Here's to Us

ANGIE

There was a knock on her bedroom door. Her eyes flew open. Sunlight filtered into the room through the bottom of the window shade; it was morning. Joel lay splayed across the bed, buck naked. Angie hastened to cover him up with a sheet and the meager chenille blanket. The last thing she wanted was Ellery marching in and seeing Joel in Angie’s bed. Angie scrambled to put on shorts and a T-shirt. She opened the door. Laurel was standing there in her bathrobe, her hair mussed, her eyes at half mast behind a pair of glasses that Angie had never seen her wear.

“Sorry to bother you, sweetie,” Laurel said. “But JP is downstairs? He said you two had plans this morning?”

Angie gasped. “What time is it?”

“Eight thirty,” Laurel said.

Eight thirty already? JP, being reliable and prompt, had come to collect Angie for her archery lesson. But now that Joel was here, Angie didn’t want to go. She didn’t need to go. She didn’t have to prove anything to herself or anyone else. Joel had shown up. She, Angela Thorpe, was desired; she was loved.

Oh, how she wanted Laurel to go downstairs and break the bad news to JP, but that was unfair. Angie would do it.

She hurried down the stairs in her bare feet and squinted at the burst of sunlight pouring in through the front door. JP stood respectfully outside, wearing his visor and Blues Brothers sunglasses, grinning.

“Look at you, Sleeping Beauty,” he said. “Get your shoes on. I have coffee for you at my cottage.”

Angie smiled ruefully. She felt awful about this. If Joel hadn’t shown up, she would have been happy and grateful to have gone with JP. It would have made the sad day in front of her bearable.

“I’m going to have to take a rain check,” she said.

“Oh,” he said. He took his sunglasses off so that he could study her. “Is everything okay?”

“Everything is great,” she said. She lowered her voice. “My boyfriend, Joel? The one I told you about? He showed up last night. He’s upstairs.”

JP’s face fell into an expression halfway between dejection and skepticism.

“I didn’t know he was coming,” Angie said. “He literally just appeared.” Then she said, “I can’t believe I just used the word ‘literally.’”

“Okay,” JP said. He didn’t bother hiding his frown, and Angie wondered what exactly he was unhappy about. Angie had wasted his time, making him come out here from Coatue, but only twenty minutes at the most. Maybe he didn’t approve because Joel was still married. Or maybe… maybe JP had been looking forward to spending time with Angie. She sort of thought this last thing was it, and she felt really bad, but she hadn’t lied to JP-and she certainly hadn’t made him any promises.

She said, “I’m sorry you had to come all the way out here.”

“Don’t worry about it,” JP said. “I’ll see you tonight on the boat.”

“Right,” Angie said. She wondered if Joel would want to come out with her family to spread the ashes. She wondered if her mother or Laurel or Scarlett would have a problem if he did. While she was thinking about this, JP turned and walked down the driveway to his Jeep. Angie wasn’t sure why, but she followed him.

“Listen, JP, I’m sorry,” she said. “I feel terrible. Honestly, I forgot you were coming this morning.”

JP laughed. “This guy must be pretty terrific if you forgot about your shooting lesson,” he said. He gave her a genuine smile. “I’m glad he showed up. You deserve to be someone’s everything, Angie.”

For some reason, tears pricked Angie’s eyes. “I was someone’s everything,” she said. “But he’s dead now.”

JP reached out and wiped away the tear that fell. Then he climbed into his Jeep, started the ignition, and gave her a wave as he backed out of the driveway.

“Wait!” Angie shouted. She waved her arms for him to come back. She would get her shoes on; she would go with JP, strap on the bow, nock an arrow, line up the pin, and-whoosh!-hit the target.

But JP didn’t see or hear her. He took off down the road, and after he was out of sight, Angie turned around and made her way back to the house.

Joel was sitting up in bed. The window shade had been raised.

“Who was that?” Joel said.

“Who?” Angie said.

“Um… the guy in the Jeep in the driveway? The guy you chased? The guy who touched your face? Who was that guy?”

“That was JP,” Angie said. “He’s the ranger out at Coatue.”

“‘The ranger out at Coatue’?” Joel said. “Am I supposed to understand what that means?”

“No,” Angie said. “You’re not. I’m sorry.”

“Are you hiding something from me?” Joel said.

“No,” Angie said. On the one hand, she wanted to tell Joel all about JP: He spends the summer in a shack out on a deserted stretch of beach, he gets up at dawn and fly-fishes on Coskata Pond, he goes clamming and scalloping, he makes a mean Concord grape jam, he reports shark sightings, he rescues sunburned tourists whose Jeeps are stuck in the sand. He’s a bow hunter, and he’s teaching me to shoot. But on the other hand, Angie wanted to keep JP to herself. “He’s a friend. A friend of mine.”

BUCK

His morning dreams were about pizza. He was awake enough to know he was dreaming, awake enough to remember that he hadn’t really slept because he had spent most of the night making love to Laurel Thorpe, awake enough to feel Laurel rise from bed and to think, No, please, don’t go anywhere, awake enough to see the promise of morning sunshine-another beautiful day, living the life on Nantucket-and yet, he was also still asleep and dreaming of pizza.

He had been born and raised in New York City, so to him, the only real kind of pizza was pizza with a very thin, crispy crust, tomato sauce, and loads of gooey mozzarella cheese. Buck had to have his cheese gooey; he lived for pulling the strings and winding them around the tip of the triangle before popping it into his mouth. Deacon had liked his pizza well done, hard and a little brittle, which was not a preference Buck was ever able to understand. When they went out for pizza-maybe two or three hundred times over thirty years-they each got their own pie, because two men so particular and opposite about their cheese could never share. Buck was a purist about toppings-pepperoni only. Deacon would throw on anything-meatballs, onion and mushrooms; olives, green pepper, sausage. Deacon accepted white pizza as pizza, which Buck did not. Deacon would eat square Neapolitan slices and the “tomato pie” that people from Philadelphia called pizza, which Buck did not.

In Buck’s dream, he and Deacon were at Ray’s on St. Mark’s Place, and there was one pie in front of them, with gooey cheese. Buck looked up at Deacon, who was smoking a cigarette, and said, “Are you actually going to eat this?” And Deacon said, “No, man, I’m out.” He crushed the cigarette in the crappy black, plastic ashtray, stood up, and walked out the door of Ray’s with a jingle. Buck wanted to follow him, but in the weird way of dreams, he couldn’t follow. Something kept him from rising from his chair. He stared at the pizza for a moment; then he reached for a piece and wound the mozzarella strings around the tip and stuck it in his mouth.

Buck woke up just as Laurel was climbing back into bed. She had shed her bathrobe and was deliciously naked.

“I heard someone at the front door,” she said. “It was JP. He was looking for Angie, I guess.”

Buck collected Laurel in his arms. There had been a couple of times the night before when he had experienced pangs of guilt about making love to his best friend’s ex-wife. Buck wondered if this most recent dream was meant to put his mind at ease. Deacon had left; Buck couldn’t go with him. Buck should stay and live on, live as fully and happily as he could. That was what Deacon would have wanted him to do. If Buck was wrong and Deacon didn’t want that… oh, well. Buck kissed Laurel’s shoulder.

Laurel wanted to sleep a little longer, so Buck slipped down the stairs by himself to make coffee. The rest of the house was quiet-nobody could have been too enthusiastic about having another scene like the one last night; therefore, Buck was startled to find the coffee already made and Scarlett, wrapped up in a red kimono with a white stork embroidered on the back, sitting out on the back deck. She looked at peace as she took in the view-fog was just lifting off the moors-and Buck thought he’d better leave her be.

But then he realized that this was his chance.

He stepped out onto the deck. Scarlett turned, saw it was him, and gave him a small, relieved smile.

“Mind if I sit?” he asked.

She held out a showcase hand, indicating the seat next to hers.

Buck took a moment to sip his coffee. He wanted to cultivate the right tone of voice for this conversation-comforting but not indulgent.

“Scarlett,” he said, “I need to talk to you about a few things.”

She arched her eyebrows but did not speak. This was sort of like communicating with a mime.

“I’ve sifted through Deacon’s affairs,” Buck said. “The first thing you need to know is that in his will, Deacon left a third of this house to you, a third to Belinda, and a third to Laurel.”

Scarlett didn’t move, didn’t speak. Dread gathered in Buck’s gut. Did she understand?

“Do you understand what I’m telling you?” he asked.

Scarlett nodded.

“Now, that’s a moot point, because this house is going into foreclosure at the beginning of next month.” He checked his watch. “Eleven days from now. Deacon had three mortgages on it, and he’d let them all slide since January. At the end of December, he had an investor pull out of the restaurant-your uncle, as it happens-and Deacon replaced your uncle’s money with a million dollars from his brokerage account. He owes over four hundred thousand dollars on this house, and the estate just doesn’t have it. The estate doesn’t have much of anything, other than a one-sixth interest in the Board Room. And he left a two-hundred-and-fifty-thousand-dollar life-insurance policy that listed you and Ellery as the beneficiaries. That quarter million is yours. It should be enough to get you through until you figure out something else.” Buck stopped and reminded himself to breathe. He had done it. He had told her. Suddenly, he perked up. “I saw the canceled check made out to Skinny4Life. Is that something he invested in that might pay off?”

“No,” Scarlett said. “The company folded. All I ended up with was one of the huge suitcases I brought with me, filled with product.”

Buck closed his eyes. The last hope popped like a soap bubble.

Scarlett pivoted in her chair to face him, adjusting the kimono around her legs. She was barefoot, and her toenails were painted crimson. Red was her signature color-Buck understood this-but it always put him on edge. “I trapped him, Buck.”

“He believed in you,” Buck said. “He wanted you to find a career that would make you happy.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about,” Scarlett said. “I mean, back in the beginning.”

Buck waited. He wasn’t sure which beginning she was talking about.

“We’d been engaged for a while,” Scarlett said. “But when he started working on the restaurant, when he got all the investors in place, I felt him slipping away from me. He was going to break the engagement, I could tell. And I loved him so much. I had wanted him for so long. I had a terrific crush on him the entire time I worked for him and Belinda. He was so talented, so funny, so… irreverent. And sexy, with the tattoos and the brooding looks on the one hand, and the sweet daddy persona on the other. I used to catch him looking at me, and I wondered if there was any way I could steal him from Belinda. From Belinda Rowe, whom I had grown up idolizing. You can’t imagine what a rush it was to fantasize that I could have what she had, that I could, in a way, become her. I had to keep him. And so… I threw my diaphragm in the trash. I got intentionally accidentally pregnant.”

