Nantucket Nights

Karla

At two o’clock on the Friday of Labor Day weekend, the phone rang. Kayla was eating lunch: half a tomato sandwich and eight Lay’s potato chips. As she ate, she paged through the Dutch Gardens catalog, looking for spring bulbs.

Kayla plucked the phone off the kitchen wall. It was her friend Valerie Gluckstern’s secretary.

“Hold for Val,” the secretary said.

Twenty seconds later, it was Val herself. Kayla heard her shut the door to her office. Val always took her personal calls behind closed doors.

“Kayla?”

“Yes, Counselor,” Kayla said, licking salt off her fingers.

“Have you talked to Antoinette?”

“Not yet.”

“But we’re on for tonight? Eleven-thirty, and not a minute later? You’re driving?”

“As promised.”

“God, I’m so happy, I could just burst. I have, like, sixteen closings this month, and I don’t care. John said something last night about running for selectman again in the spring, and even that didn’t bother me.”

“And tonight you’re going to tell us who’s making you so happy?” Kayla said. “The mystery man?”

“As promised,” Val said. “I’m bringing a bottle of champagne I picked up when I was in France. You bought cheese?”

“I’m going to the store this afternoon. When I talked to Antoinette last week I asked her to bring the lobsters, but I’ll call and remind her.”

“It’s a full moon tonight,” Val said. “Can you even believe the romance in that? Has there ever been a full moon for Night Swimmers before?”

“I don’t remember one.”

“So this is the first time in twenty years,” Val said. “Twenty years, can you believe it? God, we’re old.” She sucked in her breath and let out a long stream of air. It sounded like Val was smoking a cigarette, but Kayla knew better.

“Are you lifting your weights?” Kayla asked. “Twenty reps, bicep curl,” Val said. “You can fight age, you know.”

“You can fight age,” Kayla said. “It’s too late for me. I have to ration potato chips. Count them out, seal the bag, and hide it away.”

“I know what you mean,” Val said.

“You don’t know,” Kayla said. “Ms. Size Two.”

“Size four.”

“I envy anyone over forty in the single digits,” Kayla said.

“You know this book I’m reading?” Val said. “By the Swiss therapist? She has a lot to say about Americans suffering from poor self-image, and she actually recommends having an affair. So for once in my life, I’m doing something right. Something European.” Kayla heard the weights clunk to the floor, and then Val said, “Whew! I don’t like to hear you getting sensitive about your weight.”

“I can’t help it,” Kayla said.

“Do you want to borrow the book?”

“When you have a book that deals with the potato chip syndrome, let me know,” Kayla said. She heard the other phone in Val’s office ring-no doubt, important business, money to be made. Kayla let her go. “I’ll see you tonight.”

Kayla clicked off the phone and returned to her lunch and the seventy varieties of daffodils, but her mind stayed on her conversation with Val. Val had spent the shimmering summer months having an affair. With someone they all knew, Val said, but she wouldn’t tell who. Kayla had been guessing all summer-Charlie, who owned the fish market; The baud, the chef at 21 Federal; Alan, the mail carrier. Nope, nope, nope, Val said. Kayla’s other best friend, Antoinette, refused to play guessing games.

“I have better things to do with my time than speculate about Valerie’s illicit sex life,” Antoinette said. “For example, I could be conducting an illicit sex life of my own.”

Kayla poured herself a glass of lemonade and drank it slowly. The house was quiet, and for just a minute she felt lonely, like the last housewife left in America. Her husband was building the biggest house in the history of Nantucket Island, her four children were out enjoying the final days of freedom before they had to go back to school, and her two best friends were conducting lives that brimmed with sexual energy-strangers’ hands running up the insides of their thighs, the electric sensation of a first kiss. These feelings were lost to Kayla, buried in her past. As far away as Europe.

Dutifully, she put her plate and glass in the dishwasher.

Although she occasionally felt sorry for herself, Kayla’s life wasn’t dull. True, Nantucket was small and stranded thirty miles off the coast of America, but it had endless stretches of beach, hundreds of acres of moors dotted with freshwater ponds, and a charming town of cobblestone streets, spired churches, and historic homes built with whaling fortunes in the nineteenth century. It was popular to believe that things only happened on Nantucket during the summer. Summer was a slice of heaven, but the same was true for the rest of the year on the island, and Kayla felt sorry for anyone who missed the days of October that were as red and crisp as an apple, or the snow silently blanketing Main Street on Christmas Eve, or the seals that lounged on the rocks of the jetty and flapped their fins at the people who rode the ferry into the icy harbor in winter. It was true, though, that most of the excitement on Nantucket arrived in summer, and such was definitely the case this year, even for a housewife like Kayla.

Back in June, Kayla’s husband, Raoul Montero, owner of Montero Construction, landed the biggest job ever on Nantucket-the Ting house out in Monomoy. Val had represented Pierre and Elisabeth Ting when they bought the vacant lot for six million dollars, and the house they wanted to build would cost another ten million. The day Raoul had found out the job was his, he came home on his lunch hour, something he rarely did. Kayla had been weeding the garden, wearing a bikini top and jeans shorts, her bare knees stained with dirt. Just before Raoul pulled into the driveway, she’d had a sense of glorious freedom. Her kids were all elsewhere: her oldest, Theo, worked part-time as a ramp attendant for Island Airlines; her girls, Jennifer and Cassidy B., had babysitting jobs; and her eight-year-old, Luke, was at camp every day until four. After nineteen years of marriage and eighteen years of child-rearing, she woke up to discover that it was summer and she had a day all to herself; she dug in the garden, inhaling the scent of rosemary and basil, listening to Cat Stevens sing “Oh Very Young” on the kitchen radio. Then Kayla saw Raoul’s red pickup pull into the driveway. She’d panicked at first-construction could be a dangerous business, people fell off roofs and high ladders-but when she saw Raoul’s face, she knew he had good news.

“I got Ting,” he said. He strode through the backyard to the garden and reached her before she could even stand up.

“Lucky, lucky man,” she said. “How did you get so lucky?”

“It’s not luck, baby; it’s skill,” he said. He took Kayla’s sweaty body in his arms. Raoul was not only lucky, but blessed, as well. He was tall and strong with Spanish coloring-dark hair, golden brown eyes, rosy lips. Their kids worshiped him. They ate the same things that Raoul ate-for breakfast, two banana muffins and a bowl of fruit; for lunch, egg salad on a sub roll. They all loved Chevy trucks, skiing, The Rolling Stones singing “Street Fighting Man,” Tom Brokaw, scary movies, coconut cream Easter eggs. It baffled Kayla at times-they’d had four children who were carbon copies of Raoul. Sometimes it was like she’d had nothing to do with their creation. Sometimes it was like she was just a visitor to their planet.

Raoul scooped Kayla up in his arms. She wasn’t a petite woman by anyone’s standards, but that day when Raoul carried her into the house, she felt as light as a size two. “Anybody else home?” Raoul asked.

“Nope.”

He’d carried her upstairs to the bedroom, untying the string of her bikini top with his teeth. He laid her across the bed and slid her shorts and her underwear over her dirty knees. Nantucket was a small place, and there had been rumors during the nineteen years of their marriage that Raoul had had affairs with two women. But Kayla tried not to believe it.

Raoul whistled. “You’re beautiful, Kayla.”

“I’m glad you got the job,” she said. “I know how much you wanted it.”

“We wanted it,” Raoul said. “Didn’t we?”

“We did,” she said. “We all did. When the kids find out, they’re going to flip.”

Raoul unbuttoned his jeans and reached for her. He had a flat, brown stomach that rippled with muscles. He was a gorgeous, lucky man who had landed the job of a lifetime. What a way to start the summer-enough money was headed for their bank account to let them to grow old without a care in the world.

Maybe it was remembering that sweet afternoon hour of making love with her husband, or maybe it was all the talk of illicit affairs, but Kayla decided, after she got off the phone with Val, to drive out to Raoul’s job site. She did this occasionally, because after Raoul started the Ting job, he was rarely at home. He left the house at six in the morning with his metal lunch box (muffins, fruit, egg salad), and then he ordered pizzas for his crew for dinner, or he treated them to Faregrounds or A. K. Diamond’s. He had yet to make it home before their youngest, Luke, went to bed, and now that this had been going on for a couple of months, the kids were starting to show signs of frustration. Their hero, the parental sun they revolved around, was missing.

“Do you love the Tings more than us?” Cassidy B. asked him one Sunday morning.

“What kind of question is that?” Raoul roared, picking up Cassidy B. in a giant bear hug. He looked over Cassidy’s shoulder at Kayla-she was scrambling eggs at the stove. “The Tings are paying for your college education. Not to mention the braces you might need in a few years, not to mention a ten-speed bicycle, not to mention it looks like your doll-house could use a new roof. Do you have any idea how much it costs to reshingle these days?”

Cassidy B. put her hands over Raoul’s mouth. “Daddy!” she protested.

“You can hardly blame the kids,” Kayla said. “They never see you anymore. They miss you.”

“Well,” Raoul said, a dangerous edge to his voice, “we all decided that this was what we wanted.”

What they wanted, yes-but lately Kayla had been listing all the things that a million dollars couldn’t buy. It couldn’t buy happy, well-adjusted children; it couldn’t buy a happy marriage.

Monomoy was a breathtaking part of the island, a fitting place for a ten-million-dollar home. The Ting property had five hundred feet of waterfront with its own beach, its own dock, and sweeping views across Nantucket Harbor toward town; you could see the north and south church spires, the wharves, and the red beacon of Brant Point lighthouse. Buying a vacant lot for six million dollars set a Nantucket real estate record, but it was just a drop in the bucket for Pierre Ting, who was the scaffolding baron of Hong Kong. Most year-round islanders were unhappy about the best pieces of Nantucket being snapped up by ultra-wealthy people who didn’t appreciate Nantucket and would only spend a few weeks a year on-island. Raoul had caught a lot of flak from his fellow builders and the antidevelopment people for agreeing to build the Ting house, or “the cathedral,” as everyone called it. Raoul didn’t back down. “They’re jealous,” he said. “They’d do it themselves in a heartbeat.”

Kayla pulled into the quarter acre of dirt that had been cleared for a driveway, next to five pickup trucks, although Raoul’s truck wasn’t among them. Her spirits sagged until she remembered that Raoul sometimes let his crew borrow his truck to run to Marine Home Center, or to Henry Jr.’s for sandwiches. So she got out of the car. There was a huge yellow Dumpster, and boards, tool belts, and empty soda cans lying around. A boom box blasted her son Theo’s favorite band, The Beastie Boys. Kayla weaved her way toward the house. She was proud of Raoul’s design, although a small, secret part of her agreed with the islanders who found it ostentatious. Raoul had taken her on a tour after the framing was done. The entryway of the house had a wonderfully airy, spacious feel, with enough height to plant a tree, which was what the Tings intended to do-plant a Japanese cherry tree that would weep its fuchsia blossoms all over the marble floor. One moved into the formal living room, the formal dining room with built-in china cabinets, the gourmet kitchen featuring three islands to be topped in pink granite, the walk-in pantry, the den shelved for TV, DVD, and five hundred-CD changer, the atrium where the indoor pool would go. Up a huge, curved staircase were the five guest rooms, the children’s playroom, the master bedroom suite including his and her bathrooms, a study, a sitting room, and four walk-in closets (one just for Elisabeth Ting’s summer shoes). Outside, the house had eleven decks and nine hundred square feet of patio that led to the outdoor pool, the hot tub, and the beach.

It was Raoul’s most challenging design; already, Architectural Digest had called, wanting to feature the house the minute it was complete. But today it was still just plasterboard walls and plywood floors covered with shavings. It smelled wonderful, like fresh lumber, newly planed boards. It was Raoul’s smell, and Kayla loved it better than anything. Looking out the living room window at Nantucket Sound, she breathed in the fragrant wood and decided that maybe the house wasn’t so preposterous after all. Before they knew it, there would be another house on the island dwarfing this one.

Someone touched Kayla’s back.

She whipped around. It was Jacob Anderson, one of Raoul’s workers. Jacob had curly dark hair and green eyes, and he looked absurdly handsome in jeans and work boots. When Kayla saw him, she thought, Illicit affair, and her face burned.

“Jacob,” she said. “You startled me.”

“Did I?” he said. Jacob had the alarming quality of speaking to every woman, including her-the boss’s wife-like she was a woman.

Kayla cleared her throat. “Is, uh… is Raoul here?”

Jacob shook his curly head. He was wearing a baseball hat backwards, and the curls at his forehead, underneath the plastic strap, were damp with sweat.

“He went into town to see about something.”

“Into town?”

“Yeah, that’s what he said. He said he wasn’t sure how long he’d be gone.”

“Oh,” Kayla said. Her forehead wrinkled, and she knew it wasn’t attractive, so she raised her eyebrows trying to smooth it. There was no reason to be concerned; Raoul probably had twenty reasons to go into town-building department, the post office, the bank. “So he went into town and you don’t know when he’ll be back.”

“That’s right.” Jacob smiled at her-a charming, boyish smile. “Can I show you around the house?”

“Thanks, but I’ve seen it already,” Kayla said. “Raoul gave me the tour a few weeks ago.”

“I’ve been trimming out one of the bedrooms,” Jacob said. “Okay, listen to this-each guest room is plumbed for its own washer and dryer. Rumor has it Mrs. Ting doesn’t want the linens to get mixed up.” He shook his head. “It blows my mind what people will spend their money on. A washer and dryer in each room, fancy sheets for each bed, and a dancing troupe of cleaning girls to do the work. I’m lucky if I have time to change my sheets at home once a summer.”

“I know what you mean,” Kayla said. A picture of Jacob’s rumpled bed presented itself in her mind. “Listen, I should go.”

“Let me show you upstairs,” Jacob said. “It’s come a long way since you were here before.”

“Another time,” Kayla said.

“Oh, Kayla, you’re breaking my heart,” Jacob said. Then he did an unbelievable thing. He reached out and touched Kayla’s lip. She thought, He’s going to kiss me. And she wondered where the rest of the crew was-it was a big house, the closest person could be a hundred feet away-but then Jacob lifted his finger from her lip and held it up for her to see, “Potato chip,” he said, and sure enough, there was a fleck of Lay’s potato chip on his fingertip.

Kayla exhaled. There was moisture under her arms. “Guilty as charged,” she said, and she carefully moved herself around Jacob. “Well, when you see Raoul, tell him I stopped by.” She was almost to the entry way of the house when she remembered something else. “Oh, and Jacob?”

Jacob was still studying his fingertip. “Yeah?”

“Can you remind him that I have Night Swimmers tonight?”

“Night Swimmers?”

“That’s right. Night Swimmers. He’ll know what it means.”

“But I don’t know what it means. Is it some kind of secret society? Is it something that involves you taking your clothes off?” He licked the potato chip off his finger in an incredibly suggestive way, and Kayla was out of there with a wave because he was right on both accounts, although she surely couldn’t let him know that.

Kayla pulled out of the site, thinking about the fleck of potato chip and Jacob’s impossibly light touch and Raoul gone into town, saying he didn’t know when he’d be back. Panic rose in her as she recalled the rumors of years ago: Raoul with Pamela Ely-a leggy woman with long brown hair and an upturned nose-and then the luscious nineteen-year-old Missy Tsoulakis. The rumors were unsubstantiated, but also hard to disregard when the whole town was talking about it, and when Pamela Ely positively would not make eye contact when Kayla saw her at the Stop & Shop. For Raoul, having an affair would be as easy as telling his crew, “I’m going into town. Don’t know when I’ll be back.” Kayla’s thighs ached.

You’re being stupid and predictable, she told herself. The combination of that damn potato chip and Jacob in those paint-splattered jeans (which looked as good on him as jeans could look on a man) and Valerie cheating on her husband, John, and Antoinette, who was cheating on no one because she belonged to no one, but who hinted she’d been having crazy sex herself lately, led Kayla down this path of suspicion. There had been times in the last five years when she’d watched Raoul sleep, when she’d reached over and touched his penis, hot and erect, and she’d wondered, Is he dreaming about me? How could she ever be sure? Raoul always assured Kayla that he thought she was beautiful, but she had gained weight after four children, and she waged a constant war with herself to stay in shape. She looked okay for forty-two, but not great-certainly there were women on the island who were ten times as attractive, thanks to gyms and plastic surgery and plain, old-fashioned good genes. Kayla closed her eyes for a split second. Maybe she was too sensitive; maybe she did need one of Val’s goofy books-You’re Okay But I’m Better, Ten Steps to Your Own Uniqueness; Stop Biting Your Nails, Start Building Your Future. When Kayla opened her eyes she relaxed, because she saw Raoul’s red truck coming down Monomoy Road toward her.

They stopped in the middle of the road, Kayla in the Trooper, Raoul in his big red truck, and he turned down the radio and smiled and said, “Hi, baby.”

Kayla unfastened her seat belt and slid her body out her open window far enough to kiss him. He tasted like himself.

“Where’d you go?” she asked.

“Town Building. I had to check on some easements. I bumped into Valerie, and she reminded me about your séance tonight.”

Kayla slithered back into her car. “It’s not a séance, Raoul.”

