The Matchmaker

Agnes

Box asked her to keep an eye on her mother while he was in London.

“She hasn’t been feeling well,” he said. “She’s been acting strangely.”

“Of course, Daddy,” Agnes said.

However, Dabney was so independent and Agnes so consumed with her own problems that it took a few days for Agnes to realize that her mother was acting strangely. Almost like she was hiding something.

On Agnes’s first day home, Dabney got up to go for her walk, as always, wearing her headband and pearls. She left the house as Agnes was fixing herself a cup of coffee with real cream. (Life’s joys were in the details; CJ took only skim milk in his coffee and he insisted that Agnes do the same, but CJ was now hundreds of miles away and Agnes wanted cream, dammit!)

By the time Dabney was dressed and ready for work, Agnes was at the table, eating a plate of scrambled eggs, whole-grain toast with homemade blueberry jam, and crisp bacon. This was, for her, a decadent breakfast. CJ always ate a power shake-spinach, wheat grass, seaweed. Agnes sometimes grabbed a Vitaminwater on the way to the subway, and on the weekends she ate half a grapefruit. As Agnes crunched a piece of bacon, she thought of how horrified CJ would be if he could see her stuffing her face, still in her pajamas at a quarter to eight, and she hadn’t exercised, hadn’t done so much as touch her toes. CJ was out the door every morning at six a.m. to run in Central Park and then go to the gym, and he liked Agnes to join him. He told her before she left that he feared she would fall away from her routine. His biggest fear, she supposed, was that she would return to him fat and lazy.

Agnes had assured him this wouldn’t happen. But as she snarfed down her delicious eggs, she realized that he had a right to be concerned. She had been home for less than twenty-four hours and was already being a slovenly pig. The thing was, it felt good.

Dabney said, “Honey, I would have made you breakfast.”

“I’m a grown woman, Mom,” Agnes said. “Do you want me to make you a piece of toast? I hogged everything else.”

“I’m happy to see you eating,” Dabney said. “You’re too thin.”

“You’re too thin.” Her mother’s clothes were hanging off her, and her cheekbones were jutting out. “Daddy says you’re not feeling well.”

“Wheat allergy, I think,” Dabney said.

“You and everyone else in the world,” Agnes said. “So I guess no toast for you.”

Dabney said, “I’m headed into the office. There’s a Business After Hours tonight at the Brotherhood, so I’ll be home late, after dinner. You’ll fend for yourself?”

“Of course,” Agnes said.

Dabney smiled, then kissed Agnes’s forehead. “I love you, darling. I’m so happy you’re here.”

Agnes had moved right back into her childhood bedroom, which her mother had redone as a guest room. There was an all-white king bed with navy accent pillows, and luscious, buttery pine furniture. The room was filled with light, and it was situated all by itself at the east end of the house. Agnes wasn’t sure what CJ found so objectionable about it.

Agnes missed CJ terribly-but at the same time, not at all. She could eat freely when she was away from him, and she could breathe freely. CJ was so perfect, so beautiful to look at, so confident in his manner, so successful in his business, and so absurdly generous, that Agnes wondered what exactly he saw in her. Agnes was young and pretty and she was a devoted do-gooder, but she had seen photographs of CJ’s ex-wife, Annabelle (Agnes had googled her, and had creeped her on Facebook and Twitter). Annabelle was as gorgeous as a model, her hair and makeup always perfect. She had sat on charitable boards and chaired events; she had been an actual socialite, with socialite friends who had apartments comprised of entire floors in Park Avenue prewar buildings, whereas Agnes lived in a one-bedroom walk-up on West Eighty-Fourth Street. CJ had lived on Park Avenue as well, but he had lost his apartment in the divorce, and then Annabelle had sold it and bought a waterfront property in Boca Raton, where she served on charitable boards, chaired events, and lived off CJ’s money.

Freeloader, he called her. Good for nothing. She doesn’t realize the value of money because she never had to earn it.

Aside from this, CJ didn’t say much about Annabelle or about why the marriage had failed, even though Agnes had repeatedly asked. CJ said that both he and Annabelle had signed a paper agreeing never to discuss the particulars of their split. A gag order. This had sounded reasonable at the time, but after what Agnes had heard from Manny Partida a few weeks earlier, Agnes wasn’t so sure. She thought spending the summer away from CJ might be the best thing.

Manny Partida was Agnes’s boss, the regional director, the head of every Boys & Girls Club in New York City. He was the one who had come in to tell Agnes that National wouldn’t be funding any summer programs for her club that year. Agnes was devastated; she had more than six hundred members, and what exactly were those kids supposed to do all summer without any programming? Agnes loved the kids at her club in direct proportion to how little they had. Her favorite children, ten-year-old twins named Quincy and Dahlia, were homeless; they lived with their mother in a shelter, but not always the same shelter. They each brought a rolling suitcase to the club, which Agnes kept safe in her office so that no one would pilfer their things. Dahlia liked to make fairy houses out of twigs and grass and sometimes even old straws and McDonald’s cups that she found on the perimeter of the club’s crumbling asphalt basketball court. Agnes could have cried just thinking about the two of them without a safe place to go all summer.

As if this weren’t upsetting enough, Manny had another bomb to drop.

He said, “A little bird told me you’re engaged to Charlie Pippin?”

“CJ,” Agnes said. “Yes, I am.” She looked down at her left hand, though her fingers were bare. The diamond CJ had given her was too valuable to wear safely to work.

“When I knew him, which wasn’t that long ago,” Manny said, “he went by Charlie.”

“You knew him?” Agnes said.

“He was a big donor, one of the biggest, at the Madison Square Club, ten, twelve years ago,” Manny said. “He and his first wife.”

Agnes nodded. On one hand, she didn’t want to hear about CJ and Annabelle, and on the other hand, she craved every detail.

Manny said, “I realize people change.”

Agnes smiled uncertainly. “Excuse me?”

“People change,” Manny said. “He changed his name, and he switched affiliations to the Morningside Heights Club, which is good because you can certainly use the money. But I’d advise you to be careful.”

“Careful?” Agnes said.

“Rumor has it he wasn’t very nice to his first wife.”

“Wasn’t nice?” Agnes said.

Manny held up his palms. He wore a light blue T-shirt under a khaki suit and a three-inch silver cross on a chain around his neck.

“I’m not saying he hit her, because I don’t know the specifics. But there were stories flying around for a while. Something happened at one of the benefits for the Madison Square Club. They had both been drinking, the wife had bid on something quite expensive without asking his permission, he lost his temper, and I heard…” Here, Manny trailed off. “This is just what I heard, Agnes, and so take it with a grain of salt. But I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t tell you. I heard he got physical with her.”

“What?”

“Hair pulling, arm twisting, some not-so-nice stuff.” Manny stood up. “But again, that was ten, twelve years ago, and people change. Just please, Agnes, please be careful. You’re one of the best directors I have, and I only want to see you happy.”

Manny Partida had left the office, and Agnes had sat glued to her chair for a long while, thinking that Manny Partida was full of shit, or whomever was feeding his ear was; the people at the Madison Square Club were probably mad or jealous that CJ had moved his financial allegiance uptown, and that he had brought Victor Cruz in to sign autographs! Lorna Mapleton, who was the director at Madison Square, was in her sixties; she thought Agnes was too young to be at the helm of a club. Physical? Agnes couldn’t imagine CJ being physical with her. It was true he had a temper, especially when he was drinking, and Agnes had heard him slice people to ribbons over the phone. But he was always gentle with Agnes, he cared about her well-being, that was why he liked her to exercise every spare moment and why he watched her diet-no carbs, no cheese, no sauces. Her body was his temple, he said. He would never hurt her.

Agnes hadn’t told Dabney what Manny Partida said-God, no, that would have sent Dabney into a tailspin-but Agnes had decided on the spot that she would spend the summer at home on Nantucket.

That first afternoon, Agnes walked into town. She wasn’t a town person the way Dabney was. Dabney loved town. For her, the allure of Nantucket was found on the grid of four square blocks. This was where the action was-the real estate agents, the insurance agents, the pharmacy with lunch counter, the art galleries and florists and antiques stores, the churches, the post office, the administration buildings, the clothing boutiques, the T-shirt shops. Town was where the people were. Dabney loved people, and anyone found on the streets of Nantucket, if only for an hour or two on a day trip, she thought of as “her people.”

Agnes, on the other hand, preferred anonymity, which was why she liked Manhattan. This might have been a response to growing up as Dabney Kimball’s daughter. She had never gotten away with anything as a teenager; if she took a drag of a cigarette on the strip off Steamship Wharf or if she held hands with a boy on the bench outside the Hub, it was reported back to Dabney within the hour. This was why Agnes preferred the quieter, more remote parts of Nantucket-the far-flung beaches, the trails through the state forest, the secret ponds.

But today she felt otherwise. Today she wanted to be recognized as Dabney Kimball’s daughter. She stopped in at Mitchell’s Book Corner and browsed for a moment, then she crossed the street to check out the cute party dresses at Erica Wilson. She tried on a flirty yellow number and bought it on a whim-it was bright, the color of summertime. In the city, she, like everyone else, tended to wear black.

She window-shopped, meandering like a tourist, and was shocked when nobody recognized her. Ms. Cowen, who had been Agnes’s field-hockey coach, walked right past her. Of course, Agnes hadn’t lived here since graduating from high school. And she had cut her hair. But still, Agnes felt weirdly displaced. This was where she was from, but she didn’t quite belong here.

There was only way to rid herself of this feeling. She headed upstairs to the Chamber of Commerce office.

The Nantucket Chamber of Commerce was located above what used to be an old bowling alley, and the office always smelled vaguely of bowling shoes. To combat this, Dabney occasionally lit green-apple-scented candles. The combination of bowling shoes and green apple came to define the Chamber and, by association, Dabney herself.

When Agnes walked in, she was greeted by a shriek-happy, excited, perhaps a touch manic.

Nina Mobley.

“Agnes! Your mother told me you were here, but I didn’t think I’d be lucky enough to see you on the first day!”

“Hey, Nina,” Agnes said, bending down to give Nina a squeeze. Nina, like Dabney, seemed never to change-frizzy brown hair, gold cross at the neck, squinty eyes. Nina had always been a squinter, as if the world lay just out of focus.

Agnes noticed that Dabney’s desk was unoccupied, and by habit she poked her head into the “back room,” where the information assistants sat, answering the phones. There was a girl with a high, blond ponytail chattering away about her “favorite restaurant, American Seasons”-and at the near desk sat a guy with thick brown hair that curled up at the collar of his pale blue polo shirt. The two of them were so cute and perfect that Dabney might have picked them out of a catalog. The guy was finishing off a frappe that Agnes identified as having come from the pharmacy lunch counter across the street; he was at the slurpy-sounding end. When he looked up and saw Agnes, he jumped to his feet. She noticed that he was wearing Hawaiian-print board shorts and flip-flops, which were both in violation of Dabney’s usual dress code.

“Oh, hey!” he said. “I’m so sorry. Can I help you? I’m Riley Alsopp.”

Agnes smiled. He seemed quite earnest; he must be new, maybe too new to know about the no-beachwear rule. Agnes had worked as an information assistant one summer, and she had hated it. Her mother had made her wear a knee-length khaki skirt and button-down oxford shirts. (“I look like you,” Agnes had complained.) Her mother had insisted that when Agnes wasn’t on the phone with potential visitors, she should be memorizing the Chamber guide and learning the arcane details of the island’s whaling history.

Riley, however, had a copy of Salinger’s Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour, An Introduction open on his desk. Odd. He was too old for a summer reading list.

“I’m Agnes,” she said. “I’m…”

“Dabney’s daughter,” he said. “Your mother talks about you all the time. And I’ve seen your picture.” He smiled at her, showing off very straight white teeth.

Agnes turned around. Unlike most offices, where the bosses hid in the back, here Dabney and Nina sat in the front room. This, of course, was Dabney’s idea. She wanted to be the first person someone encountered when he or she walked into the Chamber. But Dabney’s desk was still empty, and now Nina Mobley was on the phone.

“Where is my mother?” Agnes asked Riley Alsopp. “Do you know?”

“She went out around lunchtime,” Riley said. “And she hasn’t been back.”

“Lunchtime?”

“Noon or so,” he said. “You can check the log.” Next to them, the blond ponytail yammered on about her other favorite restaurant, Cru. Cru better for seafood, she said. American Seasons better for land animals.

Land animals? Agnes thought.

Riley Alsopp winked at Agnes. He said, “I’m still learning the ropes.”

Agnes said, “Is this your first summer?”

“First summer working here,” he said. “I’ve been coming to Nantucket since I was ten. I’m in dental school now, at Penn.”

That explained the teeth, Agnes thought. But not the Salinger or the board shorts. Agnes was confused about her mother. Dabney had left at noon or so, and she hadn’t come back? It was nearly three.

“Where did my mother go?” Agnes asked. “Did she say?”

Riley shrugged. “I’m not exactly privy to office secrets.”

“Right,” Agnes said. Did Dabney have a doctor’s appointment, maybe, that she hadn’t mentioned?

Riley said, “Are you coming to Business After Hours tonight? It’s at the Brotherhood of Thieves.”

“No,” Agnes said. “I don’t go to those anymore. I got dragged to them as a kid. By the time I was fifteen, I had sneaked more than my share of bad Chardonnay.”

Riley laughed. The guy was so cute, her mother must have pounced on him immediately, and maybe forgiven him the board shorts.

“Well, Riley, it was nice to meet you,” Agnes said. Her inflection, she realized, was eerily like her mother’s at that moment. She turned, and was dismayed to find Nina still on the phone. Nina would know where her mother was.

The blond ponytail hung up her phone and announced to the room, “Those folks are definitely coming to Nantucket for a week in September!” She put two fists in the air in a V for victory. Then the blond ponytail noticed Agnes and nearly vaulted over her desk.

“You must be Agnes!” she said. She offered Agnes an extremely strong handshake. “I’m Celerie Truman. This is my second year as an information assistant here at the Chamber. I am a really, really big fan of your mother’s.”

Agnes suppressed the urge to laugh. Where did Dabney find people with such wholesome energy?

“Oh, hi!” Agnes said, again channeling her mother’s tone. “Nice to meet you, Celerie.” She paused, hoping she had pronounced the girl’s name correctly. Celerie like celery? What had her mother thought of that? Dabney was very particular about names. She believed that the only suitable names were those befitting a Supreme Court justice: Thurgood Marshall, Sandra Day O’Connor. Celerie was not a Supreme Court justice name.

“I hope you’re coming to Business After Hours,” Celerie said. “It’s at the Brotherhood, which is my other other favorite restaurant. My casual favorite.”

“Sadly, I won’t be there tonight,” Agnes said. She sounded so much like her mother it was frightening, but the words were coming out that way unbidden. She heard Nina getting off the phone. “Excuse me!” She waved at Celerie Truman and Riley Alsopp. They were so gorgeous, both separately and together, that Agnes wondered if the back room of the Chamber was a matchmaking laboratory this summer. Leave it to her mother.

Agnes presented herself at Nina’s desk. “Where’s Mom?”

Nina clasped her hands at her bosom. “Tell me about New York!” she said. “Is it wonderful? And you’re getting married! At Saint Mary’s and the Yacht Club, your mother said.”

There was catching-up required. Agnes knew this. She hadn’t had a chance to talk with Nina at Christmas or on Daffodil Weekend. Nina Mobley had five children to ask after; Agnes had babysat for all of them. But Agnes didn’t have the presence of mind for chitchat right now.

She quickly checked the log. Dabney had signed out at five minutes to noon, listing errands/lunch as the reason for her absence.

“So, wait, I’m sorry,” Agnes said. “Did Mom say where she was going?”

Nina took a deep breath, then emitted a nervous laugh. “She had errands.”

“Errands?” Agnes said. “What kind of errands?”

Nina Mobley squinted at Agnes. “Oh, honey,” she said. “I wish I could tell you.”

Agnes walked home, thinking that she and her mother must have just missed each other-or that Dabney had run to the grocery store for more eggs, or to Bartlett Farm for hothouse tomatoes. But would she do that in the middle of a workday? Never! And those errands wouldn’t take three hours. Dabney had been acting strange, Box said. Dabney did have a slew of peculiarities-a rare form of OCD and agoraphobia that made her incapable of leaving Nantucket-and then her mystical matchmaking power. Maybe she was seeing Dr. Donegal, her therapist. Or maybe she was having a midlife crisis and Agnes would find her in the cool dim of the Chicken Box, drinking beer and shooting pool.

Ha! Agnes was making herself laugh. Dabney would be at home.

But Dabney wasn’t at home. Agnes felt irrationally upset about this, as if she were a child who had been abandoned. And, to boot, her mother’s cell phone was lying on the kitchen counter, charging. Really, what good was a cell phone if you didn’t take it with you when you left the house? Agnes considered calling Box in London. It was nine thirty at night over there; Box would probably be at dinner. Agnes hated to interrupt him-and besides, what would she say? Mom left work three hours ago and I don’t know where she went. The island was only so big; Dabney had to be somewhere.

Agnes trudged up to her bedroom and threw herself across her bed. She was tired enough to sleep until morning.

She awoke to the strains of Alicia Keys singing “Empire State of Mind,” her cell phone’s ringtone, handpicked for her by one of the little girls at the Boys & Girls Club. Agnes was groggy and her limbs felt leaden, but she reached for her phone, thinking it would be her mother.

She saw when she picked up that it was five o’clock and that it was CJ calling. How had she slept for so long? What was wrong with her? She considered letting the call go to her voice mail; CJ would sense sleep in her voice and she didn’t feel like explaining that she had eaten five thousand calories already that day and had just woken up from a two-hour nap. But CJ did not like getting Agnes’s voice mail. When he called, he expected her to answer.

She cleared her throat. “Hello?”

“Agnes?” he said. “Are you okay?”

She stretched out like a cat. The room was catching the mellow slant of the late-afternoon sun across the wooden floor. Agnes’s apartment, as lovely as it was, didn’t get this kind of natural light. In the background of the phone call, Agnes heard sirens and hubbub, the city. She didn’t miss it one bit.

“Yes,” she said. “I’m fine.”

“You didn’t call once today,” CJ said. “I thought you couldn’t live without me.”

“Oh,” Agnes said. “Well, I can’t.”

“Good,” CJ said. “I just left the office. I’m headed to the gym and then I’m meeting Rocky for a game of squash. What are you up to?”

Agnes sat up and listened to the rest of the house for sounds of her mother. The house was silent. “Nothing.”

“You and your mom have big plans tonight?” CJ asked. “Peanut butter sandwiches and Parcheesi?”

“No plans,” she said.

“Is everyone on Nantucket aflutter with the news of your return? Are all your old boyfriends banging down your door?”

“No,” Agnes said archly.

“Hey, baby, don’t get angry. If anyone should be angry, it’s me. I have to live here in the big city without the woman I love.”

“We’ll be together in ten days,” Agnes said.

“If I make it up there,” CJ said. “I can’t stay in your parents’ house again. I hate to be a diva that way, but I’m just too old. I’m on the wait list for a room at the White Elephant, so we’ll keep our fingers crossed for that. Otherwise, you can come home to New York.”

Agnes blew her nose. She didn’t want to go back to New York. She had just arrived on Nantucket and she wanted to stay and enjoy it. Her job as a counselor at Island Adventures camp started the next day. Agnes wanted a routine. She wanted sun and beach and ocean air. She wanted to be with her mother.

“It would be much better if you could come here,” Agnes said.

“Well,” CJ said. “We’ll have to wait and see.”

Agnes thought again about what Manny Partida had told her. Agnes didn’t think CJ would ever hurt her. But she hated being spoken to like a child.

“I hear my mother downstairs,” Agnes said. “I should go. I’ll call you later, baby. Bye.”

But downstairs was quiet and growing darker. Dabney hadn’t returned. She had gone back to the office, Agnes supposed, after running her mysterious errands, and now she would be headed to the Brotherhood, for Business After Hours.

Dabney pulled the yellow dress out of the shopping bag and stared at it for a long minute.

If I make it up there.

She shucked off her shorts and T-shirt and slipped on the dress. Mascara, lip gloss, a hand through her hair, and a pair of gold sandals. She would stop in at Business After Hours, she decided, for old times’ sake.

Glass of mediocre Chardonnay in hand-it was a step up from the boxed wine of her teenage memory-Agnes threaded her way through the party in search of her mother. The best part of the Brotherhood was the old part-a basement grotto with low, beamed ceilings and stone walls and scarred wooden tables. Agnes had loved to come here growing up, although, for some reason, Dabney allowed it only when it was raining. The room was lit by candles; it had the contained coziness of the hull of a ship. Agnes always used to order the Boursin cheese board. Bread, butter, cheese, mustard, pickles, candlelight, rain, sometimes an acoustic-guitar player-it was a good memory that distracted Agnes for a minute.

The place was jam-packed with familiar faces. Everyone was chatting and drinking and picking up fried jalapeños and mini Reuben sandwiches from passing trays. Agnes snagged a sandwich for herself (carbs, how she craved them!), then a jalapeño, then another sandwich-all the while scanning the room for her mother. There was Tammy Block, the Realtor whom Dabney had set up with Flynn Sheehan, creating earth shock waves of scandal a few years back; there was the travel agent, the owner of a popular gift shop, there was Barley Ivan, who made beautiful Lightship-basket furniture, there was the flamboyant gallery owner, and there was Ed Law, legendary owner of Nantucket Cotton, the T-shirt shop where Dabney and then, a generation later, Agnes had worked as teenagers.

Agnes couldn’t find Dabney, yet she knew her mother must be around somewhere. Dabney had invented Business After Hours years and years ago-monthly cocktail parties where Chamber members gathered to “discuss issues in the business community,” which was a grand euphemism for drinking and gossiping.

There was the guy who owned the body shop and towing business. There was Hal Allen of Allen Heating and Cooling; Agnes had dated his son, Duke, in high school.

Old boyfriends banging down the door?

Where was her mother?

There was a guitar player tucked in the back corner, playing a Jack Johnson song. Agnes exhaled and concentrated on the music for a second. Jack Johnson songs always made her think of hibiscus leis and coconut drinks. She was dying to go to Hawaii on her honeymoon, but CJ had been to Hawaii “too many times to count” with Annabelle. CJ wanted to take a cruise to Alaska. Agnes had heard that Alaska was beautiful, but it sounded cold, and who wanted a cold honeymoon? And spending her honeymoon in the cramped quarters of a cruise ship held even less appeal. But CJ had insisted she would love it.

The song ended, there was a smattering of applause, and the guitar player said into the microphone, “This next one is for Agnes, who is back on Nantucket for the summer.”

There was a collective murmur. Agnes? Is that Agnes? Her cover was blown, although she hadn’t ever had a hope of remaining incognito. Agnes craned her neck to get a look at the guitar player. He smiled-those teeth, the Hawaiian-print board shorts. It was Riley, from the office.

He launched into “Puff the Magic Dragon,” a childhood favorite of Agnes’s, learned at circle time in Montessori, although Riley would have had no way of knowing that. Unless Dabney had told him.

Agnes chatted away, sounding exactly like her mother-Oh, it’s so good to see you, yes, it’s been a while, home for the summer, working at Island Adventure, so great to be back, there is no place like Nantucket!-until finally Riley took a break and appeared at her elbow with a fresh glass of mediocre Chardonnay.

“Hey,” she said. “Thanks for outing me. I did love the song, though.”

“I can’t believe you came,” he said.

“You didn’t tell me you were performing,” she said.

“I didn’t want to oversell myself.”

“You were great,” Agnes said. How thrilled Dabney must have been when she discovered that Riley played the guitar! “I hope my mother is paying you extra.”

“I’m playing for tips,” he said. He showed her a plastic cup with a single five-dollar bill in it.

“Riley,” Agnes said. “Is my mother here?”

“I haven’t seen her.”

“She’s not here,” Agnes said. She drank the remaining Chardonnay from the plastic cup. She knew her mother wasn’t here because if Dabney were here she would have been the epicenter of the party.

Agnes studied Riley. His eyes were brown, like his hair, and he had one dark freckle on his cheek. She could tell just from looking at him that his parents were still married, that he had grown up with siblings, probably sisters, and that his life had unfolded smoothly, making it easy for him to be a surfer, and a guitar player, and an aspiring dentist.

Agnes figured he was a good egg. Her mother hired only good eggs.

“Did my mother come back to the office this afternoon?” Agnes asked.

“No,” Riley said. “Nina said she was running errands.”

“This is so strange. My mother is the most transparent person who ever lived. She does not disappear like this.”

“I know nothing,” Riley said. “I’ve worked at the Chamber for two and a half weeks. Your mom and Nina have all this shorthand, and secret code, and nicknames for people, and Celerie and I can’t figure out what they’re talking about. I’m pretty sure that’s by design. I think we’re only meant to see the tip of the iceberg.”

“Well, you’re not supposed to wear board shorts to work,” Agnes said. “Did my mother give you a hard time?”

“No,” Riley said. “She told me they were fabulous.”

“She did?” Agnes was starting to feel like the planet was spinning the wrong way on its axis.

“She did,” Riley said. “If you want to know where your mom is, maybe you should ask Nina.”

“I tried, this afternoon,” Agnes said. “Nina isn’t giving her up.”

“Well, I’m finished playing,” Riley said. “Do you want to get out of here? Go somewhere else, maybe?”

“God, yes,” Agnes said.

They climbed into Riley’s Jeep, a forest-green Wrangler with a six-foot soft-top surfboard strapped to the roll bars. It was the quintessential Nantucket vehicle. He told her he’d owned it since he was eighteen and had driven it only on the island, back and forth between his parents’ house in Pocomo and the south-shore surfing beaches.

“I’m sorry it’s covered in dog hair,” he said. “I have a chocolate Lab named Sadie, and she is the queen of this particular castle.”

“Oh my God,” Agnes said. “We had a chocolate Lab for thirteen years named Henry. My mother loves chocolate Labs. I think I just figured out why my mother hired you.”

Riley laughed. “Believe me, I’m used to people loving me for my dog. Now, where should I take you?”

Agnes plucked at the yellow silk of her dress and arranged it around her legs. She wasn’t used to anyone asking her what she wanted. In her life at home in New York, CJ made all the decisions. He picked the restaurants and the Broadway shows and the parties they would attend, he told her when to meet him at the gym, he picked the color of her nail polish when she got a pedicure.

What did she want?

“I want to find my mother,” she said. “And I’m starving.”

Riley held up the plastic cup with the five-dollar bill. “How about somewhere cheap?” He started the car, then looked over his shoulder as he shifted into reverse. “Food first,” he said. “Then find.”

They stopped at the Strip on Steamship Wharf, where Agnes got a cheeseburger with waffle fries (carbs and more carbs!), and Riley got three slices of pizza and two Cokes. They drove to Children’s Beach and ate in the car overlooking the harbor.

“I used to come here as a kid,” Riley said.

“Yeah, me too,” Agnes said. She didn’t mean to trump Riley’s childhood nostalgia, but the grassy expanse of Children’s Beach had been etched in her brain from her earliest memories. Her great-grandmother had pushed her on the swings and taught her how to pump her legs; Box used to sit on the green slatted benches reading The Economist while Agnes mastered the monkey bars. Her mother had planted her funny old red-and-white-striped umbrella, which exactly matched her red-and-white-striped bathing suit, in the sand at the shoreline while Agnes filled buckets with a slurry of sand and water.

“So what brings you home this summer?” Riley asked.

“I work at a Boys and Girls Club in Upper Manhattan, and we lost our summer funding,” Agnes said.

“Lucky break?” Riley said.

“Some people might see it that way,” Agnes said. “I worry about my members. This literally leaves six hundred kids without anywhere to hang out this summer.”

“Whoa,” Riley said.

“I’m trying not to dwell on it,” Agnes said. “I tell myself they’ll all go to the public library where it’s air-conditioned, and they’ll read.”

“That’s a good vision,” Riley said. He folded his pizza in half; a rivulet of orange grease ran down his chin. Agnes handed him a napkin. “I love kids. That’s one reason why I’m becoming a dentist. I mean, I’m interested in the medicine of it, but my dream is to build a strong family practice. I want to watch kids grow up, hear about their lacrosse games and their baton-twirling competitions, and their first dates.”

“I sometimes worry that I get too attached to the kids at the club,” Agnes said. She thought of Quincy and Dahlia, baking on hot squares of sidewalk. She had once told CJ that she wanted to adopt them and give them a safe home. But, as CJ had pointed out, Quincy and Dahlia already had a mother. And CJ didn’t want kids at all-not biological, not adopted. “Some of them have really tough lives. It’s difficult not to become overly invested in their well-being.”

Riley smiled at her. “You have a good heart,” he said. “Like mother, like daughter.”

Suddenly, Agnes felt anxious. “Is it okay if we go? Is it okay if we go find her?”

Riley tossed his pizza crust out the window, where it was pounced on by hungry seagulls. “Of course,” he said.

Nantucket was only thirteen miles long and four miles wide, but it was by no means a small or simple place. There were countless dirt roads and mysterious acres. Agnes didn’t know where to start looking. But wherever Dabney was, she was driving the Impala, and thus she would be hard to miss.

“Should we go east or west?” Agnes asked.

“East?” Riley said. “Maybe she went to Sconset?”

“Sconset?” Agnes said. Dabney had always had lukewarm feelings about Sconset, in much the same way Union soldiers had lukewarm feelings about General Lee. There had been a period of time, years before Agnes was born, when Sconseters had wanted to secede. They had wanted their own town building and their own board of selectmen-and this had rubbed Dabney the wrong way. Now, as director of the Chamber, Dabney had to embrace and promote Sconset-the entire Daffodil Weekend was celebrated there-but Sconset fell prey to Dabney’s rules: she would go once a year to the Chanticleer, once a year to the Summer House (but only for drinks and the piano player; she didn’t trust the food), and once a year to the Sconset Casino for a movie. Every single day of the summer, she suggested that visitors bike out to Sconset, where she advised them to have lunch at Claudette’s or ice cream from the Sconset Market-but she would never do these things herself. Agnes did not see her mother going to Sconset-for secret errands or otherwise. “Not Sconset. Let’s head west.”