“Oh,” Buck said.

“And he stayed.”

“Of course he stayed,” Buck said. “He loved you.”

“Did he?”

“Yes,” Buck said.

“He told me about the girl at the gentlemen’s club, and he said he was going to stop drinking and stop the drugs, and I told him I didn’t believe him. I told him it was too little, too late, and that he’d lost me and it was his own fault. I knew he was mad that Uncle Cal pulled his money out, and I knew he thought it was because Bo Tanner and I were having an affair and my uncle knew about it and didn’t want to keep his money in Deacon’s pockets. But I didn’t realize that Deacon had replaced my uncle’s money with his own money. He told me he found another investor, someone who shared his vision.”

“Were you?” Buck asked. “Having an affair with Bo Tanner? Are you?”

Scarlett shrugged, and the kimono slipped to reveal her shoulder. Was that supposed to be an answer or a distraction tactic?

“It’s so obvious in retrospect!” she said. “Deacon became obsessed, all of a sudden, with writing his cookbook, but it wasn’t going well. You would have thought he was working on some insane deadline. He was pulling his hair out about it, losing sleep, telling the same story over and over again about how he nearly failed English in high school, but somehow he passed, somehow he squeaked by. And then this woman at my gym approached me with the Skinny4Life proposal, and I thought, Deacon is never going to go for it. But when I brought it up, he jumped on it. He invested a hundred thousand in January, thinking we would have double or triple that by the end of June. But that failed. Like everything else I’ve tried.”

“Scarlett…,” Buck said.

“I bled him dry, Buck,” Scarlett said. “I treated him horribly. I was having an affair with Bo Tanner, and I’m pretty sure Deacon knew it, and that did contribute to my uncle pulling his money out. So really, all of this is my fault.”

“You didn’t know he was going to die,” Buck said. “None of us did. You think there aren’t things I would have done differently?”

“You didn’t need to do anything differently,” Scarlett said. “He loved you. You two were Oscar and Felix.”

Buck smiled. “I would have watched him more closely. I would have negotiated better on his behalf. I would have pushed for merchandising. Gosh, there are a lot of things I would have done differently. I would have made him quit smoking.”

“At least he knew you loved him,” Scarlett said. “I can’t say the same.”

“Scarlett, come on…”

“Buck,” she said, and she gazed off in the distance. “I think I’d like another minute alone out here.”

“He knew you loved him, Scarlett.”

“Please,” she said.

Buck stepped inside the screen door and nearly ran smack into… Joel Tersigni, who was standing in the kitchen, downing a bottle of orange Gatorade.

Joel Tersigni?

Buck opened his mouth to speak, but Joel stuck out his hand first and said, “Buck, man, how you doing? This weekend couldn’t have been easy.”

Buck shook Joel’s hand and watched as Angie approached with a shy expression on her face. Then Buck remembered that Angie was involved with this creep. If Joel’s wife caught wind of this, there would be death threats. Because when it rained, it poured! Deacon wouldn’t have liked Angie being involved with Joel. Nope, not one bit.

“Good to see you,” Buck said to Joel. It was a total lie. Buck couldn’t believe Angie had invited him here.

“Good morning,” Belinda sang out, coming down the stairs wearing a leopard-print sheath dress, looking as though she were about to go out shopping on Rodeo Drive. She eyed Joel Tersigni. “Who is this?”

“Mom,” Angie said, “this is Joel. Joel, my mother, Belinda Rowe.”

Joel took Belinda’s hand reverently, as if she were the queen mother. “Pleasure to meet you, ma’am.”

“‘Ma’am’?” Belinda said. “I’m hardly older than you are.”

“He’s only forty, Mom,” Angie said.

“Only forty?” Belinda said. “That’s fifteen years older than you.”

“Fourteen,” Angie said.

“She always was a hair splitter,” Belinda said to Joel.

Laurel entered the kitchen, followed by Hayes.

“Who wants avocado toast?” Laurel asked.

“I’ll have some,” Hayes said. “I’m starving.” He eyeballed Belinda. “I had a rough night.”

Scarlett stepped in off the porch.

“Do you want avocado toast, Scarlett?” Laurel asked. “It’s vegan.”

“No, thank you,” she said. “I have my breakfast upstairs.”

And with that, she flew from the kitchen, her kimono waving out behind her like a red flag.

LAUREL

She would not let herself get swept away.

But it was tough.

Whether or not she had admitted it to herself, she was lonely, probably because her standards were so high-and, let’s face it, St. Ann’s Avenue in the Bronx wasn’t a great place to meet eligible men. But John Buckley met her standards, every single one of them, and the best thing was, he already knew her. There would be a discovery period, she assumed-what she liked, what he liked, where those likes intersected-but they had thirty years of friendship to build on. What a relief! Laurel was fifty-four years old, and the biggest deterrent to starting a new relationship at her age was all the explaining that would have to be done with a new suitor.

She wouldn’t let herself get swept away, however. If being married to Deacon Thorpe had taught her anything, it was that the people you cared about the most would hurt you the worst, no matter how pure their intentions at the beginning. Laurel would not fall too hard or too fast. True, Buck had spent eight hours making love to Laurel the night before-kissing her eyelids, rubbing her hip bone, tucking the sheet up over her shoulder when they finally tried for sleep-but that didn’t mean she could trust him. The only person she could trust was herself.

When Buck went downstairs to make coffee, Laurel tried to go back to sleep, but she was too dialed up, and so she picked up her novel, Euphoria-“euphoria” had a brand-new meaning now-but she couldn’t concentrate and barely made it through one chapter. She decided to make the very messy bed and then head downstairs to resume her role as den mother.

She was surprised to find nearly everyone in the house awake. Hayes trailed Laurel down the stairs, and in the kitchen they found Belinda, Buck, Angie, and a man Laurel immediately thought of as Tall, Dark, and Handsome, introduced to her as Joel Tersigni, the dining room manager at the Board Room. This, then, was Angie’s boyfriend, the married boyfriend.

Laurel reached across the counter and said, “I’m Laurel Thorpe. Wife number one.”

“I’m sorry for the intrusion,” Joel said.

“No need to be sorry,” Laurel said, but her smile felt forced. She had to admit, she had preferred it when it was just family. But now that there was a stranger among them, maybe everyone would be a little more careful before speaking.

There was a knock at the front door. Laurel strode down the hallway to see a cute young guy in a brown uniform standing on the porch. UPS. He was holding a package about the size of a bread box.

“Delivery for Laurel Thorpe?” he said.

“That’s me,” she said. She wondered what on earth it could be. Thinking about St. Ann’s Avenue and her clients’ rent made Laurel worry that her assistant, Sophie, had shipped her a stack of files. She took the package, signed the electronic receipt, and then it dawned on her: These were the ashes. This box, handed over like a sweater from J. Crew, was what was left of Deacon.

Naturally, Scarlett chose this moment to descend the stairs, holding a purple can of Skinny4Life. She had changed into white shorts and a skimpy red tank top that showed how painfully thin she was. With her shorn head, she looked like a teenage boy.

“What’s that?” she asked.

While Laurel was thinking of what to say, Scarlett figured it out.

“Let me?” she said.

Laurel handed her the box, thinking, Be careful with it! Scarlett had been so uneven since her arrival that Laurel could easily imagine Scarlett flushing the ashes down the toilet.

But Scarlett balanced her can on the newel post of the banister and cradled the box like a days-old infant-then she kissed it, leaving behind red lip prints. She handed the box back to Laurel and headed to the kitchen.

She loved him, Laurel thought.

Laurel stared at the box. Scarlett’s handing it back had seemed symbolic. Laurel would be Deacon’s keeper in the end, it seemed.

Joel Tersigni came down the stairs wearing a pair of green and black board shorts.

“Going for a swim?” Laurel asked.

“In a minute,” Joel said. “I want to catch up with Scarlett. Pay my respects.”

“Of course,” Laurel said. Joel seemed cordial enough, maybe a bit practiced, maybe a bit insincere in the manner of Eddie Haskell, or maybe Laurel was just looking for flaws. It was Joel’s job to be smooth and polished. Laurel could see how Angie would have fallen for the guy; he seemed like a professional heartbreaker.

All men cheat. That what they do.

Laurel took the opportunity to go upstairs and find Angie and Hayes. Angie was in her room, straightening up, and Hayes was sitting on the side of his bed, staring at his hands.

“Come into my room,” Laurel said. “Both of you.”

They obediently followed Laurel into her room, where she shut the door. She held out the box. “The ashes came.”

“Oh,” Hayes said, backing up as if she were holding a box of rattlesnakes. “Whoa.”

Laurel used a pen from the nightstand to slice open the top of the box. There were several layers of bubble wrap to cut through, but swaddled in the center was a plastic urn about the size of a pineapple.

Plastic? Laurel thought. She had heard the word “urn” and thought it would be ceramic or, because Deacon was a chef, perhaps cast iron. She smiled, thinking of Deacon’s ashes being held in a Le Creuset urn; that would have been fitting.

Angie lifted the urn, opened it, peered inside. “Is this happening?” she said. She seemed to genuinely be asking. “Every time I think I’ve wrapped my mind around it, it hits me again like it’s the first time. He’s dead.” Angie shook the urn. “This is him.”

Laurel thought back to the very first time she had set eyes on Deacon Thorpe. He had always believed it was at lunch in the cafeteria, but the truth was, Laurel had seen Deacon first thing that morning, getting off the school bus. Word had gone around among the girls of Laurel’s class that there was a new boy coming, a boy from New York City, and Laurel had held out hope for someone interesting. When she’d seen Deacon, her heart had broken a little. Even way back then, she had had a tender spot for the marginalized. She had then sought him out at lunch, assuming he would be eating alone.

She had wanted, so badly, to save him.

ANGIE

You promised to take me for a swim,” Ellery said. She stood in a pink lamé bikini in the door of Angie’s bedroom, where Angie was starting to straighten up so that she could eventually pack. At the same time, she was trying to collect her wits. The ashes had messed with her head.

“I will,” Angie said.

“I want to go now,” Ellery said.

“I hate to say this,” Angie said, “but you sound like a brat. And we both know you’re not a brat. Who’s the only brat in this family?”

“Hayes,” Ellery said.

Angie smiled and held out her arms. “Come here.”

Ellery hugged Angie, and Angie inhaled the sweet smell of her hair, which was slipping out of its braids.