He checked his side mirror, but no one was coming. Even in summer, two people could sit in the middle of the road and have a conversation without interruption. “I’d just love to know what you ladies do out there in the middle of the night.”

“I’m sure you would,” Kayla said. “But it’s none of your business.”

“I know, I know. It’s a woman thing. Estrogen required for inclusion,” Raoul said. “Now tell me, how did Theo seem this morning?”

“The same. I asked him if he was excited about school next week, and he didn’t answer. I asked him to pick Luke up from camp at four o’clock, and he sort of grunted.”

Raoul tapped his head against the headrest. “Tell you what. This weekend I won’t work Sunday or Monday. I’ll take Theo fishing and have a heart-to-heart with him.”

“Let’s hope that works,” she said.

“What time are you leaving tonight?” Raoul asked.

“Eleven-fifteen,” she said. “I’ll be back in the morning before you go to work.”

“Good,” he said. He kissed his fingers by way of good-bye and drove off.

It was half past three, which gave Kayla enough time to dash into the Stop & Shop for two pints of raspberries; then it was down to Fahey & Fromagerie on Pleasant Street, where she bought a hunk of pale, creamy Saint Andre cheese and two slender baguettes dusted with flour. There was a selection of olives and red peppers, marinated mushrooms and salami-the kind of special, wonderful things her kids wouldn’t eat. They also had chicken salad without too many unidentifiable chunks, and a cucumber-dill-sour cream thing and she got two pounds of each for dinner. By the time Kayla left the cheese shop, it was two minutes to four, and she had to head over to the school to spy on her sons.

Kayla wished she didn’t have to do this, but Theo’s odd behavior of the last month or so left her no choice. She meandered through the back streets so that she cruised by the school at ten past four, and sure enough, there was Luke in his green Nantucket Day Camp T-shirt, holding two cupcakes on a paper plate and a purple balloon, squinting against the sun. Her fifty-year-old son trapped in an eight-year-old body. Luke had been an old man since he was born. He liked order, he liked adhering to rules, he liked promptness. Kayla had him on a schedule when he was only three weeks old, and later, he refused to eat unless he was wearing a bib. Kayla had read somewhere that the youngest child in the family was the most likely to be footloose and fancy-free, but not this one. Kayla and Raoul had dubbed Luke the child most likely to develop an ulcer. The inefficiency of the world around him was always letting him down.

Kayla pulled up next to the curb, and Luke opened the door. The plate of cupcakes covered neatly with plastic wrap went on the seat between them, and then he tucked the balloon into the car.

“Theo never showed,” he said, and in his voice was the unmistakable tone: Kids today. You just can’t trust them.

“It’s only ten after,” Kayla said, pulling into a vacant parking spot. “Let’s give him the benefit of the doubt. We’ll wait here five minutes and see if he shows up.”

Luke sighed deeply and fastened his seat belt. There was a faint pink juice stain above his upper lip. He tapped one of his little black soccer shoes against the floor mat,

“So how was the last day of camp? You had a party, I take it.”

Luke nodded, crossed his arms over the front of his T-shirt.

“I’ll bet you’re glad you don’t have to wear that shirt anymore,” Kayla said. “We can use it for a rag.”

Luke plucked the shirt away from his body and sniffed it. “Be sure to wash it first,” he said.

They watched the cars pass on Surfside Road. People were leaving the beach, the tops of their Jeeps down, damp towels wrapped around the roll-bars. Contractors who kept normal hours headed home in their pickups. A few cars honked their horns joyfully; it was, after all, the start of a holiday weekend. The last weekend of summer.

“Mom,” Luke said, staring resolutely out the window. “Theo isn’t coming.”

Kayla turned the key in the ignition. “Okay,” she said. “Let’s go.”

Predictably, at home, Theo’s Jeep was in the driveway. Luke refrained from saying anything, and Kayla followed suit. They headed inside. Theo sat at the breakfast bar in just his swim trunks, inspecting his toenails. He did not look up when they came in.

“Hello,” Kayla said. She put the groceries in the fridge. Theo stood up and intercepted the cucumber salad; he got a fork and started eating right from the plastic container. Luke glared at him as if to say: Barbarian. Luke wrote his name in block letters on a piece of masking tape and put the tape over the plastic covering his cupcakes.

“These are mine,” Luke said.

“Fuck off,” Theo said.

Luke looked at Kayla as if to say: Are you going to tolerate this?

“Theo,” Kayla said, as nonconfrontationally as possible, “that salad is for all of us.”

“You’re contaminating it,” Luke said. “With your fork.”

Theo stopped, stared at his little brother. “I said, fuck off.”

Kayla ushered Luke out of the kitchen, and he whispered to her, “You forgot to yell at him for not coming to get me.”

“I didn’t forget,” she said. “I’m just picking my moment.”

“I’m telling Dad,” Luke said.

“Me, too,” she said, and this seemed to satisfy him.

The girls were in the living room. Jennifer was watching Oprah, and Cassidy B. was reading the latest Harry Potter book, finishing the bag of Lay’s potato chips.

“I can’t believe you’re eating those,” Jennifer said to her. “You might as well be ingesting poison.”

Cassidy B. shrugged.

“Hi, girls,” Kayla said.

“Theo forgot to pick me up,” Luke announced.

“So?” Jennifer said.

Cassidy B. didn’t look up from her book. Kayla’s girls were like before and after pictures of adolescence. At fourteen, Jennifer was showing all the signs of womanhood: She had breasts, and long, shiny dark hair, her voice was throaty. She worried about her weight and her complexion; she read the nutrition information labels of everything she ate. Cassidy B. was eleven and still a child. She had baby fat and a clear, untroubled look in her eyes. When she had friends over, they read or played with Cassidy’s dollhouse.

Kayla loved her children so much that she kissed the three of them. First she kissed Luke’s juice-stained lips; then she kissed the side of Cassidy B.’s face while she read, and even Jennifer let Kayla kiss her, a quick, dry kiss on top of her sweet-smelling hair.

Theo came into the living room, still eating the cucumber-dill salad. “What the fuck is going on in here?” he said.

Now Kayla had three kids looking at her as if to say: Are you going to tolerate this?

And then the phone rang.

“Kayla?”

It was Antoinette. The woman had the sexiest voice on the planet. It was dark and exotic, like sandalwood, like expensive chocolate.

“Hi.”

“What’s going on?”

“You’re supposed to bring the lobster tails,” Kayla said. She checked the kitchen clock; it was half past four. “Can you swing it? If not, I’ll send Theo to East Coast Fish. He owes me.” Kayla turned around, and there was Theo, staring at her. He was such a handsome kid-brown hair bleached a shade lighter by the sun, golden brown eyes, and an incredible tan-he was his father all over again. Yet the way he looked at her was disturbing. Always, now, these disturbing looks, like he knew something about her that she didn’t know herself.

“I can swing it,” Antoinette said. “I have time.”

“Of course you do,” Kayla said. Antoinette was the freest person Kayla knew, and as if to illustrate the concept, Luke stepped through the sliding glass doors onto the deck, holding his purple balloon, and he let it go. It floated away.

Kayla put her hand over the receiver. “Luke, honey, why did you do that?”

Luke came back inside, glared at Theo, and marched off, stomping his soccer shoes.

“Do you want to borrow a couple of kids?” Kayla asked Antoinette.

“Looks like I might be seeing my own this weekend,” Antoinette said.

“Your own what?”

“My own kid.”

Kayla was silent. Back in the reaches of Antoinette’s past was a daughter whom she’d given up for adoption and never seen again.

“You mean…”

“She called a few days ago. Her name is Lindsey. Lindsey. A white name if ever I heard one.”

“Is… is she white?” Theo was still glaring at Kayla, and she covered the receiver again with her hand. “Do you mind?” she asked.

“No,” he said coldly, his eyes not leaving her face. “I don’t mind.”

Kayla stepped out onto the deck and scanned the horizon for Luke’s balloon, but it was gone already.

“She wasn’t white when I knew her,” Antoinette said. “She wasn’t black or white. She was… well, I remember thinking she was the color of a wine cork. Obviously I’m a woman who drinks too much. This whole thing has hit me sideways. This whole thing is fucking me up.”

“Yeah, I believe it,” Kayla said. “So she’s coming this weekend?”

“Tomorrow. I tried to explain to her that I live in the woods on an island thirty miles out to sea. I tried to explain to her that I wasn’t much of a people person. Didn’t seem to faze her.”

Kayla felt vaguely uncomfortable, and when she turned around, there was Theo standing in the sliding glass door, staring at her.

“Let’s talk about it tonight, okay?” Kayla said. “I have to go.”

“Lobster tails?” Antoinette said.

“Yeah.”

“You’ll pick me up at quarter to twelve?”

“Not a minute later.”

Kayla clicked off the phone, and Theo immediately lost interest in her. He put the top back on the cucumber salad, delivered it safely to the fridge, and deposited his fork in the dishwasher. Model child. He disappeared while Kayla stood there thinking about Antoinette’s long-lost daughter showing up, tracking Antoinette down like something off Geraldo or Oprah. Tracking down a birth parent-it was cliché by now, wasn’t it? And yet Kayla, at least, was interested. What had it felt like to give up a child? And what would a child of Antoinette’s look like? Antoinette never told Kayla if her husband was black or white, and Kayla had been too afraid to ask. The color of a wine cork? What did that mean? More white than black? More black than white?

Before she determined why this question intrigued her or if it even mattered, Theo was back-he’d put on a T-shirt and a pair of flip-flops, and he was rattling his car keys.

“You’re going out?” she said.

He, naturally, did not respond. Pointless to ask where he was going or if he’d be back for dinner. He climbed into his Jeep and drove away. Kayla stood in the door and watched him go.

“Do you think they’ll all act this way?” Kayla asked Raoul later that night. She told Raoul about Theo forgetting Luke, about the foul language, the staring, the aggressive silence. It was more of the same.

Raoul leaned back in the dining chair and it creaked. It was almost ten o’clock. Luke and Cassidy B. were in bed, Jennifer was sleeping at a friend’s house, Theo hadn’t returned. Kayla and Raoul finished up the cold salads by candlelight.

“I don’t know, Kayla.”

“Do you think we should take away the car?”

“Then you’d have to shuttle him around,” Raoul said. “No. Grounding him is grounding ourselves.”

Kayla sighed. “You’re going to have to talk to him,” she said. “Maybe all he needs is one-on-one with you. Maybe the fishing will do it.”

“Maybe,” Raoul said. He rubbed his eyes. “This will pass, Kayla.”

Easy for you to say, she thought. You’re never home. And so, all of Theo’s defiance seemed aimed at her. The summer had started out fine. Theo worked at the airport, and he drove around in his Jeep. Did Kayla need errands done? Theo was there to help-to run to the Stop & Shop, Bartlett’s farm, East Coast Fish. Nights, he squired his friends and an endless stream of girls to parties and bonfires at the beach. Theo was already close to being the most popular kid at Nantucket High School, and when he got the car, the phone never stopped ringing. Kayla could have easily filled her day being Theo Montero’s personal secretary.

And then, at the end of July, something happened. Theo turned, like sour milk. He stopped answering phone calls from his friends; he vanished for long periods of time without explanation. He swore. He locked himself in his bedroom and masturbated- Kayla heard him more than once, the heavy breathing, the moaning-and she sneaked away from his room hot-faced, embarrassed. It was natural, she knew, but it was as if he wanted her to hear him being openly and defiantly sexual in the house.

Kayla scanned her mind over the last few weeks. Nothing unusual jumped out. By that time, the summer had a rhythm: the sun, the garden, burgers on the grill, baby-sitting, camp, the phone ringing. One night while Theo was out, she and Raoul searched his room. Kayla felt evil and intrusive, doing this thing she swore she’d never do-opening his drawers, checking between his mattress and box spring. They were looking for Baggies of weed or warm beers, but they didn’t find so much as a Playboy. Theo’s room was messy with baseball mitts and boxer shorts and a copy of The Scarlet Letter. Raoul picked up the book.

“Somehow I don’t think Hawthorne is behind all this,” he said.

It was a phase, Kayla kept telling herself. Theo was eighteen, a year older than the rest of his classmates because he’d contracted mono in the third grade and they’d decided to hold him back. Theo was suffering from growing pains, maybe. Many of his friends were a year ahead of him, and they were graduating, leaving the island for Amherst, Burlington, Charlottesville.

Back when the behavior started, Kayla stumbled upon Theo in the kitchen in the middle of the night. He was standing before the open refrigerator drinking milk from the plastic container. She watched him a minute before she spoke, the light from the fridge cast a bluish glow on his half-naked body-her beautiful, angry son.

“Theo,” she said. “Is something bothering you?”

He paused his guzzling. “Yeah,” he said. “You.”

“Did you have a fight with your friends? Did something happen at work?”

Theo didn’t answer.

“Theo,” she said, “just tell me what you’re thinking.”

Theo put the milk back into the fridge and returned to his room, slamming the door.

Two weeks ago at her yearly checkup, Kayla told Dr. Donahue that Theo’s behavior was keeping her up at night. Dr. Donahue was sixty-nine years old, working through retirement, and he was infamous for healing what ailed you, or what didn’t ail you. He prescribed Ativan, a sedative, for her nerves. “How old is that boy?” he asked. “Eighteen? He’ll be out of the house before you know it.”

In another hour, Raoul was fast asleep and Kayla got ready for Night Swimmers. She changed into sweatpants, a red MONTERO CONSTRUCTION T-shirt, tennis shoes. When she stepped out onto the deck, the yard was bathed with moonlight. The first full moon in the history of Night Swimmers. Maybe it was a sign.

Here was how Night Swimmers began:

When Kayla was twenty-two years old and new to Nantucket and didn’t know a soul, she rented a room in a cottage on Hooper Farm Road for the summer. The cottage was small and poorly constructed, but she had just finished living in a dorm at UMass, so to her, the cottage was a castle. Also renting rooms in that cottage were Valerie Mclntyre and Antoinette Riley. Like Kayla, Valerie was just out of college, and headed to law school at NYU. Val wanted to take law school by storm-impress the professors, date the smartest guy in her section, and land a job with Skadden, Arps in New York City. She wanted Law Review and a year clerking for Judge Sechrist on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. All this so she could one day get married, have children, and open her own practice on Nantucket. Kayla admired Valerie’s ambition; she admired her plans. Kayla had no plans other than to buy a bicycle and find a job and maybe a boyfriend and go where the summer took her.

Antoinette was three years older than Kayla and Val; she was dark-skinned like an Egyptian priestess. That was one of two things Antoinette told them about herself on the day she moved in. “Three quarters African American, one quarter French Huguenot. My maternal grandmother was the Huguenot. Now you know, so you can quit gawking.”

Kayla never imagined having a black roommate. But she was thrilled. Valerie, who was into her self-help books even then, said to Kayla, “There is one big difference between us and Antoinette, and it has nothing to do with skin color. You and I are fusers. We like other people. But Antoinette, she’s an isolator. She prefers to be by herself.”

It seemed true: Kayla and Valerie were fast friends. They each got jobs in town. Kayla worked at Murray’s Toggery peddling Lilly Pulitzer skirts and Top-Siders, and Valerie sold tiny gold lightship baskets at a jewelry store. They spent their free days on Nobadeer Beach, and their free nights doing the bump at the Chicken Box. Kayla reveled in the new friendship, but she felt uncomfortable excluding Antoinette. It did feel like a racial issue-the two white girls leaving the black girl at home. And so, Kayla invited Antoinette everywhere-to the movies, to the bars, to the beach. Antoinette always declined in the same taut, definitive way. “No.” And then, as an afterthought, “Thanks.”

Antoinette didn’t have a job that summer; she was spending her time “recovering.” That was the other thing she told them when she first moved in: She had come to Nantucket to recover. Recover from what? It was an endless source of speculation between Kayla and Valerie. Antoinette wasn’t a recovering alcoholic-she purchased cold chablis at the liquor store, poured it into one of the Waterford goblets she had brought to Nantucket, and drank alone in her room. She wasn’t a recovering drug addict- when Kayla and Valerie lit up a joint before they went out to the Chicken Box, Antoinette would poke her head out of her bedroom and ask if she could have a toke. They pushed the dope on her eagerly, hoping it would make her talk, but it shut her up even more. After smoking, Antoinette’s eyelids drooped, her mouth clamped shut, and she retreated back to her room, arms crossed over her chest.

Antoinette was a dancer. She wore black leotards and dirty pink ballet slippers, and every once in a while, Kayla found her in the backyard spinning and leaping and moving her arms in a way that reminded Kayla of an elephant’s trunk. Antoinette danced until her leotard was soaked with sweat, and when she finished, she downed a jug of water, wiped her face off with a towel, and looked around the backyard as if she’d just stepped off a bus in a strange town.

One time Antoinette noticed Kayla peeking at her from the open kitchen window, and Kayla felt like she’d been caught watching Antoinette undress or something. “Part of your recovery?” Kayla asked meekly.

Antoinette did not respond.