Riley took a right onto Cliff Road, and Agnes began the lookout. She checked the driveways of all the grandiose homes on the right that overlooked the Sound. Maybe some friends had appeared from off-island and persuaded Dabney to play hooky from work and from Business After Hours? Her friends Albert and Corrine Maku sometimes showed up and demanded spontaneous fun. There might have been other people Agnes didn’t know about-maybe one of her couples from 1989 or 2002 or 2011?

Really, what other explanation could there be?

Riley fiddled with the radio and, finding nothing satisfactory, turned it off. He said, “So, Agnes, do you have a boyfriend?”

“A fiancé,” she said.

“Oh, okay. I’m sorry, I didn’t know. Your mother didn’t tell me you were engaged, and you’re not wearing a ring.”

Nope, Agnes thought guiltily. She had taken off her ring. Agnes had accidentally seen the receipt for the ring lying on CJ’s mail table; it had cost him twenty-five thousand dollars. Agnes had nearly fainted. A twenty-five-thousand-dollar ring. Agnes could never, ever wear it to Morningside Heights, nor could she wear it on Nantucket as she led biking and rock-climbing excursions. The ring was in its box on her dresser. It was pretty but useless, a caged parakeet.

“My mother didn’t tell you?” she said.

“No, but like I said, I’m not exactly privy to office secrets.”

“It’s not a secret,” Agnes said. “Although maybe my mother wants to keep it that way. She doesn’t approve.”

“No?”

“No.” Agnes sighed. “You do know, right, that my mother is a matchmaker?”

Riley threw his head back and laughed into the evening air.

“She’s set up forty-two couples,” Agnes said, “all of them still together. She’s famous for it. She sees an aura-pink if it’s good, green if it’s bad. And my aura with CJ is green, so she can’t give her blessing.”

“You’re kidding,” Riley said.

“Not kidding.”

“I told you I was only seeing the tip of the iceberg,” Riley said. “She’s a matchmaker! No wonder she was so excited when I told her I played Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof.”

Agnes smiled. It was impossible to sustain a bad mood with this guy: he was too happy-go-lucky. “You’d better watch out,” she said. “I think she has plans for you and Celerie.”

“You think?” Riley said. “I was considering asking Celerie out, actually.”

Ridiculously, Agnes experienced a pang of jealousy at this statement. Oh my God, what was wrong with her? “You should!” she said.

“But I think she has someone back home,” Riley said. “In Minnesota.”

“Minnesota is pretty far away,” Agnes said.

“You’re right,” he said. “Okay, I’ll do it. I’ll ask if she wants to go up to Great Point with me on Saturday.”

Another pang of jealousy: Agnes loved Great Point. To her, the perfect summer day was a cooler full of drinks, a couple of avocado BLTs from Something Natural, and a trip up to Great Point in a Jeep like this one-top down, radio blaring.

Agnes watched as Riley negotiated the curves of Madaket Road. He and Celerie would make a good couple. Agnes had thought that when she saw them together at the office. But earlier, at the office, she hadn’t known Riley. She hadn’t heard him play “Puff the Magic Dragon,” she hadn’t watched him eat pizza, she hadn’t talked with him about her job. It was amazing how, after the past hour, she now felt like she had some sort of claim on him. The thought of him bestowing his affection on Celerie with her bouncy ponytail and her cheerleader moves and her favorite this and other-favorite that was upsetting.

No-what was really upsetting was that Agnes couldn’t locate her mother. They weren’t going to find her driving out to Madaket, of this much Agnes was suddenly certain.

“Would you mind taking me home?” Agnes asked.

Riley hit the brakes and the case of his guitar bumped against the back of Agnes’s seat, emitting a dissonant chord. “What? Are you sure?”

“I’m sure,” Agnes said. “This is silly. It’s a wild-goose chase. I’ll just wait for my mother at home.”

“Oh,” Riley said. “Okay, no problem. But just so you know, I’m happy to keep looking.” He sounded wistful. Well, he had been enjoying the adventure, and now it was over. It had nothing to do with Agnes.

“I appreciate that,” Agnes said. “But I’d like to go home.”

Riley’s cute face with his perfect, straight white teeth settled into an expression of something like hurt or regret. But that would be erased, Agnes was sure, once he asked out Celerie and Celerie said yes. It would, no doubt, be rosy auras all around.

It was ten thirty when Dabney finally walked in the door. Agnes was sitting at the kitchen table with an empty glass of milk in front of her. She had eaten half a dozen of her mother’s oatmeal cookies and had let three of CJ’s phone calls go to voice mail.

Dabney was clearly startled to see Agnes; she nearly dropped her Bermuda bag. “Oh! Darling, I’m sorry…I didn’t expect…what are you doing…what?”

Agnes studied her mother. She was wearing the same navy polo shirt and madras skirt, penny loafers and pearls that she’d been wearing when she’d left that morning. Her hair was smooth in its headband. But something was different. What was it? She looked like she’d gotten sun. Had she been at the beach? Agnes wondered. She thought of Riley and Celerie up at Great Point, but that served only to irritate her further.

“Where have you been?” Agnes said. Her voice had a jagged edge. She could remember using such a tone with her mother only once before.

Dabney’s expression was inscrutable at first. This woman, whom Agnes had believed to be so transparent, was hiding something. Tip of the iceberg, indeed!

“Tell me right now!” Agnes said. She was only too aware that she sounded like the parent in this scenario. “You left work at noon. You didn’t answer your cell phone! You skipped Business After Hours! Where. Have. You. Been.”

Dabney’s eyes shone defiantly.

“Out,” she said.

The reversal, Agnes thought, was complete.

Dabney

She was utterly predictable; she never failed to act exactly like herself. The only surprising thing she had ever done in her life was to start this extramarital love affair.

But it was Clendenin Hughes. He had plucked her heart out of her chest when she was fourteen years old and she had never been able to reclaim it.

Love was her only excuse.

As soon as Dabney opened the door to Clen’s cottage, she smelled garlic and ginger. Clen was at the stove; when he turned around, he didn’t look surprised to see her, which she found maddening. She handed him a bottle of Gentleman Jack; she had stopped at Hatch’s on her way to his house.

He said, “Only you would bring a hostess gift to a sexual rendezvous.”

“That’s not what this is,” she said.

He said, “Wanna bet?” And in one fluid movement, he scooped her up with his strong right arm, threw her over his shoulder, and carried her to the bed.

There was only one thing to do: she laughed.

“Stop!” she said.

“What?”

“Turn off the burner on the stove,” she said. “You don’t want to burn the house down.”

“Wanna bet?”

It was the same, it was different. She didn’t have time to say what was which or which was what because there was no thinking involved. It was, in fact, like going up in flames. His mouth devoured every part of her, his skin burned against hers, his size crushed her, but as much as he gave her, she wanted more, faster, more. He sucked her nipples and she groaned, pressing herself against his thigh, leaving him wet there. How long had it been since she’d felt this way? When he thrust into her, she nearly broke in half; she opened her mouth and howled like an animal. She had slept with only two men in her life-Clen and Box-but Clen now was a third person. She was intoxicated by his physicality. His tongue, his lips, the way he tasted, the way he smelled, her hands in his thick hair, her cheek against his beard, skin on skin. It had been years since she’d even remembered she had a body, desire, needs.

When it was over, he peppered her face and neck with kisses as the sweat cooled on her body. She reached out and stroked the curve of his stump. The skin there was as soft as a baby’s skin.

She closed her eyes. She saw cherry blossoms, bubble gum, and raspberries so ripe and juicy that they fell from the branches with the slightest touch.

When it was time for Dabney to head home, she started to cry.

Clen said, “Oh, Cupe, don’t.” Which made her cry harder.

“Come tomorrow,” he said.

“I can’t!” she said.

“Just for five minutes,” he said. “Please.”

The next day, Dabney signed out on the log at noon, writing errands/lunch.

“More errands?” Nina said slyly.

Dabney gave her a pointed look.

“I don’t think you should sign out on the log when you leave,” Nina said. “Just go. Vaughan hasn’t checked the log in years.”

Dabney appreciated Nina’s leniency and her willingness to be an accomplice, but signing out on the office log had become a discipline of working at the Chamber, and Dabney couldn’t bring herself to abandon it. She would conduct her love affair during business hours, but she would still sign out, thereby holding fast to one shred of her personal integrity.

The “five minutes” turned into an afternoon by the pool. Clen made watermelon margaritas and they floated on blow-up rafts. Clen was still a good swimmer, despite his missing arm; he moved through the water cleanly, with power. Dabney gazed at him with amazement and he said, “I bet you thought I’d go in circles, didn’t you?” The water brought out his playful self; they splashed and dunked each other and poured more margaritas and generally acted like the teenagers they had been, so long ago.

Every time she thought to get up and leave, she found a reason to stay.

She said, “I can’t believe I’m going to miss Business After Hours. I haven’t missed a Business After Hours in fourteen years.”

He said, “I’ll order pizza and french fries and wings.”

She said, “I can’t have pizza. I’ve given up wheat.”

He said, “That’s the most preposterous thing I’ve ever heard.”

He was right. Whatever was wrong with her, it wasn’t a wheat allergy.

He said, “You’re too thin.”

She said, “I’m down to 106, which is what I weighed in eighth grade.”

He said, “Jeez, Cupe.”

She thought, Lovesick. She hadn’t allowed herself to feel any guilt yet, but when the guilt kicked in, she feared, she would disappear. Box was in London. He stayed in a suite at the Connaught, and his daily life included a chauffeured Bentley that transported him back and forth between the hotel and the School of Economics, and to dinner at Gordon Ramsay and Nobu. His landscape was Big Ben, St. Paul’s Cathedral, the National Gallery, Covent Garden, the London Bridge, and the Thames. Dabney could say the names of these places and things, but she had no concept of what his life there was like, just as he had no clue what her life was now like.

When he returned, she would have to tell him.

They ate dinner in bed, and Dabney drank a beer, something she hadn’t done since the summer of 1987. She groaned and grunted with delight as she ate, she pulled strings of cheese from the pizza with her fingers and dangled them into her mouth. She sucked the sauce off the chicken bones, she dragged piping hot fries through ketchup, mayonnaise, and mustard, then back again. She would never have eaten like that in front of Box, but with Clen she was perfectly at ease.

It was for this reason, she supposed, that she said, “I’m worried about Agnes.”

The name Agnes, although spoken casually, sucked all the oxygen out of the room.

Dabney immediately stiffened. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have mentioned it.”

“No, no,” Clen said. “Please. Please tell me. What is it?”

“She’s engaged,” Dabney said.

Clen coughed. “Agnes is getting married?”

“Yes,” Dabney said. Her voice was barely a whisper-the late, dark hour and the fraught topic seemed to require it. “To a man named CJ Pippin. He’s a sports agent in New York.”

Clen said, “And Agnes and this CJ person who is a sports agent in New York…are they a perfect match?”

“No.”

“Really?” Clen seemed felt suddenly alert, intrigued. “And you’re allowing it, Cupe?”

Dabney laughed. “Allowing it? That question shows just how little you know about having children.”

“You’re right,” he said. “What I know about children I could write on my thumbnail and still have room for the Lord’s Prayer.”

“I have to go,” Dabney said. The pain of their shared past, over a quarter century gone, was exquisite.

She stood on her tiptoes to kiss him goodbye. “It’s been a long time since I’ve had a day like today,” she said. “Thank you.”

“Dabney?”

“What?”

“I want to meet her,” he said.

“Who?” she said. And then, “No.”

“Dabney.”

“No.”

She turned and walked to her car, shaking her head.

All the way home, she thought, Agnes, Agnes, Agnes.

And you’re allowing it, Cupe?

A few days later, Dabney overheard Agnes on the phone with CJ. Dabney didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but once she was within earshot, she couldn’t move away.

Agnes said, “I don’t see what your problem is with staying here…my mother likes you…yes, she does…you have to let that go, CJ…no, I am not coming to New York…it’s summertime, I belong here…I don’t want to, CJ…yes, baby, of course I love you…I could say the same to you…okay, baby, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I said!” Tears. “CJ, please, I’m sorry!”

And you’re allowing it, Cupe?

No, she was not allowing it. It was time to step in.

Dabney’s first thought was Dave Patterson, who ran the Island Adventures program. He was scruffy, outdoorsy, and entrepreneurial. He had built Island Adventures up from a camp for ten kids to the sought-after program it was now, serving two hundred kids, and he had bought his own real estate and had built his own facility, including a fifty-foot rock-climbing wall. But Dave lived on Nantucket year-round-he, like Dabney, would never leave (another reason she liked him)-and as much as it pained her to say it, she didn’t envision Agnes living year-round on the island.

Dabney had another idea for Agnes, and that was Riley Alsopp.

Was Dabney troubled by the fact that Riley had done the obvious and asked Celerie Truman out on a date?

Not really. Dabney had heard about the date in excruciating detail from Celerie, who had appeared at the Chamber office half an hour early just so she could talk to Dabney about it. Never mind that Dabney was Celerie’s boss, never mind that Dabney was Riley’s boss, never mind that Dabney, as director, might not love the idea of her two information assistants-who had to work next to each other all summer-dating. Celerie seemed eager, frantic even, to tell Dabney the whole story.

What had happened was this: Riley had planned on taking Celerie to Great Point for the afternoon, but Great Point had been closed due to nesting piping plovers, so Riley had suggested Smith’s Point-same idea, a remote spit of sand, but on the other side of the island. Celerie had been game-heck yeah, she had never been to Smith’s Point or Great Point. One of the failings of her first summer was not having befriended anyone with a 4WD vehicle; all of Celerie’s friends drove Mini Coopers, so she had gone exclusively to Surfside. On the way from Great Point to Smith’s Point, Riley’s Jeep ran out of gas. The Jeep was older, the gauge unreliable. They were close to Cisco Brewers, so they decided to spend the afternoon there, drinking beer and listening to live music in the sun.

All good, right? Wrong! Celerie drank too much too quickly and didn’t eat anything. It seemed the only food served at the brewery was from a hot-dog cart, and Celerie, as her name suggested, was a vegetarian. She had a Sheila’s Favorite from Something Natural back in the Jeep, but by the time she thought of it, it had been sitting in the sun for hours and would be poisonous. Riley suggested calling a cab, or asking his father to pick them up-but Celerie, being drunk, insisted on one thing and one thing only and that was drinking more. She began to act like a real ass-hat (her word). She approached the lead singer of the band and suggested that he let Riley sing. The lead singer had no interest in relinquishing his microphone to Riley, but Celerie persisted in harassing him. Riley told the lead singer not to worry, he didn’t want to sing. Celerie started to cry, insisting that Riley really did want to sing, and then, seconds later, she began to throw up. She was so sick that she monopolized the brewery’s main bathroom for two hours. Riley waited for her just outside the door, continuously asking could he help, could he call a taxi, could he call her roommate?

When she finally did emerge, Riley had his Jeep waiting. His father had come with a gas can. Riley drove Celerie home and walked her to her door. By that point, it was dark and her roommate was out at the Chicken Box. Celerie made it inside to the living room, where she passed out facedown on the rag rug.

It was, she informed Dabney, the most embarrassing experience of her life, short of what had happened to her during sophomore year, which was too mortifying to relay, even now.

Celerie also said that Riley had called the next day to check on her, and that when Celerie launched into her serial apology, “I’m sorry, so sorry, so sorry!” he said, “Please don’t worry about it, happens to the best of us, my fault for forgetting the sandwiches, maybe we can try it again sometime.”

Celerie had looked imploringly at Dabney and said, “Do you think he’ll ask me out again?”

Dabney realized then that she was being asked her opinion as a matchmaker. I must be sick, she thought. Her radar for such manipulation was failing.

She smiled at Celerie. “One never knows.”

But of course Dabney did know: Riley was just being polite. He had been well raised. Riley needed someone a few years older; Celerie was scarcely twenty-two.

Riley needed Agnes.

But perhaps not as badly as Agnes needed Riley.

And while she was working on Agnes, why not Nina as well?

Dabney had tried to interfere in Nina’s love life once before, when she told Nina not to marry George Mobley. Nina hadn’t listened and Dabney hadn’t blamed her; Dabney had waited too long to speak up and the relationship had too much momentum to stop. It had been like a boulder rolling down a hill. Nina had been left with a mountain of debt on one side of the seesaw, and five bright, talented kids on the other. In the seven years since Nina’s divorce, she had not gone on a single date. She told Dabney she was too tired, too busy, and too disenchanted.

The name that kept presenting for Nina was Jack Copper. Dabney was stuck back in the conversation where she told Nina about Clen’s return, and Nina had confessed to nearly hooking up with Jack. Jack Copper was single, he had always been single, and he was wiry, perpetually sunburned, craggy, salty. He had a South Boston accent that drove people like Box nuts, but that Dabney happened to adore. Arararar, wicked pissah, I gotta stop smokin’, arararar, kinda tough when you live at the bah. Jack Copper ran a fishing charter off his forty-two-foot Whaler; he always caught fish, which attracted a lot of fancy clients. He drank beer at the Anglers’ Club, he shot darts at the Chicken Box, he drove a Chevy pickup truck. He always talked to Dabney about her Impala, and he, too, dreamed of a Corvette Stingray split-window with matching numbers in Bermuda blue. Jack Copper wasn’t a bad choice. Dabney might not have come up with his name on her own, but she was intrigued that Nina regretted passing him up.

Dabney dialed the number for Eleanor Sea Fishing Charters. “Eleanor Sea” was named for Eleanor C.-Jack’s mother, who had once owned a boardinghouse on India Street.

Dabney had been expecting to leave a message on the machine; guys like Jack never answered their office phones, especially not during the summer. She was surprised when Jack picked up.

“Coppah heah.”

“Hi, Jack,” Dabney said. “It’s Dabney Kimball!”

Dabney told Jack that he had won the raffle at the last Business After Hours and that the prize was a hundred-dollar gift certificate to Hatch’s liquor store, and could Jack come into the office and pick it up that afternoon?

She knew Jack would not turn down free beer.

“Hell yeah!” Jack said. “I’ll be theah at three o’clawk.”

Dabney was delighted when Nina appeared at work wearing a sassy red tank dress that slowed off her cleavage. Nina rarely dressed like that. It was almost as if she knew.

At two thirty, Dabney said, “I’m going to take a late lunch. I should be back in an hour or so.” She signed out on the log.

Nina said, “I don’t know why you do that.”

Dabney said, “I’m a goody-goody.”

Nina said, “Well, you used to be. I’m not sure I would use that term to describe you anymore.”

Dabney said, “I think Jack Copper is stopping by to pick this up.” She dropped an envelope on Nina’s desk.

Nina said, “What is it?”

“A gift certificate for Hatch’s. He won it in the raffle at the last Business After Hours.”

“No, he didn’t,” Nina said. “Hal Allen won the raffle.” She squinted at Dabney. “You weren’t even at the last Business After Hours.”

“Make sure Jack gets that,” Dabney said. “He’s coming at three to pick it up.”

“Dabney,” Nina said, “what are you doing?”

But Dabney was halfway down the stairs, and she pretended not to hear.

When Dabney returned an hour later (after going out the Polpis Road to spend “five minutes” with Clen), the office was filled with green smoke. Dabney raced up the stairs, as panicked as if she’d set the building on fire.

The front room, where Dabney and Nina sat, was thick with the green fog, but Nina’s desk was unoccupied. Dabney poked her head into the back office. Both Celerie and Riley were on the phone, yammering cheerfully away, oblivious to the atmospheric disaster right outside the doorway. Of course, Dabney reminded herself, they couldn’t see it. Only she could.

She waved her arms until Celerie put her call on hold.

“Yes, boss?” she said.

“Where is Nina?” Dabney said. “She’s not at her desk.”

Celerie shrugged. “She was here a minute ago, talking to some guy in a white visor.”

Dabney zipped back out to the front office, waving away the pea-green soup, and checked the log. Nina hadn’t signed out, but Nina wasn’t the stickler about it that Dabney was. She might have left with Jack to get a coffee, or a drink.

Then Dabney thought she heard a noise coming from the conference room. Dabney hoped she was imagining it. She had to check. If the conference room was empty, then she would run down the street to the Anglers’ Club.

She opened the door to find Jack Copper and Nina hooked together at the hips and at the mouth, leaning against the table used for board meetings. The green smoke was so thick that Dabney could barely see them, but she could tell they were seriously going at it.

“Hey, you two!” Dabney said brightly.

Immediately, they separated, and the air cleared enough for Dabney to see the stricken look on Nina’s face.

“Nina, I need to talk to you for a second,” Dabney said. “And, Jack, you can go. You got what you came for, right?”

Jack tugged at the bottom of his fishing shirt and adjusted his visor. “Um…yup,” he said. “See you later.” He beat a hasty retreat out of the conference room. Dabney waited until she heard his footsteps on the stairs before she closed the door. The air had cleared dramatically.

“God, that was embarrassing,” Nina said. “I feel like I’m sixteen again and you’re my mother. Why didn’t you knock?”

“I didn’t know where you were,” Dabney said. “I was worried.

“Worried about what?” Nina said. “We were just kissing. That is why you called him up, right? That is why you paid a hundred dollars of your own money for a second gift certificate, right? That is why you told him to come at three and conveniently exited stage left at two thirty. Right?”

“Right,” Dabney said. “I’m sorry.”

“No, I’m sorry,” Nina said. She looked out the window, down Main Street, at the receding figure of Jack Copper, hurrying away. “That’s over, for sure. He’ll never come up here again. Now if I want to see him, I’ll have to hunt him down. Thanks a million.”

“I actually did you a favor,” Dabney said.

“A favor?” Nina said. “You get to go out and have fun. You’ve seen Clen practically every day since Box has been in London. And do I say a word about it? No! Because you are my best friend and I want you to be happy. But you don’t feel the same way about me.”

“I do, though,” Dabney said.

“You don’t!” Nina said. “You set me up just to tear me down.”

“When I got to the office, I saw green smoke,” Dabney said. “Just like with George! Jack Copper isn’t a perfect match for you, Nina.”

“I don’t care if he’s a perfect match!” Nina said, her voice louder now. “I just want a man to pay attention to me! I just want to have fun! Isn’t there a third category? Where you see happy-for-now yellow? Or a peaceful blue? Or a pulsing-hot red?”

“No,” Dabney said. “It doesn’t work that way.”

“Well, too bad,” Nina said.

“I want to find you someone special,” Dabney said. “Someone right. Someone for forever.”

“I don’t want someone for forever! I want someone for today! And you just chased him away!”

“You do want someone for forever,” Dabney said. “I know you do.” She welled up with tears. “And even if you don’t want it, I want it for you.” Tears streamed down Dabney’s face. She had been so sure Jack Copper would work, but no-he was the wrong choice. Dabney’s instincts were way off.

Nina plucked Dabney a tissue. “Dabney,” she said, “what is wrong with you?”

But Dabney wasn’t sure.

Agnes

She had a group of ten bikers heading out to Quidnet Pond. Six boys, four girls, all of them strong riders except for a child named Dalton, who hailed from New York City (Park Avenue between Sixty-Ninth and Seventieth) and who attended Collegiate. Dalton had gruesomely chapped lips and one of the reasons he was lagging behind and holding up the group was that he had to stop every three to four minutes to apply his SPF 30ChapStick. That, and his bike helmet-which Agnes noted was the most expensive bike helmet money could buy-didn’t fit properly and kept slipping forward into his eyes. He had nearly had a collision with the girls in front of him thanks to said helmet.

Agnes hated to admit it, but she wasn’t very fond of Dalton. She had snapped at him earlier, telling him he had to keep up or he would be demoted to the nine-year-olds’ group. It wasn’t a very nice thing for her to say. She wasn’t really angry at Dalton-he was merely annoying-she was angry at CJ. CJ had canceled coming up for the weekend; the room at the White Elephant hadn’t come through, and that apparently was a deal breaker.

“I don’t see why you can’t stay at the house,” Agnes had said. “Box is in London and my mother is never home.”

“I won’t be comfortable,” CJ said. “I won’t be relaxed. And if I’m going to spend time with you, I’d like to be both of those things.”

Uncomfortable and ill at ease because of Dabney, Agnes thought. If Dabney had been in London, CJ would have come.

He said, “I’d like you to come to New York this weekend.”

“No,” she said. “I can’t.”

“Why not?” he said.

She had tried to come up with a reason. She could go to New York, but she didn’t want to. CJ would be on the phone all weekend anyway, negotiating the never-ending Bantam Killjoy deal. BK had been drafted by the Jaguars, but he was unhappy; he wanted to be out West. CJ was trying to get him to Kansas City or San Diego. Or at least that was what Agnes thought was happening; she had sort of lost track.

“I’m on Nantucket, CJ,” she said. “I’d like to go to the beach. Enjoy summer.”

“We can enjoy summer in the city,” he said. “We can walk in Central Park and put our feet in the fountain. We can go to a Yanks game. We can get reservations at any restaurant in the city. You want me to book at Le Bernadin? Minetta Tavern?”

“Um…” she said. “Maybe next weekend?”

“It doesn’t even sound like you want to see me,” CJ said.

“I do,” Agnes said. She had then sung out a chorus of apologies that she didn’t quite mean.

At the turnoff for Quidnet Road, Agnes gathered her campers. There were some fun personalities here-Archie, Samantha, Bronwyn, and Jamey (boy) and Jamie (girl). But everyone was hot and thirsty, the water bottles were down to the last inches, and the kids were eager for a swim and lunch.

Agnes gave the final directions-slight left onto Quidnet Road, half a mile to the pond, lock up, head to the beach, stay together, no one in the water until Agnes blew the whistle-and they all waited for Dalton to catch up. He was forty yards back, ChapStick break.

Just then, Agnes’s attention was snared by the sight of the Impala barreling up the Polpis Road. Her mother, sunglasses on, was at the wheel, singing. Agnes caught the strains of the Rolling Stones’ “Hang Fire.”

Agnes waved. She shouted, “Mom! Mom!” But the Impala cruised past; Dabney was too intent on where she was going to notice her only child.

Where was she going? Agnes couldn’t very well follow her.

The campers were intrigued. “Was that your mom?” Samantha asked. “Like, your Mom mom?”

Agnes realized that to her campers, she probably seemed too old to have a mother.

“Was that her car?” Archie asked. “A 1967 Chevy Impala?”

There was a motorhead in every group. Agnes nodded. “That was my mom,” she said. “My Mom mom. And yes, that’s her car.”

“Your mom must be cool,” Archie said.

That night at dinner, Agnes waited until Dabney had finished her first glass of wine and poured her second before she asked. Again, it looked like her mother had gotten sun. The freckles on her cheeks were plentiful and pronounced.

“I saw you on the Polpis Road today,” Agnes said. “By the Quidnet turnoff? I was with my campers. Where were you going?”

Dabney took a bite of her grilled salmon with homemade dill sauce, then made a face of ecstasy. Agnes had to agree: her mother cooked like a goddess. Agnes had gained three pounds since she’d been home.

Dabney said, “The summer between my senior year in high school and my freshman year in college, I got a flat tire on Main Street.” She dabbed her lips and took a sip of wine. “In the Nova. I popped it against the granite curb right outside of Murray’s Toggery. And no sooner had I gotten out of the car to look at the damage than a police car pulled up.” Dabney smiled. “And it was Grampy!”

“Oh,” Agnes said.

“What are the chances my own father would wander by at the exact moment my tire popped? I was very happy to see him, even though he made me change it myself. You remember what your grandfather was like.”

“Mom,” Agnes said. “Where were you going today?”

“I just thought of that story because of how funny it is to run into, you know, your parents, or your kids, when you’re out doing other things, living your life.”

“Mom.”

Dabney lifted a spear of asparagus with her fingers and nibbled it. “I had lunch at Sankaty Beach Club,” she said.

“Really?” Agnes said. This didn’t sound right. Dabney didn’t like to go to the Sankaty Beach Club, because her mother, Patty Benson, had been a member there, and thus Dabney had decided the place was cursed. “I thought you refused to eat there.”

“Well,” Dabney said, “I did today.”

Nina Mobley

Dabney was out of the office when Marcus Cobb came in to register with the Chamber. Marcus Cobb was actually Dr. Marcus Cobb, an ophthalmologist, who was setting up a practice on Old South Road.

A real eye doctor! Nina thought.

He was of medium height, had a shaved head, and was dressed in a shirt and tie. Nina loved a man in a shirt and tie, probably because she had grown up on Nantucket, where nobody wore a shirt and tie except for the high school superintendent and the insurance guys across the street.

Nina said, “You know, I could use a pair of glasses. I haven’t been able to see clearly in years.”

This made Dr. Marcus Cobb laugh. He thought Nina was kidding.

Couple #17: Genevieve Martine and Brian Lefebvre, married twenty-one years, five daughters

Genevieve: When I first met Dabney, I was twenty-one and she was seventeen and we worked together at Nantucket Cotton, a T-shirt shop which was the most successful retail spot on the island. I was from Canada, I had just graduated from McGill with a useless degree in French language and literature, and I had come to Nantucket because I had accidentally fallen in love with my cousin’s husband. I came from a large Catholic family and my mother, who was positively verklempt with me, told me to leave the country and pray to God for forgiveness.

I took the first job I was offered; the T-shirt shop was desperate for help. Dabney, although four years younger than me and still a teenager, was my manager. The owner, a man named Ed Law, told me I was to listen to Dabney and take all my direction from her. She was, he said, the best employee he’d ever had.