Angie had initially resented Ellery’s existence in the world, much as she resented Mary and Laura’s presence. Angie didn’t understand why both of her parents had to go and have other children. Wasn’t Angie enough? Angie’s relationship with Mary and Laura was pretty much nonexistent; she had last seen them a year and a half earlier, at Thanksgiving, and her preeminent emotion then had been bemusement. Both girls looked exactly like Bob, and they were quiet and horsey like Bob; it was as if Belinda had never been part of the equation. But because Ellery lived in New York, and because Deacon had encouraged Angie to make an effort to spend time with her sister, Angie and Ellery now had a close relationship. Angie was seventeen years older, so there were times when Angie felt like Ellery’s mother or her aunt instead of her sister.

Angie had expected Ellery to cry and carry on about Deacon’s death far more than she had, but what Angie realized was that nine-year-old children were too young to process the concept of “gone forever.” Ellery and Scarlett had been away in Savannah for nearly two months; probably, in some part of her imagination, Ellery believed that when she finally got back to New York and the apartment on Hudson Street, Deacon would be there.

“Let’s go get Joel,” Angie said. “He’ll want to swim, too.”

“I didn’t know Joel was coming here,” Ellery said.

“No, me neither,” Angie said.

When Angie and Ellery went out on the deck, Angie found Joel standing behind Scarlett’s chair, massaging her shoulders. Scarlett lolled her head back and groaned with delight, saying, “Oh God, don’t stop. That feels so good.”

Angie was hit by a wave of disgusting, ugly jealousy, the likes of which she had never experienced, even when thinking about Joel with Dory.

“You have magic hands,” Scarlett said. “I didn’t realize how tight I was.”

“You’ve been through a lot,” Joel said. He continued to knead her shoulders and upper arms. “You’re in knots.” He took a deep inhalation. “Are you wearing Chanel, by any chance? That is my favorite scent on a woman.”

“We’re ready to go swimming!” Angie said.

Scarlett’s eyes popped open. “Baby, you look edible in that bikini. Honestly, I could eat you!”

Angie rolled her eyes. Scarlett constantly announced how edible Ellery looked, as though Ellery were a cookie, or a muffin, which was all tied in with her deep-seated fear of and desire for food-or so Angie and Deacon had surmised on one of their Tuesday-night dinners.

“Joel?” Angie said. “Are you coming with us?”

“Can you believe Joel is here?” Scarlett said. Years in New York had sanded away Scarlett’s Southern drawl, but when she wanted something, she turned it on heavy and sweet, just like her namesake from Gone with the Wind. “Here” became “he-ah.” Angie watched a dopey expression cross Joel’s face.

Yes, I can believe it, Angie nearly said. Joel is my boyfriend. But Angie wasn’t confident enough to make this announcement. She wasn’t even sure it was true. She had never had the freedom to call Joel her boyfriend. And now that he was free of Dory, Angie realized, he could go after any woman he wanted. Angie might have been good for him while he was attached, but what if he now found someone more desirable? What if he bided his time, then moved in on Deacon Thorpe’s new widow, Scarlett Oliver? Scarlett obviously had no idea why Joel had turned up. Possibly she believed he had come solely to comfort her.

“Are we going swimming or not?” Angie asked. Her voice was harsher than she’d intended. If there was a brat in the family, it was now her. But really, the time had come for Joel to step up. If he had come to Nantucket because he loved her, she wanted him to say it. If he had shown up here because he had nowhere else to go, then he could go pound. She thought these words with bitterness, just like the tough girl everyone believed her to be, but the truth was, she wasn’t equipped to deal with this situation at all.

“I’m going to stay here with Scarlett,” Joel said.

Angie blinked, thinking she had misheard.

“Thank you,” Scarlett said. “I could use a friend right now.”

“So you’re not coming with us?” Angie said.

Joel smiled at Angie patiently, as if she were a slow student. “I’m going to stay here with Scarlett.”

“But you came here to be with me, right?” Angie said. “You came here because we’ve been lovers for six months.”

“Angie,” Joel said. He nodded toward Ellery, and Angie felt an immediate sense of shame. The girl had lost her father and didn’t need the extra baggage of hearing about her sister’s sex life. Joel’s hands moved down Scarlett’s back, and she moaned; she was so delirious with his touch that she didn’t seem to have heard Angie’s words.

“Can we go?” Ellery asked, tugging on Angie’s arm. “You and me?”

“Thanks for taking Ellery,” Scarlett said, her eyes closed and her head falling forward on her neck. “I really appreciate it.”

“I’m sure you do,” Angie said, with as much venom as she could muster. “Enjoy that back rub.” She turned and all but lifted Ellery off the ground in her attempt to get away.

“See?” she heard Scarlett say. “They all hate me. I think even Angie hates me.”

As they walked down the driveway, Ellery said, “Why are you crying?”

Angie wiped at her tears. She hated Joel Tersigni! Hated him!

“Daddy is dead,” Angie said. She stopped and crouched down so that she could look Ellery in the eye. Ellery had green eyes, like Scarlett, pretty and clear, with dark rings around the irises. Her nose was dusted with freckles. She was a pretty girl-not beautiful, but cute and pretty, and Angie was glad for this. “You understand, right? Daddy is dead, and he isn’t coming back.”

Ellery nodded solemnly, and her eyes filled with tears. Angie felt like a monster. Who talked this way to a nine-year-old child? She, Angie, was hurting, and she wanted Ellery to hurt as well. Angie gathered Ellery up in her arms. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry, baby.”

Ellery patted Angie on the back, as if she was the one who needed comforting. “It’s okay, Buddy,” Ellery said. “It’s not your fault.”

Intermezzo: Deacon and Scarlett, Part II

Scarlett is having an affair, and Deacon can’t blame her. They have nothing in common except for Ellery. Deacon works all the time, and when he’s not actually running the kitchen, he’s developing recipes for his cookbook. Tuesday nights, when the restaurant is closed, he eats dinner with Angie because Scarlett doesn’t eat dinner, ever. Lately, on Tuesday nights, Scarlett has gotten a sitter and “gone out with the girls.” But then, at some point, Deacon realizes that she’s not going out with the girls; she’s going out with Bo Tanner. Bo, the old beau.

The way Deacon discovers this is an old story. He’s looking for tweezers because he has a piece of cucumber skin jammed up his thumbnail, and his thumb has grown hot and is starting to throb. Scarlett keeps tweezers in her nightstand drawer. Also in Scarlett’s nightstand drawer is a stack of notes, letters, and cards from Bo Tanner, the last one dated three days earlier.

Deacon sighs deeply and looks up at the ceiling. He is happy, in a way, that he didn’t come across emails or text messages. Letters seem old-fashioned; they seem Southern and genteel. They seem sincere, and, although he doesn’t sit down and read them through, the glimpses he does catch tell him the story. Bo loves her, he has always loved her; he should never have married Anne Carter. The only reason he did was because Scarlett came north while Anne Carter stayed behind.

He puts the letters back. He finds a pair of tweezers in the bathroom.

Six weeks later, Scarlett starts crying at the drop of a hat, and when Deacon asks what’s wrong, she says she has her period and she’s gained three pounds. Deacon suspects Bo has broken things off, but he doesn’t ask.

It’s December 21, the night after the restaurant’s holiday party, and Scarlett’s uncle, the Honorable Calhoun Oliver, is coming to the restaurant with his wife, Abigail, and Scarlett. Judge Oliver is one of the six investors in the restaurant, although he has never eaten there-mostly because he doesn’t like to travel north of the Mason-Dixon Line. But Abigail has long wanted to see New York at Christmastime-the Rockettes, the windows at Bergdorf’s-and, since the judge isn’t getting any younger, they decide to make the trip.

Deacon can sense things going wrong before the judge even arrives. First of all, his entire staff is hungover, tired, cranky, irritable, and half a step off. Lily, who is normally Deacon’s nomination for Best Server in the Five Boroughs, had been dancing on the bar until five that morning, and she dozes off as Deacon gives them the night’s specials, then naps all through staff meal. Joel Tersigni has dark circles under his eyes, and Deacon considers sending both him and Lily home, but there isn’t time for last-minute changes.

That’s it, he thinks. They will never have another holiday party.

When the judge arrives, Joel comes rushing back to the kitchen. They have an extra guest in their party, and Joel is caught in a quandary. He can either squeeze the four of them at a table meant for three, or he can put them at a four-top in Siberia, the table that is treated to a frigid blast of air every time the front door opens.

“There’s nowhere else?” Deacon asks.

“Nowhere,” Joel says.

“Put them in Siberia,” Deacon says. With nine courses and wine pairings, they’ll never fit at the three-top. “Give them each two cashmere throws. Who’s the extra guest?”

Joel shrugs. “Some guy.”

Deacon comes out to greet the table just after they’ve received their first amuse-bouche: a simple Nantucket bay scallop poached in lime juice and sprinkled with sea salt. The judge’s scallop sits untouched, as does Scarlett’s. Deacon notices this before he takes stock of the fourth guest. “Some guy” is a tall, sandy-haired man in a navy blazer and an old-school blue and red striped rep tie.

“Greetings, all!” Deacon says.

The judge stands. “Chef Thorpe,” he says. “You remember my wife, Abigail. And I’d like to introduce you to my attorney, Robert Tanner.”

The attorney, Robert Tanner, stands. He and Deacon shake hands. “Call me Bo,” he says.

Deacon turns to look at Scarlett. Her head is bowed over her uneaten scallop as if she’s saying a prayer.

Deacon goes back to the kitchen and shuts himself in his office. He can’t believe the rage that consumes him. He knew about Bo Tanner, and he made the adult decision to ignore it and let it run its course. Bo Tanner is married; he’s wearing a ring. And Scarlett is married. Scarlett has also proved to be flighty in her adult life. She can’t stick with anything for more than a few months; as soon as a project or interest loses its shine, she’s on to the next thing. Hence, it stands to reason, she’ll lose interest in Bo.

Except that… she’s loved him since she was in high school. Or maybe even before that; Deacon can’t remember. This is a love that will haunt her forever. Deacon should just let her go. He considers sending her a text right that second that says I want a divorce. It pains him to think of the relief and the joy that such a text would bring her. It pains him to contemplate failing at marriage a third time.

There have been critical junctures in Deacon’s life when he has needed his father: when Hayes was born, when he was about to leave Laurel, when he messed up so egregiously on Letterman… and right now. Deacon has toyed ten thousand times with hiring a private investigator to find Jack Thorpe. He’ll do it tomorrow, he decides. He doesn’t care how much it costs. He wants to know what’s become of his father.

