly it was like he’d grown up and gone off to col ege. He took bottles from Josh, from Brenda, from Ted—al Vicki got was two and sometimes three hours during the heat of the afternoon when Porter took his nap tucked into the crook of her arm. He made sweet cooing noises when he slept, he babbled when he was awake, he sucked his pacifier like it was his job. His body was a pudding; when he smiled there was a dimple in his cheek. He was almost total y bald now and he only had two teeth—in truth, he looked like an old man. But he was so sweet—that smile could make anyone love him. Don’t grow up! Vicki thought. Stay a baby, at least until I’m healthy enough to enjoy you! But Porter was chasing after his brother, the trailblazer. He would not be left behind! He was determined to conquer his developmental milestones early and with ease. Already, he had started cruising around the living room while holding on to Aunt Liv’s dainty furniture. Soon, he would be walking. Her baby would be gone.

Blaine stirred. He made a snorting noise like a startled horse, and his eyes opened. He looked at Vicki. She held her breath—the last thing she wanted was for him to wake up, or to wake up his brother. His eyes drifted closed. She exhaled. Even this hurt. I love you, she thought. You were both born for my heart.

She tiptoed into the living room. Quiet, dark. The banjo clock ticked. Brenda’s door was shut, Melanie’s door was ajar about an inch. Vicki stepped out onto the back deck. The night sky was achingly beautiful. Vicki couldn’t believe that people slept through nights like this. Back in the kitchen, she wrote the note, and then she left.

Gone for a walk. To Sankaty Light. In her ersatz pajamas—a pair of gym shorts, her Duke T-shirt, and flip-flops, with a bandanna on her head.

This was, she realized, another crazy escape, just like the previous morning’s jaunt to the Old Mil . She felt like a burglar as she padded down Shel Street. Every other house was pitch-black. The air was sweet with flowers and the ocean, and busy with the sound of crickets. Vicki was leaving the house with just a note. She thought of Josh’s mother hanging herself without any explanation, and shuddered.

She made it to Sankaty Head Lighthouse, but barely. She was coughing and wheezing; her legs hurt, her head was throbbing, she touched her forehead—it was dry and hot. And yet, she felt proud. She had walked nearly a mile, some of it uphil , and now here she was, in the middle of the night, standing at the foot of the giant peppermint stick. To one side lay the rol ing greens of the golf club, and to the other side the bluff dropped dramatical y to the pounding surf. Vicki moved as close as she dared to the edge of the bluff. The ocean was before her, and the magnificent sky.

Stars, planets, galaxies, places so far away human beings would never reach them. The universe was infinite. It was terrifying, real y, incomprehensible, and had seemed so ever since she was a little girl. Vicki used to imagine the universe as a box that God held in his hand. Time would go on forever, she thought. But she would die.

She wondered what it would be like if she had always been as alone as she was this second, with no one else in her life—no husband, no children, no sister, no parents, no best friend. What if she were a homeless person, a drifter, without connections, without relationships? What if she were an island? Would that make dying easier? Because, quite frankly, she could imagine nothing more lonesome than dying and leaving everyone else behind. Dying was something a person did on her own. Dying only proved that no matter what bonds human beings formed with other human beings, everyone was, essential y, alone.

A voice cut through the darkness. “Vicki!”

Vicki whirled around. Ted was marching up the hil toward her, huffing and puffing himself. He could have been her father, coming to scold her for sneaking out. But as he got closer, she saw the look of concern on his face. He was worried about her, and he should be. What, exactly, was she doing?

“Vick,” he said. “Are you okay?”

“I’m going to die,” she whispered.

He made a shushing noise, the same noise he used to make when Blaine was a baby. He wrapped his arms around her. She was burning hot, not just the embers in her lungs, but her whole body. It was ablaze with sickness, with renegade cel s. It wasn’t something that could be exorcised.

She was sickness. Once in Ted’s arms, however, she started to shiver. She was freezing up there on the bluff, with wind coming off the water. Her teeth chattered. Ted’s arms were the strongest arms she had ever known. She breathed in his smel , she absorbed his warmth, she rubbed her cheek against his cotton T-shirt. This was her husband, she knew him, and yet he was so far away from her.

“I can feel it,” she said. “I’m going.”

“Vicki,” he said. His arms tightened around her and that felt good, but then he started, almost imperceptibly, to shake.

“I got up to look at the boys,” she said. “I just wanted to watch them sleep.”

“You should be asleep,” he said. “What are you doing up here?”

“I don’t know.” She felt reckless then, and irresponsible. “What about you? What if the boys . . . ?”

“I woke Brenda once I realized you were gone,” he said. “She said she’d stay in our room until I brought you back.”

Like a runaway, she thought. But she couldn’t run away, she couldn’t hide. How long would it take her to understand that?

Ted held her by the shoulders, forcing her to look at him. His face was shining with tears. He was strong and masculine and competent, her husband, but the tears fel steadily and his voice was supplicating. “You have to get better, Vick. I can’t live without you. Do you hear me? I love you in a way that is so powerful it lifts me up, it propels me forward. You propel me forward. You have to get better, Vick. ”

Vicki tried to recal the last time she’d seen Ted like this, stripped down to bare emotion. The day he proposed, maybe, or the day Blaine was born. Vicki wanted to tel him, Yes, okay, I’ll fight for you, for the kids. It would be like in the movies, it would be the scene where everything turns around, with the two of them standing on the bluff next to the lighthouse under the great dark sky; it would be the epiphany. Things would change; she would get better. But Vicki didn’t believe in the words, she knew them to be false, and she wouldn’t say them. So she said nothing. She tilted her face up to the sky ful of stars. The problem with having everything, she thought, was that she had everything to lose.

“I can’t make it back,” she confessed to Ted. “It’s too far. I feel like hel .”

“I know,” Ted said. “That’s why I came to get you.”

They hadn’t made love in nearly a month, and yet Ted had never touched her more intimately than at that moment. He picked her up, he carried her home.

Brenda’s phone rang. She was on page thirty of the screenplay and screaming along; the words were coming faster than she could write them. She was too busy to even check her phone’s display. It wasn’t exactly a mystery: the cal was from either Brian Delaney, Esquire, or her mother. The phone stopped ringing. Brenda heard the soft dinging of an elevator somewhere in another part of the hospital, and then the gung-ho voice of the ESPN SportsCenter anchorman.

Vicki was meeting with Dr. Alcott behind closed doors. Vicki’s white blood cel count had dropped dramatical y, and she was running a fever of nearly 104. Dr. Alcott wanted to defer chemo until her counts rose and the fever abated. If ever there was a day when Brenda should have been praying, it was today—but for whatever reason, Brenda found that the only place she could now get any writing done was the oncology waiting room. It was al such a head game! Brenda had a block of time to work in peace at the beach each morning. But when she was at the beach, she got stuck, she was a dry wel , she thought only of Walsh. She had tried the Even Keel Cafe one more time, but that had been worse—she fixated on the other couples eating breakfast, holding hands, whispering to each other, sharing sections of the newspaper. The Milky Way coffee seemed too sweet. Brenda found she could write her screenplay only when she was supposed to be doing something else. Like praying. Like worrying.

Her phone rang again. Brenda was smack in the middle of the scene where Calvin Dare attends the funeral service for Thomas Beech—hiding in the back so as not to be recognized as the man who owned the murderous horse—and this is when he first sets eyes on Beech’s beautiful, bereaved fiancée, Emily. Brenda could see the scene with cinematic clarity—the tilt of Dare’s black hat, the meeting of gazes across a dozen crowded church pews, Dare’s decision then and there to summon the courage to speak to Emily. He approaches her on the church steps after the service to offer his condolences.

Did you know my Thomas? Emily asks, perplexed. Were you a friend?

And Calvin Dare, taking a chance, answers, Yes, a friend from boyhood. I had not seen him in some time. I have been away.

Away? Emily asks.

Abroad.

Emily’s eyebrows arch. She’s young, she was only engaged to Beech for a short while, and (as Brenda argued in her thesis) she is something of an opportunist. She’s saddened by the death of her intended but also intrigued by this stranger, this friend of Thomas’s from boyhood who has just returned from abroad.

Really? Emily says, in a way that could mean almost anything.

The phone stopped, then rang again. “Für Elise,” the ring tone, was truly awful—it sounded like an organ-grinder monkey inside a tin can. Brenda reached blindly into her purse and pul ed the phone out.

Her mother.

Brenda sighed. Put down her pen. El en Lyndon had gone into conniptions upon hearing about Vicki’s fever; she would want to know what the doctor said. Brenda had to go to the bathroom anyway. She took the cal .

“Hi, Mom.”

“How is she?”

“Stil in with the doctor.”

“Stil ?”

“Stil .”

“Wel , what did he say about the fever?”

Brenda moved down the hal to the ladies’ room. “I have no idea. She’s stil in with him.”

“They didn’t tel you anything?”

“They never tel me anything. They tel Vicki and Vicki tel s me. So, we have to wait.” Brenda pushed into the ladies’ room, where her voice bounced back at her from off the tile wal s.

“How long did they say . . . ?”

“They didn’t say, Mom.” Brenda chastised herself. She should never have answered the phone. This kind of conversation frustrated them both.

“Listen, I’l cal you when . . .”

“You promise?”

“I promise. In fact, I’l have Vicki cal so you can hear it straight from the horse’s . . .”

“Okay, darling. Thank you. I’m here waiting. I cancel ed my physical therapy appointment.”

“Why?” Brenda said. “You want your knee to get better, don’t you?”

“I wouldn’t be able to concentrate,” she said. “Kenneth always asks for a ‘dedicated effort’ with the exercises, and I wouldn’t be able to give it to him. He always knows when I’m distracted.”

I should be distracted, Brenda thought. But the opposite is true. Because I’m wired the wrong way.

“Okay, Mom,” Brenda said. “Good-bye.”

“Cal me when . . .”

“You bet,” Brenda said, then she hung up. There was a flushing noise and a bathroom stal opened. A girl stepped out. Brenda smiled sheepishly and said, “Mothers!”

The girl ignored Brenda, which was fine. But when Brenda stepped out of the stal herself a few minutes later, the girl was stil there, eyeing Brenda in the mirror.

“Hey,” the girl said. “I know you. Josh works for you.”

Brenda looked at the girl more closely. Of course. A push-up bra peeked out from the scoop neck of the girl’s white T-shirt, and then there was the streaky blusher. It was the little vixen from Admitting. Brenda eyed the name tag. Didi. Ah, yes.

“That’s right,” Brenda said. “I’m Brenda. I forgot that you knew Josh.”

“Damn right I know him.”

Brenda washed her hands and reached for a paper towel. Didi rummaged through her bag and pul ed out a cigarette, which she proceeded to light up.

“We real y like Josh,” Brenda said. “He does a great job with the kids.”

“You pay him a fuckload of money,” Didi said. This sounded like an accusation.

“I don’t know about that,” Brenda said. “I’m not in charge of paying him.”

“Have you slept with him?”

Brenda turned to Didi just as Didi blew a stream of smoke from her mouth. Brenda hoped her face conveyed her disgust, combined with the fact that she was too dignified to answer such an absurd question. But Brenda couldn’t help remembering the kiss on the front lawn. Certainly Josh hadn’t told anyone about that?

“You’re not supposed to be smoking in here,” Brenda said. “It’s a hospital. Some people have lung cancer.”

Didi curled her lip into a snarl, and Brenda was overcome with the feeling that she had somehow reverted back to high school—she was trapped in the girls’ bathroom with a rebel ious smoker who was threatening her.

“You’re fucking Josh,” Didi said. “Admit it. Or maybe it’s your sister who’s fucking him.”

“That’s it,” Brenda said. She whipped her wadded-up paper towel into the trash can. “I’m out of here. Good-bye.”

“He never would have turned me down if he wasn’t giving it to one of you,” Didi cal ed out as Brenda flew out the door. “I know it’s one of you!”

Okay, Brenda thought. Weird. And weirder stil , Brenda was trembling. Wel , maybe it wasn’t so weird that she was rattled—after al , the worst moment of her life had shared certain elements with that little scene in the bathroom. A girl, young enough to be Brenda’s student, accusing her of improper relations.

Rumor has it you committed the only sin that can’t be forgiven other than out-and-out plagiarism.

Romantic or sexual relationships are forbidden between a faculty member and a student. Romantic or sexual comments, gestures, or innuendo are forbidden between a faculty member and a student and will result in disciplinary action. There are no exceptions made for tenured professors.

We understand, Dr. Lyndon, that you’ve been having improper relations with one of your students.

The “improper relations” were Brenda’s fault. It would have been nice to blame Walsh for pursuing her, but ultimately Brenda was the professor and Walsh the student and Brenda had let it happen. There had been the drinks at the Cupping Room and the kissing—when Brenda woke up the fol owing morning she felt deeply ashamed and terrifical y energized. She thought perhaps John Walsh would cal her cel phone but he didn’t, and by Tuesday morning, she thought maybe she had imagined the whole thing. But in class Walsh sat in his usual seat, surrounded by lovely girl-women, al of whom now seemed to Brenda to be flaunting their bright intel igence like feather boas for his sake. Every time Amrita the brownnoser contributed to class discussion, she looked to Walsh right away, to see if he agreed with her point or not. And Kel y Moore, the soap opera actress, was even worse, with al of her theatrics aimed in his direction. The three Rebeccas had basical y formed a John Walsh Fan Club. He’s so hot, Brenda overheard one of the Rebeccas saying. Everybody wants him. Walsh, for his part, was disarmingly blasé. He had no idea that he was sitting in a classroom of adoring fans.

At the end of class, Brenda handed out the topic of the midterm paper: Compare and contrast Calvin Dare’s identity crisis with an identity crisis of a character from contemporary literature, either on or off the reading list. Fifteen pages. The girls groaned and filed out. Walsh stayed put.

Brenda looked up. “No,” she said. “Go. You have to go.”

He stared at her in a way that made her sick with desire. He didn’t say a word; as Brenda remembered it, he didn’t say one thing. He just stood there, looking at her. Brenda was stupid with her longing for him—and, too, she was egotistical. The other girls—girls far younger and prettier than she—al wanted him, but she was the one who was going to get him. She scribbled her address down on a piece of paper and pressed it into his hand, then she ushered him toward the door.

“Go,” she said. “I have to lock up.” She tilted her head. “Because of the painting.”

He didn’t show up that night or the next night, and Brenda felt like an idiot. She thought maybe he was a double agent hired by the other professors in the English Department who, jealous about her top teaching marks and subsequent superstar status, were trying to frame her. She thought maybe this was an elaborate practical joke dreamed up by the girl-women in the class. On Thursday, she vowed not to look Walsh’s way, though of course she did, several times. Sandrine, the singer from Guadeloupe, had managed to sneak a can of Fresca, which she was resting on her thigh, past Mrs. Pencaldron’s drinks radar. Brenda asked her to please throw it away. Sandrine had risen, reluctantly, and murmured something in French that half of the girl-women laughed at. Brenda became furious, though she was cognizant of the fact that she was not furious with Sandrine, or even with Walsh, but rather, with herself. She was fretting about the piece of paper with her address on it. It was just a piece of paper, just her address—

it didn’t mean anything—and yet, it did. Brenda had given Walsh her permission, she had given him her heart. This may have sounded ridiculous, but that was how she felt. She had pressed her heart into his palm and what had he done with it? Nothing. Walsh didn’t linger after class; he filed out the door behind miffed Sandrine and the rest of the girl-women, and Brenda was crushed.