Dabney was a cute girl-she always wore jeans, loafers, opera-length pearls, a headband, and, during her shift, a pink crewneck T-shirt that said NANTUCKET NATIVE in navy letters across the front. Ed Law had had the T-shirt custom made for her, she said. And I thought, Wow, Ed Law is a cool dude.

Dabney was the one who told me that Nantucket Cotton was the highest-grossing retail space on the island, outearning even the galleries and the jewelry stores. Every visitor to the island wanted to leave with a souvenir, Dabney said. A T-shirt was lightweight, inexpensive, and practical. Ed Law had been the first person on the island to branch out beyond the name of the island. He created a T-shirt satirizing the first line of the famously lewd limerick. The T-shirt said: I AM THE MAN FROM NANTUCKET.

We sold thousands.

What I quickly learned about Dabney was that not only was she a good manager-she was organized and fair with our work schedule, responsible with the cash register and the “bank,” and she led by example with her work ethic (she folded a T-shirt better than I’d ever seen it done, and stacked them in order of ascending size, which wasn’t mandatory by Ed Law’s standards, but that was how Dabney liked it done)-she was also a superstar when it came to customer service. She engaged the customers, and asked where they were from and where they were staying. She had encyclopedic knowledge of the island and would always suggest restaurants to people, or off-the-beaten-path places to bike and picnic. People loved it! Most customers ended up buying extra T-shirts because of Dabney, and then Ed Law got the idea to sell tourist maps for three dollars apiece, and Dabney would customize the maps for everyone who came in based on their individual needs and desires.

“You should work for the Chamber of Commerce,” I said.

She beamed at me. “You’re right!” she said. “I should!”

“But what would Ed Law do then?” I said. And we laughed.

Dabney had a boyfriend named Clendenin Hughes, who would wait for her at the end of every shift. He would sit on the bench out in front of the shop and read until Dabney was finished. Then he would take her hand and they would walk off.

I worked with Dabney for three summers, until I had an ill-fated love affair with Ed Law. I had just earned forgiveness for my cousin’s husband, when I had to start all over again. After leaving Nantucket Cotton, I waitressed at the Atlantic Café, and then I decided I needed a “real job,” and I was hired as a receptionist by Ted Field, who at that time was so new to the island, he made me feel like a local.

Meanwhile, I continued to get involved with married men, despite my best efforts to avoid them. It wasn’t me; it was them. They lied to me. Ed Law had insisted he was separated, on the verge of divorcing-not true at all. When Dabney was graduating from Harvard, I was dating Peter the Fireman, whom I later discovered had…a wife and two kids in Billerica, Mass. And when I found out Dabney was pregnant, I had just broken up with Greg, a pilot from Bermuda. Married.

I could ask for forgiveness all day long, but it wasn’t helping. It was like an affliction, or a disease I was carrying.

I saw Dabney at the grocery store-in the middle of February, in the middle of the night-her belly about ready to burst. I gasped at the shock of it. Hugely, roundly pregnant, Dabney Kimball, who had been so responsible with the cash register.

She was buying chocolate ice cream. She looked over and saw me, but she did not smile.

“Oh, hi, Genevieve,” she said.

My heart swelled with affection. Dabney was one of the only people who pronounced my name correctly, with four syllables. Ge-ne-vie-eve.

I said, “What’s this? Is the baby…yours and Clen’s?”

She looked at me with flat eyes. “No,” she said. And then she walked away.

Well, one can’t work as a receptionist at a doctor’s office and not hear all the gossip: yes, it was Clendenin’s baby, no, it wasn’t Clendenin’s baby, it was someone else’s, a summer kid’s, then no, it wasn’t the summer kid’s, it was Clendenin’s after all. Probably, maybe Clendenin’s, nobody was sure, and Clendenin himself was gone, off to be a reporter in the Sudan.

When the baby was born, I knew her name and weight within the hour: Agnes Bernadette, seven pounds fourteen ounces, eighteen and a half inches long. But there was no announcement in the paper.

And I thought, How did the sweetest, smartest, most together young woman I had ever met end up like this?

For a baby gift, I special-ordered a tiny pink T-shirt that said NANTUCKET NATIVE in navy letters across the front. An inspired gift, I thought. Dabney sent a card on her monogrammed stationery: Love the T-shirt…so many good memories…thank you for thinking of us. But that was the last I saw or heard from her for a while. At that time, Ted Field was not her doctor.

Then, a few years later, I received an invitation to Dabney’s wedding. She was getting married to an economics professor from Harvard! I was thrilled for her, if a little jealous. I was dying to meet someone suitable-someone single-and get married.

Dabney and Box wed at the Catholic church and held the reception in the backyard of Dabney’s grandmother’s house on North Liberty. It was a wedding exactly like one would expect for Dabney-there were lots of roses and champagne cocktails and tasty hors d’oeuvres and a string quartet played Vivaldi, and Dabney looked beautiful in an ivory lace dress. She was in photographs with everyone, including the caterers and the valet parkers. Agnes wore a little pink dress that matched the color of the roses and I thought, This is a more fitting ending for someone as magnificent as Dabney.

Just before we were to be seated for dinner, Dabney grabbed my arm.

“I’m moving you,” she said.

“What?” I said. I held a place card that said Indigo Table, which Dabney snatched out of my hands.

She said, “I haven’t been a very good or attentive friend the past few years, I know that. But I am going to make up for it now. Follow me. I want you at the Pink Table.”

The Pink Table was up front, at the edge of the dance floor, where the orchestra would soon be playing. I felt like I was on an airplane, getting bumped to first class, or at a hotel being upgraded to an oceanfront suite. I hoped Dabney wasn’t moving me solely because she felt guilty about neglecting our friendship. We had had a great time laughing in the shop about “the Man from Nantucket,” but we had also bonded on serious topics-her mother leaving, her all-consuming romance with Clendenin, my unwanted role as the “other woman.” I loved Dabney, I was always going to love Dabney, no matter where I was seated at her wedding.

Then I saw Brian. Blond guy with nice broad shoulders and little glasses.

“Genevieve,” Dabney said. “This is Box’s second cousin once removed, Brian Lefebvre. He just graduated from Harvard Law School and he’s setting up a practice on the island.”

Lefebvre, I thought. He’s French. Harvard Law School. Moving to Nantucket.

I took a seat next to him and smiled. It all sounded good, but I was wary.

“Nice to meet you, Brian,” I said. “I’m Genevieve Martine.” We shook hands. He seemed very nervous, which I found charming.

Dabney said, “I’ll let you two get acquainted. I have to go smile for the camera.”

I saw Brian reach out and touch Dabney’s arm. I saw him mouth the words thank you, and I busied myself with unfolding the pink linen swan on my plate and placing it neatly in my lap.

He said, “So, Genevieve…” Off to a good start because he pronounced my name perfectly. “What do you do on the island?”

“I’m the office manager for Dr. Ted Field’s family medical practice,” I said.

“Oh,” he said. “And are you…single?”

“Yes,” I said. “Are you?”

He nodded his head emphatically. “Yes,” he said.

He wasn’t wearing a ring, but as I had learned, this meant nothing.

“Really?” I said.

“Well,” he said.

And I thought, Yep, here it comes. He’s separated, but divorce is pending. He’s married, but his wife lives overseas. He just said he was single because he was stunned by my beauty; what he really meant was that he is married.

“I was married,” he said. “A long time ago. Five years ago. It lasted seven months, no kids. I like to think of it as taking a mulligan.”

“A mulligan,” I said. “Like in golf.”

“Right,” he said. “Where you get to start over without being penalized.”

I narrowed my eyes, still skeptical. “But you are divorced, right? Legally divorced?”

“Not only divorced,” he said. “Annulled.” He leaned closer to me and whispered, “I’m Catholic. The annulment was very important to my mother.”

I couldn’t believe it. I said, “You’re telling me the truth, right?”

He said, “Dabney told me to bring my divorce papers along to show you. She told me to bring my annulment signed by the bishop. But I thought she was kidding.”

I laughed mightily at that. “She told you to bring your divorce papers?”

He smiled and blushed and in that moment was just about the most adorable man I had ever laid eyes on.

And then I realized what was happening. We were at the Pink Table. Pink-of course!

Box

He received an e-mail from the Department of the Treasury: the president and the secretary needed him in Washington. He let the e-mail sit unanswered for nearly twelve hours while he decided what to do. Then, somehow, an aide tracked him down at the Connaught, and left a message with the front desk. A girl just out of university handed the message to Box with wide-eyed awe. It probably seemed to her like something from a movie, but to Box the news was merely tiresome. He threw the message away.

But when he awoke in the morning, there was a voice mail on his cell phone from the secretary himself. The president badly needed his consult; he was getting a lot of pressure from Wall Street about interest rates and trade sanctions in North Korea. Things were a mess now, but they might be looking at an even bigger mess, and “we all know how the president feels about his legacy vis-à-vis the deficit.” And, “Please, Box, as a favor to me personally, as a service to your country…”

Box sat on the edge of the bed and exhaled. First-term presidents were worried about reelection; second-term presidents, their legacies.

Dabney hadn’t wanted him to come to London at all. He couldn’t imagine her reaction when he called and asked if he could extend his trip for a week in Washington.

But it was the President of the United States, and the Secretary of the Treasury, and, more important, it was work. As at least one of his students pointed out each semester, most economic theory had no actual bearing on people’s lives. But this would. If Box didn’t go and put his hands on it, someone else would, and he or she would muck it up.

He called Dabney.

“Darling,” he said. He then launched into his careful argument: the Secretary of the Treasury, the nation’s economic policy, another week away, he was sorry. But even with a side trip to Washington, he would be back on Nantucket by the Fourth of July.

Dabney surprised him by saying, “Of course, darling, by all means, if the secretary needs you-go! I’m so proud and thrilled for you. What an honor!”

Box had to agree with her: it was an honor. He was glad that Dabney was back to her supportive and agreeable self. She was far more encouraging than he’d anticipated.

“Thank you, darling,” he said. “For understanding.”

“Don’t be silly,” Dabney said.

Her voice was light, even joyful. She must be feeling much better, he thought.

Box called the secretary back.

Dabney

Nina walked into the office wearing a chic new pair of glasses and announced that she had a date with Dr. Marcus Cobb for the following Wednesday night.

Dabney was nearly speechless. “Who is Dr. Marcus Cobb?” she asked. The name sounded familiar, but Dabney couldn’t place it. It sounded like the name of one of the guys Oprah had elevated to celebrity status-Dr. Phil, Dr. Oz-but that wasn’t right.

“The eye doctor,” Nina said. “He joined the Chamber earlier this week.”

“Right!” Dabney said. She had just processed his application yesterday. “I am losing it!”

“He asked me out when he came into the office,” Nina said.

“Did he?” Dabney said. She was surprised that this was the first she was hearing of it. “Where is he taking you?”

“To the Galley for dinner,” Nina said.

The Galley Beach was not just a good first date, it was the best first date. “I can’t believe it,” Dabney said.

“You can’t believe someone would want to take me out?” Nina said.

“No!” Dabney said. “It’s not that.” She didn’t know how to explain what she was feeling. If Nina was finally going to go on a date, Dabney had wanted to be the one to set her up. She wanted to redeem herself for the Jack Copper debacle. “When do I get to meet him?”

“I’m not sure,” Nina said. Her face held an expression that Dabney couldn’t decipher. “I think maybe I’d like to take this one slow…maybe keep it to myself for a while…would you understand if I didn’t introduce you right away?”

“I promise not to say anything,” Dabney said. “I know I messed up with Jack, Nina. I would love to meet Dr. Marcus Cobb, just get a look at him, and I swear not to say a word about auras or smoke. I swear!”

“Dabney,” Nina said, “I’m asking for space with this one. Okay?”

“Oh,” Dabney said. “Okay.” She tried not to feel hurt. She supposed she should be glad that Nina had taken care of things on her own. Dabney was terribly busy.

She and Clen had been spending nearly every afternoon together-either at the pool or at the beach. Clen preferred the pool. It was less of a hassle and the wind didn’t ruffle his newspapers and there was indoor plumbing, as well as the blender for margaritas. Dabney was becoming accustomed to frozen drinks and homemade sandwiches-one more delectable than the last-delivered to her chaise.

Dabney preferred the beach because to her, the beach was Nantucket, and it returned her to the summers of her youth. Once upon a time, Dabney and Clen had been the King and Queen of Madequecham Beach. Clen was in charge of bringing the keg each Sunday, and Dabney organized the firewood, the charcoal grills, the hot dogs and hamburgers and marinated chicken thighs, the chips and potato salad and brownies. They played horseshoes and touch football and they threw the Frisbee. They listened to the Who and the Boss and Van Morrison. Making love in the green grass, behind the stadium with you, my Brown-Eyed Girl.

They had good, long talks during those afternoons. Clen told her the story of how he’d lost his arm, which was so horrific and disturbing that Dabney couldn’t bear to think about it. She would reach out periodically and stroke the skin of his stump and think of what a brave man he was, what a resilient man.

She signed out on the log nearly every day, writing, errands. Her errands were: Beach. Pool. Sandwiches. Talk. Love.

Love.

Clen had said to her, “Take the words back. I want to hear you take them back.”

She laid her hand on his cheek and looked into the green glen and weak tea of his eyes. “I take them back.”

I don’t love you.

“Tell me you didn’t mean them when you said them.”

She said, “I didn’t mean them when I said them. I have always loved you, Beast, and I always will.”

It was, all of it, something like a state of bliss, but it was coming to an end. They had been granted a week’s reprieve when Box called to say he was going to Washington.

“The president?” Clen had scoffed. “Are you sure he isn’t exaggerating his own importance?”

Box had flaws like everyone else, but exaggerating his own importance wasn’t one of them. Dabney was just grateful for an extra week of freedom.

Agnes, however, was growing more curious by the day. Where were you going today? I saw you driving on the Polpis Road. Why were you not at work? I called the office at three o’clock and they said you’d stepped out. Again. What’s going on, Mom? Is there something you want to tell me? Are you seeing Dr. Donegal again, because if you are, I think that’s great. Nina says you’re out doing errands. What kind of errands? Does Nina know where you’re going?

Dabney yearned to tell her daughter the truth.

Clen said, “Why don’t you?”

Maybe if she’d been having an affair with Dr. Marcus Cobb, or a young waiter from the Boarding House, she would have confided in her daughter. But Clendenin Hughes was a nuclear bomb.

A week after Agnes turned sixteen, Dabney had started teaching Agnes to drive in the parking lot of Surfside Beach. They went in the evenings after dinner, just the two of them, and Dabney rode shotgun and offered tips she thought might be helpful. They drove Dabney’s Mustang, which had been an impulse buy after her Camaro died. She’d had the Mustang for only eighteen months total (buying a Ford had been a mistake), but the car would have great importance to her because in it she had told Agnes the truth.

Dabney didn’t remember her exact words. What would she have said?

Honey, sweetheart, darling…Daddy-Box-isn’t your biological father. Your biological father is a man named Clendenin Hughes.

It had gone something like that.

He lives in Asia now. He left the country before I discovered I was pregnant and it was impossible for him to get back. It would have been far easier for me to go over there, but I couldn’t go, and so I told him to please let me raise you on my own. I’m not explaining this well, darling, it was very complicated.

Clendenin Hughes. He lives in Thailand now, I think, or Vietnam.

All Dabney could remember was Agnes’s high-pitched, hysterical screaming like Dabney was stabbing her in the eye with a fork.

She had waited too long. Dr. Donegal had said thirteen. Box had wanted her to know at age ten.

But Dabney was Agnes’s mother; Dabney was in charge of what her daughter knew, and when.

Dabney hadn’t wanted Agnes to know at all, ever.

What did it matter? Really, what? Box had been a good father. He had been with Agnes since before lasting memory. Why mess up Agnes’s beautiful head with information she would never, ever need?

Because it was the truth. Because it was blood. Dabney and Box had done a lot of, if not actual lying, then sidestepping of the truth. Agnes had asked why she looked nothing like Box and Box had said, “Human genetics are capricious, my pet.” Agnes had asked Dabney about the photographs of her and Clen together in the yearbook. This was your boyfriend, Mom? Yes, I suppose it was. Whatever happened to him? Oh, he’s long gone.

Agnes had never seen her birth certificate. Clen’s name wasn’t on it. Dabney wouldn’t allow it; she’d been too freshly wounded, too consumed with baffling emotion. Dr. Benton, who was the doctor on Nantucket before Ted Field, had done the delivery and he had every idea who the father was, but Dabney looked him dead in the eye and said she had no idea. She said she had slept with a lot of boys the preceding summer.

On the line for father, it said: unknown.

Dabney had decided to confess on Agnes’s sixteenth birthday because of the birth certificate. Agnes needed a copy to apply to a summer study program abroad, and whereas Dabney had been able to handle the birth certificate up until that point-for school registration, Little League, etc.-now it was impossible to keep it out of Agnes’s hands. Agnes could have taken five dollars to the registrar at any moment and gotten a copy herself.

The screaming. You lied to me. You lied about my very being. How can I trust anything you say ever again? How do I know you’re even my mother? I wish you weren’t. I wish you weren’t my mother.

Dabney was prepared for all this. Dr. Donegal had told her to expect it. Of course, it was one thing to know it was coming and another to actually experience it. Dabney was glad she had chosen to break the news while she was still in the driver’s seat of the Mustang. Agnes might have floored it-straight over the sand and into the ocean.

I wish you weren’t my mother.

Other girls Agnes’s age threw out lines like that all the time, Dabney knew, but Agnes never had. Dabney wouldn’t lie: it hurt, and it hurt worse because Agnes had every right to be angry. Dabney had withheld pertinent information, perhaps the most pertinent. Dabney had lied to her about her very being. Dabney had misjudged the timing. She had wholeheartedly disagreed with Box about telling Agnes at ten. What ten-year-old was mature enough to understand paternity? Agnes had only just learned what sex was. And at thirteen, Agnes had been going through puberty-she got her period, she started shaving her legs, her face broke out-no, Dabney wasn’t going to add to her worries by telling her about Clen.

At sixteen, Agnes was mature, responsible, intelligent, and calm. Dabney had thought she would take the news in stride. It explained why there were no pictures of Box with Agnes as a baby, and why they shared no physical characteristics.

But Agnes was hysterical. She was beyond angry, beyond upset. Dabney had driven from the Surfside Beach parking lot to their house on Charter Street while Agnes wailed. The windows of the Mustang were rolled up, but Dabney was still convinced that everyone on the island could hear.

When they reached the house, Agnes called Box in Cambridge. Dabney had thought that Agnes would be equally upset at Box for keeping the secret-but no. Agnes merely wanted Box’s confirmation that what Dabney had said was true (as if Dabney would lie about something like that?), and finding it so, she cried and cried, allowing Box, and only Box, to console her.

To Agnes, Dabney was the liar, the slut, the enemy. Agnes didn’t speak to Dabney for three weeks, and even after that, things were strained.

A mother first, a mother forever. Dabney had lived by these words, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t made mistakes. She had made a mistake in not telling Agnes sooner. I’m sorry, darling!

Box wasn’t happy with Dabney, either. She had suffered through a great big dose of I told you so.

Dabney wondered if she should have waited until Agnes was eighteen, or twenty-one. Maybe her mistake wasn’t in waiting too long but in not waiting long enough. Maybe she should have waited until Agnes had enough experience to realize that life was a complicated mess and you could count on being hurt the worst by the person you loved the most.

However, in the weeks following the revelation, she noticed that Agnes expressed curiosity about Clendenin Hughes. Dabney’s yearbooks ended up on the floor of Agnes’s bedroom. Agnes googled Clen on the family computer; she brought up a list of his articles and may even have read a few. And then Dabney found a letter addressed to Clen, care of the New York Times. It was lying on top of Agnes’s math textbook, in plain sight, as if Agnes had wanted Dabney to see it. More likely, it had been left there as a form of torture.

Dabney had wanted few things in life as much as she had wanted to read that letter.

Then, as it always did, summer arrived and Agnes attended her program in France, and she came home weeks later with a penchant for silk scarves at the neck, and for calling Dabney “Maman,” and a ferocious new love of macarons. She brought Dabney the foolproof baguette recipe, and mother and daughter baked bread together and ate it with sweet butter and sea salt-and once, magically, the addition of an ounce of dark chocolate-and everything pretty much went back to normal. Dabney was Mom, Box was Dad, and Clen’s name wasn’t mentioned again. Life went on.

But Dabney wasn’t naive. She knew she had done some real damage and inflicted some real hurt, just as her own mother had when she disappeared for good, leaving Dabney in the care of May, the Irish chambermaid. Dabney feared that perhaps her mothering was flawed and doomed because she had received such poor mothering herself.

But no-no excuses. Dabney had never felt sorry for herself; she was her own person. She had made a decision, right or wrong. We all make choices.

But to tell Agnes that Dabney was now in love with Clendenin Hughes, her biological father, and having an affair with him?

We all make choices?

No.

Dabney woke up in the morning unable to get out of bed. She couldn’t describe it. There was pain…everywhere.

Agnes said, “Do you want me to call Dr. Field?”

“No,” Dabney said. It was not stress, or guilt. She was lovesick. “Just call Nina, please, and draw the shades.” The sun was giving Dabney a headache; she wanted the bedroom dark. It was such a sin, Dabney wanted to cry, but there was no option. Her body felt invaded by pain, colonized by pain.

Agnes brought a glass of ice water and two pieces of buttered toast. The toast would never be eaten.

“I called Nina and told her you were sick,” Agnes said. “Can I bring you anything else?”

“Just please don’t tell Daddy,” Dabney said. “I don’t want him to worry.”

The following day, Dabney woke up feeling fine. A little flannel-mouthed, maybe, but otherwise fine. So maybe not lovesick, maybe a twenty-four-hour bug.

“We’re going to dinner tonight at the Boarding House,” Dabney said. “Put on something pretty.”

Agnes said, “You just feel sorry for me because CJ canceled. I’m going to stay home and mope. Eat Oreos from the bag, watch bad TV.”

“Reservation at seven o’clock,” Dabney said. “I’ll meet you at the restaurant, though, because I have to run some errands.”

“What errands?” Agnes said.

“Wear something pretty!” Dabney said.

Agnes

When she got to dinner at the Boarding House, Dabney was already waiting at the usual table on the patio, but there was a third chair added, and Riley Alsopp was sitting in it.

Dabney beamed as Agnes approached. “There she is!” she said.

Riley Alsopp stood up. He was wearing a shirt and tie, khaki pants, and flip-flops. He grinned when he saw her. “Hey, Agnes!”

Agnes thought, My mother is so obvious.

Dabney excused herself before dessert. “You two stay and enjoy,” she said. “I’m going back to the house. I’m still not feeling a hundred percent.” She dropped her napkin onto her empty plate. She had devoured her dinner. “The bill is all paid, Riley. My husband insists on a house account. He would eat here breakfast, lunch, and dinner seven days a week if he could. Anyway, stay and have an after-dinner drink, please, or another beer, whatever you want.” Dabney was busy gathering up her Bermuda bag and her cardigan, trying to beat a quick yet organic-seeming retreat so that Agnes and Riley could be alone. Agnes had seen her mother do it again and again and again.

Agnes pitched forward in her seat. As a defense against the matchmaking, Agnes had drunk too many glasses of Shiraz. “You know she’s trying to set us up, right?”

Riley exhaled in a long stream. “Right.”

“She gets an idea in her head,” Agnes said.

“Does she see something?” Riley said. “I mean, has she told you if she’s seen…if we’re like…pink or whatever?”

Agnes smiled at him. Pink, rosy, she and Riley Alsopp? She briefly imagined what being in a relationship with Riley would be like, and the first word that came to her mind was easy. Did she want easy? She couldn’t believe she was thinking this way. She was engaged to CJ, and just because she was angry with him did not mean she could pair off with someone else, even cute, easy Riley Alsopp. She said, “How was your date with Celerie?”

“Unequivocal disaster. She got really drunk and threw up.”

Agnes said, “Jeez, I might be next. I’ve had a lot of wine.”

Riley said, “It wasn’t her drinking or puking that was the problem. There was just a disconnect. Lack of chemistry. On my end, anyway. The problem is that I have to sit next to her all day long and I can tell she’s just waiting for me to ask her out again.”

“But you’re not going to?”

“I’m not going to.”

Agnes grabbed his hand. “Let’s follow my mother.”

“What?”

She pulled him up. “We’re going to follow my mother. She’s keeping a secret.”

Riley trailed Agnes out of the restaurant and onto the street. “What kind of secret?”

“She goes somewhere. She’s hiding something. That night, when she was supposed to be at Business After Hours…?”

“Yeah,” Riley said. “Where was she?”

“She came home at ten o’clock. She wouldn’t tell me where she’d been.”

Agnes hurried along Federal Street, then turned up Main. She saw Dabney across the street, half a block ahead of them.

“I bet you a million bucks when she gets to our house, she climbs into the Impala and drives off.”

“You think?”

“We’re going to follow her,” Agnes said. “In my Prius.”

“You drive a Prius?” Riley asked. “How do you like it?”

Agnes rolled her eyes. Everyone asked her that. “It’s fine. Great on gas.”

In Agnes’s Prius, they stalked Dabney up Main to Fair, and then up Fair to Charter. On Charter, Agnes held Riley back. They couldn’t get too close to the house.

“I bet she gets right into the car,” Agnes whispered.

Dabney did not get into the Impala. She opened the gate and entered the house through the side door. Agnes thought perhaps she’d gone to grab her keys. She waited. The light came on in Dabney’s bedroom.

Agnes suddenly became aware that she and Riley were holding hands-like, really holding hands, with their fingers entwined. Riley had warm, strong, dentist’s hands.

Riley stroked Agnes’s thumb with his thumb.

Agnes pulled her hand away. If CJ could see them right now, Agnes thought, he would have hired a hit man. She shivered, remembering what had happened with her hair. She said, “Riley, I’m engaged. To be married.”

Riley cleared his throat. “I know,” he said. And then in a softer, sadder voice: “I’m sorry.”

The light in Dabney’s bedroom went out. Agnes held her breath, certain that her mother would emerge. But she didn’t. The house and the street were quiet. The mystery remained unsolved.

Agnes got out of her car and walked toward the house. She felt deflated. No one in her life was cooperating. “Good night, Riley,” she said.

Clendenin

The cleaning lady for the house he was caretaking, Irene Scarpilo, gave her notice. Irene’s daughter was pregnant with twins; Irene was moving to Plymouth to be closer to her.

“I need a new cleaning lady,” Clen said to Dabney.

“Consider it done,” Dabney said.

Clen squeezed her. They were sitting side by side on the first point of Coatue. They had driven out in the economist’s beat-up Wagoneer. They were eating lobster rolls that Dabney had prepared. The sandwiches were delicious and the day was sparkling, but they were both in a somber mood. The economist was returning that evening.

“What are you doing for the Fourth?” Dabney asked.

“I have a party,” Clen said.

“Really?” Dabney said. She sounded surprised-and for good reason. Clen hadn’t been anywhere or seen anyone but Dabney since he’d been back.

Elizabeth Jennings had invited Clen to her annual bash on the Cliff. Elizabeth and her husband, Mingus, had been in Vietnam with Clen for a half-dozen years or so before Mingus died. Mingus had been the Washington Post bureau chief, and Elizabeth had been the consummate ex-pat wife. She had gone along for every adventure, and had thrown parties for homesick Americans at their flat in the French Quarter of Hanoi. Clen had shared Thanksgiving with the Jenningses for a number of years. Somehow, Elizabeth had always gotten her hands on a turkey. Now, Elizabeth was back in the States, living in Georgetown, and on Nantucket in the summer.

“Whose party?” Dabney asked.

Clen thought she sounded jealous.

“Elizabeth Jennings? She lives on the Cliff?”

“Oh my God,” Dabney said.

“You’re going.”

“We’re going. Elizabeth is a board member of the Chamber, and we’ve gone to her party for the past three years. Box is coming home from Washington especially for it.”

How Clen loathed the use of the pronoun we when it pertained to Dabney and the economist.

“How do you know Elizabeth?” Dabney asked.

“I knew her husband overseas.” Clen paused, thinking it was probably best to tread lightly. “Mingus and I worked together in Saigon first, and then Hanoi. He was my partner in crime.”

“Sounds dangerous,” Dabney said.

“Did you ever know Mingus?” Clen asked.

“No. I’ve only known Elizabeth a few years, since she bought the house. She set out to meet everyone who was anyone on Nantucket. She’s a bit of a social climber, I think.”

“Oh,” Clen said. He had always been fond of Elizabeth. Clen and Mi Linh and Elizabeth and Mingus had vacationed together in Hoi An, among the three-hundred-year-old Chinese buildings carved from teak, with a thousand colored paper lanterns strung across the cobblestoned streets. They used to take café au lait on the terrace at the Cargo Club, and sometimes leisurely boat rides down the river in the evenings. Hoi An was a magical place. Elizabeth would photograph the Vietnamese children and then give out pencils and candy and bubble gum. Keeping the Vietnamese dentists in business, Mingus used to say. It was hard for Clen to reconcile the woman he had known in Vietnam to the woman who now hosted parties at her summer house on Cliff Road. It was like she had an Eastern and a Western persona. He supposed the same was true of him.

“If you and the economist are going,” Clen said, “then I should probably stay home.”

“Don’t be silly,” Dabney said.

“I’m not being silly,” Clen said. “We can’t all go.”

Dabney did not refute this.

But when the afternoon of the Fourth rolled around, Clen decided he would go to the party after all. He had gotten used to seeing Dabney every day, but he hadn’t seen her the day before and he wouldn’t see her the day after, or the day after that. Maybe Sunday, she’d said, if she could get away.