In the meantime, Deacon takes a bottle of Jameson out of his bottom desk drawer and pours himself a shot. He can’t believe Scarlett brought her lover into his restaurant! It’s beyond the pale. It breaks every code of human decency. Deacon doesn’t care if the judge insisted; Scarlett should have put a stop to it somehow.

Harv knocks, Deacon doesn’t respond.

Angie knocks, Deacon doesn’t respond.

Lily knocks, then says through the door, “The judge’s table refused the sexy scorched-octopus course, Chef. He took offense at the name.”

Deacon pours another shot.

When Deacon goes back out to the dining room, he’s drunk. It’s the middle of course six, the salmon, and Scarlett’s food is uneaten on her plate. Fury rises in Deacon’s throat.

How does it look when even the chef’s wife won’t eat the food? Then he remembers that Scarlett is doing a juice cleanse. He had asked her that morning to abandon the cleanse, for him. Who in their right mind starts a juice cleanse four days before Christmas?

He bares his teeth to the table. The judge has hardly touched his food. Only Abigail and Bo Tanner are enthusiastically eating.

“How is everything?” Deacon asks.

The judge clears his throat to speak, but Deacon doesn’t want to hear it. The judge is a long-winded, pompous ass who doesn’t appreciate anything Deacon is trying to do on the plate.

Deacon sidles up behind Bo Tanner and whispers in his ear, “Stay the hell away from my wife.”

“Deacon,” Scarlett hisses. “You’re being rude.”

Deacon straightens up. “Enjoy your food,” he says. He marches back to the kitchen and passes Angie and Joel Tersigni, standing too close together in front of the walk-in fridge.

“Get back to work!” Deacon shouts at them. He goes into his office and locks the door.

Joel and Angie? he thinks. Over his dead body.

He pours another shot.

The next day, the judge calls Deacon and asks for his initial investment of a million dollars back. Deacon is hungover and contrite. He apologizes for his behavior. “Let me make it up to you tonight, Your Honor. I promise the meal of a lifetime.” Every restaurant has an off night, he says. The judge has to understand: the holidays are a fraught time for everyone.

The judge does not understand. Deacon will return his money, as per the clause in the investment contract. The judge had been the last investor Deacon needed in order to start construction nine years earlier, and in his eagerness, he granted the judge a legal rip cord, a get-out-of-jail-free card, and the judge wants to use it now-otherwise, Deacon will be hearing from the judge’s counsel, Bo Tanner.

“Yes, sir,” Deacon says.

Deacon spends the week between Christmas and New Year’s calling every regular diner he knows in hopes that one of them will want to invest in the restaurant. But these guys are savvy; they know how much the restaurant costs to run and that they likely will never see a return on that investment.

Deacon needs to find someone who cares about the restaurant for the restaurant’s sake. The only person he can think of is himself. He wires a million dollars from his personal account to the restaurant coffers. He’ll deal with the ramifications later.

He hires a private investigator named Lyle Phelan, a former NYPD detective. Lyle Phelan charges a flat fee of $30,000 for missing persons, no matter how long the search takes. He will find Jack Thorpe, he tells Deacon. Guaranteed. Detective Phelan reminds Deacon of Officer Murphy, who came to their apartment in Stuy Town so long ago. Deacon writes the check.

In the ensuing months, Deacon’s financial situation goes straight downhill. He doesn’t have a royalty check due until August, so he works on getting a proposal together for his cookbook. Buck has put him in touch with a literary agent named Kim Witherspoon, who is eagerly awaiting a submission. I’m thinking part cookbook, part memoir, she says. The world is dying to know about your personal life. She sees a bidding war in his future and an advance in the mid six figures.

Envelopes come from Nantucket Bank, but Deacon doesn’t open them. He knows the news isn’t good. Notices come from the management of his building, as he’s behind on the rent. The building’s business manager, Debi, is a huge fan of Deacon’s, and he offers her dinner for two at the Board Room, on the house, if she will give him another month’s leeway. He can’t ignore his kids, however. He writes a check to Hayes’s co-op board and pays the second half of Ellery’s school tuition.

He’s going under. By the time his royalty payments come, he will have spent the check three times over. The notes for his cookbook aren’t anything he’s willing to show anybody. Writing is hard! The world is dying to know about his personal life, but Deacon has serious reservations about discussing it. He’ll need Belinda to sign a disclaimer and she will never agree to it. Writing is really hard! He nearly failed English in high school. The notes sit in a red folder on top of his desk at work, along with the envelopes from Nantucket Bank. They are too awful now for Deacon to even look at, so he puts the envelopes away in a drawer and sends the red folder to Kim Witherspoon. Can she work with this?

Probably not, she says. He’s sent her nothing except a bunch of disjointed notes and the recipe for the clams casino dip, which has been published and reprinted nearly a dozen times over the past decade.

Maybe you should hire a writer, she says. Lots of people do it.

But that costs money he doesn’t have. He should just give the people what they want: the details of his love life, starting way back in the Dobbs Ferry High School cafeteria.

No, he can’t. He’ll stick to food.

Scarlett has been well behaved since the fiasco at dinner. Deacon checks her nightstand table: all the letters, notes, and cards have been removed, and no new ones appear. Scarlett notices him slaving over his cookbook, and she asks, Why the rush? He tells her they’re a little strapped for cash and the cookbook will likely bring in a nice advance.

Scarlett hears “strapped for cash” and comes to him with a proposal for a diet-supplement company called Skinny4Life. The prospectus suggests investors will triple their money in 90 to 120 days.

“Do we want to do this?” Scarlett asks. She sounds as though she’s expecting him to say no, but he is so desperate at this point that he needs a miracle, and who’s to say Skinny4Life isn’t that miracle? Scarlett has been drinking the stuff for weeks, and she is, in fact, very, very skinny. Deacon writes a check for a hundred thousand dollars, the last of his cash. Scarlett is elated! While he’s in a good mood, she asks if she can spend eight thousand dollars to go to the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, New York, for a week of silent retreat in April. Deacon says yes and tells her to put the charge on his American Express.

On the ides of March, Lyle Phelan appears at the front door of the restaurant. Joel Tersigni shows him back to Deacon’s office.

Detective Phelan drops a sheaf of papers on Deacon’s desk. Jack Thorpe was living in Flanders, New York, working as a cook at a Denny’s. He rented a room, kept to himself, drank at a bar called the Alibi, and died in a one-man car crash on October 11, 1997.

“Looks like he had a heart attack behind the wheel,” Detective Phelan says. “I’m sorry I couldn’t give you better news.”

Deacon nods. Flanders, New York, is on Long Island. He was so close, Deacon thinks. So close all those years. Deacon shows Detective Phelan to the door of the restaurant; then he goes back in his office, locks the door. One perfect day with my son. That’s not too much to ask, is it? Deacon starts to cry.

Scarlett has been on her silent retreat for a day and a half when Deacon gets a funny feeling. Participants are not allowed to use their cell phones, so he can’t call her. He calls the office of the Omega Institute and says, “I’d like to leave a message for my wife, Scarlett Oliver. It’s urgent.”

“Who?” the receptionist says. She tells him there is no Scarlett Oliver registered at the institute for that week.

“How about Scarlett Thorpe?” he asks. He’s grasping at straws: Scarlett rarely uses that name.

“No, I’m sorry,” the receptionist says.

Scarlett has bought herself a week away without a phone. Where has Bo Tanner taken her? To a far-flung Caribbean island? Deacon remembers his time in St. John with Laurel. What goes around, comes around, he thinks. Scarlett isn’t doing anything that Deacon himself hasn’t done.

The next day, Deacon gets a call from a number he doesn’t recognize, and, thinking it’s Scarlett, he answers it.

It’s Julie from Nantucket Bank, whom Deacon has always thought of as Supremely Capable Julie. She’s a fan of Deacon the chef and Deacon the person, and he knows the only reason the house hasn’t been foreclosed on yet is because of her.

She says, “You’re running out of time, Deacon. The wolves are at the door.”

That afternoon, a Tuesday-the restaurant is closed-Deacon starts drinking at his apartment at noon. He leaves his apartment and goes to the only place he feels he can be anonymous: Times Square. He drinks at TGI Friday’s, then at Olive Garden. This, he thinks, is rock bottom. At Olive Garden, his credit card is declined, so he pays cash, then walks over to the Board Room, unlocks the door, and grabs a bottle of Jameson from behind the bar. Dr. Disibio will notice right away-he runs an impeccably tight ship-so Deacon leaves an IOU scribbled on a cocktail napkin. From the restaurant, he walks west and ends up at an establishment called Skirtz. He meets a dancer named Taryn, who recognizes Deacon from his TV show. Deacon asks if she has a car. Yes, she says, in the garage across the street. Deacon asks if he can use it. You can come with me, he says. We’ll go to Nantucket.

Deacon wakes up in Buck’s apartment, on the unforgiving leather sofa. Deacon’s first thought is that Buck’s decorator is a sadist. His second thought is a confused jumble of broken promises and unfulfilled obligations. He has forgotten something-but what?

He has forgotten to pick up Ellery from school. Buck painted a pretty grim picture of how sad and cold Ellery was when he went to fetch her in a taxi, and an even grimmer picture of that bitch Madame Giroux, with her stern French disapproval. Deacon’s imagination, however, is far crueler. He can see Ellery with her heavy, dark hair-hair he has brushed since she was very small-swept back in the required navy headband. He can see her plaid uniform skirt, her crisp, white blouse with the Peter Pan collar underneath her navy cardigan. Ellery hates her uniform because, even at nine years old, she has developed fashion sense, and the sameness with the other girls is an identity crusher. Scarlett adores the uniform and the school; both are reminiscent of Madeline, a book she read as a child.

Ellery would have had her backpack loaded with her assignments and library books. She would have been in the front courtyard playing tag or jacks with the other girls. One by one, the mothers would have arrived-Eleanor Rigby, Proud Mary, Runaround Sue (Deacon has spent the past four years coming up with rock-and-roll nicknames for each one)-and bringing up the rear was the mother Deacon thought of as Layla. Layla was a disheveled mess-depressed for certain and possibly also an addict-but she had a sleepy beauty that Deacon, perhaps alone, appreciated. On occasion, he beat Layla to the courtyard by only a moment or two, half a block.

Yesterday, Ellery would have seen Layla arrive to pick up her daughter, and the realization would have hit her: Deacon wasn’t coming.