That night, Brenda was to meet Erik vanCott for dinner downtown at Craft. They were going alone, the two of them, without Noel, which should have made Brenda happy. Craft was a real restaurant, a New York– magazine type of restaurant. It had leather wal s and a bottleneck of people at the door. Everyone was dressed up, smel ing good, using important voices, talking on cel phones ( I’m here. Where are you? ), waiting to get in, in, in. Brenda stood on her tiptoes and tried to see over shoulders and around heads, but she couldn’t locate Erik. She stood in the general mass waiting to talk to the gorgeous woman at the podium (her name was Felicity; Brenda overheard someone else say it). Brenda worried that she had the wrong place or the wrong time or the wrong night, or that she’d dreamt the phone cal altogether. When final y it was Brenda’s turn to talk to Felicity, she said, “I’m meeting someone. Erik vanCott?”

Felicity’s eyes flickered over her very important reservation sheet. “Here it is: vanCott,” Felicity said in a minor-league, how-about-that voice, as if she’d just found a dol ar on the sidewalk. “Mr. vanCott has not yet arrived and the table isn’t quite ready. Would you like to have a drink at the bar?”

At the bar, Brenda downed two cosmos. Then Felicity announced that the table was ready, and Brenda decided to sit, despite the fact that she was alone. She ordered another cosmo from a waiter who also appeared to be a professional weight lifter.

“I’m meeting someone,” Brenda told him, hoping this was true. She checked her cel phone for a message. Nothing. It was eight-thirty. She had official y been stood up by two men in one week. But then she looked up and saw Erik darting toward her from across the room, the tails of his Burberry raincoat flying. The boy who’d chased Brenda on the playground, who once ate a whole jar of pistachios in one sitting in El en Lyndon’s kitchen and then threw up in El en Lyndon’s powder room, the lovelorn boy who had sung a Bryan Adams song at his prom after being ditched by Vicki, was now a man who made money, who wore suits, who met Brenda in snazzy New York restaurants.

“Am I late?” he said.

“No,” Brenda lied.

“Good,” he said. He col apsed into the chair across from Brenda, shed his raincoat, loosened his tie, and ordered a bottle of wine in impeccable French.

Brenda was dying to tel him the story of Walsh. There was no one else she could tel ; her life was devoid of close girlfriends, and she couldn’t tel Vicki and she couldn’t tel her mother. Plus, Erik would be able to give her a male perspective, plus Brenda wanted Erik to know that yes, she did have men in her life other than him. However, in the twenty mil ion years of their friendship, rules had developed, and one of those rules was that Brenda always asked about Erik first.

“So,” she said, dipping into her third cosmo. “How’s everything?”

“You mean Noel?”

“We can talk about Noel if you want,” Brenda said, though, real y, she had hoped for a Noel-less evening.

“I have something to tel you,” Erik said.

We broke up, Brenda thought. If that was the case, she would talk about Noel al night. Good-bye to Noel, closure with Noel, and, of course, the requisite Noel-bashing.

Erik pul ed a blue velvet box out of his suit jacket, and Brenda thought, He has a ring. For me? But even three cosmos didn’t alter reality that much.

“I’m going to ask Noel to marry me,” Erik said.

Brenda blinked. Marry him? She gazed at the box. She was sure the ring was lovely, but she didn’t ask to see it. She had no right to be surprised

—Erik had warned her. He had cal ed Noel “marriage material.” But Noel had a flaw: She didn’t eat. A person who didn’t eat had a serious esteem problem, a self-image problem. Brenda had written Noel off at Café des Bruxel es, and she thought Erik had, too. Brenda was mute. If Erik knew how much Brenda loved him, he would have done her a favor and cal ed her on the phone so she could just hang up.

“Bren?”

“What?” Brenda said, and she started to cry.

Erik reached across the table for her hand. He held it tight and stroked it with his other hand. The blue box sat on the table between them, unopened. Brenda heard whispers, and she realized that somehow she and Erik had attracted the attention of their neighboring diners—who thought, no doubt, that Erik was proposing to Brenda.

“Put the ring away,” Brenda whispered. “Please.”

Erik slid the box back into his pocket but he didn’t let go of Brenda’s hand. They had never actual y touched this way, and Brenda found it both breathtaking and exquisitely painful.

“Are you happy for me?” Erik said.

“Happy for you,” she said. “Unhappy for me.”

“Brenda Lyndon.”

She saw the weight lifter approaching their table, but she couldn’t deal with another minute of this date. She pushed away from the table. “I’m going.”

“You’re walking out on me again?” Erik said. “Again, in the middle of dinner?” He started in with the awful David Soul song. “Don’t give up on us, baby. We’re still worth one . . . more try . . .”

“That’s not going to work,” Brenda said.

“Brenda,” Erik said, and Brenda looked at him.

“What?”

“I love her.”

Brenda stood up and left Erik at the table. She was crying for many reasons, not least of al because true love always seemed to happen to other women—women like Vicki, women like Noel. Brenda could practical y see Noel, naked in Erik’s bed, which he had always fondly referred to as his nest. Noel was in the nest, naked, nesting, not eating. Alabaster skin, hair like a mink, naked except for pearl earrings. Ribs showing through her skin like the keys of a marimba that Erik could play while he sang. Brenda left the restaurant.

“Eighty-second Street,” Brenda told the cab driver waiting outside of Craft, who was, of al things, American. Benny Taylor, the license said. “And do you have any tissues?”

A smal package of Kleenex came through the Plexiglas shield. “Here you go, sweetheart.”

Benny Taylor delivered Brenda to her apartment at ten minutes to ten.

“Are you going to be okay, sweetheart?” Benny Taylor said.

He was asking not because she was crying, but because there was a man lingering by the door of Brenda’s building. The man was tal and dressed entirely in black. Brenda squinted; her heart knocked around. It was John Walsh.

“I’l be fine,” Brenda said. She tried to straighten her clothes and smooth her hair. Her makeup would be a wash. She pul ed money out of her purse for Benny Taylor and ransacked her brain for something to say when she got out of the cab. Hi? What are you doing here? Brenda’s ankles were weak, and the three drinks had taken custody of her sense of balance. Benny Taylor drove away; Brenda walked as steadily as she could toward Walsh, who was smiling. He was as dashing as the hero in an old Western. Strong, masculine, Australian. Brenda tried to be cool, but she found it impossible to wipe the stupid grin off her face.

“Hi,” she said. “What are you doing here?”

John Walsh became her lover. He was her lover for days, weeks, months. It was exhilarating, delicious, and a holy, guarded secret. They never spoke on university property except during class, and Walsh stopped hanging around afterward. He cal ed her cel phone—two rings then a hang-up was his signal—and they met at her apartment. If they couldn’t wait the forty-five minutes it would take to get across town, they met in Riverside Park, where they kissed behind a stand of trees. They hunkered down in Brenda’s apartment through one blizzard, eating scrambled eggs, drinking red wine, making love, watching old Australian movies, like Breaker Morant. John Walsh told Brenda things—about a girl he got pregnant in London who had an abortion, about his grandfather who worked in the interior of Western Australia shearing sheep. He told her about his travels around the world. Brenda talked about her life growing up in Pennsylvania, her parents, Vicki, summers in Nantucket with Aunt Liv, col ege, graduate school, Fleming Trainor. It was dul in comparison, but Walsh made her life seem fascinating. He asked the right questions, he listened to the answers, he was emotional y available and mature. What Brenda loved most about Walsh was his gravity. He wasn’t afraid of serious topics; he wasn’t afraid to look inside himself. Maybe that was how Australians were raised, or maybe it was because of his travels, but Brenda didn’t know another man like this. Even Erik, even Ted, even her father. Ask them to talk about their feelings and they looked at her like she was asking them to shop for tampons.

During the second blizzard that winter, Brenda and Walsh bundled up so completely that no one would ever recognize them and they went sledding in Central Park. As the days passed, they got braver. They went to the movies (Brenda wore a basebal hat and sunglasses. She did not let Walsh hold her hand until the theater went dark). They went to dinner. They had drinks out, they went dancing. They never once saw anyone they knew.

At some point along the way, Brenda stopped thinking of Walsh as her student. He was her lover. He was her friend. But then came the Monday night that changed everything. Brenda was home alone, grading the midterm papers. She had put this off for as long as possible, and the girl-women in the class had started to complain; Brenda had promised the class their papers back the fol owing morning and she had one paper yet to read. To his credit, Walsh hadn’t asked her about it. Possibly he’d forgotten it was her job to grade it. It was with great trepidation that she picked up the paper with their names typed together at the top— John Walsh / Dr. Brenda Lyndon—and read.

What was she afraid of? She was afraid the paper would be bad—poorly organized, poorly argued, with typos and misspel ings and comma splices. She was scared he would write “different than” rather than “different from.” She was scared he would regurgitate what she’d said in class rather than think for himself (as one of the Rebeccas did, earning a flat C); she was scared he would accidental y quote somebody without noting a source. The paper was a potential relationship-ender—not only because he might get angry at a lousy grade, but because Brenda would not be able to continue seeing him if she had any qualms about his intel igence.

Nearly everyone else in the class chose to compare Calvin Dare to one of the characters from the books on their reading list. Not Walsh. He picked a book that wasn’t on the reading list, a book Brenda had never read, a novel cal ed The Riders by a Western Australian named Tim Winton. Walsh’s paper targeted what he cal ed the “identity of loss”—or how losing something or someone in one’s life caused a change in that person’s identity. In The Innocent Impostor, when Calvin Dare’s horse kil s Thomas Beech, Dare loses his confidence in his life path. The event shakes him to the core and causes him to relinquish his own dreams and ambitions and take up those of Beech. In The Riders, the main character, Scul y, has lost his wife—quite literal y lost her. She flies to Ireland with their daughter, but mysteriously, only the daughter gets off the plane. The Riders was a search for Scul y’s wife but it was also a study of how one man’s identity changes because of this loss. Brenda was riveted. Walsh presented his thesis statement clearly in the first three pages, he backed it up with ten pages of textual support from both novels, and he ended, bril iantly, by citing other instances of the identity of loss across a wide scope of literature. It could be found, Walsh said, everywhere from Huckleberry Finn to Beloved.

Brenda put the paper down, stunned. For a point of reference, she reread Amrita’s paper (which she had given an A) and then she read Walsh’s paper again. Walsh’s paper was different, it was original, as fresh and sun-drenched as the country he came from, but with a depth that could only come with age and experience. She gave Walsh an A+. Then she worried. She was giving Walsh the highest grade in the class. Was that fair? His paper was the best. Could she prove it? It was a subjective judgment. Would anyone suspect? Was the A+ in any way related to the fact that John Walsh made love to his professor on this very couch, bringing her enough pleasure that she cried out?

Brenda wrote the grade at the top of the paper in very light pencil, in case she changed her mind. But in the end, she couldn’t bring herself to change the grade: He had earned it, fair and square. Stil , she worried. She worried she was fal ing in love.

By the time Brenda made it back to the oncology waiting room, her concentration was shot. Amrita’s accusations (true) blended with Didi’s accusations (untrue). You’re fucking Josh. Admit it. Brenda packed up her screenplay and decided not to tel anyone about what had transpired in the ladies’ room.

A few seconds later, Vicki came down the hal , escorted by Dr. Alcott. Brenda blinked. Was that her sister, real y? It looked like Vicki had shrunk

—she seemed to have lost height as wel as weight. She was as frail as Aunt Liv had been in the month before she died (and Aunt Liv had been petite anyway, eighty-five pounds in her wool overcoat). Vicki was wearing the Louis Vuitton scarf on her head, a pair of white shorts that sat on her hips, a pink tank top that made it seem like she had no breasts at al , and a navy cashmere zip-up hooded sweater because with a fever of 104, she was freezing. Brenda’s mind had been far away in both time and place, but in a flash she resumed her attitude of urgent, incessant prayer.

Dear Lord, please, please, please, please, please . . .

Dr. Alcott handed Vicki over. The waiting room was empty, but stil he lowered his voice. “We’ve given her a shot of Neupogen, and she’l have to be brought in tomorrow and the fol owing day for shots. That should get her counts to rise. I’m also prescribing antibiotics, and Tylenol to get her fever down. She should be feeling better in a few days. We’l try again with a reduced dose of the chemo when her counts are up.” He looked at Vicki. “Okay?”

She shivered. “Okay.”

Brenda clenched Vicki’s arm. “Is there anything else?”

“She should rest,” Dr. Alcott said. “I don’t know about any more beach picnics.”

“Okay,” Brenda said quickly. She was already so racked with guilt (about Walsh, about kissing Josh, about writing instead of praying) and regret (about the goddamned A+, about the Jackson Pol ock painting, about not tel ing Didi to fuck right off)—what did it matter if Dr. Alcott placed blame for the beach picnic at her feet as wel ? I was trying to make her feel better, Brenda might have said. I was taking a holistic approach. But instead, she bleated, “I’m sorry.”

Out in the car, Vicki pul ed a fleece blanket around her legs and melted into the seat.

“I got what I deserved,” Vicki said.

“What do you mean?” Brenda said.

“I wanted to be done with chemo,” Vicki said. “And now chemo’s done with me. Once a week, a low dosage. It wouldn’t kil a one-winged fly.”

“You don’t think?”

“The cancer’s going to ral y,” Vicki said. “It’s going to spread.”

“Stop it, Vick. You’ve got to keep a positive attitude.”

“And I wil have brought it on myself.”

“I don’t see how you can say that,” Brenda said. “It’s not your fault you’re sick.”

“It’s my fault I’m not getting better,” Vicki said. “I suck at getting better.” She leaned her head against the window. “God, the guilt.”

Brenda started the car. “Amen to that,” she said.

T he heart wants what it wants, Melanie thought. And so, on the morning after her first prenatal appointment, she cal ed Peter at the office.

Melanie was lying in bed, listening to the wren that habitual y sang from its perch on the fence outside her window, with her eyes closed. She was tired because she and Josh had been out again the night before—to Quidnet Pond—and she hadn’t gotten home until after midnight. Earlier that day, Melanie had gone with Vicki to the hospital. While Vicki was getting a shot to bring her blood counts back up, Melanie had an appointment with a surly GP, a white-haired doctor perhaps a month or two shy of retirement. The man had zero bedside manner, but Melanie didn’t care. She had heard her baby’s heartbeat. Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh. What she hadn’t anticipated was the enormous chasm between imagining the sound of the heartbeat and actual y hearing it. The pregnancy was real. It was healthy and viable. She was ten weeks along; the baby was the size of a plum.

Now, she placed a hand on her abdomen. “Hel o,” she whispered. “Good morning.”

She had been waiting for a sign. It had been easy to keep the news from Peter because, although Melanie had been sick and so, so tired, there had been no visible manifestation of the pregnancy. She didn’t even look pregnant. But that heartbeat had been real, it had been undeniable, and that was her cue. It wasn’t that she felt she had to tel Peter. She wanted to tel Peter.

And so, once Josh and the kids left the house and once Brenda headed out to write, and once Vicki’s bedroom door was securely closed, Melanie scuffed down to the ’Sconset Market and cal ed Peter from the pay phone outside.

Melanie took a deep drink of ’Sconset morning: the blue, blooming hydrangeas, the freshly mown grass of the rotary, the smel of the clay tennis courts across the street at the casino, the scent of coffee and rol s and fresh newsprint coming from the market itself. And then there was the smel of Josh on her skin. Even if Peter was mean to her, even if he refused to believe her, he would not be able to ruin her day.

“Good morning,” the receptionist said. “Rutter, Higgens.”

Even if he said he didn’t care.

“Peter Patchen, please,” Melanie said, trying to sound business-like.

“One moment, please.”

There was a pause, a click, then ringing. Melanie was overcome with fear, anxiety, the same old negative Peter-feelings that she thought she’d buried. Shit! she thought. Hang up! But before there was time to orchestrate a hang up, Melanie heard Peter’s voice. “Hel o? Peter Patchen.”

His voice. Amazing, but she had forgotten it, or half forgotten it, so that now these three words shocked her.

“Peter?” she said. “It’s me.” Then she worried he would mistake her “me” for Frances Digitt’s “me,” and so she added, “Melanie.”

