Silver Girl

CONNIE

Connie drove to the town pier alone, thinking that she had another fifteen minutes of peace before her summer detonated. When she’d told Dan what she’d done-or, more accurately, not done-he’d said, Don’t worry about it. With what we’ve been through, it can’t be a big deal, can it? But he might only have been saying that to make Connie feel better.

Town pier, eleven o’clock in the morning on a stunning summer day. The pier was crawling with families carrying coolers and fishing poles and clam rakes, clambering aboard motor boats to putter out to Coatue and Great Point. Connie was astonished how relaxed and happy these people seemed. Connie was sick with anxiety. Sick! She had followed her gut, and now she had to hope for the best.

Eleven o’clock, he’d said. But she didn’t see him anywhere. Typical. It was Veronica’s gene passed down: Late for my own funeral.

Connie walked the dock, checking out this boat and that boat, looking but not seeing, her heart thundering, her stomach sour like she’d eaten a dozen lemons for breakfast. Then she saw him, the square shoulders, the bowlegged lope. Unmistakable. The sun was a bright halo around his head.

Toby!

He was wearing a green polo shirt, a pair of khaki shorts, deck shoes without socks (did Toby even own socks?), aviator sunglasses. He was tan. (Toby and Connie were alike in many ways, but Connie freckled while Toby was now, and always had been, a bronze god.) He still had a full head of sandy hair, and his weight seemed stable. In the past, Connie had seen him both gaunt and underfed, and bloated and heavy. He whooped and gave her a big hug, lifting her right off the dock, and Connie was reminded that, when sober, he was just like a Saint Bernard puppy, all boundless love and enthusiasm. He had been sober now for nearly two years-or so he claimed.

“I called your bluff!” he said. “I’m here!”

“Hey, brother,” Connie said. He set her down and they kissed. He tasted clean, he smelled clean-not too minty the way he used to when he was drinking.

“This weather is amazing!” he said. He hoisted the canvas duffel bag he had owned literally his entire adult life over his shoulder. It was sky-blue with his monogram; it had traveled with Toby all over the world. “Maryland is brutally hot. We haven’t had a lick of wind all summer. So I took that as a sign. This guy Roy Weedon has been asking me about my boat for years, and when the offer came from the Naval Academy, I thought, Now’s the time to sell her.”

“I can’t believe she’s gone,” Connie said. Toby had saved for Bird’s Nest for nearly ten years, and she was the most exquisite sailboat Connie had ever seen. A classic. The Jackie O of sailboats, the Audrey Hepburn of sailboats. Toby had run the number one sailing charter in the state of Maryland, which gave him the freedom and the cash to island-hop in the Caribbean all winter long. “I can’t believe you sold her. You know you’ll never be able to get her back, right? You know you’ll never find another boat like her?”

“I do know that,” Toby said. “But I can’t be at the mercy of the wind or the economy, anymore, Con. And the gig at the Naval Academy was too choice to turn down. The premier collegiate sailors in the country will soon be under my tutelage.”

Right. When they’d talked on the phone the day before, Toby had confessed that the charter business had suited him because it left him free to do other things-primarily drink and chase after other men’s wives. He needed something more stable, more serious. He had to think of his son, Michael. He needed health insurance, retirement benefits. He needed to grow up, finally.

“Want to take one last look at her?” Toby asked.

“Won’t that be sad for you?” Connie asked.

“I’ve made my peace with it,” Toby said. “Come on, she’s down here.”

Connie was grateful for anything that delayed their arrival back at home. She followed Toby down the dock. And there she was-Bird’s Nest-thirty-three feet of polished wood, rope, canvas, and nickel. There was a guy on her, tying up the sails. He looked too young to be the new owner.

“Is that the man from Nantucket?” Connie asked.

Toby laughed. “You’re funny, Con.”

They ambled back to the car. He was going to think she was funny for another second or two. “So how are you doing?” Connie asked. The ride to Tom Nevers would only take twelve or thirteen minutes, so she had to work fast. “Are you sober?”

“Sure,” Toby said.

“Sure?” Connie said. “What kind of answer is that?”

“Geez, Con,” Toby said. “Are you riding me already? Can’t we just ease into it?”

“No,” Connie said. “We can’t just ease into it.” She wouldn’t be lulled by his boyish, gee-whiz charm, though this seemed to work on everyone else. Wolf, despite the fact that he had seen Toby at his very drunkest and most pathetic, had absolutely adored his brother-in-law. The two of them could tell sailing stories for hours, and when Toby visited Nantucket, they used to race each other in Indians. It was the highlight of Wolf’s summer-chasing Toby up the harbor and back again-and then settling with a cold beer at the Rope Walk so they could talk about the sail, tack by tack, afterward.

“Okay,” Toby said. “I’ve been sober for twenty-two months. But I don’t take it for granted. I fell off the wagon once, early on.” He squinted out the side window. “The evil combination of Marlowe Jones and the Treaty of Paris.”

“Ah,” Connie said. The Treaty of Paris was Toby’s former watering hole. Marlowe Jones was the lonely wife of the Annapolis district attorney. Evil combination indeed.

“But like I said, that was nearly two years ago. I’ve come to terms with my relationship with alcohol. I inherited the disease. You’re lucky you didn’t.”

Connie felt a complicated mix of emotions. She was ashamed, thinking of how drunk she’d gotten the day of the boat ride with Dan. But what that had taught her was that she wasn’t immune; she had to watch herself. A part of Connie stupidly mourned the old Toby, the Toby who had been Connie’s boozy, fun-loving comrade. Two years earlier, when Toby had come for Wolf’s memorial service, he’d hit every bar downtown and had been dropped off at Connie’s house in a cab, a sloppy-if-happy drunken mess. Then he and Connie had stayed up drinking wine on the deck until sunrise. Jake and Iris had found them passed out on the outdoor furniture in a dead-on reprise of their own parents.

Toby’s not good for you, Iris, with her degree in psychology, had said. You’re not good for each other.

“Are you dating anyone?” Connie asked him. “Other than Marlowe Jones?”

“I’m not dating Marlowe,” he said.

“She’s still married to Bart?”

“Still married to Bart. It’s one of the worst marriages I’ve ever seen, but it just won’t die.”

“Like mom and dad,” Connie murmured.

“Exactly,” Toby said.

“And there’s no one else?” Connie asked.

“No,” he said. “Nobody special.”

It might have been better if he’d been dating someone, Connie thought. But Toby’s romantic life was impossible to keep track of. There were always women, but rarely anyone who lasted more than a few weeks. Toby had been married twice. He’d met his first wife, Shelden, crewing on the boat Cascade, which was the boat he captained before Excelsior. Shelden had family money, much of which she spent financing Toby’s lifestyle-the drinking and carousing in places like Portofino and Ios and Monaco. It wasn’t hard to see why Shelden left-at that time, Toby was at his most uncontrollable and irresponsible, and Shelden was bankrolling all of his bad behavior. He would go to the most popular waterfront bar, buy a round for everyone in the place, and then arrive back at Excelsior with fifteen people ready to party until three in the morning.

Several years later while working in Norfolk, Virginia, Toby met Rosalie, who was a shore-bound single mother of two small children. Toby was like some kind of romantic hero who sailed in to save her-though “saving” her turned into getting her pregnant, marrying her, then making her so miserable and doing such a piss-poor job as a father and stepfather that Rosalie fled back to her family in New Orleans. Toby’s son, Michael, was now ten. Rosalie had remarried a coach with the New Orleans Saints, a guy who Toby liked and admired. “The guy is so responsible,” Toby said, “I want him to be my dad.” There had been trips to New Orleans where the whole blended family-Rosalie and the coach had children of their own now-went to JazzFest and took river cruises.

“How’s Michael?” Connie asked.

“He’s great,” Toby said. He flipped open his phone to show Connie a picture. She glanced at it quickly: Michael in a baseball hat. “He’s a U-eleven all-star in Little League, and he’s doing Pop Warner again in the fall. Starting QB. Kid’s a natural athlete. Quick hands.”

“Takes after his aunt,” Connie said. She saw Toby staring at the picture. “Do you wish you saw more of him?”

“Huh?” Toby said. He flipped the phone closed. “Yeah, of course. I lobbied for him to come to Annapolis for two weeks, but he had camp.”

“He still could have come for a little while,” Connie said. “Did you ask Rosalie?”

“Of course I asked Rosalie,” Toby said. “She said he had camp.”

Connie shook her head, thinking, Did you not fight to see your son?

Toby said, “Michael’s fine; he’s happy, I’m happy he’s happy. We Skype each other.”

“Skype?” Connie said.

“Connie, it’s fine,” Toby said. And he did, indeed, sound fine.

Growing up, Toby had always been the better kid, at least in Connie’s mind; possibly, this was a notion she’d gotten from her parents. Toby was the golden-haired son, the gifted athlete. He’d shown promise as a sailor during their summers at Cape May, but there was also football, basketball, and lacrosse. At Radnor, he’d been captain of all three varsity teams. He had always been kind and generous to Connie, perhaps because he understood that Connie wasn’t as lucky as he was. She was smart, but he was smarter and better liked by his teachers. Connie was beautiful, but because she was a girl, this beauty was seen as a problem and not as a positive as it was for Toby. Connie’s beauty required that she go to Merion Mercy, an all-girls Catholic school, instead of the super fun, incredibly social, less stringent public school that Toby attended. Connie’s beauty led to boys sniffing around the house, none of whom her parents approved of.

When, in high school, Toby started drinking-going to keg parties out in the fields or stealing fifths of gin from their parents’ liquor cabinet and drinking in the car on the way to South Street-it was treated as a rite of passage. When Connie started drinking, she was grounded for weeks, and she heard incessantly about the damage to her “reputation” from, of all people, her mother.

In general, growing up, Connie had resented Toby and worshipped him, hated him and wanted, more than anything, to be him.

Connie thought, I have to tell him. Now. But then Toby said, “How are you, Con? Are things any better?”

Are things any better? Connie didn’t love the phrasing of this question, acknowledging as it did that things for Connie had been pretty bad. Well, they had been bad. Connie had been depressed about Wolf and about Ashlyn. But she resented the accusation that her life needed improvement-because, as an adult, Connie had been happy. She had the glowing marriage, the gracious home, the prestigious husband, the brilliant child.

“They’re better,” Connie said. The good news was, she could say this honestly.

“Are you seeing anyone?” Toby asked.

“Sort of,” Connie said. She felt that as soon as she came right out and said, yes, she was seeing someone, the bubble would burst and Dan Flynn would vanish into thin air.

Because of the incident with Harold, her date with Dan had been overshadowed. But now she grew warm just thinking about it-Dan at dinner, holding her hand; Dan in bed, bringing her back to life. She felt Toby eyeing her.

“ ‘Sort of?’ ” he said. “What does that mean?”

They climbed into Connie’s car, and Toby threw his duffel bag in the backseat. “It means yes, there’s someone, but I don’t know what’s what yet, okay?”

Toby said, “Okay, sorry. Don’t get all touchy on me.”

“Oh, God,” Connie said. She managed to fit the key in the ignition, but she didn’t turn it. “There’s something I have to tell you.”

Toby raised his eyebrows at her. There was the look, so familiar, so condescending, as though he were sure she was about to make something out of nothing, typical female member of the family, drama queen like their mother. Well, let’s see then, Connie thought. Let’s see how he likes it.

“Meredith’s at the house.”

Yep, she got him. His eyes widened. The whole arrangement of his face changed. But she could tell he didn’t quite believe her.

“You’re fucking kidding me.”

“Not kidding.”

“Meredith Martin?”

“Meredith Delinn, yes.”

Toby jerked his head, like he was trying to get water out of his ears. “She’s…” He looked out the passenger-side window at the hot, shimmering grid of the town parking lot. “Wow.”

“Yeah, I’m sorry,” Connie said. “I was afraid if I told you, you wouldn’t come.”

“How long has she been staying with you?”

“All summer.”

“You’re fucking kidding me.”

“Not kidding.”

“So… I mean, the husband’s in jail. So what is Meredith doing?”

“She’s trying to figure out what to do. She’s under investigation, I guess; she talks to her lawyer all the time. But the thing is… she’s still Meredith.”

“So you’re telling me she didn’t know what the husband was up to?”

“I’m telling you that, yes.”

“I never met the guy.”

“I think that was probably by design.”

“But I could tell he was a class-A jerk. Typical Wall Street greedy banker hotshot.”

“He was anything but typical,” Connie said. And then, because it sounded like she was defending Freddy Delinn, she redirected the conversation. “So, are you okay with seeing Meredith?”

“Am I okay with seeing Meredith? Sure, of course.” Toby’s face was coloring. He was flustered.

“The last time you saw her was…?”

“Mom’s funeral,” Toby said. “And that ended badly. Are you sure Meredith is okay with seeing me?”

Connie rested her forehead against the top of the steering wheel. She turned on the car; she needed the air-conditioning. “She doesn’t know you’re coming.”

Toby stared at her. “You’re fucking kidding me.”

“Not kidding.” Connie backed out of her parking spot, thinking, This whole situation is a tightrope walk.

“Her head is going to spin,” Toby said. “I hope you’re ready.”

“Don’t flatter yourself,” Connie said.

“I’m serious.”

“After what we’ve been through this summer, seeing you will come as a very minor shock,” Connie said. God, how she prayed this was true. She pulled out onto the road. “I’m sorry if that’s a blow to your ego.”

Connie spent her minutes on Milestone Road telling Toby about the highlights of the summer. Spray paint, slashed tires, Harold, their beloved seal, dead.

“You should have called me, Con,” Toby said. “I would have come up sooner.”

“We’ve been managing,” Connie said.

“That sounds like a lie,” Toby said.

“Only a partial lie,” Connie said. She pulled into the driveway. “Here we are.” Toby was looking at the front of the house. There was still a faint outline of the word CROOK on the shingles, but a few weeks of sun and sand had done its work. And Dan had used his power washer on the front porch to blast away all vestiges of Harold’s blood and bodily fluids. All outward signs of terror had been wiped clean.

Toby adjusted his sunglasses and touched his hair, and with what sounded like a deep breath, he grabbed his old blue duffel bag out of the backseat. How did he feel? Did he have butterflies? Connie thought Toby might mask his nerves with small talk-the house looks great-but he was as silent as a monk.

When they walked in, Meredith was sitting at the head of the table. She saw them and stood up. She was wearing white shorts and a black tank top and she was in bare feet. Her hair was in a ponytail. She wasn’t wearing any makeup, but her face was tan. She looked, graying hair aside, like she was sixteen years old-tiny and compact, a blue-eyed elf.

When she saw Toby, her eyes narrowed. She poked at her glasses, and Connie wanted to say, Sorry, he’s real. Meredith looked at Connie, and then back at Toby. Connie had known Meredith since the age of four, but she had no idea how the woman was feeling right now.

Connie said, “Look who I found at the town pier.”

Toby dropped his duffel and took a few strides toward her.

Meredith glared at Connie. “Do I seem like a woman who needs more surprise news?”

Toby stopped in his tracks.

Connie opened her mouth.

Meredith raised her face to the ceiling and let out a squawk. “Waaahhhhhh!!” Then she faced Toby. “Hello,” she said.

He smiled nervously. “Hello, Meredith.”

She took a baby step forward, and he opened his arms and they hugged. The hug was brief, but Connie thought it was real. Knowing each other for nearly fifty years counted for something. Connie wanted them both here, and somehow, by virtue of her own scatterbrained negligence, she had managed to get them in the same room.

She was proud of herself for that.

MEREDITH

Meredith felt the same way now that she’d felt at Connie’s wedding. And Veronica’s funeral. She couldn’t bear to be near him; she only wanted to be near him. She was at a standoff with herself.

“How long are you staying?” she asked him.

“I don’t know,” he said. “How long are you staying?”

“I don’t know,” she said. She was angry enough at Connie to threaten to leave right that second-but where on earth would she go?

“Does anyone want lunch?” Connie asked brightly.

He looked good, but this only vexed Meredith further. She couldn’t find her balance. There was so much she was dealing with already, and now Toby. Here, in person. He was wearing a green shirt and khaki shorts. His hair was the same, his face was the same but older, with lines and sun spots, but he was still a gorgeous golden lion of a man. Were they actually the same people who had kissed against the tree on Robinhood Road? Were they the same people who had made love in the Martin family library? There were two answers to that as well: They were. And they weren’t.

“I’d love some lunch,” Toby said.

“Meredith?” Connie asked.

“No, thanks,” Meredith said. She could barely breathe, much less eat. “I might go up and lie down.”

“Don’t let me chase you away,” Toby said.

“You’re not…” Meredith wasn’t quite sure what to say. You’re not chasing me away. You don’t have the power to chase me away. You don’t have power over me at all. She was light-headed now. She said, “We’ve had a rough couple of days, as I’m sure Connie’s told you. I’m exhausted.”

“Stay down here with us,” Connie said. She was already in the kitchen, toasting bread for sandwiches, slicing a lemon for the iced tea. “Even if you’re not going to eat, come sit outside.”

“You guys enjoy your lunch,” Meredith said. “Catch up with each other. Do the brother-sister thing.”

“Meredith,” Connie said. “Stop it.”

Toby put his hands on both her shoulders. Meredith closed her eyes and tried not to think. “Come out with us,” he said. “Please.”

The three of them sat at the outside table. Connie and Toby were eating sandwiches worthy of the front cover of Bon Appétit. Meredith’s stomach complained, but she would sustain her hunger strike. She sipped at her iced tea. Her back was to the ocean. She couldn’t stand to look at the water. Thoughts of Harold with his throat slit, blood everywhere, as thick and viscous as an oil spill, pervaded.

“So… I’m here because I sold my boat,” Toby said.

Meredith nodded.

“I’ve had her almost twenty years, so it was hard,” he said. “But I tell myself that, ultimately, she was just a thing.”

Just a thing. Well, Meredith could identify there. She had lost so many things: the Range Rover, the Calder mobile, the Dior gown. Did she miss any of them? Not one bit.

“It’s hard imagining you without a boat,” Connie said.

Meredith nodded again. Whenever she’d thought of Toby over the years, she’d thought of him in the cockpit of a sailboat, ropes in hand, the sun on his face. She’d thought of him toting all of his worldly possessions in the very same blue duffel bag he’d walked into the house with today. His parents had given him that duffel bag when he graduated from high school; Meredith had been sitting right beside him when he opened it. Little did she know then, it would become a symbol for Toby’s life: He wanted to be able to carry everything he owned with him in that bag, so that he was free to get up and leave, move on to a new place, new people. No commitments.

But yes, one commitment, right?

“Tell me about your son,” Meredith said.

“Michael is ten now,” Toby said. “He lives in New Orleans with his mother and her new husband.”

“Ten is the best age,” Meredith said. All of her ached: her past, her present, her future. Because, suddenly, there were her memories of Leo and Carver at ten. Leo had asked Meredith and Freddy for a pair of Ray-Ban sunglasses, and Freddy had made him earn the hundred and thirty-nine dollars by doing jobs for Father Morrissey at the church. Meredith had gone to check on him and found him on his hands and knees, scraping candle wax off the wooden floors. Meredith had instinctively gotten down on her hands and knees to help, and Leo had said, Don’t, Mom. This is my job. And reluctantly, Meredith had stood up and left him to it.

Carver had started surfing at age ten. He wore a leather choker with a white shell woven into it, and green and black board shorts that reached past his knees. Meredith could picture him so clearly-his young, tanned back, the emerging muscles under the smooth, clear skin of a boy, a boy whose voice had yet to change, a boy who still called her Mommy.

Mommy! Watch me!

“How old are your sons now?” Toby asked.

“Leo is twenty-six and Carver is twenty-four. They’re in Connecticut. Leo has a girlfriend named Anais.”

Toby nodded. The shirt made his eyes look very green.

Mommy! Watch me!

“Leo was working for Freddy, and he was under investigation for months. But my lawyer called a couple of days ago to say he’s been cleared.”

“That’s good news,” Toby said.

“The best news,” Connie said. She swatted Toby. “Leo’s my godson, remember.”

“I’m sure you did a great job with the spiritual guidance through this crisis, Aunt Connie,” Toby said.

“I was a basket case about it,” Meredith said. “Your kids come first, you know.”

“I know,” Toby said.

“I’m still under investigation, however,” Meredith said. She smiled weakly. “So enjoy me now, because I might be whisked off to jail at any moment.”

“Meredith,” Connie said.

“I don’t mean to be maudlin. We’ve been having a pretty good summer, considering.”

“Except for the dead seal,” Toby said.

“Harold,” Meredith said. “He was like our pet and they murdered him.”

“And don’t forget the slashed tires and the spray paint,” Connie said. “Meredith spent the first part of the summer hiding inside.”

“Wow!” Toby said. “There’s a lot to talk about, but it’s all really painful!”

Meredith stood up. Every time he opened his mouth, she thought about what had happened at Veronica’s funeral. It made her dizzy. “I’m going upstairs to nap,” she said.

“Please stay,” Connie said.

“I can’t,” Meredith said. She realized this sounded harsh, so she said, “I can hardly keep my eyes open.”

“Okay,” Connie said. “If you’re sure.” She reached for Meredith’s hand. Connie was being very sweet. Certainly she was worried that Meredith would be mad. Was Meredith mad? She was something. She needed time to process this.

She went upstairs to her bedroom, and cracked open the doors of her Romeo and Juliet balcony. She could hear the murmur of Toby’s and Connie’s voices. What were they saying? Meredith wanted to know. She stood in the stripe of sunlight between the doors and listened. Connie said, “Well, you didn’t show up at Chick’s funeral…”

“… always felt bad about that. But I was a kid…”

Meredith flopped on the bed. Her memories of Toby and her father were all jumbled up. One moment, she’d had them both. She lost one first, then the other, and like that, her childhood ended. She thought about her father and Toby in the front yard raking leaves, or in the den watching football. She thought about her father taking Toby aside for “the talk.” Respect my daughter. Be a gentleman. She thought about Chick inviting Toby to sit in on the poker game and how thrilled Toby was to be included. It had been his passage into manhood. She thought about Chick and Toby heading off to the roast-beef station during brunch at the Hotel du Pont. She thought about her graduation from Merion Mercy. She had stood at the podium to deliver her salutatorian’s speech, and when she gazed out at the audience, she found Veronica and Bill O’Brien, Toby, and her father and mother, all in a row. She’d daydreamed about her wedding day at that moment. Her inevitable marriage to Toby. But less than twenty-four hours later, Toby had packed up his proverbial bag and announced that he was moving on, leaving Meredith behind. Meredith remembered the driving lessons with her father in the gathering dusk of the Villanova parking lot. The smell of hot asphalt and cut grass, the shouts of the few university students who remained for the summer, the unbearable knowledge that Toby was at the beach, and that the mainsail and the jib and his freedom were more important to him than she was. Chick Martin had said, “I can’t stand to see you hurt like this,” and at a loss for further words, he’d played the Simon and Garfunkel song over and over again. Sail on Silvergirl, Sail on by.

Meredith sat up. She couldn’t sleep. She yanked her lone cardboard box from the closet and unfolded the flaps. On top were the photographs. Meredith pulled out the one of her and Freddy at the Dial holiday formal. They looked like kids. Freddy had weighed 165 pounds, and his black curly hair went past his shirt collar. There was a picture from their wedding day. Freddy’s hair was cut short then, in the manner of all stockbrokers. Those were the days of his first suit from Brooks Brothers, a huge extravagance. For their wedding, he’d rented a tux. When federal marshals stormed their penthouse on the first of July, they would have found six tuxedos and fourteen dinner jackets in Freddy’s closet.

Meredith could have spent all day on the photos, but she was looking for something else. She dug down to the paperback novels that were on top of the boys’ yearbooks that were on top of the copy of her Simon and Garfunkel album. Meredith pulled out the record sleeve and there, in her father’s handwriting, it said: For my daughter, Meredith, on her sixteenth birthday. You always have been and always will be my Silver Girl. Love, Dad, October 24, 1977.

She’d had her wedding to Toby all planned. Her first dance with Toby was going to be to “The Best of Times,” and her dance with her father was going to be to “Bridge Over Troubled Water.”

Meredith stared into the dim, nearly empty closet. She couldn’t remember what song she and Freddy had danced to at their wedding. Freddy didn’t care much about music. Freddy only cared about money.

And yet, years and years later, he’d bought her a star and he’d named it Silver Girl, after the song. It had always bothered Meredith that he named the star Silver Girl-because he never knew her father, and he’d never heard her father play that song for her. The name and the song and the story were Meredith’s, Freddy was only a guest to it, and yet in buying that star, he co-opted the song and made it his own. He stole the name from Meredith in order to give it back to her as something else.

Meredith rummaged through the cardboard box to the bottom, where she found a manila envelope that held her important documents. She had taken only the lasting things: the children’s birth certificates, her marriage license, her Princeton diploma-and, for some reason, the certificate for her star. She pulled it out. It was on official-looking cream-colored paper and it said “NASA” across the top.

She had received the star for her forty-fifth birthday. Freddy had booked a private room at Daniel. He had invited thirty people-New York friends only-Samantha and Trent Deuce, Richard Cassel and his new girlfriend (young), Mary Rose Garth and her new boyfriend (younger), their favorite neighbors from the building, and some people that Meredith and Freddy didn’t know all that well but whom Fred had probably invited in order to fill the room. The dinner had been elegant, everyone else got bombed on the extraordinary wines, but Meredith stuck to her glass and a half of red, and Freddy stuck to mineral water. And yet, he had been more effusive than usual, a manic, overeager master of ceremonies. Something was happening after the meal, Meredith picked up on that, and it had to do with her birthday present. Meredith experienced a flutter of curiosity; for her fortieth birthday, Freddy had arranged for Jimmy Buffett to sing to her on the beach in Saint Barth’s. She thought this year would be something like that-Elton John, Tony Bennett. They had all the tea in China and so purchasing gifts for each other was a challenge. What could Freddy give her that would be creative and meaningful and unique, that she wouldn’t just go out and buy for herself?

Right after Meredith blew out her candles, Freddy chimed his spoon against his water glass.

“Attention, attention!” Everyone quieted down to listen.

“It’s Meredith’s birthday,” Freddy said. He mugged, the room chuckled. Meredith thought about the things she really wanted. She wanted her children to be happy and successful. She wanted more time with Freddy. She remembered looking up at his salt and pepper curls, his piercing blue eyes, his fine-cut suit, and thinking, I never see this man. I never spend time alone with him. She remembered hoping that her present was everyone else in the room going home.

But no. There was some elaborate presentation of an envelope on a silver tray by one of the waiters, which Freddy opened with the nervous suspense of an Oscar presenter, and he announced that he had bought his wife, Meredith Martin Delinn, a star in Bode’s Galaxy. He had named the star “Silver Girl,” after a song Meredith’s father had sung to her as a child.

Teenager, Meredith thought.

A star? she thought.

Where is Bode’s Galaxy? she wondered.

“So when you look up in the sky,” Freddy said, “you’ll know that one of those stars out there belongs to Meredith.”

He kissed Meredith and presented her with a certificate from NASA, and everyone in the room applauded, and the waiters moved around the room with star-shaped chocolate truffles and bottles of port from the year of Meredith’s birth.