The expression Deacon imagines on his daughter’s face-beyond dejection, beyond melancholy-is what vaporizes Deacon’s soul.

There is no excuse for what happened. Scarlett calls in from “the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck” and gives him holy hell. She is home in New York the very next day, packing her things, pulling Ellery out of school, telling Deacon she’s leaving for good.

He could tell her he knows she wasn’t in Rhinebeck. He could tell her he knows all about Bo Tanner. But what would that do, other than further traumatize Ellery?

He will stop drinking, he tells Scarlett. And drugs, all drugs.

I don’t believe you, Scarlett says.

I’m done, Deacon says.

I don’t care, Scarlett says. I’m sorry, Deacon. I simply don’t care.

BELINDA

She only had to last one more day without Mary and Laura, but something about being around Ellery made being without her daughters nearly unbearable, and so Belinda put on Laurel’s flip-flops and made the trek to the end of the driveway. Calling Bob was useless; it was Monday morning, so he would be at his weekly meeting with Dr. Mary Ellen Plume, the large-animal vet. Belinda would have to call the house.

Mrs. Greene answered on the first ring. She was reliable that way, the last person in America who believed in landlines.

“Good morning, Percil residence.”

“Mrs. Greene, good morning,” Belinda said. She wandered down the road toward the beach club, hoping the signal would grow stronger. “I was hoping to talk to the girls.”

“Oh goodness,” Mrs. Greene said. “They’ve been out on the trails since the sun came up.”

“Shoot,” Belinda said. “Are they with Stella?”

“Yes, and Mr. Percil,” Mrs. Greene said.

“Bob went along?” Belinda said. “I’m sorry, are you telling me Bob went on the trail ride this morning with Stella and the girls?”

“That’s what I’m telling you.”

“I see,” Belinda said. “Has Stella been staying at the house since I’ve been gone?”

“That I wouldn’t know of course,” Mrs. Greene said. “All I can say for certain is, she’s here when I leave at eight o’clock in the evening and here when I arrive at seven in the morning.”

Belinda bit her tongue. Is she staying in my room? she wanted to ask. Is she sleeping in my bed?

“Mrs. Greene?” Belinda said. “Is there anything else I should know?”

“If I were you,” Mrs. Greene said, “I would get home.”

“I can’t possibly leave until tomorrow,” Belinda said. “We’re spreading Deacon’s ashes this evening.”

Mrs. Greene was respectfully silent at this, and Belinda harkened back to a time when the girls were little-Mary a toddler and Laura an infant. It had been nap time, which was when Belinda practiced her lines, and she had wandered into the kitchen to get some of Mrs. Greene’s banana pudding, script in hand. Mrs. Greene had been watching TV, and it took only a second for Belinda to recognize Deacon’s voice. Mrs. Greene was rapt with attention, watching Pitchfork. Deacon had been making the clams casino dip; it was the classic episode.

As Belinda opened the fridge, she said, “Have you invited my ex-husband into our kitchen, Mrs. Greene?”

Mrs. Greene had turned to Belinda, and in a softer, more sincere voice than usual, she said, “What is he like?”

“Who, Deacon?” Belinda said.

Mrs. Greene gave a schoolmarm nod.

Belinda could have issued any number of answers. Deacon is sweet, he’s charming, he’s a wonderful father, he’s great in bed. But Mrs. Greene could probably have deduced those things on her own.

“He’s broken,” Belinda said. “He was broken when I met him, but I didn’t help.”

Now, Mrs. Greene said, “I’m sure that will be very difficult for you.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Greene,” Belinda said. “For everything.”

“Indeed,” Mrs. Greene said, and she hung up.

Oh, how Belinda wanted to believe that Bob had gone on the trail ride because he wanted to spend quality time with the girls. But Belinda knew better. It was Stella, with the tits and the ass and the accent.

Belinda trudged back to the house; then she slipped upstairs to Clara’s room, where she popped an Ativan. She wasn’t that much better in the controlled-substance department than Hayes.

Would she have to divorce Bob? The notion was sad and exhausting.

The Ativan put Belinda to sleep. There was something nearly hedonistic about napping on a summer afternoon with the windows open, the sea breeze blowing the filmy white curtains, the sound of people coming and going downstairs, Angie’s voice floating up, Buck’s, Laurel’s. Today was their last day. Belinda would miss Angie desperately. And Buck and Laurel, too, she realized, and Hayes and Ellery.

And Deacon, of course.

Belinda awoke at four o’clock, when she heard footsteps on the stairs and a general busy-bee atmosphere pervading the house like an impending storm. Was something happening? Then Belinda heard the word “boat,” and she realized it was time to go out on the harbor and spread Deacon’s ashes.

Boat. Harbor.

Belinda shook two more Ativan from the bottle into her palm and threw them back. She had known from the get-go that the plan was to spread Deacon’s ashes in Nantucket Sound, but somehow she had ignored the fact that she, Belinda Rowe, would have to get in a boat.

Terror seized her. It was like asking someone afraid of heights to stand on a diving board at the top of the Burj Khalifa and bounce. She wouldn’t make it. She couldn’t go. She would go downstairs and break the news: she was staying home. She would offer to watch Ellery. Should a nine-year-old child really be asked to spread her father’s ashes?

Belinda sat on the edge of the bed, practicing her yoga breathing.

“Mom!” Angie yelled from the bottom of the stairs. “Let’s go! We’re leaving!”

She had meant to renege, offer her regrets, to say, I’m sorry, but there’s just no way I’m getting in a boat. But for some reason, maybe the quieting effect of the Ativan, she allowed herself to be herded forward like a sheep. The ranger, JP, had arrived in his silver Jeep; he would drive half of them to the harbor, and Buck would drive the rest. Laurel climbed in with Buck, of course, and then Scarlett and Ellery climbed in the back.

Joel Tersigni said, “Move over. I’ll go with you guys.” He climbed in next to Scarlett.

Belinda caught the poisonous look that Angie gave Joel.

“We’ll go with you!” Belinda said brightly to the ranger.

The ranger, too, was watching Angie. “You okay?” he asked her.

She shrugged and started to climb in the back of JP’s Jeep, but Belinda said, “No, no, darling. Hayes and I will sit in the back. You get up front.”

Hayes touched his face, as if making sure it was still there. He gallantly helped Belinda into the back of the Jeep, then smiled at her and said, “And how are you?”

She studied him. High or straight? It was impossible to tell. High pretending to be straight, most likely, but Belinda was grateful for his normalcy and that he didn’t seem to be holding her midnight visit against her. But he did remember that she knew his secret, right?

“Never better,” she said.

She had expected a garden-variety powerboat, white and utilitarian, but the boat JP steered toward the dock was an antique wooden launch with a hull the color of burnt honey. It was sleek and breathtaking and reminiscent of one of Bob’s Arabian horses. Even Belinda, who could write what she knew about boats on her thumbnail and still have room for the Lord’s Prayer, could tell this one was special.

Buck whistled.

“Her name is the Lena Marie,” JP said. “She’s a lapstrake mahogany harbor launch and was custom built in Denmark in 1950. She belonged to my grandfather.”

“What a beaut,” Buck said.

The boat was elegant. If Belinda was going to get into a boat-and she still hadn’t made a final decision-it would be this boat. An American flag waved off the back.

“JP, this is more than I ever could have hoped for,” Laurel said. “Thank you.”

Thank you, Laurel, our spokesperson, Belinda thought. She stole a quick glance at Scarlett to see what Scarlett thought about Laurel taking the number-one pole position or about Laurel clenching the urn of Deacon’s ashes as if it contained her own beating heart. Scarlett was holding on to Ellery with one hand and on to Joel Tersigni’s impressive forearm with her other hand.

“Yes, thank you,” Scarlett echoed. She let go of Joel and offered JP her hand. “I’m Scarlett Oliver, Deacon’s widow.”

JP nodded. “Nice to meet you. I’m sorry for your loss. Deacon was a good friend of mine.”

“And this is our daughter, Ellery,” Scarlett said, ushering Ellery forward.

“What do you say, Ellery?” JP said. “Want to help me drive the boat?”

“Yes!” Ellery said. She was in another party dress, this one a navy scoop-neck number with a handkerchief hem.

“Excellent!” JP said. “The person who assists the captain is called the first mate.”

Belinda smiled. She should have known the ranger would be good with children.

“I’m Joel Tersigni,” Joel said, stepping forward to shake JP’s hand. “I manage Deacon’s restaurant in Manhattan.”

“The dining room,” Angie said. “You manage the dining room, not the restaurant.”

Joel ignored Angie’s comment and stepped off the dock, into the boat, which Belinda thought was presumptuous. There should be some sort of hierarchy for who boarded first, and it certainly shouldn’t be Joel. However, he stood at the side and reached for Scarlett’s hand, then he lifted Ellery up and in. The boat had a horseshoe of seating around the front and two bench seats, one midboat and one in the back by the motor, which was where JP sat. Joel settled with Scarlett and Ellery on the middle seat, as though they were a family unit.

What is going on here? Belinda wondered. She was appalled at how this Joel person was ignoring Angie. Had they had a fight? Or was Joel simply abandoning Angie for Scarlett the way he had abandoned his wife for Angie? Once a cheater, always a cheater-look at Bob Percil. Belinda said, “Joel, I would really like to sit next to Scarlett, if you don’t mind.”

“Mother,” Angie said.

“Scarlett and I haven’t had a chance to catch up,” Belinda said. She took the ranger’s hand and stepped gingerly down into the boat. It rocked under her, and she wondered if she was going to do the predictable thing and faint, or vomit. But she felt spurred on by indignation. Joel Tersigni might be a heartbreaker, but he wasn’t going to humiliate Angie in full view of her family. Belinda simply would not have it. She lorded her five-foot-two frame over Joel until he got up and with obvious reluctance gave Belinda his seat.

Laurel sat with Buck along the horseshoe, and Joel sat on the other side of Buck. Hayes stood in the front of the boat like some kind of damaged figurehead. Angie ended up sitting next to Ellery, who was next to JP.

“Are we all ready?” JP asked.

Belinda clenched the bench beneath her with one hand and the side of the boat with the other. The harbor was flat, and they cut smoothly through the water. The sun was hitting that place in the sky where it ceased to be hot and was merely warm as it cast a golden glow on the surface of the water and on the sails of the other boats. What did Deacon used to call it? The golden hour.

Sailors manning other boats waved and called out to the Lena Marie.

“She’s beautiful!” one man called out. “And so are her passengers!”