“Melanie?” He sounded surprised, and if she wasn’t deluding herself, happily surprised. But no, this wasn’t possible. It was a trick of long distance, of the rusty old pay phone.

“Yes,” she said, trying to keep her voice clipped and cool.

“How are you?” Peter said. “Where are you?”

“Nantucket,” she said.

“Oh,” he said. Did she sense disappointment in his voice? Not possible. “How is it?”

“Great,” she said. “Beautiful. Warm, sunny, breezy, beachy. How’s New York?”

“Hot,” he said. “Sticky. A cauldron.”

“How’s work?” she said.

“Oh, you know. The same.”

Melanie pressed her lips together. The same, meaning he was stil screwing the girl down the hal ? Melanie wouldn’t ask; she didn’t care. She did care about the state of her garden, however—her poor perennial beds!—but she wouldn’t ask about that either.

“Okay, wel , I’m just cal ing to let you know . . .” God, was she real y going to say it? “I’m pregnant.”

“What?”

“I’m pregnant.” The words seemed smal er when she spoke them than they did in her mind. “Pregnant with a baby. Due in February.”

There was silence on Peter’s end. Of course. Melanie focused on a nine- or ten-year-old girl walking into the market with her father. Bubble Gum Princess, the girl’s T-shirt said. She had long, thin legs like a stork.

“You’re kidding me,” Peter said. “This is a joke.”

“It is not,” Melanie said. Though wasn’t it just like Peter to think so. “I would never joke about something like this.”

“No, you wouldn’t,” he said. “You’re right, you wouldn’t. But how? When?”

“That time,” she said. “You remember.”

“During the thunderstorm?”

“Yes.” She knew he remembered, of course he remembered. Even if he’d had sex with Frances Digitt a hundred times that very week, he would remember. Melanie had been out in the garden cutting lilies. She ran into the house because it had started to pour. In the mudroom, she peeled off her soaked clothes and announced to Peter that she was al done with IVF. The disappointment was kil ing her, she told him. She wanted to get on with life. Melanie’s face had been wet with raindrops and tears, natural y. Peter cried a little, too—mostly out of relief, she suspected—and then they made love, right there in the mudroom, up against the porcelain front of her gardening sink. Outside, it rained harder and harder; there was a sharp thunderclap that sounded like a very large bone breaking. Peter and Melanie made love like they hadn’t in years—she hungrily, he grateful y—while the stamens of the lilies bled a deep orange into the sink.

Afterward, Peter said, We could never have done that if we had children.

The stains from the lily stamens remained in the sink, a lingering reminder of their coupling, which made Melanie wistful before she learned about Frances Digitt and bitterly angry afterward. She had been able to forget those stains now that there was something even more permanent. A heartbeat. A baby.

“You’re sure, Mel?”

“I went to the doctor,” she said. “I’m ten weeks along. I heard the heartbeat.”

“You did?”

“Yeah.”

“Jesus,” he whispered. And then he was silent again. What was he thinking? Melanie was pleased to discover that she didn’t particularly care.

“So, anyway,” Melanie said. “I just thought you should know.”

“Know? Of course I should know. I am the father.” His tone was approaching that of an accusation, but Melanie would not be bul ied. He had given up the right to the secrets her body contained when he slept with Frances Digitt. Melanie could close her eyes and picture Frances rounding the bases of the softbal field, pumping her fist in the air.

“I wanted to wait until I’d been to the doctor before I told you. I wanted to make sure everything was okay.”

“How do you feel?” he said.

“I’ve been pretty sick,” she said. “I’m tired a lot, but otherwise, I feel fine.”

“You sound great,” Peter said. “You sound real y great.” He paused, cleared his throat. Melanie listened for the sound of his fingers on the computer keyboard. It would be just like him to check the market or play Snood while he was on the phone with her. But what she heard was silence; he didn’t even seem to be breathing. “God, I can’t believe this. Can you? After al we went through?”

“I know,” she said. “Pretty ironic.”

“You do sound great, Mel.”

“Thanks,” she said. “Okay, wel , I’m on a pay phone so I should probably hang up. I’l see you . . .”

“When?” Peter said. “I mean, when are you coming home?”

Melanie laughed. “Oh, geez,” she said. “I have no idea.” She felt wonderful saying this. She was 100 percent in control. When she got back to the house, she would kiss Vicki and thank her again for letting her come to Nantucket. Tonight, she would kiss Josh, and then some.

“I’l be in touch, Peter,” Melanie said.

“Um, okay, I’l —”

Melanie hung up.

Every morning when Josh walked into Number Eleven Shel Street, he asked himself what he was doing. What am I doing? What the fuck am I doing? The answer was: He was sleeping with Melanie Patchen, a woman both married and pregnant, he was having an affair with her, and he was keeping it a secret not only from Brenda and Vicki and his father, but from Blaine and Porter. He felt the guiltiest, perhaps, when he looked at the two kids, because he wanted to set a good example for them. They were going to emulate him any which way, a fact that would be easier to accept had he not been screwing their mother’s best friend. It was always first thing in the morning, when he saw their round, wide-eyed faces at the breakfast table, that his remorse was the keenest. By ten o’clock at night—which was when he met Melanie at the town beach—it had dissipated enough for him to carry on with his treachery.

How long would it be until they got caught? Josh asked himself this a hundred times a day, though he never put the question to Melanie because she had enough to worry about as it was. And they were very, very careful. Melanie went so far as to climb out her window into the garden rather than leave the house by the front door; she went so far as to straddle the picket fence rather than use the gate. She built a body out of spare pil ows in her bed, and she padded along the side of the road in the grass rather than crunch on the shel s. She arrived at the parking lot of the town beach between ten and ten-thirty; she climbed into Josh’s Jeep, and he whisked her away to one of a dozen secluded spots where they made love either in his car or, if they were feeling brave, on the beach. Twice, Josh had gotten the feeling that they were being fol owed. One time, he had turned down a dirt road that led them deep into the moors, and the other time he pul ed into an empty driveway. Those incidents made Melanie squeal with nervous excitement, and Josh had to admit, his adrenaline surged in a way that was not unpleasant. They were living a movie script—the secret, forbidden relationship complete with dramatic escapes, and the explosive sex that fol owed.

The sex was, in fact, astonishing. It became abundantly clear to Josh that having sex with a girl was one thing and having sex with a woman was quite another. Josh had thought Melanie’s pregnancy would make things weird, or uncomfortable, but it was just the opposite. Melanie was completely in tune with her body, her hormones were flowing, she was always ready for Josh, she craved him. She complimented him, she encouraged him to be creative. Yeah, the sex was a fantasy, Josh couldn’t deny it, but if the relationship with Melanie had been only about sex, Josh would have tired of it. The problem was that the relationship quickly became about more than just sex. Melanie talked to him, she told him things—

real, adult things; she trusted him with details. It was different from the dreck Josh usual y got from girls. When Josh thought about the stupid drivel he was used to hearing from girls his age ( My hair goes frizz-city in this humidity. . . . Ohmygod, look how many grams of fat! . . . Who’s going to be there? That bitch? . . . I downloaded it for free on . . . ), he was amazed his brain hadn’t turned to tapioca. At first, Josh wasn’t sure that hearing about Melanie’s shattered marriage or her quest for a child would be any better, but he was wrong. It was a story that sucked him right in.

A marriage, as you’ll no doubt discover one day, is a pact you make with another person. It’s a vow you take, it’s sacred, or so you believe on the altar. It’s a promise that you’ll never be alone, you’re part of a team, a unit, a couple, a married couple. That’s the dream, anyway, and I believed it. The baby thing was another dream. For most couples, it’s a given. They don’t even think about it and—bam!—pregnant. I thought it would be that way with Peter and me. I always wanted lots of kids. And then we tried and it didn’t happen and people said, Give it time, because what else can they say? And so we kept trying and kept trying, but the more I thought of it as “trying” the more stressful it became and I got sad and Peter got angry because there was nothing either of us could do. So then we went to see a doctor, and I was, of course, thinking there was something wrong with Peter, and Peter was thinking there was something wrong with me. But the frustrating thing was that there was nothing wrong with either of us. We were both perfectly healthy, we just weren’t connecting. So I took fertility drugs, which had unpleasant side effects, and they didn’t seem to be working anyway, so I stopped those, and we tried the holistic approach—powder from rhinoceros horn and making love upside down at midnight during a full moon—and then we just threw in the towel and admitted it wasn’t working. So what were our options? In vitro. But in vitro is tricky—there’s a timetable, they harvest eggs, they take Peter’s sperm, they fertilize the eggs in a laboratory, then they implant the eggs and hope they take root. There’s a lot of hospital time involved, lots of other people, health professionals helping you along, and meanwhile you’re thinking how unromantic it all is, and you’re wondering why you couldn’t just have conceived after three martinis or a weekend in Palm Springs, like everybody else. You start to hate yourself. Seven times I went through in vitro cycles. It was over a year of my life spent holding my breath, basically, and praying—then crying when it didn’t work, blaming myself, blaming Peter. I’m not going to say I was easy to live with—I wasn’t. Peter got tired of hearing about my cycle, ovulation, fertilization, implantation, viable embryos, but that was all I could think about. The real difference between Peter and me was that I kept the faith in our marriage. I thought we were on the same team—in a tug-of-war, let’s say, against whatever forces were working to keep us childless. But then it was like I looked behind me and Peter was gone, I was tugging alone. Or worse. It was like Peter had joined the other team. He and Frances Digitt. He was my dearest love, my best friend, my safe place, my hero, Josh—and then I discovered I was nothing to him. Less than nothing. It was—it is—the betrayal of a lifetime. I thought affairs were only in soap operas. I thought they were only in Cheever. I didn’t know they really happened. I was so fucking naive. Peter is having an affair with Frances Digitt, he is involved with Frances Digitt. You can’t imagine. You just can’t imagine.

She was wrong there. Al he could do was imagine, and when he did so, he found himself hating Peter Patchen. Because what Josh quickly learned was that Melanie was a sweet person, a genuine person, she thought of others, she was kind and vulnerable and trusting. Of course she believed in love that lasted forever, of course she wanted a house ful of children—and she deserved it. The more time Josh spent with Melanie, the more he wanted to help her, to save her. He wanted to be her hero. He realized he’d felt this way from the very beginning—when Melanie fel off the airplane’s steps and he offered her first aid, and then again when she was stranded at the airport and he gave her a ride home. Late at night, when Josh lay sleepless in bed trying to figure out what the fuck he was doing with Melanie, he wondered if there was something in him that needed to be needed—but if that were the case, he might as wel have stayed with Didi. She was the neediest person he knew. In the end, Josh would have to say that he didn’t know what he was doing with Melanie, but he was powerless to stop.

The nights passed in what felt like a blaze of light, at once slow-burning and quick as a flash. Neither of them was wil ing to skip a night, take a break, although they both pretended to think it was a good idea. ( We should probably take a breather at some point, Josh said. And with a yawn, Melanie: I don’t know how long I’ll be able to keep these late nights up. ) Josh figured that at some point the novelty would wear off; his insanely absorbing anticipation of the moment when Melanie climbed into his Jeep would diminish. A lackluster night would come upon them, a night when he just wasn’t that into it, a night when Melanie seemed less dynamic than usual, or too familiar. This was how things went with Josh and girls.

Eventual y he felt—as with Didi—that he was being pul ed along against his wishes.

But with Melanie, it was different. With Melanie, it was like climbing a mountain to a breathtaking view, and each time it was as novel and captivating as the first time.

More and more, he wanted to be with Melanie in a real bed, but that wasn’t possible. His bed, his childhood bed, in his room with his model airplanes and soccer trophies, his journals now tucked into the drawer of his nightstand? No. And Josh would never have the guts to sneak into Number Eleven Shel Street knowing that Vicki and Brenda and Blaine and Porter (and Ted, on the weekends) were al right there. Josh found himself brainstorming for an alternative—a night in a bed-and-breakfast, maybe? It was an expensive option and risky to boot because Tom Flynn knew everyone on the island. Somehow, Josh was sure, word would get back to his father that Josh had paid three hundred and fifty dol ars for a room, which he had shared with an “older woman.”

Josh hadn’t seen much of his high school friends al summer. He was busy with work, they were busy with work—and going to the parties or meeting up at bars meant risking a run-in with Didi, which Josh was happy to avoid. Josh felt bad cal ing up Zach for what was, basical y, the first time al summer—but Zach could help him. Zach was spending his summer working for Madaket Marine, the business his parents owned, but as a sideline, he served as caretaker for a house in Shimmo, right on the harbor. The house was modest for Nantucket’s waterfront—it had five bedrooms and three baths, with a deck that extended the length of the second floor. The house was only used two weeks of the year—the first two weeks of July—and the rest of the time, it sat empty. It was Zach’s responsibility to let the cleaners in every two weeks and arrange for the landscaping—and in winter to shovel the snow and check for burst pipes or leaks. The owners lived in Hong Kong; they never showed up without warning, and in fact, Zach spent the weeks before their arrival ensuring that every detail was perfect and in place—Asiatic lilies on the dining room table, Veuve Clicquot in the fridge. People had been urging Zach for the years that he’d been taking care of the Shimmo house to throw a party, man! But Zach was even more intimidated by his father than Josh was by Tom Flynn, and the owner of the house was a longtime Madaket Marine client. So Zach’s answer was always, No way, man. Are you kidding me? Zach threw his parties at the beach.

Zach had been known, however, to entertain women at the house in Shimmo, especial y summer girls (he told them the house was his). So Zach’s scruples were negotiable (this had always been the case), and Josh thought, Well, it’s worth a shot. He cal ed Zach one night on his way home from swimming at Nobadeer Beach.

“I want to use the Shimmo house,” Josh said. “One night. Any night next week.”

“What?” Zach said. “Who is this?”

“Shut up.”

“I haven’t heard from you in ages, man. You skipped my party. You never go out. And now you want to use the house?”

“Don’t be so sensitive,” Josh said. “You sound like a woman. Can I use the house?”

“You have a girl?” Zach said.

“Yeah.”

“Who is it?”

“None of your business,” Josh said.

“Oh, come on.”

“What?”

“Tel me who it is.”

“A girl I met in ’Sconset.”

“Real y?”

“Real y. There are girls in ’Sconset who never show their faces in town.”

“What’s her name?”

“None of your business.”

“Why so secretive? Just tel me her name.”

“No.”

“If you tel me her name, I’l let you use the house. Next Wednesday.”

“Her name is Merril ,” Josh said. He wanted to use a name he would remember—and Merril was Melanie’s maiden name.

“Merril ?”

“Yeah.”

“Is she in school?”

“She just graduated,” Josh said. “From Sarah Lawrence.”

“Sarah Lawrence?”

“Yeah.”

“She graduated? So she’s older?”

“She’s older. A little bit older. I’d like to impress her. Hence, the request for the house.”

“And I take it this Merril person is why I haven’t seen your ass al summer.”

“Pretty much.”

“Wel , okay,” Zach said. “Next Wednesday. I’l get you the keys. But you must promise to strictly adhere to al the rules.”

“I’l adhere,” Josh said.

The fol owing Wednesday, instead of driving to the beach, Josh turned down Shimmo Road and pul ed into the last driveway on the left. He was al wound up with anxiety and sexual anticipation and an overwhelming desire to surprise Melanie. He dug the keys to the house from the console and jangled them in her face.

“What are we doing here?” she said.

“What we normal y do,” he said, grinning.

He got out of the car and hurried around to open Melanie’s door for her.

“Whose house is this?” she said.

“It belongs to a friend of mine,” Josh said. “He’s not using it this week.”

He watched for her reaction. She seemed nonplussed. It had occurred to him since the moment that Zach handed him the keys that Melanie would think borrowing someone else’s house was cheesy and juvenile. Peter Patchen made serious money. He was the kind of guy who booked a suite at a five-star resort in Cabo. He could have rented a place like this with ease.