He was going to Elizabeth Jennings’s house because he missed Dabney and wanted to put his eyes on her.

He wore his blue seersucker suit, which he’d had custom-tailored in Hanoi in the months after he’d won the Pulitzer. One sleeve of the jacket hung limp as an air sock on a still day. Clen didn’t like parties because some drunk was always sure to ask about his arm.

Khmer Rouge, he would say. Machete.

The drunk’s eyes would pop. Really?

Yeah. Boring story.

The party started in the front yard, where everyone lined up to be photographed on the front porch by Elizabeth. She no longer used the old Leica she’d had in Vietnam; now, it was something fancy and digital.

The last thing in the world he wanted was to have his picture taken. He looked to the left and the right, wondering if he could skirt Elizabeth and her camera and enter the house from the side door. He wanted to get to the bar. Elizabeth, being a Washington hostess and the wife of a prominent journalist, would have good scotch.

Clen looked up in time to see Dabney and the economist smile for Elizabeth’s camera. Clen felt a wave of some nasty emotional cocktail-jealousy, anger, sorrow, longing. There they were together, a couple. Dabney was wearing a red silk halter dress that wasn’t like anything he’d ever seen her in. She had on red high heels. The dress and shoes were pretty and stylish, but she didn’t look like Dabney. She was, however, wearing pearls, and a navy headband with white stars, and she was carrying her Bermuda bag. The economist looked old-the white hair, the glasses, the double-breasted navy blazer as though he were the commodore of the Yacht Club (Was he the commodore? Clen wondered), the look of smug superiority because he had just spent the last week behind closed doors with the president and the Treasury secretary.

You’re going to tell him, right? Clen had asked.

Yes, she had said. Once he gets back. Once he gets back and settled in. I’m going to tell him. I have to tell him.

After the photo was taken, the economist held the door open for Dabney, and she disappeared inside.

Clen thought to go home, but he couldn’t leave her.

Box

He was impossible to miss-big, tall, bearded fellow with only one arm. Elizabeth Jennings had been leading him around all night, showing him off, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, Clendenin Hughes. They had known each other in Vietnam, Elizabeth trilled. Can you imagine? Then she went on to hit the Clendenin Hughes highlights: the series about the Khmer Rouge, the tyranny in Myanmar, the best coverage of the caning of Michael Fay, the Thaksin debacle in Bangkok.

Box turned away. Elizabeth Jennings had no idea that Hughes had impregnated Dabney. If she had known this, she would never have invited all three of them to this party.

Dabney was talking to the Massachusetts congressman (D) by the raw bar. The guy was a windbag, but he had worked with Dabney on keeping chain retailers off Nantucket, and she was forever indebted, and thus had to listen to him detail his woes with the Steamship Authority. Box tried to swoop in to rescue her, in the process helping himself to a few oysters. Good food and better wine here at Elizabeth’s. And a glorious view across Nantucket Sound. It was a clear night, ideal for the fireworks. The secretary had tried to get Box to stay in D.C. and attend the celebration on the Mall, but Box found that he was happy to be on Nantucket.

He gave up on Dabney. He feared she might do the sorority bump-and-roll-hand Box over to the tedious congressman and disappear into the crowd.

Box fixed himself a plate of fried chicken and ribs and coleslaw and corn salad and then wandered into the living room. Cocktail parties weren’t really his thing anymore; they were too much work. People who knew who he was approached him with an agenda, and people who didn’t know who he was tended to bore him. Dabney thought him a terrible snob, but he was sixty-two years old and had, quite frankly, earned the right.

He had tried to get Agnes to come to the party; the evening would have been far superior with her there, besides which he had barely seen her since he’d been back. But she had been headed to Jetties Beach to watch the fireworks with some fellow who worked for Dabney at the Chamber. Box wondered aloud if this was a date-Agnes seemed to be going to a lot of trouble making a picnic-and he also wondered what had happened to CJ. Agnes said, “No, Daddy, not a date, we’re just friends, and Celerie is coming, too. I’m actually kind of chaperoning. It’s a long story.”

Box didn’t like long stories, especially not those related to scheming romance. That was Dabney’s territory.

CJ, Agnes said, was spending the holiday in a luxury box at Yankee Stadium. He had wanted Agnes to come down to the city, but Agnes had work the next day, so that wasn’t really practical, and Box agreed.

“Have fun,” he said. And Agnes gave him an extra-long hug and said, “Mom and I are so glad you’re home. We missed you so much.”

Box wondered about this.

He was sipping a very nice Louis Jadot Chardonnay when Clendenin Hughes walked into the room with a full tumbler of scotch. Hughes saw Box and stopped short. He executed a half turn, as if to leave the room. Box couldn’t blame him, but he didn’t want to let Hughes escape. This was too rich an opportunity.

“Excuse me!” Box called out. He stood. “Mr. Hughes?”

Despite his size-he had at least six inches on Box-Hughes looked very young at that moment. Young and vulnerable, and of course he had only the one arm. Box reminded himself to proceed civilly.

“Professor,” Hughes said. At least he wasn’t pretending not to know who Box was.

“Call me Box,” Box said. “Please.” He reached out to shake hands, but Hughes was holding his drink, so Box awkwardly retracted his hand.

Hughes said, “Nice party.”

“Yes, Elizabeth always does a beautiful job,” Box said. “Do you know her well?”

“I do, actually. Her husband and I worked together in Asia for six years. I think I can claim to be the only man at this party who has seen Elizabeth ride an elephant.”

“I’m sure you’re right about that,” Box said. “And you, you’re back on the island permanently? Staying here?”

“Permanence is hard to commit to,” Hughes said. “But this is home. I grew up here.”

“Yes,” Box said. “Of course, that’s right.”

Hughes rattled the ice in his glass. “And how do you know Elizabeth? From Washington?”

“No,” Box said. “From here on island. I live here half the year, and the other half in Cambridge. I still teach a full course load at Harvard.”

“I’m aware,” Hughes said.

“You’ve done your investigative work, then,” Box said. “You’re a newspaperman, so I can hardly be surprised.”

“I don’t wield nearly the influence that you do,” Hughes said. “Behind closed doors with the President of the United States? I could only dream of that.”

Box stared at Hughes. “You heard I was with the president? You…spoke to Dabney, then?”

Hughes rattled his ice again. It was a tell; he was nervous. “Yes,” he said. “I bumped into Dabney on Main Street and she filled me in.” Somehow his drink had disappeared. “Well, anyway, I should get some food before the Glenfiddich hits bottom. Good to see you…”

“Wait,” Box said. “You bumped into Dabney on Main Street? She didn’t mention that to me.”

“It was no big deal,” Hughes said. “A casual run-in on the street.”

“You and Dabney used to be quite close,” Box said.

“Yes, quite,” Hughes said. “I’m sorry if that bothers you. Everyone has a past.”

Box didn’t know what to do with the rage that was consuming him. It was jealousy, he realized. He was insanely, criminally jealous of this man in front of him, the man who had broken Dabney’s heart and then absconded with the fragments. Box and Dabney had been married twenty-four years and those years had been good ones for both of them. They had raised a daughter, created a lovely home, and pursued fruitful careers. Dabney had given Box her genuine smile and her keen intellect and her sweet disposition and her warm body-but he had never had her heart.

Because this man had it.

Box gritted his teeth, and reminded himself to proceed civilly. “I understand chance meetings on the street,” he said. “But I would appreciate it if, from now on, you would give my wife a wide berth. It can’t be easy for her to have you back on this island.”

Hughes said, “I’m sorry, I don’t see that it’s any of your business.”

“No, I’m sorry,” Box said. “It is my business. Dabney is my wife.”

Hughes set his glass down on a side console that was probably an antique and should not be seeing a wet glass without a coaster. Box was considerate this way, but Mr. Hughes, of course, was not. Mr. Hughes was a boor and a philistine and didn’t know the first rule for caring for fine things.

Hughes said, “I realize you are currently married to Dabney, Professor. But that doesn’t give you the right to comment on my relationship with her.”

“You caused her a great deal of pain,” Box said.

“What do you know about it?” Hughes asked. “Were you here when it happened? No, you were not. You aren’t qualified to speak on the subject of my shared past with her, sir.”

The “sir” hit Box sideways, spoken as it was with such contempt. “I raised your daughter.”

Hughes pressed his lips together but said nothing. Box took a step closer, his fists clenched.

“I drove her to ballet class, I took pictures of her before the prom, I paid for her college education.”

Hughes nodded. “Yes. Yes, you did.”

But Box wanted more than just an acknowledgment of the fact. He wanted a thank-you, or a grand apology, preferably both and preferably with some fucking humility. Box couldn’t remember ever being this angry before. What reason would he ever have had-an irreverent student? A frustrating department meeting? “She is mine,” Box said. “And Dabney is mine.”

“You sound pretty sure about that,” Hughes said.

Before Box knew what he was doing, he rushed Hughes and swung at him, meaning to hit him in the jaw but instead catching him under the clavicle. The punch hurt Box’s fist and it threw Hughes off balance. Hughes fell into the side console, toppling a lamp and knocking his glass to the floor, where it shattered.

“Really?” Hughes said. He rubbed the spot where Box’s punch had landed. “You want to fight? I will kill you, and I will do it with one arm.”

Box took a stutter step back. He had no doubt that Hughes could beat him bloody and blind with only one arm. He had started something he couldn’t finish-a fistfight in Elizabeth Jennings’s living room.

“Please,” he said, raising both his palms. “I’m sorry.”

“You hit me,” Hughes said. “And now you’re sorry.”

“Clen!” Dabney wobbled into the room, unsteady on her heels. “What are you doing?” Then she saw Box. “Honey?” She looked rapidly between them. “What are you two doing?” She bent over to pick up pieces of broken glass off the floor.

Box, with a similar instinct for propriety, righted the lamp. He said, “Darling, let me do that. You’ll cut yourself.”

Hughes said, “Your husband punched me.”

“Clen,” she said.

“He punched me, Cupe. He started it.”

Dabney looked at Hughes with the shards of glass in her upturned palm. “Go enjoy the party,” she said. “Please. We’ll get this.”

“Dabney.”

“We’ll get this,” she said. “Go.”

“I’m going home,” Hughes said.

Box was struck by the way the two of them spoke to each other. He was no expert on love or romance; he didn’t claim to have any special emotional insight. But he could tell just from hearing that brief exchange that they shared an intimacy. It sounded like they talked every day.

“No,” Box said. “I’ll go.”

Agnes

Riley had called with a favor.

Celerie had asked Riley to go with her to the fireworks at Jetties Beach. She had asked him in the office, with both Dabney and Nina listening, and thus he hadn’t been able to make up an excuse to turn her down. He couldn’t lie in front of Dabney and Nina.

Riley said to Agnes, “Listen, I need you to come with us. Please.”

“No,” Agnes said. “No way. The other night, I think you got the wrong idea…”

“I know you’re engaged,” Riley said. “It didn’t sink in before because you don’t wear a ring, and then your mother told me your fiancé canceled on the weekend…”

“My mother told you that? Of course she did.”

“But let’s be friends,” Riley said. “Buddies, pals, okay? That’s allowed, right?”

“That’s allowed,” Agnes said, although this wasn’t true. CJ was the most jealous man alive. Agnes had noticed this on their third date. They were having dinner at Peter Luger, and Agnes had bantered with their waiter. The next thing she knew, CJ was up out of his chair, asking the maître d’ to move them to another section of the restaurant.

Then there was the incident with Wilder from work. Wilder was the outreach coordinator at the Boys & Girls Club, and from time to time he and Agnes would go for a beer at the Dubliner. Once, CJ showed up at the Dubliner unannounced, with one of his clients in tow-a linebacker for the Washington Redskins-at the exact moment that Wilder was tugging on the ends of Agnes’s hair, in an imitation of Vladimir, the most annoying child at the club. When Wilder explained to CJ and the linebacker-a man who was the size of a tree and covered in tattoos-why he was pulling Agnes’s hair, CJ had laughed maniacally and asked him to do it again. We want to see you do it again, don’t we, Morris? Morris had grunted. Go ahead, CJ said, pull my girl’s hair again. Wilder had excused himself for the men’s room, then left the bar. The next day, CJ had taken Agnes to Bumble + Bumble, and he sat and watched as Agnes donated thirteen inches of her thick brown hair to Locks of Love.

Many things about this memory disturbed Agnes. She had never asked CJ how he knew she was at the Dubliner in the first place.

Agnes thought she would most likely never have a good male friend again, so she might as well enjoy Riley’s companionship this summer. Besides, she didn’t have any plans for the Fourth. Her parents were going out.

Agnes packed a picnic for three, following Dabney’s suggested menu and recipes: hero sandwiches, dilled potato salad, cherry tomatoes stuffed with guacamole, blueberries and raspberries with vanilla-bean custard. Beer, a bottle of champagne, cheese straws, spicy nuts.

So far this summer, Agnes had gained five pounds.

Riley brought his guitar. Celerie was in charge of blankets, trash bag, plastic cups, bottle opener, all paper products, and sparklers.

It wasn’t as bad as Agnes had expected. She had been certain it would be awkward-Celerie wanted a date with Riley and Riley wanted a date with Agnes. For this reason, Agnes had worn her engagement ring. The diamond was too big to be ignored. Celerie noticed it immediately, and Agnes sensed not only her relief-Agnes wasn’t a threat if she was engaged-but her enthusiasm.

“Your mother didn’t tell me you were getting married!” Celerie said, in her most upbeat cheerleader voice. “Will you get married on Nantucket?”

“Yes,” said Agnes. “At Saint Mary’s. Reception at the Yacht Club.”

“I want to get married on Nantucket,” Celerie said. She bobbed her head.

Celerie was all decked out in red, white, and blue. She wore red denim shorts and a blue-and-white-striped T-shirt and red flip-flops, and-this Agnes found both touching and strange-she had pushed her blond hair back with a navy grosgrain headband with white stars, the exact headband Dabney wore tonight.

Celerie had bought the two headbands so that she and Dabney might match.

Riley said nothing during this exchange. He was trying to lead them through the crowd while carrying his guitar case and the cooler with the drinks.

Celerie said, “Is your fiancé a nice guy?”

Agnes thought Celerie sounded younger than twenty-two. What kind of question was that? Of course he was a nice guy, otherwise Agnes wouldn’t be marrying him.

Agnes nodded, and they walked along.

But then it struck Agnes that nice wasn’t the first word that came to mind when describing CJ, and he might not have seemed nice even by Celerie’s midwestern standards. CJ was confident and magnetic. He knew what he wanted, he had the world on a string, he could fix any problem-or so it had seemed to Agnes. In her daily workday, which involved a lot of chaos, CJ was stability. And life with him was exciting-the restaurants, the celebrities and professional athletes, the money, the perks, the parties. The glamour of life with CJ was intoxicating. Agnes often wondered how his ex-wife, Annabelle Pippin, had walked away from all that. It must have been like detoxing from a drug.

Agnes thought about what Manny Partida had said: I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t tell you.

CJ would never be physical with Agnes, no more physical than asking her to cut her hair, although it was true that CJ required more maintenance than a litter of shar-pei puppies. And he liked to have his way.

They found a good place in the sand on Jetties Beach and set up camp. There were couples and families all around them-everyone happy and sunburned and hungry. Agnes took great relief at plopping down on the blanket, forming a triangle with Celerie and Riley, coolers in the middle. She opened a beer for Riley and poured champagne for herself and Celerie.

Celerie said, “We should have a cheers. Toast the birth of our nation.”

Agnes loved the girl’s earnestness. She held up her plastic cup. “Cheers!”

They all touched glasses. Celerie smiled at Riley and said, “I’m being good tonight!”

And Riley said, “Be sure to eat!”

Agnes pulled out the cheese straws and the spicy nuts, and Riley removed his guitar from its case and began strumming. Agnes gazed up at the Cliff. Her parents were up there at a party, being proper adults. Dabney wouldn’t pull any of her crazy disappearing acts now that Box was home.

Agnes fiddled with her ring. It was loose; she needed to get it sized. CJ didn’t know it was loose, because when he presented it to her, Agnes kept proclaiming how perfect it was. She should have told him it was loose, and she should have told him the diamond was too big. She could never, ever wear it and feel safe in the neighborhood where she worked. But that would, inevitably, lead to CJ’s telling her she shouldn’t be working in that neighborhood. After they were married, he wanted her to quit.

The sun was going down. Agnes drank her champagne. Riley was playing “Good Riddance,” by Green Day, and the people around them were singing.

I hope you have the time of your life.

CJ was at Yankee Stadium, watching a double header against the Angels that would end with fireworks. Agnes had been in the luxury box before, and it was fabulous. CJ would be drinking a Dirty Goose, eating sparingly off the tray of crudités (unless he was cheating, as Agnes was; she hoped he was stuffing his face with baked Brie), and schmoozing with the players’ wives and members of the Steinbrenner family.

She felt a pang of longing for him and wished for a second that she were at Yankee Stadium. But then she corrected. The Bronx with CJ was fun, but it wasn’t Nantucket.

Riley played “Only the Good Die Young,” and even more people sang along. It was turning into a regular concert. Requests came in-“Country Road” and then “Sweet Home Alabama.” Agnes closed her eyes and listened to the voices melding around her. Her feet were buried in the sand and the champagne had warmed the very center of her. She was conscious of being alive and being present: a clear night, a golden beach, good food-and now, thanks to Riley, their favorite songs, to which they knew all the words.

“‘High Hopes!’” Celerie called out.

Of course, Agnes thought.

She wasn’t sure when she had lost the ring, but if she had to guess, it had probably fallen off while she was serving up the picnic-cutting the hero sandwich or scooping the potato salad. All Agnes knew was that as she was walking off the beach in a stream of humanity-everyone commenting on how the fireworks this year had been better than ever-she noticed the ring was no longer on her finger. At that instant it felt like her heart thudded down between her feet. She stopped in her tracks; the people behind her were not pleased.

“Oh, God,” she said.

“What?” Riley said. He was ambling alongside her while Celerie forged ahead. Dealing with crowds was a particular skill of hers, as she had spent a good part of her college years negotiating the Humphrey Metrodome.

My ring, Agnes mouthed. She literally couldn’t bring herself to say the words. They were too awful. She tried to blink herself back five or six hours to the moment when she decided that wearing the ring was a good idea. No, it had not been a good idea. She should have left it at home, in its box on her dresser.

“Your ring?” Riley said.

“It’s gone,” Agnes said.

Celerie was lost to them up ahead when Agnes and Riley decided to go back to where they had been sitting to try to find the ring. It was dark, and the sand was cold and littered with trash. Agnes eyed the wide swath of Jetties Beach. Who could say for sure which six square feet they had occupied? With all the people walking past, the ring would be buried.

Agnes felt nauseated. It was gone.

She stopped walking. Even though the cooler and picnic basket were lighter now, her arms ached.

“Riley,” she said, “let’s just go. We’re never going to find it.”

He had such a despondent look on his face, Agnes would have thought the ring had been given to him by his fiancée who was a fancy New York sports agent.

“We have to look,” he said. “We have to try.”

Agnes agreed, though she thought it was pointless. They did have to try. The ring was expensive, and beyond that, it was invaluable. It could be replaced, she supposed, in that she could buy another three-carat Tiffany diamond in a platinum setting, but it wouldn’t be the same ring, and CJ would know.

This was awful. Agnes could barely breathe. Riley stood above her, shining the light of his cell phone on the sand.

He said, “Celerie is calling. Should I see if she wants to help us?”

Agnes picked up handful after handful of sand, visualizing the ring. Celerie would bring a certain energy to the search, but right now, Agnes wasn’t sure she could handle another person’s well-intentioned concern.

“Can you just tell her we’ll meet her later?” Agnes said. Celerie had been keen on heading to the Chicken Box to meet up with her roommate. “You can go, Riley. You do not have to stay here with me. This is my fault. I am such an idiot!” Agnes shouted this last word at the night sky, enormous and star-filled above them. This whole big, wide world, this beach with its infinite grains of sand, one ring-a classic diamond solitaire, the most beautiful thing she could ever have hoped to own.

“I’m not going to leave you,” Riley said. He let Celerie’s call go to voice mail.

Half a dozen times, Agnes thought to give up the search, but then as soon as she was ready to dust off and walk dejectedly home, she thought, What if it’s in the next handful? Or the handful after that?

The party up on the Cliff was still raging, although Agnes presumed her parents had left by now. Box didn’t like to stay out past ten.

What would they say when she told them she had lost the ring?

Riley said, “We can come back early tomorrow morning with my father’s metal detector.”

This was the third time he’d suggested the morning, and the metal detector. He knew the search was fruitless.

“You can leave,” Agnes said, also for the third time.

“Agnes…”

“What?” she snapped. She flipped over onto her butt and regarded Riley, who was dutifully holding up the incandescent rectangle of his phone.

He plopped onto the sand next to her and put one of his strong, warm, dentist’s hands on her knee. “Listen,” he said. “I’m sorry about the ring.”

“CJ is going to kill me,” Agnes said.

“He might be upset,” Riley said. “But I’ll point out, it’s just a thing. A precious, valuable thing, I know. But still only a thing.”

Agnes would never be able to summon the courage to tell CJ she’d lost it, which meant that she would have to try to replace it without his knowing. How would she ever come up with the money? She made sixty-eight thousand dollars a year at her job, and she had eleven thousand dollars in savings. She could spend her savings on another ring and pay the rest off in installments, she supposed. Or she could go to her parents for the money. Mommy, Dad, I need twenty-five thousand dollars in order to buy a new engagement ring, and yes, I do know that’s as much as a semester’s tuition, room and board at Dartmouth, but if I don’t replace the ring to its exact specifications, CJ will break up with me.

She could never, ever ask her parents for the money. Maybe Box alone? He liked CJ a lot.

But no.

She had to find it. She wished it had been locked onto her finger, like her Cartier love bracelet.

She searched, handful after handful of sand, inch after inch of beach. She plucked out every pebble, stone, and shell.

“We can come back in the morning,” Riley said. Time number four. “With the metal detector.”

“I can’t leave,” she said. “The tide. What if the tide washes it away?”

“The tide doesn’t come up this far,” Riley said.

Agnes started to cry. The ring was gone. CJ would never forgive her. She would be placed in a category with Annabelle Pippin, a woman who had needlessly wasted his money. Manny Partida had said that CJ lost his temper with Annabelle because she had bid too high on an auction item without his permission-these last three words being operative. It wasn’t that CJ couldn’t afford it. It was that he hadn’t okayed it.

Agnes thought about finding the receipt for the ring on his mail table. It had been right out in the open when Agnes let herself into CJ’s apartment and CJ was in the shower. Almost as if he had wanted Agnes to find it.

Twenty-five thousand dollars.

Agnes would apologize, but he might not forgive her, just as he still hadn’t forgiven Dabney for saying that he and Agnes weren’t a perfect match. What Agnes realized at that moment of sitting on the cold beach, sifting through handful after handful of sand, crying her eyes out, was that Dabney was right. CJ was not only wrong for her but, probably, bad for her.

“Here,” said Riley. He handed her a gently used napkin from the picnic basket, and Agnes blotted her eyes and blew her nose.

Agnes had been dating CJ for an entire year before she told him that Box wasn’t her biological father. She had wanted to keep that part of her history private, but when it looked like things were getting serious, she told him the truth. CJ had told her it was okay, she didn’t need to be ashamed or embarrassed, he was glad she had finally felt comfortable telling him. He had smiled at her reassuringly and said, “It explains certain things about you.”

“Certain things like what?” she asked.

But he hadn’t answered, and Agnes’s world had tilted a little more out of kilter.

Down the beach, some kids were setting off bottle rockets. Agnes let Riley pull her to her feet.

Dabney

She watched Box stride across Elizabeth Jennings’s front lawn toward Cliff Road, where they had parked the Impala. Dabney knew she should follow him, but she couldn’t make herself go.

She wanted to be where Clen was.

The second Box walked out the door, Dabney raised her eyebrows at Clen and said, “What happened, really?”

“He hit me,” Clen said. “Punched me.” He pointed at his chest.

“I find that hard to believe,” Dabney said. “What did you say to him?”

“I know you’d like this to be my fault,” Clen said.

“That’s not true.”

“You need to tell him, Cupe.”

“I know I do. But…”

They were interrupted at that moment by Elizabeth Jennings herself, who came rushing into the room in her usual imperious manner. Dabney knew Elizabeth because Elizabeth had sat on the Chamber of Commerce board of directors for the past eighteen months. If Dabney was very honest, she would admit that she found Elizabeth a bit self-important and her so-called elegance a bit practiced. Elizabeth was popular in Washington circles; she was a hostess along the lines of Sally Quinn and Katharine Graham. What else did Dabney know about her? Her résumé stated that she had attended Mary Washington and worked briefly as an administrative assistant at the State Department. Dabney knew she came from old Washington money; she was related somehow to President Taft. Dabney knew that Elizabeth had had two daughters, and that her husband had died. Dabney did not know that Elizabeth’s husband, Mingus, had been friends (indeed, partners in crime!) with Clendenin Hughes. This was unfortunate indeed.

“I heard there was a brouhaha in here,” Elizabeth said. Her eyes skipped about the room, narrowing in on the rug under the side console, which was askew. She bent to straighten it. When she stood, she glared at Dabney like she was an errant child. “Dare I ask what happened?”

“Oh,” Dabney said. She was afraid to look at Clen. “Nothing.”

“I lost my balance,” Clen said. “Dropped my glass and it broke. I’m very sorry, Elizabeth.”

“I hope you’re all right,” Elizabeth said.

“Fine,” Clen said. “We got the shards picked up but you might want to vacuum in the morning.”

Elizabeth beamed at Clen, as if nothing delighted her more than the thought of pulling out her Dyson or giving an extra instruction to her cleaning lady. Ever the gracious hostess, Dabney supposed.

“And John?” Elizabeth said, addressing Dabney. “Where has he gone off to?”

John? Dabney was temporarily stymied, until she realized that Elizabeth was asking about Box. Nobody called him John. That Elizabeth chose to do so only increased Dabney’s ire.

“He left,” Dabney said bluntly. She had other words at her disposal that would have softened the blow-he had to scoot, he wasn’t feeling well, he was tuckered out after all the excitement at the White House-but Dabney didn’t feel like granting Elizabeth the favor of a lovely excuse.

“Well, he’s very naughty and didn’t say goodbye,” Elizabeth said. She then seemed to take stock of the situation before her-Dabney and Clen alone together in the living room where a glass had broken and an endowed chair of economics at Harvard had left a party without thanking the hostess. Elizabeth Jennings knew nothing of Dabney and Clen’s past-or did she? one could never be certain-but neither was the woman naive. She probably had a good idea about what had transpired, or at least its general nature. She might be mentally sharpening the tines of her gossip fork.

Leave, Dabney thought. Go home, and find some way to apologize to Box. Or end the shenanigans now, and just tell him the truth.

But Dabney did not leave. She headed back onto the deck, ostensibly in search of another glass of vintage Moët & Chandon which she did not need. She was almost instantly captured by the congressman, who apparently had already bored everyone else at the party and hence had no choice but to give Dabney a second helping of his opinions.

Clendenin was at the end of the porch. Elizabeth still held his arm, rather proprietarily, Dabney thought. Jealousy started as a burn at her hairline.

Clendenin and Elizabeth?

The good thing about the congressman was that he didn’t require any actual conversation from her. He talked and Dabney had only to nod along, and at the appropriate moments say, Right, yes, I see, of course.

Clendenin and Elizabeth had spent time together “overseas.” Elizabeth wasn’t afraid to travel; she was a woman who arrived in the lobby of the Oriental Hotel smoking a cigarette in a mother-of-pearl holder while some Thai boy in traditional garb dragged in her Louis Vuitton steamer trunk. But Dabney was being ridiculous. She had seen too many movies.

Dabney drained her champagne quickly and the congressman snapped at a waiter to have it refilled, a gesture born less out of rudeness, she suspected, than out of the fear that Dabney might abandon him for the bar. Another glass of champagne appeared, and a different waiter materialized with fruit tarts that were as pretty as stained glass. Dabney demurred; she couldn’t eat a thing.

Clendenin and Elizabeth. Dabney would lose him to the East-or the burnished memories thereof-again!

Jealousy consumed her face: her lip was curling, her molars grinding.

Look my way, Dabney thought. She would be okay if Clen made eye contact.

But he was engaged in conversation; he was making a point to Elizabeth and another couple whom Dabney didn’t recognize. She heard his voice but not exactly what he was saying. She had forgotten how lively he could be in public. He was handling himself brilliantly now, so well that Dabney hated him a little. The group was hanging on his every word.

This was her punishment, she supposed, for what she was doing to Box.

The fireworks began and everyone turned to watch them explode over the harbor. Enjoy them, she thought. But no, she couldn’t, not without Clen. She had half a mind to yank Clen away from Elizabeth. Scandal would ripple through the party, but what did Dabney care? She would be able to watch the fireworks with the safe, heavy weight of Clen’s arm around her.

Love was awful. She hated love.

And to make matters worse, the congressman seemed suddenly to realize that he was standing next to a living, breathing woman.

“Dabney?” he said. “Are you all right?”

Dabney raised her face to the sky just as a giant white chrysanthemum of fire burst open above them. Dabney hoped her face was illuminated in such a way that her excruciating heartache looked like rapture.

Agnes

She found her engagement ring sitting in the pool of icy water at the bottom of the drinks cooler.

Not lost. Here in her palm. Not gone.

Not gone! Not lost!

There weren’t words for her relief.

But there was another emotion shadowing the relief, an emotion without a name, which felt like an escape hatch closing.