Belinda smiled, though it was wrong to assume they were speaking of her when Scarlett, Laurel, Angie, and sweet Ellery were all on the boat. And Buck, wearing a pink shirt and a pair of shorts embroidered with whales. He had certainly bought into the whole New England summertime fashion disaster.

JP maneuvered around the other sailboats and power yachts. He headed toward Brant Point Lighthouse. Hayes sat down next to his mother and leaned his head on her shoulder. Laurel clutched the urn to her midsection and put her arm around her son. Belinda closed her eyes and imagined herself on dry land.

Belinda had had no intention of “catching up” with Scarlett, or of even speaking to her. But almost involuntarily, she said, “How far out do you think we’ll go?”

Scarlett didn’t answer. When Belinda looked at her, her lips were set in a grim line.

“Oh, come on, Scarlett,” Belinda said.

“Come on, what?” she said.

“We need to get past our past,” Belinda said. “You, Laurel, and I are all in the same boat.” She laughed at her own joke. “Ha! We are literally in the same boat. We’re scattering the ashes of the man all of us were married to. Not just you, my dear. All of us.”

“I had a child with him,” Scarlett said.

“So did I!” Belinda said.

Scarlett sniffed. “That’s not the same.”

The breeze was blowing from the back of the boat, so it wasn’t likely that Angie was overhearing any of this exchange, but still, Belinda was… well, “furious” and “indignant” didn’t begin to cover it. She was egregiously offended. She leaned into Scarlett’s shoulder and lowered her voice. To everyone else, they probably looked like a couple of women sharing a trusted confidence.

“If you’re trying to tell me that Angie is any less Deacon’s child because she was adopted…” Belinda trailed off. “Or, even worse, because she’s black and adopted, then you are revealing just how ugly you are on the inside, Scarlett. Maybe I should have been more wary when I interviewed you in the first place.”

“I love Angie,” Scarlett said. “And I was good to her all those years you left her in my care. I practically raised her. Deacon and I raised her like a husband and wife.”

Belinda clenched the seat beneath her so hard, she felt the nail on her middle finger snap, but she was too afraid of letting go to inspect the damage. They were out of the harbor now, puttering around the stone jetty.

“The boat isn’t really built for this,” Belinda heard JP say to Angie, behind her. “But your dad wanted his ashes scattered in Nantucket Sound, so that’s where we’ll go. Besides, it’s a flat night.”

A flat night? The boat was now a Mexican jumping bean every time they hit a wave. Would it get any worse? Belinda imagined the front of the boat rising so high that the whole thing flipped over, dumping all of them in the drink.

Drink. When this was over, Belinda was going to have a big, fat glass of wine. Or, better still, a margarita.

All of these thoughts served to distract her from Scarlett’s last statement-but only for a matter of seconds.

“I didn’t leave my daughter for you to raise,” Belinda said. “You were her nanny. You watched her while I was working.”

“You were never around,” Scarlett said. “Ever.”

“And when you say that you and Deacon raised her as a ‘married couple,’ what does that mean? Were you sleeping with Deacon back then, Scarlett? I know now that it was Laurel he took to St. John, but that doesn’t mean you and he weren’t carrying on years before that. When I was in Scotland? When I was in Vietnam?”

“We were not,” Scarlett said. “But when I reconnected with him, he admitted to me that he fantasized about me all the time. So it’s probably safe to say, when he was making love to you all those years, he was thinking about me. Pretending you were me.”

Belinda wanted to slap her. She wanted to throttle her. “How dare you say that to me, Scarlett. How dare you.” Belinda stood up. She had to get away-but she was trapped. Belinda made her way to the back of the boat, where she lost her thoughts in the drone of the motor and the sharp smell of diesel fuel. The Ativan made her hazy and mixed up; she shouldn’t have taken so many pills.

But desperate times called for desperate measures.

ANGIE

The boat ride would have been excruciating without Joel present, but Joel was making it a thousand times worse. Angie should have told him to turn around the second he arrived. She could have talked to Joel later, back in New York, where she wouldn’t have had to witness him trying to make sweet love to Scarlett.

It didn’t matter, she told herself. He could pursue Scarlett, but he would end up falling on his face.

It did matter. It hurt. It was humiliating.

She tried to focus on the task at hand. JP maneuvered the launch over the building swells and into the sound, and then, just off the coast from the Cliffside Beach Club, he cut the motor.

Laurel stood up and held the urn out to Buck.

Buck said, “Are we ready?”

No, Angie thought. She would never be ready.

Hayes stood up. Belinda stood up. Scarlett stood up and took a few wobbly steps across the boat until she was tucked under Joel’s arm. Angie could not believe it. She felt a hand on her arm: JP.

You okay? he mouthed.

Angie got to her feet and gave JP a weak and defeated smile. It was both comforting and mortifying to know she wasn’t the only one who’d noticed Joel’s unbridled pursuit of Scarlett. JP had been through this. His girlfriend was now dating his best friend, and he had survived just fine.

Buck said, “I feel like I should say a few words, but I don’t know what those words might be.”

Hayes took a stumbling step forward and reached into the urn. He brought forth a handful of remains-chunks of bone, Angie supposed, and a powder that looked like talcum.

“I love you, Dad,” he said. Then he flung his handful into the water.

“I want to try!” Ellery said, darting forward. She reached into the urn, took a prodigious handful, and tossed it overboard.

Scarlett sobbed into Joel’s shoulder.

JP nudged Angie forward. She reached into the urn, thinking, This is not Deacon. Deacon was the man who had lifted her up onto his shoulders so she could feed leaves into the hungry mouth of the giraffe. Deacon was the one who had played endless games of Monopoly with her, in which his favorite strategy was to put up houses and hotels right away and then half the time watch himself fall into foreclosure while Angie cleaned him out. Deacon was the one who always saved Angie the last glass of wine. Deacon was the one who called her when a new Jamaican jerk place opened on Avenue C. We have to go! Can you meet me in five minutes?

He was my father, Angie thought. But, more than that, he was my friend.

She took a handful of remains and let them drop into the water, then she dusted off her hand on her shorts. She turned back to look at JP. He was wearing his sunglasses, but she saw the shine of one tear run down his face. He smiled at her. I thought it would give you something else to think about, something else to want. Certainly, JP had realized that nothing would trump what Angie wanted now and what she would want for the rest of her life: five more minutes with Deacon, so she could hug him and say good-bye.

Laurel threw a copious handful of ashes with exuberance, as though she were a passenger on the deck of the QE2 throwing confetti at well-wishers on the dock. Buck followed suit because, as Angie realized in that instant, Buck was besotted with Laurel and would do anything to make her happy.

Buck handed the urn to Scarlett, but Scarlett turned her face away and wailed, “I can’t! I just can’t!”

Belinda staggered over and reached her hand into the urn. She bent all the way over the side of the boat as if she was afraid to throw Deacon’s ashes, as if she preferred to simply set them down on the surface of the water. “Good night, sweet prince,” she said. Angie rolled her eyes. Of course her mother would quote Shakespeare.

BELINDA

After the ceremonial moment had passed, they idled a bit. Belinda returned to the back of the boat, as far away as possible from Scarlett.

“It’s a lovely night,” JP said. “We’ll turn around in a minute.”

Scarlett stood up. At first, Belinda thought she had changed her mind about the ashes, which was a good thing. If she didn’t scatter them now, she would always regret it. But instead of asking for the urn, Scarlett headed for Belinda with her arms outstretched.

“Belinda,” she said. “Listen to me.”

“No,” Belinda said. She backed up. In that moment, Scarlett became Stella, or maybe just a younger Scarlett, maybe the Scarlett who had occupied Deacon’s fantasies even while he was married to Belinda.

“Stay away from me, please,” Belinda said. Belinda took another step back and instantly realized her mistake. There was nothing behind her except-after a moment of suspended time, which was at once instant and endless-the water.

ANGIE

Splash.

There was a beat of stunned silence. If it were anyone else, Angie might have laughed. But it was Belinda.

Angie said, “She can’t swim! JP, my mother can’t swim!”

JP jumped up onto the bench, and from there, he dove over the side of the boat. A few seconds later he surfaced and said, “I don’t see her!”

Buck dove into the water. Laurel dove into the water. The boat bounced around, and Angie gripped the side to keep herself upright. JP went down again. Ellery wrapped her arms around Angie’s legs.

“Miss Kit Kat?” she said.

“She’ll be fine,” Scarlett said.

“She can’t swim!” Angie said to Scarlett. “You know she can’t swim!”

“I was just trying to apologize!” Scarlett said. She turned to Joel. “I wanted to say sorry.”

Joel peered over the side of the boat into the water, but he did not jump in, Angie noticed.

Mom! Angie could not lose both her parents. She could not. Belinda was a fighter. Swim! she thought. Find the surface! Wasn’t everyone born with an innate sense of what to do in the water?

JP’s head popped up. He dragged Belinda to the surface. Belinda sucked in air, coughed, and choked. Then, once she had oxygen, she started to howl. Angie, too, started crying.

“Mom!” Angie said.

Buck climbed aboard, and together he and JP managed to get Belinda back onto the boat. Laurel followed, then JP. Hayes was sitting with his head in his hands. “Man,” he said. “I just cannot handle this.”

From the launch, JP radioed the harbormaster, who sent one of his assistants to meet them on the dock with towels and blankets. Belinda was in full-on teeth-chattering, goose-bump mode. Angie walked her mother over to JP’s Jeep, and Hayes helped Belinda get settled in the front seat.

They had to wait for JP to tie the launch back up, during which time Angie watched Joel, Scarlett, and Ellery climb into the back of the red Jeep, with Laurel and Buck in the front.

“Who is that guy with the goatee?” Hayes asked. “Do we know him?”

“He’s my boyfriend,” Angie said. Hayes was so oblivious! Angie wanted to snap in his face and say, For Pete’s sake, Hayes, pay attention! But she didn’t want to be the instigator of any more family strife, and besides, she envied Hayes his ability to block everything out.

“Your boyfriend?” Hayes said. “I thought he was Scarlett’s boyfriend.”

“Exactly,” Angie said.

“But I guess that wouldn’t make sense,” Hayes said. “Because she was married to Dad, and he’s only been dead a few weeks.”

“Exactly,” Belinda mumbled. Angie put a hand on Belinda’s shoulder and kept it there until JP climbed into the Jeep.

“Back to Hoicks Hollow?” he asked.

“Yes, please,” Angie said. She wanted to somehow apologize for her family, but she didn’t know how.