Josh’s hands shook as he unlocked the front door. He checked over his shoulder at the neighbor’s house, where a single onion lamp burned.

These neighbors, according to Zach, were real watchdogs, and so one of the rules Josh had to strictly adhere to was not to turn on any lights on the north side of the house.

Inside the house, Josh took off his shoes.

“Take off your shoes,” he said.

Melanie laughed. “Ohhhh-kay.”

“I know,” he said. “Sorry.” The floors were made of some rare wood, Zach said, and the rule was: No shoes, not even if you were the Queen of England.

Josh walked up a curving staircase to a great room with windows overlooking the harbor. He turned on some lights and immediately set them on dimmers, way down low. There was a fancy bar with mirrors and blue granite and a hundred wineglasses hanging upside down. On the counter, as promised, Zach had left a bottle of champagne in a bucket of ice and a plate of cheese, crackers, strawberries, and grapes.

“For us,” Josh said, brandishing the champagne bottle.

“Oh,” Melanie said. She walked to the sliding glass door and stepped out onto the deck. “This place has some view!” she cal ed out.

Josh nearly asked her to lower her voice. The last thing he wanted was for the neighbor to hear them and come over to investigate—or worse, to cal the police. Since he’d gotten the keys, a hundred ruinous scenarios had presented themselves in Josh’s mind, making him wonder if al this was even worth it.

But later, after they had used the bed (not the master bed, of course, but the best guest-room bed, which was a king and very soft and luxurious, a five-star bed, in Josh’s estimation) and after they had showered together in a bathroom tiled with tumbled marble and after they had consumed the entire bottle of champagne (this was mostly Josh, since Melanie was pregnant) and the plate of cheese and fruit (this was mostly Melanie because she was ravenous after sex)—he decided that yes, it was worth it. The champagne had gone to his head, but that only intensified his enjoyment of these moments stolen, borrowed. Josh turned on the flat-screen TV at the foot of the bed. He had never done anything normal with Melanie, like watch TV.

“What do you watch?” he said.

“Nothing,” she said. “Wel , The Sopranos. And Desperate Housewives, if I remember to Tivo it. And footbal .”

“Footbal ?” he said. “Col ege or NFL?”

“NFL,” she said.

He fed her Brie on crackers, and the cracker crumbs fel onto the sheets. Josh tickled her and she squirmed and Josh noted how squirming on 400-count sheets was far superior to squirming in grainy sand. He tickled her so relentlessly that she squealed, and Josh stopped immediately, cocking his head like a dog, listening. Had anyone heard them?

“What’s wrong with you?” Melanie said.

“Nothing.”

“We’re not supposed to be here, are we?”

“Of course we’re supposed to be here,” Josh said. “We are supposed to be here.”

He and Melanie wrapped themselves in white, waffled robes that were hanging in the closet and stepped out onto the deck. Josh found himself wondering where he might find six mil ion dol ars, so he could buy the house. So they could just stay there. So they would never have to leave.

He pul ed Melanie back into bed. “Are you happy?” he asked. “Do you like it here?”

“Mmmhmmgwshw,” she said. Her mouth was ful of strawberry. “Yeah. It was very sweet of you to arrange this. You didn’t have to, though, Josh.

The beach is fine.”

“You deserve better,” he said.

“Oh,” she said. Her eyes misted up. She touched his cheek. “You are better.”

You are better: She said things like this and rendered Josh speechless. You are better: He replayed the words over and over again in his mind, even after he took Melanie back to Number Eleven Shel Street, even after he returned to Shimmo to wash the sheets and wipe down the bathroom, even as he fel into bed at three o’clock in the morning. You are better.

The fol owing night, it was back to the beach.

“I almost got caught today,” Melanie said.

They were lying next to each other on an old blanket. (It was, in fact, the blanket that Vicki had given Josh to take to the beach with the kids.

Earlier, he’d had to shake it free of raisins and graham cracker crumbs.) They were on the very smal beach in Monomoy, hidden on the far side of two stacked wooden dinghies. To their left was tal marsh grass, which thrummed with the sound of bul frogs. The best thing about Monomoy was the view of town, which glittered in the distance like a real city. Monomoy was one of Josh’s favorite spots on the island, though compared to the night before, it was camping. Riches to rags, he thought.

Josh propped himself up on his elbows. Melanie wasn’t trying to scare him. It had become part of their ritual to detail the ways in which they had almost gotten caught. There were a hundred pitfal s. Josh himself had nearly blown their cover that morning by showing up at Number Eleven with Melanie’s watch in his pocket. She had left it on the bedside table in Shimmo the night before and he had meant to slip it to her or leave it, casual y, on the kitchen table, but the second he walked through the gate, Blaine grabbed him by the pocket and the watch fel onto the flagstone path.

Brenda was sitting on the step at the end of the path, but she was so intent on landing a pebble in the paper cup that she didn’t notice the watch.

Blaine noticed, however—it was impossible to get anything past that kid—because later, when Josh asked the family beside them at the beach for the time, Blaine scrunched his brow.

I thought you had Melanie’s watch, he said.

Right, Josh said, determined not to get flustered. I found it in the yard. But I gave it back to her.

Oh, Blaine said. He might have looked at Josh suspiciously for an extra beat, or that might have been Josh’s paranoid imagination.

“What happened today?” Josh asked Melanie now. He leaned over and kissed her neck. She smel ed like chocolate. Immediately after sex she had pul ed a bag of M&M’s from her pocket, and now she was letting them dissolve, one by one, on her tongue.

“I sat with Vicki after dinner,” Melanie said. “I read to her. And when I left, I told her I’d check on her when I got in.”

“And she said, ‘Get in? From where? Are you going out?’” Josh said.

“Exactly,” Melanie said. “So I told her I was planning on walking to the market to cal Peter from the pay phone.”

Josh stiffened. Peter? Cal Peter?

“That was a stupid excuse,” he said. “Because why wouldn’t you just cal Peter from the house?”

“There’s no long distance from the house,” Melanie said. “So to cal Peter I’d have to go to the market.”

“It was stil a stupid excuse,” Josh said. “Why would you want to cal Peter? He’s such an asshole.”

“Right,” Melanie said. “That was just what I told Vicki.”

“So you didn’t cal Peter?”

“God, no. Not tonight.”

“Another night? Did you cal him another night? Last night?”

“Last week,” Melanie said. “In the morning, I cal ed him. About a household thing.”

They were quiet. Josh heard the clanging of a buoy somewhere offshore. Normal y, he enjoyed Melanie’s too-close-for-comfort stories. It was thril ing, the secret of the two of them, the forbidden aspect of it. Josh’s senses were heightened, his desire doubled and tripled by the simple fact that they were flying under everyone’s radar. And yet now, with the mention of Peter, with the confession that she had spoken to him earlier in the week, he felt confused and jealous. He felt like he had been deceived. If she had talked to Peter earlier in the week, she should have told him. He might not have gone to al the trouble that last night entailed had he known Melanie was back in touch with Peter the creep, the lowlife, the philanderer. He might have skipped it and saved the ninety dol ars he’d had to pay Zach for the champagne.

Why the hel would Melanie be cal ing Peter? A household thing? Which meant what, the electric bil ? Josh didn’t get it. He wanted to ask Melanie to explain, he wanted her to clarify. But Josh was halted by the sensation that this relationship was becoming too important to him—and one of the deals he had made with himself was that this was fun, yes, and exciting, certainly, but it was also short-term. For the summer only. He and Melanie had real lives to live—Josh would return to Middlebury, Melanie would go back to Connecticut and have her baby. There wasn’t real y room for jealousy or hurt feelings, and yet Josh was dangerously close to suffering from both.

Melanie offered Josh the bag of M&M’s, but he pushed her hand away.

“Uh-oh,” she said. “Someone’s upset.”

“I’m not upset.”

“It was nothing, Josh. One phone cal . I probably won’t cal him again this summer.”

“Go ahead and cal him,” Josh said. “He’s your husband.” He took a breath of pungent air. At that moment, Monomoy seemed like less of a haven and more of a swamp. “Let’s get out of here.”

Melanie eyed him for a second, and he thought she might protest, but Melanie wasn’t sil y or desperate like the other girls he knew. She folded the top of the M&M’s bag over neatly, stood up, and brushed herself off.

“Fine,” she said. “Let’s go.”

They walked back to the Jeep in silence, with Josh thinking alternately that this whole thing was stupid, they should just end it now. Deep down, however, Josh knew he would never be able to end it, and why would he want to? Melanie wasn’t going back to Peter any time this summer, and summer was al he cared about so he should stop whining and enjoy himself.

Fine. That conclusion reached, he felt much better. At the Jeep, he opened Melanie’s door and kissed her as he helped her in.

Headlights swooped in on him so fast he didn’t know what they were at first. He felt caught, like a cartoon convict pegged by searchlights. He shouted at Melanie to get down, but she didn’t hear him or she heard him but didn’t listen because when he checked she was staring into the front of the big, black truck like she thought it might run them over. The engine gunned and the truck swerved into the spot next to the Jeep for just long enough that Josh could see who was driving; then the truck reversed and pul ed out, leaving behind the proverbial cloud of brown dust and a spray of sand that peppered Josh’s legs like buckshot.

Shit, Josh thought, and he said it over and again as he climbed into the Jeep next to Melanie. Shit, shit, shit. It might have been a coincidence, Josh thought. It wasn’t like parking in Monomoy was an original idea. But who was he kidding? Rob Patalka, Didi’s brother, was fol owing him, stalking him, or driving around the island at Didi’s insistence trying to hunt him down. Didi certainly wasn’t paying Rob, so what incentive did Rob have to do her bidding? Was it out of loyalty? Brotherly love? Josh didn’t want to think about it. Al he knew was that the thril and rush of almost getting caught had turned, like sour milk, into the reality of getting caught.

Melanie, not knowing this, looked amused. “Friend of yours?” she said.

“Not exactly,” he said.

A card came in the mail. It was from Dolores, the leader of Vicki’s cancer support group back in Connecticut. Alan, the member of the group with pancreatic cancer, had passed away the previous Monday. Vicki stared at the words “passed away” in Dolores’s spidery handwriting. Alan was fifty-seven years old, he’d been married for thirty-one of those years, he was the father of one son and two daughters; he had a grandchild, the son of his son, a baby named Brendan, who was the same age as Porter. Alan, either coincidental y or on purpose, always chose the seat next to Vicki in the support group circle; they held hands during the opening and closing prayer. This was al Vicki knew of the man, and yet as she read Dolores’s note (“passed away”) she felt cold and numb. Alan had kissed Vicki’s cheek before she left for Nantucket. She’d said, I’ll see you when I get back. And he’d said, You bet.

The support group had been Dr. Garcia’s idea. Vicki had attended half a dozen times—twice a week for the three weeks before she left for the summer. What she had learned, perhaps the only thing she had learned, was that cancer was a journey, a series of ups and downs, of good days and bad days, of progress and setbacks. Vicki yearned to be back in the circle so she could tel the story of her own journey and hear murmurs from people who understood.

The fever, which lasted five days, was like nothing Vicki had ever experienced. She was alternately burning up and freezing cold; she shook so violently in the bathtub that the water splashed over the sides. She wore a sweater to bed, she slept fitful y and had horrible nightmares—armed robbers in ski masks with guns in her bedroom, demanding that she hand over one of her boys. Choose one! How could she choose ? Take me!

she’d said. Take me! Yes, they would take her. They carried her out of the room by her arms and legs.

Her vision, during the day, was splotchy, she suffered from insidious headaches; it hurt just to look out the window at the bright sunlight and the green leaves. Her brain felt like a piece of meat boiling in a pot. She was dehydrated, despite the fact that Brenda replenished a frosty pitcher of ice water with lemon slices floating on top every few hours. Brenda held the straw to Vicki’s lips, as did Melanie, as did Ted. Ted laid a washcloth across her forehead—a washcloth that they started keeping in the freezer, that made her cry out with pain and relief. Once, Vicki opened her eyes and was certain she saw her mother standing in the doorway of the bedroom. It was El en Lyndon, come from Philadelphia, despite the fact that her leg was imprisoned in a complicated brace. El en’s hand was cool on Vicki’s forehead; Vicki inhaled her mother’s perfume. Vicki closed her eyes and suddenly she was back at her parents’ house, in her childhood bed, with a cup of broth and angel toast dusted with cinnamon, with strains of Mozart floating up the stairs from the kitchen. Vicki rose from her bed. There was something in her shoes. Sand.

She was taking antibiotics, strong ones, although no one in the hospital could tel her where the infection was. Her fever dropped to 101 then shot back up to over 104. They threatened to admit her while she was at the hospital getting an injection of Neupogen, the drug that was supposed to boost her white count. She was taking four painkil ers every six hours, and every two hours she suffered through the goddamned thermometer under her tongue or in the crook of her arm. Vicki started moaning about her missed chemo. Now that she couldn’t have it, she wanted it badly. Dr. Alcott told her not to worry. Blood count up first, then they would let her return for treatment. Vicki’s body felt like a murky soup, her blood poisoned and diluted. Al the colors of the rainbow mixed together, Blaine had once informed her, made brown. That was Vicki.

Al across the globe, mothers were dying. Engulfed in fever, Vicki tried to count them—women she remembered from childhood (Mrs. Antonini next door died of Lou Gehrig’s disease, leaving behind seven-year-old twins); people she didn’t know (Josh’s mother, hanging herself); people she had read about in the newspaper (a Palestinian woman, eight months pregnant, blew herself to pieces at an Israeli checkpoint. In Royersford, Pennsylvania, a disgruntled client walked into the headquarters of his insurance company with an AK-47. His first victim was the receptionist, Mary Gal agher, who was on her first day back from maternity leave. Seven mothers were kil ed in Los Angeles when a commuter bus flipped on the freeway and caught on fire). These women floated over Vicki’s bed, she could see them, sort of, she could hear them crying. Or was that Vicki crying? Curse the God who took mothers out of this world! But no sooner was she cursing Him than she was praying. Praying! Don’t let it be me.

Please.

The only pleasure she had, if you could cal it pleasure, were those sips of water. The water was so cold and Vicki was so, so thirsty. Half the time, she swore, she didn’t even swal ow it. It was absorbed instantly by the chalky insides of her mouth, the dry sponge of her tongue. She had to be careful to ration herself. If she drank too much at once, she would spend torturous moments hanging off the side of her bed, sweating, her stomach twisting and clenching, her back spasming, her shoulders and neck as tense as steel cable as she fought to bring up teaspoons of bitter yel ow bile.

On the sixth day, she woke up and her sheets were soaked. She feared she’d wet the bed, but she could barely bring herself to care. On top of everything else, what was a little incontinence? But no—it was sweat. Her fever had broken. Vicki took her temperature herself, then had Brenda double-check: 98.6.

Blaine ran into the room to see her, and she barely recognized him. He was brown from the sun. His hair, so blond it was almost white, had been cut to reveal pale stripes behind his ears and around his neck. Porter had a haircut, too.

“Who took them to get haircuts?” Vicki said. “Ted?”

“Josh,” Brenda said. “But that was last week.”

Already it was the middle of July. Where had the time gone? Vicki’s fever had subsided and she and everyone else were glad about that, but Vicki was left feeling like a hol ow log, one that the cancer cel s might carry away, like so many ants. She went back to the hospital, they drew more blood, Vicki’s count rose. On Tuesday, they would resume treatment, though slowly at first. She had lost an additional five pounds.

Melanie came in to read to Vicki every evening after dinner. Melanie was reading from Bridget Jones’s Diary because it was light and fun, and both Vicki and Melanie wanted to spend time in a place where the only things that mattered were boyfriends, calories, and designer shoes. Vicki was embarrassed, being read to like a child, but she enjoyed the time with Melanie. They had been living under the same roof but they had lost each other. Now Melanie was coming back into focus, and she seemed different. Certainly she looked different—her body was simultaneously swol en and tight, she was tan, her hair was growing lighter from the sun. She was beautiful.