Kayla remembered that first summer on Nantucket vividly. As soon as she stepped off the ferry she knew she’d found her spiritual home. The island was peaceful, simple, the historic home of Quakers and Native Americans. Kayla loved the colors of Nantucket: the gray of cedar shingles, the blue of the sky reflected across the harbor, the green of the dune grass, the red of ripe tomatoes in the back of the Bartlett’s farm truck. But what made Nantucket special was the people. In mid-July, Kayla met Raoul at the Chicken Box, but their relationship didn’t grow serious until the fall. That first summer, Kayla immersed herself in life with her two roommates, the one who liked her and the one who didn’t. Kayla tried everything in her power to draw out Antoinette-she made a fancy dinner and set the table with three places. Candles, Chablis, marinated swordfish; she even went so far as to slide an invitation under Antoinette’s bedroom door. Dinner party here! Tonight! the invitation said. Please come as you are! Seven o’clock! At quarter to seven, Antoinette slid the invitation back out. No! it said. Thanks! Kayla and Val ate the swordfish and drank two bottles of Chablis by themselves.

“I don’t know why you try so hard,” Val said. “She’s obviously a mental case.”

Right before Labor Day that first summer, a heat wave hit. Walter Cronkite announced on the evening news that Nantucket Island was the most comfortable location on the eastern seaboard, and immediately people from Boston, New York, and D.C. flocked to the island. But even Nantucket was hot and sticky, and when Kayla stood in the close, un-air-conditioned showroom of Murray’s folding and refolding the Shetland sweaters they’d ordered for autumn, she felt like crying. It was hard to ride her bike, it was hard to lift her hands above her head, and it was impossible to sleep.

One night during the worst of it, she rose from bed and went into the kitchen, dug into a half gallon of Rocky Road, and lit up a joint. She heard footsteps, and she expected Valerie to appear, but instead, Antoinette walked into the kitchen, completely nude. Kayla tried to hide her surprise. One of the things she and Valerie had agreed on was that no matter how strange the things Antoinette did were, they would not act shocked.

“Kayla,” she said.

Kayla handed Antoinette the joint, trying not to stare at her dark pubic hair, her purplish nipples. “It’s hot,” Kayla said.

Antoinette inhaled the smoke and after a moment let it go. “You got that right.”

“I couldn’t sleep.”

Antoinette looked at Kayla then, and Kayla got the feeling it was the first time Antoinette had ever really seen her. “Let’s swim,” Antoinette said.

They woke Val, and the three of them climbed into Antoinette’s CJ7, a great old Jeep that Kayla and Valerie had both admired but never ridden in. Kayla thought they would go to Steps Beach, where the water was calm, or possibly to Surfside or No-badeer, which were close to the house, but Antoinette was driving-still nude-and when she took unfamiliar roads, Kayla said nothing. They headed out Polpis Road, where Kayla sometimes rode her bike, and took a left toward Wauwinet. They continued down a road with a lot of trees-Kayla could remember thinking that nowhere else on Nantucket had she seen so many trees-and then Antoinette pulled onto the shoulder, turned off the Jeep, and got out of the car. They were sitting in complete darkness amid the chattering of crickets. Valerie pressed her fingertips into Kayla’s shoulder blade, and Kayla knew what she was thinking: Now we’ve done it Antoinette’s deserting us here. Or worse, she’s going to march us back into those woods and shoot us. Then Kayla heard a hissing sound and she leaned over the driver side and peered out the window. She saw, through the darkness, the even darker form of Antoinette, crouched down, letting air out of the tires.

That was Kayla’s first time up the beach to Great Point, the tip of Nantucket, the beginning and end of the island. It was the first time she’d driven over sand at all-the Jeep bounced and jiggled over bumps and in and out of ruts, and Antoinette’s breasts jiggled, too. Kayla watched as Antoinette gripped the steering wheel, eyes straight ahead. They said nothing.

Antoinette stopped out past Great Point lighthouse. There was no moon that year, but there were billions of stars, and the kind of distinct Milky Way you could see only when you were a hundred miles away from the nearest city. When they stepped out of the Jeep, they were surrounded by water on three sides, with the lighthouse behind them like a stately guard. A division was visible in the water: a current pushing toward the sound, a current pushing toward the ocean. The foam on the waves was iridescent For a moment, Kayla forgot it was hot.

She and Valerie stripped, and the three of them waded into the water and fell backwards. Chill. That’s the best way to describe the sensation: sweet and chill. Kayla’s life at that moment was all about the temperature of that water, the relief, the beauty of it. She could have stayed there forever.

Maybe Antoinette was feeling the same way, because as she floated on her back, she began to tell them things.

“I got married three years ago,” she said. “A year ago I became pregnant, and while I was pregnant, I found my husband cheating on me. I had a baby girl, but I gave her away.”

Kayla kept treading water, and Valerie, somewhere near her, did the same. Because it was dark, they didn’t have to worry about the expressions on their faces: shock, horror, and perverse interest.

“You were married?” Kayla asked. That explained the Waterford goblet, at least. “You had a baby?”

“Was. Had.” Antoinette spoke to the sky. “All past.”

“So that’s what you’re recovering from, then?” Kayla said.

“Recovering, yeah. That’s the bullshit I told myself when I got here. But if this summer’s taught me anything, it’s that I’m never going to recover. I have these dreams, you know, nightmares, where I hear my baby crying and I’m searching through a big house, but behind each door instead of finding my baby I find my husband having sex with different women.”

“Why did you give away your baby?” Val asked.

“After she was born I tried to kill myself,” Antoinette said. “I took pills. My neighbor found me and I was hospitalized and social services took the baby. But in the end, I decided to put her up for adoption.”

“Because?”

“Because,” Antoinette said, like it was obvious. “Because I can barely live with my own pain. Taking care of someone else, being that responsible, you know, for another person’s welfare, I’m just not healthy enough. I want to be able to kill myself if that’s what I decide.”

“Please don’t decide that,” Val said. “Don’t kill yourself over a man. They’re not worth it.”

Antoinette kicked her feet. “He wasn’t just some man. He was my husband. Not that I expect either of you to understand.”

“I understand,” Kayla said, though of course she didn’t. But she sensed in herself the power to understand someday, and she realized the magnitude of Antoinette’s confidence. “Thank you for telling us. We thought you didn’t like us.”

“I don’t want friends,” Antoinette said. “Nothing against you personally. I just don’t have the energy. Besides, in a couple of weeks you’re leaving. You’ll go back to your lives; you’ll forget I even exist.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Kayla said. She didn’t realize the words were true until she spoke them. “I’m staying here on Nantucket.”

“I’m leaving for law school,” Val said. “But I’ll be back. Next summer I’ll be back. We can come up here again. We can tell more secrets.”

“I might be dead next summer,” Antoinette said.

“No,” Kayla said. “Don’t say that.”

“You have no idea how I feel,” Antoinette said. “You have no idea how much effort it takes to survive each day.”

“Telling us the truth is a really crucial step,” Val said. “That’s why you brought us up here in the first place. You wanted us to know what happened. You wanted to share.”

Antoinette almost smiled, but instead she dipped her head back and came up spouting water from her mouth. “You white women,” she said. “Share is your middle name. You two can’t even go to the bathroom by yourselves.”

“Friends are important for personal growth,” Val said.

“I lost the only two people who meant anything to me,” Antoinette said. “It’s not like I can replace them.”

Kayla swam over to Antoinette and took her hand. Val joined them, and the three formed a circle in the water.

“We can’t replace them,” Kayla said. “But I agree with Val. I think we should come back here every summer.”

“I don’t know if I’ll make it to next summer,” Antoinette said.

“You’ll make it,” Val said.

“We’ll see to it,” Kayla said.

“I don’t want you future Junior Leaguers on my charity case,” Antoinette said. “You hear me? Don’t knock on my door in the middle of the night to check if I’m still alive.”

“Of course not,” Kayla said.

“And like I said, I don’t want friends.”

“We’ll be better than friends,” Kayla said. She was sucked into the idea immediately: Great Point at midnight, the stars, the chill water, three women sharing the secrets of their souls. “We’ll be the Night Swimmers.”

Kayla picked up Valerie first because she lived closer, on Pleasant Street, near Fahey & Fromagerie. Her house was smaller than Kayla’s, but more attractive-gambrel-style, like a barn, with neat hunter green shutters, pink geraniums in the window boxes, and a healthy violet-blue hydrangea bush on either side of the front door. Two cars in the driveway: Val’s slick, sexy BMW convertible and her husband’s quieter black Jaguar. Race cars, the cars of professionals who could afford landscapers and a cleaning lady, the cars of people without children. After that first summer on Nantucket, Val had accomplished most of what she set out to do: Law Review, clerking for Judge Sechrist, a job as an associate at Skadden, Arps in New York, where she met and married John Gluckstern, a Wall Street superstar. Within five years they had enough money to leave Manhattan behind and move to Nantucket year-round. Val set up her own law practice in an office overlooking the Easy Street Boat Basin. She was tremendously successful, handling all the biggest real estate deals on the island.

John worked as an investment adviser at Nantucket Bank, a job he took so he could meet other islanders with money to invest. Kayla and Raoul had been to see John twice-once when they set up Raoul’s business and then again in June, when Raoul landed the Ting job. John wore a three-piece suit to work, and at first that made one think that John was no different professionally from how he was socially: a self-important, puffed-up jackass. John had run for local office four times and had never been elected. He was unlikable. He was a one-upper, and he didn’t listen. But what Kayla found after going to see him at work was that in his job, he was different. He was eager and excited and friendly, and although he knew everything in the world there was to know about money and investing, he wasn’t pushy. He explained options to Raoul and Kayla carefully, he asked pertinent questions about the kids’ college educations, and he let them make their own choices-choices that made them feel confident, smart, successful.

After their second visit with John at the bank, Kayla wanted to gently suggest to Val that if John treated his friends and neighbors the way he treated his clients, he’d be better liked. But by that point, Val had lost interest in making John seem less reprehensible. Back in April, John ran for selectman for the fourth time and garnered only sixty-seven votes. Val called Kayla from the high school cafeteria in tears, and Kayla went to pick her up. It was a rainy night, and the two of them drove out to die deserted parking lot of Surfside Beach. The rain was so heavy that Kayla couldn’t even see the ocean through the windshield. Val sopped up her tears and slugged coffee and Kahlúa from a thermos that Kayla had brought. Val talked about how humiliating it was to have received only 67 votes when the winner got over 1,300.

“John doesn’t even see what that means,” Val said. “He doesn’t understand that nobody likes us.”

“Everybody likes you,” Kayla insisted, though she knew this wasn’t true. Some people didn’t like Val- they thought she was too uptight for Nantucket, too tough for a woman. She was wealthy, she was powerful, she intimidated people. But Kayla defended Val against the people who muttered bitch or dyke when Val’s name came up in conversation. Val was Kayla’s first friend on the island; she’d known her longer than she’d known Raoul. Still, Kayla was well aware that Val didn’t help John at all in the polls.

“I feel this deadly combination of disgust and pity for John,” Val said. “Actual pity for him because running for office is his passion. How do I ask my husband to stop pursuing his dream? Do I just say, “Honey, please give up your aspirations, you’re embarrassing me’? Is that what I say? Maybe it is. Because I can’t handle another loss like tonight.”

Six weeks later, when Kayla and Val met for coffee at Espresso Cafe, Val told Kayla she was having an affair. Her passions, she said, lay elsewhere.

Valerie came out of her house holding the largest bottle of champagne Kayla had ever seen. It was almost as big as Luke; the cork was level with Valerie’s head, and the bottom of the bottle was at her waist. Kayla flung open the car door.

“What have you got there?” she asked.

“It’s a Methuselah of Laurent-Perrier,” Val said. She set the bottle down on the seat between them. “I brought it back from France for this very occasion. They had an absolute fit in customs, but they made an exception when I told them it was for Night Swimmers.”

“You don’t suppose we’ll drink all that?” Kayla said.

Val shrugged. “We have a lot to celebrate after twenty years. I’m finally happy, you’re finally rich-”

“I’m not rich,” Kayla said.

“You will be soon enough,” Val said. She closed her door, and Kayla backed out of the driveway. “It’s okay to have money, Kayla, though I know you don’t believe it.”

“I think it’s okay,” Kayla said defensively. “In fact, I think it’s fine.”

Val shook her short hair. She wore a pressed white linen shirt that was so crisp it looked like parchment, and baggy linen pants the color of wheat bread. Beige suede Fratelli Rossetti sandals. She was deeply tanned (from sunbathing nude every weekend at Miacomet Beach), and she wore three gold chains around her neck that were as thin as strands of web. Those chains were her signature jewelry, she said. They defined who she was. Kayla cringed when Val said things like “signature jewelry” in public because it just gave people another reason to dislike her. Who on earth had signature jewelry? Princess Diana? Zsa Zsa Gabor?

As if reading Kayla’s mind, Val fingered her chains. “Did you talk to Antoinette?” she asked.

“I did.”

“How did she sound?”

“She sounded fine.” Kayla threw the car into reverse and backed out of the driveway. “Why do you ask?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Val said. “We had lunch last week, and she seemed a little reflective.”

“You had lunch?” Kayla said. “You didn’t tell me that.”

Val shrugged. “It was no big deal. It was just lunch.”

“Yeah, but you could have…” Kayla almost said “invited me along,” but she caught herself. “You could have mentioned it.”

“I also had lunch with Merrill and Kelly. I also had lunch with Nina Monroe.”

“Yeah, but those are your friends.”

“Antoinette is my friend. Please, Kayla, don’t get sensitive about this. It was only lunch.”

“You’re right,” Kayla said. She couldn’t help but feel jealous in the most adolescent way-there was no reason why Val and Antoinette shouldn’t have lunch alone. No reason why they shouldn’t pursue a friendship independent of her. But, in fact, Kayla had always believed that she was the glue that held Val and Antoinette together; she was closer to both of them than they were to each other. “So she sounded reflective?”

“Yes,” Val said. “Has she told you anything?”

Kayla considered mentioning Antoinette’s daughter, if only to prove that she had some inside information first, but she shook her head. The announcement about the daughter could wait until midnight, when Night Swimmers officially began.

The Night Swimmers had evolved over the past twenty years into an evening of rules and rituals. It was a rule to eat decadent food-lobsters, cheese, berries. It was a rule to drink champagne. And it was a time to share secrets, like the one Antoinette had shared with them twenty years earlier.

As Kayla drove through the moonlit night toward Antoinette’s house, she thought about the secrets she’d shared over the past years. She’d told Val and Antoinette all the secrets from her past-about sneaking out in the middle of the night to meet a high school boyfriend at a disco, cheating on a chemistry test in college, stealing a pair of duck shoes from Murray’s when she worked there her first summer. She told them one year that she was pregnant with Cassidy B.-before Raoul even knew. Val and Antoinette’s secrets were always more interesting than her own. Val told about sleeping with a professor to get on Law Review, she told about a bank account abroad that she kept a secret from John, she told them she overcharged one of her best clients on a regular basis. Antoinette told about being cut from the Joffrey Ballet School when she lived in New York before she was married, she told about how her mother ran out on her when Antoinette was at boarding school in New Hampshire.

This year Antoinette would tell about her daughter coming to visit, and Val would disclose the name of her lover. Kayla-well, Kayla would talk about Theo. The three women would accept each other’s secrets like valuable gifts to be kept safe from the rest of the world.

Antoinette lived off Polpis Road down a long, bumpy dirt path bordered on both sides by scrub pines. Antoinette bought the land with a portion of her enormous divorce settlement, and she hired Raoul to build her four-room cottage. She invested her set dement with John Gluckstern in the early eighties, and he bought her a load of Microsoft at two dollars a share. Val had let it slip that Antoinette now had close to thirty million dollars. She was worth more than Kayla and Raoul and Val and John put together, but her lifestyle required very little. She danced, she went for walks in the woods, she drank chardonnay, she read novels. It sounded enviable at first-Antoinette had enough money to do whatever she pleased, and what she pleased was to go for days, even weeks, without talking to another soul. She had claimed twenty years earlier that she didn’t want friends, but over time she had given in to Kayla and Val in small ways. She joined them for an occasional meal, she sometimes remembered their birthdays, she called just to talk every once in a while. Her desire to kill herself subsided, although she experienced dark periods when she didn’t eat, didn’t dance, didn’t leave the house. The dark periods lasted a few days, maybe a week, and then they ended and Antoinette went back to what she did best, cultivating her loneliness. “I’m lonely all the time, every day,” she told Kayla. “But there are far worse things than being lonely. Like being betrayed.”

Once a year Antoinette opened herself fully to Kayla and Val, she played their game, she returned their love. Every year Kayla worried that Antoinette would withdraw from Night Swimmers, deem it silly and worthless, but she never did. Deep down, Antoinette respected the bond they’d nurtured for twenty years.

Antoinette emerged from her cottage dressed entirely in black: black leotard, black leggings, and her vintage black Chuck Taylor basketball shoes. She was a woman in permanent mourning.

“I come bearing crustaceans,” she said, sliding a plastic tub of lobsters covered with aluminum foil into the backseat. She touched both Kayla and Val on the shoulders. “Hello, white women.”