Dabney

On July 5, she was too sick to rise from bed. She’d called in to work, leaving Nina a message on voice mail, saying that the flu had returned with a vengeance and, if she was lucky, she would be in at noon. But even by nine she knew there would be no way. She could barely make it to the bathroom. Agnes was at work and Box was downstairs in his study. She heard him early in the afternoon, banging around in the kitchen making lunch, but he didn’t come up to check on her. She needed ice water and Advil. She had to wait until five thirty for Agnes. She also asked Agnes for her cell phone, and Agnes gave her a confused look. The landline was right next to Dabney’s bed.

But Agnes brought the water and the medicine and Dabney’s cell phone-and a piece of buttered toast, which Dabney couldn’t eat.

“Thank you,” Dabney whispered.

“Oh, Mommy,” Agnes said.

That night, Box did not come up to bed, and Dabney supposed he was either angry or ashamed, but she couldn’t predict which. She had a dream that Clendenin and Elizabeth Jennings were playing mah-jongg on a wooden raft at Steps Beach, and the raft was engulfed in a miasma of rosy pink. Clen and Elizabeth Jennings a perfect match?

She woke up and thought, No!

July 6, sick. Dabney heard classical music downstairs, but Box did not appear.

Her cell phone remained silent. She wanted Clen to text, but maybe he was angry with her, too, or he was ashamed, or he was besotted with Elizabeth Jennings. Maybe both Box and Clen would forsake her. They would abandon her, as her mother had.

Dabney’s father had done a wonderful job in raising her, but it was fair to say that there had always been a part of Dabney that had felt unloved.

July 7, sick. Agnes stayed home from work; Dabney tried to protest but forming the sentence was too difficult. Then Agnes explained, “It’s raining, Mom. Pouring rain. Camp is canceled today.”

The sound of the rain against the window was comforting.

Dabney heard Agnes’s voice from downstairs. “Daddy, she’s really bad. Should we take her to the hospital?”

Box said, “Give her one more day.”

One more day, Dabney thought.

How was he getting clean clothes? she wondered. And what were he and Agnes eating?

At midnight, a text from Clen: Tell me when I can see you.

On the morning of July 8, Dabney woke up feeling like a flat, empty version of herself, but she was well enough to shower and go downstairs for a bowl of shredded wheat.

Box was at the table with his black coffee and the Wall Street Journal. He looked at her over the top of the paper. “You feel better?”

She nodded.

He nodded. He said, “I have to go to Washington tomorrow. I’ll be back on Friday.”

Dabney thought, Washington. Back Friday.

Dabney made it to work by noon.

Agnes

Riley left a message on her voice mail that said, “Your mother signed out on the log at three o’clock and I followed her. She drove out the Polpis Road to number 436. She turned in the driveway.”

Agnes listened to the message twice. Riley had followed Dabney? That was an audacious maneuver. He had done it for Agnes. Or because he was naturally curious, or he was intrigued that Dabney was keeping a secret.

Agnes googled 436 Polpis Road and found that it was owned by Trevor and Anna Jones, people Agnes had never heard of.

That evening, Dabney was back in the kitchen, making dinner-grilled lamb, fresh succotash, baby lettuces. Box was still in his study, but Agnes assumed he would soon be lured out by the aroma of the roasting meat, garlic, and rosemary. The last three nights, they had ordered in Thai food.

Agnes said, “Mom, do you know anyone named Trevor or Anna Jones?”

Dabney was tossing the salad. Agnes sensed the slightest hesitation with the utensils.

“No,” Dabney said.

“Really?” Agnes said. “You know everyone. Trevor and Anna Jones? They live on the Polpis Road?”

“No,” Dabney said. She met Agnes’s gaze straight-on. “I don’t know Trevor or Anna Jones.”

Dabney

The board of directors met four times a year: in January, in April, in July, and in October. Dabney loathed the board meetings. She started dreading them weeks in advance, even though they always proceeded smoothly.

The meetings were held in the conference room, which was tiny and airless; it was the same room where Dabney had unfortunately barged in on Nina and Jack Copper. The conference room held a rectangular table and ten chairs. It had one small window, which opened from the top, and one electrical outlet, where Dabney plugged in a standing oscillating fan. The fan blew everyone’s papers about and made a lot of noise, but experience had taught them that holding the July meeting without the fan was next to unbearable.

All ten of the directors showed up to the July meeting because Elizabeth Jennings and Bob Browning, the only two summer residents on the board, attended that meeting. Normally, Dabney stood at the July meeting because there wasn’t room for an eleventh chair, and she was not among equals. She was the employee. These were her bosses.

Dabney had the treasury report done and the grant requests from the regional tourism council, as well as a full recap of Daffodil Weekend and a plan for Christmas Stroll. She had a dozen bottles of cold water in the center of the table, and extra pens. She wasn’t sure why she felt so much anxiety; nothing ever went wrong in these meetings. The directors listened to Dabney’s description of how well the Chamber was doing, and they looked at how thick and detailed Dabney’s grant reports were, although nobody ever read them. They all simply nodded in approval and adoration, and Vaughan basically patted Dabney on the head like a good dog, and the meeting was adjourned.

Today, as usual, the arriving board members greeted Dabney-Jeffrey Jackson kissed her cheek as he always did, and Martha asked lovingly after Dabney’s new laptop as though it were a pet. Betty and Karen were more solicitous than usual. Betty actually offered Dabney her seat at the table, but Dabney declined. Forbearance. She couldn’t sit while one of the directors stood.

Old Mr. Armstrong from Nantucket Auto Body said, “Dabney can just sit on my lap.”

Everyone laughed at that, although weakly, because Mr. Armstrong was a dirty old man and probably would have loved to have Dabney on his lap.

Elizabeth Jennings did not say hello to Dabney or even look in her direction, which gave Dabney a queasy feeling. Dabney picked up a packet from the center of the table and handed it to Elizabeth. “Here you go, Elizabeth.”

Elizabeth accepted the packet without thanking Dabney or even looking at her, then she turned immediately to Karen the Realtor, who had apparently been at the Company of the Cauldron with Elizabeth the night before. They started talking about the salmon.

A snub, then, Dabney thought. She had been snubbed. Wow. She looked around the table to see if anyone else had noticed it, but of course everyone else was minding their own business, or poring over the packets, attending to the business of keeping Nantucket the busy hive of commerce that it was.

Dabney was on autopilot through the meeting as she stood with the fan shooting air down her back. That was the only way she was going to make it without fainting. Forbearance. She had not acted badly at Elizabeth’s party, she told herself. It was Box and Clen. Clen had tried to leave the room when he first saw Box, he said, but Box had pursued the conversation and it grew nasty quickly. They were fighting over Dabney, but there wasn’t any way Elizabeth Jennings would know that. She was perhaps just angry about Box’s poor showing, or about Clen’s broken glass.

The budget was in order, the grant reports were meticulously completed, and the coffers were full. They were so full that Dabney had decided to do that which she rarely did and ask for a raise-not for herself, but for Nina Mobley. The room was very hot and Dabney felt like all her blood was pooling at her feet. Elizabeth Jennings’s cinnamon-colored hair was perfectly straight and smooth, tucked behind one ear, and her nails were perfect, a soft coral color.

She had been holding Clen’s arm so proprietarily at the party.

He’s not yours, Dabney thought. He’s mine.

Dabney cleared her throat, to make herself known. She had not warned Vaughan that this request for a raise was coming, because he always asked at the end of each meeting if there was any other business not on the agenda.

It was so hot that Dabney’s vision started to splotch. Bob Browning was nodding off; Karen the Realtor was blatantly texting.

Vaughan said, “Everything appears in order. Is there any other business?”

“Yes,” Dabney said.

They all turned to her. Her feet were tingling. Was it possible for one’s feet to fall asleep while one was standing?

“Yes, Dabney?” Vaughan said.

“I’d like to request a raise,” Dabney said.

There was a murmur through the room. Jeffrey Jackson, who could be counted on to side with Dabney in every instance, said, “You deserve one.”

“Not for me,” Dabney said. “Obviously. I’m very happy with my salary. I’m thinking of Nina Mobley. She has done an exceptional job, and has increased the amount of responsibility she’s taken on, especially in the last few months.” Dabney paused. “I’d like to see her receive a pay raise of twenty percent.”

Elizabeth Jennings made a dismissive noise, air through her nose, with a little haughty laugh attached.

“Well,” she said. “That’s a hell of a bomb to drop at the end of a meeting.”

Hell, Dabney thought. Bomb. Had Elizabeth said hell of a bomb? Dabney swayed. She could feel herself losing her feet. She reached out to hold on to the back of Martha’s chair.

Old Man Armstrong shouted out, “How much does she want?”

“It’s not her,” Dabney said. “It’s me. I mean, I’m the one asking…for her. She doesn’t even know I’m asking. But she deserves a raise. I would like to see her get a raise. She’s doing her job, and…” Dabney nearly said, and she’s doing mine. But she realized at the last minute how bad that would sound. “And she’s doing it well.”

“We’d like to think all of you are doing your jobs well,” Elizabeth said. “That’s what we pay you for. To do your jobs well. You don’t get extra money for doing your job well.” Elizabeth was looking at Dabney now with piercing eyes. Elizabeth hated Dabney. But why? Dabney had never had an enemy before. There had been Jocelyn, at Yale, at the despicable tailgate. Jocelyn had been in love with Clen, or whatever the collegiate approximation of “in love” was. Now, Elizabeth was after Clen-and she knew, somehow, she knew, that Dabney was standing in her way. How did she know?

How did she know?

“Never mind,” Dabney said. She watched her hand do a slow-motion dance in front of her face, as if wiping away the idea of a raise for Nina Mobley. “Wait, let’s discuss this,” Jeffrey Jackson said. Jeffrey Jackson had a port-wine stain on his neck and the lower half of his face, and in elementary school, two other boys had been cruel about it, and Dabney had defended Jeffrey. Ever since, he had been Dabney’s devoted champion.

“There’s nothing to discuss,” Elizabeth said. “At least not right now. This room is an oven, and it’s nearly six o’clock, and I don’t know about the rest of you, but I have other plans for my evening. I think we should table the discussion of a raise for Ms. Mobley until the next meeting.”

“Agreed,” Karen the Realtor said.

Dabney blinked; sweat trickled down her back. She wanted to see how Vaughan Oglethorpe would handle this. He didn’t like other board members to overrule his authority, but when Dabney looked over, Vaughan’s face had turned to melting wax.

Dabney thought, I’m going to faint.

But thankfully, Vaughan adjourned the meeting. Martha stood to leave, and Dabney collapsed in Martha’s chair.

Clendenin

Elizabeth Jennings invited him for dinner at the Straight Wharf.

Clen said, “I have to tell you, Elizabeth, I’m not really one for the Nantucket restaurant scene.”

Elizabeth said, “Not a worry. Come to my house instead. Seven o’clock tomorrow night.”

She hung up without giving him a chance to say no.

He brought a six-pack of Singha beer, which he had miraculously been able to find at Hatch’s. This was the beer that he and Mingus and Elizabeth had drunk in Bangkok and Saigon years and years earlier.

Clendenin knocked on Elizabeth’s front door, feeling like an ass. What was he doing here? This felt like an exercise in pointless nostalgia.

She shrieked with joy at the sight of him. She appeared to be three sheets to the wind already. She shrieked again with the presentation of the beer. “Singha?” she said. “Am I really seeing this? Did you have it flown in? And it’s icy cold. Do you remember how good an icy cold Singha used to taste after running around in that godforsaken heat? You’re a genius!”

Elizabeth was wearing a seafoam-green cocktail dress with tiny sequins and her feet were bare. Elizabeth was an attractive woman-the cinnamon-colored hair, the long nails, the perfume-and Clen had never been able to shake a vision of her climbing out of the swimming pool at the resort in Nha Trang. That red bikini. But there had always been a desperate edge to Elizabeth, a part of her that was trying too hard-and then, too, she wasn’t Dabney.

On her deck a table was set for two, and candles burned in hurricane lamps. But first Elizabeth poured him a Glenfiddich and they gazed at the Sound below.

This was a date, Clen realized. She had asked him there on a date. He hadn’t considered this before. He supposed he had thought there would be other people there or that she’d asked him out of kindness or boredom. He was an old friend from another life.

Mingus and Clen had drunk like crazy at La Caravelle in Saigon, then piled onto a motorbike, which they’d crashed in front of the Reunification Palace. Mingus and Clen had drunk like crazy at the Majestic, and at the Continental as well. What did Clen remember specifically? Rattan ceiling fans, Singapore slings, peanut shells on the floor; he and Mingus used to smoke unfiltered Luckys, lighting one from the next. The cigarettes had killed Mingus, lung cancer at fifty-two.

Mingus had returned to the States when he was diagnosed. He had died in Washington; Clen hadn’t made it back for the funeral. He had, however, sent a long letter to Elizabeth, which was less sympathy than a prose poem of memories: Bangkok, Singapore, Mandalay, Rangoon, Siem Reap, Saigon, Hanoi, Hoi An-and the weeklong vacation in Nha Trang. They had stayed at a five-star resort that Elizabeth paid for. She had insisted that Clen come along, although he’d felt odd about crashing their romantic getaway. It had been a slice of heaven, though, and he had needed it-the infinity pool, the endless chilled bottles of Domaines Ott, a certain spicy green-papaya salad delivered right to his umbrella. There had been one night when Mingus retired early and Clen and Elizabeth had drifted from the dinner table to a spot in the sand. They were both quite drunk, Clen able to do little more than gaze at the moon’s reflection on the South China Sea. Something had happened, she had said something or he had, and Elizabeth had brought her face very close to his. He had thought kiss; it was impossible not to. That red bikini. But he had backed away, stood up, brushed himself off. She had said, “Was I wrong? I’ve seen you looking at me.”

Was she wrong? No, not wrong. This was before Clen had met Mi Linh, and he was lonely. He had been looking at Elizabeth, all week long. But he was not a man to betray his one true friend, and so he had bowed to her, then gone to bed.

Now, Elizabeth asked him a question, but Clen didn’t hear what it was. Something with the word east.

“I’m sorry?” he said.

“Do you miss the East?”

“Oh,” he said. “I don’t know. Sometimes. Certain things. The food in Thailand, the monks in Cambodia, the hotel bars in Vietnam. But not really. Not as much as I thought I would. How about you?”

She cupped her chin. “It was a time in my life that I cherish,” she said. “But it’s over. I’ll never go back. Will you?”

“Only if Singapore calls,” Clen said. But then he realized that he was so attached to Dabney that even if a job did materialize in Singapore, he would turn it down. He would not leave her again.

Dinner was served by caterers. Other men might have been impressed, but it just made Clen sad. To be invited over for dinner and then have the meal cooked by other people?

And to make matters worse, it was grilled sirloin. Clen stared at his plate helplessly. He couldn’t cut a steak. And this was one of the reasons why he didn’t accept invitations out. He lifted his fork and tried a bite of potato gratin, then set his fork down with a ching!

“Oh my goodness,” Elizabeth said. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t…think.”

“It’s okay,” Clen said. “It’s fine.”

Elizabeth looked around for one of the catering staff, but the three of them were sequestered in the kitchen. Elizabeth stood. “Here, let me cut it for you.”

Clen grimaced. It was mortifying for them both, Elizabeth cutting his steak, like he was a child.

Elizabeth said, “I don’t think I ever got the lowdown on that.”

“On that?” Clen repeated.

“Your arm,” she said. “What happened?”

Khmer Rouge, he thought. Machete. Boring story.

But to alleviate the humiliation of the moment, he told her the truth. He had been writing a story about girls being bought in the countryside and sold into prostitution in Bangkok. He had a source, a woman all of thirty years old whose thirteen-year-old daughter had disappeared, and was purportedly working on Khao San Road. Clen had gone to all the reputable brothels and requested the girl-Bet, her name was. Bet had light skin and freckles, her grandfather had been an Irishman named O’Brien, and because of her unusual coloring, people remembered her. Clen had been led further and further into the underbelly of the city. Girls, younger and younger, were produced until Clen was offered the services of a girl who couldn’t have been more than nine years old. He told Elizabeth it was like his spirit was a dry twig that just snapped in half. He picked the girl up and tried to carry her out of the establishment. She started screaming. She didn’t want to go with Clen. She didn’t know him, she didn’t realize he was trying to save her, and he didn’t have the language skills to reassure her. He knew the Thai word for police, tarwc, but that served only to terrify her further.

Clen didn’t make it fifty yards down the alley before the girl was taken from him by the goons of the establishment. The goons were smaller than Clen-every man in Southeast Asia was smaller-but there were four or five of them and they all seemed to be trained in nine martial arts. They beat Clen to a pulp, and they broke his arm in four places, one a compound fracture through the skin, and the only way the doctors at the hospital he eventually landed in knew how to deal with it was by amputation just below the shoulder.

Clen pushed away his plate. It was a story that killed the appetite.

Elizabeth was breathless. “Oh,” she said. She reached across the table to take his right hand.

“And is that why you left?”

“That was one reason,” Clen said. “I also realized I was never going to get assigned to the Singapore desk.” He reclaimed his hand. “I pissed off the wrong person when I was there covering the caning story.”

“Who?” Elizabeth said.

“Jack Elitsky.”

“I knew Jack,” Elizabeth said. “Mingus helped him out once, with a thing, can’t remember what now, it’s like it all evaporated once I came back.”

“Jack is fine,” Clen said. “I was a pompous ass. I’ve always had a problem with authority.”

“Rebellious,” Elizabeth said.

“Something like that,” Clen said.

There was an awkward moment at the door when they said goodbye. Clen had hurried the evening along to this point, refusing dessert and port and another scotch, wanting only to get home and text Dabney. He hadn’t heard from her since the Fourth, when he had summarily ignored her after the scuffle with the economist. But now Clen ached for her.

Quick peck on the cheek, he thought. Thank you for dinner.

Elizabeth leaned against the closed front door, blocking his way. She gazed up at him through her cinnamon bangs, a siren’s look; it must have worked with other men.

She said, “At my party on the Fourth…when you were in the living room with the Beeches…? What was going on? Was there a fight? I didn’t even realize you knew the Beeches.”

“I don’t,” he said. Then he self-edited. “Well, I don’t know the professor. Dabney and I dated in high school.”

“Did you?” Elizabeth said. “That’s interesting.”

“I don’t know how interesting it is,” Clen said quickly. The last thing he needed was Elizabeth believing that anything between him and Dabney was “interesting.” “It was aeons ago. Ancient history.”

“I saw her a few days ago at our Chamber board meeting,” Elizabeth said. “I don’t think she looks well. Her skin is quite sallow, and she’s so thin. It looks like a case of hep C to me, though I’m no doctor.”

Dabney had told Clen that she’d almost fainted. She had said that the room was a hundred degrees and she’d been so anxious about the meeting that she’d skipped lunch. But, with Elizabeth’s words, Clen realized that Dabney did look sallow-her skin had a lemony tinge-and she was quite thin. The other day, he had been able to count the individual knobs of her spine. He doubted that she had anything close to as serious as hepatitis C, but he would gently suggest that she go see a doctor.

He cleared his throat. “Thank you for dinner.” He bent in for Elizabeth’s cheek, but she reached up with both hands and met him full on the lips.

Clen pulled back. Elizabeth’s expression was one of instant mortification, reminiscent of that other, long-ago night on the South China Sea. Oh shit, he thought. Had he led her to believe this was what he wanted? Had she assumed he would be receptive now that Mingus was dead?

“Elizabeth,” he said.

She opened the door. “Thank you for coming,” she said, recovering. Ever the proper hostess. “It was a lovely evening.”

“Lovely,” he said, and he all but ran across the moonlit grass.

Dabney

Miranda Gilbert and her fiancé, Dr. Christian Bartelby, were due to visit for the weekend, as they had the past three summers. But a few days before their arrival, Miranda called to say that Christian couldn’t make it. He had to work at the hospital.

“And I’m sure you don’t want just me by myself,” Miranda said.

“Of course we do,” Dabney said. She said this just to be polite. In reality, having Miranda cancel would be for the best. Dabney needed to tell Box about Clendenin and she could hardly do so while they had a house guest.

“Wonderful!” Miranda said. “I was facing the rather dreary prospect of going to the cinema alone, or spending too much money on Newbury Street. I’ll keep my flight, then.”

When Dabney hung up, she was filled with surprising relief. She was off the hook.

She didn’t want to tell Box about Clendenin. It would be too awful.

The lives we lead.

Miranda arrived on Friday afternoon, only a few minutes before Box flew in from Washington, so they all piled into Dabney’s Impala and headed to the house together. Dabney hadn’t informed Box that Dr. Bartelby was a no-show, and she could tell that he was thrown off by Miranda’s appearing alone. Miranda picked up on this, and the whole way home she thanked Dabney profusely for allowing her to come anyway. Boston was a cauldron this time of year, she said, as Box well knew.

Box said, “Mmmmm, yes.”

Once at the house, Miranda gushed to Dabney about how lovely the guest room was. Finer than the Four Seasons, she said. Miranda was a tall woman with strawberry-blond hair and porcelain skin and green eyes, her nose perhaps a bit sharp for true beauty. She wore a pale pink cotton sundress and a pair of flat sandals with complicated straps. Her hair was frizzy from the humidity, and her personality was warmer and far looser than Dabney remembered from previous summers. She seemed almost silly-but was that possible? Then Dabney realized that not only was Miranda’s sundress pink, her aura was as well. She emitted a color like that of New Dawn climbing roses on their finest day.

Miranda was pink.

Box?

Miranda Gilbert and Box, a perfect match? Dabney had always been a tiny bit jealous of Miranda, but she had never thought…there had never been any indication during Miranda’s previous visits…but of course Dr. Christian Bartelby had always been with her before…he had caused interference…Dabney hadn’t seen it.

Okay, Dabney thought. Wow.

“I’ll let you settle in,” Dabney said. “Can I bring you a drink? A glass of Shiraz? A gin and tonic?”

“Oh, a gin and tonic would be lovely!” Miranda said. She flopped back onto the bed. “I have to say, Dabney, this is a slice of heaven. I look forward to this weekend every year. But Christian…well, he’s quite wrapped up with his patients. He just wasn’t able to get the time off.”

Dabney nodded. “I’ll be right back with your cocktail.”

Dinner was rib-eye steaks and marinated farm vegetables on the grill, a large green salad, some good rolls, and a lot of Shiraz. Dabney set the table outside and encouraged Box and Miranda to sit and talk while Dabney got everything ready.

“Do you need any help?” Miranda asked.

“I’m a bit of a control freak,” Dabney said.

Box let a beat of silence pass. “Confirmed,” he said.

Laughter.

Dabney lingered in the kitchen. She kept peering out the kitchen window. Pink? Miranda pink, Box emitting nothing, nada. If he had an aura, it was the color of air. Because Dabney was there, causing interference.

She excused herself right after the last bite of sabayon with fresh, wild strawberries. She had not hurried per se-how could she hurry through homemade sabayon and tiny, delectable wild strawberries? However, as soon as she was finished, Dabney stood and cleared, saying to Miranda, who was about to protest, “You stay and enjoy. I am a control freak.”

Dabney then carried the dessert dishes to the kitchen and popped out to the patio one more time to replenish their Shiraz. Box and Miranda were deep in conversation about Milton Friedman, a particularly favorite topic, as the famous economist was the subject of Miranda’s thesis. Dabney didn’t think either of them had noticed her. Their glasses might have been magically filled by fairies.

This was a good thing, she thought. This was, very possibly, the solution to all her problems.

And yet, of course, it was perturbing. Was Dabney really just going to pass off her husband of twenty-four years? Miranda was emitting a glow like a peony in full bloom-pinker than pink: she was in love with Box, besotted, and Dabney felt that he deserved this. Dabney had adored Box and respected him and even desired him, but had she ever been besotted?

Dabney watched them from the kitchen window as she rinsed dishes and felt a pang-not of jealousy over Box, per se, though it was a feeling that could not be ignored. She had been having a lot of these lately-urges, she supposed. Lovesick.

She texted Clen. Now?

By the time she had the dishes in the rack, there was a response. Yes, please get here five minutes ago.

Dabney exhaled. Could she leave the house undetected? She thought she could. She would say she was going up to bed. Box and Miranda might stay awake for another hour or two talking about Friedman, then Tobin, then Larry Summers. Once they got to talking about Larry Summers, there would be no stopping them. Dabney would go see Clen for five minutes and scoot right home.

She poked her head out the back door. “I’m going up. Do you need anything else?”

Box emptied the contents of the bottle of wine into Miranda’s glass and held it up for Dabney. “Do we have another?”

“We do!” she said brightly. Box’s cheeks were florid the way they tended to get after a couple of glasses of wine, but he was not emitting an aura. Probably because Dabney was there. Of course! She had to leave them alone. A wave of dizziness overcame her and she steadied herself against the counter. She was not only engaging in awful, illicit behavior, she was hoping that other people would engage in it as well, so that she might feel less guilty.

Dabney hurried to open another bottle of the Shiraz.

Her escape was almost too easy. She slipped out the front door and into the Impala.

As Dabney headed around the rotary, she spotted Agnes’s Prius a quarter circle away. Had Agnes seen her? The damn Impala was impossible to miss. Agnes had been so suspicious lately, Dabney could imagine her zipping around the rotary in hot pursuit of her mother. She would have to abort her mission.

But Agnes must have been daydreaming, or on the phone with CJ, because she exited the rotary and headed toward home. Dabney stepped on it.

“I had a date with Elizabeth Jennings,” Clen said.

Dabney felt a stabbing pain in her gut. Her internal organs felt like they were being sliced up by sharp, shining knives.

“A date?”

“She asked me for dinner. I assumed there would be other people, but it was just the two of us.”

Dabney and Clen were lying on top of his expensive sheets, naked. The long kiss Dabney had come for had gotten away from them both, even though Dabney had told Clen she didn’t have much time.

Had Agnes seen her? Dabney wondered. Would Agnes barge in on Box and Miranda at an inopportune moment and say, I just saw Mom driving around the rotary. Where was she going?

This worry was diminished by the thought of Clen and Elizabeth Jennings alone at dinner.

“So how was it?” Dabney croaked.

“She served me a steak,” Clen said. “And I couldn’t cut it.”

Dabney winced. “Ouch,” she said. “How was the conversation?”

“There was some reminiscing about the good old days of fish sauce and Asian toilets. She asked about my arm.”

“Did you tell her the truth?”

“Yes.”

Dabney exhaled through her nose. The pain in her gut was enough to make her cry out. She pictured ten Japanese hibachi chefs fileting her.

“That’s pretty intimate,” Dabney said. “Did it get any more intimate than that?”

“She tried to kiss me,” Clen said.

Oh, God, no. Dabney emitted a moan and curled up in the fetal position, which served only to intensify her pain. She started to cry. She was going to lose everybody and everything. She recalled thirty years earlier, seeing Clen with Jocelyn at the Yale-Harvard tailgate, Jocelyn’s hands buried deep in Clen’s thick hair.

Clen wrapped his arm around her. “Don’t cry, Cupe. I didn’t kiss her back. I was very rude, pushed her away and left.” He nuzzled the back of Dabney’s neck. “I have to live with the thought of you sleeping next to the economist every night, you know.”

“I know,” Dabney bleated.

“But there isn’t another woman in the world for me,” Clen said. “There just isn’t. I only see you.”

The house was dark when Dabney pulled up, and she was filled with relief. She hadn’t wanted to leave Clen, especially after hearing about the date with Elizabeth Jennings. Anyone but Elizabeth Jennings, Dabney thought. She wasn’t sure why the aversion; Elizabeth was silly and harmless-but then Dabney admitted that Elizabeth was neither silly nor harmless. She was strong-willed and opinionated at the Chamber meetings; of all the board members, Elizabeth was the only one Dabney felt she had to impress. It was her money, maybe, or her pedigree. And Elizabeth and Clen shared memories of a different world, one Dabney couldn’t even begin to imagine. Elizabeth would lasso Clen, move him to Washington, introduce him to people. He would end up writing for the Post. He would escort Elizabeth to the Kennedy Center and inaugural balls; he would teach a class at Georgetown and drink at the National Press Club. He would be changed.

Dabney had stayed much longer at Clen’s house than she’d meant to, allowing him to reassure her, waiting for the knife pain in her gut to diminish so that she could get to her feet.

Before she left, Clen had said, “You seem to be dropping a lot of weight, Cupe. Have you thought of seeing a doctor?”

Dabney gasped involuntarily. “A doctor?”

“You’re very thin,” he said. “Damn near skeletal. And your skin is turning a funny color. And you said you nearly fainted in the boardroom. I’m just worried about you.”

Dabney pasted a smile on her face, which felt like a picture hung crookedly. “Lovesick,” she said.

“I hear you saying that. But, Cupe-”

Dabney kissed him goodbye and scurried to her car.

At home, Dabney eased open the front door, which wasn’t a door anyone in the house ever used. When she stepped in, she cried out in surprise.

Box was standing before her, blocking the stairs.

“Where have you been?” he said.

“What?”

“The truth, Dabney.”

“I went for a drive with the top down,” she said. “I needed air.”

“A drive?”

“Yes.”

“You didn’t stop anywhere?” he asked. “You didn’t see anyone?”

She had sort of been telling the truth up until that moment.

She said, “I have horrible pain, Box. I’m still not feeling well.”

He narrowed his eyes at her. “You’re not answering my question. Did you stop anywhere? Did you see anyone?”

Dabney couldn’t tell him the truth, but neither could she lie. She said, “I can’t believe you’re asking me this. I can’t believe you care. You haven’t paid attention to me in years, Box. And now all of a sudden you care where I’ve been, if I stopped, if I saw anyone?”

“You’re my wife,” he said.

“Yes,” she said. “I am.”

“Tell me the truth!”

Tell him the truth, she thought. He was asking for it. He deserved it.

“I was driving,” she said. “Driving around the island. Driving makes me feel better.”