Back at 33 Hoicks Hollow, there was a commotion in the driveway. Belinda had regained some color and some life. She sat forward.

“Someone is here,” she said. “Is it Bob?”

“It might be?” Angie said. That would be a nice surprise for her mother. The red Jeep was already in the driveway, as well as… the Lincoln. Pirate’s taxi.

“What does that guy want?” Hayes asked.

“What does that guy want?” Angie asked Hayes. “Do you owe him money?”

“More like the other way around,” Hayes said.

JP said, “Pirate is the scourge of this entire island. He moved here last year and parades around in that asinine costume like he owns the place. And it’s no secret he deals drugs.”

Angie saw a man-tall and lean, with sandy blond hair, wearing a coat and tie-climb out of the back of the taxi. Not Bob.

“Who’s that?” she said.

Scarlett jumped out of the red Jeep and launched herself into the man’s arms.

“Well,” Belinda said.

The man was Bo Tanner. Angie unfolded herself from the back of JP’s Jeep just in time for Scarlett to introduce her.

“Bo, this is Angie, Belinda and Deacon’s daughter. Angie, this is Bo Tanner.”

He held out his hand. Angie wasn’t sure what she was supposed to do. Deacon’s ashes probably hadn’t even settled on the ocean floor yet, and already Angie was meeting his replacement. She shook Bo’s hand. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

This, at least, was true.

When Angie turned around, she saw Joel waiting for her.

“You should go,” she said. “Get your stuff out of my room and have Pirate here take you to the ferry.”

Joel reached out for Angie’s arm, but she swatted him away. “Don’t touch me.”

“Ange.”

His voice, with its smoldering, sexy, ragged edge, nearly undid her resolve. She wanted to go to him and rest her head on his heart. The nonsense with Scarlett she could forgive; he had probably just felt uncomfortable putting his feelings for Angie on display. But then she thought of JP’s words, You deserve to be someone’s everything. She would never be Joel’s everything. He might not leave her for Scarlett Oliver, but he would leave her for someone, the way he’d run through Karen and Winnie. Angie drew on some strength way down in the pit of her stomach that she didn’t even know she had; it was even more difficult than drawing back the string of the bow. “Leave, Joel,” she said. “Oh, and by the way, you’re fired.”

“You can’t fire me,” Joel said. “Only Harv can fire me.”

“Okay, then wait for Harv to tell you,” Angie said. “But you’re fired.”

Angie and JP helped Belinda from the car into the house.

“I can walk,” Belinda said. “I’m fine, really.”

Angie looked at JP. “We’re ordering pizzas for dinner,” she said. “Dad’s favorite. Can you stay?”

“Let me run back to my shack and get changed,” JP said. “Then, yes, I’d love to join you.”

“My hero,” Belinda said.

JP left, and Joel was gone. Laurel, Buck, Hayes, and Ellery were in the kitchen when Belinda and Angie walked in, followed by Scarlett and Bo.

“Bo is going to join us for dinner!” Scarlett announced. She beamed at Laurel. “Is that okay with you?”

Laurel opened her mouth, but no sound came out. Finally she managed: “It’s Deacon’s farewell dinner, Bo,” she said. “Do you feel like you want to be here?”

Bo smiled. “No,” he said. He held his palms up as if to show he meant no harm. “I’ll head back to my hotel, I think.” To Scarlett, he said, “I’ll let you enjoy your time with everyone tonight, and I’ll come get you and Ellery in the morning. Good-bye, y’all,” he said, excusing himself with half a wave.

“I’m hungry,” Ellery said.

“I’ll order the pizza now,” Laurel said.

“I don’t get it,” Hayes said. “Who was that guy?”

LAUREL

They had four pies delivered from Sophie T’s-three with three toppings each and the cheese well done, and one with just pepperoni and the cheese gooey.

“That one’s for Buck,” Laurel said after they’d spread the boxes out on the counter.

“Anyone is welcome to a slice,” Buck said as he chose the largest piece for himself and wrapped the strings of mozzarella around the pointy end.

JP said, “Yeah, man, I’ll have a slice of that.”

“Me too,” Ellery said. She was sitting on Angie’s lap.

“Hey, shall we measure you, finally?” Angie asked.

“Yes!” Ellery said.

“I think we forgot to do it last year,” Scarlett said. She was drinking a can of Skinny4Life and a glass of wine. “I can’t remember. All the years run together.”

Angie stood Ellery up against the door frame and checked the hash marks. “There’s one here for Ellery from 8/12/15. It’s in Dad’s handwriting.”

“He must have done it, then,” Scarlett said. “I don’t know what I was thinking-he never forgot. It was one of his rules.”

“Like the clothesline,” Belinda said. “And showering outside.”

“Living the life on Nantucket,” Buck said.

“On Hoicks Hollow Road,” Hayes said. “Our home away from home.”

Angie marked the doorframe right above Ellery’s head. “My, my, how you have grown,” she said.

Later, after dinner, Laurel stood on the front porch with Angie, Hayes, and JP. Angie was having a cigarette, and the rest of them were gazing up at the emerging stars. Buck was cleaning up in the kitchen, and Belinda had volunteered to go upstairs and read to Ellery.

“Well, it wasn’t pretty, but we survived,” Angie said. She crushed the butt of her cigarette against the sole of her clog. She turned to JP. “Thank you for having dinner with us.”

“Thank you for asking me,” JP said. “But I should get home.”

“I’ll walk you to the car,” Angie said.

Laurel and Hayes watched Angie and JP head down the porch stairs to the driveway.

“They would make a cute couple,” Laurel said. “Don’t you think?”

Hayes turned to her. “Mom,” he said. “I have a problem.”

“A problem?” she said.

“With drugs, I think?” Hayes said. His eyes filled with tears. “I’m sorry, Mom.”

Laurel led Hayes up the stairs. They went into his room, where Laurel closed and locked the door so that they wouldn’t be disturbed.

“I tried to be careful,” Hayes said. He was openly crying now, her handsome, accomplished son, so worldly, so sophisticated, the same little towhead that she tucked into this bed after a long day of sun and sand, half-asleep before his head even hit the pillow.

She let him cry in her lap. She stroked his hair, which was how she used to comfort Deacon.

“What is it?” she asked. “What are you addicted to?”

“Heroin,” he said. “It was an accident, Mom.”

Heroin, Laurel thought. She closed her eyes.

BELINDA

Belinda read Ellery a picture book called A Penny for Barnaby. In the book, Barnaby Bear is on Nantucket and doesn’t want to leave… so he follows the old tradition of throwing a penny off the side of the ferry as it passes Brant Point Lighthouse, to ensure his safe return.

Belinda was Barnaby: she didn’t want to leave.

She lay next to Ellery in the gathering dark and tried to recall her own self as a little girl. She had been skinny with red hair and freckles, intent on learning how to do a one-handed cartwheel and then an aerial; she had practiced after school in the field behind her backyard. She had been obsessed with TV, which her mother called “the boob tube.” Belinda watched I Dream of Jeannie, and That Girl, and The Partridge Family, and she dreamed of being like Barbara Eden, Marlo Thomas, Susan Dey. Then, in high school, she and her girlfriends Judie and Joanne Teffeteller, identical twins, used to spot one another for backflips. It was their dream to become cheerleaders for the Iowa Hawkeyes. Belinda worked the soda counter at Pearson’s Drug Store after school. She wore a polyester dress and a name tag and a hairnet. The soda counter served sandwiches-tuna salad, ham and pickle, chicken salad, and egg salad-and single-serving Campbell’s soup cans that came shooting out of a dispenser when Belinda pulled on the arm. She worked every day except for Thursday; on Thursdays, she and the Teffeteller twins went to the movies. It had been raining, she remembered, on the afternoon they went to see Ordinary People. It had been the first movie to break Belinda’s heart, and she had sat in the theater long after the twins had left to have burgers at the Fieldhouse, reflecting on what she’d just seen.

The summer after they graduated from high school, Belinda and the twins had driven out to California, and Belinda had stayed, using her Pearson’s savings on a motel room on Santa Monica Boulevard and showing up at the ICM offices without an appointment. It could easily have gone the other way; Belinda could have been forced to hitchhike home, or call her parents for bus fare, but she had been lucky because Sally Bloom had been on her way to lunch as Belinda was standing at reception, and Sally had stopped to take a closer look at Belinda. Within a week, Belinda had been cast in Brilliant Disguise. And that, as they say, was that. Belinda had spent her entire adult life pretending to be other people.

Once Ellery was asleep, her breathing deep and steady, her pretty face at peace despite the tumultuous adult day, Belinda slipped from the room and down the hall to Clara’s pathetic excuse for a room. Belinda owned a 750-acre horse farm in Louisville, on which sat the sprawling 5,600-square-foot residence, as well as six barns, four outbuildings, three rings, and a racetrack. She kept a penthouse suite at the Standard in New York and the presidential suite at the Beverly Wilshire. But somehow, she felt more comfortable here in the spartan quarters of Clara’s room, which had nothing to offer but the view from the window. Simplicity, Belinda thought as she lay down on the bed. It’s underrated.

LAUREL/BELINDA/SCARLETT

Laurel couldn’t sleep. She lay in bed next to Buck-he had been wonderfully supportive and, with a few phone calls, had gotten Hayes admission to Eagleville Hospital, about two hours south of New York City, for a twenty-eight-day rehab program-but even after Buck descended into slumber, with snores as regular and soothing as rolling waves, Laurel fidgeted. Legs under the sheet, one leg under and one leg over, pillow one way, pillow the other way, left side, right side, back. She ordered herself to put her concerns about Hayes aside. He would get help. They were leaving tomorrow; he would be in professional hands by the evening. There was nothing more she could do, but still the question lingered: why? Had it been her fault? Had she not given him enough love or attention? He told her he’d first smoked opium on his trip to inner China a year ago, and from there it had gotten out of hand. Was it Deacon’s fault? Was it a result of Hayes growing up in a broken home? Laurel knew she was being ridiculous, but the questions presented themselves. Stop thinking about it, she told herself. It was nobody’s fault.

She decided to go down to the kitchen. She needed a cup of chamomile tea or a shot of Jameson-or maybe both.

Scarlett had been in love with Bo Tanner for most of her life-ever since she saw him across the room at Miss Louisa’s etiquette classes when she was in fifth grade.

But that was a story for another time.