“Hello, you beautiful black woman, you,” Val said. “When are you going to brighten your wardrobe? I’m reading this book about positive self-image, and it said other people respond to the colors you wear. They tie it right in with your personality.”

“I think Antoinette looks lovely in black,” Kayla said.

“Thank you,” Antoinette said. “It’s been a long time since I’ve been called lovely. Beautiful, sexy, reclusive, yes. Lovely, no. Lovely seems better suited to describing a summer day, or a bride. Lovely is a poem by Robert Frost. I view myself as a Gwendolyn Brooks poem. Something grittier, more complicated. Do you want to reconsider your choice of adjective, Kayla?”

“No,” Kayla said. “I don’t. I find you lovely.”

“I should read more poetry,” Val said. “I don’t even know who Gwendolyn Brooks is.”

“I smell Coco Chanel,” Antoinette said. “Is that you, Kayla?”

“What can I say? Women are the only ones who appreciate perfume. I don’t know why I bother to waste the stuff on Raoul.”

“What’s this?” Antoinette asked, inspecting the champagne.

“It’s for our twentieth anniversary,” Val said. “I wanted to do something special.”

“Val brought it back from France,” Kayla said. “She was thinking of Night Swimmers as she toured the Champagne region.”

“Well, thank you, madam,” Antoinette said. “I’m sure tonight will be a night we’ll remember for the rest of our lives.” She pointed to the blue numbers of the car’s digital clock. “It’s eleven-forty-seven, ladies. We’d better get a move on.”

Kayla drove down the Wauwinet Road, past the gatehouse, and onto the crooked finger of land that stuck out into Nantucket Sound. Great Point. It was so secluded, so remote, it was Nantucket’s only real destination, the place year-round islanders went when they wanted to get away, when they wanted to feel like they’d been somewhere.

Kayla cruised along the shoreline a good ten feet above the water line. The tide was going out, the water silvery in the moonlight, and Kayla had a feeling that this silence would be the best part of the evening. This peaceful coexistence.

She parked in the usual spot, beyond Great Point lighthouse. “Here we are.”

They sprang into action. Val. grabbed the bottle of champagne by the neck as though it were an unruly child and dragged it onto the sand. Kayla turned around to greet Antoinette. Antoinette’s frizzy dark hair was pulled back in a rubber band, and she had something green on her lip. Kayla reached out to wipe it off, exactly the way Jacob had reached for the potato chip that afternoon on the job site, but Antoinette recoiled from Kayla like a serpent, a wild look in her eye.

Kayla retracted her hand. “You have something on your lip.”

Antoinette wiped at her mouth defensively.

“Sorry,” Kayla said. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

“You didn’t frighten me, Kayla,” Antoinette said, and she smiled. “I’m just feeling a little guarded about my personal space.”

Because of her daughter coming, Kayla thought. The daughter whose existence had explained so much twenty years earlier.

“It’s eleven-fifty-eight, people,” Val said. “Let’s hurry.”

Kayla pulled a blanket out of the back of the Trooper and spread it in the sand. Val wrangled the wrapper and cage off the champagne. Kayla set out the cooler that held the cheese, the berries, and three champagne glasses. Antoinette plopped the tub of lobsters down, and Kayla handed Antoinette a chilled glass. Valerie let the cork fly out of the Methuselah with a deep, resounding thwop! The cork sailed toward the water.

Val poured the champagne. The three women raised their glasses. In the moonlight, bubbles rose to the surface of the flutes.

Val checked her watch. “Okay, ladies, it’s… midnight! Say it, Kayla.”

Kayla addressed the ocean. “To the night, to the water that surrounds us, to the island of Nantucket, and to our friendship. These things are eternal.”

“Eternal,” Val said.

“Eternal,” Antoinette said.

“Your secrets,” Kayla said, “are safe with me.”

“And safe with me,” Val said.

“And safe with me,” Antoinette said.

They drank the first glass of champagne all the way down-and the golden rush that went to Kayla’s head encouraged her. This part of the ritual always made her feel wild and daring-a nearly overweight, nearly middle-aged mother of four buzzed on champagne at Great Point at midnight. It made her feel exciting things were possible. They set their glasses carefully in the sand and joined hands. Val’s hand was warm and moist, like the hand of a preschooler, and Antoinette’s hand was dry and bony, like a bunch of sticks. They walked in a circle. “Our friendship… no beginning… no end,” Kayla said under her breath. Then they dropped their asses onto the blanket, and Val poured more champagne. Night Swimmers had begun.

It took only one more glass of champagne to make Val antsy about her secret. She cleared her throat, sucked in a deep, dramatic breath, and said, “I can’t wait another second. You know I’ve been seeing someone, a man, not my husband-I’ve been sleeping with someone. And I’m ready to tell you who it is. Now I don’t want you to freak out, okay? Especially not you, Kayla. You won’t freak out on me, will you?”

The muscles around Kayla’s heart steeled themselves for a blow. Why did Val think she would freak out? Was Val going to say Raoul’s name? Kayla dug her feet into the cool sand as she remembered the year when her secret had been this: I think Raoul is having an affair. This was back when Luke was a toddler and Kayla was still fighting to lose the weight she’d gained while carrying him. Her first suspicion was about Missy Tsoulakis. A picture of Missy popped into Kayla’s mind: her nineteen-year old blondness, her tennis skirt with matching bloomers that peeked out when she bent over to pick up a ball. Missy had taught Jennifer tennis at the “Sconset Casino, and Raoul had always been the one to drop Jennifer off and pick her up. He’d insisted on it. Once when Kayla happened to show up, he was engrossed in the tennis lesson, his fingers wound through the wire fence like claws as he watched them. Missy’s strong tan arms were wrapped around Jennifer, showing her how to execute the perfect backhand. Kayla felt the air being pressed out of her lungs as she watched Raoul watch Missy. He loves her, she thought. He’s obsessed with her. Kayla felt fat and dowdy-and unbearably matronly in her station wagon with Luke in the car seat in back. She drove past the courts and headed home, thinking of how the first thing she would do was cancel Jennifer’s tennis lessons, and the second thing was go on a diet, and start walking like the other women in her neighborhood. Raoul and Missy Tsoulakis. That night, she asked Raoul if her suspicions were true and he said, “She’s a girl, Kayla. Are you crazy?”

Antoinette nudged Kayla with her foot, and she snapped back to life.

“Speak, Val,” Antoinette said. “Confess.”

Valerie sipped her champagne with excruciating slowness, prolonging the dramatic moment. She wiped the lipstick smudge from her glass. “It’s Jacob Anderson,” she said.

“Jacob Anderson,” Kayla repeated. “Jacob, who works for Raoul?”

“Yes.”

Antoinette drained her champagne. “Jacob Anderson. That name rings a bell. Do I know Jacob Anderson?”

“He’s on Raoul’s crew,” Kayla said. “You know him, Antoinette. Dark hair, green eyes, a real sweet-talker.”

“Excuse me?” Val said.

Kayla thought of Jacob reaching out and touching her lip. How sure she’d been that he was going to kiss her. She had wanted him to, she realized now. She had wanted Jacob Anderson to kiss her-and so a part of her was stung by this news. A part of her did want to rebel against it. Valerie was sleeping with Jacob. He was her secret.

“He has a very sexual nature,” Kayla said. “He’s about thirty, he drives a blue-and-white Bronco.”

“He’s thirty-two,” Valerie said. “Antoinette doesn’t know him.”

“I know him,” Antoinette said. “He helped Raoul build my house.” She looked at Val. “Congratulations.”

“Thank you,” Val said. She poured herself another glass of champagne. “We’re in love.”

“You’re in love?” Kayla said.

“What?” Val said. “I’m not allowed to be in love with Jacob Anderson?”

“Of course you’re allowed,” Kayla said. “It’s just… Oh, I don’t know.”

“You do know,” Val said. “You think it’s silly. You think he’s too young.”

“There’s no such thing as too young when you’re a woman over forty,” Antoinette said. She kicked off her Chuck Taylors, peeled off her leggings and leotard until she was nude before them in the moonlight. “Now I don’t know what you ladies came here for, but I came to swim. I’m going in.”

“Me, too,” Kayla said. She slid out of her sweats and her T-shirt. She examined her own naked body, but she knew how different she looked from Antoinette and Val. Antoinette had a ballerina’s body: tall, slender, and lithe. Statuesque. Val was more muscular-lifting free weights in her office was no joke-her arms were perfectly toned and she had a teeny-tiny little butt that probably fit into one of Jacob Anderson’s hands. Kayla, in comparison, was thick-full, droopy breasts, rounded belly, dimpled thighs. She tried not to get discouraged by this.

Valerie pried off her sandals. “You guys aren’t happy for me,” she said.

“I’m happy for you,” Kayla said. “I’m glad it’s Jacob. I like Jacob.”

Val unbuttoned her crisp white shirt. “You’re not angry?”

“Why would I be angry?” Kayla asked.

“I don’t know,” Val said. “I’m just so happy, and I want you to be happy, too.”

“I’m happy!” Kayla said. It was difficult not to feel like everyone’s mother when the people around her acted like children. “You have my blessing. Really.”

They heard a splash and turned to see Antoinette plunge into the water. Kayla and Val hurried in behind her.

The water was the perfect foil for Val’s news. Soft waves rolled over Kayla’s shoulders. Her anger and confusion subsided. She didn’t wonder about the trajectory her thoughts had taken in the last ten minutes-why she felt Val was going to say Raoul’s name, why she felt a pinch of jealousy when Val said Jacob’s name instead. She didn’t consider these things. Or rather, she considered them and then let them go, like Luke letting go of the string of his purple balloon that afternoon. Kayla concentrated on the simple perfection of the water, the moonlight, the lighthouse, the Methuselah of champagne. Swimming with her two dear friends.

Antoinette dived and surfaced like a dolphin, her dark hair sleek against her head. “My daughter arrives tomorrow,” she said.

She obviously said this for Val’s benefit, since Kayla already knew. But Val was quiet. Antoinette went under again.

“Did you hear Antoinette’s secret?” Kayla asked Val. “Her daughter arrives tomorrow. The daughter she gave up for adoption.”

Val was bobbing in the waves; Antoinette was the only one of the three of them who actually swam. Val shrugged. She didn’t seem surprised at all.

Antoinette surfaced.

“Start at the beginning,” Kayla said. “When did she call you?”

“Wednesday night,” Antoinette said.

“And what did she say? Did she… did she introduce herself?”

“Obviously.”

“Well, I mean, did she say, “Hi, I’m Lindsey, your daughter’?”

“Something like that.”

“Lindsey wasn’t what you named her, though, was it?”

“I didn’t give her a name at all,” Antoinette said. She dived under and stayed below water a long time. Kayla got the message: Antoinette didn’t want to talk about it. Kayla tried to imagine what it would be like to be in Antoinette’s place. A daughter she’d given away. What if the daughter looked just like the husband? It was too bittersweet, too powerful. You’d want to see the girl more than anything else, your own child, but it would be scary, too. All the emotion Antoinette had escaped twenty years ago would come walking across the tarmac tomorrow.

“What are you going to do with your daughter?” Kayla asked. “Do you have plans?”

“No plans,” Antoinette said.

“What are you going to say to her?” Kayla asked. “What are you going to tell her?”

“I’ll answer her questions,” Antoinette said. “I explained the basic story to her over the phone.”

“Will we get to meet her?” Kayla asked.

“I’m busy this weekend,” Val said. “With Jacob.”

“I want to meet her,” Kayla said.

“Maybe you can pick her up at the airport and take her to your house,” Antoinette said. “Maybe you could pretend you’re her mother, Kayla. I’m sure she’d be happier with you.”

“Come on, Antoinette.”

“No, I’m serious,” Antoinette said. “Why don’t you take her?”

“You are the consummate parent, Kayla,” Val said, playing with the chains at her neck. In the moonlight they looked like strands of golden thread. “The perfect mother of four perfect children. We agreed on that at lunch the other day.”

Kayla pictured Val and Antoinette sitting together at lunch-at 21 Federal or the Galley-someplace expensive and elegant. She was more than just jealous, more than just hurt at not being asked along. She was angry that they had talked about her. “Shut up,” Kayla said. “Just shut up.”

She swam to shore with some difficulty, because the tide was going out and waves kept washing her backwards. She struggled back to the beach, where she buried her face in one of the towels she’d brought-it was scratchy and dry and smelled like Bounce. She toweled her body and hair and stepped into her clothes. Her heart was beating wildly. Why was she so angry? She wondered if this was how Theo felt-consumed with unreasonable anger, with rage that seemed to come from nowhere. Or maybe she was so angry because of Theo. Because her friends were telling her that she was the perfect mother, and she knew they were being sincere. Antoinette gave her child up, and Val had no children- they had left the mothering to Kayla. Kayla had spent her adult life doing the best job that she possibly could, and yet when she thought about Theo, she knew she had failed. Her oldest child was a brilliant, blazing example of how she had failed.

Kayla unwedged her purse from underneath the front seat of the car. She rummaged through it until she found the bottle of Ativan Dr. Donahue had prescribed, and she put a pill under her tongue. Then she poured herself another glass of champagne and swallowed the pill, thinking that she would go to the airport tomorrow and spy on Antoinette and her daughter. She would witness the awkwardness between them, the inevitable disappointment when they saw each other’s faces-and maybe that would give her some small, mean satisfaction, watching Antoinette fail, too.

Val and Antoinette emerged from the water, dried off, and wrapped themselves in their towels. Kayla poured them each another glass of champagne, and without conversation, the three of them started in on their feast: Kayla pulled lobster meat free of the scarlet shell and dipped it indiscriminately into the melted butter, she smeared hunks of baguette with the Saint André, and she popped raspberries into her mouth like bonbons. The food was so delicious that Kayla started to cry. It was the Ativan kicking in. Soon, she was sniffling and sobbing, and Val and Antoinette stared at her. She poured herself another glass of champagne, then one for Val and Antoinette.

“Did I say something that upset you, Kayla?” Val said.

“It’s not you,” Kayla said, reaching for another hunk of baguette. She was feeling light-headed and drunk. “I guess it’s time for me to tell my secret. It’s about Theo.”

There was a spectacular silence. She was coherent enough to notice that-a silence that was different from quiet, different from lack of conversation. She raised her head and watched Val and Antoinette exchange a look.

“What about Theo?” Val asked.

“Something’s happened to him,” Kayla said. “He’s changed. He hates me, he hates his brother and sisters, he even hates Raoul. He’s turned vile and disgusting and scary.” Then she remembered something she had been trying to erase from her mind since the moment she discovered it, a week before. “He drove his Jeep through my garden.” The words sounded pale and insufficient for what had happened. Kayla woke up one morning and found her garden ruined. Every single vegetable, herb, and flower had been buried in a Crosshatch of deep ruts. Theo had run the Jeep back and forth until every plant was torn to bits, every vegetable smashed. And he made no move to hide it: the tires of his Jeep were muddy. He’d had the gall to park the Jeep in the driveway with muddy tires. It was then she knew that her child hated her, because that garden was her project, it was her avocation, it was hers and hers alone. Raoul didn’t even notice anything wrong. “It took me three days to dig everything up, to get it cleaned out. The whole thing is gone. He stole it from me.”

After a second, Val turned to Antoinette. “Well, what do you think of that?” Antoinette said, “He’s a teenager, Kayla. He’ll get over it.”

They drank more champagne. They finished the lobsters and the cheese and the berries. Kayla leaned back in the sand and closed her eyes. The Ativan was working its magic. Val and Antoinette spoke words that made no sense, a code. Or maybe the words made sense but just not to her because she was asleep; maybe the words got jumbled up with a dream she was having. Kayla dreamt that the string of Luke’s purple balloon was wound around the legs of a baby seagull, and tangled, so that the bird couldn’t fly. The gull tried to fly and Kayla chased after it, wanting to cut the string. But she couldn’t get close enough.

Kayla heard herself snore, and she jolted awake. She reached instinctively for her glass of champagne, drank what was left, and filled it again, lifting the Methuselah with ease now. The huge bottle was half empty.

“What were you guys talking about while I was asleep?” Kayla asked. “Were you discussing what a bad mother I am?”

“You’re not a bad mother at all, Kayla,” Val said. “I’m sure whatever Theo’s problem is, it has nothing to do with you. You’re being too sensitive again.”

“What is it, then?”

Val patted her knee. “It’s school or something. Friends. A girlfriend.”

Kayla shook her head. “No, if it were that kind of thing he would have told Raoul. He tells Raoul everything.”

Antoinette interrupted them. “I have something to say. I have my secret to tell.”

“You already told your secret,” Kayla said. “About your daughter, remember? Only one secret per customer.”

“Maybe you should stop drinking, Kayla,” Val said. “It’s really bringing your emotions to the surface.”

“So what? I thought that’s what tonight was about. Letting it all hang loose.”

“I have a confession to make,” Antoinette said.

Kayla turned to her friend. Antoinette was looking at her in a meaningful way, and Kayla got an awful vibe. “Oh, God,” she said in a voice she didn’t recognize as her own. “Don’t tell me. Are you having an affair with Raoul? Are you screwing my husband?”