Meredith kissed Freddy and thanked him.

He said, “What do you think? I promise you are the only woman on the Upper East Side with her own star.”

Meredith had kept the NASA certificate, although in truth, she had barely glanced at it. She was ambivalent about the name of the star, and she felt abashed at the grandiosity of the gesture, and in front of all those people, some of them perfect strangers. How much money had Freddy spent on this star? She wondered. A hundred thousand dollars? More? Wasn’t it the equivalent of throwing money away, since the star wasn’t something Meredith would ever see in this lifetime? Wasn’t Freddy basically announcing that since they could afford anything on God’s green earth, he had to move into the heavens to find a surprise for Meredith?

These things had all bothered Meredith, but what had bothered her the most was the way he’d acted. His posturing, his showmanship. There were times-and this was one of them-when Freddy came across as a charlatan, rolling into town with his cart of magic potions meant to cure this or that, tricking the innocent townspeople, disappearing with their money, leaving them with a handful of placebos and a vial of sugar water.

Meredith studied the certificate. There was no seal on it, nothing engraved or embossed. Meredith hadn’t wondered about this at the time Freddy gave it to her, although now it seemed clear that this wasn’t a NASA document at all-but, rather, something that Freddy had printed up himself on his computer. She shook the paper in fury. How had she not seen this? She hadn’t studied the document closely at all. As with everything else Freddy told her, she’d accepted it on blind faith.

And now it was painfully clear that it was a fake. If she had only looked at it, if she had only opened her eyes, she would have seen that. This was something Freddy did himself on the computer. She wanted to rip up the certificate-Goddamn you, Freddy! She thought (zillionth and sixth). But it might be evidence. Meredith pulled out her cell phone and called Dev.

“I think I have it this time,” she said. “Check for the name ‘Silver Girl.’ ” Then she caught herself. “Or, that may be the name of a star registered with NASA.”

“Huh?” Dev said.

“Freddy said he bought me a star,” Meredith said. “But now I think he was lying about it.” Of course, he was lying about it: the certificate had been printed on ivory cotton bond paper, the same paper Freddy kept in his office.

“When was this?” Dev asked.

“Two thousand and six,” she said. “Did you find Thad Orlo?”

“I’m not allowed to say,” Dev said.

“Not allowed to say? I gave you the information.”

“We’re getting closer, we think,” Dev said.

Meredith noted how he now included himself as a “we” with the Feds. “Well, use the name ‘Silver Girl,’ and cross-reference it with what you’ve already got. Or what the Feds have got.”

“Does the certificate say anything else?” Dev said. “Does it have a number on it? The Feds are looking for account numbers. Preferably nine digits.”

“Yes, it has a number,” Meredith said. In the upper-right corner, in Freddy’s own handwriting, was a number-ten figures, not nine, and three of the figures were letters. In Freddy’s own handwriting, in Flair pen. This was it, this was a real clue, this stupid star, her supposed birthday present! Freddy had hidden information here. He had given the information to her, but had he ever expected her to figure it out? God, Meredith was a dismal failure at seeing what was right there in front of her face. Meredith read the number off to Dev. “Zero, zero, zero, four, H, N, P, six, nine, nine.”

He said, “Do those numbers mean anything to you?”

“Nope,” Meredith said.

“It’s probably just an account number from the bank. Maybe one of the zeros is extraneous; maybe one of the numbers is a dummy number. Thank you for this, Meredith. This is good stuff.”

“But you don’t know for sure if it’s good stuff,” Meredith said. “The Feds have to check it out, right? But can you please tell them I’m trying?”

“Oh, Meredith,” he said. “We all know you’re trying.”

CONNIE

Meredith and Toby had been under Connie’s roof for nearly twenty-four hours-and was it awkward?

Yes.

There had been a strained exchange at lunch. Meredith had lasted ten or twelve minutes before she went to hide out upstairs.

Toby had said, “Should I just leave? I have an open-ended ticket back to BWI. I can go anytime.”

Connie said, “You just got here. I haven’t seen you in aeons. I want you to stay.”

“Okay,” Toby said uncertainly.

“She’ll get over it,” Connie said.

“You think?” Toby said.

When Meredith descended at five o’clock, she looked even more unglued than she had at noon.

Connie said, “Everything okay?”

Meredith turned on her. “Okay?” she said.

“I’m sorry,” Connie said. “I didn’t mean to spring it on you. I honestly didn’t think he’d show. You know how unreliable he is.”

“That I do.”

At that moment, Toby materialized out of nowhere. “Who’s unreliable?” he said.

They had to do something about dinner. Connie didn’t feel like cooking, Meredith didn’t want to go out, Dan called to say he was spending the night at home with his boys but that he’d come by in the morning to take the three of them to Great Point. Connie told Meredith this. Meredith had been talking about going to Great Point for weeks, but Meredith just frowned and said, “Fine.”

They decided to order pizza with sausage and onion, which was the kind of pizza they’d eaten all through high school. If Connie closed her eyes, she could see their booth at Padrino’s, herself and Matt Klein on one side, Meredith and Toby on the other, the pitcher of birch beer and four brown pebbled plastic glasses between them, Orleans on the jukebox singing “You’re Still the One.”

Connie whipped up a salad, and when the pizza came, they sat down to eat. But the conversation was stilted; Meredith was off in her own thoughts someplace. It was as different from Connie’s memories of Padrino’s as a dinner could be.

Not to be defeated, Connie suggested that they go into the sitting room to watch a movie. Was this too obvious? How many hundreds of movies had the three of them watched together in the O’Brien basement? Toby was game, and Meredith agreed reluctantly. Connie took the easy chair and Toby sat on the sofa, and Meredith glanced at the spot on the sofa next to Toby. Toby patted the cushion. “Come sit here.”

But Meredith said, “I’ll be fine on the floor.” She sat cross-legged on the Claire Murray rug, her back straight, her chin high. Annabeth Martin’s influence, or all that diving.

Connie said, “Meredith, you can’t be comfortable.”

Meredith said, “I’m fine.”

They deliberated over which film to watch, which was to say that Connie and Toby deliberated with the understanding that whatever they picked, Meredith would deem it “fine.” They had agreed on The Shawshank Redemption, but then at the last minute, Toby cried out, “Oh, no, let’s watch Animal House.”

Very slowly, Meredith turned to him. “You’re kidding, right?”

“Come on,” he said. “Don’t you remember?”

“Yes,” Meredith said. “I do remember.” And then, slowly as smoke, she rose and drifted out of the room. “Good night,” she said, once she was on the stairs. “I’m going to bed.”

Connie waited until she heard the door of Meredith’s bedroom click. “Do I even ask?”

“First date,” he said.

“Why are you torturing her?” Connie said.

“I’m not torturing her,” he said. “I thought she’d find it funny.”

“Yeah, she was just cracking up.”

Toby said, “So what happened between the two of you?”

“What happened between the two of you?” Connie said.

“Work in progress,” Toby said.

Connie shook her head.

Toby said, “I know the two of you had a big fight. I noticed she didn’t show up at Wolf’s funeral, but you never told me what happened. And I was too much of a drunk to ask.”

“It’s water under the bridge,” Connie said.

“Tell me,” Toby said.

“Oh…” Connie said. She hadn’t talked to anyone about her fight with Meredith except for Wolf. Ashlyn and Iris and her friend Lizbet knew there had been a rift, but Connie hadn’t wanted to share the details. It was nobody’s business, and the break from Meredith had been exquisitely painful. But Connie was sick to death of taboo subjects. If she had told Dan what happened with Ashlyn at the funeral, then she could tell Toby about her phone call with Meredith.

“A few months before Wolf died,” Connie said-Wolf had still been working, but the doctors weren’t pulling any punches; this was it, Wolf wouldn’t be getting any better-“he scrutinized all of our financial paperwork.” Wolf had pored over the statements and stock reports for most of a Sunday afternoon, and Connie remembered feeling annoyed and churlish. It had been a glorious September day, and she had wanted to go for a walk with Wolf while he was still able, but he was tied to the paperwork spread out all over the dining-room table. They should go out and embrace the day; they had Gene, their accountant, to worry about the finances, didn’t they? Wolf had long since given up reading-the effort made his eyes ache-and even at job sites, he had an assistant read him the measurements off the plans. So how much of those columns of figures did Wolf understand? But he was determined. Connie went for the walk by herself and came home watery eyed and sneezing from hay fever.

“Wolf asked me to sit down. He presented me with a pile of statements from Delinn Enterprises, which had been printed on a dot-matrix printer. I had never laid eyes on the actual statements before. I said to Wolf, ‘Jesus, we should donate these to the Smithsonian.’ ”

We’re going to pull this money out tomorrow, Wolf said.

What?

Get out of Freddy’s thing. Gene loves it, but he can’t explain to me how it’s done, and in all the years I’ve known Freddy, he’s never been able to explain it to me in any way that makes sense.

It’s black magic, Connie had said lightly. This was Freddy’s answer whenever someone asked him about the formula for such fantastic returns, even in years when there was a down market.

It’s black all right, Wolf said. I’m sure he’s breaking the law.

Freddy?

Yes, Freddy. I like the guy; I’ve always liked him. God knows, he’s generous to a fault. And I love Meredith and the boys, but something isn’t right with that business. Whatever he’s doing, the SEC is going to catch him, but we’re not waiting around for that to happen. We’re getting out of this tomorrow.

Tomorrow? Really? Don’t you want to talk to Gene about it before…

Connie. Wolf had put his hand over her hand and tried to look at her, but his gaze had been off, as it occasionally was then. He couldn’t always focus. Connie’s eyes had filled with hot tears that had nothing to do with ragweed. She was losing him. The liquidation of the Delinn Enterprises account was one step taken in preparation for Wolf’s death. We’re getting out of that fund tomorrow.

Okay, Connie said, though she was skeptical. The returns were so good and they had been so lucky to be allowed to invest when so many others had been turned away. But she had backed Wolf on more radical decisions that this; she would back him now. Do you think Freddy will be mad?

Mad? Wolf said. He had seemed amused by this idea. We only have three million in our account. That’s a drop of water in the ocean of Delinn Enterprises. Freddy won’t even notice.

“But as it turned out,” Connie said to Toby, “Freddy did notice. He left messages at Wolf’s office-and then once he found out that Wolf was on-site all the time, he ambushed Wolf’s cell phone.” But Connie had only discovered this days later when, reaching a point of extreme frustration, Freddy called the house.

Pulling out your money? Freddy ranted. What the hell?

Freddy had sounded livid, which perplexed Connie. It was only $3 million. Why did he care? She said, We have so little money with you. Compared to other clients of yours, I mean. You won’t miss us.

Won’t miss you? Freddy said. Do you know how proud I am to be able to tell people that Washington architect Wolf Flute is a client of mine? I have hundreds of clients in Hollywood-I have Clooney’s money and Belushi family money-but I get more pleasure out of mentioning Wolf Flute’s name than anybody else’s.

Really? Connie said. She hadn’t known how to react to this. Freddy wanted Wolf to stay invested so Freddy could drop his name and lure other architects, or other prominent Washingtonians, to invest? Could this possibly be true? And if it were true, would Wolf be flattered or annoyed?

“So I hung up with Freddy, promising that Wolf would call to explain. Wolf then told me that he didn’t want to explain. It was a free country, he said, and he was pulling our money out of Delinn Enterprises. I had no choice but to throw the Meredith friendship card. And Wolf told me that if I was worried about what Meredith thought, I would have to call her myself.”

“So what did you do?” Toby asked.

“I called her,” Connie said.

Meredith had answered on the first ring, as though she had been standing around her apartment waiting for the call.

Meredith?

Constance.

You heard?

I heard something, Meredith said. But I didn’t believe it.

Connie had sighed. She had hoped that Meredith would make this easier. She had hoped that Meredith would take the news in stride and do her part to smooth things over with Freddy. Wolf really felt we had to pull our money.

That’s what Freddy told me. But why?

Well, Connie said. Did she tell Meredith the truth here? Certainly not. I don’t know why, exactly.

You’re lying to me, Constance, Meredith said.

I’m not lying, Connie said. Wolf has his reasons, but I’m not sure what they are.

Wolf is sick, Meredith said.

Connie raised her hackles. Yes, she said. I know.

He has brain cancer, Meredith said.

Well, that doesn’t mean he’s stupid, Connie said.

He’s making a stupid mistake, Freddy says.

Of course, Freddy would say that, Connie said. It’s Freddy’s fund. Freddy wants us to stay in. He made that perfectly clear.

So then, what’s the problem? Are the returns not good enough?

They’re good enough, Connie said. Wolf feels like they’re too good.

What does that mean? Meredith asked.

Our accountant can’t explain how Freddy’s doing it, Connie said. Nobody can.

Well, of course not, Meredith said. Otherwise, they’d be doing it themselves. Freddy is a genius, Connie. Here, Connie could mouth along to Meredith’s words, they were so predictable. He was an econ whiz at Princeton. He understands the market like nobody else. Do you know how many people who ask to invest with Freddy he turns down?

Wolf thinks it smells funny, Connie admitted.

Smells funny? Meredith said. Are you accusing my husband of something?

I don’t know, Connie said. She had used an apologetic voice when she said this. She used a please-don’t-let-our-husbands’-business-tear-us-apart voice. Wolf’s just concerned.

Because he thinks Freddy is breaking the law, Meredith said.

I said, I don’t know.

You do know that Freddy works in a highly regulated industry?

Connie opened her mouth to speak, but Meredith said, God, I HATE it when people call Freddy a crook. He’s excellent at what he does, he’s better at it than anyone else, and that makes him a crook?

All I’m saying is that Wolf wants our money out. Connie’s voice was tougher with that statement. She had never put herself up against Freddy in Meredith’s eyes, and now, she could see, she was going to lose. If Meredith was going to champion Freddy, then fine-Connie would defend Wolf. She thought of sitting on Wolf’s shoulders during the chicken fights at the Madequecham Jam. Hadn’t she been ruthless? Hadn’t they won every single time? We want our money out. We want a check in the morning!

A check in the morning? Meredith said. So that’s your decision? You’re done with Freddy?

Done with Delinn Enterprises, yes, Connie said. She said this to make a distinction between the business and the friendship. The awkward fact was that Connie and Wolf had a vacation planned to Cap d’Antibes with Meredith and Freddy two weeks hence. What would they do about that?

Meredith was the one to ask. What about France?

The trip to France would most likely be Wolf and Connie’s last trip together, and Connie had been desperately looking forward to it. But how could they go to France now?

We’re not coming to France, Connie said.

Here, Meredith paused. You’re not coming to France?

I don’t see how we can… now, Connie said. What she meant was: How can we all sit around and eat pâté and drink wine when you’ve both made such a brouhaha about us pulling out our money? How can we accept hospitality from a man whom we’ve essentially labeled a crook?

Meredith’s voice was very quiet. Perhaps if they had both still been yelling, they would have resolved things differently. But Meredith took a resigned breath and said, Okay, Connie, if that’s the way you want to play it, fine. But you’re making a big mistake.

And Connie, incredulous that the Meredith she had known for over forty years, a woman she considered as close as a sister, would let their friendship asphyxiate because of money, said, Actually, I don’t think I am.

I’ll tell Freddy you want a check tomorrow, Meredith said.

Thank you, Connie said.

And they both hung up.

“And that was that?” Toby said.

“That was that,” Connie said. “Weeks went by, then months, and I didn’t hear from her. I kept thinking she would call to apologize.”

“But you didn’t call her to apologize,” Toby said.

“What did I have to apologize for?” Connie said.

When Wolf died, Meredith sent flowers and wrote a $10,000 check to the American Cancer Society in Wolf’s honor. Connie wrote to say thank you. She thought that maybe she and Meredith could mend the fence, but she didn’t hear back from Meredith. Connie knew this was because of Freddy.

And then Wolf was proved right: Freddy was arrested. The Ponzi scheme was revealed.

“I’m lucky we got out when we did,” Connie said. “If Wolf hadn’t pulled our money, I would have been forced to sell the Nantucket house. And maybe the Bethesda house, too. I would have had nothing left.”

She would have been just like Meredith.

The next day was Sunday, and as soon as Connie woke up, she called Ashlyn.

She was shuttled right into voice mail.

“Hi, honey, it’s me,” Connie said. “I’m still on Nantucket, and guess what? Uncle Toby is visiting!” Connie paused, as if waiting for Ashlyn to respond. For all Connie knew, Toby talked to Ashlyn on a regular basis. As desperately as Connie wanted news of her daughter, she couldn’t bring herself to ask. “Anyway, call me back when you get this. I love you, Ashlyn. It’s Mom.”

Connie packed as carefully for their trip to Great Point as she might have for a trip to Paris. She wore a bathing suit and a sheer white cover-up that she hadn’t worn since the summer Wolf was sick. Even with his failing eyesight, he’d said, You look like an angel in that white dress, my love. That comment alone had made Connie unwilling to wear the cover-up for anyone else. But now she saw how silly that was. The cover-up had been expensive, and it looked good on her. She would wear it. She packed her book, sunscreen, towels, and a sweater. In her overnight bag, she packed her toothbrush, face lotion, and her brush, a nightgown.

She packed food in the cooler, and a thermos of iced tea, but no wine. It would be fine. Of course, she could pack a bottle of wine and simply choose not to drink it-but who was she kidding? If the wine was there, she would be too tempted.

She heard a horn beeping outside. Dan!

“Dan, this is my brother, Toby. Toby, this is Dan Flynn.”

“Dan the man!” Toby said, shaking Dan’s hand.

Dan grinned. “Nice to meet you. You and Connie look alike.”

“We do?” Connie said. She could see right away that everything was going to be fine. Toby was used to charming everyone he came in contact with, and Dan would be no exception. Dan and Toby were alike; they were men of the outdoors. Neither of them cared about money or prestige or about leaving behind a legacy. They cared about being free to do as they liked. They were a perfect match.

Dan kissed Meredith on the cheek. He said, “I like the way you did your hair.”

Meredith was wearing a red baseball hat with sorority letters on it. It had been Ashlyn’s, long abandoned to the dusty shelf of the front closet. Connie had initially been shocked to see Meredith wearing it, then she thought, Oh, what the hell. No more taboos. And Meredith seemed marginally more cheerful this morning.

“Thanks,” Meredith said.

“I meant, no wig,” Dan said.

“Wait a minute,” Toby said. “Do you actually wear a wig?”

“I’ve been traveling incognito,” Meredith said. “But not today.”

Dan touched Meredith’s shoulder. “You won’t need a disguise today.”

“Great Point!” Toby said, rubbing his hands together.

“Let’s go!” Dan said.

They drove through the town of Sconset, stopping at the market for sandwiches and bags of chips, pretzels, and marshmallows. Connie had made a fruit salad, potato salad, and coleslaw, and Dan said he had the rest of their provisions covered.

The top was down on the strawberry Jeep, and the sun shone on the four of them as they drove out of Sconset along the Polpis Road, past Sankaty Lighthouse and the golf course, past the flat blue oval of Sesachacha Pond, to the Wauwinet turnoff. Here, the road grew winding and rural-there were farmhouses surrounded by open land, and then there was a thicket of green, leafy trees before they reached the gatehouse at the Wauwinet inn. Dan stopped the Jeep and hopped out to let the air out of the tires. Toby said, “Can I help?”

“I’d love it,” Dan said. He tossed Toby the tire gauge and worked with the car key.

Connie was up front, Meredith directly behind her. Connie turned around and smiled at Meredith.

“You okay?” she said.

“Great,” Meredith said. She had her big, dark sunglasses on, so Connie couldn’t tell if this was a real “great” or a sarcastic “great.”

Connie listened to the hiss of air escaping the tires. It was like a double date, she thought. Having Toby here balanced things out. She remembered her last double date with Meredith-and Wolf and Freddy-in the south of France. Freddy had arranged for a car trip to the picturesque village of Annecy. They had traveled in a 1956 Renault; they had a driver in a military-blue chauffeur cap who spoke only French. Meredith had been the one who communicated with him. Connie remembered being envious of Meredith’s French and feeling angry at herself for taking four years of useless Latin. The four of them had gone to an elegant lunch at a Michelin-starred restaurant overlooking a lake. It was a place Meredith and Freddy went often; they knew the owner, a distinguished, olive-skinned gentleman in an immaculate suit. The man had reminded Connie of Oscar de la Renta; he had kissed Connie’s hand and brought both her and Meredith glasses of rose champagne. Krug. The lunch must have cost five hundred euros, though no bill ever came to the table. It had been like that with Freddy and Meredith-you had these amazing experiences that just seemed to magically happen-though, of course, Freddy had paid for lunch somehow. The lunch had probably cost more like a thousand euros because there had been at least two bottles of the Krug. There had been lobster and mango salad, and microgreens with marinated artichokes that were grown at a local farm. There had been a whole poached fish with sauce on the side and these special potatoes braised in olive oil, and a cheese platter with figs and tiny champagne grapes. And then, at the end of the meal, chocolate truffles and espresso. It had been the lunch of a lifetime. Freddy, Connie remembered, had drunk only mineral water. He had sat at the head of the table, the undisputed king, ordering up this dish and that, while Connie and Wolf and Meredith grew giddy on the Krug. Freddy’s tee-totaling, Connie saw now, had been a way of controlling them all. And hadn’t this car trip to Annecy and this lunch occurred the day after Freddy had kissed Connie on the terrace? Yes, she remembered feeling Freddy’s eyes on her during that lunch; she had felt his admiration and his desire. She had, if she could be perfectly honest, basked in it.

He had kissed her, touched her.

Connie nearly turned around to ask Meredith the name of that restaurant-it was the kind of thing one was meant to remember-but Connie decided she wouldn’t bring it up. For all she knew, the owner of the restaurant had been an investor; for all she knew, the restaurant was now gone, one more casualty of Delinn Enterprises.

You are an incredibly beautiful woman, Constance.

The attendant from the gatehouse came out to check their beach sticker. He was an older gentleman with a gray buzz cut and a stern demeanor. Ex-military for sure. A retired lieutenant. That was who was needed for this job: someone who could keep the unregistered riffraff off the hallowed conservation acres of Great Point.

The attendant brightened when he saw Dan. “Hello there, young Flynn,” he said. “How goes it this fine day?”

The two men shook hands.

“It goes,” Dan said. He looked at Toby, then back at the Jeep. “These are some friends of mine…”

Be careful! Connie thought.

“From Maryland.”

Toby, never one to shy from an introduction, offered his hand. “Toby O’Brien.”

“Bud Attatash,” the attendant said. He looked past Toby at the Jeep.

Don’t introduce us! Connie thought.

“You ladies ready to go have some fun?” Bud asked.

Connie waved. She couldn’t see what Meredith was doing.

“How is it up there today?” Dan asked. Connie thought, Get in the car. Please, let’s go. But then she remembered that Dan’s real job was to know everyone on this island and everything that went on. Clearly, he felt he had to take two minutes to chew the fat with Bud Attatash.

Bud said, “Well, it’s August and the seals are finally off the point. They’ve made their way up the coast.”

“It’ll smell a lot better,” Dan said.

“Got that right,” Bud said. He scratched the back of his neck. His collar was as stiff as cardboard. “Hey, did you hear about a dead seal on the south shore? Murdered, they say. Dropped off special delivery for that Delinn woman.”

Toby made a noise. Bud looked over.

Dan said, “Yes, I did hear about that. Awful stuff.”

Connie’s palms itched. Her shoulders were burning in the sun. She was afraid to turn around to check on Meredith. Toby, she saw, looked stricken. If he’d had three drinks in him, he would have socked Bud Attatash in the jaw.

“Awful is right,” Bud said. “Killing an animal like that.”

“Senseless violence,” Dan said.

Get in the car! Connie thought. She cleared her throat. Toby read her mind and hopped into the backseat next to Meredith. Dan took a step back with one foot but wasn’t able to make the full commitment to leaving.

Bud said, “They’ll never catch the guys who did it. That woman has too many enemies.”

“It’s a little more complicated than that, Bud,” Dan said. “And if you don’t believe me, you should talk to the chief about it.” Even Dan seemed flustered now, and Connie felt a flash of irritation. How had he not been able to keep the conversation off this one topic? Jesus! “Well, we should be shoving off now.”

“A poor, innocent sea creature,” Bud said.

They pulled out onto the sand, leaving Bud Attatash in his khaki uniform staring after them at the gatehouse.

Dan said, “Sorry about that.”

Nobody spoke. Connie checked on Meredith in the side-view mirror. Her expression, under the brim of the hat and behind the dark, saucer-size lenses of her sunglasses, was inscrutable.

“Bud is harmless,” Dan said. “I’ve known him my whole life.”

Again, no one spoke. Connie turned on the radio. It was a commercial, loud and grating. She pushed in the CD, thinking it would be the Beatles, but the music that came blaring out was even worse than the radio. Dan popped the CD back out with a proprietary air that made Connie feel like she shouldn’t have presumed to touch the radio in the first place.

He said, “Sorry. I let Donovan borrow the car. That’s his music.”

Connie feared all the good karma she’d attached to this day was in danger of draining through the floorboards.

But the Jeep bounced over some bumps in the sand, and Toby whooped, and Connie was forced to grab hold of the roll bar. They drove past the last of the summer homes and headed out onto the pure sands of Great Point.

Suddenly, their silence seemed not due to the awkwardness with Bud Attatash back at the gatehouse but, rather, in deference to the stark beauty of the landscape around them. The sand up here was creamy white. The vegetation consisted of low-lying bushes-bayberry and sweet-scented Rosa rugosa. The ocean was a deep blue; the waves were gentler than the waves in Tom Nevers. In the distance, Connie saw Great Point Lighthouse. What was breathtaking was the purity of the surroundings. A few men were surf casting along the shore. Crabs scuttled past the seagulls and the oystercatchers.

Why had Connie never come out here before? The real answer, she supposed, was that the Flutes didn’t come to Great Point; it wasn’t in their repertoire of Nantucket excursions. Mrs. Flute, Wolf’s mother, claimed she couldn’t abide the thought of automobiles on the beach, but Wolf told Connie that what this really meant was that his parents-being stingy Yankee folk-didn’t want to fork over the money for a beach sticker. (It had been seventy-five dollars back in the day; now, it was nearly twice that.)

Well, Connie thought, they had missed out. The place was a natural treasure.

Dan drove them through the sand tracks to the tip of the island. “There,” he said. “You can see the riptide.”

Toby stood up in his seat. “Man,” he said. “Amazing.”

Connie could see a demarcation in the water, a roiling, where the riptide was. This was the end of the island, or the beginning of it. The lighthouse was just behind them.

“Can we climb the lighthouse?” Meredith asked. She sounded a little closer to her normal self. Hopefully, she had chalked the encounter with Bud Attatash up to bad luck. More than anything, Connie wanted to keep Meredith happy.

“Yes, can we?” she asked Dan.

“We can,” Dan said. He pulled the car around to the harbor side of the point and parked. There were sailboats scattered across the horizon.

They trudged through the hot sand toward the lighthouse. There was an antechamber with two wooden benches, but the door that led into the lighthouse was shut tight.