“You’re beautiful,” Vicki said one night as Melanie took the seat beside her bed. “You look fabulous. You’re glowing. You should be in a magazine.”

Melanie blushed, smiled, and tried to busy herself with finding the correct page in the book. “Stop it.”

“I’m serious,” Vicki said. “You look happy. Are you happy? ” She hoped her voice conveyed that although she herself was dying, she could stil celebrate the good news of others.

Melanie seemed afraid to speak, but the answer was obvious. And to Vicki, this change in Melanie seemed like the biggest thing of al that she had missed. Melanie was happy! Here on Nantucket!

Vicki resumed chemo. She returned to her lucky chair, the pearl-gray wal s, the sports news, Mamie, Ben, Amelia, Dr. Alcott. She was happy to hear they were stil undefeated in softbal . Vicki gasped when Mamie inserted the needle into her port—the skin there was as tender as it had been in the beginning—but she was determined to think of the chemo as medicine. Positive attitude!

“Your sister seems very busy over there,” Mamie commented. “She’s writing something?”

“A screenplay,” Vicki said. For the first time, this didn’t sound completely ridiculous. “She’s almost half done.”

Vicki had one good day fol owed by another. The lighter chemo regimen took less of a tol on her body. She was able to cook dinner—gril ed salmon, barbecued chicken, corn and early tomatoes from the farm—and she was able to eat. After dinner, she devoured ice cream cones from the market. She gained two pounds, then three, and she joked that the weight went right to her ass. The weekend came, which meant Ted, and she felt so much better and looked so much better that sex came easily and natural y between the two of them. Sex! She might have lain in bed afterward savoring the first postcoital glow she’d enjoyed in nearly two months, but she didn’t want to lie in bed when she could be up, when she could be outside.

“Let’s go!” she said. She felt wild and carefree; she felt like Bridget Jones.

She went to the beach with Ted and the kids, though it was stil too far for Vicki to walk, so they drove the Yukon. Vicki was the palest person on the beach and grotesquely skinny, and because of the port, she wore a nylon surf shirt over her bathing suit—but these things went immediately onto her List of Things That No Longer Matter. A few yards down the beach Vicki spied a familiar figure in a matronly black one-piece bathing suit.

It was Caroline Knox with her family. If Vicki wasn’t mistaken, Caroline was looking her way but trying not to be caught looking. She turned to say something to a bald man in a webbed chair next to her. Probably: There’s Vicki Stowe, lung cancer, poor woman. Just look at her, a skeleton. She used to be so pretty. . . .

Vicki didn’t care. She waded into the water with Blaine, and then she swam out a few yards by herself. The water felt incredible. It cradled her.

She floated on her back and closed her eyes against the sun; she flipped over and floated on her stomach and opened her eyes to the green, silent world below. The waves washed over her, she was suspended, weightless, buoyant. How long did she stay out there? One minute, five minutes, twenty? She lost time the way she used to as she lay in bed, only now it was liberating. She was alive, living, out in the world, floating in the ocean.

When she raised her head and looked back toward shore, she saw Ted standing at the edge of the water with Porter in his arms and Blaine standing beside him. They were searching for her. Could they not see her? She waved to them. Hi! I’m right here! For a second, she panicked. This was what it would be like once she was gone. She would be able to see them but they wouldn’t be able to see her. Vicki raised her arms a little higher; she cal ed out. Hey! Hello! And then Ted saw her; he pointed. There she is! Hi, Mom! They waved back.

First Vicki felt good, then she felt great. She cal ed her mother and, for the first time al summer, put the woman’s mind at ease. You sound wonderful, darling! You sound like your old self! Vicki felt like her old self—even breathing came easier. She imagined the tumor in her lungs shrinking to the size of a marble, she imagined the cancer cel s giving up and dropping dead. It was easy to keep a positive attitude when she felt this good.

On Monday, when Josh took the kids to the beach, Vicki persuaded Brenda and Melanie to go shopping with her in town. The day was dazzling, and Main Street was a hive of activity. Vicki stood for nearly twenty minutes at the Bartlett’s Farm truck picking out a rainbow of gladiola, six perfect tomatoes for sandwiches and salad, ten ears of sugar-butter corn, the perfect head of red leaf lettuce, and cucumbers that she would marinate in fresh dil , tarragon, and vinegar. Vicki carried this bounty herself—though Brenda strongly suggested putting it in the car—because Vicki liked being healthy enough to carry two shopping bags of vegetables, and she liked the way the stems of the gladiola brushed against her face.

Brenda wanted to go to the bookstore, and so they lingered in Mitchel ’s for a while, where Vicki paged through cookbooks. Melanie bought the sequel to Bridget Jones. Vicki dashed up to the bank for cash and she picked up lol ipops for the kids. When she got back to the bookstore, Melanie was standing outside, waiting for her. Brenda had gone to the Even Keel Cafe for a coffee. They proceeded down Main Street to Erica Wilson. Melanie wanted some new clothes. She tried on a long embroidered skirt with an elastic waist, and a tunic that she could wear over her bathing suit. Each time she came out of the curtained dressing room to model for Brenda and Vicki, she twirled. Her face barely concealed her delight.

Vicki was about to mention Melanie’s unprecedented ecstasy to Brenda, but Brenda beat her to it. “What is up with her?” Brenda said. “She’s been Suzy Sunshine lately.”

“I know,” Vicki said. “She’s happy.”

“But why?” Brenda said.

“Does there have to be a reason?” Vicki said.

“Don’t you think it’s strange?” Brenda said.

“Maybe it’s the pregnancy hormones,” Vicki said. “Or maybe she just loves it here with us.”

Brenda looked skeptical. “Oh, yeah, it’s us.” Her cel phone started its strangled jingling. “I’m certainly not going to answer that.”

“What if it’s Josh?” Vicki said.

Brenda checked the display. “It’s not Josh.”

“Not Mom?”

“No.”

“Your lawyer?”

“Mind your own business, please.”

Melanie came bouncing up, swinging the shopping bag in her hand. “Okay!” she said. “I’m ready!”

Brenda furrowed her brow. “If you’re taking happy drugs, it’s time to share.”

“What?” Melanie said.

“Onwards!” Vicki said.

They hit Vis-A-Vis and Eye of the Needle, Gypsy, and Hepburn. Brenda looked long and hard at a reversible Hadley Pol et belt at Hepburn but then declared loudly that she couldn’t afford anything new. Vicki thought this sounded suspiciously like fishing, but she let it go. They moved on.

Vicki bought a straw hat at Peter Beaton. The salesgirl was careful not to stare at Vicki’s head when the scarf came off; Vicki could feel her not-staring, but she didn’t care. She caught up with Brenda and Melanie at the top of Main Street. Melanie was standing outside Ladybird Lingerie, gazing at the door as if waiting for it to magical y open.

“Do you want to go in?” Vicki asked.

“No, no,” Melanie said. “What use do I have for lingerie?”

At Congdon’s Pharmacy, the three of them sat at the lunch counter and ordered chicken salad sandwiches and chocolate frappes. Brenda’s cel phone rang again. She checked the display.

“Not Josh,” she said.

“I feel guilty,” Vicki said. “Having this much fun while someone else is watching my children.”

“Get over it,” Brenda said. “You deserve a morning like this. We al do.”

Melanie lifted her frappe in a toast. “I love you guys,” she said.

Brenda rol ed her eyes and Vicki almost laughed. But this was the old Melanie. Before Melanie became obsessed with having a baby and devastated by Peter’s betrayal, she had been one of the finest girlfriends around. She was always up for a twirl outside the dressing room and for cozy lunches where she would propose lovey-dovey toasts.

“Cheers!” Vicki said. They clinked glasses. Brenda joined in reluctantly.

“Oh, stop being such a sourpuss,” Melanie said. “I got you something.”

“Me?” Brenda said.

Melanie pul ed the Hadley Pol et belt out of a smal shopping bag at her feet and handed it to Brenda. “For you,” she said.

“No . . . way!” Brenda said. Her expression was one Vicki remembered from childhood: She was excited, then suspicious. “What for? Why?”

“You wanted it,” Melanie said. “And I know I horned in on your summer with Vicki. The house is yours, too, and I’m grateful to you for letting me stay. And you’re taking such good care of Vicki and the kids. . . .” Melanie’s eyes were shining. “I wanted to do something nice for you.”

Brenda cast her eyes down. She wound the belt around her waist. “Wel , thank you.”

“That was real y thoughtful, Mel,” Vicki said.

Brenda narrowed her eyes. “Are you sure there’s not something else going on?”

“Something else?” Melanie said.

S omething else.

Later that afternoon, the phone rang in the cottage. Vicki was in bed, napping with Porter, and the phone woke her up. She was the only one home; Melanie had taken the Yukon to her doctor’s appointment, and Brenda had walked with Blaine to the swing set on Low Beach Road. The phone rang five, six, seven times, was silent for a minute, then started ringing again. Ted, Vicki thought. She climbed out of bed careful y, so as not to disturb Porter, and hurried through the living room for the phone.

“Hel o?”

There was silence. Somebody breathing. Then a young, female voice. “I know you’re sleeping with him.”

“Excuse me?” Vicki said.

“You’re sleeping with him!”

Careful y, quietly, Vicki replaced the receiver. For this she had gotten out of bed? She poured herself a glass of iced tea and repaired to the back deck, where she stretched out on a chaise longue. The sun was hot; she should go back inside and put on lotion, but she was so dopey from her nap that she indulged herself for a few minutes. She thought about the phone cal and laughed.

A little while later, the phone rang again. Vicki opened her eyes. Took a deep breath. She had been working hard on visualizing her lungs as two pink, spongy pil ows. She rose and went to the phone; she didn’t want it to wake up Porter. Though God knows if it was another wrong number, or the same wrong number, she would take the phone off the hook.

“Hel o?” She tried to convey impatience.

Silence. This was ridiculous! But then, a throat clearing. A man.

“Uh, Vicki?”

“Yes?”

“It’s Peter. Peter Patchen.”

“Peter Patchen.” Vicki couldn’t disguise her shock. “Wil wonders never cease.” You jerk, she thought. You coward.

“Uh, yeah. Listen, I realize you probably hate me . . .”

“To be honest, Peter, I haven’t given it that much thought.”

“Right. You’re busy with your own stuff, I get it. How are you feeling?”

“I’m feeling fine, actual y.”

“Yeah, that’s what Ted told me. That’s great.”

Vicki didn’t want to discuss her wel -being or otherwise with Peter Patchen. But being on the phone with him made wheels turn in her mind.

Melanie had told Peter about the pregnancy; this Vicki knew, and while Vicki was glad it was now out in the open, she didn’t necessarily think Melanie should take Peter back right away.

“What can I do for you, Peter?” Vicki said.

“Wel , I was wondering if Melanie was around.”

“No,” Vicki said. “She’s out.”

“Out?”

“Out.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“Would you like me to tel her you cal ed?” Vicki said.

“Yeah,” Peter said. “Tel her I cal ed. Tel her I miss her.”

Vicki rol ed her eyes. Yeah, you miss her now. Jerk! Coward! Stil , this was what Vicki wanted to see: Peter coming back on his hands and knees, groveling.

“I’l tel her,” Vicki said.

Later, when the Yukon pul ed up in front of the house, Vicki stepped out onto the flagstone path.

“I know what’s going on,” she said as Melanie got out of the car.

Melanie stared at Vicki; she had one hand resting on her bel y. Al the color drained from her face. “You do?”

“I do,” Vicki said. “Peter cal ed.”

Melanie looked at Vicki strangely. She undid the latch of the gate and stepped inside slowly and careful y, as though Vicki were holding a gun to her head. “He did?”

“He said he misses you.”

“He did? ” Now Melanie looked perplexed.

“He did. He cal ed, I told him you were out, he said, ‘Out?’ I said, ‘Out.’ He said to tel you he cal ed. He said, ‘Tel her I miss her.’”

Melanie shook her head. “Wow.”

“‘Wow’?” Vicki said. “‘Wow’? Yeah, wow. That’s right, wow. This is exactly what I said was going to happen. Didn’t I tel you he’d come around?”

“He only cares about the baby,” Melanie said.

“Maybe,” Vicki said. “But maybe not. Are you going to cal him back?”

“No,” Melanie said. “Not today.” She rubbed her bel y. “My hormones are al over the place, Vick. I don’t know what I want.”

“Right,” Vicki said. “I can understand that. I’l tel you what, it was weird having him cal .”

“Yeah, I’l bet.”

“In fact, I got two weird phone cal s this afternoon.”

“Who else?”

“Some girl,” Vicki said. “Some crazy girl. A wrong number.”

The longer Vicki felt good, the more frequently she wondered when the other shoe was going to drop. Could the worst be over? Vicki had three weeks of chemo left, then she would have another CT scan, the results of which would be sent to Dr. Garcia in Connecticut. If her lungs looked okay, if the tumor had shrunk, if it had receded from the chest wal , then Dr. Garcia would schedule the surgery. Now, because Vicki was feeling good, she al owed herself an occasional glimpse at herself after surgery: She pictured herself waking up in the recovery room, attached to an IV and five other machines. She imagined pain in her chest, soreness around the incision, she pictured herself bracing her body when she coughed or laughed or talked. Al this would be fine because she would have survived the surgery. She would be clean. Cancer-free.

Vicki felt so good for so many days that one night at dinner she mentioned she was thinking of letting Josh go.

“I can take care of the kids myself now,” she said. “I feel fine.”

Brenda made a face. “I promised Josh work for the whole summer. He quit his job at the airport for us.”

“And he has to go back to col ege,” Melanie said. “I’m sure he needs the money.”

“It’s not fair to fire him at the beginning of August just because you feel better,” Brenda said.

“I can’t real y imagine the rest of the summer without Josh,” Melanie said. She set down her ear of corn; her chin was shiny with butter. “And what about the kids? They’re attached.”

“They’re attached,” Brenda said.

“They’re attached,” Vicki conceded. “But would it devastate them if he stopped coming? Don’t you think they’d be happy to have me take them to the beach every day?”

“I promised him a summer of work, Vick,” Brenda said.

“I think the kids would be devastated,” Melanie said. “They love him.”

“They love him,” Brenda said.

“Do they love him, or do you guys love him?” Vicki said.

Brenda glowered; Melanie stood up from the table.

“Oh, who are we kidding?” Vicki said. “We al love him.”

The next day Vicki invited herself to the beach with Josh and the kids. Josh seemed happy to have her come along, though he might have been pretending for her sake.

“I can help out,” Vicki said.

“That’s fine,” Josh said.

“I know you guys have your own routine,” Vicki said. “I promise not to cramp your style.”

“Boss,” Josh said, “it’s fine. We’re happy to have you come with us. Right, Chiefy?”

Blaine locked his arms across his chest. “No girls al owed.”

Vicki ruffled his hair. “I’m not a girl,” she said. “I’m your mother.”

“This is where we usual y sit,” Josh said, dropping the umbrel a, the cooler, and the bag of toys in the sand. “As you can see we’re spitting distance from the lifeguard stand and close enough to wet sand that we can build sand castles.”

“And dig holes,” Blaine said.

Josh put up the umbrel a, laid out a blanket, and set Porter in the shade. Immediately, Porter grabbed the pole of the umbrel a and pul ed himself up.

“He normal y stands like that for five or ten minutes,” Josh said.

“Then he chews on the handle of the orange shovel,” Blaine said.

“Then he gets his snack,” Josh said.

“I see,” Vicki said. She had brought a chair for herself, which she unfolded in the sun. “You guys have it al figured out.”

“We’re al about routine,” Josh said, winking at Vicki. “We’re big fans of consistency and sameness.” He waved at a woman down the beach who had two little girls. “There’s Mrs. Brooks with Abby and Mariel. Blaine loves Abby.”