Antoinette sat perfectly still for a moment, staring at Kayla. Kayla stared back at first with accusatory fire, then with defensiveness, and finally with shame. She was ruining everything. But before Kayla could find the words to apologize, Antoinette rose and her towel fell away, exposing her beautiful dark body. Kayla thought she was going to drive off in the Trooper, leaving them there. Kayla wouldn’t have blamed her. But Antoinette didn’t get into the car. Instead, she put her arms out like she was holding an imaginary beach ball, and she pirouetted into the water. Kayla watched in a stupor; she was drunk. Antoinette swam straight out.

Kayla turned to Val. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

Val blinked. “Kayla, what is wrong with you?”

“I don’t know,” Kayla said.

Kayla waited for Antoinette’s dark head to surface so that she could call out an apology. She had no idea why those words escaped her lips-Are you screwing my husband? It was the Ativan talking, and the champagne, combined with the awful memory of Missy Tsoulakis. Even after nineteen years of marriage, Kayla was insecure-and especially when she saw forty-four-year-old women with incredible bodies like Antoinette’s and Val’s. But still, how dumb of her. Insensitive. And inappropriate for Night Swimmers. It was their twentieth anniversary, and she’d ruined it.

Kayla missed Antoinette surfacing; she was looking in the wrong place. Her mental clock ticked: How long was too long? The water was dappled by moonlight; it was all bright surfaces and dark troughs. After a minute, she stood up.

“Do you see her?”

Now Val was the one lying down with her eyes closed, probably off in dreamland with Jacob Anderson. “Do I see who?”

“Antoinette.” Kayla’s insides felt like they were filling up with something dark and syrupy. Foreboding. Fear. “I don’t see Antoinette,” she said. Her voice sounded calm; the Ativan reined her in.

“She’s swimming,” Val said.

“I don’t see her,” Kayla said. She walked closer to the water, which reflected the moonlight like a mirror. Was Antoinette out there floating on her back? “Antoinette, I’m sorry! Hey, I’m sorry! I’m stupid drunk. Please come out! Antoinette!”

Kayla looked around Great Point to the harbor side. The rip current was raised in the water like a scar.

“I don’t see her,” Kayla said.

Val sat up on the blanket. “What do you mean you don’t see her?”

“Do you see her?” Kayla asked. Panic grabbed Kayla-a child running out in the road, a piece of hard candy lodged in a throat-imminent danger.

Val joined her at the water’s edge. “Holy shit,” she said. “Antoinette!”

“Antoinette!” Kayla called. “Antoinette, please!”

No answer.

Kayla tore off her clothes and dived in. Val followed. Kayla wasn’t a strong swimmer, but she went underwater and opened her eyes. The water was greenish black, too dark to see a thing, and immediately she was terrified of this dark, silent world. Her eyes stung. She flailed her arms through the water hoping to hit something warm and familiar, a body, Antoinette’s body.

She surfaced but saw no sign of Val. “Val!” she screamed.

Val raised her head. “I’m over here!”

“Antoinette!” Kayla called. She went under again and batted her arms and legs in all directions. She could see nothing but water-so much dark water. Her children were home safe in their beds, dry, warm, her husband, too, and she was submerged in the Atlantic Ocean searching for Antoinette. Kayla broke the surface and tried to put her feet down, but the water was too deep. A wave crested over her; she came up coughing. The current pushed her out; water had gotten up her nose, and her whole face stung. A voice whispered in Kayla’s ears-a shushing that washed over her with each wave. The Ativan and the champagne wanted to slow her down, rock her to sleep. She could just close her eyes and let the waves carry her away. But she lifted her arms and started swimming back to shore, and as she did, she saw a figure crouched on the beach, and she allowed herself a moment of sweet relief until she saw that the figure was Val, hugging her knees, crying.

Kayla let the waves wash her up next to Val.

“Oh, Jesus God. Oh, sweet Jesus,” Val said. She looked at Kayla. “We have to get some help.”

This sounded right-get help-but Kayla couldn’t make her mind work properly. How would they get help?

“I’ll stay here,” Val said. “You go. Call the police from the Wauwinet gatehouse. Go right now.”

“I’m too drunk to drive,” Kayla said. Another Night Swimmers rule was that no one left the beach until sunrise, when they’d had enough time to sleep off the champagne. “And I took a sedative. I can’t go.”

“You have to go!” Val said. “I’m just as messed up as you, and it’s your car. You have to go, Kayla, right this second!”

Kayla moved heavily, like she was still underwater. She pulled on her clothes and floated over to her car. It smelled like lobster. She eased the car over the ruts in the sand and headed back toward the Wauwinet. She started convulsing with the cold; water ran down her back. Oh, God, she thought, please, please, please God. Why had Kayla said what she said? Her head swelled until it felt like it was the size of a watermelon. The dunes to her right grew larger. How would she make it to the phone? Kayla yanked on the steering wheel to get the Trooper to stay in the tracks. What if she got stuck? Everything blurred; the car bounced as Kayla tackled the dunes. Antoinette is going to be fine, Kayla thought. This is just a joke. She’s angry at me for saying something so stupid.

When Kayla reached the Wauwinet gatehouse, she grabbed a handful of change from the console of her car and ran to the pay phone. She stared at the receiver of the phone, and the buttons. Did 911 require money? Certainly not. But Kayla slid a quarter and a dime into the slot anyway and dialed her house. She needed to talk to Raoul.

After two rings, Theo answered the phone. “Hello.”

“Put Daddy on,” Kayla said. Her voice sounded calm, maybe tinged with low-grade anxiety, as if to say, / have a flat tire, or I’m stuck in the sand.

“Mom?” Theo said.

‘Theo, put Daddy on, please. It’s important.”

Theo hung up the phone.

Kayla thought, Call 911! But she put more change into the slot and dialed her house again. The phone rang until the answering machine picked up. Kayla called back a third time. After three rings, she heard the hoarse croak of Raoul and she burst into tears. Time was of the essence-she knew that-but it took Kayla several seconds to regain her voice enough to tell him that Antoinette went swimming and didn’t come back to shore.

“Where are you?” he asked.

“The Wauwinet.”

“Where’s Val?”

“Back at the Point”

“You’ve called the police?” he asked.

“Not yet”

“Well, call the fucking police, Kayla. Call 911,right now. I’ll call the fire department. Jesus, Kayla.”

“I want you to come out here,” Kayla wailed. “Leave the kids. They’ll sleep.”

“Call 911,” he said. “Do that one thing and then drive back out and wait with Val. Don’t go in the water, Kayla, do you hear me?”

He hung up and Kayla called 911. The dispatcher was a reedy-voiced woman-Charlotte, her name was. She had a daughter in Luke’s grade. Kayla told her there was a woman missing in the water off Great Point.

“This is Kayla Montero. I’m calling from the pay phone at the Wauwinet. This woman is a friend of mine. Can you send someone out right away?”

“We’ll send the Open Water Rescue Squad,” Charlotte said.

“And they’ll be able to find her? Even in the dark?”

“They’ll do their best,” Charlotte said.

Driving back out to Great Point, Kayla remembered Antoinette’s daughter, Lindsey. What if she showed up in the morning to find Antoinette missing? I’m sorry, but Antoinette’s missing. She danced into the water last night, and now she’s.… gone. Lindsey would blame herself. Because maybe Antoinette had disappeared on purpose to avoid this child of hers. Motherhood was firmly ensconced in Kayla, anchored like her soul in her body, but she could imagine what a terrific fear it might be for Antoinette to be faced with motherhood when she had rejected it so long ago. And Antoinette was just about to confess something. Maybe the confession was that she was planning to disappear for a few days, to ditch the daughter. This sounded cruel, not to mention unlikely, but Kayla liked it better than the thought that Kayla’s accusation had made Antoinette retreat to the water and that, once swimming, Antoinette was swept out to sea. Because then it would be Kayla’s fault.

By the time Kayla got back to the lighthouse, the approaching lights of a boat were visible. Val paced the beach wearing her white shirt and a beach towel tied around her waist. She had Antoinette’s Chuck Taylors on each of her hands and she banged the soles together like a child playing with blocks.

“She’s gone,” Val said. Her eyes were round and empty. “She just danced away.”

The remains of their picnic lay about. Kayla picked up the Methuselah and ran with it to the water’s edge, where she heaved it into the ocean.

“What are you doing?” Val said.

Kayla picked up the three champagne glasses and tossed them into the water as well; they shattered against the wet sand.

“It’s called destroying the evidence,” Kayla said. “You’re a lawyer, Val, you should know that.”

“We have nothing to hide,” Val said. “It’s not like we committed a crime here, Kayla.”

“We’re drunk!” Kayla screamed. “Antoinette was drunk!”

Kayla tossed the food and trash into the middle of the blanket and shoved it in the back of the Trooper. She loaded in the empty cooler. The lights of the boat got closer; she could hear the motor. She saw two more pairs of headlights driving up the beach. Please let that be Raoul, she thought.

“You’re crazy,” Val said. She ran to the water’s edge. “If they find that bottle, they’re going to think we’re guilty of something.”

Guilty of something. Kayla watched Val wade into the water and retrieve the Methuselah. Kayla hadn’t thrown it very far, and unlike Antoinette, the bottle had washed back to shore, whole and unharmed.

Soon, Great Point was swarming with men. How incongruous, Kayla thought, that their women-only ritual was being invaded by these foreign creatures. A true sign that something was wrong. And what did it say about her that she was relieved, happy even, to see all these men-the men in the coast guard who piloted the search boat, two men on WaveRunners, the men of the police and fire departments who arrived in their Suburbans with their lights flashing, and finally Raoul, who trundled up the beach in his red Chevy? He ran to her like a hero from the movies. Raoul was the luckiest man Kayla had ever met. Just his presence would help.

Paul Henry, a policeman Kayla had known for years, climbed out of one of the Suburbans. Paul was short and wiry, quietly intense. He dressed like a math teacher, or like Mr. Rogers, in cardigan sweaters and canvas sneakers, and he had a crew cut. Kayla asked him once if he’d ever been in the military. Navy, he said-but the crew cut he’d had since he was six years old, and he’d never seen any reason to change it.

“Kayla, Valerie,” Paul said. “Tell me what happened.”

“We were swimming,” Kayla said. “I mean, Val and I were sitting here on the beach and Antoinette danced into the water.”

“She what?”

“She danced into the water. She put her arms out like she was holding a ball, and then she pirouetted into the water. Look, here are her footprints.” Kayla showed him the deep gouges that Antoinette’s toes had left in the sand. “Once she started swimming, we lost track of her.”

Paul Henry pinched his lips together like he’d just eaten a bad clam. “Never, never swim up here without a spotter. At night, no less. It’s irresponsible. Because this is what can happen. This is the danger. Do you see that rip, Kayla?” Paul Henry pointed. “You know better than this. You’ve lived here, what, twenty years? You wouldn’t let your kids do it, and you shouldn’t be doing it yourself.”

“Paul,” Val piped up. “Scolding us now isn’t helping Antoinette.”

Kayla and Val walked with Paul Henry to the water line. The waves lapped over Kayla’s feet, and over the tops of Paul Henry’s canvas sneakers.

Val pointed to an imaginary spot in the dark sea. “I saw her out there.” “And she swam straight out?” Paul asked. “You’re sure?”

“Yes,” Val said.

“I’m not sure,” Kayla said. “Now I can’t remember where I saw her.”

“It was here,” Val said.

“What was she wearing?” Paul Henry asked. “Did she have anything on-a sweatshirt or anything- that might weigh her down?”

“She was nude,” Val said.

“Why in the world were you ladies out here in the middle of the night swimming nude?” Paul Henry said. “What was going on out here?”

“We come every year,” Kayla said. “For Night Swimmers.”

“Night Swimmers?”

“It’s a tradition,” Kayla said. “We’re always careful.”

“Well, not careful enough,” Paul Henry said. “Not tonight.” He radioed the coast guard boat. The boat had a roaming searchlight, there was more talk of the rip current, and they were all silent when someone on the coast guard boat cut through the radio static and said, “With a rip tide like this, a person could be washed out to sea in a matter of minutes.”

Jack Montalbano, the fire chief, approached them. He was a big, hearty Portuguese with a crushing handshake. His wife had died of ovarian cancer the year before, and Kayla hadn’t spoken to him since she’d dropped a roasted chicken off at his house after the funeral.

“Hi, Jack,” she said.

“We’ll find her,” he said, putting his arm around Kayla. “Don’t you worry. The boys will pull her out on the WaveRunners. They always do.”

“Thank you, Jack,” Kayla said. “We know you’re doing the best you can.”

Jack shook hands with Raoul. “Heard you’re working on the Ting house,” Jack said. “Heard that job is so big you have your own phone number for the site.”

Raoul shrugged. “Lots of job sites have their own phone numbers. You know how it is.”

Jack rubbed his hand over his black hair. He was in street clothes: a denim shirt, khaki pants. Jack’s wife, Janey, had been a secretary at the elementary school. She knew every kid’s name by heart, and she had always called when one of Kayla’s kids was sick or in trouble. “No, I don’t. I’m sure as hell not making any money off the wash-ashores the way some folks are. And these Tings, they’re Chinese, right?” Both Jack and Janey had been born and raised on the island; they were warm and kind people, although Jack was known to be close-minded about anyone who wasn’t a native Nantucketer. Round-the-pointers, wash-ashores-this was what he called the summer people and even folks like Kayla and Raoul, who’d lived here for twenty years.

“Does their ethnicity matter?” Raoul said.

“Jack, I want you to find my friend,” Kayla said.

“Rumor on the scanner has it that you ladies were out here fooling around.”

Rumors were everywhere on Nantucket, Kayla thought. Even the police scanner. “Depends what you mean by fooling around.”

“I mean drinking,” Jack said. “Drinking and swimming in waters that would be a challenge for a good swimmer, sober. It’s two o’clock in the morning, Kayla.”

“We’ve been coming out here for twenty years,” Kayla said. “We’re not a bunch of drunk teenagers you can just chastise, Jack.” But her voice sounded whiny and overly defensive, like that of a drunk teenager.

He let a “Chrissake” out under his breath and then stuffed his hands deep in the pockets of his khakis. “It might be best if you all stepped out of the way,” he said. “Maybe you could wait in your car?”

Kayla and Val sat on the front bumper of the Trooper with Raoul between them. Kayla watched Paul Henry pick the empty Methuselah out of the sand. He read the label as he walked over to them.

“You ladies drank all this?”

Kayla huffed. “We’re over twenty-one, Paul.”

“I asked you a question,” Paul said. “I’m your friend, Kayla, but I’m also a policeman and I’m trying to help. Was your friend drinking champagne?”

Kayla threw her hands up. “The rumors are confirmed. We were drinking! Blatantly breaking the open container law!”

Paul scowled at her, unamused. “So you estimate that the woman we’re looking for drank a third of this bottle?”

Kayla looked at Val. Val was asleep with her eyes open. “Not a third. Just a couple of glasses.”

“Two glasses?” he asked.

“Two or three,” Kayla said.

“And how much did you have?” he asked. “This is a huge bottle.”

“Does it matter, Paul?” Raoul asked. “They come out here every year to have some champagne and go for a swim. Celebrate the end of summer. That’s all this was.”

“I’m not insinuating anything else,” Paul said. “But I like to know what I’m dealing with. There’s a big difference between a swimming woman and an intoxicated swimming woman. A big difference.”

A young policeman whom Kayla didn’t recognize approached Paul with a handful of glass shards he’d gathered from the shoreline. The remnants of the champagne glasses.

“Don’t get excited,” Kayla said. “Those are our glasses. I threw them in the water.”

Paul picked up a piece of glass and turned it in the moonlight. “Was this before or after Ms. Riley disappeared?”

“After,” Kayla said.

“So it wasn’t as if you had a fight with Ms. Riley before she decided to go swimming?”

Kayla disliked the way Paul said the words “go swimming.” He said them like they were a euphemism for something else. “No,” she said.

Paul gave the piece of glass back to the young policeman, who was wearing surgical gloves. The coast guard boat moved farther out, and the WaveRunners zipped back and forth closer to shore. Jack Montalbano watched them, smoking a cigarette.

“Why aren’t they diving?” Kayla asked. “Jack, why aren’t they diving?”

“They’re looking above the surface right now,” Jack said. “They’ll dive only if they have to.”

Paul’s walkie-talkie rasped, and Kayla heard the sound of a helicopter.

“Coast guard sent a copter,” Paul Henry said. He sounded impressed.

The coast guard helicopter had a searchlight that swept over the water like the eyes of God. Paul Henry squinted at it, the tendons of his neck stretched tight.

“That baby has a sensor that detects body heat above the water,” he said. “The helicopter will locate her, Kayla. You can bet on it.”

They waited while the helicopter circled the area. At one point it was so far away that Kayla lost track of it, and her stomach turned at the thought of Antoinette all the way out there. Everything keeled to one side like a capsizing boat. Kayla vomited in the sand-the champagne, the lobsters, one stinky, lumpy mess. How had this happened? She wanted to hit reverse, rewind, she wanted to rewrite the way the evening had gone. One moment all of them were safe, the next moment not. Raoul patted her back and gave her a towel to wipe her mouth. Paul Henry handed her a thermos of cold water, which was so unexpectedly beautiful and welcome, tears came to her eyes. She drank nearly the whole thing, letting it drip down her chin. Raoul smoothed her hair.