“You never used to know if the door would be locked,” Dan said. He turned the knob.

“It’s locked,” Connie said. She was disappointed. She tried the knob herself.

“It’s locked,” Dan said. “But I have a key.”

“You do?” Meredith said.

Dan pulled a key out of his pants pocket. It was the color of an old penny. “I’ve had this key since I was eighteen years old. Back then, the ranger out here was a man named Elton Vicar. And I dated his granddaughter, Dove Vicar.”

“Dove?” Connie said.

“Dove stole this key from Elton and gave it to me, and I was smart enough to hold on to it. Because I knew it would come in handy someday.”

“Are you sure it still works?” Connie said. How could a key that Dan had had for thirty years still work?

Dan slid the key into the knob. He had to wiggle it, but he fit it in and turned the knob and the door opened. “They’ll never change the lock. Too much trouble. Plus, they have no reason to.”

“So are we doing something illegal, then?” Meredith asked. She sounded nervous.

“Relax,” Dan said. “The crime was committed long ago, by Dove Vicar, who is now Dove Somebody Else, living somewhere in New Mexico.”

“But aren’t we breaking and entering?” Meredith said.

“We have a key!” Dan said, and he stepped inside.

Connie had never been inside a lighthouse before, but this one was about what she expected. It was dark and dingy with a sandy concrete floor; it smelled like somebody’s root cellar. In the middle of the room was a wrought-iron spiral staircase and Dan began marching up. Connie followed, thinking, I am dating the only man on Nantucket with a key to the Great Point Lighthouse. Meredith was behind Connie, and Toby brought up the rear. Connie watched her step; the only light was filtering down in dusty rays from above.

At the top of the stairs, there was a room of sorts-a floor and windows and a case that held the reflecting light, which was powered by solar panels.

Toby was impressed. “How long ago was this built?”

“Originally in seventeen eighty-five,” Dan said. “Reconstructed in nineteen eighty-six.”

There was a narrow balcony that encircled the top. Connie and Meredith stepped out and walked around the outside. Connie could see all the way across Nantucket Sound to Cape Cod. To the south, the island was spread out before them like a blanket-the houses and trees and ponds, sand dunes and dirt roads. Connie had been coming to Nantucket for twenty years, but today might have been the first day she truly saw it.

Dan parked the Jeep on the harbor side, and they unfolded chairs and laid out towels.

“This,” Connie said, “is a breathtaking spot. Isn’t it breathtaking, Meredith?”

Meredith hummed. “Mmmhmmm.”

Dan opened a beer. “Does anybody want a drink?”

Connie said, “Toby, I brought iced tea.”

Toby held up a hand. “I’m fine right now, thanks.”

Dan said, “Meredith, how about you?”

“I’m all set.”

“Connie?” Dan said. “Can I pour you a glass of wine?”

“I brought iced tea,” she said.

“Really?” he said. “No wine?”

“Really,” Connie said. She put on a wide-brimmed straw hat that she’d bought to keep the sun off her face but that she never bothered to wear. Time to start taking care of herself. Wear a hat, leave the chardonnay at home. “I’ll have an iced tea.”

“Okay,” Dan said. He sounded surprised.

Toby said, “Meredith, do you want to go for a walk?”

Meredith said, “Connie, do you want to go for a walk?”

Connie said, “Not just yet. You two go.”

Meredith didn’t move. She said, “I’ll wait for Connie.”

Toby said in a very adult, very serious voice Connie couldn’t remember ever hearing him use before, “Meredith, come for a walk with me. Please.”

Meredith sat, still as a stone. “No,” she said.

Connie thought, Is today going to be a total disaster?

Toby walked off in silence. Connie watched him go. Then, a few seconds later, Meredith got to her feet, and Connie thought, Oh, thank God. But Meredith took off in the opposite direction.

Dan settled in a chair next to Connie. He had a copy of The Kite Runner in his lap. “So, do I dare ask? What’s their deal?”

“Oh, God,” Connie said. “I have no idea.”

“You have no idea?”

When Connie looked at Dan, she was overwhelmed by how little she knew him-and she was overwhelmed by how little he knew her. How did it happen, getting to know someone? It took time. It took days spent together, weeks, months. The thought of all the effort it would take to get to know Dan and to have Dan know her suddenly seemed exhausting. Why had she not just brought the wine? Everything was so much easier with wine.

“Meredith and Toby dated in high school,” Connie said.

“Ah,” Dan said, as if this explained everything. But how could he possibly understand?

“They were madly in love,” Connie said. “It was irritating.”

Dan laughed. “Irritating?”

“Well, you know, he was my brother; she was my best friend…”

“You felt left out?”

“Sort of, yes. At first, I was really bothered by it. I nearly put an end to it-I had the power to do that, I think, at least with Meredith. But I grew used to the idea, and I had boyfriends, too, always…”

“That doesn’t surprise me,” Dan said.

“So we used to double date. We went to the movies and to dances at Radnor High School, where Toby went. We went roller skating.” Connie laughed. It was funny thinking about her and Meredith and Toby and Matt Klein at the roller rink with the disco ball spinning, creating spots of multicolored light. They skated to Queen and Lynyrd Skynyrd and Earth, Wind & Fire. Connie and Meredith skated backward-they had spent hours practicing this in Meredith’s basement-and Toby and Matt rested their hands on the girls’ hips. Connie and Meredith both had feathered hair; they kept plastic combs in the back pockets of their designer jeans. Between skates, the four of them would sit at the plastic tables in the snack bar and drink suicides and eat bad nachos. “But, I don’t know, my boyfriends were always just guys to pass the time with. Meredith and Toby were different. They were in love. They were very vocal about that, very smug about it.”

“Irritating,” Dan agreed.

“And then once I’d pretty much embraced the fact that they were probably going to get married and have five kids, Toby broke up with her.”

“Did something happen?”

“He was nineteen years old, going off to college, and he wanted his freedom. Meredith was a wreck. I was surprised by that. She was always so tough, you know, so cool, and… impervious, like nothing could affect her. But when Toby broke up with her, she crumbled. She cried all the time, she leaned on her parents a lot, she was very close with her father… I remember right after it happened, I tried to take her mind off him, and it backfired.”

Dan leaned forward. “Really? What happened?”

“I had been invited to this party at Villanova, and I convinced Meredith to go with me. I had to beg her, but she agreed, and once we got there, she started drinking this red punch. Kool-Aid and grain alcohol.”

“Oh, God,” Dan said.

“And the next thing I knew, everyone else in the room was jumping up and down to the Ramones, and Meredith was slumped over on the couch. Passed out. Dead weight.” What Connie didn’t say was that there was a minute or two when Connie had feared Meredith was actually dead. Connie had screamed until someone shut off the music. And then another partygoer, who claimed he was pre-med, determined that Meredith was breathing and had a pulse. Then the music was cranked back up, and it became Connie’s responsibility to get Meredith out of there. “The problem was that we had walked to the party,” Connie said. For the preceding two years, Toby had been their ride everywhere. Connie had failed her driver’s test three times, and Meredith was still learning how to drive from her father, but Meredith spent more time crying than driving. “So my options were to call my parents for a ride, call Meredith’s parents for a ride, or try to get Meredith home on my own.”

“So…?” Dan said.

So, Connie’s parents were always drunk themselves and could offer no assistance. And Connie hadn’t wanted to call the Martins because they truly believed that Meredith hung the moon, and Connie couldn’t stand the thought of being the one to inform them that their daughter was a human being, an eighteen-year-old girl with a broken heart and some pretty typical self-destructive impulses. And she couldn’t call Toby.

“I carried her home,” Connie said. “On my back.”

Dan hooted. “You’re kidding me.”

Yes, it sounded funny-anyone who heard the story always laughed-but it hadn’t been funny at the time. It had been sad-a sad, difficult, poignant night in Connie and Meredith’s shared experience of growing up. Connie had managed to rouse Meredith enough to get her to cleave onto Connie’s back. Connie held Meredith’s legs, and Meredith wrapped her arms around Connie’s neck, and rested the hot weight of her head on Connie’s shoulder. How many times had they stopped so that Meredith could throw up? How long and loudly had Meredith cried because of Toby? And Connie thought, Why do you need Toby when I’m right here? But she held her tongue. She rubbed Meredith’s back.

I know, I know it hurts, I know.

Connie knew where the Martins kept their extra key, and she knew the alarm code for the house. She got Meredith upstairs into her own bed without waking up Chick or Deidre. Connie filled the bathroom cup with water and put three Excedrin on Meredith’s nightstand, where, Connie saw, Meredith still kept a picture of herself and Toby from Toby’s prom at Radnor. Connie turned the picture facedown and whispered to Meredith’s sleeping form that everything was going to be fine.

The epilogue to that story, which Connie didn’t like to think about now, was that the following January, Meredith sent Connie a letter from Princeton. The letter said, Guess what? You were right. I am going to be fine! I’ve met an amazing guy. His name is Fred.

Meredith returned from her walk with a handful of shells that she set in a row along the edge of her towel like a prepubescent girl.

She gave Dan a teensy smile. “It’s lovely here. Thank you for bringing us.”

Dan said, “Meredith, you’re welcome.”

Connie thought, Things are improving.

Toby returned a little while later with an armload of driftwood, which he dropped in a noisy pile a few inches from where Meredith lay.

“For a fire,” he said. “Later.”

“Great!” Connie said.

Toby nudged Meredith’s shoulder with his big toe. “You missed a great walk,” he said.

“No, I didn’t,” Meredith said. “I took a great walk. I went that way.”

Toby eyeballed her a second, then shook his head.

Connie closed her eyes and thought, Things are not improving. She thought, Okay, the two of you don’t have to fall back in love, no one expects that, but can’t you be friends? And if you can’t manage to be friends, could you at least be civil?

Meredith stood up. “I’m going for a swim.”

“Me, too,” Toby said.

Meredith whipped around. “Stop it, Toby,” she said.

Toby laughed. “The ocean is big enough for both of us.”

“No,” Meredith said. “I don’t think it is.” She waded in, and when the water was at her hips, she dove under. She was as natural to the water as a porpoise. Toby dove in after her, and Connie thought, God, Toby, leave the woman alone. But he swam right up to her and snapped the strap of her black tank suit, and Meredith splashed him in the face and said, “Get some new tricks.”

And he said, “What’s wrong with my old tricks?”

Meredith said, “What’s wrong with your old tricks? Do I really need to answer that?” But if Connie wasn’t mistaken, her voice was a little more elastic, and that was all Toby would need to wiggle into her good graces. Meredith swam down the shoreline, and Toby took off after her, undeterred.

“That looks like fun,” Dan said. He stood up to join them, and Connie followed, although she hated being pressured into the water. But the water here was warm and shallow. Connie floated on her back and felt the sun on her face. Dan encouraged her out a little deeper where he cradled her in his arms and sang a James Taylor song in her ear. “Something in the Way She Moves.” He had a wonderful voice-he was good enough to be a real singer-and Connie loved the buzz in her ear. When he finished, she said, “You are the man with the key.”

“The key to what?” he said.

The lighthouse, silly! she nearly said. But instead, she said, “The key to my heart.”

He seemed pleased by this. “Am I now?” he said.

She nodded. Then she felt guilty. Wolf! Wolf was the man with the key to her heart. It was foolish to believe she could love anybody else like that.

She swam back to shore.

After lunch, Meredith curled up on her blanket and fell asleep. Toby leaned forward in his chair and watched the sailboats in the distance. Connie wondered if he was thinking about Bird’s Nest. Of course he was. She had been more than a boat; she had been, for Toby, a home. As Connie was studying him-she wanted to say something, though she wasn’t sure what-she saw him cast his eyes at Meredith. He gazed at her for a long couple of seconds, and Connie thought, Oh, boy.

Dan pushed himself up out of his chair. “I’m going to fish for a little while. Connie?”

“I’ll pass.”

Toby hopped to his feet. “I’d love to join you.”

Connie watched her lover and her brother amble down the beach with their fishing poles. Meredith’s breathing was audible; she was fast asleep. Connie wondered what she was dreaming about. Did she dream about her sons or Freddy or Connie or her attorney or the angry woman at the salon? Did she dream about Toby, and if so, was it Toby at eighteen, or Toby now, at fifty-one? Connie’s eyes drifted closed. She heard Dan singing a song without words, she felt the breeze lift the brim of her straw hat, she wondered if seals went to heaven and decided they probably did.

When she woke, it was because Toby was shouting about a fish. Dan yelled up the beach, “It’s a keeper!” Connie squinted at them. Meredith was still asleep. Connie decided to walk over and be impressed. She recognized the dark markings on the scales-a striped bass. Big one.

Dan said, “Now that’s a beauty.”

Toby said, “The sea has always provided for me.”

Connie looked at Dan. “Are we going to eat it?”

“I brought my filet knife,” he said. “And a bottle of olive oil and my Lawry’s seasoned salt. I knew we’d catch something. We’ll cook it over the fire.”

Connie smiled and kissed her brother on the cheek. “Hunter-gatherer,” she said. “Meredith will be so impressed.”

They played horseshoes, and Dan won handily. They played Wiffle ball, and Connie hit the ball over everyone’s heads into the eelgrass and they couldn’t find it again. Although this ended their game prematurely, Dan was impressed by the hit, and Connie beamed.

Toby said, “You should have seen her play field hockey. She was a killer.”

Connie and Dan went for a walk and stopped to kiss, which got so heated at one point, Connie thought they might… there was no one around, so… but Dan pulled away. He said, “If Bud comes driving around and sees us, he won’t like it.”

“Does Bud come driving around?” Connie asked.

“Oh, sure,” Dan said, and he nibbled on Connie’s ear.

The sun was setting. When Connie and Dan got back to the camp, Toby had dug a pit with a shovel he’d found in the back of Dan’s Jeep. He piled in the wood and used the paper from their sandwich wrappings to start a fire. He was a man with survival skills. Two failed marriages, a lifelong battle with alcohol, a little boy he didn’t see enough of. Connie had buried a husband and lost a daughter; Dan had buried a wife and lost a son. Meredith-well, Meredith had experienced difficulty the likes of which Connie couldn’t begin to imagine. And yet, despite all of this collective suffering, the four of them gathered around the growing heat and light of the bonfire, and let it warm them.

God, human beings are resilient, Connie thought.

We are resilient!

Dan filleted the bass, and Connie set out cheese and crackers on a plate. Toby and Meredith were sitting side by side on the blanket, not touching, not talking, but they were definitely coexisting more peacefully now. Or was she imagining this?

It was high school over and over and over again.

There was a noise. Connie looked up to see a forest-green pickup truck coming their way. Although it had been a nearly perfect day, they had seen very few people-a couple of lone fishermen on foot, a handful of families in rental Jeeps who approached their spot then backed up, for fear of infringing. But this truck drove toward the camp, then stopped suddenly, spraying sand on Toby and Meredith’s blanket. There was white writing on the side of the truck. Trustees of the Reservation. A man poked his head out the window. He was wearing a green cap. It was Bud Attatash.

He stepped out of the truck. “You folks doing all right?”

Dan was monitoring the progress of the striped bass on the grill. He said, “We’re doing great, Bud. Couldn’t have asked for a better day.”

“I’ll agree with you there,” Bud said. He stood with his hands in his pockets, an uncomfortable air about him. He hadn’t come to talk about the weather. Was he upset about the grill? Or about the fire? Dan had gotten a fire permit; it was in the glove compartment of the Jeep. Was he going to scold them for having an open container? One open beer?

“You headed home?” Dan asked. He had explained that, as ranger, Bud Attatash spent the summer living in a cottage out here on the point.

“Yep,” Bud said. “I just wanted to stop by and see how you folks were doing.”

“We’re cooking up this striped bass,” Dan said. “It was legal, half inch over.”

“They’ve been big this summer,” Bud said. He cleared his throat. “Listen, after you folks headed out, I got to thinking about what you said about that dead seal on the south shore being a more complicated issue than it appeared. So I called up Chief Kapenash, and he told me about it. He said that you, Dan, were a part of that whole thing.” Here, he looked, not at Dan, but at Meredith, whose face had gone scary blank. “And I realized that I said some inappropriate things.” He nodded at Meredith. “Are you Mrs. Delinn?”

Meredith stared. Toby said, “Please, sir, if you don’t mind…”

“Well, Mrs. Delinn, I just want to apologize for my callous words earlier. And for perhaps sounding like I cared more about a dead seal than I did for your welfare. What those people did was inexcusable. No doubt, you’ve been through enough in your private life without these hooligans trying to scare you.”

Meredith pressed her lips together. Toby said, “That’s right, you’re right, she’s been through enough.”

“So if anyone ever bothers you again, you let me know.” He gazed out over the dark water at the twinkling lights of town. “Nantucket is supposed to be a safe haven.”

Dan came over to shake Bud’s hand. “Thanks, Bud. Thank you for coming all the way out here to say that. You didn’t have to.”

“Oh, I know, I know,” Bud said. “But I didn’t want any of you to get the wrong idea about me. I’m not coldhearted or vindictive.”

“Well, thanks again,” Dan said. “You have a good night.”

Bud Attatash tipped his cap at Meredith and then again at Connie, and then he climbed into his truck and drove off into the darkness.

“Well,” Meredith said after a minute. “That was a first.”

They ate the grilled fish with some sliced fresh tomatoes that Dan had gotten at Bartlett’s Farm. Then they each put a marshmallow on a stick and roasted it over the fire. Meredith went back in the water, and Toby stood to join her, but Meredith put a hand up and said, “Don’t even think about it.” Toby plopped back down on his towel. “Yeah,” he said. “She wants me.” Connie climbed into Dan’s lap and listened to the splashing sound of Meredith swimming. Dan kissed her and said, “Let’s get out of here.”

Yes! she thought.

She and Dan started breaking down the camp and packing everything up. Meredith emerged from the water with her teeth chattering, and Connie handed her the last dry towel. She collected the trash and stowed everything in the coolers. She folded up the blankets and the chairs while Dan dealt with the cooling grill and doused the fire. Toby put away the fishing poles, and Meredith collected the horseshoes. A seagull landed for the remains of the striped bass. Connie found the plastic bat in the sand and tucked it into the back of the Jeep. The Wiffle ball was still out there somewhere, Connie thought, tucked into the eelgrass like a seagull’s egg, a memento of one of the small triumphs of the day.

The days zipped by. Connie spent nearly every night at Dan’s house. She left a toothbrush there, and she bought half-and-half for her coffee (Dan, health nut, had only skim milk) and kept it in the fridge. She had met both of Dan’s younger sons-Donovan and Charlie-though they had little more to say to her than “Hey.” Dan relayed the funny things they said to him after Connie left.

Donovan, who was sixteen, had said, “Glad you’re getting laid on a regular basis again, Dad. Can I borrow the Jeep?”

Charlie, the youngest, said, “She’s pretty hot for an older lady.”

“Older lady!” Connie exclaimed.

“Older than him, he means,” Dan said. “And he’s fourteen.”

On the days that Dan had to work, Connie and Meredith and Toby walked the beach and then sat on the deck and read their books and discussed what they wanted to do for dinner. These were the moments when Toby acted like an adult. But more and more often, there were moments when Toby acted like an adolescent. He would mess up Meredith’s hair or throw stones at the door of the outdoor shower while she was in there, or he would steal her glasses, forcing her to come stumbling blindly after him.

“Look at you,” he’d say to her. “You’re chasing me.”

Connie said to Dan, “I can’t tell if that’s going to happen or not.”

Toby asked if he could stay another week.

“Another week?” Connie said. “Or longer?”

“I don’t start at the Naval Academy until after Labor Day,” he said.

“So what does that mean?” Connie asked. “You’ll stay until Labor Day?”

“Another week,” Toby said. “But maybe longer. If that’s okay with you?”

“Of course, it’s okay with me,” Connie said. “I’m just wondering what I did to deserve the honor of your extended presence?” What she wanted him to say was that he was staying because of Meredith.

“This is Nantucket,” Toby said, “Why would I want to be anywhere else?”

MEREDITH

On the morning of the twenty-third of August, Meredith was awakened by the phone. Was it the phone? She thought it was, but the phone was in Connie’s room, far, far away, and Meredith was in the grip of a heavy, smothering sleep. Connie would answer it. The phone kept ringing. Really? Meredith tried to lift her head. The balcony doors were shut tight-even with Toby across the hall, she didn’t feel safe enough to sleep with them open-and her room was sweltering. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t answer the phone.

A little while later, the phone rang again. Meredith woke with a start. Connie would get it. Then she remembered that Connie wasn’t home. Connie was at Dan’s.

Meredith got out of bed and padded down the hall. Toby probably hadn’t even heard the phone; he slept like a corpse. Meredith liked to believe this was a sign that he had a clean conscience. Freddy had jolted awake at the slightest sound.

Connie didn’t have an answering machine, and so the phone rang and rang. It’s probably Connie, Meredith thought, calling from Dan’s house with some kind of plan for the day-a lunch picnic at Smith’s Point or a trip to Tuckernuck in Dan’s boat. Meredith’s heart quickened. She had fallen in love with Nantucket-and yet in a few weeks, she would have to leave. She was trying not to think about where she would go or what she would do.

The caller ID said, NUMBER UNAVAILABLE, and Meredith’s brain shouted out a warning, even as she picked up the phone and said hello.

A female voice said, “Meredith?”

“Yes?” Meredith said. It wasn’t Connie, but the voice sounded like she knew her, and Meredith thought, Oh, my God. It’s Ashlyn!

The voice said, “This is Rae Riley-Moore? From the New York Times?”

Meredith was confused. Not Ashlyn. Someone else. Someone selling something? The paper? The voice sounded familiar to Meredith because that was how telemarketers did it now; they acted like you were an old friend. Meredith held the phone in two fingers, ready to drop it like a hot potato.

“I’m sorry to bother you at home,” Rae Riley-Moore said.

At home. This wasn’t Meredith’s home. If this was a telemarketer, she wouldn’t have asked for Meredith. She would have asked for Connie.

Meredith said nothing. Rae Riley-Moore was undeterred.

“And so early. I hope I didn’t wake you.”

Meredith swallowed. She looked down the hall to the closed door of Toby’s room. He would still be fast asleep. But a few days ago, he’d said, If you need to come into this room for any reason, just walk right in. I am here for you, Meredith. Whatever you need.

At the time she had thought, Here for me? Ha!

Meredith said, “I’m sorry. What can I do for you?”

“I’m calling about the news that broke this morning?” Rae Riley-Moore said. “In regard to your husband?”

Meredith spoke without thinking. “Is he dead?” Suddenly, the world stopped. There was no bedroom, no old boyfriend, no beautiful island, no $50 billion Ponzi scheme. Meredith was suspended in a white-noise vacuum, waiting for an answer to come through the portal that was the phone in her hand.

“No,” Rae said. “He’s not dead. And he’s not hurt.”

Things came back into focus, though Meredith was still disoriented. This wasn’t Ashlyn, and it wasn’t a telemarketer trying to sell her a subscription. This was something about Freddy. Meredith sat down on the smooth, white cotton of Connie’s bed. There, on the nightstand, was Connie’s clock radio, its blue numbers said 7:16. Certainly, Meredith knew better than to answer the phone. If the phone rang at seven o’clock in the morning, it was for a terrible, awful, disturbing reason.

“What then?” Meredith asked. “What is it?”

“Federal investigators have found evidence of an affair between your husband and a Mrs. Samantha Deuce. Your interior designer?”

Decorator, Meredith thought automatically. Samantha wasn’t certified in interior design.

“And at two a.m. this morning, Mrs. Deuce made a statement to the press confirming the affair. She said that she and your husband had been together for six and a half years.”

Meredith gagged. She thought, Oh, God, it’s true. She thought, It’s true, it’s true, Samantha and Freddy, Samantha confessed, it’s true! She thought, Hang up! But Meredith couldn’t bring herself to hang up.

“Is this news to you?” Rae asked.

Was it news to her? It was. And it wasn’t. “Yes,” Meredith whispered. Her lips were wet with saliva.

“I’m sorry,” Rae said. And she did, Meredith had to admit, sound sorry. “I didn’t realize… I thought you knew.”

“Well, now I hope it’s clear,” Meredith said. She cleared her throat. “I hope it’s clear… that I knew nothing about what Freddy did behind closed doors.”

“Okay,” Rae Riley-Moore said. “So it’s fair to say you’re shocked and hurt.”

Shocked. Could she honestly say shocked? Hurt, yes. And nothing about this was fair.

“You’re telling me Samantha confessed to this?” Meredith said. “You’re telling me she said they’d been together for six and a half years?”

“Since the summer of 2004,” Rae said.

Summer 2004: Meredith rummaged. Cap d’Antibes? No, Sam had never been with them to France, though she’d dropped hints, hadn’t she? Southampton? Yes, Samantha had come to their house in Southampton all the time-she and Trent had a place in Bridgehampton. Samantha, it now seemed to Meredith, had always been around. She had decorated three of the Delinns’ four homes, down to the teaspoons, down to the hatbox toilets. Samantha had been their tastemaker, their stylist. She and Meredith used to go shopping together; Samantha picked out clothes for Meredith and clothes for Meredith to buy Freddy. She had insisted on the Yankees memorabilia and the antique piggy banks for Freddy’s den.

Meredith had seen them together in his den; Meredith had seen Freddy’s hand on Samantha’s lower back. But Meredith had turned a blind eye, thinking, No, not Freddy. Never.

“Were they… are they… in love?” Meredith asked. She couldn’t believe she was asking a total stranger, but she had to have the answer. She tried to remember: Had Samantha been at the indictment? No. Had she been at the sentencing? Meredith wasn’t sure, since she herself hadn’t attended the sentencing. Meredith hadn’t heard from Samantha when the news broke-not a phone call, not an e-mail-except for an invoice for a small piece of artwork that arrived after Freddy was already in the city jail. Meredith had handed the invoice over to her attorneys. She didn’t have the money to pay for it; it was something for Freddy’s office. It was, she remembered now, a photograph of an Asian city that Meredith hadn’t recognized.

“Malacca,” Freddy had said. Meredith had been visiting Fred at the office a few weeks before the collapse. She had noticed the photograph hanging behind his desk, and she’d asked about it. “It’s the cultural capital of Malaysia.”

The invoice had been for twelve hundred dollars.

Twelve hundred dollars, Meredith thought now. For a photograph of a place we’ve never been.

Meredith had thought the invoice might have a note written on it, an expression of sympathy or concern. But no.

“Did she say they were in love?” Meredith asked again, more forcefully. “Mrs. Deuce. Samantha. Did she say that?”

Down the hall, the door to Toby’s room opened, and Toby stepped out. He stood, in boxers and a T-shirt, looking at her.

Meredith held up a finger. She needed to hear the answer.

“She said she was writing a book,” Rae Riley-Moore said.

Meredith hung up the phone. She walked toward Toby, and Toby walked toward her, and they met in the middle of the hallway.

Toby said, “I have some bad news.”

The bad news was that Toby had been awoken by a commotion outside. There were news vans lining the road at the edge of Connie’s property.

“I assume they’re here for you?” Toby said.