“I do not,” Blaine said.

“Oh, you do so,” Josh said. “Go ask her if she wants to dig with us.”

“Hey, Josh,” a man’s voice said. Vicki turned around. A tal , dark-skinned man with a little boy Blaine’s age and a baby girl in his arms waved as he moved down the beach.

“Omar, my man!” Josh said. Then to Vicki, he whispered, “That’s Omar Sherman. He brings the kids to the beach every morning while his wife talks to her patients on the phone. I guess she’s some hotshot psychiatrist in Chicago and deals with a bunch of complete basket cases.”

“Geez,” Vicki said. “You know everybody.”

She sat back and watched as Abby Brooks and Mateo Sherman helped Blaine and Josh dig a hole and then a tunnel in the sand. Porter stood holding on to the umbrel a pole, and then he tired out and plopped onto the blanket. He reached for his orange shovel and started chewing. Vicki watched al this with the distinct feeling that she was a visitor. Josh was 100 percent in control. At ten-thirty, he pul ed snacks from the cooler: a bottle of juice and box of raisins for Blaine, a graham cracker for Porter. Blaine and Porter sat on the blanket and ate neatly and without complaint, like a model of two children having a snack. Josh produced two plums from the cooler and handed one to Vicki.

“Oh,” she said. “Thank you.” She took a bite of the cold, sweet plum, and juice dripped down her chin. Josh handed her a napkin. “I feel like one of the children,” she said, wiping her face. Vicki liked this, but it made her feel guilty, too. Guilty and unnecessary. She was the children’s mother and they didn’t need her. No girls allowed. Josh was taking care of everything and everybody.

Josh sat on the blanket. Porter pul ed himself up to standing, holding on to the umbrel a pole in a way that reminded Vicki of an old man on the subway. Blaine had dutiful y col ected the trash from snack and walked it over to the barrel behind the lifeguard stand. “You’re a model citizen,” Josh said. Blaine saluted. He joined Abby a few yards down the beach, where they busily fil ed up buckets with sand and then water.

Vicki couldn’t believe she’d been thinking of letting Josh go. “I’m so glad you’re here,” she said. “With us, I mean.”

“I like being here,” Josh said. “With you.”

“I don’t mean to embarrass you,” Vicki said. “Or get al serious on you.”

“You can be as serious as you want, Boss.”

“Okay, then,” Vicki said. “I don’t know what we would have done this summer without you.”

“You would have found someone else,” he said.

“But it wouldn’t have been the same.”

“Things happen for a reason,” Josh said. “I knew when I saw you coming off the plane . . .”

“When Melanie fel ?”

“Yeah, I knew then that something like this would happen.”

“Something like what? You knew you’d be our babysitter?”

“I knew our paths would cross.”

“You did not.”

“I did. First Brenda left the book behind, then I saw Melanie at the airport. . . .”

“She was trying to leave,” Vicki said.

“But I brought her back,” Josh said. “It’s like it was al part of some greater plan.”

“If you believe in a greater plan,” Vicki said.

“You don’t believe in a greater plan?” Josh said.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Vicki said. When she looked at the ocean, or at some smal er, more delicate perfection—like Porter’s ear, for example—it was hard to deny there was a force at work. But a plan into which everyone fit, a plan where everything happened for a reason? It was a convenient fal back. How many people in Vicki’s cancer support group had said they believed they got cancer for a reason? Almost everyone. But look at Alan

—he was dead. What was the reason there? The woman in Royersford, Pennsylvania, shot in the face, leaving her three-month-old motherless.

That didn’t happen for a reason. That was a mistake, a tragedy. If there was a greater plan, it was ful of holes and people dropped through al the time. Vicki thought back on her own life. It had progressed in a way that made sense . . . right up until the cel s of her lungs mutated and became life-threatening. “I’ve never been good at these meaning-of-life conversations.”

Just as Vicki said these words, an amazing thing happened. Porter let go of the umbrel a pole and took two, three, four steps forward.

Vicki leapt from her chair. “Oh my God! Did you see that?”

Porter stopped, turned to his mother with a triumphant expression that quickly became bafflement. He fel back on his butt and started to cry.

“He took his first steps!” Vicki said. “Did you see him? Josh, did you see him?”

“I saw him. He was walking.”

“He was walking!” Vicki swept Porter up and kissed his face. “Oh, honey, you can walk!” She held Porter so tightly his cries amplified. Forget trying to find the meaning of life in some greater plan—it was right there in front of them! Porter had taken his first steps! He would walk for the rest of his life, but Vicki had been there, watching, the very first time. And Josh had seen. If Vicki hadn’t come to the beach today, she might have missed Porter’s first steps—or maybe he only took them because Vicki was there. Or maybe, Vicki couldn’t help thinking, maybe seeing Porter’s first steps was a smal gift for Vicki before she died. No negative thoughts! she told herself. But she couldn’t help it; doubt fol owed her everywhere.

“Amazing,” she said, trying to hold on to her initial enthusiasm. She cal ed out to Blaine. “Honey, your brother can walk. He just took his first steps!” But Porter was crying so loudly Blaine couldn’t hear her. “Oh, dear. I scared him, maybe.”

Josh checked his watch. “Actual y, it’s time for his nap.”

“Eleven o’clock?” Vicki said.

“On the nose. Here, I’l take him.”

Vicki handed Porter over to Josh, who laid Porter on his stomach on a section of clean blanket. Josh patted Porter’s back and gave Porter his pacifier. Porter quieted, and as Vicki sat and watched, his eyes drifted closed.

Josh stood up careful y. “Now is when I play Wiffle bal with Blaine,” he said. “He’s real y learning how to connect with the bal .”

“You’re going to be a great father,” Vicki said.

“Thanks, Boss.” Josh smiled, and something about the smile gave Vicki a glimmer of hope. Josh would get older, fal in love, marry, have children. One thing, at least, would be right with the world.

PART THREE

AUGUST

There was a lot to be learned from children’s games, Brenda thought. Take Chutes and Ladders, which she and Blaine had played umpteen times this summer and which they were playing again now on the coffee table. The board, with its 100 spaces, was a person’s life, and a random spinner dictated which space a person would land on . This little girl did her chores so she earned money to go to the movies: short ladder. This boy stood on a wobbly chair to reach the cookie jar, but he fell and broke his arm: steep chute. As Blaine assiduously practiced counting out spaces, he looked to Brenda for nods of affirmation, but she was musing about al the things that had happened to her in the past year. Brenda had sailed up a tal ladder with her doctorate and the job at Champion and the highest teaching rating in the department, but al this seemed to do was to elevate her to a place where there were more perilous chutes. A professor has an affair with her student. . . . A woman throws a book in anger. . . .

Blaine won the game. This always made him happy.

“Want to play again?” he asked.

It was August, everybody’s summer, though for Brenda the month heralded the beginning of the end. They would be leaving the island in three and a half weeks. It made Brenda physical y sick to think of leaving Nantucket and returning to the city, to the apartment she could no longer afford and the pervasive back-to-school atmosphere that now meant nothing to her. For the first time in her memory, Brenda would not be going back to school.

She had been banned from school. You will never work in academia again. It was almost too much to bear. And so, Brenda did her best to ignore the fact that it was August.

Brian Delaney, Esquire, however, would not let her forget. His cal s came so frequently that Brenda’s life felt like a video game in which Brian Delaney, Esquire, popped up in her path to thwart her.

She final y cal ed him back from a bench in the smal park next to the ’Sconset Market. Even ’Sconset, quaint vil age that it was, was bursting at the seams with people now that it was August. There was a line out the door of the market for coffee and the paper, and there were no fewer than five people on cel phones in the smal park, but none of them, certainly, were conducting business more unpleasant than Brenda’s.

Trudi, Brian Delaney, Esquire’s secretary, sounded relieved to hear it was Brenda cal ing. “He wants to get this settled,” Trudi confided to Brenda, “before he goes to the Hamptons!”

“So now we’re working around your vacation?” Brenda said when Himself came on the line. She meant to sound snappy-funny-sarcastic, but for once, Brian Delaney, Esquire, wasn’t biting.

“Listen,” he said. “The university is wil ing to settle at a hundred and twenty-five. Are you jumping for joy? One twenty-five. And they’l waive the ten grand you owe them to work on the painting. I guess the guy Len, or whomever, is going to write a paper about the restoration. So that’s a clean and clear one twenty-five. That is as good as it’s going to get, Dr. Lyndon. I strongly advise you to take it.”

“I don’t have a hundred and twenty-five thousand dol ars,” Brenda said. “And I don’t have a job. How can I settle when I don’t have the money?”

“We have to settle,” Brian Delaney, Esquire, said. “How’s the screenplay coming?”

“Fine,” Brenda said. Which was true—the screenplay, which had started out as a wing and a prayer, was now nearly done. But the problem with finishing the screenplay was the incipient worry about sel ing the damn thing.

“Good, good,” Brian Delaney, Esquire, said. “There’s your mil ion dol ars right there.”

“Yeah,” Brenda said. “In my dreams.”

“And there’s that pretty piece of real estate you’re sitting on. You could sel out to your sister.”

“No,” Brenda said. The cottage was the only thing Brenda owned. If things didn’t work out in the city, she would have to live on Nantucket year-round. She would have to get a job as a landscaper, or as a salesperson at one of the shops in town. She would have to make friends with other year-rounders who had failed to make lives in the real world. “I’ve told you I don’t know how many times, my sister is sick. She has cancer. I can’t bother her or her husband with a real estate thing now, just because I need money.”

“But you do need money,” Brian Delaney, Esquire, said. “We can’t leave this hanging. Everything doesn’t stop just because it’s summer and you’re on Nantucket. The university wil take us to trial, where, I assure you, we wil lose—to the tune of three hundred grand, plus al the money you’l have to pay me to prepare. I don’t know what you did to that woman Atela, but she is pissed. She wants justice, the university counsel tel s me.

Justice! ” Brian Delaney, Esquire, huffed impatiently. “Do you want me to settle this thing or not?”

There was no justice, Brenda thought. There were only chutes and ladders.

“Settle,” she said.

The beginning of the end with Walsh had arrived when Brenda handed back the midterm papers to her class. She knew students compared notes and shared grades, but she never expected that Walsh would do so. Then again, she never told him (as perhaps she should have): Don’t tell anyone what grade I gave you. The fact of the matter was, Brenda and Walsh didn’t discuss the paper, or his grade, at al . It wasn’t relevant to their relationship; it might have been someone else who gave Walsh the grade.

On the first day of April, no one showed up for class. At five past eleven, not a single student. This struck Brenda as odd, but she relished the quiet. She was tired. She had spent the night before at her parents’ house in Philadelphia; she and Vicki had gone to their father’s law office and signed the papers that made them the official owners of Number Eleven Shel Street. El en Lyndon had persuaded Brenda to stay for a dinner that featured roast chicken and several bottles of celebratory wine. Brenda missed the last train back to New York and had spent the night in her childhood bed. She’d awoken at six that morning to get to 30th Street Station. Her day had been a blur of Metroliner, subway, crosstown bus.

So as she waited for her class to arrive, she rested her head on the Queen Anne table. It smel ed like lemon Pledge. She closed her eyes.

And jolted awake! A minute later, two minutes? No, it was eleven-fifteen and stil no one had come. She checked her syl abus; spring break wasn’t for two weeks. But then she thought, April first, April Fool’s. The class was playing a trick on her. Ha, ha. But where were they?

Brenda walked down the hal to Mrs. Pencaldron’s desk, and on the way, she was passed by the university caterers rol ing a tray of linens and dishes toward the Barrington Room.

Mrs. Pencaldron was on the phone. She saw Brenda but looked right through her. She said something about shrimp in the pasta salad, Dr.

Barrett was al ergic, if he ate it, he’d die. She hung up, huffing.

“Impossible!” she said.

“Am I missing something?” Brenda said.

Mrs. Pencaldron laughed with a false brightness. It had become clear to Brenda over the course of the year that Mrs. Pencaldron regarded al the professors in the department as pets she was trying hard to train, but to no avail.

“Your class,” Mrs. Pencaldron said. “What are you doing here?”

“No one’s in the Barrington Room,” Brenda said. “Except now it looks like they’re setting up some kind of lunch.”

“The department’s spring luncheon,” Mrs. Pencaldron said. “The notice has been in your box for ten days.”

“It has?” Brenda was guilty. She never checked her box.

“It has. Along with a memo informing you that because of the luncheon your class is being held in Parsons 204.”

“It is?”

“It is,” Mrs. Pencaldron said. She was al gussied up in a floral-print dress. Should Brenda have gotten gussied, too?

“Should I go to the luncheon?”

“Are you a member of this department?”

That sounded like a rhetorical question, but was it?

Mrs. Pencaldron sighed in a way that made Brenda feel like a hopeless case. “We’l see you at one.”

Brenda booked it over to Parsons 204. It was a beautiful spring day—final y!—and the quad looked like one of the pictures on the university Web site. Champion University had grass after al ! It had daffodils! It had students eating Big Macs on beach towels! Brenda hurried, but she was almost certain her effort would be in vain. After twenty professorless minutes, the class would have left, and on such a sublime day, how could she blame them? So there was one precious seminar wasted. Brenda prayed that, at the very least, Walsh waited around. The weather had put her in a flirtatious frame of mind. Maybe they could go out tonight, to the Peruvian chicken place. Maybe they could strol in Carl Schurz Park and check out barges on the East River. She would tel him about the cottage on Nantucket, half of it now hers.

Just outside Parsons 204, Brenda heard voices. She opened the door and there was her class, thick in discussion of the week’s reading, Lorrie Moore’s short story “Real Estate.” The kids were so into it, they didn’t even notice her standing there, and Brenda nearly burst with pride.

Brenda’s good mood got better: Walsh grinned when she told him, after everyone else had filed out of the room, that she wanted to go on a chicken-eating, park-strol ing, barge-watching date, and then—because they were in a strange classroom in the Biology Department—they kissed.

“I have to run,” Brenda said. “I’m expected.”

The department’s spring luncheon was in ful swing by the time Brenda arrived. The Barrington Room looked very elegant with the layered tablecloths, flowers, tiered silver trays of tuna and egg salad sandwiches, radishes with sweet butter, the shrimpless pasta salad, a bona fide punch bowl. There was a cluster of female graduate students by the door, teaching assistants, who greeted Brenda like a group of teenagers might greet Hilary Duff. Brenda was the department’s rising star, but to the teaching assistants, Brenda tried to come across as a nice, regular, down-to-earth person. She complimented Audrey on her skirt and told Mary Kate that she’d be happy to proofread the first chapter of her thesis. Brenda chatted with Dr. Barrett, the Russian literature authority who had been friends with Aunt Liv, and then Brenda found herself in conversation with Elizabeth Graves’s secretary, Nan, about the gorgeous weather and the weekend forecast. Across the room, Brenda saw Mrs. Pencaldron, Suzanne Atela, and a graduate student named Augie Fisk, who was a Chaucer specialist and who had asked Brenda out to dinner no less than three times. It would have been a beneficent gesture to seek out Augie Fisk and talk with him, it would have been wise to schmooze with Suzanne Atela—but Brenda was tired, and hungry. She fixed herself a plate and took a seat in a chair along the far wal next to a stout gentleman in a gray suit.

“I’m Bil Franklin,” he said.

Aha! Bil Franklin was the drama professor, a famous queen, known among the students as “Uncle Pervy.” Brenda had never met him. He taught at night, in the university theater. He had an office in the department, but the door was always closed.

“Oh, hi! It’s nice to final y put a face to the name. I’m Brenda Lyndon.”

“Yes, I know.”

She smiled, trying not to let his unfortunate nickname color her first impression. Bil Franklin was in his midfifties, he had a nondescript, semi-desperate traveling-salesman aura about him. Something about him was familiar. She had seen him before. Around campus, maybe. Brenda sneaked another look at him sideways as she nibbled on a radish.