“Ssshhh, it’s okay.”

But, of course, it wasn’t okay. The helicopter was out of sight, the rescue boat a mere blip on the horizon, and then the WaveRunners pulled onto shore and the riders climbed off, shaking their heads.

“She’s not out there anywhere, boss,” one of the riders told Jack Montalbano. “Do you want us to dive?”

Jack answered them facing the water, so Kayla didn’t hear his response. He pointed thirty or forty yards out and the riders climbed back on the WaveRunners taking masks and snorkels with them. Out looking for Bob-that was what the fire department called it when they were searching for a body. Kayla couldn’t bring herself to tell Raoul the worst part-that, seconds before Antoinette danced away, Kayla had accused Antoinette of sleeping with him. Kayla added to her list of things that money couldn’t buy. It couldn’t buy words back once they were spoken; it couldn’t buy her best friend back from the dark ocean.

Kayla woke when she heard the helicopter hammering toward them. She was still sitting on the bumper of the Trooper, crushed up against Raoul, who stared at the helicopter as it approached. The Suburbans were parked nearby, but now the men who had formerly been all action sat in the sand or stood with their hands dangling at their sides. Waiting. Then Paul Henry got static over his walkie-talkie, and he moved away as he listened to the report. He looked their way once, and Kayla’s heart fluttered with optimism. But his slumping shoulders suggested defeat. He spoke into his walkie-talkie and slowly headed back to them.

“They’re not picking her up with the heat sensor,” Paul told them. “They want to start a recovery mission.”

“What does that mean?” Kayla asked.

Paul tucked his hands into his armpits so that his arms made an X across his chest. “It’s been almost four hours already, Kayla. The general consensus is that if she entered the water at the time and place you said she did, they would have found her by now. Since the coast guard hasn’t located her yet, it means something very unusual has happened.”

“She’s dead,” Val said, emerging from the car, her face eerily blank and zombielike. “What they’re telling us, Kayla, is that they think she’s dead and they’re not going to spend any more time and money trying to rescue her. She’s a woman, and a black woman at that. Now, if it were a white male out there, if it were a policeman or a fireman out there, you can bet things would be different.” She pointed her finger at Paul, and in doing so, she teetered like a drunk. “You, buddy, are looking at a lawsuit.”

“What if it were your wife?” Kayla asked Paul. “Would you call off the rescue? What if it were your daughter?”

“Calm down, ladies. The pilot just asked me if it’s possible this woman’s not out there at all. It’s highly unlikely that if she entered the water at the time you said she did, that our men wouldn’t have picked her up on the radar. The coast guard uses mathematics, Kayla. They know where to look. They also know how long a person can survive in waters like these. I promise you, if they thought Ms. Riley were alive out there, it would still be a rescue mission.”

“She’s dead,” Val said.

“Is there any chance your friend swam down the beach instead of out?” Paul asked. “You said she lives in Polpis. Is there any chance she headed home?”

“Why would she do that?” Val asked. “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“You ladies have had a lot to drink,” Paul said. “And this thing about her dancing, well, it sounds odd to me, like she was kidding around or something. Maybe she swam down shore and climbed out, and you never even saw her.”

“Ridiculous,” Val said.

“Where does she live?” Paul asked. “We’ll check her house.”

Kayla told him the address; then she said, “Can we come with you?”

“This is turning into police business,” Paul said.

“Paul,” Kayla said. “Please. She’s our best friend. We’ve known her for twenty years.”

“Okay,” he said.

Kayla climbed into the Trooper, but Val stood in the sand with a strange look on her face.

“I’m going to ride with Raoul,” Val said. “I want to talk to him about something. Is that okay with you, Raoul?”

Raoul tossed his keys in the air and caught them. “Sure thing. Hop in. We’ll see you at the house, sweetie,” he said to Kayla. “Think positive.”

“I’ll try,” Kayla said. A pesky jealousy gnawed at her heart. Why should Val ride with Raoul? Kayla thought about the warm cab of Raoul’s truck, Raoul fresh from bed, and Val sitting next to him with just a towel wrapped around her waist. Val’s linen pants were in the back of the Trooper, along with her ridiculously expensive Italian sandals. She was riding next to Kayla’s husband half naked. Val wasn’t afraid to cheat on her husband; she was fucking Jacob Anderson. Anger, jealousy, and fear surged through Kayla, and she almost slammed into Raoul’s back bumper.

Why did Val want to talk to him? Was she going to tell him what Kayla said before Antoinette entered the water? Here were other things that money couldn’t buy: loyalty from your best friend or your husband or your wife.

Their caravan pulled down Antoinette’s long dirt driveway: Raoul and Val in the truck, Kayla in the Trooper, Paul and his partner in a police Suburban. When Kayla saw the cottage, her heart soared. Every light in the place was on, the front door was wide open. Antoinette was home! Kayla jumped out of the Trooper and ran to Raoul, reclaimed him.

“Oh, thank God,” she said. She tugged on Raoul’s arm like one of the kids: Love me, love me best. Forget what Val has told you and love me. I’m not a murderer after all. “Thank God.”

“Let Paul go in first,” Raoul said quietly.

Val pulled Kayla toward the open front door. “I can’t believe this,” she said. “She left us on Great Point thinking she was dead. Now I am going to kill her. Antoinette!”

Paul Henry and his partner brushed by them; the partner had his hand on his gun. Kayla didn’t even know Nantucket policemen carried guns, but this guy carried surgical gloves and a gun.

“Stand back, ladies,” he said. He peered inside the open door. “Oh, baby.”

Paul Henry looked in over his shoulder. “Uh-oh. Whoa.” He knocked on the door frame. “Ms. Riley? Ms. Riley, it’s Paul Henry with the Nantucket Police Department. Are you in there?”

“What’s going on?” Val said. Her bottom half was still swathed in just a beach towel, and Kayla had an urge to tell her to put on her pants.

Raoul stayed in the driveway, studying the outside of the house. At first Kayla thought he was admiring his handiwork in the moonlight The house had only four rooms, but it was one of his favorite designs. Huge living area, huge kitchen, huge bathroom, huge bedroom. High ceilings, big windows, lots of custom touches. He once told her he could stare at his houses for hours, the same way she had watched enthralled as the children slept when they were babies.

“She’s not in there,” he said.

“Raoul?”

He shook his head. “She’s not in there, Kayla. What does Paul say?”

Paul and his partner had just taken their first steps through the front door into the living room. Val was close behind them, and Kayla was a few steps behind Val. When Val poked her head in the door, she screamed.

Antoinette, hanging from the exposed beams?

Antoinette, lying in a pool of blood?

“What is it?” Kayla asked, afraid to move.

“Ms. Riley?” Paul Henry called out.

Kayla looked through the front door.

The place had been torn apart. Antoinette’s things were everywhere. The floppy beige cushions of her sofa were strewn about, her books had been swept off her built-in shelves, the hand-dipped candles that she ordered from Woodstock, New York, had been snapped in half. Her Norfolk pine lay on its side. Bottles of Stag’s Leap chardonnay were scattered across the floor like bowling pins.

“Oh, dear God.” Kayla took a step inside, but Paul Henry raised his hand.

“Don’t move,” he said. “This really is police business now, Kayla. Is it safe to assume this place didn’t look this way when Ms. Riley left this evening?”

“We didn’t come inside,” Kayla said. She turned to Val, who was back to wearing her wide-eyed, doped-up expression. “Did we, Val?”

Val shook her head.

“So it could have looked like this,” Paul Henry’s partner said. He put his surgical gloves on before he started picking things up. “For all we know, Ms. Riley could have made this mess herself. Meaning she was in a certain frame of mind when she headed to the beach.” Every light in the house was on-the in-ceiling track lighting, the Tiffany lamps, the lights in the kitchen and the bathroom. Antoinette hated lightbulbs. She preferred sunlight, candlelight

“These lights weren’t on when we picked Antoinette up,” Kayla said. “Someone else has been here.”

“Is anything missing?” Val said. “Was she robbed? You might as well let us look around because we’re the only ones who will be able to tell you.”

“The TV is missing,” Paul Henry said. He nodded at the big square blank spot in Antoinette’s built-in shelves.

“Antoinette doesn’t own a TV,” Kayla said. “Val’s right. You should let us in.”

The partner glowered at them. “Don’t touch anything,” he said. “And you,” he nodded at Val. “Put on shoes.”

“They’re in the back of my car,” Kayla said. “Along with your pants.”

Val disappeared to dress. Raoul remained in the driveway, but now he was drawing patterns in the dirt with his feet. He kicked up clouds of dust.

“Antoinette is still missing,” Kayla said.

“Yes,” he said.

Kayla and Val moved through the house behind Paul Henry and his partner, whose name Kayla learned was Detective Dean Simpson-an actual detective here on Nantucket!-ogling the mess. They found Antoinette’s checkbook and wallet hidden deep in a pile of clothing that had been dumped out of the drawers onto her bed. The checks were all accounted for on the register and there was cash, $227, in the wallet. Detective Simpson dusted the handles of the dresser drawer for fingerprints. They were all of a sudden in the middle of a crime scene. Kayla tried to remember what Antoinette had been like at the beach. She had been in a good mood, Kayla thought, although maybe a little nervous about her daughter. But then there was the confession she was going to make. What was the confession?

They entered the bathroom. Everything from the medicine cabinet had been thrown onto the floor or into the toilet. “This could have been a person looking for drugs,” the detective declared. He picked up the prescription bottles.

Kayla yanked Val into the kitchen. “All right. Tell me what you think. Did Antoinette come back here and make this mess herself?”

“Why would she do that?” Val asked.

“Maybe she wanted to disappear,” Kayla said. “Maybe she wanted to ditch the daughter.”

“Speaking of the daughter,” Val said. She pointed to a note on the fridge-a cocktail napkin smeared with blue ink: L., Cape Air, noon Sat. “That’s in a matter of hours. We’re going to have a lot of explaining to do.”

“She was going to confess something, Val,” Kayla said. “Maybe she was telling us she was going to disappear.”

Val looked doubtful. “I don’t think so.”

“Why? Do you know what she was going to say?”

“No.”

“What were you two talking about while I was asleep?”

Val fiddled with the refrigerator magnet-from the Islander liquor store-and furrowed her brow. “I can’t remember. I was probably doing most of the talking. I usually do.”

“So she didn’t tell you her secret?”

Val put her hands on Kayla’s shoulders. “No, friend, she didn’t.”

“Well, do you think she-? I mean, we know she tried to kill herself before.”

“That’s true.”

“You think she’s dead, don’t you?”

They heard a voice-clearing from the bathroom and then Paul Henry, “Ladies, would you come in here, please?”

Val raised her eyebrows and mouthed the word ladies. Kayla looked out the front window at Raoul, still in the driveway, systematically smoothing the dirt with the edge of his work boot.

They entered the huge, brightly lit bathroom.

The floor alone, jade green tiles, was worth several thousand dollars, according to Raoul. Paul and the detective had their paws all over Antoinette’s collection of little brown bottles-they were popping the child-proof caps off and shaking a few pills out onto the countertop between the double sinks. The detective wrote the names of the drugs into a little notebook.

Out the window Kayla saw the sky brightening; it was almost half past five. If things had gone as planned, they would be waking up on the beach ready to hit the Downyflake for some chocolate doughnuts before heading home. Raoul would be putting on his boots, sliding his lunch box from the top shelf of the fridge and driving out to the Tings’, who, Jack Montalbano had so pointedly reminded them, were Chinese. But no. No.

“Do either of you know why Ms. Riley had so many prescription drugs?” the detective asked. He pronounced either “eye-ther,” which Kayla found annoying.

“Menstrual cramps,” Val said. “Bad ones.”

Kayla looked away. Migraines, she thought, depression. Was Antoinette’s committing suicide such a far-fetched idea? Kayla remembered back to the first Night Swimmers: / want to be able to kill myself if that’s what I decide.

On the back of the toilet Kayla saw a perfect whelk shell that she and Antoinette had found on Tuckernuck, back when Theo was a little boy. Kayla remembered the afternoon well-they’d borrowed a seventeen-foot Mako from one of Raoul’s workers, and Antoinette had motored them through Madaket Harbor and out past Smith’s Point until they reached the next island over, Tuckernuck, which was still mostly wilderness. Kayla had Theo bundled in an orange life jacket, and she made him sit on the floor of the boat with both arms wrapped around her legs. And then Antoinette lifted him onto the deserted beach and they had a picnic and swam and collected a bucket of perfect shells like this one.

Kayla lifted the whelk shell, disobeying the detective’s orders to not touch anything, but he was engrossed with Antoinette’s Fiorinal and his notebook, and didn’t notice. Underneath the whelk shell Kayla saw a white plastic stick that made her catch her breath. She practically slammed the whelk shell back down.

Val had moved around her to look at the pills with the police. “These are the ones for the cramps,” she was saying. “These blue ones, I’m pretty sure.”

Seven green tiles separated Kayla from Val and the policemen. Val was shielding Kayla from view. Kayla picked up the whelk shell again and slid the plastic stick into the pocket of her sweatpants, completely unobserved.

Detective, ha!

They probably wouldn’t even have known what the stick was, but Kayla, the mother of four children, knew only too well.

A pregnancy test, with two purple stripes showing. Positive.

When they emerged from the house, Raoul was still smoothing the dirt in the driveway. The detective flipped out.

“What are you doing?” he shouted. His voice was sucked into the dark woods surrounding the house. “Have you given any thought to footprints? Tire tracks? You just destroyed evidence!” He threw his hands up in the air and with them, his dinky notebook, which fluttered to the ground like an injured bird.

Raoul looked stunned. And exhausted. “Sorry, man. It was just a nervous thing. You know, something to do while you snooped around.”

“Well, shit,” the detective said. He couldn’t have been older than thirty. He wore wire-framed glasses and had dark hair turning gray around the ears. Funny, Kayla hadn’t really looked at him until then.

Paul Henry retrieved a coil of yellow police tape from the Suburban, and he and the detective wound it around Antoinette’s house, sealing off the doors. They were going to head back to the station to file a report and send the fingerprints and some other samples to a forensics lab on the Cape. The coast guard would do a sweep of the outlying areas in the chopper at seven, and the divers would start their recovery mission. But now it was clear that neither Paul nor the detective thought Antoinette was in the water. They thought something else was going on.

“We’ll have our men check the airport and the Steamship right away, see if they find her leaving the island,” Paul said to Kayla before she left. “Can you get us a photograph of Ms. Riley? I didn’t see any pictures in the house.”

“Antoinette isn’t fond of the camera,” Kayla said. “But I’ll look at home. I think I have one.”

“Thanks,” Paul Henry said. “We’ll call as soon as we get any news.”

Kayla drove home as the sun was coming up. The sky was a band of deep rose along the horizon, then yellow, then dark blue. A V of Canadian geese passed overhead. Val snored softly in the passenger seat. Kayla had insisted that Val ride with her. Besides, Raoul said he wanted to stop by the Hen House, where his crew gathered for breakfast every morning, to let them know he wouldn’t be working today.

“Tell Jacob I’ll call him,” Val said, and Raoul had simply nodded. So he knew about Jacob. Kayla wondered if that was what he and Val were discussing in the truck: Val’s secret was a secret no longer.

Well, now Kayla had a secret, too. Antoinette was more than just a missing woman. She was a missing woman with a long-lost daughter showing up; she was a missing woman with a house that had been ransacked; she was a missing woman who, at the age of forty-four, was pregnant. By whom? It wasn’t as if Antoinette had been celibate since she divorced-she had flings every once in a while, the most notable with a man who stumbled across her house by accident when he was on his bike looking for Jewel Pond. But these were week-long summer flings, or one-night stands, no one sticking around, and certainly no one leaving behind anything as lasting as a baby. Kayla was at a loss. Who had fathered the baby? That part of the secret Antoinette had taken with her, wherever she went.

Kayla woke Val up when they reached her house. Kayla didn’t know what to say. “Get some sleep? We’ll talk later?” The pregnancy test was practically glowing in her pocket, but she wasn’t ready to tell Val about it. Not yet, anyway.

Val nodded. “I want to leave John.”

Kayla groaned. “Oh, Val.”

“What?”

“Not today, Val, okay? Don’t leave him today.”

“I’m miserable with him. I’d like to be less miserable. I’d like to do something drastic, something dangerous.”

Kayla looked at the perfect façade of the house; it was hard to believe so much unhappiness lived inside. “Do you think Antoinette disappeared on purpose?” she asked. “Do you think she did this to be drastic?”

“Of course not,” Val said.

“So you think she’s dead?”

“They didn’t find her alive, Kayla.”

“They didn’t find her dead, either. They didn’t find her at all. It’s like she vanished into thin air.”

Val smiled sadly, and with obvious fatigue. “You’re right. Call me later.” Val shut the car door and limped across her manicured lawn to her house. Kayla sat in the driveway until Val disappeared inside, and then she headed for home.