“Oh, my God.” Meredith couldn’t have felt more exposed if they’d caught her stepping out of the shower. How did they know where she was staying? The police dispatcher, maybe. Or someone at the salon. Or they’d been tipped off by the wretched person who was terrorizing her.

“Do you know what it’s about?” Toby said.

Meredith peered out the window. “Oh, my God,” she said. “I can’t believe this. I can’t believe it.”

“Did something happen?” Toby asked. “Who was on the phone?”

“A reporter from the New York Times,” Meredith said.

Toby stared at her.

“Freddy had an affair with our decorator, Samantha, for six and a half years.” Meredith said these words, but she didn’t believe them. She understood they were, most likely, the truth, but she didn’t believe them.

Toby reached out for her. Meredith closed her eyes. Toby smelled like warm sleep. If she were brutally honest with herself, she would admit that she’d been wanting Toby to hold her like this for days. She’d been pushing him away, scorning him at every opportunity-he was still a teenager in so many ways, he had never grown up-but the truth was, she yearned for a little piece of what they’d had back then. But now, with this news, the only man she could think about was Freddy. Was it possible that she still loved Freddy? And if that wasn’t possible, then why did she feel this way?

“The guy is a bastard, Meredith,” Toby said.

Right, Meredith thought. That was the predictable answer. Freddy had cheated so many people, why would he not cheat Meredith? He was a liar; why would he not lie to Meredith? Mmm, impossible to explain.

Meredith had believed that Freddy had adored her. Worshipped her.

The idea that she might have been wrong about that-so very, very wrong-made her dizzy and nauseous. She pulled away from Toby and bent at the waist, bringing her head to her knees. The pike position in diving. She thought, Okay, this is where I crumble, where I dissolve. I fall to the floor and I… I cry.

But no, she wouldn’t. She took a breath and stood up.

“What do we do about the reporters?” she asked. “How do we make them leave?”

“Call the police?” he said.

“Are they breaking the law?” she asked.

“If they set foot on the property, they’re trespassing.”

“They won’t set foot on the property,” Meredith said. “Will they?”

“Call the police anyway?” Toby said, “Or… you could give them what they want. Give them a statement.”

Right. They wanted a statement. They wanted Meredith to decry Freddy, call him a bastard, a liar, a cheater. She looked at Toby’s face uncertainly, although it wasn’t Toby’s face she was seeing; it was Freddy’s face. Just as Freddy had been unable to give Meredith certain things, so now Toby would be unable to give her the answer to… why.

Why? Had Meredith done something wrong? Was Samantha Deuce better than Meredith in some way? Was she able to give Freddy something Meredith couldn’t give him? Meredith had given him everything. Everything.

Toby said, “I’ll call the police anyway. And I have to call Connie. She’ll want to know that there are barbarians at the gate. Okay?”

Meredith nodded. Toby went for his cell phone. Meredith went into her bathroom, where she retched into the toilet until there was nothing left inside of her.

Toby brought Meredith a mug of coffee that she couldn’t even look at, much less drink, and his cell phone. He had Connie on the other line.

Meredith said, “Hello?”

Connie said, “Oh, honey. I’m so sorry.”

Meredith was in the kitchen. She was in a bright, sunny room with a pack of wolves at her back. “It’s a beautiful day,” Meredith said. “You and Dan should do something fun. You should avoid the house until we figure out what to do about all these reporters.”

“Dan called Ed Kapenash,” Connie said. “They’re sending someone out to disperse the crowd.”

“I hope that works,” Meredith said.

“Is there anything I can do?” Connie asked. “For you?”

Take me back to yesterday, Meredith thought. “No,” she said. Everything that had to be done, she had to do herself.

“You don’t even sound angry,” Connie said. “Aren’t you angry, Meredith?”

Angry, Meredith thought.

“You’re not going to let him off the hook for this, too, are you?” Connie said.

“I haven’t let him off the hook for any of his actions, Connie,” Meredith said. She heard something confrontational in her voice. She didn’t want to fight. She didn’t want to feel. She wanted to think. She wanted to know. She said, “I’ll call you later, okay?”

“Okay,” Connie said. “I love you, you know.”

Meredith had been waiting all summer to hear Connie speak those words. Meredith hoped she was sincere and not saying them out of pity. “I love you, too.”

She managed to wash her face and change into clothes. She put on a very comfortable white skirt and a soft pink T-shirt. She brushed her hair and her teeth. But something about all of these simple actions felt final, as though she were doing them for the last time. How could she go on?

Toby knocked at the door. He poked his head in. “How are you doing? Are you okay?”

She wanted to be left alone. But she was terrified of being left alone. She said, “They’re still out there?”

“Yes, but the police are coming any minute. I’m going down to wait for them. Will you be okay?”

Okay? she thought.

Meredith tried to be calm and rational. Unlike the eighth of December, when she was forced to deal with a situation of such enormous proportions her mind could scarcely comprehend it, today was simple. Today was a man cheating on his wife. She, Meredith, was the wife.

She didn’t feel any pain yet; she was suspended in a kind of breathless shock. Why shock? She had seen Samantha and Freddy together in Freddy’s den. She had caught Freddy with his hand on Samantha’s back. Meredith had witnessed them together, but she had dismissed it. It was a piece of dandelion fuzz that she’d blown off her palm into the wind. And why? If she ignored it, then it wasn’t real? What she didn’t know couldn’t hurt her? Was that true, also, of Freddy’s heinous crimes? Hadn’t she been staring them right in the face but been refusing to see?

Toby was still downstairs. Meredith crept along the hall, to Connie’s master suite. She opened the door to Connie’s bathroom.

The pills were there. Six amber bottles in a line. Meredith checked the label of each one, as though she’d forgotten the exact names of the drugs or the exact order she would find them in or the exact heft of each bottle in her hand. Connie hadn’t been taking the pills.

Meredith wanted the Ativan. And, yes, it occurred to her to take the whole bottle and end her life right there in Connie’s room. If what Samantha had told the press was true, if she and Fred had been lovers-at the thought of this word, Meredith gagged again-then what choice would Meredith have but to end her life?

She counted out three Ativan. She already had two, in a pill box in her bathroom. If she took all five, would that be too many? Maybe. She would save the two that she had and take three right here, right now. She knew what she was after: Something more than sleep, something less than death. She wanted to be knocked out, unconscious, unaware, unreachable, untouchable.

She made it back to her bedroom, shut the door, checked that the balcony doors were secure, climbed into bed, and buried her face in the sweet pink covers. It was too bad, she thought. It was such a beautiful day.

They had met Samantha when they bought the penthouse apartment at 824 Park Avenue. Samantha had seemed to come with the building. She was decorating three other apartments, and so her presence had been nearly as steady as that of Giancarlo the doorman. Meredith and Freddy kept bumping into Samantha in the elevator. Either she was holding great big books of fabric swatches, or she was accompanied by plasterers and painters. They bumped into her in the service elevator carrying a pair of blue and white Chinese vases once, and an exquisite Murano glass chandelier another time.

It was finally Freddy who said, “Maybe we should have that woman decorate our place.”

Meredith said, “Who?”

“That blonde we keep seeing around here. I mean, our place could use some help.”

What year would that have been? Ninety-seven? Ninety-eight? Meredith had tried not to take offense at Freddy’s comment. She had “decorated” the penthouse much the same way she’d “decorated” the other apartments they’d lived in, which was to say, eclectically. Meredith wanted to achieve the look of an apartment in a Woody Allen film-lots and lots of books crammed on shelves, a few pieces of art, a ton of family photographs, old worn furniture in leather and suede and chintz, most of which had been inherited from her mother and grandmother. Meredith liked Annabeth Martin’s silver tea service on a half-moon table next to a hundred-year-old Oxford dictionary that she’d found in a back room at the Strand. She liked a mishmash of objects that displayed her intellectual life and her broad range of tastes. But it was true that, compared to the apartments of the people the Delinns now socialized with, their penthouse seemed bohemian and cluttered. Unpolished. Undone. Meredith knew nothing about window treatments or fabrics or carpets or how to layer colors and textures or how to display the artwork they did have. As soon as Freddy suggested they hire a decorator, Meredith realized how pathetic her efforts had been in presenting what they owned. No one else had so many tattered paperback books on shelves; no one else had so many photographs of their children-it seemed immodest all of a sudden.

Furthermore, now that they had the penthouse, there were more rooms-whole rooms, in fact, that Meredith had no idea what to do with. The room that was to be Freddy’s personal den had walnut library shelves with nothing on them but his and Meredith’s matched framed diplomas from Princeton.

“It looks like a dentist’s office,” Freddy remarked.

And so, Meredith set out to introduce herself to this woman they kept seeing around, the decorator whose name (Meredith had discovered from eavesdropping) was Samantha Deuce. Meredith approached her one afternoon as she was standing under the building’s awning in the rain, waiting for Giancarlo to hail her a cab. Meredith introduced herself-Meredith Delinn, the penthouse-and asked if Samantha would be willing to come up to the apartment sometime so they could talk about the decorating.

Samantha had made a wistful face-not a hundred percent genuine, Meredith didn’t think-and said, “I wish I could. But I’m so slammed that I can’t, in good conscience, take on another project. I’m sorry.”

Meredith had immediately backpedaled, saying yes, of course, she understood. And then she’d retreated-shell-shocked and dejected-back into the building.

That night at dinner, she told Freddy that Samantha, the ubiquitous decorator, had turned her down.

“Turned you down?” Freddy said. “Who turns down a job like this? Were you clear, Meredith? Were you clear that we want her to do the whole apartment?”

“I was clear,” Meredith said. “And she was clear. She doesn’t have time for another project.” There had been something about the look on Samantha’s face that bugged Meredith. Her expression had been too prepared, as though she knew what Meredith was about to ask, as though she knew something about Meredith that Meredith had yet to figure out herself. Had Samantha heard unsavory things about the Delinns? And if so, what were those things? That they were nouveau riche? That they were without taste? That they were social climbers? Meredith and Freddy hadn’t known anyone else in the building at that time; there was no one to speak for or against them.

“I’ll talk to her,” Freddy said, and Meredith remembered that his decision to step in had come as a relief. She was used to Freddy taking care of things. Nobody ever said no to him. And, in fact, two weeks later, Samantha was standing in their living room, gently caressing the back of Meredith’s grandmother’s sofa as though it were an elderly relative she was about to stick in a home. (Which was true in a way: Samantha relegated nearly all of Meredith’s family furniture to storage first, and then, when it became clear that it would never be used, to the thrift shop.)

Meredith said brightly, “Oh, I’m glad you came up to see the apartment after all.”

Samantha said, “Your husband convinced me.”

Meredith thought, He talked you right out of your good conscience?

And now, it was clear that he had.

Samantha Champion Deuce was a brassy blonde, nearly six feet tall. She towered over Meredith. She had broad shoulders and large breasts and hazel eyes and a wide mouth. She wore lipstick in bright colors: fire-engine red, fuchsia, coral. She wasn’t a beauty, though there were beautiful things about her. She captivated. She was always the dominant personality in the room. She had a sexy, raspy voice like Anne Bancroft or Demi Moore; once you heard it, you couldn’t get enough of it. She would say to Meredith, “Buy this, it’s fabulous.” And Meredith would buy it. She would walk into a room and say, “We’re going to do it this way.” And that was how the room would be done. She never asked for Meredith’s opinion. The few times that Meredith expressed disapproval, Samantha turned to her and said, “You mean you don’t like it?” Not as though her feelings were hurt, but as though she couldn’t imagine anyone in the world not liking it.

Hmmpf, she’d say. As if Meredith’s response had stumped her.

Samantha moved through her life with extreme self-confidence. It was so pronounced that Meredith was drawn to studying Samantha’s mannerisms: her wicked smile, the way she swore to great, elegant effect (“fucking Scalamandré, I fucking love it!”), the way she shimmered in the presence of every man from Freddy Delinn to the Guatemalan plaster guy (“José, you are a beast and a god. I could eat you”).

As Meredith got to know her better, she learned that Samantha had been raised with four older brothers in Dobbs Ferry, New York. Her family was middle-class royalty. The four brothers were the best high-school athletes the town had ever seen; they all received Division I athletic scholarships. Samantha herself had played basketball all the way through Colby College. She married her college sweetheart, the preppy, handsome, and completely underwhelming Trent Deuce. They had lived downtown on Great Jones Street until their first child was born, when they moved to Ridgewood, New Jersey. Trent had worked for Goldman Sachs, but he’d been canned after 9/11. He then worked for a buddy who had a smaller brokerage firm-really, the details of Trent’s career were always presented vaguely by Samantha, though Freddy had gathered enough information to conclude that Trent Deuce was a loser and would be better off at a car dealership in Secaucus selling used Camaros. (Freddy rarely spoke badly of anyone, so hearing him say this was flabbergasting. Now, Freddy’s dismissal of Trent made perfect sense.)

Somewhere during the course of Trent’s peripatetic career, Samantha had deemed it necessary to go back to work. She decorated a friend’s house in Ridgewood. (Here, it should be noted that Meredith and Freddy had never once been invited to Samantha’s home in Ridgewood, and Meredith had been grateful for that. Who wanted to make the trip from Manhattan to the Jersey suburbs? No one. In Meredith’s mind, Ridgewood was soccer mom/Olive Garden hell.) After the success of the Ridgewood friend’s home, Samantha decorated the Manhattan apartment of the Ridgewood friend’s mother, who happened to be fantastically wealthy, have millions of friends, and entertain often and lavishly. This set Samantha’s career on its way. By the time Meredith met Samantha, she was a wealthy woman in her own right.

But not quite.

There was a subtle class distinction between Samantha and the Delinns-always. On the surface, Samantha told Meredith and Freddy what to do and they did it. But there was the underlying fact that she worked for them.

The Yankees memorabilia, the antique piggy banks. A certain lavender Hermès tie, Freddy’s favorite tie, had also been one of Samantha’s picks. Even the pink and tangerine palette of the Palm Beach house-which Meredith had bucked against-Freddy had defended. Pink and tangerine? Seriously? Samantha had used a pair of Lilly Pulitzer golf pants as her inspiration.

She’s the expert, Fred said.

Samantha had something that Freddy valued. A knowledge, a perspective. He was a rich man. They, Freddy and Meredith, were a rich couple. Samantha was the one who showed them how to be rich. She had shown them how to spend. Nearly every extravagance that Meredith indulged in, Samantha Deuce had introduced her to.

Six and a half years. The summer of 2004. Had Fred and Samantha been in love? Think, Meredith! Remember!

She remembered Samantha in Southampton, decorating the house in whites and ivories, despite Meredith’s protests that she had two teenage boys who also lived in the house, and Meredith wanted Leo and Carver and their friends to be comfortable dragging sand in, or sitting on the sofa in damp bathing suits. But the Southampton house had been done to Samantha’s specifications, in whites and ivories, including a white grand piano that Meredith found tacky. (“Don’t you think a white grand piano just screams Liberace? Or bad Elton John?” Meredith said. Samantha’s eyes widened. “You mean you don’t like it?”)

Fred and Meredith used to meet Trent and Samantha for dinner at Nick and Toni’s; inevitably, Freddy and Samantha would be seated on one side of the table, and Meredith and Trent on the other. Meredith struggled with conversation with Trent. She tried to remember to read the sports section of USA Today before they all went out, so she would at least have that to fall back on. More and more often, Samantha showed up alone, claiming that Trent was stuck in the city “working,” or that she’d left him at home to care for the kids, because he absolutely never saw them during the week. Trent was always dismissed in this way, and so there had been many nights where it was just the three of them-Meredith, Freddy, and Samantha. Freddy used to say, “I’m going out with my wife and my girlfriend.” Meredith had laughed at this; she had found it innocent and charming. She had occasionally been suspicious of dark, exotic beauties-women who resembled Trina or the lovely Catalan university student-although, really, Meredith was so certain of Freddy’s undying devotion that these worries had flickered, and then extinguished.

It was around 2004 when Freddy had started to take care of himself again. Like everyone else, he stopped eating carbs for a while, but that was too hard, especially since he couldn’t resist the focaccia or the ravioli with truffle butter at Rinaldo’s. But he ate more vegetables. He had salads for lunch instead of reubens and omelets. He started working out at the gym in their building. The first time he’d told Meredith he was going downstairs to work out, Meredith said, “You’re going to do what?” Freddy had never been much of an athlete or an exerciser. His tennis game was adequate and he could swim, but he didn’t have time for golf. He didn’t even like tossing the lacrosse ball with the boys. Meredith could no sooner see him lifting weights than she could see him break dancing with the Harlem kids in Central Park. But he went at the workout regimen with a vengeance; he hired a personal trainer named Tom. Some days he spent more time with Tom than with Meredith. He lost weight, he developed muscles. He had to have a whole new set of suits made on his next trip to London. He let his hair grow longer. It was really gray by then, more salt than pepper, and his beard was coming in gray, and some days he went two or three days without shaving so he would have a scruff that Meredith found sexy but that she suspected was raising eyebrows at the office. She said, “Did you have a fight with your razor?” Freddy said he wanted to try something different. He grew a goatee.

Samantha had loved the goatee, Meredith remembered. She used to stroke it like a cat, and Meredith had found this funny. She had wanted Samantha to join her in teasing Freddy. That’s his midlife crisis, Meredith said.

Could be worse, Samantha had said.

When Samantha was around, Freddy was looser, he laughed more, he occasionally had a glass of wine, he occasionally stayed out past nine thirty. Once, the three of them had even gone dancing at a nightclub. Samantha had been immediately absorbed by the crowd. When Meredith and Freddy found her, she was dancing with a bunch of the gorgeous, emaciated Bulgarian women whom Meredith had seen around town-working behind the counter at the fancy food store or babysitting the art galleries-and their hulking boyfriends. They all abandoned the dance floor for the bar, where they did shots of Patrón. Freddy had followed them to the bar, he magnanimously paid for ten shots of Patrón, and then he tried to convince Samantha to leave the club with him and Meredith. Nope, she didn’t want to go.

Meredith said, Come on, Freddy. We’ll go. She can stay. She’s going back to Bridgehampton tonight anyway.

But Freddy didn’t want Samantha to stay. He had words with her that turned into an argument. Meredith couldn’t hear what they were saying to each other, though she did see Freddy take Samantha’s arm and Samantha pull her arm back. Now, of course, it was clear that it had been a lover’s spat. Freddy didn’t want Samantha to stay with this group of young, Eastern European hedonists. She might do drugs, she might participate in group sex and find a younger, hotter lover. But at that time, all Meredith thought was that it was a good thing she and Freddy had never had a daughter. Freddy’s concern for Samantha that night had struck Meredith as avuncular, bordering on fatherly, even though Samantha was only seven years younger than Meredith and nine years younger than Freddy.

They had left Samantha at the club. Freddy had been fuming. Meredith had said, Come on now, Fred. She’s a big girl. She can take care of herself.

What an idiot Meredith had been!

Was the summer of 2004 when the nickname had surfaced? At some point, Freddy had started calling Samantha “Champ,” a shortened form of her maiden name, Champion. Meredith had noticed the sudden use of the nickname, and she thought, Hmmm, I wonder what precipitated that? But she’d never asked. Samantha was a part of their lives; after the decorating was done, she became their lifestyle consultant. She was always around-in their homes, in Fred’s office, on the phone. Meredith had assumed the nickname came about organically from some conversation between Freddy and Samantha.

Does the word “champ” mean anything to you?

When had they met for this affair? And where? Six and a half years. Safe to say they had met hundreds of times then, right? But in Meredith’s mind, Freddy had spent every night in bed beside her. He had been in bed by nine thirty, asleep by ten, awake by five, in his home office until six thirty when he left for the office-office. Had Meredith and Freddy spent nights apart from each other? Well, yes: Freddy had to travel. He went to London to do business with the office there, and that was where he’d gotten his suits tailored. Had Samantha met him in London? It would be safe to say yes. She had probably introduced Freddy to the tailor whose name he would not disclose. That tailor probably thought Samantha was Freddy’s wife. There were times when Meredith was in Palm Beach when Freddy had to fly back to New York. Lots of times-especially in recent years. Had he seen Samantha then? Yes; of course, the answer was yes. Where did they meet? (Why did Meredith have to know this? Why torture herself with the details? What did it matter now?) Did they meet at a hotel? If so, which hotel? Did they meet in Ridgewood? Certainly not. Did they meet in Meredith and Freddy’s apartment? Did they have sex in Meredith and Freddy’s bed? Meredith could see how awful and insidious this was going to get.

Did they rendezvous on the yacht Bebe? There had been plenty of times when Freddy had flown to “check out” one problem or another with Bebe-when the yacht was in the Mediterranean, and when she was in Newport or Bermuda. But Bebe had a crew and a captain. If Freddy had been on board with Samantha, certain people would have known about it.

So certain people knew about it. Billy, their captain knew, and Cameron, the first mate knew. They were complicit.

Samantha said she’d always wanted to see their property in Cap d’Antibes, but this may have been a smoke screen. She may have been quite familiar with the property.

As Meredith awoke from her stupor-someone was calling to her from the bottom of a deep hole, or she was the one in the deep hole and someone was calling to her from the top-she flashed on the photograph that Samantha had selected for Freddy’s office. A photograph of Malacca, in Malaysia. As far as Meredith knew, Freddy had never been to Malaysia; he’d never been to Asia at all, except for his trip to Hong Kong before they were engaged. Or was Meredith wrong about that? Had Freddy and Samantha been to this place, Malacca, together? The photograph had been hanging right behind Freddy’s desk. What had hung there previously? Meredith tried to think. Another photograph.

Toby had her by the shoulder. The room was dark; there was a light on in the hallway behind him and she could see the outline of Connie standing there.

“What time is it?” Meredith asked.

“Nine o’clock,” Toby said. “At night. You slept all day.”

Meredith was relieved. It was nighttime. She could go back to sleep. She closed her eyes. But the dark was terrifying. She was unmoored, in danger of floating away. She opened her eyes.

“Toby?” she whispered.

“Yes?”

She wanted to ask him something, but she didn’t have to. She already knew the answer. Veronica’s funeral had been in July of 2004. Meredith had been on Long Island, and Freddy had arranged for a helicopter to take Meredith to New York and then a private car to drive her down to Villanova. Meredith had asked Freddy to come with her. And what had he said? “I never met the woman, Meredith. This is your chance to be with Connie. Go be with Connie. I’ll stay here and hold down the fort.”

Hold down the fort?

“Never mind,” Meredith said to Toby now.

Meredith felt Toby staring at her, then he retreated to the hallway and pulled the door closed.

Meredith awoke in the morning, dying of thirst. She slipped downstairs to the kitchen and poured herself a tall glass of ice water. She drank deeply and thought about how there were times when you were just grateful for cold, clean water, and this was one of those times.

Connie appeared in the kitchen, floating like a ghost or an angel in a white nightgown and robe. Meredith figured that Dan must be upstairs.

Connie hugged Meredith.

“Oh,” Connie said. “I’m sorry.” She pulled away. She had tears in her eyes. “I am so, so sorry.”

Meredith nodded. It hurt to move her head. Everything hurt. She hadn’t thought that anything could hurt again after what she’d been through, but yes, this hurt. This hurt differently. God, she couldn’t believe she was even thinking this: it hurt worse.

Connie said, “You slept for nearly twenty-four hours.”

Meredith exhaled. She said, “I took three of your Ativan.”

Connie hugged her again. “Oh, honey.”

“I think maybe you’d better hide the rest of the pills. It did occur to me to take them all.”

“Okay,” Connie said. “Okay.”

“I thought you’d be mad,” Meredith said. “I snooped around your bathroom when I first got here. I’ve snuck five Ativan altogether and two Ambien. I stole them.”

“I don’t care about the pills,” Connie said. “I care about you.”

“I don’t know what to do,” Meredith said.

“What do you want to do?” Connie asked.

Meredith pulled away and eyed her friend. “I want to talk to Fred.”

“Oh, honey, you’re kidding.”

“I’m not kidding. That’s all I want. I don’t want to read about their love affair in her book. I want to hear about it from my husband. I want him to confess to me. I want to hear the truth from him.”

“What makes you think Freddy would tell you the truth?” Connie said.

Meredith had no answer for this.

A little while later, both Toby and Dan came downstairs. Connie made coffee. Meredith thought, miraculously, that the coffee smelled good. She was back to counting each small blessing: cold water, hot coffee with real cream and plenty of sugar.

Dan and Toby were concerned about the practical problem they faced.

“The reporters are still out there,” Toby said. “In fact, they seem to have multiplied overnight.”

Dan looked at Meredith apologetically. “I called Ed Kapenash yesterday morning, and by noon, the reporters were all gone. We could have gotten you out of here for a little while. But now they’re back. I could call Eddie again, but…”

“Or we could try Bud Attatash,” Toby said. “He seems like the type of guy who owns a shotgun and isn’t afraid to use it.”

“It’s okay,” Meredith said. She was embarrassed that Dan had to ask personal favors from the chief of police on her behalf. She sat down at the table with her coffee. Three months ago, she had been all alone. Now she had friends. She had a team. She added this to her list of things to be grateful for. “I’m going to enjoy this coffee, and then I have some phone calls to make.”

“I’ll make French toast,” Connie said.

Upstairs, in the privacy of her bedroom-balcony doors still shut tight-Meredith called Dev at the office, while praying a Hail Mary.

The receptionist answered, and Meredith said, “This is Mrs. Delinn, calling for Devon Kasper.”

And to Meredith’s shock, the receptionist said, “Absolutely, Mrs. Delinn. Let me get him for you.”

Dev came to the phone. “Holy shit, Meredith.”

“I know.”

“Once you gave me the name, the Feds did the rest. It was all right there. All over his date book, his planner…”

“Stop,” Meredith said. “I didn’t know they were having an affair.”

“What?”

“I knew that ‘champ’ was Samantha. That was what Freddy called her. But I didn’t know they were sleeping together.”

“Meredith.”

“Devon,” Meredith said. “I didn’t know that my husband and Samantha Deuce were having an affair.”

There was silence. Then Dev said, “Okay, I believe you.”

“Thank you.” She sighed. “There are reporters all over the front lawn.”

“Good,” Dev said. “You should make a statement.”

“No,” Meredith said.

“Meredith,” Dev said gently. “This could help you.”

“The fact that my husband was betraying me, not honoring our vows, for six and a half years, could help me? I can see you know nothing about marriage. I can see you know nothing about the human heart.”

Dev, wisely, changed tactics. “The information about the star was good information.”

“Did you find the account?” Meredith asked. “Did you find Thad Orlo?”

“The Feds are still working on it,” Dev said. “I can’t tell you what they’ve uncovered.”

“Even though it was my information to begin with?” Meredith said.

“Even though,” Dev said. He paused. “Do you think this Champion woman knew what was going on with Fred and the business?”