“That is a load of crap!” he shouted. “Something is going on and I want to know what it is!” He slammed the door shut and the whole house shuddered. And yet Dabney was relieved that the front door was now shut because, from the corner of her eye, she had just seen a light go on across the street at the Roseman house. What on earth would York and Dolly Roseman make of the screaming coming from the Beech household, where two of the most civilized people they knew lived? Would they even believe it? No, they would think there was something horribly wrong. They would call the police.

“I don’t feel well,” Dabney said. “The antibiotics didn’t help, and I thought it was a wheat allergy, but-”

“You need to go to the doctor,” Box said.

“Yes,” she whispered.

“A real doctor,” Box said. “In Boston.”

“Okay.” Dabney hoped that if she agreed to this, he would let her off the hook.

“And another thing,” Box said. “When I was talking to that philistine Hughes at Elizabeth’s party, he said the two of you had bumped into each other on Main Street. You had a conversation with the man and didn’t tell me. But that isn’t the worst thing. The worst thing is that you told him I was in Washington consulting with the president!”

Oh dear God, she thought. Now was the time. She just had to say it. “I’m sorry,” she said.

“He’s a journalist, and by all accounts, a bloodthirsty, ruthless wolf. I don’t want my involvement with the administration reported to the Times or the Journal, or anywhere else!”

“Of course not, darling,” Dabney said. “Clen would never-”

“We don’t know what he would never do.”

“He would never turn anything I told him into a news story,” Dabney said. “That I can assure you.”

“I didn’t realize you had forgiven him so wholeheartedly,” Box said. “I didn’t realize you two were on such chummy terms.”

“We aren’t on ‘chummy terms,’” Dabney said.

“Don’t lie to me!” Box screamed. He had spittle on his lower lip and his glasses had slipped to the edge of his nose; they looked in danger of dropping to the floor. He had officially become someone else.

“Please,” Dabney said. “Please stop yelling. You’ll wake Miranda.”

“I don’t care about Miranda!”

“I think she has feelings for you,” Dabney said. “She’s been rosy ever since she got here.”

“I don’t give a rat’s ass if Miranda is rosy or not!” Box said. “And I am most certain the answer is ‘not.’ She’s engaged to be married, Dabney.”

“But she loves you,” Dabney said. “I can see it.”

“You can see it! You can see it!” Box said. “I don’t give a good goddamn if you can see it! I have heard enough about rosy auras and perfect matches to last me the rest of my life! I don’t believe in it, Dabney. I don’t believe in it at all!”

“I’ve never been wrong,” Dabney said.

“You are wrong about me and Miranda! That much I can assure you!”

At that very moment, Dabney saw Miranda’s form at the top of the stairs.

“I’ll leave in the morning,” Miranda said. “I didn’t realize…I…I didn’t realize things were…so difficult for you.”

“No!” Dabney protested. “Please stay! We’re having a picnic at the beach tomorrow. And we have dinner reservations at the Boarding House.”

Miranda swayed on her feet. Even in the shadowy dark, Dabney could see her rosy aura.

“Let Miranda go,” Box said. “She wants to go.”

“I don’t want to go,” Miranda said. “But I feel I should.”

“She doesn’t want to go!” Dabney said.

Box squared his shoulders, then turned to address Miranda properly. “With apologies, Miranda, I think it would be best if you left tomorrow. I need some time alone with my wife.”

Agnes

In all her growing up, Agnes had never heard her parents so much as quarrel. On a rare occasion, they disagreed-Box was a Republican, Dabney a Democrat, so there was an endless debate about politics. And every so often Box would want to go to the Boarding House for dinner while Dabney would want to branch out and go to Cru or Ventuno. Agnes knew that her parents had their deeper issues-Dabney’s matchmaking, Box’s slavish devotion to work-but those issues were never, ever aired within Agnes’s earshot.

So the screaming match at midnight was startling. Agnes heard every word, Box yelling and Dabney screaming. Miranda’s voice eventually breaking in. She was a brave woman, braver than Agnes, who was cowering in bed like a child. Agnes was upset enough to reach for her phone and call CJ, but CJ would offer little in the way of support. CJ would take Box’s side.

The person Agnes really wanted to call was Riley. Agnes had been out earlier with Riley and Celerie at the bar at the Summer House, listening to the piano player, drinking champagne cocktails, having what Celerie called an “adult evening.” Celerie had trailed Agnes to the ladies’ room, and in one of those confidences that could take place only in a cramped bathroom after three champagne cocktails, Celerie had said, “Riley likes you, not me.” She had said this in a resigned, nonconfrontational way; she was merely stating a fact. It sounded like she was also giving Agnes permission to like Riley back.

Agnes knew that Riley liked her and not Celerie. It was obvious in his body language and in every word that came out of his mouth.

Agnes said, “I’m engaged.”

Celerie had shrugged. “Yeah, but you can’t deny that he’s a great guy, and he likes you. That has to feel good.”

Riley was a great guy, a warm, companionable presence, he was funny and smart and charming, he was a gentleman, and Agnes loved to listen as he sang along with the piano player and tapped out the rhythms on the bar. It did feel good to know that Riley liked her, and as Agnes listened to her parents below, she knew she could call him and explain the situation and he would have something soothing to say. He understood Dabney and appreciated her and valued her idiosyncrasies the way few people but Agnes did.

But as soon as Agnes decided that she would call Riley, the fighting stopped. It was over. Agnes heard footsteps on the stairs and bedroom doors closing.

Did you stop anywhere? Did you see anyone?

Box was only now asking the questions Agnes had been asking for weeks.

Dabney

Forbearance: In the morning, she went for her power walk, waving to the same people, petting the same dogs. When she got home, the rest of the house was still asleep, so she set about squeezing oranges for juice, frying bacon, and making blueberry pancakes.

She was at the stove when Miranda came downstairs with her suitcase packed.

“I’d really like you to stay,” Dabney said. She hoped that the smells of the kitchen would indicate a return to normalcy. “Emotions were running high last night and we’d all had a lot of wine. I know Box wants you to stay.”

A shadow crossed Miranda’s face. It looked for a second like she might cry, and Dabney thought, I will then be in a position to comfort the woman about her unrequited love for my husband. She thought, How do I get myself into these predicaments? She thought, My matchmaking is going haywire. Agnes is still going to marry CJ, Clen went on a date with Elizabeth Jennings, and I have managed to make a grand debacle of Box and Miranda.

“Please stay,” Dabney said.

Miranda sighed. “I can’t,” she said. “I just can’t.”

Agnes

Monday after work, Agnes bade her campers goodbye and drove out the Polpis Road toward number 436. Her heart was banging in her chest. She was petrified to discover her mother’s secret, and yet she had to know.

Again, she wanted to call Riley. It was he who had done the legwork. He should rightly be her sidekick, the Watson to her Sherlock Holmes.

She found the mailbox for 436 and turned into the driveway. She was buzzing with nerves. What was she going to find?

She eased down the long shell driveway, the Prius’s tires crunching along until she came to a clearing, a huge summer home not unlike other showstopping summer homes on the island-it was a fantasy of decks and balconies, gray cedar shingles and impeccable white trim, with a half-moon window over the front door. The house looked unoccupied; all the windows were shut and there was no sign of humanity. Agnes felt an easing in her chest, but also a letdown. This was the address Riley had given her, but it was nothing.

Then Agnes noticed that the driveway diverted behind the house and she followed it. She passed a beautiful rectangular pool shielded by privet. Agnes saw a table and chairs, a red canvas umbrella, a gas grill. And then she saw a smaller dwelling, the guest house, she supposed.

And a man, sitting in a rocking chair on the porch, smoking a cigarette. He was eyeing her warily, and Agnes panicked. She was trespassing, no doubt about it, but she could just say that she’d turned down the wrong driveway; she was lost. She was looking for her mother, Dabney Kimball Beech. Would she be brave enough to say that?

The man dropped his cigarette into a jar of water. He stood up and moved out of the shade of the porch, into the late-afternoon sun. The man, Agnes saw, had only one arm. There was something about him. She had never met him before, she thought, but she knew him somehow.

She put down her window so that they could speak, although the man was huge and bearded and scary-looking and might easily have been dangerous. The man peered into the car at Agnes and his face opened in surprise, and she thought, He recognizes me. And the thought that tumbled right on top of that was Oh my God.

It was her father.

Couple #14: Shannon Wright and David Kimball, married sixteen years. Couple #29: Shannon Wright Kimball and Hal Green, together four years.

Shannon: I am the only person Dabney has set up twice. The first time, of course, was with her father.

I started working with David Kimball at the police department in 1973. My father had been on the job in Brockton, and so even though I came to Nantucket in the summer of 1972 intending to wait tables and get a good tan, it was no surprise that I ended up as the dispatcher at the Nantucket Police Department.

I met David the year before his wife disappeared. My first impression was: solid guy, Vietnam guy, maybe a bit angry, with the bitter edge of any vet. He was patriotic, serious, dedicated to his job in law enforcement. He was a fourth-generation islander, he had inherited some pretty nice real estate, and I’d heard he’d married a fancy summer girl, a Sankaty Beach Club member and all that. He had a young daughter named Dabney; he kept a picture of her on his desk, but I never saw the wife or the daughter in person that first year. They didn’t stop by and say hello like some of the other families.

Then, in December of 1974, the wife, Patty Benson, pulled an unbelievable stunt. She took the daughter to see The Nutcracker in Boston. David talked about their impending trip more than he talked about other things-the orchestra seats, the suite at the Park Plaza Hotel downtown, the black velvet coat for Dabney. “Patty knows how to do things right that way,” David said.

Patty really knew how to do things right. She left the child in the hotel room and vanished-with twenty bucks to the concierge and a phone call to David saying, Come to Boston and get our daughter.

He never heard from her again, and I thought, Isn’t curiosity, at the very least, killing him? Then, one night late at the station, he admitted to me that he had hired a private investigator who had found Patty in Midland, Texas, working as a flight attendant on a private jet.

“Are you going to see her?” I asked. “Or call her? Write a letter?”

“What for?” he said. “She doesn’t want me.”

David was, in the years that followed, a sad, resigned man. He lived for his daughter-but a man raising a daughter alone was a delicate thing. He had his mother, Agnes Bernadette, to help, but the original Agnes Bernadette was something of a battle-ax, with fiery red hair even at age seventy, and a thick Irish accent. So I helped out behind the scenes with raising Dabney. I went to Nantucket Pharmacy and bought her sanitary pads when she got her period. I advised David about the stumbling blocks of training bras and curfew and a frank discussion about sex.

Here, please let the record show that I did advise on birth control. But Agnes Bernadette was an old-school Catholic, and David was afraid to defy her. No information about birth control was provided for Dabney-and look what happened.

Was I interested in David in a romantic way all those years? I would say that, most of the time, our relationship was professional and platonic. David had moods, the most common of which was serious and focused with an edge of gruffness; he wasn’t one to joke or flirt. But there had been times when we were working nights and David had returned from a particularly unpleasant call-a drunken domestic, say, where a man had shattered his wife’s nose-when David would relay the whole grisly story and then he would look at me in a certain way and I knew he felt something. I had been married once upon a time to a scalloper named Benjamin Copper, who had left the island for Alaska. Ben was long gone, and although I occasionally enjoyed a one-night stand when I was off-island, I had never had any inclination to replace him.

One night, late in the empty, quiet station, David nearly kissed me. But he stopped himself, for reasons I have never figured out.

And then, Dabney got involved. It was her senior year in high school; she was newly accepted to Harvard. Agnes Bernadette was very sick and didn’t have much time left. Dabney was, perhaps, concerned about leaving her father alone. When Easter rolled around that year, Dabney called the station and invited me to dinner. I accepted right away. For a woman who lived alone, Easter was hard to celebrate. In years past, I had gone to Mass, and by way of celebration, I watched The Wizard of Oz on TV and nibbled a chocolate bunny.

Once I accepted, I had second thoughts. “Wait a minute,” I said. “Does your father know you’re inviting me?”

Dabney said, “Not exactly. But he’ll be happy, Shannon. Trust me.”

I showed up at the Kimball house with tulips in a pot, trying not to feel like an interloper. By that point, I had been working alongside David for ten years, but I had never been invited to his house. He greeted me at the door wearing a shirt and tie. It was clear he had made an effort to look nice, and he smelled good. I was wearing a dress that I had bought for my niece’s confirmation; it was flouncy and flowery, maybe a bit too springlike for the cold, gray, early April day, but I felt attractive in it. I never wore anything like it at work.

“Wow,” David said. “Look at you, Shannon.”

I didn’t know what to say or do; we had never greeted each other socially before. But it was Easter and I was excited to be there, so I leaned in and kissed the side of his mouth. He looked shocked for a second, then he blushed and took the tulips.

Even at seventeen, Dabney was a magnificent cook. She had made hot cheese puffs and a crab dip to start, then at the table we had beef tenderloin with a horseradish crust and creamed spinach and roasted potatoes. Dabney and Agnes Bernadette were drinking water, but David and I shared a bottle of red wine. The wine had been Dabney’s idea; she brought it up from the basement, a good bottle that a grateful citizen had given David, and which he’d been saving for a special occasion.

“This is a special occasion, right?” Dabney said. “It’s Easter and Shannon is here.”

“Our Savior reigns,” Agnes Bernadette warbled.

The meal was delicious and conversation eased a bit with the wine. David and I fell into reminiscing about the more memorable 911 calls we’d received over the years: the woman who claimed her husband made her drink Windex, the portly father who got stuck in the chimney on Christmas Eve in his Santa suit. Dabney listened and asked encouraging questions while Agnes Bernadette inserted non sequiturs.

Dessert was lemon meringue pie, made entirely from scratch, and then Dabney presented me with a small Easter basket filled with buttercream eggs and jelly beans. It was one of the nicest Easters I could remember.

Dabney stood up from the table. “I’m going to take Grammie home, and then I’m going over to Clendenin’s. I’ll be home at ten.”

David nodded his assent, although I knew, because he had confided in me, that he didn’t like Clendenin Hughes. David felt there was something not trustworthy about the kid, he was smug, and too smart for his own good.

I laid my crumpled napkin on the table. “I should go,” I said.

“No!” Dabney said. “Stay! Please stay!”

I looked at David. “Stay,” he said. “We can watch The Wizard of Oz.”

David and I started dating shortly thereafter. We kept it under wraps for the most part, appearing out in public only as “friends,” but I don’t think we were fooling anybody. Agnes Bernadette died in January, and David proposed to me the following Easter Sunday, in front of Dabney, over the dinner she had once again prepared.

Dabney said, “You two are a perfect match. I can see it.”

But the fact of the matter was, David couldn’t actually marry me because he was still married to Patty Benson. He had never hunted her down and asked for a divorce. It was when he finally used the information that he had gotten from the private investigator to track Patty down in Texas that he learned she had overdosed on Valium the year before. She was dead.

David had been afraid to tell Dabney. He believed that Dabney had spent her whole life waiting for her mother to come back. Dabney had been in therapy for years, dealing with her fear of leaving the island, which both David and Dabney’s therapist, Dr. Donegal, believed was connected to her abandonment. But Dabney took the news in stride.

“Oh,” she said. She shrugged. “Maybe I should feel sad? But I hardly remember her.”

Dabney was not so levelheaded in her relationship with Clendenin. The romance endured, despite the fact that she was at Harvard and Clen at Yale. There was the disastrous weekend of the Yale-Harvard game in New Haven during Dabney’s sophomore year. Both David and I thought that would be the end, but Dabney refused to let go.

And then, Dabney found herself unexpectedly pregnant at twenty-two. Clen was already in Bangkok; he sent her a plane ticket, but Dabney refused to leave the island. She would raise the baby herself, she said.

There was one time during the pregnancy when David was working a double and I heard Dabney crying in her room. I knocked lightly and opened the door. Dabney raised her face from the pillow and said, “I hate love, Shannon! Love is the worst thing in the world!”

I sat with her awhile and rubbed her back. I almost felt like a mother. I asked her if she missed Clendenin and she said yes, she missed him with every cell of her being. I asked her if she was angry at Clen for not coming back to Nantucket. She told me that she had asked him to please let her be. Not to call her or write to her or contact her in any way ever again. This was news to me, and I was pretty sure it would be news to David.

Dabney said, “His dream is over there. I couldn’t ask him to stay on Nantucket, Shannon. He would hate me and hate this baby…just the way…” She trailed off.

Gently, I said, “Just the way, what, Dabney?”

“Just the way my mother did,” she said.

“Your mother didn’t hate you,” I said. But with those words, I was way out of my comfort zone. Who was I to explain why Patty Benson had done what she’d done?

Dabney started crying again. “I thought Clen and I were a perfect match. I have been right about everyone else. Why was I wrong about myself? It isn’t fair!”

I agreed. It wasn’t fair.

David died of a heart attack in his sleep when Dabney was thirty-four, Agnes nearly twelve. It was a sad time for us all, although Box was around to help us manage things.

I stayed on at the police department until I had my thirty years and could properly retire. Then I decided to leave Nantucket. It was too lonely a prospect to stay, a woman nearly sixty-five, alone on this island. I had cousins in Virginia, and I liked the idea of moving south, someplace milder.

But then Dabney got involved. She asked me, did I know Hal Green, he had been a summer resident for years with a house in Eel Point, and only now had moved to the island year-round. He’d lost his wife a few years earlier to breast cancer, and he was a terrific guy; Dabney knew him because he entered his Model A Ford in the Daffodil Parade each year.

I said, “No, Dabney, I do not know Hal Green.”

Dabney said, “That’s good, that means he hasn’t had any run-ins with the law.”

I did not crack a smile. I knew what Dabney was up to.

She said, “I think you should meet Hal Green. I think you would like him.”

I said, “Oh, do you?”

Dabney said, “Come for dinner on Saturday. I’ll invite him.”

“Dabney.”

“Please,” she said. “Just come.”

Hal and I have been married for four years.

Clendenin

She was like Dabney twenty years earlier, Dabney as she had been standing on Steamship Wharf just before he left. But there was something else in this woman that grabbed at him: the hazel eyes, and a certain facial expression he had only ever seen in the mirror.

He clenched his right fist and felt his phantom left fist clench in unison; he felt his whole left arm in a way he hadn’t in months, except in dreams.

He couldn’t believe it.

“Agnes?” he said, his voice no more than a whisper.

“Yes,” she said.

It took some convincing to get her inside. He understood the urge to flee. It was scary and confusing, this reunion, unplanned, unexpected-but for him, not unhoped for.

He said, “Can I offer you a cup of coffee? Or some tea?”

She blinked at him.

He said, “I don’t bite.”

She barely moved her head, whether to indicate yes or no, he wasn’t sure.

He said, “I have bourbon.”

She turned off her car, a hybrid, more a toy than a car. Clen wondered what Eight-Cylinder Dabney thought about the Prius.

He poured two Gentleman Jacks, neat, and Agnes threw hers back without flinching. His daughter.

She said, “My mother comes here.”

He couldn’t tell if it was a question or not. “Yes,” he said. “We’re friends.”

“Friends,” Agnes said.

Clen downed his bourbon, then poured two more. He didn’t know how to proceed; he didn’t know what Dabney had told the girl.

He said, “How did you know to come here?”

She said, “That I can’t tell you.”

He laughed, not because she was funny but because she was so much like him. He felt like he was being born. His daughter, his child, his progeny, his DNA, his his his. How had he missed out on this until now? Tears stung his eyes. It was too much, it was overwhelming. He stared at the grain of the oak table. Agnes held her silence. Any other girl her age might have been shrill or hysterical, angry or dramatic.

Oh, Dabney, he thought. Forgive me, please.

He hadn’t realized what he had given up-not really-until now.

He said, “Does your mother know you’re here?”

“She does not.”

“Are you going to tell her you met me?”

“I haven’t decided yet.”

Clen said, “I answered your letter, years ago. I never heard back. Did you get my letter?”

“I did,” she said. “Thank you. It helped me to read it. It was enough.”

“It wasn’t close to enough,” Clen said. “You deserved much more.”

“Let’s not have that conversation right now,” Agnes said. “Okay?”

“Okay,” he said, relieved.

“I want to talk about you and my mother,” Agnes said.

The relief evaporated. “I think you should probably ask your mother.”

“I have asked my mother,” Agnes said. “She has been disappearing all summer long-leaving work for three- and four-hour stretches. She tells Nina she’s ‘running errands.’ A few weeks ago, I saw her by chance about a half mile from here, and when I asked her about it, she said she was going to have lunch at Sankaty.”

Clen nodded. Nobody who knew Dabney would believe Sankaty.

Agnes said, “That was bullshit, of course.”

Clen drank his second bourbon. He itched for a cigarette.

Agnes said, “She comes here to see you. She comes every day?”

“Not every day.”

“The two of you are…lovers?”

“Agnes…”

“The two of you are lovers, yes or no?” There was no anger in her voice, but her tone was uncompromising. She was demanding an answer. Was Clen supposed to tell her the truth, tell his daughter that yes, in fact, he and her mother were lovers?

“Yes,” he said.

Agnes said, “How long?”

Clen poured another bourbon even though the first two shots were making his head swim in one direction and his stomach swim in another. Another man might be able to have this conversation without alcohol, but he wasn’t that man.

“I moved back here at the end of April. It started a couple of weeks after that.”

“Oooooohweeeahhh!” Agnes said. Whether this utterance was one of surprise or horror or disapproval, Clen couldn’t tell.

He said, “Dabney and I are in love, Agnes. Deeply, truly, passionately in love. This was true for years before you were born, and continues to be true now. More so now that we have each lived lives that had nothing to do with each other. Dabney Kimball is my reason and my answer.” Here, his voice failed him, much to his shame. “I can’t let her go again.”

Agnes

When she pulled out of the driveway of 436 Polpis Road, she was a different person.

Her mother’s secret revealed: Clendenin Hughes, her father.

Agnes had to tell someone. She couldn’t bear this revelation alone. When she emerged from Clendenin’s cottage, she found four voice mails from CJ on her phone. The first message was curious (“Where is my best girl?”); the second message terse (“Um…hello?” Click.) The third message, annoyed (“Jesus Christ, Agnes, answer the goddamned phone, would you, please?”). It was the fourth message that took Agnes’s breath away. CJ screamed with unbridled fury, “Where the fuck are you?”

She thought of Manny Partida: I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t tell you…hair pulling, arm twisting, some not-so-nice stuff…just please, Agnes, be careful. She recalled CJ’s facial expression as he watched Agnes’s hair being cut. He had been smug with his power over her.

Agnes deleted all the messages except for the last one. She couldn’t talk to CJ about meeting Clendenin. She couldn’t talk to CJ about anything, she realized, except for CJ.

She figured she was expected home for dinner-she hadn’t told Dabney otherwise-but she couldn’t sit at a table with Box and Dabney and eat and make chitchat.

Clendenin had asked Agnes not to say anything. He had begged her, even while realizing that he had no place to ask and even less reason for her to agree.

He said, “This is adult stuff.”

She stiffened. “I am an adult.”

“It’s between your mom and me. And it’s between your mother and the professor. You are an adult, and so I’m asking you to give your mother the time and space to figure her situation out.”

“Do you think she will?” Agnes asked.

“I do,” he said.

She had not expected the summer to be like this. There were secrets everywhere she looked.

Agnes called Riley and got his voice mail; she felt a wave of irrational anger overtake her. She needed Riley! There was no one else she could talk to! Except, possibly, Nina Mobley. Should Agnes call Nina Mobley? As Agnes was considering this, her phone rang. It was Riley.

“Hey,” he said. “Sorry, I just got done surfing.”

“Where are you?” Agnes asked.

“Antenna Beach,” he said.

“Stay there,” she said. “I’m going to grab a couple of sandwiches. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

“I’m supposed to meet Celerie at the movies,” he said. “It’s Diablo Cody week at the Dreamland and they’re showing Juno tonight. Celerie said it’s her favorite movie. She’s been calling me ‘Bleek’ for the past three days.”

“Is there any way you can cancel her?” Agnes said. She felt like a big jerk for asking, but this was an emergency like none Agnes could have dreamed of. “I really need to talk.”

“I’ll cancel her,” Riley said.

Less than an hour later, Agnes and Riley were drinking beer, eating lobster rolls, and watching the sun go down. They were sitting in the open air of Riley’s Jeep on the lip of the beach. Riley was still in his wet suit, although he had peeled off the top half, so Agnes had a fine view of his shoulders, chest, and abs. She felt ashamed for even looking. There were two new voice mails from CJ on Agnes’s phone, but she hadn’t listened to them yet.

“Was Celerie upset you canceled?” Agnes asked.

“Devastated,” Riley said. “But she didn’t cry. She said she would make her roommate go. She said she hoped the friend I needed to talk to knew how lucky she was.”

“You didn’t tell her it was me, did you?”

“I did not tell her it was you,” Riley said. “But who else would it be?”

Agnes sighed. She couldn’t have Celerie getting wind of this situation. No no no.

Riley said, “So what’s up?”

Agnes said, “I followed your tip and went to 436 Polpis Road.”

Riley said, “And what did you find?”

Agnes said, “My father. My biological father, whom I’ve never met. Until today.”

Riley sipped his beer and stared out at the wild, churning ocean. “What did I tell you the first time I met you? What was my exact phrase, Agnes? Tip of the iceberg.”

“Yes,” Agnes said. “You were right about that.” And then she explained: Clendenin Hughes, whom Agnes had never met, who had led a life on the other side of the world, who had won a Pulitzer Prize, who had lost his left arm in pursuit of a story, who had returned to Nantucket three months earlier, was Dabney’s secret. He was her lover.

“So,” Riley said. “What is he like?”

What was Clendenin Hughes like? Agnes hadn’t spent enough time with him to know, really. The word that first came to mind was complex. She had looked at him and seen a funnel of swirling thoughts and emotions. Clendenin had not come back to the United States and lived a life as Dabney’s husband and Agnes’s father. Your mother didn’t want that, he said. She wanted to go it alone. But he knew that, deep down, Dabney had wanted him. A stronger man, a better man, would have done the right thing and come home. Clendenin could claim no honor. He had been consumed with shame and regret, he’d told her, and for days and months and years, that shame had been the most powerful thing in his life. He’d made it clear that he was not in a position to ask for Agnes’s forgiveness. But Clendenin also said that the only reason he had come back to Nantucket was because Dabney was there.

I realized something when I lost my arm, he had said. And that was, my arm wasn’t the only thing I was missing. I was missing my heart. It lies with your mother. Always has.

Returning to the island had been his only option. It felt like it was written somewhere; it felt like he had been moved to do so by the hand of God.

Do you believe in God? Agnes had asked him.

I believe in something bigger, higher, and more important than ourselves that it is beyond human beings to comprehend, Clendenin said. Yes, I do.

Agnes grabbed Riley’s arm. “I can’t believe this happened. I met my father today. Half my blood, half my genes, half my biology.”

“It’s big,” Riley said. “It’s huge. Are you going to tell her?”

“Maybe,” Agnes said. “But not yet.”

“Are you going to see him again?”

“Thursday,” Agnes said. “Thursday after work. He wants to know about me, he said.”

“How does this make you feel about your other father?” Riley asked. “The professor?”

“Box,” Agnes said. “He’s my real father. Clendenin is…well, I don’t know what he is to me other than my DNA. But I want to find out. The question is, in finding out am I betraying Box?” She drank some more of her beer. “I don’t know. I’m so confused.”

“My two cents?” Riley said.

“Please.”

“Your mother is an extraordinary woman who has two men in her life. Probably, she loves them both.”

“Probably she does,” Agnes said.

“I bet it happens more than we think,” Riley said. “Although I am strictly a one-woman-at-a-time guy. But my parents always told me to be open to what they called the ‘wide spectrum of human experience.’ They were in the Peace Corps in Malawi before I was born, so they embrace tolerance, kindness, acceptance.” Riley put his hand on top of Agnes’s hand, which was still holding his arm, “I think it’s okay if you love them both, too, Agnes.”

Agnes looked at his arm, her hand, his hand, and then she started to cry. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” she said. “You’re being so understanding and you canceled Celerie for me and it is so easy to confide in you, and this situation is so screwed up and yet you’re making me feel like it’s not screwed up, you’re making me feel like I’m on a reasonable part of the spectrum of human experience and everything might end up okay.”

“And that’s why you’re crying?” he said. He pulled a box of tissues out of his center console and plucked one for Agnes.

What she didn’t say was that she knew that CJ, the man she was engaged to marry, wouldn’t have been this understanding. Because it was Dabney, he would have judged. He would have judged not only Dabney but Agnes as well. Her mother was a liar and a cheater and a slut-and therefore, so was Agnes. Agnes pictured CJ pulling Annabelle Pippin’s hair, twisting her arm. If CJ could see her now, sitting in Riley’s Jeep, he might hurt her. He just might. Agnes knew that the bad green gunk Dabney saw floating in the air around her and CJ wasn’t made up. CJ ridiculed Dabney’s matchmaking, but her mother was never wrong. And, Agnes feared, Manny Partida wasn’t wrong either. I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t tell you.

Agnes also didn’t say that she was jealous of Riley’s future dental patients, all of whom would think he was the greatest dentist in the world. Riley would glide through his office like he was on roller skates. He would look at a recalcitrant seven-year-old patient and say, “Kissing girls yet, Sam?” And when that didn’t get Sam to open his mouth, he would say, “Hey, guess what I got for Christmas? Snowman poop!” And Sam would laugh and Riley would deftly move in with his instruments to count Sam’s teeth.

Agnes was also jealous of the young women in the audiences who would hear Riley play the guitar and sing Jack Johnson so beautifully that Jack Johnson himself would want Riley to serve as his best man or be godfather to his children. And Agnes was most jealous of the woman who would someday be Riley’s wife, the woman who would get to wake up next to him every morning and be the consistent recipient of his generous spirit.