Kayla’s house looked the same, which seemed odd, given all that had happened. It was almost as though she expected it to be burned down or torn apart, but it stood solid and steady. She had beaten Raoul home, and from the looks of it, Theo had already left for work. Island Air flights started at six, and since this was when Raoul usually began his day, Theo didn’t mind getting up early. He and Raoul rose together and drank coffee quietly in the kitchen before going to their respective jobs, although since his outbursts started, Theo had taken to getting up half an hour earlier and drinking his coffee at Hutch’s at the airport. Or so he told Kayla the one time she was brave enough to ask.

Kayla extracted herself wearily from the car, looked in the back at all the picnic stuff-the towels, the tub of lobster shells that would start to stink as soon as the sun came up, the empty Methuselah- but she didn’t have the energy to deal with it. The lobster shells, though. She opened the back of the Trooper and managed to lower the tub to the driveway, where she could just leave it for now. And then she saw Antoinette’s black Chuck Taylors and she welled up with tears and hurried into the house. She needed sleep.

As soon as Kayla entered the kitchen, she remembered that Jennifer was sleeping at a friend’s house, which meant Luke and Cassidy B. were here alone. An eight-year-old and an eleven-year-old-she was one hell of a mother. True, Theo had probably only left twenty minutes before, but still. She was lucky the house hadn’t burned down. Before she went upstairs, she checked the answering machine. There was one new message. Kayla imagined hearing Paul Henry’s voice pumped with the adrenaline of victory, We found her! Or better still, Antoinette’s voice. But it was dead air, a hang up: Kayla calling from the Wauwinet.

She checked on Luke and Cassidy B. All four of her children had Raoul’s thick, dark eyelashes, which curled against their cheeks when they slept. God, she loved them. She stumbled into bed herself, too tired to even take off her clothes. The sun was up now, peeking through the rosewood blinds. She put Raoul’s feather pillow over her head and let the waves of sleep wash over her.

Twice Kayla tried to float to the surface of her sleep and break into consciousness-once when Raoul joined her in bed, and once when Luke padded in wearing his blue pin-striped pajamas, like a little business suit-and both times she failed. Her eyelids fluttered, and she was sucked back down.

She finally awoke with Raoul shaking her. “Kayla. Kay-la.”

Kayla focused her eyes. The blinds were up, the room filled with sunlight. It was hot, and she felt sticky and hazy and uncomfortable. She had a pounding headache; the inside of her mouth was powdery and tasted like egg yolk, her hair was stiff with salt. Then it all flooded back: too much champagne, Antoinette gone.

She blinked. “Are the kids okay?”

Raoul touched her cheek. He was showered, dressed, his dark hair damp. “Of course they’re okay. Jennifer came home and left again to sit for the Ogilvys. She ate a banana, but that was all I could interest her in. Cass and Luke are downstairs watching TV. I told them it was okay until you got up. They want to see you. They’re worried about you.”

“What did you tell them?” Kayla asked. “Do they know Antoinette is gone?”

“Gone is a strong word. I said you had a rough night. I said Antoinette got lost and we’re having trouble finding her.”

“Fair enough,” she said. “Can you get me some water? What time is it?”

Raoul went into the bathroom and brought her water in the green plastic cup that held their toothbrushes. Not a cup she wanted to drink from, but she kept quiet. “It’s twenty past eleven,” he said.

Kayla drank the water, handed Raoul the cup, and swung her legs so that they rested on the floor. It felt wildly luxurious to have him at home waiting on her like this, and she wanted to stay and enjoy it, but she couldn’t. With effort, she stood up.

“I have to go,” she said.

“Kayla.”

“I have to go to the airport to meet Lindsey,” she said.

“Lindsey who?”

“Antoinette’s daughter,” Kayla said. “A daughter that she gave up for adoption a long time ago and who is coming to visit today. I can’t explain it all to you right now, but I have to go meet her.”

“Whoa,” he said. He stuffed his hands in the back pockets of his jeans. He was wearing a crisp white polo shirt instead of his usual MONTERO CONSTRUCTION T-shirt. He looked so beautiful: clean, tan, barefoot in his jeans and white shirt. What a handsome, lucky man. Kayla felt sure right then that she would never get enough of him, even if they both lived to be a hundred, and especially not if he continued to work the way he did. “What are you going to tell her?”

“I don’t know,” Kayla said. “But if she wants to stay here tonight, I’m going to let her.”

“She’ll stay where-on the pullout?”

“We’ll put her in Luke’s room,” she said. “Luke can sleep in here with us.” Luke would pretend not to like that-he would say he was too old to sleep with his parents, but secretly he’d enjoy it. Kayla’s mind traveled a predictable path: changing the sheets on Luke’s bed, vacuuming, clearing space in the closet. God, she was such a housewife.

“She might not show up,” Kayla said. This was, of course, her hope-that this girl the color of a wine cork would get cold feet about seeking out her birth mother and find an excuse to miss her plane. Nantucket was tricky to get to, she reasoned, especially on a holiday weekend.

“It’s possible,” Raoul said, but Kayla heard doubt in his voice. He was lucky; she was not.

Kayla showered quickly and put on a pink sundress with thin straps. It looked summery and nonthreatening, and it flowed nicely over her stomach and thighs. She took three Advils, spritzed on a little Coco, which she hoped would mask the smell of hangover, and went downstairs.

If Luke and Cassidy B. were worried about her, she couldn’t tell. They were engrossed in a wildlife program about the Komodo dragon.

“Here it is almost noon on a beautiful day and you’re inside,” Kayla said. “Are you being punished?”

Cassidy B. jumped up from her position on the floor-probably half out of excitement to see her and half out of fear that Kayla would scold her. Sitting too close to the TV was a no-no. Kayla couldn’t even remember why anymore.

“Mommy, you’re home!” she said. She hugged Kayla in an exaggerated little-girl way. “Daddy said Auntie A. got lost.”

Kayla pressed her close and glanced over her head at Luke, who was wearing his green Nantucket Day Camp shirt even though today was Saturday, even though camp was now over.

“Good morning, Luke,” she said.

“Good morning,” he said seriously. “Did Auntie A. drown?”

“No. Who said that?”

He shrugged. “Nobody.”

Raoul must have let more slip than he intended, although it was impossible to keep the truth from an eight-year-old. Eight-year-olds were perceptive and suspicious by nature.

“I have some exciting news,” Kayla said. “We may have a sleepover guest tonight.”

“Who?” Cassidy B. said. “Is Sabrina coming?”

Sabrina, Raoul’s mother, who never visited without her head scarves and séance candles, was another one of the kids’ favorites.

“Not Sabrina,” Kayla said. “It’s someone you’ve never met before. It’s a woman named Lindsey…” Lindsey what? Not Riley. “She’s Auntie A.’s daughter.”

“Auntie A. doesn’t have any children,” Luke pronounced. He glared at her as if to say: Can you please get the facts straight?

“Yes, she does. Antoinette hasn’t seen her in a long time, and that’s why you’ve never met her. But I’m going to pick her up right now, and she may stay the night. We’re going to let her sleep in Luke’s room and Luke can sleep with Daddy and me.”

Before Luke could protest, Cassidy B. said, “Lucky.” That did the trick; Luke smiled smugly.

Kayla snapped off the TV and checked the clock. She had to go. “You two play outside. See if you can get Daddy to throw the Frisbee. I’ll be back in a little while.”

Before she left, Kayla put the pregnancy test in a plastic sandwich bag and dropped the bag into her purse. Then she checked three photo albums for a picture of Antoinette. She thought there was one picture from long ago of Antoinette at their house for dinner, holding one of the children in her arms. Kayla flipped back and forth through the laminated pages, past baby shots and birthday parties, Jennifer riding a horse, Theo in his baseball uniform, but she couldn’t find a single photo of Antoinette. The picture Kayla remembered was missing.

Kayla reached the airport with five minutes to spare, and so she called the police station to see if they had any news. Paul Henry wasn’t in; Detective Simpson wasn’t in. The woman who answered the phone said there had been no news about the missing woman; they hadn’t found her at the Steamship or the airport. If Kayla wanted a report on the recovery mission, she should call the fire department.

Kayla called the fire department, keeping her eyes on the Cape Air gate. Jack Montalbano came to the phone.

“We haven’t found her yet, Kayla,” he said. “But, hey, the good news is that she might not even be in the water. I heard you found some mischief up at her house.”

“Mischief is toilet paper in the trees,” Kayla said. “This was a lot more than just mischief.” She wondered if Jack had been up all night; with his wife gone, he probably avoided his empty house as much as he could. “Are you still… out looking for Bob?”

He cleared his throat. “The diver is out there now, yes.”

Kayla felt nauseated. She hadn’t eaten anything since the night before-the lobsters, the cheese. “Keep me posted,” she said, and she hung up.

The Cape Air gate still looked quiet, so Kayla made a dash to Hutch’s to get a sandwich from the take-out. And a cold Diet Coke. The girl behind the counter was about seventeen, from Eastern Europe somewhere, and she had hair the color of Bing cherries. She made Kayla think of Theo. Kayla was afraid to find Theo to say hello; she was afraid he would bully her in public, or worse yet, look at her with absolute blankness as though he’d never seen her before. Kayla wolfed down half a dry turkey sandwich and took two long swills from the Diet Coke and immediately felt better. Food. Out the window, she watched the Cape Air plane land and she thought, Okay, I can do this. The plane taxied to its spot. Kayla still had time. She threw the rest of the sandwich away and strolled over to the Island Air counter. Just in case Theo was hanging around.

“Kayla!” Theo’s boss, Marty Robbins, saw her right away and came up to the desk. “Where’s your son?”

Kayla smiled as benignly as she could, but her voice was weary. “I’m not sure what you mean, Marty.”

“Theo never showed,” Marty said. “True, Monday is his last day, but I need him now. It’s a holiday weekend.”

“He didn’t call?” she asked, knowing the futility of the question. She closed her eyes and tried to remember: The Jeep had definitely not been in the driveway, but what about the door to Theo’s room? Open? Closed? It hardly mattered. If the Jeep was gone, Theo was gone. Kayla didn’t have time for another missing person, and although she was ashamed to admit it, part of her was relieved that Theo wasn’t at the airport. One less distraction, one less stressful encounter. The encounter she had coming would be stressful enough.

“I’ll try to round him up, Marty,” she said, backing away from the counter. “Right now I have to meet someone.”

There was no doubt as to which of the women coming off the Cape Air flight was Antoinette’s daughter. Even Antoinette would have been startled at the resemblance. Lindsey was tall and thin like her mother, with the same unruly black hair and the same dark eyes. Her skin a shade lighter, her nose pointier, her gestures more hurried than Antoinette’s, but otherwise it was as though Kayla had stepped back in time to the kitchen on Hooper Farm Road as Antoinette poured Chablis into her Waterford goblet. Kayla wanted to cry at the incredible unfairness of it-this young woman so much like her mother, whom she had never seen, and because of some cruel trick of fate, would not see today. Oh, Antoinette, how could you miss this moment? Your own child. Kayla’s heart was breaking as she approached the girl.

“Lindsey?” she said.

The girl’s eyes widened just a bit, though Kayla could see she had steeled herself for anything. Well, anthing except Kayla-blond and big-boned. Lindsey was carrying a Louis Vuitton backpack, and her knuckles whitened as she clenched the strap.

“Antoinette?”

“No,” Kayla said. The poor girl. Kayla sensed her relief immediately. “I’m a friend of your mom’s.” Mom-that sounded way too familiar. “I’m a good, dear friend of Antoinette’s. My name is Kayla Montero.”

Lindsey smiled-gorgeous teeth, the perfect shade of plum lipstick-and offered Kayla her hand. “Lindsey Allerton. Nice to meet you.” Incredible poise. Here she was-what, twenty years old?-and she was as smooth as a newscaster. She wore loose-fitting white cotton pants, a sleeveless hot pink T-shirt that showed one inch of midriff, and sandals that laced up her calves. Jennifer would love her clothes. Theo probably, too.

“It’s nice to meet you,” Kayla said. “Do you have luggage?” Kayla wanted to get out of the airport before she told Lindsey anything. That would give her time to figure out what she wanted to say.

“… brown like this one…” Lindsey walked over to the baggage area and reached for a matching Louis Vuitton duffel.

“Where did you come from?” Kayla said. “Where do you live?”

“Right now I’m living in Boston,” Lindsey said. “I’m a junior at Emerson.”

“What do you study?” Kayla asked.

“Art history,” Lindsey said. “I know, I know- my parents tell me it’s totally useless.”

“Your parents,” Kayla repeated.

“My adoptive parents,” Lindsey said. “Claude and Denise Allerton. They live in New York. That’s where I grew up. I told Antoinette all this already over the phone.”

“Of course,” Kayla said. “Well, anyway, the car’s out here. Have you eaten lunch?”

“No,” Lindsey said. “I wanted to eat with Antoinette.”

“That was thoughtful,” Kayla said. The longer she waited to tell Lindsey the news, the more Kayla felt like she was deceiving her. “Okay, look, my car is over here. The Trooper.” Kayla walked ahead of Lindsey and opened the back so she could load her luggage in, and wham-the stench of old lobsters. Even more alarming were Antoinette’s black Chuck Taylors sitting there like a ghost that only Kayla could see. Kayla climbed in the driver’s side and let down all the windows and turned on the air-conditioning. Lindsey got in the passenger side, backpack at her feet. Now what? Drive away? Explain things here in the smelly car, in the hot airport parking lot? Kayla sat tapping her palms against the steering wheel, letting the cool air blast the dampness between her breasts and under her arms.

Lindsey cleared her throat. “Is everything okay?” she asked. “Where’s Antoinette?”

I wish I knew, Kayla thought. The car had cooled down some, so she put up the windows. “Your mom…” She had to stop saying that!

“Antoinette and I have been friends for twenty years, since just after you were born. It was just after you were born that your mother moved here.”

Lindsey nodded. “She told me.”

“I’m not sure how to put this,” Kayla said. “I have some bad news.”

“She doesn’t want to see me.”

“No, that’s not it. She does want to see you. But something’s happened. Last night, your mom and I and another friend of ours went swimming. We went swimming in the dark and Antoinette disappeared.” Kayla paused. This sounded ridiculous, even to her. “We called the police and the coast guard, and they had a helicopter searching, but they haven’t found her. As far as I know. I mean, there may be a message waiting for me at home. But when I left the house half an hour ago, they hadn’t found her yet. Your mom…” Stop it! Kayla told herself. “Antoinette is missing.”

Lindsey made a noise like a hiccup; then she lit into Kayla. “That is such bullshit!” she said. “Disappeared while swimming? That’s the best you can do?” She pulled a small package of tissues from her bag. She was crying now, her smooth facade melting. “I know this is difficult. It was the hardest thing in the world to board the plane this morning. I was the one who was abandoned. How do you think that feels? How long do you think it took me to summon the courage to even contact the agency? And then Antoinette tells me over the phone that the reason she gave me up was because my father cheated on her in this disgusting way and she developed suicidal tendencies. That wasn’t exactly what I wanted to hear.” Lindsey looked out the window at the car next to Kayla’s-a rusty red Wrangler with the top off. “Okay, well I guess I can’t make her want to see me. And if she doesn’t want to see me, I’m sure as hell not sticking around.” She reached for the door handle. “Thank you, Ms I’m sorry, I forgot your name.”

“Kayla. Kayla Montero.” Kayla didn’t know what to do. What would be more painful: to think this was some kind of elaborate hoax, or to know the truth-that the day you were to meet your birth mother she actually did disappear? Drowned, possibly.

Kayla touched Lindsey’s arm. Lindsey had goose bumps; the air-conditioner was going full-blast now, and Kayla turned it down.

“I understand what you’re thinking,” Kayla said. “I wish this were all made up, Lindsey, but it’s not. I’m telling you the truth. Antoinette, we think, got lost in the water off Great Point. I say “we think’ because nobody’s sure. The coast guard seems convinced that if she had been swimming, they would have found her. Anyway, we checked her house, because if she wasn’t in the water we figured she just went home without our knowing it. But the house had been ransacked. Like someone broke in or whatever. To be perfectly frank, we have no idea what’s going on.”

Lindsey’s lip curled in an unattractive way. “Ransacked,” she said. Her voice could not have been more deadly.

Kayla sighed. “You don’t believe me. Okay, I don’t blame you. You don’t know me, and here I am telling you these preposterous things. Why don’t we get some lunch and we can talk a little and then I’ll drive you out to Antoinette’s house and you can see for yourself? Who knows, maybe by then she will have turned up. Maybe we’ll have news.”

Lindsey wiped the tissue under her eyes, mopping away the smeared mascara. “Fine, whatever,” she sniffed. “I could do with some food.”