“You’d have to ask her that,” Meredith said. She wondered how she would feel if it turned out that Samantha had known about the Ponzi scheme. Would Meredith feel betrayed? Would Freddy have shared his biggest secret with Samantha, but not with his wife? Then again, wasn’t not knowing its own kind of gift? But Meredith was the one who had lost everything. Samantha was still out walking around, still running a decorating business, still driving her children to Little League and dance, still cozy at home with her underwhelming husband, her community, and her friends. Samantha Deuce wasn’t under investigation, her home wasn’t being vandalized, she wasn’t being stalked. She might be now, with this admission. Samantha must have had no choice. The Feds must have had ironclad evidence; they must have had phone records or eight-by-ten glossies or a video. Or, perhaps, Samantha had been so overwhelmed by her love for Fred that she decided to talk. Or an $8 million book deal sounded good.

“There’s something else I want to tell you about,” Meredith said. “There’s a framed photograph in Freddy’s office. It’s a street scene in an Asian city. Freddy said the city is called Malacca. It’s in Malaysia. It’s the cultural capital of Malaysia.”

“And this is relevant because…”

“Because to my knowledge, Freddy has never been to Malacca. Or Malaysia at all. And yet this was a photograph that Samantha bought for Fred’s office. The invoice came after he went to jail: twelve hundred dollars. Freddy hung the photograph right behind his desk.” At that instant, Meredith remembered. The street scene in Malacca had replaced a grainy photograph of Freddy with his brother, David: the two of them bare chested in cutoff shorts, standing in front of a Pontiac GTO that David had restored. It was the only surviving picture of the two brothers together, and Freddy had replaced it with Malacca? “This photograph had a secret meaning for Freddy, I think. I’m sure of it now.”

“Like it was a place he trysted with the Deuce woman?” Dev said.

“Just find the photograph,” Meredith said.

“Okay. I’ll do that. Your instincts are good.”

“And Dev?”

“Yes.”

There was one last thing. The most important, vital thing. But she was having a hard time thinking of how to ask.

“I need to talk to Fred.”

“Fred,” Dev said flatly.

“I need to talk to him,” Meredith said. “About this and about other things. Can I call him, or do I have to travel to Butner?”

“Traveling to Butner would be a waste of your time,” Dev said.

Part of her was relieved to hear this. The thought of leaving Nantucket was debilitating enough. She couldn’t imagine traveling to North Carolina in the brutal heat of August, or of suffering the dust and filth and indignity in order to visit the prison’s most infamous inmate. There would be reporters everywhere like buzzards on fresh roadkill.

“Really?” she said. “A waste?”

“There’s been no change in his demeanor,” Dev said. “He won’t speak to anyone. Not even the priest. It’s unclear if he can’t speak or if he’s choosing not to speak.”

“He might choose to speak to me, though,” Meredith said. “Right?”

“He might,” Dev said. “But it’s a gamble.”

“Can I call him?” Meredith asked.

“He’s permitted one phone call a week.”

Meredith swallowed. “Has he…? Has he taken any other phone calls?” What she wanted to know was if Freddy had talked to Samantha.

“No,” Dev said. “No phone calls. He speaks to no one.”

“Can you help me set up a phone call?” Meredith asked.

Dev sighed. It was the sigh of a much older man. Meredith was aging him. “I can try. Do you want me to try? Really, Meredith?”

“Really,” Meredith said.

“Okay,” Dev said. “I’ll contact the prison and see what I can do.”

“Thank you,” Meredith said. “It’s important to me.”

“Make a statement, Meredith,” Dev said. “Save yourself.”

She had spent the whole summer wondering how to save herself, and now, she found, she didn’t care. Goddamn you, Freddy! she thought (zillionth and seventh). She didn’t care if she lived or died; she didn’t care if she was dragged off to prison. She would, like Fred, fold herself into an origami beetle. She wouldn’t speak to another human being as long as she lived.

And was that what Fred had wanted all along? Had he meant for them to be ruined together? Had he asked her to transfer the $15 million so that she would go to prison?

Save herself? For what?

Brilliant and talented. That girl owns my heart.

Mommy, watch me!

Sail on Silvergirl. Sail on by. Your time has come to shine. All your dreams are on their way.

Meredith sat on her bed and took a stab at writing a statement. She pictured herself marching out to the end of Connie’s driveway to face the eager reporters; this would be the juiciest news since OJ drove off in the white Bronco. She imagined her face and graying hair on every TV screen in America. She couldn’t do it.

But she wrote anyway.

I have been informed that my husband, Fred Delinn, who is serving one hundred and fifty years in federal prison for his financial crimes, had been conducting an affair with our decorator, Samantha Champion Deuce, for over six years. This news has come as a profound shock. I had no idea about the affair, and I am still ignorant of the most basic details. Please know that I am hurting, just the way that any spouse who discovers an infidelity hurts. My husband’s financial crimes were a public matter. His infidelity, however, is a private matter, and I beg you to respect it as such. Thank you.

Meredith read her statement over. It was… minimalist, nearly cold. But would anyone be surprised by this? She had an opportunity here to say that she’d known nothing about Freddy’s financial dealings. Should she add a line? Clearly, my husband kept many secrets from me. But that felt too confessional. I knew nothing about Freddy’s Ponzi scheme and nothing about this affair. I didn’t know Freddy was stealing everyone’s money and I didn’t know he was romancing Samantha Deuce, our best friend.

I didn’t know Freddy.

“Jesus!” she said, to no one.

She took the statement down to the kitchen where Connie and Dan and Toby were still gathered around the table, finishing up plates of golden brown, cinnamony French toast.

“The Post is going to have a field day with this,” Connie was saying. Then she saw Meredith and clammed up.

Meredith waved the paper at them. “I wrote a statement,” she said.

“Read it,” Connie said.

“I can’t read it,” Meredith said. “Here.”

Connie read the statement, then passed it to Toby. Toby read it, then passed it to Dan. When they finished, Meredith said, “Well?”

“You’re too nice,” Connie said.

“The guy’s a bastard,” Toby said. His face was bright red-from the sun or from anger, Meredith couldn’t tell. “Why don’t you just align yourself with the rest of America and come right out and call the guy a bastard? If you aren’t tougher on him, people are going to think you were conspiring with him.”

“Is that what you think?” Meredith asked.

“No…” Toby said.

“I’ve been holding my tongue because that was how I was raised,” Meredith said. “I don’t feel like spilling my guts all over the evening news. I don’t want the details of my marriage popping up across the Internet. I don’t even want to make this statement. I think it’s crass.”

“Because you’re a repressed Main Line snob,” Toby said. “You’re just like your parents, and your grandmother.”

“Well, it’s true my parents never battled it out on the front lawn,” Meredith said. “They didn’t hurl their wedding china at one another. But, for the record, I’m not ‘repressed.’ You know damn well I’m not ‘repressed’! But I also didn’t spread my love and affection around the way you’ve apparently spent your life doing. And the way my husband did.”

“Hey, now,” Connie said. She put a hand on Meredith’s arm.

Toby lowered his voice. “I just think you need to sound angrier.”

“At who?” Meredith said. “You know what I thought when I met Freddy Delinn? I thought, here’s a guy who’s rock solid; this guy isn’t going to ditch me so he can go off sailing in the Seychelles. You, Toby, you made Freddy look like a safe bet.”

“Oh, boy,” Dan said.

“But I never lied to you, Meredith,” Toby said. “You have to give me that. I was insensitive when I was nineteen years old. I was possibly even worse than insensitive when I saw you a few years ago. I know I hurt you and I’m sorry. But I never lied to you.”

Meredith stared at Toby, then at Connie and Dan. “You’re right,” she said. “He’s right.”

“The statement is what it is,” Connie said. “It’s a statement. It’s classy and discreet, worthy of Annabeth Martin.” Connie cut her eyes at Toby. “And that is a good thing. So, are you going out there to read it now?”

“I can’t,” Meredith said.

“You can’t?”

“I want you to read it,” Meredith said.

“Me?” Connie said.

“Please,” Meredith said. “Be my spokesperson. Because I can’t read it.”

Connie got a strange expression on her face. In high school, every time Meredith had been sick, or at early diving practice, Connie had jumped at the chance to do the readings at morning chapel. She had been sick with jealousy when Meredith gave her salutatorian’s speech at graduation. Something like 90 percent of Americans were afraid of public speaking-but not Connie.

“Me?” she said. “Your spokesperson?”

“Please,” Meredith said. It would be better to have beautiful, serene, red-haired Connie read the statement. America would love Connie. People would see that Meredith did have someone who believed in her. But most important, Meredith wouldn’t have to do it herself.

“Okay,” Connie said, standing up.

“You’re not going out like that?” Dan asked. Connie was still in her filmy nightgown and robe.

“No,” Connie said. “I’ll wear clothes.”

A few minutes later, Connie was dressed in a pair of white linen pants and a green linen shirt and flat sandals. She looked like an ad for Eileen Fisher. With the paper in hand, she walked straight out to the end of the driveway, for the weirdest press conference ever. Flashbulbs started going off. Meredith closed the front door behind her.

Meredith wanted to watch Connie from the window, but she was certain she would be photographed if she did. So she sat at the oval dining table with Toby and Dan, and waited. She imagined all of the people across the country who would hear Meredith’s words come out of Connie’s mouth.

Well, for starters, Ashlyn would see Connie on TV. Had Connie thought of this? Leo and Carver would see Connie. Gwen Marbury would see Connie, Amy Rivers, Connie’s friend Lizbet, Toby’s ex-wife in New Orleans, Dustin Leavitt, Trina Didem, Giancarlo the doorman, Julius Erving. Everyone in America would watch the footage. Samantha herself would watch it. Possibly even Freddy would watch it, on a TV in prison.

And what would he think?

A few minutes later, Connie stepped back into the house. The reporters, far from dispersing, were yelling things. What were they yelling?

Connie looked pink and winded, as if she had just finished a foot race. She was perspiring.

Dan said, “How’d it go?”

Toby said, “Water, Con?”

Connie nodded. “Please.”

They all trekked into the kitchen, where Toby fixed his sister a glass of ice water with lemon.

“Why are they yelling?” Meredith asked.

“Questions,” Connie said. “They have questions.”

Meredith thought, They have questions?

Connie said, “Mostly, they want to know if you’re going to divorce him.”

“Divorce him?” Meredith said.

“Leave him.”

“Leave him?” Meredith didn’t get it. Or she thought maybe the reporters didn’t get it. The man was in jail for 150 years. He was never getting out. Maybe people thought Meredith would move to North Carolina, would visit him every week, would lobby her congressman and pray and wait for ten or twelve years for possible conjugal visitation rights. Meredith and Freddy making love in some tin-roofed trailer. Maybe that was what Meredith had envisioned for herself. But no-Meredith had envisioned nothing of the sort. The present was so overwhelming, she’d had no energy or imagination for any kind of future, with or without Freddy.

Would she divorce him?

She didn’t know.

She was Catholic, she believed in the sacrament of marriage, she believed in the vows-till death do us part. Her parents had remained married, and her grandparents. She and Freddy would never live together as husband and wife again, so what would be the point of getting divorced?

Across the kitchen, she and Toby locked eyes.

The point of getting divorced was that Meredith would be free to get an annulment and marry again. Start over.

The notion was exhausting.

“I can’t answer any of those questions,” Meredith said. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”

Connie hugged Meredith so hard, Meredith nearly tipped over.

“It’s going to be okay,” Connie said. “I think the statement worked, or it will work, once they realize it’s all they’re going to get.”

“So you didn’t say anything else?” Meredith said. “You didn’t answer for me?”

“It was hard,” Connie said. “But I just stood there with a plastic smile on my face. ”

“We should see what it looks like on TV,” Toby said.

Connie jumped at this idea, and Meredith couldn’t blame her, though Meredith didn’t want to see the statement broadcast on TV; she wanted three more Ativan and a dark bedroom. She wanted to talk to Freddy; her throat ached with the need. Tell me everything. Tell me who you really were.

Toby and Dan and Connie went into the sitting room and turned on the television. Meredith lingered in the hallway, not committing to watching, not committing to hiding upstairs. She was dangerously close to the front door; anyone might see her through the sidelights. She stepped into the sitting room. She heard Connie reading her words: Please know that I am hurting… She saw Connie on the screen, looking natural and calm and poised. The channel was CNN. The banner at the bottom of the screen read: Meredith Delinn spokesperson, Constance Flute, responds to the news of love affair between Freddy Delinn and the couple’s decorator, Samantha Deuce.

In the background, Meredith could see Connie’s house.

The banner changed to read: Meredith Delinn seeking refuge on Nantucket Island.

It was her they were talking about, her life. That was her best friend speaking her words. They showed the house-this very house where they were now watching TV. It was weirdly reflexive.

Connie said, “I look awful.”

Toby said, “It’s not really about you, Con.”

Dan said, “You look great.”

Meredith needed to thank Connie for going out there on her behalf and reading the statement, but she couldn’t find the words.

And then the phone rang.

Toby answered. He said, “May I ask who’s calling?”

Meredith started to shake. She clung to the soft material of her skirt.

Toby put a hand over the receiver. “It’s your attorney.”

Meredith took the phone upstairs to her room. She reminded herself to breathe. She was light-headed; the caffeine from the coffee darted through her like lightning bolts. She felt a pressure in her bowels. But not now, with Dev on the phone. She lay down on her bed.

“Two things,” Dev said. He sounded more chipper than he had earlier. Maybe his coffee had kicked in, too. “I just saw the statement on TV.”

“Already?” Meredith said.

“We have a twenty-four-hour news feed in the office,” Dev said. “Everyone does these days.”

“And…?” she said.

“You could have said more,” he said. “And you could have said it yourself.”

Meredith nodded, though of course he couldn’t see this. “I couldn’t…”

“Because you know what people’s response will be. Is already.”

“What?”

“That you hired someone to do it for you. A spokesperson.”

“I didn’t hire Connie. She’s my friend. I didn’t have the guts to do it myself. She offered.”

“I’m just telling you the perception. What people will think.”

“I don’t care what people think,” Meredith said.

“You do, though,” Dev said.

Meredith thought, He’s right. I do.

Taking pity on her, he said, “But it was better than nothing. You communicated something. That’s what matters.”

“The second thing?” Meredith said. The caffeine high was fading. She was suddenly exhausted.

“I spoke to the warden at Butner,” Dev said.

Her bowels squelched. She put a hand to her abdomen.

“He’s looking into it for you,” Dev said. “The phone call.”

Dan had to leave the house to go to work. He asked if anyone was up for steaks that night at his house.

Toby said, “Not tonight, man.”

Meredith said nothing. She was now the fun-sucker Dan had feared she would be.

Connie said, “Maybe. Call later.”

“You guys should go,” Meredith said. Dan was leaving soon for a three-day camping trip to New Hampshire with his sons. And by the time he returned, there would be less than a week left before Labor Day. It was all going to end; there was nothing Meredith could do to stop it.

Connie and Meredith and Toby retreated to the back deck. It was hot; Meredith wanted to swim, but she was afraid if she tried to swim, she would drown. Her limbs felt light and useless. She was a husk. She was a bladder filled with the hot, stinking air of anxiety.

Toby said, “You should divorce him, Meredith.”

“Leave her be, Toby,” Connie scolded. Then a few seconds later, she said, “You should divorce him. I’ll pay for it.”

Meredith laughed a sad, dry laugh. She hadn’t even considered cost.

Toby swam. Meredith moved in and out of consciousness. She felt sluggish, then jumpy; the Ativan were exacting revenge. Toby became Harold, Harold had been brutally killed, and it was Meredith’s fault. It was like Meredith had a hex on her, why not blame her for everything, the oil spill in the Gulf, the bloodshed in the Middle East. Why, oh why, had Samantha spoken? Everyone would hate Samantha now, too, her life would be ruined. She must have loved Freddy, must love him still if she was going to allow him to destroy her life. She still had young kids, one of them only ten. Her business would go kaput, or maybe not. Maybe infidelity boosted a decorator’s cachet. What did Meredith know? Samantha was writing a book. Meredith could write a book, should write a book, but what would that book say? I wasn’t paying attention. I was moving blithely through my days. I accepted what Freddy told me as the truth. I had never been exposed to lying or liars growing up; I didn’t know what to look for.

Connie said, “What are you thinking about?”

Meredith said, “Nothing.”

The phone in the house rang. Meredith nearly leapt out of her chair at the sound. She knew she shouldn’t answer it, but she hoped it was Dev calling back with an answer from the warden. She checked the caller ID: NUMBER UNAVAILABLE. Meredith couldn’t help herself: she picked up.

A woman’s voice said, “Meredith?”

Meredith felt like someone’s hands were around her neck. She felt like she had a golf ball stuck in her throat, or one of the gobstoppers the boys used to buy at the candy store in Southampton.

“It’s Samantha,” the woman said, though of course Meredith knew this.

“No,” Meredith said.

“Meredith, please.”

Please what? What did Samantha want? Did she expect to bond with Meredith now that she had been exposed as Freddy’s lover? Did she think that she and Meredith would be sister-wives, do the blended family thing the way Toby was so content doing? Meredith as some sort of ersatz aunt to Samantha’s children? Meredith and Samantha joining forces to appeal Freddy’s sentence?

“No,” Meredith said, and she hung up.

The phone rang again an hour and six minutes later. Meredith was hyperaware of time passing. She thought of Samantha stroking Freddy’s goatee. He had grown the goatee for Samantha, he had started going to the gym for Samantha. Everything had been for Samantha.

Meredith believed that it had all started when she went to Veronica’s funeral. Or shortly after. Because Freddy sensed something, because Meredith came back addled and distracted. Freddy had asked her how the funeral was, and she had said, “Oh, it was fine,” though it hadn’t been fine; it had been an emotional sweat bath, but Meredith had stayed true to Freddy. She had stayed true, but not Freddy. He had stepped out of bounds. He had called Samantha, or something had sparked between the two of them in person. Meredith understood that. Because of what had happened between her and Toby at the funeral, she understood. But when you’re married, you smother those sparks. You step on them, you extinguish them.

Meredith felt like she was going to vomit again. When she checked the caller ID, it gave the name of the law firm.

“Hello?” Meredith said.

“Meredith?” It was Dev.

“Yes,” she said.

“Boy, do I have news for you,” he said. “Sit down and fasten your seatbelt.”

Meredith didn’t like the way this sounded. At all. She said warily, “What is it?”

“Listen to this: There were four numbered accounts at the bank in Switzerland where Thad Orlo was most recently employed that looked like they might have links to Delinn Enterprises. Each of the accounts had the same numbers and letters as the one on your supposed NASA certificate, only in a different order. These accounts were all “managed” by Thad Orlo, and each account contained either a little over or a little under a billion dollars. But these were holding accounts; there was no action on them.”

Meredith said nothing. She hated to say it, but she no longer cared about Thad Orlo or the missing money. Still, she had the wherewithal to ask, “Whose accounts were they?”

“All four accounts were under the name of Kirby Delarest.”

Meredith gasped.

Dev said, “Wait, it gets better.”

“But you know who Kirby Delarest is, right?” Meredith asked. “He lived near us in Palm Beach. He was an investor.”

“Not an investor,” Dev said. “He was Freddy’s henchman. He was the one responsible for hiding the money and moving it around.”

“He’s dead,” Meredith said. She thought of Amy Rivers, her lip curled in disgust. “He killed himself.”

“He killed himself,” Dev said, “because he was in so deep. Because he was afraid he was going to get caught. But Meredith…” Here, Dev paused. Meredith could picture him pushing back his floppy bangs or adjusting his glasses. “He was not only investing with Thad Orlo. He was Thad Orlo.”

“What?” Meredith said.

“Kirby Delarest and Thad Orlo were the same person. He held two passports-one American, Kirby Delarest, and one Danish, Thad Orlo. Thad Orlo had an apartment in Switzerland where he worked for the Swiss bank and managed four accounts, which contained a total of four billion dollars. Kirby Delarest of Palm Beach, Florida, owned three large condo buildings in West Palm as well as a P.F. Chang’s restaurant and a couple of rinky-dink strip malls. His real action, though, was overseas. He hid Freddy’s clients’ money and kept it safe. Four billion dollars. Can you believe it?”

Meredith reminded herself to breathe. She saw Connie coming up the stairs from the beach rubbing her wet hair with a towel, and she prayed that Connie wouldn’t come inside and ask if Meredith wanted a turkey sandwich for lunch. Meredith needed to process what she’d just heard; she felt like she was torn between two worlds. There was this world, Nantucket, with the ocean and the outdoor shower and lunch on the deck, and then there was the world of international banking and double identities and lies. Kirby Delarest was Thad Orlo. Kirby had been tall and blond and lean, and he’d had that accent, which he’d claimed he’d acquired growing up in Wisconsin. Meredith knew something was wrong with that answer, but she hadn’t questioned him. What had Freddy always said? Midwesterners were the most honest people on earth. Ha! Kirby Delarest had been in cahoots with Freddy. His daughters always wore those beautiful matching Bonpoint dresses. Meredith thought of the afternoon when she had discovered Freddy and Kirby Delarest by the pool, the bottle of Petrus consumed by two men on a Wednesday afternoon to celebrate the fact that they were robbing the whole world blind. Kirby Delarest had shot himself in the head rather than face Freddy’s fate.

Meredith’s eyes burned like she was in the desert. The account numbers had all been variations on the phony NASA star. These were Silver Girl accounts. Did that implicate her further? Please, she prayed, no.

“So you found the money, then?” she said. “Four billion? That’s a lot of money.”

“No, no,” Dev said. “The money was withdrawn last October. All of it-gone, vanished. Moved, most likely in cash, to another location.”

“When in October?” Meredith asked, dreading the answer.

“October seventeenth.”

Meredith shut her eyes. Connie tapped on the glass door. Meredith opened her eyes. Connie mouthed, Are you okay?

“That’s…” Meredith said.

“What?” Dev said.

“You’re sure it was the seventeenth?” Meredith said. “The seventeenth of October?”

“What is it?” Dev said. “What is the seventeenth of October?”

“Samantha Deuce’s birthday,” Meredith said.

“Okay,” Dev said. “Okay, okay, okay. Could be a coincidence. But probably not. Let me call you back.”

“Wait!” Meredith said. “I have to know… Have you heard from the warden? At Butner? Can I speak to Fred?”

“Fred?” Dev said, as though he wasn’t sure who Meredith meant. Then he said, “Oh. No, I haven’t heard back.”

“I really need to…”

“I’ll let you know if I do,” Dev said. “When I do.” And he hung up.

Meredith lowered herself onto a chair. She thought about Kirby Delarest, his wife Janine, those little blond girls, as perfect and precious as the von Trapps. She thought of Kirby Delarest’s brains splattered all over his garage. Meredith remembered Otto, the folk sculpture in Thad Orlo’s Manhattan apartment with his gray cottony hair and the piece of wire twisted to make spectacles. She remembered how carefully she had watered the Norfolk pine, terrified it would turn brown and lose its branches in their custody. She had never met Thad Orlo, though she had lived among his things. Those fancy knives, the blond wood rocking chair. She had felt she’d known him.

The phone rang at ten minutes past six.

The evening news, Meredith thought. America was now watching the evening news.

Connie was there to check the caller ID. “Number unavailable,” she said. “Should I answer?”

“I’ll answer,” Toby said. He had just come downstairs in fresh clothes. Meredith had been unable to tell him or Connie about the Thad Orlo/Kirby Delarest story, partly because it was so bizarre that Meredith couldn’t believe it was true, though of course it was true. Freddy hadn’t acted alone; he’d had helpers, henchmen, Dev had called them, people helping him to dig a mass financial grave-and it made sense that Meredith would know some of these people. Kirby Delarest was Thad Orlo. All of the things that hadn’t made sense about Kirby Delarest were now explained. Meredith had been right about Thad Orlo, and she had been right about the phony NASA star, and yet she worried about just how right she had been. The $4 billion in those accounts were, however tangentially, connected to her. Had Freddy hidden the money there for her? He’d moved it on October seventeenth-Samantha’s birthday-but what did that mean? Was it a coincidence, or was the money for Samantha?

Meredith was afraid to think any further.

She also didn’t tell Connie or Toby because she wanted to keep the noxious fumes of the story out of this house. This house was Meredith’s only safe place. But she couldn’t keep the phone from ringing.

“I’ll get it,” Connie said, and she picked up. “Hello?”

Meredith watched Connie’s face, trying to gauge friend or foe, but she couldn’t tell. Connie looked surprised; her mouth formed a small, tight “o.” Her eyes popped, then mysteriously, filled with tears. Were these sad tears, happy tears, angry tears, a little of each? Meredith couldn’t tell.

Connie held out the phone. “It’s for you,” she whispered. She blinked. Tears spilled down her pretty, tanned face. Meredith took the phone, and Connie moved away with purpose.

“Hello?” Meredith said, thinking, What has Connie just handed me?

“Mom?”

Oh, my God. She nearly dropped the phone. It was Carver.

What did he say? What did she say? She could only remember the conversation in snippets afterwards.

“I saw the news,” he said.

“Did you?” she said.

“Jesus, Mom. I can’t believe it.”

She didn’t want to talk about this. She had her son on the phone. Her baby, her beloved child.

“How are you? What are you doing? How is your brother? Are you making it? Are you okay?” She would have said there was nothing bigger inside her than her hurt, but yes, this was bigger. Her love for her sons was bigger.

But Carver was stuck back on this other thing. “He cheated on you, Mom. Now do you see? Please tell me you see him for what he really is… a shallow, empty person who fills himself up with lies and things that he can take from other people. You get it now, right?”

“I get it,” she said, though she was lying. She didn’t get it. “I need to talk to him.”

“Who?”

“Your father.”

“No!” Carver shouted. “Forget him, leave him, divorce him, get him out of your life. This is your chance.”

“Okay,” Meredith said. “Yes, you’re right. You’re right. How are you? How are you?”

Carver’s voice softened. “But he did love you, Mom. That’s what blows me away about all of this. He really did love you. He revered you, like a queen or a goddess. Leo agrees with me. He knows it, too.”

Leo! Meredith thought. She wanted to talk to Leo. He was such a straight arrow, such a good kid, on his hands and knees scraping wax off the hard wood floor of the church, refusing Meredith’s help. There had been one time when Meredith had shot up to Choate in the middle of the week to see Leo’s lacrosse game. Meredith broke the speed limit in the Jaguar, but she had made it there in time to surprise Leo, and he had scored the goal that won the game. Meredith had been there to cheer, and then afterward, she took Leo and Carver and two teammates to Carini’s for pizza. She had made it back to the city before Freddy got home from work, but when he walked in, she told him what she’d done; she told him about the goal and how surprised Leo had been to see her, and how he’d kissed her through the car window before she pulled out of the gates, even though his buddies were watching.

Freddy had smiled wearily. “You’re a wonderful mother, Meredith,” he’d said. But his mind had been elsewhere.

“Are you okay?” Meredith asked. “Is Leo okay?”

Carver sighed. “We’re doing okay, Mom.”

But what did this mean? Was he really okay? Meredith had been picturing the two of them in a big, dusty Victorian house. She wanted to hear about the house, how they were refinishing the floors or painting the baseboards.

“We love you,” Carver said. “But I’m calling to make sure you do the right thing. File for divorce. Please. Promise me.”

She wanted to promise. But she couldn’t promise. No one understood. She was absolutely alone. She panicked because she heard the end of the conversation encroaching in Carver’s voice, and there was still so much to say. So much she wanted to know. He was going to hang up, and she didn’t have a number for him. He would be lost to her again, as lost to her as Freddy was, as her father was.