At ten o’clock, Scarlett checked on Ellery: fast asleep. Scarlett slipped onto the back deck, tiptoed through the yard, and rolled a bike out of the shed. She pedaled down Hoicks Hollow Road by the light of the stars and half a moon, then turned left onto the Polpis Road. The night air was warm enough that she could ride without a jacket, and it was filled with cricket chatter.

Bo was staying at the Wade Cottages in Sconset. When Scarlett pulled into the shell driveway, she saw him standing in the moonlight, waiting for her. Ever the gentleman. He led her inside.

Scarlett was so distraught about losing the Nantucket house that she nearly asked Bo if he might loan her the money to save it. But she had asked quite a lot of him recently. She had asked him to leave Anne Carter-who had been Scarlett’s friend since her earliest memories-but then, when Bo said he would, Scarlett hadn’t been able to leave Deacon. When Scarlett decided that her marriage to Deacon was over, she again asked Bo to leave Anne Carter, and again he said he would, and he did. While Bo was moving out, Deacon had died.

Bo made a good living as an attorney for wealthy Georgia gentlemen-mostly Savannah based, but some in Atlanta as well-who had business interests up North. But he would be paying alimony to Anne Carter, and besides, Nantucket wasn’t his summertime place. He had always been a Folly Beach boy.

Scarlett bicycled home just after midnight; the dark was velvety and nearly opaque. Anywhere else in the world, Scarlett would have been afraid, but here she felt safe. She shed a few tears on the way home because endings were sad and the day had been filled with emotional fireworks. She had only wanted to apologize to Belinda for the atrocious things she’d said; the others, she feared, might have thought she’d meant to push Belinda off the boat. When JP had surfaced the first time without her, Scarlett’s limbs had turned leaden, and a pool of cold dread had collected in the pit of her stomach. She had her problems with Belinda, but that was a far cry from wanting her dead.

When Scarlett tiptoed back into the house, she saw a light on in the kitchen. There, at the counter, sat Laurel-with a steaming mug of tea and a shot of Jameson sitting before her.

“That looks good,” Scarlett said.

Belinda awoke in the night, certain that she heard voices below her. She strained her ears, but she couldn’t be sure. She gave herself a case of the willies wondering if the murmuring she heard was the ghost of Clara Beck. She squeezed her eyes shut, willing sleep to take her.

The voices stopped, then started again. Belinda sat up.

They’re probably going to ask you for something. Money, or a favor. Or both.

Technically, no one had asked; Belinda would make sure to point that out to Bob later. In fact, Laurel had been adamant about not accepting Belinda’s money. Belinda might have a struggle with her-although Laurel probably felt as Belinda did: anything to save this house. Belinda recalled what Marianne Pryor had said: It’s not a house to us. It’s a home. And it’s not a home, it’s a way of life. Our summertime happens here. This house is part of our past, it’s our present, it’ll be our future. It’s who we are.

Whether Belinda liked it or not, the Thorpe summertimes happened here, at American Paradise.

She would save it-for Angie’s sake and Hayes’s sake and Ellery’s sake. She wouldn’t bother with the arrears; she would pay off all three mortgages, whatever that cost. And during her weeks in residence, she would take the master bedroom! Although she might just sneak down to Clara’s room every once in a while for a secret nap.

Belinda rose from bed and crept down the stairs. The voices grew louder and more distinct. There were people in the kitchen. Belinda poked her head in: Laurel and Scarlett were sitting together at the kitchen counter, each with a cup of tea and a shot of Jameson before them.

“Oh, hello,” Belinda said.

They both looked over. Without a word, Scarlett rose, pulled a shot glass out of the cabinet, and poured Belinda some whiskey.

“Tea?” Laurel asked.

“Not necessary,” Belinda said.

Scarlett and Laurel raised their shot glasses.

“Here’s to us,” Laurel said.

“To us,” Scarlett said.

“To us,” Belinda said.

The glasses clicked, and they drank.

A second shot followed. Then a third… before Belinda announced that she was paying off the mortgages.

“I don’t want you to argue with me. And I don’t want you to thank me. I’m not doing it for the two of you. I’m doing it for our children.”

Laurel welled up with tears. “And our grandchildren.”

“Thank you, Belinda,” Scarlett said.

Belinda glared at her. “What did I just say?” She wandered over to the door frame. “I want to know why the kids are the only ones to be measured,” she said. “Why not us? I, for one, would like my own hash mark.”

Laurel stood up. “Me too.”

Scarlett pulled a pen out of the junk drawer.

“You first, Laurel,” Belinda said.

Scarlett measured Laurel. She was almost an inch taller than Hayes had been at thirteen.

Laurel then measured Belinda. She was a smidge shorter than Angie had been at twelve.

And Belinda, standing on the step stool that Mrs. Innsley had probably used to reach the high cabinets and shelves, measured Scarlett. She was taller than everyone.

When they were done, the three of them stepped back to admire their names on the door frame of American Paradise: LAUREL 6/20/16, BELINDA 6/20/16, SCARLETT 6/20/16.

My, my, Belinda thought. Look how we have grown.

Tuesday, June 21

ANGIE

She had thought she would be the first one awake; JP was coming to get her at eight. He had volunteered to give her another shooting lesson.

Joel had left behind a T-shirt. Angie had held it for a moment; she’d even brought it to her nose and inhaled his scent. It pained her to remember him holding her, his face buried in her neck, or the way he tugged on her ponytail. She had fallen for him, and he had disappointed her. Her first adult relationship had taught her what? That men were wily and opportunistic. That people used the word “love” without thinking. Real love existed-about this she was optimistic-but she hadn’t found it having hurry-up sex in the dry pantry or in her apartment in the stolen hours between Joel leaving work and heading home.

When she entered the kitchen for coffee, she found Laurel, Buck, and Belinda already sitting at stools, deep in a hushed conversation.

“What’s up?” Angie asked.

The three of them stared at her.

“I’m taking Hayes to rehab,” Laurel said.

Angie nodded, trying to process these words. Hayes. Rehab. “He’s agreed to it? Or we’re doing an intervention? What is he addicted to?”

“Heroin,” Laurel said. “He’s agreed to go. There’s a place in Pennsylvania, about two hours south of New York. We’re leaving later this morning.”

“Oh, wow,” Angie said. Heroin. She thought about how Hayes had looked the first time she saw him, sitting outside her door. Like any tweaker plucked off Ludlow Street. He was going to rehab; this was a sign of hope. But it was too much to think about, and so Angie deferred to considering the logistics of this new development.

“How am I getting home?” Angie asked.

“You are home,” Belinda said.

As Angie stood aiming the arrow at the target, she felt herself relax. JP noticed, because he said, “There you go. You’re breathing. Now, line up the pin.”

She didn’t have to hit the target today. Now that she was staying on Nantucket for the rest of the summer, the pressure had been lifted. She could work on getting her stance and form right, and if she missed, she missed.

She could always come back tomorrow and try again.

“I have to admit,” Belinda said, “I’m jealous.”

“You should be,” Angie said. She couldn’t believe how excited she felt about staying; nor could she believe how close she’d come to losing Nantucket altogether. Her mother had saved the day. Belinda! Now Angie would go to the beach every day, and she would work on Deacon’s cookbook; it would be a dream summer. Only one thing would be missing. “Did I tell you that JP is teaching me how to use a bow and arrow?”

“He’s adorable,” Belinda said.

He was adorable, but Angie wasn’t about to discuss her brand-new friendship with her mother.

“I think I’ll come back after the Fourth of July,” Belinda said. “Mary and Laura will be away at riding camp for three weeks. Would it be okay with you if I came for three weeks?”

“What would you do for three weeks?” Other than drive me crazy? Angie thought.

Belinda got a wicked glimmer in her eye. For an instant, Angie understood how her father had fallen so profoundly in love. “I’m going to take swimming lessons,” she said.

Publishers Weekly

Legacy: The Recipes of Deacon Thorpe, Foreword by Quetin York

Fans of Deacon Thorpe’s TV shows, Day to Night to Day with Deacon and Pitchfork, and guests lucky enough to have secured a coveted reservation at Mr. Thorpe’s midtown Manhattan restaurant, the Board Room, will rejoice that the legacy of the late chef-who passed away in May 2016-lives on through the voices of his talented children. His daughter, Angela Thorpe, graduated from the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park in 2010 and worked for the past four years as the fire chief at the Board Room. His son, Hayes Thorpe, was until June 2016 an editor at Fine Travel magazine. Together, the Thorpe offspring provide a host of the most popular recipes from the TV shows and the restaurant, as well as some treasured family recipes and some original recipes developed by Ms. Thorpe. Interspersed throughout is an unflinchingly honest and often humorous portrait of their father. According to his eldest two children (Thorpe also fathered a daughter, Ellery, age 10, with his third wife, Scarlett Oliver), Deacon Thorpe fought the demons of drugs and alcohol most of his life, but he was buoyed emotionally by the women he loved-his childhood sweetheart and first wife, Laurel Thorpe, his second wife, Academy Award-winning actress Belinda Rowe, and the aforementioned Ms. Oliver. Legacy is more than a cookbook; it’s a touching tribute to a cultural icon many Americans miss. It celebrates Mr. Thorpe’s greatest legacy, which is love.

New York Times Wedding Announcements

OLIVER-TANNER

Scarlett Oliver and Robert “Bo” Tanner were married yesterday at the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in Savannah, Georgia. The Reverend Clarence Meets officiated.

Ms. Oliver, the widow of the late chef Deacon Thorpe, was attended only by her daughter, Ellery Thorpe. Ms. Oliver is the daughter of Bracebridge and Prudence Oliver of Savannah, Georgia.

Mr. Tanner is a private wealth management specialist in Savannah, Georgia, and New York City. He’s the son of Beulah Tanner and the late Harrison Robert Tanner. Mr. Tanner’s first marriage ended in divorce.

Deacon and Angie’s Stupid Word List (reprised)

1. protégé

2. literally

3. half sister (brother)

4. oxymoron

5. repartee

6. nifty

7. syllabus

8. parched

9. brouhaha

10. doggie bag

11. giddy

12. unique

13. condolences/sympathy/pity

14. maraschino

National Enquirer, August 31, 2016

Belinda Rowe divorces horse-trainer husband… her ex, Chef Deacon Thorpe, advises her from beyond the grave, “Get rid of him!”

LAUREL SIMMONS THORPE and JOHN EDWARD BUCKLEY JR.,

along with their families,

invite you to join in the celebration of their marriage.

September 17, 2017

Nantucket Island, Massachusetts

American Paradise, 33 Hoicks Hollow Road

RSVP by August 10.