“This is a very nice event,” she said.

And at the same time, he said, “You seem to be quite popular with the kids.”

“Oh,” she said. “Wel , who knows? I like teaching. I love it. Today I was late and the class just started up without me.”

“You’re very young.”

“I’l be thirty this month,” Brenda said.

“Much closer to their age. They must find you intriguing.”

“Intriguing?” Brenda said. “Oh, I kind of doubt that.”

Bil Franklin was drinking a Michelob. He brought the bottle to his lips. He had a gray handlebar mustache. A handlebar mustache. Something about the mustache rang a bel , but why? Brenda got a funny-sick feeling in her stomach. It was a real y bad paranoid suspicion. Real y bad.

Through three bites of pasta salad, she watched Suzanne Atela conferring with the head caterer. Dr. Atela was pointing; Brenda heard the word

“coffee.” Brenda had to stand up. She wanted to look at Bil Franklin from across the room. She pretended to be headed for the punch bowl, though the punch was the color of Pepto-Bismol, and no one had touched it. She lingered, trying to get a good, long look without getting caught. Okay. He drank from his bottle, he saw her, he winked. Winked.

Brenda looked away, horrified. Horrified! We’re in Soho. It’s like another country. The man at the end of the bar would like to pay for your drink.

The man at the end of the bar at the Cupping Room the night Brenda met Walsh, the night she kissed Walsh and flaunted her hot longing for al to see . . . the man who offered to buy her a drink was Bil Franklin.

Brenda cancel ed Walsh without explanation, and nine o’clock found him leaning against Brenda’s buzzer until she let him in.

On purpose, she was wearing sweatpants. Since they were no longer to be lovers, he could see her looking grubby. Ancient Philadelphia marathon T-shirt, ponytail, no makeup. Wel , a little makeup. Brenda took a long time with the dead bolts. She didn’t want to see him.

“What’s going on?” he said. “You sounded bloody awful on the phone. What happened?”

Walsh stepped inside, and she locked the door back up. Her apartment, at least, was safe. She took her clothes off before Walsh could get a good look at them.

Later, as they lay in bed sweating and spent, Walsh kissed her temple. Some days he seemed much older than he real y was. Maybe because he was from Australia.

“You’re upset,” he said. “Tel me what happened.”

She inhaled. “One of the professors in the department . . . the drama guy, Bil Franklin . . .”

“Uncle Pervy?” Walsh said.

“Yes. He was at the Cupping Room the night we were there.”

“He was? How do you know? Did he tel you?”

“I recognized him,” Brenda said. “He tried to buy me a drink. I remember him. At the other end of the bar. He was wearing the same suit he wore to the luncheon. And his mustache, with the curlicue ends al waxed, you don’t forget something like that. He winked at me. Oh, God. It’s awful.”

“You’re sure it wasn’t some other bloke with the same suit?”

“I wish it was,” Brenda said. “But I’m sure. And I mean, sure. Same guy. And he knows. I’m sure he knows. He said al this stuff about my being young. He said the students must find me ‘intriguing.’”

“Intriguing?”

“He knows. It was the way he said it. He knows, Walsh. Okay, that’s it. I will be fired. You wil be . . . wel , hopeful y nothing wil happen to you.”

“Come on,” Walsh said.

“We have to stop,” Brenda said. “If I get fired, my career is over. My whole professional life. Everything I’ve worked for, the things I’m building on.

Because I would like to stay at Champion, and if Champion doesn’t want to offer me anything permanent, then I would like to teach someplace else.

I can’t have a weird sexual thing on my record. No one wil hire me.”

“I can’t stop,” Walsh said. “I don’t want to stop.”

“I don’t want to stop, either,” Brenda said. “Obviously. But is this any way to conduct a relationship? Sneaking around, hoping nobody catches us?”

“It hasn’t seemed to bother you before.”

“Wel , now everything’s different.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that.”

“I can’t believe you care what Uncle Pervy thinks. I hear stories about that guy al the time.”

“Yeah, but not with undergraduates. Not with his own students.”

“No, but stil . That guy has too many skeletons in his own closet to blow the whistle on us . . .”

Brenda slid out of bed and stumbled through the dark apartment to the front door, where she found her sweats in a pile on the floor. Brenda put them on. She thought about how much she loved her class. But Walsh was part of that class and part of why she loved it was because he was in it.

She thought of Bil Franklin winking at her. Ugh! They must find you intriguing. Because I saw you kissing one of your students at a bar. But that night in the Cupping Room had been nearly two months earlier, and if Bil Franklin hadn’t said anything about it to Suzanne Atela yet, he might be planning to keep it under his hat. After al , he had no reason to sting Brenda. He didn’t even know her. There were only five weeks left in the semester, anyway. The other day Walsh had told Brenda he wanted to take her back to Fremantle and introduce her to his mother, and Brenda had gone so far as to check flights from New York to Perth on the Internet. Brenda thought about their names, side by side at the top of his paper. John Walsh /Dr. Brenda Lyndon. He was a col ege sophomore. He was her student. Romantic or sexual relationships are forbidden between a faculty member and a student.

“Brindah,” he cal ed out.

Her mind was a muddy puddle.

. . . and will result in disciplinary action.

“Brindah?”

She couldn’t come up with an answer.

I can’t stop. I don’t want to stop.

I can’t stop.

Brenda didn’t stop. Her relationship with Walsh had too much momentum. And so, they continued to see each other, but only at Brenda’s apartment. Brenda was firm in this. The beautiful weather beckoned; Walsh wanted to be outside. He wanted to walk with Brenda, lie in the grass with Brenda. It was against his nature to be cooped up in her apartment, where the windows didn’t even open. But no, sorry—Brenda said no. She wouldn’t budge.

In class, Brenda was increasingly businesslike, serious, professional. She was young, but that didn’t mean she was frivolous! That didn’t mean she would fly in the face of the strictest university rule and sleep with one of her students!

Brenda was consumed with anxiety, but she had no one to talk about it with. She couldn’t tel her parents or Vicki and she hadn’t spoken to Erik vanCott since their dinner at Craft. The bad news of Erik marrying Noel seemed very minor when compared to the bad news of Brenda losing her job and watching her good name go up in flames. Besides, what would she possibly say? I’m sleeping with one of my students. When phrased like that, which was to say, bluntly, without nuance or detail, it sounded tawdry and lecherous. It was the kind of secret that Brenda would have been ashamed to tel her therapist, if she had a therapist. The only person Brenda could vent to was Walsh himself, and he was growing weary of it.

Brenda yammered on about getting caught, getting fired, what if, God forbid . . . until the words clinked like worthless coins. Relax, he said. You’re acting like such an American. Obsessing like this.

Brenda’s class read Anne Lamott’s Crooked Little Heart, which was the book Amrita the brownnoser had chosen to write her midterm paper on, and yet Amrita’s customary seat, to Brenda’s right, was vacant first on Tuesday and then again on Thursday.

“Does anyone know where Amrita is?” Brenda asked.

There was throat-clearing, a noise that sounded like a sneeze but could just as easily have been a snicker from one of the Rebeccas, a bunch of downcast eyes. Brenda got a funny vibe, but she couldn’t pinpoint it and no one in the class was going to talk. Brenda scribbled, Call Amrita! at the top of her notes.

Spring break arrived. Walsh had rugby games in Van Cortlandt Park, he wanted Brenda to come watch him, they could picnic afterward, but she refused. I can’t. Someone will see me. Someone will figure it out. Erik vanCott cal ed and left a message, asking Brenda to be the best man in his wedding. Brenda thought he was kidding, but then he left another message. Best man? she thought. Would she have to stand on the altar looking like Victor Victoria while “marriage material” Noel looked stunning in silk shantung and tul e? For her vacation, Brenda took the train up to Darien to see Vicki, Ted, and the kids. Vicki wasn’t feeling wel ; she’d been to the hospital for tests. Walking pneumonia, they thought it was. Brenda said, Ugh, are you contagious? She washed her hands, she kept a safe distance. She asked Vicki about being Erik vanCott’s best man. Tuxedo? she said. Black dress, Vicki said. But nothing too sexy. You’re not allowed to upstage the bride. One night, when Ted was out with clients, Brenda nearly confessed to Vicki about Walsh, but she held her tongue. Instead, they talked about Nantucket. Would they go, together, separately, when would they go, how long would they stay? Vicki said, I have a family, Bren. I have to plan. Brenda said, Just let me get through this semester.

After spring break, Brenda started holding class outside, in the quad, under a spindly, urban tree. She was thinking of summer, of time on Nantucket, she was thinking: Walsh wants to spend time with me outside, here it is. She also wanted to keep a low profile in the department. If she wasn’t there, she reasoned, nothing bad could happen.

She left three messages for Amrita—two on Amrita’s cel phone and one at Amrita’s apartment, where a roommate promised to pass the message along. Had Amrita dropped the class? That seemed so unlikely that Brenda figured she must have contracted mono, or had to fly back to India to bury a dead grandmother. Students like Amrita didn’t drop a class they were acing.

And then, one day, two weeks before final papers were due, two weeks before Brenda and Walsh were in the clear, Brenda found a note taped to her office door. SEE ME! S.A.

Brenda removed the note and held it in her hand. Her hand was steady. She wasn’t nervous. Suzanne Atela could want a hundred things. The semester was ending; there was next year to consider. There had been talk of Brenda picking up another section. It was either that or some other administrative thing. Brenda wasn’t nervous or worried.

Suzanne Atela wasn’t in her office. Brenda checked with Mrs. Pencaldron, who without a word uncapped her Montblanc pen and elegantly scripted a phone number on a peach-colored index card.

“She wants me to cal her?” Brenda said.

Terse nod. Mrs. Pencaldron picked up her own phone and handed the receiver to Brenda.

Suzanne Atela wanted to meet at Feed Your Head, in the student union. Brenda agreed, handed the phone back to Mrs. Pencaldron, stifled a groan. She wasn’t nervous or worried; she was merely inconvenienced. She was supposed to meet Walsh at her apartment with take-out Indian food at one. In the stairwel , she cal ed Walsh to cancel.

At quarter to twelve, Feed Your Head was packed. Packed! Brenda realized how removed she had been from the student body of Champion University. She knew twelve students out of six thousand. She’d been teaching for nearly an entire school year and she’d never once eaten on campus. And no wonder. She paid twelve-fifty for a soggy tuna sub, fruit salad, and a bottle of water. She wandered past a bunch of girl-women watching a soap opera as she searched for Suzanne Atela. It took a few minutes to find her because Brenda was, of course, looking for a woman alone. Dr. Atela was not alone, however. She was sitting at a table with Bil Franklin and Amrita.

Brenda nearly turned and ran—it would have been easy to get lost in the crowd—but Amrita saw her and frowned. She nudged Dr. Atela, and Dr.

Atela turned and drew Brenda over to the table with a steady, disapproving gaze over the top of her glasses. Bil Franklin was wearing a blue seersucker suit and a bow tie. With his waxed mustache, he looked old-fashioned and ridiculous, like a carnival barker. His attention was glued to the soap opera, showing on a screen over Atela’s head.

As Brenda approached the table, her bowels did a twisty thing that made her think she might need a bathroom. She eased down in a molded plastic chair next to Atela.

“Hi,” she said. “Amrita. Dr. Franklin. I didn’t realize this was a meet—”

Suzanne Atela sliced through the air with her arm and checked her slim, gold watch. “I have a lunch at Picholine in an hour,” she said. Her voice was so taut there was no trace of her accent. “I’l get right to the point. There are some indelicate rumors circulating about you, Dr. Lyndon.”

“Rumors?” Brenda said. “About me?”

Amrita clucked and made eyes. Brenda regarded the girl. Her long black hair was parted in the middle and combed slick against her head; it was gathered in a schoolmarm’s bun at the nape of her neck. Her skin was grayish, and she wore red lipstick, the same crimson as her fingernails.

She was wearing jeans and a yel ow Juicy Couture hooded sweatshirt. She did not look so different from the rest of Champion’s students, and yet she stood out, not because of her culture, but because of the intensity with which she pursued her education. She had missed five classes, which was enough for Brenda to fail her for the semester. What did I do to you? Brenda thought. You wanted teaching and teaching you got. I engaged you, I took your points, I showered you with praise. What more did you want?

Bil Franklin cleared his throat, and then, with difficulty it seemed, he ripped his attention away from the TV. “We’re talking about more than just rumors, Suzanne,” he said. “Otherwise we wouldn’t be wasting our time. Or Dr. Lyndon’s time.”

“Quite right, Dr. Franklin,” Suzanne Atela said.

For some reason, the TV above Dr. Atela’s head snagged Brenda’s attention. On the screen was Brenda’s student Kel y Moore, her purple hair spiked like a Muppet. So this was Love Another Day. Kel y Moore’s character kissed a man twice her age, then there was a struggle, a slap. She escaped the man and ran out of the room, flinging the door closed.

Amrita reached into her ornately embroidered silk book bag and pul ed out her midterm paper, which had copious notes and exclamations of praise from Brenda in blue pen, and an A at the top.

“We know what’s going on with you and Walsh,” Amrita said. “Everybody knows. It’s disgusting.”

Dr. Atela removed her harlequin glasses and placed them on the sticky Formica table with a sigh. Brenda took a yoga breath. She was prepared for this, wasn’t she? She had lived through this scene in her mind a thousand times in the last three weeks. And yet, the word “disgusting” threw her.

“Disgusting” was the teacher who became impregnated by her seventh-grade student. Walsh was a year older than Brenda; a relationship between them was natural. Except he was her student. So it was wrong. It was indelicate, as Atela had said, unwise, a bad decision. It was against university rules. But it was not disgusting. Brenda was so busy thinking this through that she didn’t say a word, and after a number of seconds had passed, this seemed like a bril iant strategy. Don’t even dignify the accusation with a response.

“Dr. Lyndon?” Suzanne Atela said.

“I’m sorry. I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Brenda said.

“We understand, Dr. Lyndon, that you’ve been having improper relations with one of your students.”

“I saw you with him downtown,” Bil Franklin said. “At the beginning of the semester. One of the things I noticed—in addition to your obvious attraction to one another—was that he paid the bil . The reason why faculty are forbidden from dating students is because of the power differential.

He buys you drinks, you give him grades . . .”

“What are you suggesting?” Brenda said. “I’m sorry, I don’t . . .”

“I real y respected you,” Amrita said. She fingered the zipper of her sweatshirt, unzipped it an inch, zipped it back up. Up, down, up, down. She was nervous. Brenda should capitalize on that fact, but she didn’t know how. “I loved your class. I thought, final y, a real teacher, someone young, someone I could relate to.” Here, Amrita’s voice wavered. “But then it turns out that you’re the impostor—and not so innocent. You’re having a . . .

thing with Walsh. You gave him an A plus on his paper!”

Brenda stared at her inedible lunch. She wanted to dump the bottle of water over Amrita’s head. You little snot! she thought . Is that why you’re doing this? Because I gave him the grade he deserved? Or because you yourself are in love with him? She wanted to smash the tuna sub into Bil Franklin’s face. He had shown his true colors that night at the Cupping Room. Sitting at the end of the bar, getting drunk, waiting to prey on any young woman—or man—who came in unescorted. Uncle Pervy— that was disgusting. And then there was Dr. Atela. She was the worst of the three because Brenda could see that beneath the somber concern and measured disapproval, she enjoyed watching Brenda suffer. If they were in ancient Rome, Atela would have thrown Brenda to the lions and applauded at the sport of it. But why? Because Brenda was young? Because she was a good teacher? Was Suzanne Atela jealous of Brenda? Did she feel threatened? Another department head might have emitted disappointment, but Suzanne Atela’s face conveyed resignation, as though she’d known al along this would happen, as though she had predicted it. Brenda was so appal ed, she stood up.

“I have a lunch at one myself,” she said. “So if you’l excuse me . . .”