“Wait!” she said. “Your number! Can I call you?”

Again, the sigh. Carver had become a sigher, like a disappointed parent.

“Julie Schwarz wants Leo to wait,” he said. “Until the smoke clears a little more. Until a little more time has passed. And that goes for me, too. I shouldn’t have called you now, but I had to. I had to talk to you.”

“I know,” Meredith said. “Thank you.”

“You heard me, Mom, right?” Carver said.

“Right,” Meredith whispered.

“I love you, Mom. Leo loves you, too,” Carver said. And then he hung up.

Meredith said, “I love you, too. I love you, too!” She became aware that she was speaking to a dead phone, and she became aware that there were other people in the room: Toby, who was watching her, and Connie, who was watching Toby watch her.

CONNIE

She should have gone over to Dan’s house for dinner. When she called him to say she was staying home, he told her he might just go out by himself. Connie pictured him eating at the bar at A.K. Diamond’s, where he knew everyone and everyone knew him, where his old flames would find him, or the cute receptionist from the salon would be sitting on a neighboring bar stool. Connie desperately wanted to go with him, but she couldn’t go out; her face was all over the news. Sure enough, when Connie checked her cell phone, she had missed calls from Iris and Lizbet; they had seen her on CNN. She couldn’t go anywhere.

“Remember, I’m leaving for New Hampshire on Friday,” Dan said.

Connie hesitated. Dan was taking Donovan and Charlie on a wilderness-survival camping trip for three days in the White Mountains. He wouldn’t even be able to call her.

“I have to stay in,” Connie said. She knew he was waiting for her to invite him over, but she couldn’t do that, either. The emotions in this house were too raw. “Tomorrow for sure.”

But now, she wished she’d gone. She watched Meredith hang up the phone. Meredith said, “That was Carver.”

Connie could barely bring herself to nod. She was the one who had answered the phone, she was the one who had heard Carver say, “Hi, Aunt Connie? It’s Carver. Is my mom there?” Connie had been consumed by an emotion she couldn’t identify, though now she supposed it was just plain envy, concentrated envy, envy in its purest and most insidious form. Meredith’s son had called her. He had heard the news and reached out. He had told her he loved her. Connie had felt both pierced and deflated. She could check her cell phone right now, but she knew that even though her face had been on TV all day, there would be no message or missed call from Ashlyn.

Meredith seemed a little lighter since the phone call from Carver-although she was quick to admit that Carver had barely said a word about himself. Meredith didn’t know where he was living or what he was working on or if he still had friends or if he was dating anyone.

“He just called to make sure I was going to divorce Freddy,” she said.

“And what did you tell him?” Connie asked.

Toby stared. Meredith said nothing.

“My offer stands,” Connie said. “If you want to divorce Freddy, I’ll pay for it.”

Meredith said nothing. Connie could see the shine of the phone call wearing off. Meredith was very slowly slipping back down to her previous depths.

“He told me he loved me,” Meredith said.

“Of course he loves you,” Toby said. “He’s your son.”

The phone rang again, just as the sun was setting, at seven thirty. Setting sun at seven thirty? God, the summer was ending; they were running out of time. Dan was leaving the day after tomorrow for his camping trip, and when he got back, they would have a scant week left together. Last year, Connie remembered, she had been grateful for the end of summer. The sunshine and the beach and the forced cheerfulness had been trying for her. Last summer, she had been unable to look at the ocean without thinking of Wolf’s ashes. So much had changed in one year; she should be happy for that.

Toby was over by the phone, checking the caller ID. “It’s an unknown caller,” he said. “Want me to answer it?”

“No,” Connie said, but Meredith said, “Go ahead,” and since Meredith’s answer would always trump Connie’s answer with Toby, he answered.

“Hello?” He paused. He looked at Meredith. He said, “May I tell her who’s calling?” He paused. He said, “I won’t give her the phone unless you tell me who this is.”

Then, to Meredith, he said, “It’s her.”

“Samantha?” Meredith said.

Toby nodded.

“No,” Meredith said.

Toby hung up. Connie thought, I told him not to answer. But her insides were jumping. She hated to admit it, but it was exciting living through this kind of drama.

“Wait a minute,” she said. “That was Samantha?”

“Samantha Deuce,” Toby said.

Meredith slowly shook her head.

“You don’t seem surprised,” Connie said.

“She called earlier.”

“She did?”

“I answered, and when I figured out it was her, I said, ‘No,’ and hung up.”

“Wow,” Connie said. “That woman has guts.”

“Well, yeah,” Meredith said.

Connie put out some crackers with bluefish pâté, but none of them ate. It grew dark in the room, and Connie thought, I should turn on some lights, but lights seemed too harsh, or perhaps too optimistic, so Connie lit candles, as she might have during an electrical storm. It was too bad it wasn’t raining, she thought. A storm would fit the mood.

Connie wanted wine. If this had been three weeks ago, she would already be on her third glass. And Dan wasn’t here, so… Connie poured herself some.

She said, “Meredith, do you want wine?”

Meredith said, “Do I want wine? Yes. But I shouldn’t. I won’t.”

Connie shouldn’t either, but she was going to anyway. She took in a mouthful, thinking, Deliver me. But the wine tasted sour; it tasted like a headache. She poured it down the drain. She got herself a glass of ice water with lemon. She knew they should do something about dinner. Meredith was in the armchair, folded into herself like an injured bird, and Toby was sprawled across the sofa, keeping vigil on Meredith. He loved her. It was as plain as the nose on his face.

But Meredith wouldn’t divorce Freddy. The man had done despicable things, both publicly and privately, and yet Meredith still loved him. Any other woman would have left Freddy Delinn in the dust, but not Meredith.

Dinner, they needed to eat dinner, Connie thought, something simple-sandwiches, salad, scrambled eggs, even. But she wasn’t hungry.

She said, “Meredith, are you hungry?”

Meredith said, “I’ll never eat again.”

At that second, Toby’s cell phone rang. He said, “It’s Michael,” and he bounded up the stairs to his bedroom.

Meredith said, “I can’t believe Samantha called here twice.”

“I’m sure she wants to talk to you,” Connie said.

“I’m sure she does,” Meredith said.

They sat for a second, listening to the mantel clock tick. Connie could hear the strains of Toby’s voice. “Hey, buddy.” Everyone was talking to their children tonight, except for her.

Meredith must have heard Toby, too, because she said, “It was good to talk to Carver. It was magical to hear his voice, just to hear him call me ‘Mom,’ you know? Just to hear him say he loves me. I can’t see him, I can’t touch him, but at least I know he’s alive out in the world somewhere. Thinking of me.”

Connie was suddenly too sad for tears. This, she realized, must have been how Meredith felt. Her sadness took on a sharp, shining edge.

She said, “Do you think Samantha was the only one?”

“What?” Meredith said.

“Well, we know Freddy did things in a big way.”

“What are you saying?” Meredith asked. “That there might have been other lovers?”

“There might have been,” Connie said. “I mean, you know how Freddy was.”

“No,” Meredith said. Her voice was cold stone. “How was Freddy?”

“He was flirtatious,” Connie said. “And at times, he was more than flirtatious.”

“Did he ever make a pass at you?” Meredith asked. She sat up in the armchair, her spine straight, her chin lifted as though there were a string from the top of her head to the ceiling. Meredith was so small in stature, she looked like a ventriloquist’s dummy. “He did, didn’t he?”

“He did,” Connie said. She couldn’t believe she was saying this. She had decided there would be no more taboo subjects, but really, to bring this up? Stop, Connie, stop! Shut up! But there was something inside driving her. She couldn’t say what. An urge to tell. “He made a pass at me in Cap d’Antibes. He told me I was a beautiful woman, and then he kissed me.”

“He kissed you.”

“And he, sort of, touched my breast. Cupped it.”

Meredith nodded once, succinctly. “I see. Where was Wolf?”

“Running.”

“And where was I?”

“Shopping.”

“So the two of you were alone in the house, then,” Meredith said. “Did you sleep with him?”

“No, Meredith, I did not sleep with him.”

“This was… when?” Meredith said. “What year?”

Connie tried to think. She couldn’t think. “It was the year we had lunch at that restaurant in Annecy. Do you remember that lunch?”

“Yes,” Meredith said. “So… two thousand three. Does that sound right?”

“I don’t know,” Connie said. “I guess so.”

“Before Samantha,” Meredith said. She slapped her hands against her thighs. “So maybe there were others, then. Safe to assume there were others. Dozens, maybe, or hundreds…”

“Meredith…” Connie said.

“Why,” Meredith said. She shut her mouth and swallowed. “Why on earth didn’t you tell me?”

God, what was the answer to that question? Freddy had made a pass; Connie had deflected it. There was, essentially, nothing to tell. Maybe she had kept quiet about it because it was a private moment between her and Freddy; he was paying her a compliment, and it had made Connie feel good. It had made her feel desired. She didn’t want to ruin that feeling by turning it into something else. Maybe she hadn’t wanted to spoil the week in Cap d’Antibes by making a mountain out of a molehill. Maybe she hadn’t had access to the kind of language it would require to tell Meredith what had happened without implicating herself. It hadn’t been Connie’s fault. Except, she had worn the clingy patio dress that put her breasts on display. But a woman should be able to dress however she wanted. It wasn’t an invitation for men to act inappropriately.

“I don’t know why I didn’t tell you,” Connie said. “It didn’t seem like a big deal.”

“My husband kissed you and touched you, and you remember it all these years later, but it didn’t seem like a big deal?”

“It was alarming,” Connie said. “Of course it was. But I backed away. In my mind, I minimalized it. I guess because I was embarrassed.”

Meredith stared. She had an arsenal of cold, scary looks. “I can’t believe you.”

“Meredith, I’m sorry…”

“You’re my best friend. And after you, my closest friend was Samantha.”

“I didn’t sleep with Freddy,” Connie said. “I didn’t encourage Freddy or invite any further attention. I did nothing wrong.”

“You didn’t tell me,” Meredith said.

It suddenly felt like a question pulled from a woman’s magazine: If your best friend’s husband makes a pass at you, do you tell her? Certainly the answer was no. But maybe the answer was yes. Maybe Connie should have told Meredith. One thing was for sure: Connie should not have told Meredith about it tonight. She had done so out of meanness; she had wanted to hurt Meredith, when Meredith was already hurting so badly. Do I look like a woman who needs more surprise news? But why? And then Connie knew: she was jealous about the phone call from Carver. Now look at the mess. If Connie had intended to keep her moment with Freddy a secret, it should have remained a secret forever.

“I’m sorry,” Connie said. “I should have told you, I guess.”

“You guess?” Meredith said. “You guess?” Her voice was shrill and righteous. Connie stood up. She needed a glass of wine; she didn’t care if it tasted like Drano. She took a glass from the cabinet and opened the fridge.

Meredith said, “That’s right. Pour yourself some wine. That’ll fix everything.”

Connie slammed the refrigerator door shut, then she threw the wine glass into the kitchen sink and the glass shattered. The noise was startling. Her anger and upset were unbelievable, and she knew that Meredith’s anger and upset matched, if not surpassed, hers. Was there room in one house for so much agony? Connie looked at the broken glass-and she spotted a chip in her enamel sink. Her gorgeous farmer’s sink, of which she had once been so proud.

Wolf, she thought. Ashlyn. Lost to her. Lost.

She thought, Dan. I should have gone to Dan’s.

She said, “Well, while we’re at it.”

“While we’re at it, what?” Meredith said.

“While we’re at it, I’m not the only one who made a mistake. I’m not the only one in the wrong here.”

“What are you talking about?” Meredith said.

She was standing with her hands on her hips, her graying hair tucked behind her ears, her horn-rimmed glasses slipping to the end of her nose. She had gotten those glasses in the eighth grade. Connie remembered her walking into American History class and showing off the glasses, and then in lunch and study hall, passing them around for other girls to try on. Connie had been the first one to try them on; they had turned the cafeteria into a blurry, swarming mass of color. Connie had almost vomited. And yet, she had been jealous of Meredith’s glasses, and of Meredith, since childhood. Practically her entire life.

“I’m talking about the things you said about Wolf,” Connie said. “The horrible things. You insinuated that we were pulling our money because Wolf had brain cancer and didn’t know any better.”

Meredith said, “You basically came right out and called Freddy a crook.”

“Meredith,” Connie said. “He was a crook.”

Meredith pushed her glasses up her nose. “You’re right,” she said. “He was a crook.” She stared at Connie. She seemed to be waiting for something. “And what I said about Wolf was ruthless. I’m sorry. I don’t know how I could have been so awful.”

“And you didn’t come to Wolf’s funeral,” Connie said. “And you knew that I needed you there.”

“I was on my way,” Meredith said. “I was at the door of the apartment, wearing a charcoal-gray suit, I remember. And Freddy talked me out of it.” She bit her lower lip. “I don’t know how he did it, but he did. You know Freddy.”

“Whatever Freddy told you to do, you did,” Connie said.

“That’s why I’m in trouble with the Feds,” Meredith said. “Freddy asked me to transfer fifteen million dollars from the business to our personal account three days before he was exposed, and I did it. I thought he was going to buy a house in Aspen.” She laughed. “I thought I was going to Aspen, but instead I’m going to jail.”

So that was why she was under investigation, Connie thought. She hadn’t been brave enough to ask. Another taboo shattered. She said, “You were supposed to come visit me here in nineteen eighty-two, but you didn’t come because of Freddy. Because Freddy had sent that telegram. He’d proposed, remember? And I said, ‘That’s great, we can celebrate your engagement.’ But you only wanted to celebrate with Freddy.”

“That was thirty years ago,” Meredith said.

“Exactly,” Connie said. “He’s been holding you hostage for thirty years.”

“I still don’t understand why you didn’t tell me what happened in France,” Meredith said. “Did our friendship mean nothing?”

“Wait a minute,” Connie said. “We’ve both done damage to the friendship. It wasn’t just me. I didn’t tell you about Freddy because, at the time, my best judgment told me to let it go. I’m sorry I brought it up.”

“Not as sorry as I am,” Meredith said.

“I’m not Samantha Deuce,” Connie said. “You’re angry with Samantha. Not with me.”

At that moment, Toby came downstairs. “What’s going on?” he said. “Did someone break a glass?”

“Connie,” Meredith said.

Toby turned to Connie. Connie could speak, but Toby wouldn’t hear her. This was her house-where, it might be pointed out, both Meredith and Toby were guests-but she had no voice.

“I’m going to bed,” Connie said. Dinner, she thought. She foraged through the pantry and selected a Something Natural herb roll, which she took a bite out of like an apple.

Meredith said, “No, the two of you stay up. I’m going to bed.”

Old habits die hard, Connie thought. It was exactly nine thirty.

Connie spent the night on the living-room sofa. After growing accustomed to sleeping in a real bed, she felt that the sofa offered as much comfort as an old door laid across sawhorses, and when she woke up, Connie felt like she had fallen from a ten-story building. Her breath stank of onions from the herb roll. She had forgotten to pour herself a glass of water, and her lips were cracked. She needed lip balm. She needed to brush her teeth.

She stood up, gingerly. She decided she wouldn’t think about anything else until she took care of these small tasks.

Water. Chapstick. Toothbrush.

She cleaned out the sink-carefully removing the shards of glass with rubber gloves. She made a pot of coffee. She was okay. Her heart hurt but she was functioning.

Her cell phone was there on the counter, charging, and because she couldn’t help herself, she checked for missed calls or messages. She was thinking of Dan, but really she was thinking of Ashlyn. There was nothing new. The voice mails from Iris and Lizbet lingered, unheard.

The coffee machine gurgled. Connie got a mug and poured in half-and-half and warmed it up in the microwave. She poured in the coffee and added sugar. She could remember drinking coffee for the first time with Meredith and Annabeth Martin in Annabeth’s fancy drawing room at the house in Wynnewood. Connie and Meredith were wearing long dresses. Connie’s dress had been red gingham with a white eyelet panel down the front that was embroidered with strawberries. Connie remembered thinking, Coffee? That was something adults drank. But that was what Annabeth Martin had served; there was no lemonade or fruit punch. Annabeth had poured cream out of a tiny silver pitcher and offered the girls sugar cubes, stacked like crystalline blocks of ice, from a silver bowl. Connie’s coffee had spilled into her saucer and Annabeth had said, “Two hands, Constance.”

And then, when Connie got home and told her mother that Annabeth had served them coffee, Veronica had said, “That woman is trying to stunt your growth.”

Connie smiled now, remembering. Then she felt a heaviness gather inside her. She and Meredith had been connected since her earliest memories. She didn’t want Meredith to be upset with her. She couldn’t lose another person.

She took her coffee out to the deck. There were a few clouds on the horizon, but the rest of the sky was brilliant blue. Nantucket was the kind of place that was so beautiful it broke your heart, because you couldn’t keep it. The seasons passed, the weather changed, you had to leave-and return to the city or the suburbs, your school, your job, your real life.

Connie drank her coffee. She thought, I can’t lose anyone else.

She turned and saw Meredith standing in the doorway, holding a cup of coffee. She was in a short white nightgown. She looked like a doll. Her hair was lighter.

Connie spoke without thinking. “Your hair is lighter.”

Meredith said, “You’re just saying that because I’m mad.”

“I’m saying that because it’s true. It’s lighter. It’s blonder.”

Meredith took the seat next to Connie and reached for her hand. “I’m sorry,” she said.

“I’m sorry,” Connie said.

Meredith narrowed her eyes at the view. Her face was tanned, and she had a spray of freckles across her nose. She said, “I would have died without you.”

Connie squeezed her hand. “Shhh,” she said.

Later that morning, the phone rang. Toby said, “Geez, the phone has rung more in the past two days than it has in the past two weeks.”

Connie threw him a look. Meredith was upstairs getting dressed. There were no reporters out front, so Connie and Meredith were going to run to the grocery store, and if that went well, to Nantucket Bookworks to stock up on novels. Dan had called; he was taking Connie to the Pearl for dinner, so Meredith and Toby would be on their own at home.

Connie checked the caller ID. It was the law firm. Connie picked it up. The fifteen-year-old attorney asked for Meredith.

Connie said, “Just a moment, please.”

Connie caught Meredith coming down the stairs. She said, “It’s your counsel.”

Meredith said, “I wish we’d left five minutes ago.”

Connie said, “I’m going to run up and brush my teeth. We’ll go when you’re off the phone?”

“Okay,” Meredith said. She had her wig in one hand. They were back to the wig.

Goddamn you, Freddy, Connie thought.

She climbed the stairs slowly because she wanted to listen. Toby was right there in the room, probably unabashedly eavesdropping. Connie heard Meredith say, “Hello?” Pause. “I’m doing okay. Do you have any news for me?”

Connie stopped in her tracks, but she was near the top of the stairs, and she didn’t hear anything more.

MEREDITH

He wouldn’t talk to her.

“I asked everyone in the system at Butner,” Dev said. “Everyone gave the same answer: Fred Delinn won’t take your phone call, and they can’t make him. They can’t even make him listen while you talk.”

Meredith felt her cheeks burn. She was embarrassed. Humiliated. She was dying a living death. “Why won’t he talk to me?”

“It’s anyone’s guess, Meredith,” Dev said. “The guy is a sociopath, and he’s deteriorated mentally since he’s been in. Everyone at the prison knows what happened with Mrs. Deuce. They understand why you want an audience. Mrs. Briggs, the warden’s secretary, personally pushed for Fred to face you on Skype and at least be forced to listen to what you have to say, but that idea was shot down. It’s against prisoner’s rights. They can lock him up, they can make him go to meals, they can make him go out into the yard at nine a.m. and come in from the yard at ten a.m., they can make him take his meds. But they can’t make him talk, and they can’t make him talk to you.”

Meredith reminded herself to breathe. Toby was somewhere in the room, though she wasn’t sure where. Her right knee was knocking into the table leg. “I should go down there and see him in person.”

“He won’t see you,” Dev said, “and they can’t make him. You’ll go down there for nothing, Meredith. It’s a romantic idea, like in the movies. I get it. You go down there, he sees you, something clicks, he offers up all kinds of explanations and apologies. That isn’t going to happen. He’s a sick man, Meredith. He’s not the man you once knew.”

She was tired of this idea, even though she knew it to be true.

“So you’re telling me I can’t go?”

“I’m telling you you shouldn’t go,” Dev said. “Because he won’t see you. You can travel down there to hot and desolate Butner, you can plan on enduring a media circus, you can meet with Nancy Briggs and Cal Green, the warden, but they’re just going to tell you the same thing that I’m telling you. He won’t see you. He won’t talk to you.”

“I’m not going to yell at him,” Meredith said. “I’m not going to hurt him. I’m not going to go on some kind of crazed jealous-wife rampage. I just want answers.”

“You won’t get answers,” Dev said.

She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She had thought that perhaps the prison would make it difficult for her to talk to Fred. But from the sound of it, they wanted to facilitate the phone call but couldn’t-because Freddy refused. It was the very worst thing: He had stolen everybody’s money, he had lied to the SEC and single-handedly put the nation’s economy in the toilet. He had cheated on Meredith for six and a half years with a woman she considered to be their closest friend. He had lied to Meredith tens of thousands of times-fine. But what she couldn’t forgive was this, now. What she couldn’t forgive was this stonewalled silence. He owed her a conversation. He owed her the truth-as egregious as it might be. But the truth was going to stay locked up in Butner. It was going to stay locked up in the sooty black recesses of Freddy’s disturbed mind.

“Fine,” Meredith said. She slammed down the phone. She was furious. Furious! She would make a statement to the press vilifying the man. She would take down Freddy and the undisputed harlot who was Samantha Champion Deuce. (She wrote her own Post headlines: CHAMPION HOMEWRECKER, CHAMPION TWO-FACED LIAR.) Meredith would file for divorce, and three hundred million Americans would support her; they would raise her up. She would regain her position in society; she would hit the lecture circuit.

She turned around. Toby was standing there, and something about the look on his face made Meredith’s anger pop like a soap bubble.

She said, “He won’t talk to me. He refuses. And they can’t make him.”

Toby nodded slowly. Meredith expected him to take this opportunity to say, He’s a rat bastard, Meredith. A piece of shit. What further proof do you need? But instead, Toby said, “Maybe he’ll change his mind.”

Meredith smiled sadly and headed for the front door to meet Connie in the Escalade. They were going to the store. Meredith had planned on wearing her wig, but this suddenly seemed pointless. The wig was meant to protect her, but she had just suffered the ultimate blow. Nothing anyone did could affect her now; the wig had been rendered useless. Meredith left it on the stairs. When she got home, she would throw it away.

Toby was being kind about Freddy because he could afford to be. He knew, as Meredith did, that Freddy would never change his mind.

That night, before she left for her date with Dan, Connie made dinner for Meredith and Toby. It was a crabmeat pasta with sautéed zucchini in a lemon tarragon cream sauce, a stacked salad of heirloom tomatoes, Maytag blue cheese, and basil, sprinkled with toasted pine nuts and drizzled with hot bacon dressing, and homemade Parker House rolls with seasoned butter.

Unbelievable, Meredith thought. Connie had showered and dressed. She looked absolutely gorgeous, and she had made this meal.

“I feel guilty,” Meredith said. “You should have served this meal to Dan.”

“I offered,” Connie said. “But he really wanted to go out.”

Without us, Meredith thought.

“And I wanted to cook for you,” Connie said.

Because she feels sorry for me, Meredith thought. Again. But there was something almost comforting about reaching this point. Nothing left to lose, nothing left to care about, nothing left to want.

The outdoor table was set with a tablecloth and candles. There was a breeze off the ocean that held a hint of chill.

Fall was coming.

Connie wrapped herself up in a pashmina and said, “Bon appétit! I’m off for my date. I’ll be back tomorrow morning. Dan’s on the noon boat.”

“This is lovely,” Meredith said. “Thank you.”

“And there’s dessert in the fridge,” Connie said.

“Have fun,” Toby said, pushing her gently to the front door.

She left, and Meredith had the feeling that Connie was the parent, and she and Toby were teenagers on a date. It was supposed to be romantic-the candlelight, the delicious food, the ocean before them like a Broadway show. Meredith should have dressed up, but she was in the same clothes she’d put on that morning: a ratty old T-shirt from Choate that Carver had worn his senior year, and her navy-blue gym shorts. She knew it was possible that she would sleep in these clothes and wear them again the next day. She didn’t care how she looked. She didn’t even care, anymore, about her hair.

Thirty years of marriage, and he wouldn’t talk to her. So many dinners at Rinaldo’s she had sat with Freddy the way she was now sitting with Toby, and she had talked about her day, and Freddy had nodded and asked questions, and when Meredith asked him about work, he’d run his hands through his hair and check his BlackBerry as if a pithy answer would be displayed there, and then he’d say something about the stress and unpredictability of his business. Meredith had no idea that Freddy was printing out fake statements on an ancient dot-matrix printer, or that he was spending his lunch hours with Samantha Deuce at the Stanhope Hotel. Freddy had pretended to live in awe of Meredith, but what he really must have been thinking was how blind and gullible and stupid she was. She was like… his mother, Mrs. Delinn, who toiled at providing for Freddy and giving him love. He’ll pretend like he can get along without it, but he can’t. Freddy needs his love. And Meredith had been only too happy to take over the care and maintenance of Freddy Delinn. He was a rich man, but she was the one who rubbed his back and kissed his eyelids and defended him tooth and nail to those who said he was corrupt.

There had been one time in early December when Freddy had called out in the night. He had shuddered in bed, and when Meredith rolled over, she saw his eyes fly open. She touched his silvering hair and said, “What? What is it?”

He didn’t speak, though his eyes widened. Was he awake?

He said, “David.”

And Meredith thought, “David? Who is David?” Then she realized he meant his brother.

“It’s okay,” Meredith said. “I’m here.”

And he had turned to her and said, “You’re never going to leave me, Meredith, right? Promise me. No matter what?”

“No matter what,” she’d said.

Freddy’s eyes had closed then, though Meredith could see manic activity beneath his twitching lids. She had stayed awake as long as she could, watching him, thinking, David. I wonder what made him dream of David?

But now she suspected he hadn’t been thinking about David at all. He’d been thinking about money, the SEC, a looming investigation, being caught, discovered, indicted, imprisoned. He had invoked his brother’s name to throw Meredith off the trail of his real worries. He had known how to lie to her, even when he was only semiconscious.

No matter what, Meredith had promised. But she hadn’t known what kind of “what” he was talking about.

“I don’t think I can eat,” Meredith said. Toby was very patiently holding his utensils in the hover position over his plate, waiting for her.

Toby’s face darkened. “The guy is the biggest creep on earth,” he said. “He didn’t deserve you.”

It was confounding hearing these words from Toby. Quite possibly, Freddy had said something similar about Toby so many years ago, when Meredith told him about how Toby broke up with her on the night of her high-school graduation. You’re better off without him. He didn’t deserve you.

Toby put a forkful of pasta in his mouth and chewed sadly, if such a thing was possible.