They went to lunch at The Brotherhood because it was dark and quiet and full of tourists, so Kayla would be unlikely to see anyone she knew. Although she’d polished off half the turkey sandwich, by the time they sat down at a table for two in the corner, she was hungry again. The restaurant smelled of French fries. Their waitress was a young blonde wearing a long patchwork skirt; she bore a disturbing resemblance to Missy Tsoulakis. Missy, Kayla knew, had moved to Greece right after graduating from college. This was her younger sister, maybe, Heather. Kayla ordered without looking up from her menu: clam chowder, green salad, iced tea. Lindsey got a burger. Kayla played with the spoon sticking out of the tiny pot of ketchup. This felt a little too civilized: sitting down to lunch, when twelve hours earlier all hell had broken loose. What if there was news? Raoul was expecting her home at any minute. Just as Kayla was about to excuse herself to call Raoul, Lindsey spread her fingers out on the scarred wooden table. She had a French manicure, and her nails were as smooth and pearly as shells.

“What’s she like, my mother?”

“Oh.” Kayla deflated in her chair. “Antoinette is… well, she’s one of a kind. You look remarkably like her.”

“Do I?” A flicker of pleasure crossed Lindsey’s face.

“It’s astonishing. Antoinette is tall like you, and slender. Bronze skin. Curly hair. She’s into her dancing and her meditation, and she reads.”

“What does she read?”

“Novels, I think. Charles Dickens, J. D. Salinger. Toni Morrison.” Kayla closed her eyes, remembering the year when Antoinette’s Night Swimmers secret had been that she spent three months memorizing The Bluest Eye. And then to prove it, she started reciting.

“Does she have a job?”

“No,” Kayla said. “She hasn’t worked the whole time I’ve known her.” Kayla stirred the ketchup. She wasn’t about to bring up the divorce settlement or Antoinette’s money. “She seems to have her own life work to do. The dance, the reading. She takes a lot of walks, rides her bike.”

Their food arrived, and they were quiet as they ate. Kayla sipped her buttery chowder, trying to ignore the fact that it held thousands of unnecessary calories, wondering what else to say about Antoinette. She danced, she read-and she had a lover who made her pregnant. Pregnant! Kayla could really alarm the girl with that piece of news, although to Lindsey, who was Antoinette but a woman who’d once been pregnant?

“Your mother is a private person,” Kayla said. She stabbed a perfect coin of cucumber lying on top of her salad. “She had her heart broken a long time ago, when your father betrayed her, when she decided to give you up. Those losses hardened her. She built herself a life of inanimate objects, you know. Her life is her books, her wine, her bicycle. Things that can be replaced.”

“She loved my father,” Lindsey said.

“Obviously.” Kayla lifted two purple rings of onion off her salad and dumped them in her empty soup bowl. “But she’s never even told me his name.”

“Darren Riley,” Lindsey said. “They told me that at the location agency.”

“Giving you up broke her heart,” Kayla said. “Now she lives in the woods by herself.”

“Sounds lonely,” Lindsey said.

Kayla took a swallow of iced tea, added two Sweet’N Low packets, and stirred them in with her straw. The sweetener kicked up in the bottom of the glass like dust, and it reminded her of the dirt in Antoinette’s driveway as Raoul smoothed it with the edge of his work boot. In Kayla’s memory, Raoul was careful about this task. The detective had accused him of destroying evidence, and in her mind Kayla could see that Raoul was erasing something- footprints, tire tracks. While they were in Antoinette’s house, he’d cleared the whole area in front of the house. What was he clearing? His footprints? His tire tracks? Before coming out to Great Point, had he stopped at Antoinette’s and torn the place apart, removing any signs that he’d been her lover? Clothing, tools he might have left behind; maybe he’d even been hunting for the pregnancy test. Kayla spit a chunk of red pepper into her napkin. She was making herself crazy.

“She was lonely,” Kayla said. “Is lonely.” Except that Antoinette was having an affair, an affair even more secret than Val’s. Kayla wondered if that was why Antoinette danced away when Kayla accused her of sleeping with Raoul. She was caught! And pregnant by him, no less. That would have been quite a confession. Kayla pushed her plate and bowl to the side. “If you’ll excuse me, I have to use the phone.”

Heather Tsoulakis approached the table. “Are you ladies finished?”

Kayla brushed by her and bolted for the pay phone in the entryway, fumbling for thirty-five cents from her change purse. She wanted to take another Ativan while she was at it, but she couldn’t find the bottle of pills. The ceiling in The Brotherhood was low and die floors slanted. Kayla felt the restaurant closing in on her. Her stomach churned; her mind screamed out, You fool! You idiot! You stupid, blind woman!

No one answered at home, and the worst came to Kayla’s mind. Raoul running away to meet Antoinette, taking Luke and Cassidy B. with him. And possibly Jennifer and Theo. Whisking them away to live elsewhere with a new mother, and their new brother or sister.

Kayla didn’t leave a message. When she turned around, she saw Lindsey plunk some bills down on the table and stand up. She came toward Kayla, a concerned look on her face.

“Are you all right?” Lindsey asked.

“Let’s go to Antoinette’s house,” Kayla said. “So you can see for yourself.”

On the way from the restaurant to Polpis Road, Kayla was too frantic for conversation. She turned on the radio for distraction-her semi-oldies station was playing the top three hundred songs “of all time” as a special thing for Labor Day. “Got to Get You into My Life,” by The Beatles; “Show Me the Way,” by Peter Frampton. Lindsey put her window down, and a warm wind filled the car. It was a gorgeous day, and Kayla had never felt worse. Her head was throbbing, her stomach engorged from too much food too quickly, and she reeled with her new theory, puzzle pieces that she feared would fit if she found the courage to put them together.

Kayla accused Antoinette of sleeping with Raoul. Antoinette disappeared. Kayla called Raoul and told him Antoinette was missing. He drove out to Great Point. Kayla racked her brain: Did he have enough time to stop by Antoinette’s house and tear the place apart? Someone had been there between the time they picked Antoinette up and the time they returned, and it wasn’t a house found by people who didn’t know of its existence. So, Kayla reasoned, it could have been Antoinette herself, or it could have been Raoul.

Once at Antoinette’s, Raoul had stayed in the driveway and systematically wiped away all the evidence of footprints and tire tracks, except for what they’d left themselves. Pretending it was a nervous habit. But Kayla knew her husband, and she recognized his face when he was at work on something. He’d even said, Let Paul go in first, because he wanted Paul and the detective to be distracted by the mess so that he could clear his tracks. But what about fingerprints? What about the other “forensic samples” the detective claimed to have found? Did Raoul have work gloves in his truck in the middle of summer? And then there was the troubling detail of Val wanting so desperately to talk to Raoul in his car. Talk to him about what? Was she in on it, too? It was possible; anything was possible at this point.

They turned into Antoinette’s driveway. “This is it,” Kayla said. “Your mother’s property.”

“Do you think she’ll be here?” Lindsey asked. She was gazing into a compact, reapplying her purple lipstick, like she was about to meet a blind date.

“No,” Kayla said.

Kayla turned to watch Lindsey’s reaction, and so she didn’t notice the car headed toward them. Lindsey saw it a split second before Kayla did, and she gasped and put a hand on the dashboard to brace herself,

Kayla slammed the brakes, and the Trooper bucked to a stop, stalled out. Lindsey’s compact and lipstick went flying into the windshield. Kayla had just missed hitting the front of John Gluckstem’s black Jaguar. John Gluckstern. Ugh. He was alone in the car. Val must have told him what happened. He backed his car into a clearing on the left, and Kayla pulled alongside him.

“Hi, John,” she said, as pleasantly as she could. “I guess you heard. Did Antoinette turn up?”

His voice was battery acid. “No,” he said. “She did not turn up. I can tell you one thing, though, Kayla. You and my wife are in some deep shit here. I don’t care if I’m the one who has to start shoveling it your way. This isn’t right, and it’s your doing.”

“What is our doing?”

“Antoinette disappearing. It may look innocent to the police, but there’s no way a woman like Antoinette would let herself get swept away. That woman is tough. Physically and mentally.” He tapped his graying temple to emphasize the word mentally. Kayla wondered about John’s knowledge of Antoinette’s mentality. Of course, he invested her money, so Kayla supposed he had some right to be concerned. He was wearing a shirt and tie even though it was Saturday. But Saturdays for John meant work.

Kayla wrinkled her brow. “What are you doing here?”

“Taking a look, same as you. You won’t get too far. They have a summer cop guarding the house.”

Kayla glanced in the direction of the house and then at Lindsey, who was busy fixing her lipstick. “John, this is… this is Lindsey Allerton. Antoinette’s daughter. She just flew in this morning.”

John poked a finger out his window at Lindsey. “Be careful of this woman, and my wife, too, if you’re lucky enough to meet her. They’re to blame here.”

“Blame?” Kayla said.

But John was finished. He revved his engine and drove off down the driveway, his tires leaving behind a brown cloud.

“Asshole,” Kayla said. “I’d like to know what his agenda is.”

“Who is that guy?” Lindsey asked.

“John Gluckstern,” Kayla said. “Husband of my friend Val, the other woman who was with us at Great Point.”

“And he knows my mother?”

“He’s her banker,” Kayla said. “Believe me, his only interest in her is monetary.” They pulled up to the front of Antoinette’s house, next to the police car. A kid of about eighteen sat in the driver’s seat reading Rolling Stone. He straightened when he saw the Trooper; then he put down the magazine and got out of the car.

“Can I help you?” he asked. He was dark-haired and had some sore-looking acne on his chin. His name tag said JONATHAN LOVE. Officer Johnny Love. Behind him, the house was aflutter with yellow police tape, like a badly wrapped gift.

“Has Ms. Riley returned?” Kayla asked, though anyone could see the answer was no.

“No, ma’am. The fire department is still up at Great Point on the recovery mission.”

“I see,” Kayla said. “Well, Officer Love, this is Ms. Riley’s daughter, Lindsey. I brought her by to see the house.”

Johnny Love took a long, appreciative look at Lindsey. “No one can enter the house, ma’am.”

“So Mr. Gluckstern, the gentleman who was just here-he didn’t go into the house?”

“No. Mr. Gluckstern wanted to look in the window, and I did allow that.” Johnny Love pointed to the back deck. “If you stand on the deck, you can see into the bedroom. But no crossing the police tape. I would be in hot water if I allowed you to cross the police tape.”

“We don’t want to get you in trouble,” Kayla said. “But I think we’ll have a look. Did Mr. Gluckstern say what he was looking for?”

Johnny Love picked at his chin. “Something about his wife being a friend of Ms. Riley’s and her telling him to come out here and see for himself if he didn’t believe it. I figure there’s no harm in looking.”

“Yes, we just want to look,” Kayla said.

She and Lindsey stepped onto the deck, and Kayla ushered her toward the bedroom window. “Go ahead,” she said.

Lindsey cupped her beautiful hand around her eyes and peered in. “Ransacked,” she said. “As reported.” She straightened up and looked at Kayla. “Okay, so now what do we do?”

“What would you like to do?”

Lindsey turned toward the woods and took a deep breath. Her shoulder blades protruded through her pink T-shirt. “I’d like to know what’s going on here. I prepped myself for a lot of shit, you know, but not this.”

“I understand,” Kayla said.

“No,” Lindsey said, “I don’t think you do. I have a space, you see, right here-” she tapped her breastbone “-and that space needs to be filled. I need to see my mother. Only now I’m beginning to think this dream isn’t going to come true for me. Not today, maybe not ever.” She pronounced ever “evah,” and this small bit of street accent caught Kayla’s interest. She studied the girl. Lindsey was trying hard to keep it together-makeup, hair, clothes. Until now, she’d been acting like seeing Antoinette was simply a choice she’d made, rather than a burning desire. A way to fill a weekend, rather than a life-defining moment. But Kayla recognized her desire-no, her need-to see Antoinette. Just to meet her for a moment, to stand face-to-face, say hello, and touch-God, touch-the person who had given birth to her.

“You’re right,” Kayla said. “I don’t understand. I’m sorry.”

“Can we go to Great Point?” Lindsey said.

“That’s what you’d like to do?”

Lindsey pulled a clump of hair into her fist and held it so that it strained the skin of her forehead. “Yes,” she said. “Take me to the place where she disappeared.”

And so, fourteen hours later, Kayla made the same trip she’d made the night before: first to Antoinette’s, then to Great Point. It wasn’t a bad idea- the police might have missed something in the dark that would be clear now that it was two in the afternoon.

Because it was Labor Day weekend, the parking lot by the Wauwinet was crowded with happy beachgoers: rental Jeeps and trucks crammed with children. Someone else was playing her radio station loudly; Eric Clapton’s “Wonderful Tonight.” Kayla wanted to separate herself from their frivolity, but she had to let the tires down. She jumped out of the Trooper with the gauge. She saw the tires were plenty low-they hadn’t been refilled from the night before. One good thing. But then the gatehouse attendant motioned for her to stop.

“I have a sticker,” Kayla said. “And my tires are already low.”

Another teenager, with a brown ponytail and bangs, serious looking in her dun-colored uniform with her clipboard. “I need to advise you that the fire department is conducting a recovery mission off the end of the Point,” she said. “We lost someone last night.”

Lost someone.

“We know,” Kayla said. “Thank you.”

Even under the circumstances, it was impossible to find the ride out to Great Point anything but beautiful. The white sandy beach, the Rosa rugosa in its final bright pink bloom, the harbor on one side dotted with sailboats, and the ocean on the other, the seagulls, and the distant figure of the lighthouse. Kayla wasn’t surprised when Lindsey caught her breath and said, “Wow.”

“There’s a map in the glove compartment,” Kayla said. “I’ll show you where we’re going.”

Lindsey pulled out the map, and Kayla pointed to the spit of land sticking out into the sea. It was daunting to see how isolated Great Point was-surrounded by water.

“Why did you go swimming out here?” Lindsey asked. “It seems kind of reckless.”

“It was your mother’s idea,” Kayla said defensively. “A long time ago. Twenty years ago. We drove out here in the middle of the night, and it’s been a tradition ever since. It’s not reckless because we’re careful. We’re good swimmers and we understand the water. And Antoinette is the best swimmer of the three of us. How she got swept away, if she got swept away, is a mystery to me.”

“What was she like before she went into the water? Was she okay? Was she upset about seeing me? Did she want to see me?” Lindsey’s neck splotched. “I can’t shake the feeling that it’s my fault. That Antoinette, you know, chickened out.”

Kayla touched Lindsey’s arm. “It wasn’t you, Lindsey. It was me. I said something that upset her. And after I said it, I thought she was going to take the car and drive away. But instead she held her arms in a circle, like she was holding a ball, and she danced into the water.” In fact, something about the dancing bugged Kayla. It had seemed so, well… so staged. Like she’d been planning it.

“You said something to upset her?” Lindsey asked.

“She was upset because I… “ This felt reckless- confiding the truth in someone she barely knew. It was like stripping off all her clothes and letting Lindsey see her naked. But the poor girl deserved as much of the truth as Kayla could give her. “I accused her of sleeping with my husband.”

Lindsey fingered the hollow at her throat. “Oh, God,” she said. “So you’re telling me that you upset my mother, and then she went swimming in this dangerous water.” She let her window all the way down, and they both watched the waves sweep up onto the beach. The water didn’t look dangerous at all-it was blue-green, crystal clear.

“The fact is, Lindsey, your mother was hiding something.”

“Oh, really?”

They passed other cars that had made camp- beer, sandwiches from Henry’s, boom boxes playing Kayla’s station (Lynyrd Skynyrd, “Free Bird”), umbrellas, shrieking children. Before Ting, Kayla and Raoul had enjoyed days at the beach just like this with their kids.

“Yes.” The news of Antoinette’s pregnancy coated Kayla’s mouth. The test was in her purse.

“What do you think she was hiding? Do you really think she was having an affair with your husband? Is that something she would do?”

“She was having a relationship with someone,”Kayla said. “That much I know.”

“Because she told you?”

“No,” Kayla said. “She was about to tell me. Before she went in the water. But she never got the chance.”

“So you’re assuming she was having a relationship, then,” Lindsey said. “I mean, if Antoinette didn’t tell you.”

“I have evidence,” Kayla said.

“Oh, please,” Lindsey said. “Please. You’re being very melodramatic, Kayla, you know that? I appreciate that you’re my mother’s friend and everything, but really. You come off as a bit of a drama queen.”

Kayla hit the brakes and reached for her purse, dug through it like a smoker hunting down her last cigarette. Then she found it-the sandwich bag containing the pregnancy test. She held it up before Lindsey’s face.

“This,” Kayla said, “is a positive pregnancy test. I found it at your mother’s house last night. Believe me, there is no way it belongs to someone else. This is Antoinette’s. There is no way someone else’s positive pregnancy test was going to be lying around your mother’s house.”

Lindsey stared at the bag like it was a severed head. Okay, fine. Melodrama. Kayla hit the gas, and panic washed over her. They were getting closer to the spot where they’d been swimming. Two orange pylons marked off a section of beach, and a man in a black fireman’s uniform held the end of a rope that led into the water. He walked with the rope between the two pylons. About twenty yards out, a diver surfaced, lifted his mask, shook his head. They were dragging the bottom. Kayla was so spooked by this that it took her a moment to notice a Jeep sitting alongside the fire department’s Suburban. Kayla blinked, confused. The Jeep. And then she saw him, sitting on the front bumper, his face hidden in his hands, his shoulders heaving.

Her baby crying.

It was Theo.