Brenda picked up the bottle of water but left the rest of her tray for Suzanne Atela to deal with. In seconds, Brenda was swal owed up in the crowd of hungry undergraduates.

She reached into her bag for her cel phone. Cal Walsh, instruct him to deny everything. They had no proof! Bil Franklin saw them together at the Cupping Room. And maybe someone saw them kissing in Parsons 204. Why had she been so stupid, so cavalier? It didn’t matter if they had proof or not, it was true—Brenda could deny it, but she would be lying. She was having a romantic and a sexual relationship with one of her students.

Disciplinary action would be taken. Her job was gone and with it her good name, her reputation. Brenda might have walked off Champion’s campus, taken the crosstown bus home, and never looked back, but there were things in her office she could not leave behind—certain papers, her first-edition Fleming Trainor. She raced back to the English Department.

Mrs. Pencaldron’s chair was empty, and a half-eaten Caesar salad sat on her desk blotter. When Brenda reached into her bag, her fingers came across a single key on a thin wire ring with a round paper tag that said (in Mrs. Pencaldron’s penciled script) Barrington Room. Brenda looked down the hal at the heavy, paneled door. There wasn’t time! She had to get out of there! Go to her office, get her things! The door seemed even more formidable now than it had been at the beginning of the semester, but in spite of that, or maybe because of that, Brenda was drawn down the hal . In the copy room, Augie Fisk stood at the Xerox machine, and his presence almost deterred her, but when Brenda breezed by, he didn’t even look up.

In her deposition, Brenda had admitted to being only partly conscious of her actions that afternoon. What she said was, I was upset. I was stunned, mortified, terribly confused. I wasn’t thinking clearly. I didn’t know what I was doing. I wasn’t planning on stealing the painting. I just wanted . . .

Wanted what, Dr. Lyndon?

To see the painting one more time, she’d said. To say good-bye to it.

Brenda punched in the security code and unlocked the door to the Barrington Room, ful y prepared to find Mrs. Pencaldron sitting at the Queen Anne table, waiting for her. But the room was empty, hushed, just as it had been in the moments before Brenda’s class al semester long. Brenda felt an enormous sense of loss, the beginnings of mourning. Her career was dead, but the body not yet cold. And it was al her own stupid, stupid fault. Temptation had been placed in Brenda’s path, and instead of swerving around it, she had met it at a bar.

Brenda set her purse and the bottle of water down on the Queen Anne table, and she stood before the painting. She was trying to absorb it, to internalize it, because, certainly, she would never see it again. She wanted to rest her face against its surface, feel its texture under her cheek; she wanted to climb into the painting and lie down.

Brenda heard a noise. She turned to see Mrs. Pencaldron clapping at her, like she was a wayward dog. Mrs. Pencaldron snatched up the bottle of water from the Queen Anne table (it would indeed leave a pale ring).

“What are you doing in here?” Mrs. Pencaldron said. “You don’t belong in here! And this—” She shook the bottle of water and wiped at the table with the bottom of her blouse. “What were you thinking? You know the rules!”

“Sorry,” Brenda said. “I’m so sorry.”

“You know the rules, but you don’t fol ow them,” Mrs. Pencal-dron said. “Sorry does not begin to address your transgressions.”

Brenda held up her hands. “Okay, whatever. I came to get my things. I’m leaving.”

“I wil pack your things properly and send them to your home address,” Mrs. Pencaldron said. “I suggest you leave this room and the department now, otherwise I wil cal campus security.”

“Campus security?” Brenda said. “There’s no need for that . . .” Brenda was dying to address Mrs. Pencaldron by her first name, but she didn’t know what it was. “I’m leaving.”

Augie Fisk appeared in the doorway. He looked at Brenda with a combination of pity and disgust. “We al heard,” he said. “Everyone knows. Did Atela fire you?”

“She didn’t have to,” Brenda said. “I’m leaving.”

“This isn’t going to be something you can walk away from,” Augie said. “This is going to stick. I mean, you can try to find another job, but you won’t be able to work anywhere accredited. Hel , you won’t even be able to teach high school. Maybe you should look into one of those online universities, where they don’t care what crimes you’ve committed.”

“It’s disgraceful,” Mrs. Pencaldron said. “I knew something wasn’t right with the two of you. Couldn’t put my finger on it, though, and certainly never expected that . . . but something, yes, I sensed something from the beginning.”

“We al thought you were a flash in the pan,” Augie said. “A woman as attractive as you, with your boutique subject matter, a specialty that no one else on earth knows about, that has no relevance to the rest of the canon. I knew you weren’t for real. There was something fishy about you, something artificial. We al knew it.”

“Stop it,” Brenda said. Couldn’t they see she was upset enough as it was?

“You stop it,” Mrs. Pencaldron said. She pointed to the door. “Leave, or I cal security.”

Not in her right mind. Terribly confused. And angry. Brenda hated Mrs. Pencaldron. She had never liked her but now she real y despised her.

And Augie Fisk—yuck!—with his thick shock of red hair and his pale, pinched lips. Flash in the pan? He had asked her out again and again, and each time Brenda turned him down, she felt worse. Not in her right mind. Fishy and artificial? An online university? After eight years of graduate school, the thousands of hours of reading and research? Al that work? The slavish devotion? Suddenly, Brenda was furious. She would not be ordered out of this room. She had done a good job; she was a good teacher.

We all knew it. Wel , wasn’t it easy to say so. Now.

Brenda reached into her bag and grabbed a book—one of the nearly impossible to find paperbacks of The Innocent Impostor that she had ordered for her class—and flung it. She threw it, she told the university counsel in her deposition, just to throw something. Have you never thrown anything in anger? Have you never felt that impulse? Brenda was not aiming the book at Augie Fisk or Mrs. Pencaldron or the painting. But hit the painting it did. (Lower left quadrant, three-quarter-of-an-inch “divot” or “gouge.”) Brenda sucked in her breath, horrified, and Mrs. Pencaldron shrieked, and Augie Fisk said, “Oh, shit. You’ve real y done it now.”

Mrs. Pencaldron said, “I’m cal ing security. Block the door, Augie. We are not letting her leave. She has to answer to this.”

Brenda gazed at the painting through her tears. She understood it perfectly now. The splatter, the mess, the tangle, the chaos. That painting was her life.

Settle, she thought. It was a word with multiple meanings. On the one hand, it was comforting. The matter would be settled, final y. Cleaned up, laid to rest. Champion University v. Brenda Lyndon would become another file in the law offices of Brian Delaney, Esquire, closed away in a drawer.

But settle also meant doing without. She would have to settle for a life excluded from academia, and for a life without Walsh.

Her heart longed for him, her body ached for his arms around her. She wanted to hear his voice; it didn’t matter, particularly, what he said. But Brenda couldn’t make herself cal him; her relationship with Walsh was intertwined with the loss of her career, her life’s work. Brenda hurt now, but it would hurt more to talk with Walsh, to relive, day in and day out, the humiliation of that afternoon with Suzanne Atela, Bil Franklin, Amrita, Augie Fisk, Mrs. Pencaldron, and, final y, campus security.

Where was she going to find the money? Could she declare bankruptcy? Would she be forced to ask her parents? In Brenda’s mind, a hundred and twenty-five thousand dol ars was no different from a hundred and sixty—they were both unattainable. She would have to sel her half of the cottage, but she couldn’t drop that on Vicki now—and what if Vicki and Ted, for whatever reason, didn’t have the money to buy Brenda out? Would Brenda force a sale of the whole property? She could just hear the thoughts of Vicki and her parents: Brenda is book smart, yes, but she has no common sense. She is unable to make her way in the world. We always have to bail her out.

How to defend herself? What else could she do? One thing. There had always been only one place for Brenda to hide. Lowly Worm, bookworm, nose always in a book. She pul ed her yel ow legal pad out of her bag, poured a cup of coffee from her thermos, and started to write.

It was nothing he would ever be able to use on his résumé, but Josh was proud of his Wiffle bal pitching ability. Josh gave the bal perfect arc and speed—and in addition, Josh had taught Blaine stance and swing so that Blaine hit the bal nearly every time. Yes, the Wiffle bal was satisfying, it was one of the things Josh would miss most about babysitting, and he was glad that he’d been able to show off his pitching prowess for Vicki.

Vicki was feeling better, she looked healthier and stronger, and Josh found himself wanting to spend more time with her. She was his boss, yes, but she was also his friend and he found her easy to talk to and fun to be with. Josh’s relationship with Brenda had basical y been whittled down to pleasantries and an occasional short conversation about the progress of her screenplay—and Josh’s relationship with Melanie had morphed into a whole, huge, complicated and secret thing. Josh’s feelings for Melanie were running amok; they were growing like some crazy, twisting vine, strangling his heart. He wanted to talk to someone about Melanie—and strangely, the person who came to mind was Vicki. But this was out of the question.

Melanie was thirteen weeks pregnant. Her stomach held the slightest swel —rounded, smooth, tight. She was luminous—always smiling, radiating good, sweet, sexy Melanie-ness. He was crazy about her, he couldn’t wait for the day to pass, for night to come, for his father to switch off the TV and retire to his bedroom, because this was when Josh left the house, driving out to ’Sconset with a sense of fervent anticipation. Melanie.

Since the beginning of August, his longing for her had intensified. One night, she didn’t come to meet him at al . Josh waited patiently in the beach parking lot until eleven o’clock, then he drove, as stealthily as possible, past the house on Shel Street. The house was dark and buckled up for the night. In the morning, Melanie told him in a quick whisper that she had simply fal en asleep.

Simply? he thought. What had developed between them was wel beyond simple.

She admitted to him that she was talking to Peter. Not just the one time and not just to discuss “household matters.” He knew about the baby; she had told him.

“I had to,” she said. “He’s the father. He deserves to know.”

Josh disagreed. “Is he stil having the affair?”

“I don’t know.”

“Have you asked him?”

“No.”

“Wel , what does he say when he cal s?”

“He says he misses me. He asks when I’m coming home.”

“That’s just because of the baby,” Josh said. “He cares about you now because you’re pregnant.”

Josh said these words without realizing how hurtful they were. Melanie’s eyes widened in shock. Right away, he knew he should apologize, he did apologize, and Melanie said, “No, no, you’re right. I can’t trust him. I don’t trust him. He’s only cal ing me because I’m pregnant.”

“He’s stupid,” Josh said. And when Melanie didn’t respond, he said, “It might be better if you didn’t tel me about the phone cal s anymore.”

“Okay,” she said. “Sure thing. I just don’t want to keep anything from you.”

But this wasn’t exactly true. What she kept from Josh was how the phone cal s made her feel and what she intended to do about Peter once the summer ended and she returned to Connecticut. Peter was her husband, yes, but was she going to take him back? Melanie never said, and Josh was afraid to ask. He needed someone to talk to, but there was no one. He spent al day with a four-year-old, throwing perfect pitches, fielding perfect hits.

“Josh? Josh?”

Blaine was standing at “home plate” with his bat poised when Josh, who had been ready to pitch, froze. It was his custom, between pitches, to check on Porter, who was asleep on the blanket under the umbrel a. Was he stil asleep? This was increasingly important now that Porter could walk; the last thing Josh wanted was for Porter to toddle off down the beach unnoticed. But when Josh checked on Porter this time, he was taken by surprise. There was a person sitting under the umbrel a next to Porter, a person who had appeared out of nowhere, like a ghost, like a bad dream. It was Didi.

“What—” Josh said, but he stopped himself. He didn’t want to get noticeably angry or flustered in front of Blaine.

“Hi,” Didi said.

“Josh!” Blaine said. “Pitch!”

Josh looked at Blaine waiting—and then back at Didi. Josh felt as threatened as he would have by a cobra under the umbrel a with Porter, or a Siberian tiger. What if Didi snatched Porter up and disappeared with him?

Josh pitched the bal , Blaine smacked it over Josh’s head. Didi made a big show of clapping and cheering, and at that point, Blaine realized there was someone under the umbrel a with his brother. A stranger. But no, not a stranger.

“Hey, I know you,” Blaine said. “From the hospital.” As Josh retrieved the bal , Blaine approached the umbrel a. Not too close! Josh thought. He jogged over.

“Blaine, do you want to play with Mateo now?”

“What about Wiffle bal ?”

“I have to talk to Didi.”

“Is she your girlfriend?”

At this, Didi laughed, a forceful, one-syl able blast. “Ha!”

“No,” Josh said. “But I have to talk to her. Wil you play with Mateo?”

“How many minutes until lunch?”

Josh checked his watch. “Eighteen minutes.”

“Okay,” Blaine said. He wandered a few yards down the beach to where Mateo Sherman was burying his father’s feet in the sand. Omar Sherman looked over to Josh and said, “I’ve got him.”

“Thanks!” Josh said. Omar would be wondering who Didi was, as would Mrs. Brooks two umbrel as down. Josh smiled at Didi, but this was purely for show. “What are you doing here, Didi?”

“I know about her.”

“You know about who?” Josh said wearily.

“You’re screwing the mother’s friend,” Didi said. “And she’s pregnant. I know al about it. It’s weird, okay, Josh? It’s twis-ted.”

“You don’t know a damn thing,” Josh said. “You are so far off base, you’re just making shit up. You sound like a crazy person.”

“Rob saw you with a woman with curly hair. Older. And I did some further research. It’s the mother’s friend. She came to the hospital for a prenatal appointment. I know you’re sleeping with her. I know you took her to the house in Shimmo. Zach told me.”

Stop! Josh thought. Stop and think! But if he paused, even for a second, if he faltered or showed a crack, she would get a fingerhold and pul him apart.

“You owe me money,” Josh said. “Two hundred dol ars, plus interest. Are you here to pay me?”

“Don’t try to change the subject,” she said.

“You’re the one who’s trying to change the subject,” Josh said. “Because the only thing between you and me is that money.”

“I need five hundred dol ars to get my car back,” Didi said. “Give me five hundred dol ars and I won’t tel anyone.”

“Won’t tel anyone what?”

“That you’re sleeping with a woman who is pregnant. I could see if you hit on the other one, the sister. She, at least, is attractive, though waaaaaaayyyyy too old for you.”

“Stop it, Didi. You can’t blackmail me.”

“Sure I can.”

“No, you can’t,” Josh said. “What you’re saying is outrageous. No one wil believe you.”

“Rob saw you, Josh. Out in Monomoy. With the woman. At midnight. How do you explain that?”

“I don’t have to explain it because it isn’t true. Rob is untrustworthy. He’s as crazy as you are.” Josh looked over at Blaine, happily playing with Mateo Sherman. Omar gave Josh the thumbs-up. Porter’s breathing was deep and even. Everything is okay, Josh told himself. You can handle Didi.

“Everyone wil believe it,” Didi said. “Because you’re different this summer. You never come to parties, you don’t go out. You don’t do anything except hang around with those women and the kids. Everyone’s noticed, Josh. I’m sure even your father’s noticed. Although, maybe not. Your father is pretty oblivious.”

“Stop it, Didi.”

“I’l have to clue him in.”

Josh tried not to let any emotion cross his face. He felt like he was onstage. Stil , he couldn’t let Didi get anywhere near his father. That would be a complete disaster.

“Whatever,” Josh said. “My father already thinks you’re wacko, Didi. Anything you try to tel him wil fal on deaf ears.”

“That’s a chance I’l have to take,” Didi said. She stood up and brushed off the seat of her shorts. “Give me five hundred bucks and I’l let this go. I won’t tel your father. I won’t tel anyone.”

“Get out of here, Didi.”

“You’l be sorry.”

“Why are you doing this?” Josh asked.

“You real y want to know?”

“Yes,” he said. “I real y want to know.”

Didi sidled up to him and tucked herself right under his ear. “Because I love you,” she whispered.

A few days later, the heat arrived. Real heat, and humidity—and as in the case of an unwelcome houseguest, no one knew how long it was staying.