“You’re luckier than Freddy,” Meredith said. “You got me at my best. Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen. That was the best Meredith, Toby, and she was yours.”

Toby swallowed and looked at her. “You’re at your best right now.” He fingered the fraying sleeve of her ancient T-shirt. “You’re the best Meredith right now.”

Meredith thought back to the day of Veronica O’Brien’s funeral. Meredith had arrived at the church nearly an hour early, and the only person there was Toby. He was sitting in the back pew, and Meredith had tapped his shoulder and he turned and they looked at each other and-what could Meredith say? She hadn’t seen Toby in nearly twenty years at that point, but the sight of his face brought her to her knees. He stood up and took her in his arms. It started out as a condolence hug. His mother had, after all, just died. The indomitable Veronica O’Brien was gone.

Meredith said into his chest, “I’m so sorry, Toby.”

He tightened his grip on her, and she felt her body temperature rise. She thought she was imagining it. Of course, she was imagining it. She was married, married to rich and powerful Freddy Delinn. Freddy gave her everything her heart desired, so what could she possibly want from Toby now? But the human heart, as Meredith learned then, rarely paid attention to the rules. She felt Toby’s arms tense around her, she felt his leg nudge up against her leg, she felt his breath in her hair.

“Meredith,” he said. “My Meredith.”

The next thing Meredith knew, Toby was leading her out of the church, leading her to the shady spot under a majestic tree where his car was parked. He opened the passenger-side door for her and she got in.

She stared out the windshield at the trunk of the hundred-year-old tree, and when Toby got into the car, Meredith said, “Where are we going?”

“I want to take you somewhere,” he said. “I want to make love to you.”

“Toby,” Meredith said.

“Did you feel it back there?” he asked. “Tell me you did.”

“I did.”

“You did, right? Look at me, I’m shaking.”

Yes, Meredith was shaking, too. She tried to think of Freddy, who had hired a helicopter and a private car to get her here, but who had not given her the most precious thing-and that was his time. He hadn’t come with her.

Meredith said, “This is insane.”

“I should have been more persistent at Connie’s wedding,” he said. “I knew then that I’d made a mistake with you.”

“You broke my heart,” Meredith said. “I thought we would get married.”

“I want to take you somewhere.”

“But the funeral…”

“We have time,” he said. He started the engine and drove out of the churchyard

“We should turn around,” Meredith said.

“Tell me you don’t want me.”

“I can’t tell you that,” Meredith said.

“So you do want me?”

She was glowing with arousal, but it wasn’t just sexual. A part of Meredith had been yearning for this moment-Toby wanting her back-since she was eighteen years old.

He drove through the town of Villanova to the O’Brien house. He screeched into the driveway, and he and Meredith got out. The day was hot, Meredith was wearing a black lace Collette Dinnigan dress; it was too fancy for the Main Line, and now it was plastered to her, and itching. Toby led Meredith into the O’Briens’ garage, which smelled exactly the same as it had twenty-five years earlier-like cut grass and gasoline from Bill O’Brien’s riding mower. A tennis ball hung from a string over one of the bays; it had been placed there when Veronica smashed her Cutlass Supreme into the garage’s back wall after too many gimlets at Aronimink. As soon as they were shut in the cool dim of the garage, Toby took Meredith’s face in his hands, and he kissed her.

And oh, what a kiss it had been. It had gone on and on, Meredith could not get enough, it had been so long since someone had kissed her like that. Freddy loved her, but there were a hundred things more important to him than sex and romance. Money, money, money, his business, his reputation, his clients, his profile in Forbes, his appearance, his yacht, his suits, his early bedtime-all of those rated with him in a way that kissing Meredith did not.

“Come upstairs with me,” Toby said. “To my room.”

She thought of parking with Toby in the Nova. The best of times are when I’m alone with you. She tried to think of Freddy, but she couldn’t conjure his face. So, she would go upstairs with Toby. She would have him again, just this once.

They hurried through the house, up the stairs. It was so familiar, it played tricks on Meredith’s sense of time and place. She had started her day in Southampton 2004, but now it was three o’clock in the afternoon and she was in Villanova 1978. Toby’s room was exactly the same-why hadn’t Veronica turned it into an exercise room or a study like every other empty nester? There was Toby’s lava lamp, his poster of Jimmy Page, his water bed. The heels of Meredith’s Manolos got caught in the shag rug. She stumbled and Toby caught her, then somehow they both crashed onto the water bed, and this knocked Meredith back into her present self. She stared up at the ceiling, and there were the tape marks from where Toby had hung his Farrah Fawcett poster.

He started to kiss her again. She said, “Toby, stop. I can’t.”

“What?” he said. “Why not?”

She rolled onto her side, creating wave motion in the mattress. She looked into his green eyes. “I’m married, Toby.”

“Please, Meredith,” he said. “Please?” He looked like he might cry. She reached out to wipe away the first tear with her thumb.

“I’m sorry, Toby,” she said. “I can’t.”

He watched her for a second, perhaps to see if she was bluffing. She hoisted herself up off the bed and straightened her dress.

“So that’s it?” he said.

“We should go back,” she said. “It’s your mother’s funeral.”

“Is it the man you love?” Toby asked. “Or is it the money?”

Meredith stared.

“Is it the houses? Is it the place in France? Is it the behemoth boat? I saw her once, you know, in the Mediterranean. Saint Tropez.”

“Toby, let’s go.”

“Does he make you laugh?” Toby asked.

“No,” Meredith said honestly. “But you’re not very funny right now, either. Let’s go back.”

“I can’t believe you’re doing this to me.”

Meredith turned on him. “What am I supposed to do? Allow you to make love to me, allow the feelings to come back, and then watch you take off tomorrow for… where? Where, Toby?”

“Spain,” he said. “On Tuesday.”

“See?” she said.

“You wouldn’t come with me even if I asked you,” he said. “Because you’re married to money.”

Meredith shook her head. “I wouldn’t come with you even if you asked me because you wouldn’t ask me.”

On the way back to the church, Toby wept silently, and Meredith felt bad. He had just lost his mother. But Meredith was angry, too-for so many reasons.

Connie and Wolf had been ascending the church stairs. Connie waved to Toby to hurry up; they were to follow the casket inside. She herded Meredith along, too, but Meredith demurred. She wasn’t family. Connie studied her critically and said, “Did you two go somewhere together?”

Meredith kissed the side of Connie’s face. She said, “I have to leave right after. I’m sorry, Con. I can’t stay for the…”

“You can’t stay?” Connie said.

“I have to get back,” Meredith said.

Toby appeared then, over Meredith’s shoulder. “Yeah,” he said. “She has to get back.”

Now, Meredith smiled sadly at Toby. “At your mother’s funeral…”

“You did the right thing,” he said. “Then.”

“Yes,” she said. “I suppose I did. Then.”

Meredith reached a hand out to him, and he grabbed it and brought it to his mouth. They rose from their chairs and faced each other and Meredith thought, My God, what am I doing? And in a flash, it came back: the greedy, hungry desire for this man. Did Toby understand? Did he feel it? Toby lifted her up by the hips, and she rubbed against the length of his body. He was more powerful than Freddy; Meredith felt featherlight, no more substantial than a wish or a hope. Toby kissed her, his mouth was warm and buttery, tender at first, then fierce. She wanted fierce. She wanted fire.

She had wanted to kiss Freddy good-bye before the FBI dragged him away last December, but when she’d taken his arm, he’d looked at her in wild confusion.

Toby’s hands were in her hair. It was the tree on Robinhood Road all over again; something so old it was new. She could feel him hard against her leg, an occurrence that had confused her at age fifteen and that, truth be told, confused her now. Was she finally going to make love to Toby O’Brien again? His hands shifted to her back, his hands were up inside her T-shirt, unhooking her bra. Meredith thought of Freddy with his hand on Samantha’s back. Was Meredith acting out of anger, out of retribution? If so, she should stop right now. But she didn’t want to stop. She was pulsing with heat and light; she was experiencing an arousal that was as cutting and bordering on painful as it had been in her new body. This was a different kind of sexual awakening. It was electrifying in its utter wrongness. Stop! she thought. But she had no intention of stopping. It felt like Toby was going to tear her T-shirt in two just to get at her.

She twisted and darted inside the house.

“Meredith?” Toby said. He thought she was running away.

“Come on!” she screamed.

They made love on Toby’s bed amid his rumpled sheets, which smelled like him. The sex was urgent, quick, rough, and desperate. Afterward, Meredith lay panting; the inside of her elbow hurt from where Toby had pinned her. Toby touched Meredith’s hair, her graying hair, she was so much older now, but there was something fountain of youth-like about this summer. Meredith felt seventeen. She grabbed Toby’s hand-the thought of being touched gently unnerved her-and she brought his hand to her mouth and kissed it first, then bit it.

“Ouch!” he said.

“I’m starving,” she said.

That night, she feared she might dream about Freddy or Samantha or the warden at Butner-but instead she dreamed about their dog, Buttons. In Meredith’s dream, Buttons was Toby’s dog. He was standing on the bow of Toby’s boat, eating a striped bass. Meredith was yelling at him-No! Please Buttons. No, you’ll get sick! Toby was dressed in a white naval cadet’s uniform, with the brass buttons and flat-top hat. He tried to pull the fish away from Buttons, but Buttons fought back like a junkyard dog and Toby ended up reeling backward and falling into the water. Meredith checked over the edge, but there was no sign of him, except for his floating hat. He had disappeared.

She woke up. Toby was propped on one elbow, watching her. She had inhaled the plate of food that Connie had made her, as well as a dish of panna cotta with berries, which Toby had brought to her in bed. She had left the smeared dishes on Toby’s nightstand, and she’d fallen asleep without brushing her teeth. Now, she felt louche and irresponsible. Her elbow still hurt, and there was a dull soreness between her legs.

She couldn’t help wondering if Freddy had ever gazed at her like this. She wanted so badly to believe that he had, but it was probably time to admit that Freddy had only adored himself. And money. And, possibly, Samantha. Meredith almost hoped he had adored Samantha, because that, at least, would mean Freddy was human.

She said to Toby, “I dreamed I lost you.”

“I’m right here,” he said.

Later, Meredith tiptoed naked across the hallway to her bedroom and climbed out onto her Juliet balcony for one quick second, almost daring the paparazzi to come get her. You’re the best Meredith right now. She nearly laughed at the thought. She could do so much better than this.

Meredith slipped on a robe and padded down to the outdoor shower. She stayed in as long as she could in good conscience, and then she went back upstairs to dress. Toby was asleep in his bed, snoring. Meredith gently closed his door.

She retreated to her room. She pulled the cardboard box out of the closet. In that box was the spiral-bound notebook that she had been taking notes in on the day that Trina Didem interrupted her anthropology class to tell Meredith that her father was dead. Meredith had kept the notebook.

It still had plenty of empty pages. Meredith lay across her bed the way she used to as a schoolgirl. She meant to write Freddy a long letter that would elicit all the answers she needed, but the only two words that came to her, which she traced over and over again until the letters were heavy and dark, were OBLIVION and LOVE.

These were her crimes.

CONNIE

Dan would be gone for three days. Four, really, because he was coming back on the late boat on Monday, so Connie wouldn’t see him until Tuesday. When she said good-bye to him, she felt a sick kind of desperation, which she tried to hide.

It was Dan who said, “I can’t believe how much I’m going to miss you.”

“And it’s only three days,” Connie said. What she meant was: Think how bad it will be a week from now when I go back to Maryland.

But then, too, Dan was excited about his camping trip with the boys. Connie had taken a gander at all their equipment: the three-season tent, the Coleman stove, the sleeping bags and air mattresses, the fishing poles and tackle box overflowing with flies, the generator and heavy-duty flashlights, the grocery bags of ramen noodles and peanut butter and instant oatmeal.

“We’re going to catch fish and fry it up,” Dan said. “We’re going to hike and swim in waterfalls. We are going to survive.”

Connie pretended to be excited for him. He would be consumed with the wilderness, leaving little time to pine for Connie.

She kissed him good-bye in his driveway-self-consciously, because the boys were in the house-and then she drove away.

She needed something to keep her mind occupied. But what? And then it came to her. She would teach Meredith to cook.

“You’re going to teach me to cook?” Meredith said. “Me?”

“I’m going to teach you the basics,” Connie said. “So when you’re…”

“Living alone…”

“You can feed yourself,” Connie said.

“Cheaply,” Meredith said.

“Right,” Connie said. She smiled uneasily. She wanted to ask Meredith what her plans were once Labor Day arrived, but she didn’t want to cause Meredith any additional anxiety. But really, what was she planning on doing? Where would she go? To Connecticut, to live near her boys? Before the most recent development with Freddy, Connie had feared that Meredith would move to North Carolina. That wouldn’t happen now, thank God. Meredith needed to cut bait-Dan’s term-and set herself free from that man. It was Connie’s opinion that, in refusing to see her or talk to her on the phone, Freddy was doing Meredith a favor. He was giving her a chance to liberate herself. Really, Freddy was acting out of kindness-either that, or he was too much of a coward to answer for his actions.

“You can stay here, you know,” Connie said. The house had heat. Connie had toyed with the idea of staying here herself. What reason did she have to go back to Bethesda? The powers that be had asked her to serve on the board of directors at the VA, so she could look forward to a lifetime of meetings in the building that had been more important to Wolf than his own life. She would go back to Bethesda because that was where her life was-her friends, her Whole Foods, her UPS man. She would go back to Bethesda because that house was where Ashlyn had grown up, and Connie would keep it for her, in case she ever decided to come back. Pointless? Probably.

“I can’t stay here,” Meredith said. “I’ve imposed on you long enough.”

“You know better than to say that.”

“I still have time to think about it,” Meredith said. “I don’t have to decide today. And there’s still a chance that I’ll be…”

Connie held up a hand. She couldn’t stand to hear Meredith say it. She turned to her cutting board. “The first thing I’m going to teach you is how to chop an onion.”

They chopped onion, shallot, garlic. They sautéed the shallot in butter. Connie showed Meredith how to move the shallot around the sauté pan with a wooden spoon. They added white wine and reduced it. They added Dijon mustard. They added heavy cream, salt and pepper, and a handful of fresh herbs.

“There,” Connie said. “We have just made a mustard and herb cream sauce. You can add grilled sausage and serve this over pasta. You can substitute lemon juice for the Dijon and add shrimp.”

Meredith was taking notes. It was so elementary, who needed notes? But Meredith had always been that kind of student.

Connie poached some chicken breasts in water, white wine, and celery leaves. She let the chicken cool, then shredded it with two forks.

“You don’t even need a food processor,” Connie said.

“That’s good,” Meredith said. “Because I can’t afford one.”

“You can probably buy one on eBay for cheap,” Connie said.

“And which computer will I be using when I bid on eBay?” Meredith said, “And which credit card will I use?” She smiled. “I’m only kidding. I still have some money. Very little, but some. All I need is the guts to apply for a new credit card. All I need is the courage to walk into the public library and ask to use the Internet.”

“Correct,” Connie said. “You’re a free citizen. You can do these things, and no one-no one, Meredith-can stop you.”

They did eggs next. Eggs were cheap. Connie mixed three eggs with a little milk and some salt and pepper. She threw some butter in the frying pan.

“Scrambled eggs,” Connie said. “Low heat, slow motion. You can add any kind of cheese you want. I like cheddar or Gruyère.”

“Does my future include Gruyère cheese?” Meredith asked.

“Cheddar, then,” Connie said.

“Government cheese,” Meredith said. She laughed. “Do you think the government would even give me cheese? If they don’t indict me, maybe they will give me cheese.”

Connie turned off the burner under the eggs; they were rich and creamy. She threw in a handful of fresh thyme, and the aroma enveloped them. “Do I need to worry about you?” she asked.

“Yes,” Meredith said. She smiled, then she reached out to hug Connie. “This is amazing, Con. You’re helping me.”

“No,” Connie said. “You’re helping me.”

They ate the scrambled eggs right out of the pan, and then they moved on to quiche. Connie used a prepared pie shell-Meredith wasn’t ready to make her own pastry dough-and mixed up a basic custard of eggs, half-and-half, and salt and pepper.

“You can add anything you want,” Connie said. “Bacon, sausage, chopped ham, chopped Spam, government cheese, scallions, chives, wild onions you find on the side of the road, diced tomatoes, diced zucchini, mushrooms, you name it. Then you pour it into the crust like this, and bake it at three fifty for fifty minutes.”

Meredith took notes. Connie shredded some Emmental cheese and added chopped deli salami and some diced tomatoes and snipped chives. She slid the quiche into the oven. They would eat it for lunch.

Dan had been gone for only an hour. Connie wasn’t sure how she was going to make it through the next three days.

“Now,” she said, “I’m going to teach you the most important lesson of all.”

“What’s that?” Meredith said. She seemed genuinely interested, and Connie wondered how Meredith could be so focused-nearly happy-when she was doomed to read about Freddy’s affair in a book written by Samantha Deuce.

Just then, Toby walked into the kitchen and said, “Something smells good.” He kissed Meredith on the back of her neck and grabbed her around the waist. Meredith cast her eyes down, and Connie thought, All right, what’s going on?

She said, “Did something happen last night?”

Meredith elbowed Toby in the ribs. “Connie was just about to teach me the most important lesson of all.”

Toby said, “Dinner was delicious. When we finally ate it.”

Connie glanced at her brother. He kept a straight face, then broke out into a beautiful smile. Meredith turned around and kissed Toby in a way that evoked 1979, and Connie nearly groaned. This would be a lot easier to stomach if Dan were here.

“Out of the kitchen,” Connie said to Toby. “I’ll call you when lunch is ready.”

“But I want to learn the most important lesson,” Toby said. “What is it?”

Connie felt like she should give a profound answer. What was the most important lesson? Was it love? Was it forgiveness? Was it honesty? Was it perseverance?

She wielded her whisk. “Vinaigrette,” she said.

They ate a late lunch of quiche and perfectly dressed salad greens. After lunch, Meredith and Toby wanted to go for a bike ride-probably they wanted to be alone-but if Connie sat around the house by herself she would lose her mind, so she tagged along with them. They biked out to Sconset. The climbing roses were in their second bloom, even more lush and lavish than they had been in July-and then they decided to bike Polpis Road. This was nine miles on top of the two they had already done. Connie was in terrible shape, but the bike ride invigorated her. Her heart was pumping and her legs were warm and tingling, and she filled with a kind of euphoria from the fresh air and the endorphins. It was ideal weather-low seventies with low humidity and mellow sunshine. Autumn was coming. Maybe it was this thought that made Connie suggest that they head into town instead of home to Tom Nevers.

“Town?” Toby said. “You’re sure?”

“We can get ice cream,” Connie said.

They biked an additional two miles into town, at which point Connie was wiped out. She collapsed on a stool at the counter of the Nantucket Pharmacy. Meredith and Toby flanked her and the three of them ordered chocolate frappes. There were lots of other people in the pharmacy-primarily older people who had come to get their prescriptions filled and harried-looking mothers with recalcitrant children demanding jimmies, but none of them seemed to notice Meredith, and more unusual still was the fact that Meredith didn’t seem to mind if she was noticed or not. She interacted with one little girl whose scoop of peppermint-stick ice cream was threatening to topple into the lap of her hand-embroidered sundress. The little girl was about six years old and had a perfect blond bob. The little girl was Meredith Martin at age six.

“Let me help you with that,” Meredith said, and she secured the ice cream onto the cone with a spoon.

“Thank you,” the girl’s mother said.

Meredith smiled. To Connie, she murmured, “She looks like one of these little girls I knew in Palm Beach.” Her expression darkened, the demons were encroaching, and Connie thought, We have to get out of here while things are still okay.

She eased back off her stool; even that made her legs ache. She said, “I’m never going to make it back home. We have to call a cab.”

“Thank God you said that, Nance Armstrong,” Toby said.

They called a cab that could accommodate the bikes, and rode home in exhausted silence.

It was six o’clock. They took turns in the outdoor shower, with Meredith slated to go last.

“So you can stay in as long as you want,” Connie said.

“You’re so good to me,” Meredith said.

“Who’s the little girl in Palm Beach?” Connie asked.

“Long story,” Meredith said.

Connie wanted to pour a glass of wine-oh, boy, did she-and she had earned it with nearly fifteen miles of biking and Dan away and Meredith and Toby in a state of bliss, but she decided against it. She prepared pasta and served it with the Dijon shallot cream sauce that she and Meredith had made earlier, and a salad with vinaigrette, and some leftover Parker House rolls. It was a good dinner, and the three of them ate outside. After, they cleaned up, and Toby asked if they wanted to watch a movie. Meredith said yes, but Connie said she was tired and thought she would go upstairs to read.

“But reading might not last long,” Connie said. “I’m beat.”

“It was a good day,” Meredith said.

“Dinner was delicious,” Toby said. “Thank you.”

Once in the master suite with the door shut, Connie thought, I survived the first day without Dan. But how would she make it through three more days? And how, how, how would she leave the island?

She loved him.

She sat on the edge of her bed. Okay, wait. She was unprepared to love anyone but Wolf Flute. So she didn’t love Danforth Flynn. But God, her heart was splintering at the prospect of even three days without him. The clock radio was on the nightstand. Connie reached over to turn it on, and then she got an idea.

No, the idea was stupid. It was so cliché. But before she could stop herself, Connie had her cell phone in her hand and she was dialing. With all those hours of avid listening, she knew the number by heart.

At first, the line was busy. Of course, it was busy; Delilah had millions of listeners who all wanted to send songs out to their loved ones. Connie hit redial.

And on her sixteenth try, someone answered. Not Delilah, but a screener.

“Tell me your story,” the screener said. The screener was male; he sounded as young as Meredith’s attorney. Was this some college kid earning extra money by screening for Delilah? Connie found this amusing.

She thought, My story? My story will take all night.

She said, “My husband died two years ago of brain cancer, and I never thought I’d find love again.” Here, Connie walked over to her dressing table. She pointed to herself in the mirror and thought, You, Constance Flute, are made for Delilah! “But this summer, I’ve met a wonderful man named Dan, and my life has changed. I’ve changed. Dan is away this weekend, on a camping trip with his sons, but I’d like to send out a song to him so he knows I’m thinking of him.”

“What’s the song?” the screener asked.

“ ‘Something in the Way She Moves’ by James Taylor,” Connie said. The song Dan sang in her ear up at Great Point.

“Good stuff,” the screener said. “I’m going to get you on.”

The next day, Connie taught Meredith how to make a cream soup from scratch.

“Once I show you the basics,” Connie said, “you can do this with any vegetable: broccoli, asparagus, carrot, tomato, mushroom.”

“Right,” Meredith said. “But what’s going to keep me from reaching for a can of Campbell’s for a dollar forty-nine instead?”

“You’ll see once you taste it,” Connie said. “First, you sauté an onion in four tablespoons of butter until the onion is soft.” She moved the onion around the stock pot as the butter foamed. Connie had done so well on the radio that now she was thinking TV, she was thinking the Food Network, her own cooking show! “Then, add three tablespoons of flour and cook for one minute. Cooking the flour a little eliminates the starchiness.” If Toby could go to the Naval Academy, why couldn’t Connie do the Food Network? “Add the vegetable next-in this case, four cups of sliced summer squash.” Connie enunciated clearly, mugged for an imaginary camera, then dumped the squash into the pot. Meredith didn’t notice the theatrics; she was bent over her little notebook, writing down every step. Would she really make her own soup? Connie wondered. Or was she destined for Campbell’s? “Pour in six cups of chicken broth, a cup of white wine, and a teaspoon of fresh thyme. Put the top on the pot and simmer for twenty minutes.”

Connie set the timer. She turned to Meredith. She was unable to hold it in any longer. “I was on Delilah last night.”

Meredith’s brow crinkled. “Huh?”

“I called in to Delilah and sent a song out to Dan.”

“You did not.”

“I did so. I was on the radio.”

“Why didn’t you tell us?” Meredith said. “Oh, my God, what I would have given to hear that. What song did you ask her to play?”

“ ‘Something in the Way She Moves.’ ” Connie said. “By James Taylor.”

A shadow crossed Meredith’s face.

Connie said, “Don’t even think about it.”

Meredith turned away. Connie absently stirred the squash in the pot.

“Okay, do think about it,” she said. “What song would you send out to Freddy?”

“I don’t know,” Meredith said. “ ‘I Will Survive’?”

“And you will,” Connie said. “You will, Meredith.”

Meredith walked over to the sliding-glass doors. “I’m going to sit in the sun,” she said. “You know, we only have nine days left.”

Nine days. A ticking started in Connie’s head, like a time bomb.

When the squash had cooked and cooled to room temperature, Connie went outside to grab Meredith. “Time to finish the soup.”

Connie poured the cooled contents of the pot into her food processor. When she turned it on, the mixture became a smooth, sunny-colored liquid. Connie poured it back into the pot and added salt, pepper, and a cup of heavy cream. She lifted a spoonful for Meredith to taste, then she tasted it herself.

Sublime. It was fresh, sweet, and squashlike. This was why Meredith couldn’t simply pick a can off the shelf.

“You have to promise me that you’ll try this yourself,” Connie said. “With some really good produce.”

“I’ll try,” Meredith said. “But I can’t promise. How can I promise?”

That evening, they ate the soup with a fresh, piping hot baguette-the crevices filled with melting sweet butter-and a green salad with vinaigrette that Meredith had made herself, as a final exam of sorts. It tasted just like Connie’s vinaigrette, and Meredith was thrilled. They did a cheers with their water glasses. The cooking lessons had been a success, Meredith was a quick study, and it was a good thing because Dan would be home soon enough, and Connie would have other things to do.

In the middle of the night, Connie was awakened by a noise. At first, she thought it was the radio; she had fallen asleep listening to Delilah. But it was a rattling, coming from downstairs. It was a pounding.

The vandal, Connie thought. There had been nothing for weeks, nothing since Toby arrived, but now, yes-someone was outside. Connie slipped out of bed. She was wearing only a T-shirt and underwear. She needed shorts.

She called out, “Toby!” The man slept like the dead. She might have to splash him with cold water to wake him up.

But when she got out to the hallway, Toby and Meredith were standing at the top of the stairs.

“Someone’s outside,” Connie said.

“I’ll take care of it,” Toby said.

“It sounds like the person is trying to get in,” Meredith said. “What if it’s Samantha? What if she came here to confront me?”

“Is that possible?” Connie asked. Of course, it was possible, but was it likely? It did sound like the person was knocking, then shaking the doorknob, trying to force the door. What if it was the FBI, come to take Meredith away?

Toby turned on the hall light. Connie peered down the stairs at the clock. It was only five after eleven.

Toby said, “Who is it?”

Connie and Meredith were creeping down the stairs one at a time. Connie tried to look out the sidelights.

A muffled voice said, “Itzashalan.”

Connie said, “It’s Ashlyn!”

Toby unlocked the door, and Connie heard herself cry, “Wait, wait!” Because they had to punch in the security code first, Ashlyn’s birthday, Connie did it automatically, her whole body was shaking like she had a fever, and she thought, “Is it Ashlyn? Is it?”

And they opened the door and Connie looked, and there was her baby girl.