Agnes didn’t say any of this, however. She carefully removed her hand from his arm, dabbed the tissue at her eyes, and took a deep, cleansing breath. The sky was streaked with the hot pink of the setting sun and Agnes wondered if this was the color Dabney saw when two people were a perfect match.

When Agnes got home, she listened to the fourth voice mail CJ had left on her phone. Where the fuck are you? And then, fearfully, she listened to the two later voice mails, which had no words, just the sound of CJ’s breathing. These, somehow, were even scarier. Agnes picked up the velvet box from her dresser and gazed at her engagement ring.

Tomorrow, she would send it back.

Dabney

The day Miranda left, Box announced that he realized that for the past three or four (read: eight or nine) years, he had bungled his spousal duties. He had not paid Dabney the kind of attention she deserved, he had not loved or appreciated her ardently enough. But now, all that was going to change.

He didn’t leave Dabney alone for a minute.

When she awoke, he was downstairs in the kitchen fixing her coffee. He let the Wall Street Journal lay on the table, untouched, and instead engaged Dabney in conversation. How had she slept? What had she dreamed about?

“What did I dream about?” Dabney said. “Who can remember?”

She said this to cover for the fact that she had dreamed about Clen; she dreamed about Clen all the time now. Last night, she and Clen had been naked, holding hands, circling. They were models for Matisse’s La Danse.

Next, Box asked what was going on at the Chamber. How were the information assistants working out, had a love affair started between the two of them? How was Nina Mobley, her kids must be nearly grown by now. Were any of them applying to college? And what of George Mobley? Did he still have a gambling problem?

Dabney stared at Box, nonplussed. It was possible that three or four or eight or nine years ago she had yearned for Box to take an interest in the daily minutiae of her life this way. For years, decades even, she had rattled on about this and that with only half, or a quarter, of his attention. It was as though he had stored up every detail she had ever told him in some mental vault that he had only now magnanimously decided to unlock. She wished he would pick up the Journal and let her drink her coffee in peace. Was it horrible of her to think this way?

Box wondered about the date and location of the next Business After Hours. He wanted to go with Dabney; there were people he hadn’t seen in years whom he wanted to catch up with. And what about trying a new restaurant this week? What about Lola Burger, or The Proprietors? Should he include Agnes, or would it be more romantic just the two of them?

Romantic? Dabney thought.

She said, “I’m going for my walk now.”

“Dabney,” Box said.

She stopped at the door and turned around.

“You have to make a doctor’s appointment,” he said.

“Yes,” she said. “I realize this.”

“If you don’t have time to call,” Box said, “then I’ll call for you.”

“I’ll call,” Dabney said.

“How’s your pain?” he asked.

“You have no idea,” she said.

Thank heavens for work. At work she was free, Nina knew all, so Dabney didn’t have to lie or pretend. She spent all morning planning the next Business After Hours, which would be held at Grey Lady Real Estate and catered by Met on Main. Dabney chuckled as she thought about how quickly Box would renege once he found out the locale. He detested all Realtors. In the spirit of Holden Caulfield, he believed them all to be phonies, and horrible gossips on top of it. And he had never wanted to go to Met on Main because there was a branch on Newbury Street in Boston that was supposed to be far superior. No, when push came to shove, he would pass on Business After Hours.

In the back office, both Celerie and Riley were on the phone; the rush leading up to August was upon them.

At noon, Dabney said, “I’m going to run some errands.”

Nina nodded her assent, and Dabney signed out on the log.

On top of the filing cabinet behind Nina’s desk were the wilting remains of the lilies Nina had received the week before from Dr. Marcus Cobb. Nina and Marcus Cobb were falling in love, and they were doing so without any help from Dabney. If Dabney interfered at this point, she would only mess things up. Her matchmaking ability seemed to be stuck in reverse.

Dabney turned to go, but at that moment they both heard the door downstairs open and then slam shut, and they heard footsteps on the stairs. Dabney worried that it was Vaughan Oglethorpe, and that at any second the office would be suffused with the smell of embalming fluid. Dabney would have to deal with Vaughan, and then light her green-apple-scented candles. She wanted to get to Clen; it had been four days since she’d seen him, and, like Nina’s flowers, she was starting to wilt.

“Hello, ladies!” The person walking into the office was…Box.

Nina gasped and Dabney felt so startled at the sight of him that she grabbed the edge of Nina’s desk.

“Darling!” Dabney said. “What are you doing here?”

“I was at home working when I had a revelation,” Box said. “I remembered how much you love that poem by William Carlos Williams, and so I brought you a cold plum.”

Dabney gaped at him. That poem by William Carlos Williams? “This Is Just to Say”-yes, Dabney had always loved that poem. In the years of Agnes’s growing up, a copy of the poem had been taped to the refrigerator door. It was an apology poem-forgive me, they were delicious, so sweet and so cold. Box was holding out the plum and a bottle of chilled Perrier with a silly grin on his face.

Celerie picked that moment to pop out of the back office for her lunch break. “What is this?” she said. She eyed the white-haired man holding the water and the plum. “You aren’t by any chance Professor Beech?”

He gave a little bow. “I am.”

“Your husband!” Celerie said, as though introducing him to Dabney. “And he brought you fruit and water. How lovely!”

Dabney was stymied. What was going on here? She took the plum and the Perrier, and, at a loss for the words to make both Box and Celerie disappear, she bit into the plum. It was succulent, and juice dripped down her chin. From his pocket, Box produced a napkin. He had thought of everything.

“You must be Celerie,” Box said, offering his hand. “I’m John Beech, but please call me Box.”

“My roommate is going to die when I tell her I met you,” Celerie said. “She was an econ major at Penn. She used your textbook!”

Box was used to this kind of godlike status among the collegiate and newly graduated. “I hope she doesn’t actually die.”

Celerie clapped her hands together at her chest, as if prepping for the next cheer. Dabney had to get out of there, but how? She made eyes at Nina, who was nervously sucking on her gold cross.

Nina said, “Dabney, you should go. You’ll be late.”

“Go?” Box said. “Go where? Where do you have to go?”

Nina said, “Dabney has a meeting with a potential Chamber member.”

Dabney had never loved Nina Mobley as much as she did at that very moment. On her way home from seeing Clen, she was going to call and order Nina a fresh bouquet of flowers.

“Really?” Box said. “Who’s the potential member?”

Nina laughed. Dabney thought, Who is the potential member? Nina said, “Oh, who can remember? The phone has been ringing all day.”

“It sure has!” Celerie said, her blond head bobbing.

Box said to Dabney, “Surely you must know whom you’re meeting with.”

“Yes,” Dabney said. She took another bite of the plum, then wiped her lips. “Internet start-up.”

“An Internet start-up is joining the Chamber?”

“Nantucket based,” Dabney said. She threw the plum pit and the napkin into the trash. “I have to go.”

“Cancel your meeting,” Box said. “I’m taking you to lunch at the Yacht Club.”

“Awwww…” Celerie said. “Sweet!”

“I can’t just cancel my meeting,” Dabney said. “I was supposed to leave five minutes ago.”

“Cancel,” Box said. “I’m not asking you.” His voice was stern. This was suddenly a showdown, and Dabney reared up. She didn’t like Box telling her what to do. She didn’t want to cancel her imaginary meeting; she wanted to be with Clen.

Celerie suddenly seemed to realize she was in the middle of something. She signed out on the log, then headed for the stairs. “Toodaloo!”

“Nice meeting you!” Box called out after her. Box checked the log. “You wrote ‘errands’ on the log,” he said. “I thought you had a meeting.”

“I do,” Dabney said weakly. “I was going to run errands after my meeting.”

To Nina, Box said, “Nina, please cancel Dabney’s ‘meeting.’ I’m taking my wife to lunch.”

Dabney wasn’t able to text Clen until nearly ninety minutes later, after she had suffered through lunch at the Yacht Club. In reality, lunch at the Yacht Club was lovely-a table outside overlooking the harbor while Diane played standards on the piano, a blue crab and avocado salad, iced tea for Dabney and a glass of white Bordeaux for Box, children wearing life preservers headed out for their sailing lessons, couples in white coming off the tennis courts sweaty and chuckling. Dabney wished she could relax and enjoy it, but it was all she could do to keep her toe from impatiently tapping. She wanted to text Clen at the very least to tell him she couldn’t make it; she hated to think of him sitting on the porch in the granny rocker, waiting in vain. He had probably made sandwiches and possibly margaritas; Dabney had tucked her bathing suit into her bag, anticipating a swim in the pool.

Every man and woman over the age of eighty who was eating lunch at the Yacht Club wanted to stop and talk to Box and Dabney. All of them wore hearing aids, hence much of each conversation had to be repeated two or three times. These were friends of her father’s and the parents of her old summer friends and some were acquaintances of Box’s who wanted to know why their investments were doing so poorly. Box was an economist! Dabney wanted to scream. He dealt in theory! If people wondered about their investments, they should call their stockbrokers!

“Dessert?” Box asked.

“God, no,” Dabney said. “I have to get back to work.”

She texted Clen: Sorry, Beast, I got ensnared in a situation I couldn’t get out of. Can I come see you at five o’clock?

Clen texted back: I have plans at five o’clock.

Clendenin

He was like a starving man standing at a groaning board. He had to keep from stuffing his face like a glutton. He wanted to know everything about Agnes. When had she learned to ride a bike? Who had taught her piano lessons? What book had changed her life? Had his name ever been mentioned around the house? What kind of movies did she like? Why Dartmouth and not Harvard, where the economist taught and Dabney had gone? What size shoe did she wear? Did she sneeze in sets of three like he did?

“Yes,” she said to this last question. “Actually, I do.”

And they laughed.

She wanted to know about Vietnam and Cambodia and Thailand, his life there. Twenty years, and yet his lasting memories were few, and they were general rather than specific-the oppressive heat, the air so thick it was like agar or jelly, you could practically chew it. The stink of diesel fuel and cigarette smoke. The trash, the traffic, the seemingly endless streams of people, so many people, how did one distinguish himself?

Babies on motorbikes, young girls in brothels, the same question repeating on ticker tape through Clen’s mind: Who is in charge here?

Clen said, “Tell me about your fiancé.”

Agnes

She wasn’t sure what to tell Clen about her fiancé, who was technically no longer her fiancé. Agnes had sent the ring back by Federal Express with a note that said, “I’m not sure what I want. Please don’t call or text me. I need time to think. I will call you when I return to New York on the first of September.” She had tracked the package; it had arrived the afternoon before, and there had, surprisingly, been no phone calls to either her cell phone or the house. He was respecting her wishes. Training camp for his NFL players was less than a week away; CJ was probably busy trying to finalize a deal for Bantam Killjoy. There might not be room for hurt feelings about Agnes. He might look at the ring and think that Agnes clearly didn’t know a good thing when she saw one, that she was being influenced by her evil witch of a mother; he would take the ring and give it to the next woman he dated, after he wooed her with presents and flowers and his special table at Nougatine.

To Clen, Agnes said, “Can you keep a secret?”

“Are you seriously asking me that?” Clen said.

Right. Clen was a good, neutral person to talk to about this.

“Has my mother told you anything about CJ?”

“Not really,” Clen said. “Only that she doesn’t approve. No rosy aura or whatever. Not a perfect match.”

“She doesn’t approve,” Agnes said. “But that’s not why I did what I did. Or not the whole reason, anyway.”

“What did you do?”

“Sent the ring back,” Agnes said. “I’ve been away from CJ for three weeks and two days, and I feel great. I’m my own person again.”

Clen raised his eyebrows.

“CJ is very confident,” Agnes said. “Very Master-of-the-Universe. He snaps his fingers and things happen. Front-row seats to the Knicks, and to Broadway shows, backstage passes to Madison Square Garden. A car service all the time with a bottle of Veuve Clicquot on ice because he knows it’s my favorite champagne. Flowers at work, love notes on my pillow. Victor Cruz, who plays for the New York Giants, showed up in Morningside Heights to sign autographs for my kids. Really sweet stuff. And he’s smart…and he’s funny…” Agnes blinked. What had she done? Had she made the world’s biggest mistake? “He’s a lot older than me, eighteen years older, and he expects certain behavior from me. I’ve spent the past year wanting to be his good girl. Maybe I was looking for a father figure.” She looked at Clen and laughed unhappily.

He said, “Well. That’s not impossible.”

“But since I’ve been at home, I realized that my relationship with CJ isn’t healthy. He’s very controlling. I’m like a marionette. I can’t disagree with him, I can’t make my own decisions. He hated my friends, so I don’t see them anymore. The relationship looks good to most people-Box loves CJ, they’re best buddies-but it’s bad. Really bad. My mother was right.”

“She usually is,” Clen said.

“She always is,” Agnes said. “It’s weird.”

They sat in silence for a minute. Then Clen brought two glasses out of the cabinet.

“Bourbon?” he said.

“Please.”

“You haven’t told your mother you sent back the ring?”

“No,” Agnes said. “I don’t want her to know yet. I don’t want her to know about CJ, and I don’t want her to know about you.”

“I feel sorry for the guy,” Clen said. “Losing out on a future with you.”

“He’ll find someone else in two minutes,” Agnes said. She threw back the bourbon. “I kind of like this guy who works for Mom. His name is Riley, and he’s studying to be a dentist.”

“I’ve heard her talk about the dentist,” Clen said. “He surfs and plays the guitar. I thought maybe your mother kind of liked him.”

“She has too many men as it is.”

“Agreed,” Clen said.

As Agnes pulled out of Clendenin’s driveway that evening, a blond woman driving a Mercedes pulled in. They nearly collided, but the Prius was small and handled well, and Agnes scooted out of the way, giving the woman a little wave. The woman looked at Agnes with great interest, then finally offered half of an uncertain smile.

It wasn’t until Agnes was out on the Polpis Road that she wondered who the woman was. The owners of the big house didn’t arrive on island until August, Clen said. It might have been the cleaning lady, but what kind of cleaning lady drove a Mercedes?

A friend of Clen’s? A woman he was dating? Of all the surprising emotions Agnes had felt this summer, here was one more: Agnes felt jealous on her mother’s behalf.

Dabney

Box was relentless. He went with her everywhere now. She was never alone. They went to dinner together, they read together, they went to bed together. There were still no sexual overtures from him, which was a blessing.

During her walk, she called Clen.

He said, “Jesus, woman, when am I going to see you?”

She said, “I was free yesterday at five, but you had plans. What plans?”

He said, “That I can’t tell you.”

She said, “Elizabeth Jennings?”

He said, “I hate to tell you this, Cupe, but you sound jealous.”

“I am jealous,” she said. “What were the plans?”

“I can’t tell you,” he said. “But it wasn’t Elizabeth. She did, however, drop off a homemade blueberry pie on my porch with a little note.”

“Homemade pie? Elizabeth?” Dabney said. “Her chef probably made it.”

“Jealous and catty!” Clen said. He sounded delighted.

“I can come today at five, “ Dabney said. “Or do you have plans again?”

“No plans,” he said. “Except to devour you.”

Dabney went to see Clen at five, but she had to do so under the auspices of going to the salon to get her hair cut. She figured this bought her an hour and a half, which she and Clen desperately needed. She listened to his voice in her ear, she tasted his skin, she felt him squeeze her-it hurt! But squeeze harder!-and it was just like she had never been apart from him. He was hers, she was his, they were one.

But then the countdown began. They had fifteen minutes left, then ten, then five.

“Will you miss me?” she asked.

“I miss you already,” he said.

As Dabney gathered her car keys, she watched the storm cloud cross his face, which exactly matched the shadow over her heart. She hated to leave him.

“I have to tell Box,” she said. “I want to be with you all the time.”

“So tell Box,” he said.

She nodded. “I will.” And then she thought, I can’t.

She had asked Clen again what his plans had been the day before at five o’clock and he had again declined to say, calling her a nosey parker. Her gut told her it was Elizabeth Jennings and Clen just didn’t want to admit it, but they had such a good time together that Dabney didn’t want to spoil it in a tug-of-war of accusation and denial.

He deserved his privacy, she thought. Though she didn’t believe this.

When she arrived home, Box studied her hair with narrowed eyes. “It looks the same,” he said.

“My hair always looks the same,” Dabney said. “It’s looked exactly the same since the fourth grade, when my grandmother bought me my first headband. Pink grosgrain ribbon with navy-blue whales, purchased at Murray’s Toggery.” Dabney narrowed her eyes right back at him. “God, I remember that day so vividly. Why do you think that is? Because of the headband? My grandmother didn’t spend money on pretty things, but she bought me that headband to keep the hair out of my eyes and I was thrilled with it.”

Box moved in closer, then lifted a lock of her hair and sniffed it. “It doesn’t smell like it usually does when you get back from the salon.”

Dabney swatted him away. “What are you talking about?”

“Your hair doesn’t have the salon smell and it looks the same as when you left.”

Dabney couldn’t believe this. Box had never before noticed the “salon smell” of her hair.

He said, “Dabney, did you go to the salon?”

“Yes!” she said. There was exasperation in her voice that was exasperation about having to lie. “Call the salon yourself if you don’t believe me!”

For a second, she thought he might do exactly that. She tried to imagine how compromised Box’s dignity would be if he stooped to calling the salon to confirm that Dabney had actually been in for an appointment. And then when Lindsey, the receptionist, said that no, they hadn’t seen Dabney that afternoon, Dabney’s appointment was for Saturday afternoon (so that her hair would look nice and smell pretty for the Levinsons’ annual Backyard BBQ on Abrams Point), what would Box say?

Thankfully, she didn’t have to worry, because Box let the issue go, and Dabney was able to breathe. That night, they went to the Proprietors with Agnes-who seemed preoccupied and strangely quiet-and a certain normalcy was restored.

But as she and Box brushed their teeth and climbed into bed that night, she thought, I don’t want normalcy.

She wanted Clendenin.

Box

He received the news of Miranda Gilbert’s resignation not over the phone, as he would have expected, but by a letter mailed to the Nantucket house. The letter was written on heavy, creamy stock; initially, Box thought it might be a thank-you note for the ill-conceived and aborted weekend on Nantucket. But when he read it, he realized it was something else entirely.

Dearest Box,

I am writing to thank you for four of the finest and most stimulating years an economist could ask for. What a joy and a blessing it has been working with you.

A collusion of circumstance has made it necessary for me to leave Harvard. I have broken my engagement to Christian, for reasons that I dare not explain in this letter, and at nearly the same time, I was approached by Dr. Wilma Dresdalay at Columbia University about a research opportunity. For both personal and professional reasons, it feels like a move from Harvard and Cambridge to Columbia and Manhattan is the right one. New York is the epicenter of economic thought, as you know, and I can hardly pass up this chance.

I will miss you terribly-your intelligence, your patience, your kindness, and your wit. I’ll send along a new e-mail and physical address as soon as I can so that we might stay in touch.

Fondly and with inexpressible gratitude,

Miranda

Box set the letter down on his blotter, then let out a long, frustrated stream of air.

“Goddammit!” he bellowed.

He was losing Miranda. She had been with him a long time, longer than any other postdoc research assistant; their compatibility had been remarkable. He would never find anyone like her, not anyone close.

“Goddammit!”

Dabney was somewhere in the house. No doubt she heard him yelling, but she wouldn’t knock. She found the closed door to his study intimidating.

He read the letter again. Certain things about it nagged at him, starting with the first word, Dearest. “Dearest Box.”

Was he, in fact, her dearest? Was all this related to the nonsense Dabney had conjured up? Was Miranda Gilbert in love with Box, as Dabney had claimed?

There was the use of the word stimulating.

There was news of the broken engagement, the details of which she dared not mention. A broken engagement today, when a week or so earlier, everything had been hunky-dory? Box had asked after the good doctor, and Miranda had told Box that Christian was utterly absorbed with work, but that this was as per usual. For reasons that I dare not mention in this letter. What did that mean? To Box, it felt like Miranda must have gone directly home from Nantucket and ended the relationship.

What had Dabney said to her?

Then the zinger that Miranda was moving to New York, to Columbia, to work with Wilma Dresdalay. Wilma’s name had been mentioned casually, as though Miranda were unaware that Wilma was the only living economist whose work Box consistently admired and even envied. There was only one person Miranda would be wise to leave Box for, and that was Wilma. He couldn’t fault her one bit.

Then the line I will miss you terribly. This was the line that Box fixated on. She would miss him terribly. It sounded heartfelt, nearly romantic. Well, yes, Box would miss her terribly as well. She was singular and extraordinary. He tried not to think of how her smile lit up the offices, or how he enjoyed her accent the way one enjoyed music, or how on the occasions when they went to the movies together, she grabbed his arm in excitement or fear. When they went to dinner with colleagues, she presented beautifully, with her strawberry hair in a loose bun, and her clothes soft and feminine; she wore a lot of ivory and peach, which flattered her complexion. Her knowledge of wine was comprehensive; she liked trying new varietals and vineyards and she always chose wines that she knew would excite and please Box.

He admitted to himself that he would miss Miranda Gilbert terribly as well, and not only as a colleague. The thought of her leaving caused his heart to sputter like a dying engine. She had been, perhaps more than anything else, his friend.

Fondly and with inexpressible gratitude-those words were appropriate, and mutual.

“Goddammit!”

The third time brought Dabney to the door.

“Box?” she said, knocking lightly. “Are you all right?”

He opened the door and thrust the letter into Dabney’s hands, but he didn’t wait for her to read it.

“Miranda has resigned, she’s going to Columbia to work with Wilma.” He cleared his throat. “Seems she’s broken off the engagement with Christian.”

“Oh,” Dabney said. “Wow!”

Agnes

Five days of silence from CJ. It was now a standoff. He was waiting for her to break down and change her mind. The silence was also eerie; she hadn’t believed him capable of it.

She started joining Riley for trips to the beach after work. She swam while he surfed, then they lay around on his cherry-red beach blanket like a couple of seals and enjoyed the golden hour-the hour when the sun was sublime and mellow. Despite the turmoil of the summer, Agnes relaxed with Riley.

One night, she let Clendenin cook her dinner. Fried rice with authentic spices that he had ordered on the Internet-the fragrant rice was a deep yellow and was studded with delicious tidbits-golden raisins, lacquered pork, rock shrimp-that looked like tiny gems. That night, Clen talked about what Dabney had been like in high school-how popular and confident she had been, her elaborate matchmaking schemes, even among the faculty, her love of Nantucket. Dabney had been salutatorian of their class, and Clen the valedictorian; Dabney had been bitter about that, Clen said. He had her by three-tenths of a percentage point in GPA and forty points verbal and ten points math in the SAT-but she had gotten into Harvard and he hadn’t. Back then, it had been easier to get into Harvard as a girl, or so Clen had told himself at the time. Dabney used to keep a notebook, he said, of her favorite streets on the island. Charter Street, in the fish lots, was her very favorite. She wanted to live on Charter Street when she grew up, and if not Charter, then Quince, or Lily.

After dinner, Clen poured them each a bourbon and he smoked a cigarette on the front porch while Agnes did the dishes. Then she joined him on the porch and they looked at the stars in the sky, and at the large, empty, illuminated house that it was Clen’s job to caretake.

Agnes said, “Will you stay here on Nantucket?”

“I don’t see ever leaving again,” Clendenin said. “Unless something happens to your mother. For me, this island is home, but it’s home because of Dabney. I moved here when I was fourteen. I lived here only three weeks before she befriended me, and as soon as she did, I never wanted to leave. She gives this island its meaning. Dabney, Nantucket. Nantucket, Dabney.” He exhaled. “And long as she stays, I stay.”

Agnes wanted to ask him what he thought was going to happen. Did he think Dabney would leave Box? And…marry him? At that moment, Agnes understood that she had gotten way too involved in the love triangle. Her mother, her father, her other father.

She gathered up the keys to the Prius. “I’d better go,” she said.

Dabney

She was at the farm, selecting ears of corn for dinner. She felt so weak and so sick, she could barely stand. She should have called the doctor weeks ago-but as soon as she resolved to do it, she felt better, or life got in the way. That morning, Dr. Marcus Cobb, Nina Mobley’s beau, had gone fishing and caught five striped bass. When he came into the office to take Nina out to lunch, he gave Dabney a heavy bag of fresh filets.

Dabney had been thrilled with the fish; she instantly planned dinner: grilled striped bass, corn on the cob, farm greens lightly dressed. It had sounded like the perfect meal at noon, but now, at five, Dabney was in so much pain that she wanted to take a pill and sleep until morning.

Forbearance. She would choose the corn. The fish was already marinating on her kitchen counter. With a few simple instructions, Agnes could pull dinner together.

Suddenly, there was a woman at the corn crib, trying to get Dabney’s attention. It was Elizabeth Jennings.

“Elizabeth!” Dabney said. “Hello!” She was in too much pain to talk to Elizabeth. The pain was like a black marble, and Dabney was suspended inside.

“Dabney!” Elizabeth said. “I’m so happy I bumped into you. I have the most interesting piece of news to share.”

Dabney was wary of “interesting pieces of news,” because they were usually rumors or gossip, and yet people came to her with “interesting pieces of news” all the time. Dabney did not want to hear any “interesting pieces of news” from Elizabeth Jennings, that was for darn sure.

“I’m in a terrible hurry,” Dabney said. She indiscriminately stuck two final ears of corn into her recyclable shopping bag.

But Elizabeth either didn’t hear Dabney or she chose to ignore her. She said, “You’re friends with Clendenin Hughes, right?”

Dabney froze. Her insides contorted. Lovesick.

Elizabeth said, “When we had dinner a few weeks ago, he told me the two of you have known each other since high school. So sweet!” Elizabeth smiled, showing off her capped teeth. She was wearing a turquoise-and-white dress with matching turquoise sandals, and her toenails, Dabney noticed, were painted the same shade of turquoise. Was it possible that Elizabeth Jennings had her pedicure done each day to match her outfit? It wasn’t impossible. What else did Elizabeth Jennings have to do all day except gossip and chase after Clendenin? She wasn’t even at the corn crib to pick out corn, Dabney realized. She had come only to torment Dabney!

“I have to go,” Dabney said. She turned to her cart and loaded in her ears.

“I went to Clen’s house to drop off a pie I made,” Elizabeth said.

Involuntarily, Dabney shook her head. There was no way Elizabeth had made a pie.

“And there was a young woman pulling out of his driveway as I was pulling in. A very beautiful young woman. I think Clendenin has a girlfriend!”

Dabney barely made it to the Impala before the pain became unbearable. Elizabeth Jennings had been jealous, spiteful even, and possibly suspicious of Dabney’s relationship with Clen. Either she had wanted Dabney to tell her who this young mystery woman was or she wanted Dabney to commiserate. Men always chose younger women. Life was unfair in many aspects, but this, perhaps, was the most unfair.

At the very least, Dabney knew that Elizabeth Jennings hadn’t been the guest at five o’clock. Someone else had been.

Dabney called Clen from the parking lot.

She said, “Who were your plans with the other day? When I wanted to come over at five o’clock and you said you were busy?”

He sighed. “I’m sorry, Cupe. I can’t tell you.”

“Clen!” she shouted. She was in so much pain, and now this. “A young woman? A beautiful young woman?”

“Dabney,” he said. “I can’t tell you.”

The sharp, shining knives piercing her gut…She moaned. Her insides were being gnawed on by millions of tiny razor teeth.

I think Clendenin has a girlfriend!

I’m sorry, Cupe. I can’t tell you.

Lovesick.

No, she thought.

In the morning, she called Genevieve at Dr. Field’s office. “I need to talk to Ted,” she said. “Please, I think it’s an emergency.”

“Like, an emergency-room emergency?” Genevieve said.

“Please, Genevieve,” Dabney said. “I need to talk to Ted. Can you make that happen?”

“For you, I can make anything happen.”

Ted Field set it all up. He sent Dabney’s blood work to the correct person at Mass General, and they scheduled a CT scan for Thursday morning.

“You do realize,” Ted Field said, “that you have to go to Boston.”

“Yes,” Dabney said. It had long been her mantra that she would leave the island only if her life depended on it. Now, she was suddenly certain, her life depended on it.

She told Box first.

“I spoke to Ted Field,” she said. “I’m going to Boston for a CT scan.”

“That sounds serious,” he said. “I’ll go with you.”

“No,” Dabney said. “I’m going alone.”

“It’s my city and it’s been aeons since you’ve been there, or anywhere else, by yourself. Let me go with you. We can end the day with dinner at Harvest, spend the night in my apartment, and come back in the morning.”

“That sounds like your idea of a lovely time,” Dabney said. “I want to go and come back, and I am going alone.”

“You have got to be kidding me,” Box said.

“First flight to Boston on Thursday,” she said. “Last flight back Thursday.”

“You can’t possibly expect me to believe that you’re going alone,” he said.

“I’m going alone,” she said.

She told Clen next.

“Boston on Thursday,” she said. “I have to have some tests.”

“I don’t like the way that sounds,” he said. “Let me go with you.”

“You can’t,” she said.

“Wanna bet?”

“Clen.”

He frowned. “Is the economist going with you?”

“No,” she said. “I’m going alone.”

She told Agnes, and then Nina. Boston on Thursday for tests. Before either of them could open her mouth, she said, “I’m going alone.”

At the airline counter, she accepted her boarding pass and thought, Am I really doing this? It would have been far easier with Box or Clen or Agnes or Nina there to prop her up. But she felt it was important that she go alone, self-motivated, powered by her own two feet.

At the very moment the airplane lifted off the ground, something fell back down to earth. Her spirit, her soul, her self. She was nothing but a shell.

Taxi, Ted Williams Tunnel, Cambridge Street, Mass General. She had seen the Prudential Building and the Hancock Tower as she flew in. Skyscrapers, the wider world. It was just Boston, she reminded herself, only ninety miles from home. She had gone to college across the river, she had made it through four years of higher education; she would make it through today.