Connie didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. She did both. She was a hysterical, sobbing mess, but it didn’t matter, did it? She had her daughter, her very own daughter, in her arms. Toby’s eyes were brimming, and Meredith-well, Connie didn’t expect tears from Meredith and she didn’t find any. Meredith was smiling and nodding her head. Meredith was level-headed enough to get everyone inside and Ashlyn’s luggage in and the cabbie paid. She shepherded everybody into the kitchen, and Connie sat at the table and encouraged Ashlyn to sit, but she wouldn’t let go of Ashlyn’s hand. No way.

Meredith said, “Ashlyn, are you hungry? Would you like some summer-squash soup? It’s homemade.”

Ashlyn looked at Meredith, then at Toby, then at Connie, and she burst into tears.

Connie said, “Honey, what’s wrong?” She realized then that something horrible must have happened. Ashlyn wouldn’t have shown up here out of the blue for Connie’s sake.

“Bridget and I…” She tried to get air in. “Bridget and I…”

“Split up?” Connie said.

Ashlyn nodded. “For good this time!” she wailed and dropped her head to the table.

Oh, no. Oh, dear. Connie wasn’t sure what to do. She touched the top of Ashlyn’s head, the pale hair. “Oh, honey. I’m sorry.”

Eventually, Ashlyn raised her head. Her nose was red and running. “We split earlier this summer…”

“When you called me before?” Connie said.

“When I called you before,” Ashlyn said.

“But…?”

“But then we got back together, and I didn’t feel like I could talk to you about it. Because of what happened at the funeral.”

“Ashlyn,” Connie said. “I’m sorry about what happened at the funeral.”

“I love Bridget so much,” Ashlyn said. “And she was my best friend besides.” They all waited, watching Ashlyn cry, and Connie thought, I’d do anything to make her feel better. But there was nothing. Of course, there was nothing any of them could do.

“What happened?” Connie asked.

“I wanted a baby,” Ashlyn said.

Instinctively, Connie made a noise. She pressed her lips together.

“And Bridget didn’t,” Ashlyn said. “I really did and she really didn’t. And two months ago when she found out that I’d been to a donation center and had put myself on the list for insemination, she told me she was leaving. She moved out. Our separation lasted two and a half days, then I went to her and said I couldn’t stand to be away from her, and I said I would give up the idea of having children.”

“She doesn’t want children right now?” Connie asked. “Or not ever?”

“Not ever,” Ashlyn said. “She’s on track to be the best female pediatric heart surgeon in the state of Florida. She wants to be the best pediatric heart surgeon, man or woman, in the country someday. She said she was around children enough to know that she wasn’t capable of raising her own. She thinks she’s too selfish, too driven.”

“But lots of men are like that,” Connie said. “If you agreed to stay at home…”

“She still wouldn’t do it,” Ashlyn said. She started crying again.

Connie squeezed Ashlyn’s hand, thinking, This is my daughter’s hand. This is all I’ve been wishing for.

Meredith set down a bowl of warm soup and a hunk of baguette and a glass of water. Toby cleared his throat. He said, “So then why did you break up?”

Ashlyn wiped at her red eyes. Her hair was in a messy bun. It didn’t look like she’d seen the sun all summer. But she was, absolutely, the most beautiful creature Connie had ever laid eyes on.

Ashlyn said, “I’m pregnant. Due in April.”

Toby jumped in surprise. Meredith said, “Oh, Ashlyn, that’s wonderful.”

Connie thought, Wolf! Wolf! Did you hear that?

Ashlyn was still crying. “And I thought news of a baby, a real live baby, would change Bridget’s mind.” She sniffled. Meredith brought a box of Kleenex. Ashlyn blew her nose. “But it didn’t.”

“So here you are,” Toby said.

She crumpled the Kleenex in her hand. “So here I am.” She looked at Connie with bleary eyes. “I’ve been a terrible daughter, and I know I don’t deserve a second chance, but I came here because I didn’t have anywhere else to go.”

“That sounds familiar,” Meredith said. She rested her hands on Toby’s shoulders.

Connie thought, What is the most important lesson of all? Perseverance? Honesty? Forgiveness? Love?

Wolf, Ashlyn, Toby, Meredith, Dan. Ashlyn, Ashlyn, Ashlyn-Connie and Wolf’s daughter, their only child, conceived so many years ago in the back of a pickup truck a few miles away, beneath a sky filled with stars. Ashlyn was going to have a baby. Ashlyn had been so angry-she had been silent and seething-but she had come back to Connie because Connie hadn’t stopped loving Ashlyn even for a second. Ashlyn would soon know it herself: parents didn’t stop loving their children for any reason.

Love, then, Connie decided. The most important lesson is love.

MEREDITH

Meredith felt like they were all graduating from college, and everyone knew what the next step was but her.

In the span of sixteen or seventeen hours, Connie’s life had transformed as dramatically (almost) as Meredith’s life had the previous December-only for the better. Connie would return to Bethesda the Tuesday after Labor Day. That was as planned. What was different now was that Ashlyn was putting her house in Tallahassee on the market and moving back up to Bethesda, into Connie’s house. Ashlyn would live with Connie indefinitely. She would have the baby, and Connie would care for it while Ashlyn went back to work. Ashlyn had applied for a job in the ped onc department at WHC, and if she didn’t get that job, she would look elsewhere.

“Lots of good hospitals in Washington,” Connie said to Meredith and Toby. “And just think, next summer when we’re all here, we’ll have a baby!”

Next summer when we’re all here: These words were a balm to Meredith. She had been invited back. It took some of the sting out of leaving, although it did nothing to help her sense of floundering, about where to go or what to do in the next ten months.

Toby was going back to Annapolis. A brand-new freshman class of cadets awaited.

“Now I wish I hadn’t sold my boat,” Toby said. “Now I wish I could just sail with you around the world.”

Sailing with Toby around the world: it was appealing, Meredith had to admit.

“I know you,” Meredith said. “You have to have your freedom.”

“I’d like to share that freedom with you,” he said. “Give you a little sip of it. It’s the most intoxicating thing on earth.”

But Meredith’s freedom was still in the firm grip of federal investigators.

They all sat on the back deck, enjoying the sun: Connie, Ashlyn, Toby, Meredith. They had a pitcher of iced tea (decaf, for Ashlyn) and a bowl of Bing cherries, which they passed around. Ashlyn was nauseous; every half hour or so, she’d go into the house to throw up.

“I can’t believe how lousy I feel,” she said.

“I could tell you stories,” Connie said. “About you.”

Meredith squinted at the ocean. She decided to speak the words that were on everyone’s mind. “I never want to leave here.”

“You don’t have to,” Connie said. “You know you don’t have to go anywhere.”

The phone rang inside. The phone, the phone. Meredith’s shoulders tensed. “Maybe that’s Dan,” she said.

“Not for another thirty-two hours,” Connie said.

“I’ll get it,” Toby said. He heaved himself up and out of his chaise. A second later, he poked his head out and said, “Meredith, it’s for you.”

“Of course,” Connie said.

“Is it Dev?” Meredith asked.

“I don’t believe so,” Toby said.

Leo, Carver, Freddy? Freddy, Freddy, Freddy? It was official: Meredith hated the telephone. The phone terrified her.

It was Ed Kapenash, chief of police. He wanted Meredith to come down to the station.

“I think we’ve found our man,” he said. “And our woman.”

Meredith and Connie went to the police station together. Although it was Meredith who was being terrorized, the property belonged to Connie. She was the only one who could press charges.

“Who do you think it is?” Connie said. “Do you think it’s someone you know? Do you think it’s your friend from Palm Beach?”

“I don’t know,” Meredith said. She was in a hazy daze. It was hot outside. She wanted to be on the deck. She wanted to go for a swim. She wanted to whip up more vinaigrette. She wanted Freddy to call. Most of all, that was what she wanted. She didn’t want to be going into the police station to meet her own personal terrorist.

“Right down the hall,” the secretary said. She stared grimly at Meredith for an extra second, and Meredith guessed that this was the kind of person who would dress up as “Meredith Delinn” for Halloween. “First door on the left.”

Connie led, Meredith followed. The first door on the left was unmarked.

“This one?” Connie said.

“That’s what the lovely woman said.”

Connie knocked, and Ed Kapenash opened the door.

“Come in,” he said. He ushered them in to what looked like a classroom. There was a long particleboard table, ten folding chairs, a green blackboard coated with yellow chalk dust. Two people sat at the table already, two people whom Meredith could only describe as hungry-looking. The man was beefy with a thick neck, a buzz cut of dirt brown hair, a gold hoop earring, and a T-shirt that appeared to be advertising Russian beer. He looked familiar to Meredith. She felt like she had seen that T-shirt before. Meredith-got a hot, leaky feeling of fear. The woman, probably in her midthirties, had very short hair dyed jet black. She wore jeans shorts and a sleeveless yellow blouse. She had a bruise on one cheek. Meredith couldn’t believe these two were just sitting at the table, as though they had arrived early for dinner.

“Mikhail Vetsilyn and Dmitria Sorchev,” the chief said. “They were stopped on Milestone Road for speeding at two o’clock this morning. They said they were headed to Tom Nevers to see ‘an old friend.’ The van reeked of marijuana smoke. The officer on duty, Sergeant Dickson, asked them to step out of the van. He then proceeded to check the back of the van. He found three five-gallon jugs of gasoline and fourteen empty cans of electric-green spray paint. He called in reinforcements and did a full check of the van, and they found this.” The chief held up a plastic bag containing a medieval-looking curved dagger, covered with blood and hair. Meredith looked down into her lap.

“Have they confessed?” Connie asked.

“They’ve confessed,” the chief said. “Two acts of vandalism for her. That, plus the unlawful slaying of a sea mammal for him. God only knows what they were going to do with the gasoline.”

“Burn the house down,” the man said.

“Hey!” The chief’s voice was like a whip. Meredith looked up in alarm. There was the chief, being chieflike. “I’m happy to book you with attempted arson,” he said. He turned to Connie and Meredith. “I assume you want to press charges.”

“Burn my house down?” Connie said. “My husband designed that house. God, yes, I want to press charges.”

“But wait,” Meredith said. “Who are they?” She lowered her voice, trying to convince herself they wouldn’t hear her, and if they did hear her that they wouldn’t understand. “Are they Russian?” Were these the assassins the Russian mob had sent? Two people who looked like they’d escaped from the gulag?

“They’re from Belarus,” the chief said. “Minsk.”

Minsk. Meredith looked at the woman. Like me, also from Minsk. “Are you a housekeeper?” she said. “Do you clean houses?”

The young woman nodded.

Yes, okay. Meredith said, “Did you give your life savings to your employer to invest with Delinn Enterprises? A hundred and thirty-seven thousand dollars?”

The girl twitched her head. “Yes,” she said. “How you know?”

“I met a friend of yours,” Meredith said.

Connie eyed her quizzically.

“At the salon.”

“Ahhh,” Connie said.

Meredith studied the man. She had seen him before. Burn the house down. She had heard his voice before. And then she remembered: She had seen him on the ferry. He had been in line with her when she went to get coffee for her and Connie. He must have recognized her then. He must have followed Connie’s Escalade out to Tom Nevers.

“We can drop the two vandalism charges on her,” the chief said, “but the unlawful slaying of a sea mammal will stick with him regardless, as well as a marijuana-possession charge.”

“Drop the vandalism charges,” Meredith whispered.

“What?” Connie said.

“She lost her life savings.”

“So?” Connie said. “It’s my house. My car.”

“Would you ladies like to talk about this out in the hallway?” the chief asked.

“No,” Meredith said. She smiled at Connie, then whispered, “She lost a lot of money, Con. She lost everything.”

Connie shook her head, unconvinced.

“And here’s the other thing,” Meredith said. “If they hadn’t spray painted the house, you wouldn’t have met Dan.”

“Oh, come on,” Connie said.

“You should be thanking them,” Meredith said.

Connie rolled her eyes. She turned to the chief. “Okay, we’re out of it. You’ll punish him for killing Harold? And you’ll make sure neither one of them does anything like this again?”

“That’s our job,” the chief said.

Meredith and Connie stood to leave. Meredith approached the woman, Dmitria Sorchev, and said, “I want you to know how sorry I am. I’m sorry about your money. Your savings.”

The young woman pulled her lips back to reveal grayish teeth. “Fuck Freddy Delinn.”

Meredith sighed and looked at Connie over the top of her glasses. Connie smiled. She liked the girl a little better now.

Connie turned to the chief. “Thank you for calling us.”

“I’m glad we settled this,” the chief said. He escorted the ladies out to the hallway. “There will be paperwork for you to sign, probably sometime tomorrow.”

Connie and Meredith shook his hand. The secretary, thankfully, had left for lunch. Meredith stepped outside into the sun.

“I’m going to take you up on your offer,” Meredith said as they climbed into the Escalade. About eight weeks earlier, Meredith had climbed into this car for the first time, running through a dark alley, dodging the flash of the hidden photographer. “I’m going to stay on Nantucket this winter.”

“Atta girl,” Connie said. And she started the engine.

No sooner had Meredith and Connie settled into their chaise lounges on the deck next to Toby and Ashlyn than the phone rang again.

“You answer it,” Connie said. “I want to tell these guys what happened with Boris and Natasha.”

“Did anything happen here?” Meredith asked. She didn’t want to answer it.

“Just napping and puking,” Ashlyn said. But she seemed marginally more cheerful.

Anything but a ringing phone. Leo, Carver, Freddy. Freddy, Freddy, Freddy! Goddamn you, Freddy! she thought (zillionth and eighth). That poor girl, her gray teeth, her life’s savings; she might as well have poured gasoline on the money and set it on fire herself.

Meredith dragged her feet for so long that the phone stopped ringing. She exhaled. Then it started ringing again. The starting up again was worse: whoever it was really wanted to talk to her.

But maybe the call wasn’t for her. Maybe it was Bridget, calling for Ashlyn.

Meredith checked the display. It was the law firm.

Meredith picked up the phone, saying a Hail Mary in her head. Now that she had decided to stay on Nantucket, the most devastating thing she could think of was for someone to take her away. Please don’t take me away. “Hello?”

“Meredith?”

“Dev?”

“Thank God you answered,” he said. “I tried a second ago and no one answered.”

“I just walked in,” she said.

“We found the money!” Dev said. He sounded amped up, triumphant; he was crowing. “And you were right! It was in a bank in Malaysia-nearly four billion dollars in Samantha Champion’s name. That money had been transferred from the four numbered accounts in Switzerland on Mrs. Champion’s birthday last October.”

“Four billion dollars,” Meredith said. For Samantha, on Samantha’s birthday, which was exactly one week before Meredith’s birthday.

“The word ‘champ’ was all over Freddy’s confidential papers, and so, thanks to you, the Feds brought Mrs. Deuce in. And when the Feds questioned her, she copped to the affair. I think she thought if she confessed to the sexual stuff that we’d be thrown off the trail of her financial involvement. But the information you gave us really helped.”

“Great,” Meredith said, but her voice was flat. On the one hand, she no longer cared about money. On the other hand, she couldn’t believe Freddy had transferred $4 billion to Samantha on Samantha’s birthday and had left Meredith with nothing.

“And we found eight billion dollars in other accounts at the same bank… in the name of David Delinn.”

David Delinn.

“His brother,” Meredith said.

“His brother.”

“But his brother is dead, right?” Meredith said. God, what if Freddy had been lying from the very beginning? From their first walk together, their first conversation?

“His brother was shot and killed in a training exercise outside of Fort Huachuca in nineteen seventy-eight. Freddy used an existing account of David’s from the nineteen sixties. Freddy had been depositing money into that account for decades. He was listed as trustee. The money was transferred out in nineteen ninety-two, then, apparently, transferred again. It was a web that was almost impossible to untangle.”

Meredith shut her eyes. It was a web of lies involving David, Samantha, Kirby Delarest, and Thad Orlo, but not her. Not her. They knew that, right? Not her.

“So, that twelve billion dollars was recovered,” Dev said, “largely thanks to you. This is going to help out a lot with the restitution to investors.”

“Right,” Meredith said. She wondered if Amy Rivers would get any money back. Or the poor girl from Minsk, who would need it now for her comrade’s legal fees.

“The Feds are going to issue a statement at five o’clock today,” Dev said. “And they will include mention that information provided by Meredith Delinn was instrumental in the investigation.”

“So I’m not in trouble anymore?” Meredith said. “I can call my children?”

“The SEC is going to be sifting through the rubble of this for years, Meredith,” Dev said. “But for now, the Feds are satisfied that you had no knowledge of the Ponzi scheme. They now believe what you said in your deposition: Freddy asked you to transfer the fifteen million dollars, and you transferred it. You were his pawn, but that’s not a crime. So, yes, you can call your children.”

“Thank you,” Meredith whispered. She took a huge breath. She was getting her kids back! Leo! Carver! As soon as Meredith hung up, she would call Carver’s cell phone. It would ring in the pocket of his Carhartt overalls. Meredith imagined him standing on a ladder leaning against the great big beautiful old house that he was restoring. He would answer the phone, and it would be Meredith. And after she’d told him about what had happened, she would ask to speak to Leo. Carver would call out, “Hey, Leo? It’s Mom.” He would toss the phone down to Leo, and Leo would grin, and he would say, “Hey, Mom.”

In the days that remained of the summer, news of Freddy Delinn and the spoils of his kingdom hit the front page of every paper in the country. All reports mentioned that Meredith Delinn had been working with federal investigators to help locate the missing money.

Dennis Stamm, the head of the SEC’s investigative team, was quoted as saying, “We couldn’t have found this money without salient bits of information provided by Mrs. Delinn. She showed herself to be a truly great citizen with the effort she put forth in cracking the code and recovering this money for Mr. Delinn’s former investors.”

Meredith fully expected the reporters to reappear, but they didn’t. Maybe because Ed Kapenash was an effective police chief who had finally learned how to protect the island’s most notorious summer resident, or maybe because the Post only followed trails of blood. Girl Scouts didn’t make the front page.

Meredith didn’t want to waste the final days of summer watching reports about the rediscovered money on TV, and luckily, she didn’t have to. She and Toby went kayaking in the Monomoy creeks, where the only sounds were the water lapping against their paddles and the cries of seabirds. When they got home, they found Connie and Ashlyn sitting together on the sofa, Ashlyn weeping, Connie rubbing Ashlyn’s feet.

“Everything all right with the baby?” Meredith asked quietly later.

“Everything’s all right with the baby,” Connie said. “She misses Bridget.”

And Meredith thought about how it felt to yearn for something that you absolutely knew you weren’t going to get-in her case, a phone call from Butner. “Yes,” Meredith said. “I bet she does.”

They managed to get Ashlyn out of the house the next day. Dan took everybody on an expedition to Smith’s Point, where Toby and Dan caught eight inedible bluefish-so they ended up having fish tacos on the outdoor deck of Millie’s as the sun went down. The next morning, Meredith and Toby and Connie and Dan biked to Bartlett’s Farm and found themselves on a road that cut through two resplendent fields of flowers. As far as the eye could see, there were snapdragons and zinnias and marigolds and lilies, a palette of color upon color such as Meredith hadn’t seen since she viewed the Pissarros during her private tour of the Musée d’Orsay.

Meredith stopped her bike and inhaled. It was an intoxicating sip of freedom.

On their final afternoon, Meredith and Connie sojourned into town. Meredith bought two novels, which she would read after the others had left the island, and Connie bought a white baby blanket that had the word “Nantucket” embroidered across the bottom in navy thread. Then Connie wanted to zip into the kitchen store, and Meredith took the opportunity to light candles at the church.

The interior seemed brighter than it had the last time; muted light shone through the stained glass windows. Meredith stuck ten dollars into the slot, a small fortune, for despite all that had happened, she still believed.

She lit a candle for Connie first, then Toby, then Dan. She lit candles for Leo and Carver. Then she lit a candle for heartbroken Ashlyn and one for the baby inside her. Then Meredith lit a candle for her mother and her father. She had one candle left. She thought about lighting it for Dev or for Amy Rivers or for Samantha. She considered lighting it for herself. Of everyone she knew, she needed a candle the most. One thing was for sure: she was not going to light a candle for Freddy.

She pushed the button and thought, For Dev. He had been so good to her.

She slipped through the double doors into the vestibule, but she couldn’t bring herself to leave the church. She rummaged through her purse for another dollar bill and went back and lit another candle-for Freddy.

Because that was how she was. She couldn’t seem to abandon him.

No matter what.

Out in the sunny world, Connie waited on a bench.

Connie said, “Did that go okay?”

Meredith said, “I lit candles.” She didn’t tell Connie that she’d lit a candle for Freddy-but who was she kidding? Connie already knew.

“I got you something,” Connie said. She handed Meredith a big white shopping bag with cord handles from Nantucket Gourmet. “Sorry it’s not wrapped.”

Meredith peered inside. It was an eleven-cup Cuisinart food processor. “Of course you can use the one in my kitchen,” Connie said. “But this is one of your very own. A graduation present”

Meredith was so overwhelmed by the perfection of the gift that she closed her eyes. She thought back to the cruel summer weeks right after Toby had broken up with her. Connie had dragged her to a party at Villanova, and Meredith had drunk too much, and Connie had carried Meredith home on her back. This summer was like that night times fifty billion (this was the largest real number Meredith could think of). This summer, Connie had carried Meredith on her back once again. She had carried Meredith all the way to safety.

“I almost lit a candle for myself in there,” Meredith said, nodding at the church. “But then I realized I didn’t need to.”

Connie put a hand up. “Don’t say it, Meredith. You’ll make me cry.”

Meredith said, “Because you, Constance-you are my candle.”

Connie sniffed; tears leaked out from beneath her sunglasses. Meredith pulled her to her feet, and they crossed the cobblestone street to Connie’s car.

Endings were like this. You could see them coming from far away, but there was one more thing (dinner at Le Languedoc) and one more thing (ice cream at the Juice Bar) and one more thing (a stroll down the dock to see the yachts) and one more thing (an hour with Toby out on the deck, looking at the stars, knowing, finally, that not a single one of them was especially for you) and one more thing (lovemaking, tender and bittersweet) and one more thing (watching the sunrise on the Juliet balcony) and one more thing (a trip to the Sconset Market for snickerdoodle coffee and peach muffins, only they didn’t have peach anymore; fall was coming, they’d switched to cranberry) and one more thing…

Endings, when anticipated, took forever.

And one more thing: Toby and Meredith sat on the floor of Meredith’s room, sifting through the possessions in her one cardboard box. Downstairs, Connie and Ashlyn were packing, and Dan was helping them load the car, which was going back to Hyannis on the noon boat. Dan was taking Toby to the airport at eleven. Toby’s sky-blue duffel bag was packed fat, waiting at the top of the stairs. Meredith was torn between wanting the ending to be over with-just everyone go-and wanting to squeeze the life out of every remaining second.

The first thing out of Meredith’s box were the photographs, which Meredith placed facedown. Too painful. Next, were the boys’ yearbooks and Meredith’s favorite paperbacks-Goodbye, Columbus and The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. There was her record album, Bridge Over Troubled Water. And finally, her anthropology notebook. Meredith paged through the notebook, ogling her eighteen-year-old handwriting. There was so much knowledge here, completely forgotten.

Toby studied the Simon and Garfunkel album. He pulled out the record sleeve and read her father’s note. “Wow,” he said. “No wonder you kept this.”

Stay with me, Meredith almost said. Live here with me for the winter. It was ironic that Toby would have been free to do that in the past, but now he had a steady job. And, of course, his son. Toby promised he would bring Michael to Nantucket for Thanksgiving, along with Connie and Ashlyn. Dan would come, too, with his sons.

“And when you realize that you can’t live without me,” Toby had said the night before, “you can come and live with me in Annapolis. It’s not Park Avenue and it’s not Palm Beach, but we will live an honest life.”

“Dunbar’s number,” Meredith said, reading from her anthropology notebook. “It says here that human beings can have stable social relationships with a maximum of one hundred and fifty people. One hundred and fifty is Dunbar’s number.”

“Stable social relationships?” Toby said.

Meredith said, “My own personal Dunbar’s number is four. On a good day, seven. You, Connie, Dan, Ashlyn, Leo, Carver, and…”

The phone rang in the house.

Meredith heard Ashlyn cry out, “I’ll get it!” Meredith knew that Ashlyn would be hoping and praying it was Bridget.

A second later, Ashlyn called out. “Meredith?”

Was there any doubt? Meredith looked at Toby, and Toby pulled her to her feet. Out in the hallway, Ashlyn offered up the phone, a look of crushed disappointment on her face.

“Thank you,” Meredith whispered. And then, into the phone, “Hello?”

“Meredith?”

It was Dev. He sounded excited again. Another insidious discovery? More money uncovered? Hidden with the jihadists perhaps, in the Middle East?

“Hi, Dev,” Meredith said. He was her seventh stable social relationship.

“Somehow this woman, Nancy Briggs? At the prison? At Butner?”

“Yes?”

“Somehow she worked it out. Her and the priest. Or her through the priest-maybe that’s what it was, since I’m sure the warden’s secretary doesn’t have any contact with the actual prisoners. But she convinced the priest, and the priest convinced Freddy, and he’s agreed to take your call.”

“He’s agreed to take my call,” Meredith said.

“He’ll take your call,” Dev said. He paused. “That was what you wanted, right? That was what you asked me for?”

“It was,” Meredith said. Toby squeezed her hand, and then he left the room. He knew that there were some things that Meredith had to deal with alone.

Freddy would take her call. What did that mean? That meant he would sit in a room, and someone would hold the phone to his ear or he would hold the phone himself, and Meredith would speak. She would go down her list of eighty-four questions, as though she were giving Freddy a test. Where? When? How? Why?

Why? Why? Why?

She was never going to get the answers she was looking for. Freddy wouldn’t tell her the truth, or he would tell her the truth and she wouldn’t believe him. There was no truth with Freddy. Freddy’s own personal Dunbar’s number was zero. It had always been zero.

“Oh, Dev,” she said.

“Don’t tell me,” he said. “You’ve changed your mind.”

“I can’t believe it,” Meredith said. “I’m sorry.”

“You don’t want to talk to Freddy.”

“That’s right,” Meredith said. “In fact, I don’t want any news of Freddy at all, from this point on. Unless, well, unless he dies. You can call me when he dies.” Meredith fidgeted with her grandmother’s engagement ring. This was the ring that she had given Freddy to give to her, a strange transaction in its own right, but now, more than anything, Meredith wanted it off her finger.

Dev said, “Okay, Meredith, are you sure? You want me to call the people at Butner back and tell them to forget about it?”

Was that what she wanted? She imagined prison officials saying to Fred, You know what? Your wife doesn’t want to talk to you, after all. What would Freddy think? Meredith didn’t care what he thought. She was going to save herself. She was going to swim to shore.

“I’m sure,” Meredith said.

“Fine,” Dev said. He paused, and then he added. “Good for you.”

“Thanks, Dev,” Meredith said, and she hung up. Downstairs, she heard Ashlyn and Connie and Dan and Toby talking about taking a picture before they all left. Who had a camera? It was one more thing, and Meredith was grateful.

She hurried downstairs to join them.