Blood pressure, temperature, needles, hundreds of medical questions, culminating with the CT scan, which was like something out of science fiction.

Then, a rather lengthy wait, while a doctor read the scan. Everyone at the hospital was being solicitous. Rosemary, the nurse-practitioner in Imaging, treated Dabney like she was a minor celebrity.

She said, “This is all being expedited. We know you want to get home.”

Dabney supposed that Dr. Field had some influence here, or maybe Box did, via Dr. Christian Bartelby.

She ate a tuna fish sandwich in the cafeteria. She looked around at all the other people-some sick, some healthy, some hospital employees. There were so many people in the world, people she didn’t know and who didn’t know her. That was, perhaps, the scariest thing of all.

Dr. Chand Rohatgi was a handsome Indian man with kind eyes.

“There’s someone here with you?” he said.

“No,” she said. “I came alone.”

He nodded. His face was pained.

“Just tell me,” she whispered. “Please.”

“Not a great prognosis,” he said.

Cancer of the pancreas, which had metastasized, already, to her liver. The lungs would likely be next. It wasn’t resectable, and considering her level of pain, she wouldn’t be strong enough for chemotherapy, and there was no guarantee that chemo would do anything other than make her sicker. At this point, Dr. Rohatgi said, there was little they could do but hope the progression was slow. He could help her manage the pain.

She said, “How long…?”

“Difficult to say.”

“Will I live to see the lights on Main Street at Christmas Stroll? It’s my busiest weekend of the year.”

He looked puzzled. He wasn’t familiar with Christmas Stroll, he said, but if it was in December, there was a chance, maybe. Again, difficult to say.

A chance, maybe? she thought. Christmas Stroll was only four months away. Was he telling her then that she didn’t even have four months? She felt blindsided. Someone else should not be able to tell you you’re dying.

No wonder she felt like a shell. Her insides were being consumed by disease.

She said, “I’ve always been an intuitive person. I thought it was something else. I thought I was…lovesick.”

He said, “Yes, I can understand that. The symptoms are probably similar.”

Or perhaps Dr. Rohatgi didn’t say the symptoms are probably similar, perhaps he didn’t say a chance, maybe, perhaps he didn’t say metastasized, already, to the liver. Dabney walked out of the hospital in a state of extreme confusion, and the most confusing thing was this: she wasn’t thinking about Agnes, or Clen, or Box. She was thinking about her mother.

Dr. Donegal had asked her time and again, during the eight or nine years that she had gone to see him, to describe what had happened the night Dabney’s mother left. Time and again, Dabney had stared mutely at Dr. Donegal because she couldn’t remember.

Why, then, all these years later, with the onset of this…news…was the scene so crisp in Dabney’s mind? The suite at the Park Plaza, a ceramic vase holding ostrich feathers, the chandelier in the lobby that was as big and bright as a bonfire, the king-size bed that Dabney had been allowed to jump on for as long as it took her mother to put on her makeup, the front-row-center orchestra seats at The Nutcracker, her mother tapping out the rhythm of the music on Dabney’s hand during the “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy,” and Dabney agape at the beauty of the ballerina, her ability to float, twirl, fly. At the hotel afterward there were cheeseburgers from room service and, for Dabney, a hot fudge sundae. Her mother had been drinking red wine, which was what she drank at home, and it always turned her teeth blue, which Dabney found funny. Why blue and not red, Mama? It was quite late, Dabney remembered, pitch-black outside, and it had started to snow, and Dabney’s mother lifted her up to the window so she could see. Dabney was wearing her white flannel nightgown, she had spilled chocolate sauce down the front, which upset her, she grew weepy, she was tired. She brushed her teeth and climbed into the big bed and her mother sat on the edge of the bed and smoothed her hair from her face. Her mother was engulfed in green smoke, she might have been a bit drunk, her words were slurred, she said some things about Dabney’s father that Dabney didn’t understand, how he had come back from the war and vowed, Nantucket, always Nantucket, and her mother couldn’t do it anymore but her father wouldn’t live anywhere else. I’ll always love you, Dabney, you will always be my little girl, this is hard for me, so hard. Her mother’s perfume had smelled like a sugar plum, or so Dabney had thought that night. Her mother’s pearls had glowed even in the darkened room. She was right there on the edge of the bed, and then when Dabney woke up she was gone. May, the Irish chambermaid, was there.

Mama! Where’s my mama?

Your father is coming for you, my sweet.

Bye bye, Miss American Pie.

Mama!

Dabney climbed into a taxi. She was just able to tell the driver, “Logan Terminal C, please,” before the tears squeezed out from the corners of her eyes. They were not tears about the news, because the news was incomprehensible. She cried all the way to the airport because her mother had left, and still, to this very day, Dabney missed her.

There was no rhyme or reason to her thoughts. It just wasn’t possible, it was too terrifying to comprehend. She was very sick. She would die. She would die? It was a door she would step through without knowing what was on the other side. Her grandmother, Agnes Bernadette, had believed in Heaven, fluffy clouds, angels, harps, peace, and that was what Dabney had grown up believing. But now that she was faced with the concrete reality, she thought, Angels? Harps?

Then she thought, Everyone dies, absolutely everyone, there is no escaping it, so the only reasonable option was to focus on the time she had left.

Dr. Rohatgi had urged her not to look too far ahead. Take things a moment at a time, he’d said. He had given her some literature, which she stuffed into her purse, and a prescription to ease her pain. She thought of Clen, Box, Agnes, Nina Mobley, Riley, Celerie, Vaughan Oglethorpe, Diana at the pharmacy who made her coffee, people she cherished, the people who made her who she was. She would tell no one. But was that feasible? She was holding in so many secrets now. How long would it be until she burst, like a dam?

Dabney’s life had been safe with her mother, and then not safe. Then safe again, and then when Clendenin left, not safe. Then safe for a long time, but now, not safe. Everyone’s life had moments of both. She liked to believe she was special because of what she’d survived, but this last thing she would not survive. Incomprehensible. The literature in her purse was supposed to help her grapple with being terminally ill, but who wrote such literature? And how did they know the best strategies for grappling? Nobody knew what happened next.

She was relieved when Nantucket came into view-historically preserved homes and lighthouses, ponds and moors, the blue-and-white ribbon where the ocean endlessly hit the shore. The only thing Dabney had wanted, all day long, was to be back home.

In the car driving home, she decided that she would wait until Monday to tell everyone the news. She thought of Dr. Rohatgi saying, Take things a moment at a time. She wanted to go to the Levinsons’ Backyard BBQ on Saturday night, she wanted to dance, she wanted to drink wine and laugh and have fun.

She wanted to have one last perfect summer weekend.

Box asked first, and then Agnes, then Nina, then Clen: How did it go at the hospital?

Dabney said, “I had a lot of tests. One thing I know for sure is that I do not have a wheat allergy.”

Dabney would someday be too sick to go to a party, but she wasn’t too sick yet, and so on Friday morning she signed out of the log, writing errands-but instead of going to see Clen, she went to Hepburn to buy a new dress. She selected a white Dolce Vita sundress with a racerback and fringe around the waist that would swing when she danced. Despite her fear and confusion, she decided that she would dance. This, after all, might be her last chance. She bought new white sandals to match the dress-flats, nothing fancy. Dabney loved the new sundress and the new sandals and she hung the dress on the door of the closet, where she could look at it. When she woke up in the middle of the night, she saw the dress glowing white; it looked like a ghost.

Would she haunt this house after she was gone?

She supposed anything was possible.

Box brought a glass of wine up to the bedroom as Dabney was getting ready for the party.

“Here you go, darling.” Box set the wineglass on her bureau. “A dressing drink.”

Dabney moved into an embrace with her husband and clung to him in a way that probably qualified as histrionics, but what did it matter now? Surprisingly, Box reciprocated. He said, “It’s nice just to hold you.”

Dabney squeezed her eyes shut. There was no pink with Box, there had never been pink with Box, but he was a good man.

He led her over to the bed, and she worried for a second that he had intentions, possibly he wanted to try to make love to her, an endeavor that would surely embarrass them both. But Box sat on the bed next to Dabney, with her hand in both of his.

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

“You do?” she said.

He said, “I have been dreadfully jealous of Clendenin Hughes. Since the minute I learned of his existence, really. But even more so now that he’s back on Nantucket.”

Dabney stared into her lap.

Box said, “I know your past relationship with him is complicated, possibly beyond my limited understanding. I’m sure you still have still some residual feelings for him, and although I don’t know what form those feelings take, I want to apologize, because there have been some anomalies in my behavior this summer that have to do with my jealousy of him.”

“You don’t have to apologize,” Dabney said.

“I just want you to know that I am not as hard-hearted as you may think. Nor am I unreasonable. You should work out your feelings for Hughes, and when you come to a resolution and sense of peace regarding your relationship with him, do let me know so I can finally put the green-eyed monster to rest.” Box patted Dabney’s hand. “I’m sure it’s difficult to have him back on the island.”

“Well, yes,” she said. It was a relief to finally speak a few true words about Clen. “It is, actually.”

“Thought so,” Box said. He stood up. “Let’s go have fun tonight, shall we?”

At the party, there was valet parking; a pretty blond girl from the catering company was stationed at the entrance next to a table of deep-orange cocktails. Dabney was so entranced by the color of the drinks that it took her a second to realize the pretty blond girl was Celerie.

“Dabney!” Celerie shouted.

Dabney startled, then tried to recover quickly as Celerie gave her a power squeeze.

Dabney said, “You’re working for…?”

“Nantucket Catering Company!” Celerie said, her hands forming a V in the air. “And Riley is here, too! He’s playing the guitar in the garden!”

“Oh,” Dabney said. “How did you…?”

“My roommate works for NCC and they needed extra hands tonight, so I said I’d help out, the money is great, and I hooked Riley up.” Celerie beamed. “When the Levinsons found out we both worked at the Chamber, they were so excited! They love you! They said you matched them!”

Celerie was using what Dabney thought of as her stadium voice, and Dabney was a bit embarrassed.

“Yes, well,” Dabney said. “That’s what I do.”

Box wisely sidestepped Celerie and the bright orange drinks-tangerine cosmos, Celerie announced-and entered the party ahead of Dabney. When she stepped through the trellised archway, she found Box shaking hands with Larry Levinson. Marguerite Levinson was on Dabney immediately, taking both of Dabney’s hands in hers.

“Dabney,” she said. “How are you doing?”

Dabney had adored Marguerite Levinson since they’d met a dozen years earlier up at Tupancy Links with their dogs. Dabney’s chocolate Lab, Henry, had still been alive, and Marguerite’s golden retriever, Uncle Frank, had been little more than a puppy. Larry had frequented Tupancy with his golden retriever at the time, Arthur Fielder. Dabney had introduced her brand-new friend Marguerite to her more established friend, Larry, and there had been pink auras before a Frisbee had even been thrown.

How was she doing?

I’m dying, she thought. And my soul aches for Clen. Box had made such a kind and thoughtful speech in the bedroom, he had proved himself to be an evolved person, he had been trying to tell Dabney that whatever her feelings were for Clendenin, he would understand. She had had her chance…but she had blown it.

Forbearance. To Marguerite, she said, “What a beautiful night! This is my favorite party of the year, you know. I can’t wait to dance!” Dabney shook her hips, and the fringe on her white dress shimmied.

Marguerite whooped and said, “Great! Let’s have us some fun!”

Dabney finished her tangerine cosmo. It was surprisingly good, and she might have gone for another one but she thought it best to keep her forward momentum and not go back and distract Celerie from the other guests. Dabney stood in line at the bar to get a glass of wine for herself and one for Box. It was a crystal-clear, bug-free, blue-skied stunner of an evening and the Levinsons’ property at Abrams Point faced south over the harbor. There was enough breeze to keep the flag lazily waving and to carry Riley Alsopp’s voice over the lawn.

Take things a moment at a time. There were few moments of her life that had been as aesthetically pleasing as this one.

Wine in hand, Dabney found Box and together they headed to the raw bar to attack some oysters.

There were people to talk to, endless people. Dabney knew everyone, although certain people she knew only because she saw them at this party every year-Donald and Irene from Newport Beach, California, and Marguerite’s unmarried brother, Charles Baldwin. Charles had a stick up his ass and a bad case of lockjaw; he was a private-equity guy with a house in Potomac, Maryland. But he was lonely, Marguerite had confided, and Marguerite was perennially hoping that Dabney would set him up with someone wonderful. Charles had used every Internet dating service known to man-eHarmony, Match.com, It’s Just Lunch-but none of them had worked. Dabney had promised Marguerite that she would keep Charles in mind. Years ago, she had nearly set him up on a blind date with Nina Mobley, but then she’d thought better of it. Dabney had to admit, she probably didn’t have an arrow in her quiver meant for Charles Baldwin.

Take things a moment at a time. She enjoyed her conversation with Charles, or rather, she enjoyed listening to Charles and Box converse (Box excelled with the stuffy) while Riley sang James Taylor, and she tasted all the hors d’oeuvres-the coconut shrimp with mango-curry aioli, the pork satay, the phyllo cups of lobster and corn salad-and she enjoyed the mellow sunshine on her face.

At the end of the James Taylor song, there was a smattering of applause and Riley caught Dabney’s eye. She floated over to him.

“Look at you!” she said.

He stood up and moved away from the microphone. “I hope you don’t mind that I’m moonlighting,” he said. “I realize I probably should have asked your permission.”

Dabney laughed. Had anyone used the term moonlighting since 1989?

She said, “I’m thrilled you get to show off your talent and make a little extra money in the process.”

He said, “Yeah, what they’re paying me is ridiculous.”

Dabney’s mind wandered away like a puppy left off a leash. She thought, Please, Riley, do not leave the Chamber. Riley had a chocolate Lab named Sadie, a fact that had captured Dabney’s heart because she missed Henry, missed him so profoundly that she had never gotten another dog. She wished she could go back to the days of Tupancy Links with Henry and Uncle Frank and Arthur Fielder-rolling green hills overlooking the Sound, half-a-dozen Frisbees in the air at once, red and purple and yellow disks against the blue sky. Agnes had still been in high school then, and Clen was living in a place so far away that it seemed imaginary. Riley Riley Riley-he would be perfect for Agnes. How much easier it would be for Dabney to leave this world if she knew that Agnes had Riley Alsopp in her future. Agnes would inherit the house on Charter Street. She and Riley could bring their children to Nantucket for the summers, Dabney’s grandchildren, the grandchildren she would never meet. Dabney thought that she would like to be a ghost in that house; that way, she could set eyes on her grandchildren and kiss them as they slept.

Riley, it seemed, was asking her something.

“I’m sorry?” Dabney said.

He said, “Where’s Agnes tonight?”

Dabney blinked. Where was Agnes? Dabney and Box had left before Agnes got home from work. Dabney had written a note saying there was chicken salad in the fridge and homemade cheddar scones if Agnes wanted supper. Agnes had been out on her own a lot lately, it seemed, and the one time Dabney had asked her about it, Agnes said she had stayed late at work. Dabney wondered if Agnes was interested in Dave Patterson, her boss. That would be good. They weren’t a perfect match, but any relationship that took Agnes away from CJ was welcome. Anyone but CJ! As Dabney thought about it, she realized that she hadn’t heard Agnes talk about CJ in a while, a week or ten days at least, and neither had Dabney heard Agnes on the phone with CJ in her bedroom. And of course CJ hadn’t shown his face here on Nantucket. Dabney wondered now if maybe she should have pried a little deeper into what was going on with Agnes-but Agnes was twenty-six years old, an adult, and the last thing she wanted was to explain her every move to her mother. If Agnes wanted to talk, she would come to Dabney.

However, Dabney had been self-absorbed. To say the least.

“I don’t know where she is,” Dabney said.

Agnes

As she was leaving work, a call came to her cell phone from an unfamiliar number. Agnes was afraid to answer it, so she let it go to voice mail. She didn’t listen to the message until she had pulled into her driveway. It was Rocky DeMotta, one of CJ’s partners at work. Agnes had met Rocky at the U.S. Open the preceding September. Rocky was calling, he said, because CJ was…missing. AWOL. The ink had just dried on Bantam Killjoy’s contract with the Chiefs, and training camp had started the day before, and CJ was supposed to be in Kansas City with Bantam, but he had never shown up for his flight. Nor had he come to work, or called in, or even checked his e-mail. He wasn’t answering his calls or texts.

Rocky said, “We’re all a little worried about him. Worried enough that I grabbed your number off the office records, sorry about that, but would you please call us if he’s there with you, or if you’ve heard from him.”

Agnes sucked in her breath and thought, He’s dead, he’s dead, he’s dead, I killed him.

She listened to the message again. Rocky sounded panicked, of course he sounded panicked; CJ was never, ever out of touch, he carried a BlackBerry, two iPhones, and a laptop. What reason would he possibly have had to miss his flight to Kansas City? Had he hanged himself in his apartment, leaving a suicide note weighted down with the returned engagement ring?

It was about two hundred degrees in her closed-up Prius, and yet Agnes shivered. She was so, so cold. She headed inside. She needed her mother.

But the house was empty, although there was a note on the kitchen table about the things Dabney had left for Agnes’s dinner. The end of the note said, “Daddy and I are at the Levinsons’. Don’t wait up-hopefully we’ll be home very, very late!”

The Levinsons. Dabney loved the party at the Levinsons’; she had really been looking forward to it. Agnes could not call Dabney or Box at the Levinsons’ and ruin their night out just because CJ wasn’t answering his phone.

Agnes sat at the kitchen table and bit her nails. She tried to come up with a plausible reason why CJ had missed his flight. If he’d hurt himself or gotten sick, he would have called in to the office. What else could it be? Had he gotten hit by a bus? Had he gone on a weeklong Dirty Goose bender once he received the ring back, and was he now passed out facedown on a bar somewhere? Should Agnes call someone? Both of CJ’s parents had passed away; there was a brother somewhere in Upstate New York, but he and CJ no longer spoke. CJ knew a million people, but he wasn’t close to anyone, really, except Agnes. And Rocky…he played squash with Rocky. He had gone to high school at Collegiate, on the Upper West Side, and then had a PG year at the Berkshire School before going to the University of Florida. He never talked about anyone from high school or college, except for the Gators, who had later become his clients. Agnes then thought of Annabelle Pippin in her waterfront home in Boca Raton. Should Agnes call Annabelle and ask about CJ…about…Charlie Pippin, her ex-husband? Was it weird that CJ had changed his name after his divorce? Agnes had all but decided that she wasn’t going to marry CJ, at least not right away-so why did she care that he was missing?

No answer for this, but she did care. She felt responsible.

What to do?

She called Riley. Riley would be able to calm her.

But her call to Riley went straight to voice mail, which was unusual. Agnes considered driving to Antenna Beach to see if he was surfing. She stared at her phone. She needed more friends. It was CJ’s fault that she had no friends.

She tried Riley again-straight to voice mail. Then, she called Celerie. Celerie wouldn’t be able to help at all but Agnes craved someone’s positive outlook-and, well, Celerie was a cheerleader.

Her call to Celerie also went straight to voice mail, which was even stranger than Riley’s call going to voice mail. Celerie lived and died by her cell phone.

Agnes wondered if maybe Riley and Celerie were on a date somewhere. She wondered if they were in bed together. She had to admit, the thought bothered her.

What to do? Call her mother? Drive out to Antenna Beach in search of Riley? Call back Rocky DeMotta?

Almost against her will, she dialed CJ’s number, then racked her brain for what she might say in her message. Should she say, Hey, it’s me? or, Hey, it’s Agnes? Now that she had returned the ring, she figured she had pretty much given up the right to say, Hey, it’s me.

“Hello?”

Agnes was so startled, she nearly dropped the phone. CJ had answered.

“Hey,” she said. Her voice sounded bright and normal, but her thoughts darted around like a school of frightened fish. What was she going to say?

“Hey, Agnes,” CJ said. His voice was calm, and a little flat. “Where are you?”

“On Nantucket,” she said. “At my parents’ house. Where are you?”

Click. CJ had hung up.

Dabney

It was as Dabney was standing in the buffet line, eyeing the mashed-potato bar and thinking, bacon, chives, sautéed mushrooms, caramelized onions, cheddar, a dollop of sour cream, that she saw Clendenin walk into the tent with Elizabeth Jennings.

Not possible.

But there they were. Together, indisputably together. Clen was…what, then? Dating her? Lying to Dabney?

The thick white china plate wobbled in Dabney’s hand and her vision started to splotch. She couldn’t help herself to the mashed-potato bar or the grilled lobster tail or the beef tenderloin or the luscious-looking tomatoes with burrata cheese. She couldn’t eat a thing right now; she felt like she might never eat again. But she also couldn’t move through the buffet line with an empty plate. Box was right behind her, and she knew everyone at this party. She took a scoop of potatoes, a lobster tail, a few spears of grilled asparagus, and a lone tomato, then she cast about for a place to sit. There were two empty seats at the Levinsons’ table, but in her present state of mind, Dabney didn’t want to eat with the host and hostess.

Someone touched her back. Dabney turned around. Clen and Elizabeth.

“Hey there, Dabney!” Elizabeth said. She looked like the cat that ate the canary.

“Hey there,” Dabney said. It hurt to make herself smile, but she did it. “Look at you two.”

Clen was wearing a crisp blue-and-white-gingham shirt with the cuff turned smartly back on his right wrist, and he had trimmed his beard. His expression, however, was one of sheer misery. He looked the way Dabney would have looked if she weren’t trying so hard to conceal how she felt.

“Dabney,” Clen said. He bent down to kiss the side of her mouth. It was like a stranger kissing her.

Elizabeth said, “Where is that naughty husband of yours? I’m still angry at him for leaving my party without saying goodbye.”

Dabney hunted around for Box; he had been right behind her in the buffet line. He hadn’t been more than three feet away from her all night long. But now, Dabney saw, he was sitting down with the Levinsons. He must have noticed Clen and peeled off. From across the tent, he beckoned to Dabney.

Dabney waved at him. “He’s over there,” she said to Elizabeth. “Go say hi.”

“I will,” Elizabeth said. To Clen she said, “Be right back.”

Dabney waited until Elizabeth was safely at Box’s side before she raised her eyes to Clen.

“Let’s get out of here,” he said.

“What?” she said.

He took the plate of food from her hands and set it on an empty waiter’s tray. “Come out to the lawn with me so I can talk to you.”

“Are you crazy?” Dabney said. “Everyone is watching us.”

“I don’t care,” Clen said.

“Well, I do,” Dabney said. She heard the trill of Elizabeth’s laugh, but Dabney knew that no matter how witty Box was being, he also had one eye glued on his wife.

“Come out onto the lawn,” Clen said. “So I can talk to you.”

He cut a path through two tables and headed for the opening in the side of the tent and the purpling night outside.

This was, Dabney saw, a defining moment. We all make choices.

Dabney followed him out.

You’ve been lying to me. You’re seeing Elizabeth Jennings.

We didn’t come together. We met at the entrance and she latched on to me. It was an awful coincidence.

You expect me to believe that.

I rode my bicycle. She came in Mingus’s old Mercedes, is my guess.

You didn’t plan to meet here?

Did not plan.

Who is the beautiful young woman Elizabeth is talking about?

Dabney.

Tell me! This, practically, loud enough to silence the tent-but no, it was only in Dabney’s imagination. In reality, the tent hummed with voices and laughter and the band tuning up.

My new cleaning lady, Clen said. I’ve been taking some time to get to know her.

Dabney furrowed her brow. Weeks earlier, she had sent Clen a new cleaning lady from Brazil named Opaline.

You mean Opaline?

Opaline, yes.

This didn’t sound right to Dabney. Opaline was in her late thirties and had five sons back in Rio; she wasn’t someone Dabney would consider young or pretty. She had dyed orange hair and a hard-line mouth.

Elizabeth is after you. You said she tried to kiss you.

She did try, yes. However, kissing requires two interested parties.

Why can’t you stay away from her? Tell her to go away. What are you doing? Are you trying to torture me?

No, Cupe, I’m not trying to torture you.

Well, you are! She started to cry.

How do you think I feel, knowing that you’re still living with the economist? Sharing a bed with him? You’ve been telling me you’re going to leave, but you know what, Dabney?

His use of her real name frightened her.

What?

You’re never going to leave him. I want you to be truly only mine, but you never will be. Ever.

Dabney stepped forward into Clendenin’s arms.

You jerk. You stupid, stubborn, difficult man. I have always been truly only yours.

He squeezed her so tightly that her insides screamed out in pain, and then he kissed her until her vision went black and she saw stars. She was going to faint from love, die right here of it.

“Dabney!”

Dabney didn’t bother turning around to look at Box, nor did she pull away from Clendenin. At that moment, she didn’t see the point.

Agnes

She called CJ back three times, but there was no answer. Agnes supposed she should feel relieved. She had nothing to say to CJ anyway. She was merely glad he was alive. If he didn’t want to show up for his client, he didn’t want to show up for his client. It wasn’t Agnes’s concern.

She wished Riley would answer his phone or listen to his messages and call her back. Or Celerie. She wished her parents would come home. She had never once felt scared or uncomfortable in this house, but she felt scared now. She turned on the TV for the voices, and helped herself to her mother’s chicken salad and a cheddar scone, which she heated up and slathered with butter, but she was too agitated to eat. She could go out by herself, she supposed-to the Straight Wharf bar or down to Cru-and get a glass of champagne and some oysters. She had a wallet full of cash-Box pressed twenties and fifties and hundreds into her hand every time she left the house. She might meet someone nice, someone new-man or woman. She was pathetically low on friends.

She thought she heard a noise outside; there was a rustling like someone poking around in her mother’s hydrangea bushes. Agnes was afraid to check out the windows, then she chastised herself. Nantucket was one of the safest places in the world. Half their neighbors didn’t even lock their houses; Dabney and Box only did so because of their art.

Agnes’s apartment door in New York had four dead bolts.

Agnes scooped up her car keys. She couldn’t stay in the house alone.

She found herself involuntarily driving out the Polpis Road toward Clendenin’s cottage. He would be at home; he was a self-described hermit, and Dabney was at the Levinsons’ with Box, so there would be no danger of disrupting a rendezvous. Agnes found Clen easy to talk to. He listened in a way that so few men listened, even Box. Box heard every third word you said-only when he was talking economics was he present. Agnes understood how seductive it would be for Dabney to know that her words were being cherished and appreciated.

Agnes would talk to Clendenin.

She pulled into the driveway, but the cottage was dark, and Agnes’s heart sank. Where was everyone tonight? It felt like the whole world had abandoned her. The big house was lit with the usual lights, which were on timers. Clendenin had told Agnes that the family who owned it, the Joneses, weren’t coming to Nantucket at all this summer; they were going to the south of France instead.

Agnes sat in the driveway outside Clen’s cottage and rested her forehead against the steering wheel of the Prius.

Headlights swung into the driveway, which meant that Clen was home, thank God. He used the Joneses’ Volvo only when he had to get groceries or had another errand for which his bicycle wasn’t suitable.

The headlights pointed right into Agnes’s windshield, blinding her, and she realized it wasn’t Clen in the Volvo. She thought to panic-it was a lot quieter out in Polpis, there weren’t any neighbors nearby to hear her yell for help-but then Agnes assumed that the car belonged to someone who was lost and had turned into the wrong driveway. Agnes got out of her car, thinking she would help this lost soul, then leave Clen a note and head into town for a drink.

A man got out of the other car and started walking toward her.

Agnes blinked.

It was CJ.

Dabney

Box didn’t speak, and Dabney hoped that he would believe she was working out her feelings for Clendenin Hughes, trying to find a resolution and a sense of peace, and that he would sensibly walk back into the tent.

The problem was that Elizabeth Jennings had followed Box out.

Dabney casually extracted herself from Clendenin’s arms, then she faced Box and Elizabeth head-on and said, “Everything is okay, everything’s fine. I just wasn’t feeling well is all.”

Box glared at Clendenin, and Dabney thought there might be another fistfight. She wanted to vaporize. Her mind was racing with the scandal of it all. Tomorrow, everyone would be talking about Dabney Kimball Beech; the island’s most beloved citizen, and its fiercest champion, would be revealed as a liar and a cheat.

And yet, she realized that this was her chance; all the other chances had been practice, trial runs. She wasn’t sure if she believed in Fate, but she was pretty sure that Clendenin Hughes had lost his arm and returned to Nantucket for a reason. He had been meant to reconcile with Dabney before it was too late. Take things a moment at a time.

Dabney cleared her throat and aimed her words at her impossibly dignified husband. She didn’t care one bit about Elizabeth. “You told me today that you thought I might have residual feelings for Clendenin, but that you didn’t know what those feelings were. The answer is that…I’m in love with him.” She paused, wondering if she’d really just said those words. “I’ve been in love with him my whole life. I’m so sorry.”

Box nodded, but it looked like the lightbulb was slow to come on. Was there a way that Dabney could have been clearer, or kinder? Finally, he said, “Thank you. Thank you for telling me. I thought I was going crazy. It’s nice to know that my instincts were correct and that my sanity, at least, is intact.” With that, Dabney watched him go, her brilliant and esteemed professor, the man who had saved her, the man who had loved her and allowed her to be herself, the man who had raised Agnes as his own, a good, principled man. Dabney decided to do him the favor of not chasing after him and exhibiting more histrionics.

Elizabeth made a noise-a sniff or a soft cry-then said, “I had no idea.”

Clen said, “Really, Elizabeth, this is none of your business.”

“I knew something was going on, too,” Elizabeth said. “On the Fourth of July I knew.” She shook her head as if to clear it, and then gave Dabney a wobbly smile. “You’ve got yourself a regular love triangle.”

Dabney thought, Was there ever anything regular about a love triangle? Maybe there was. Maybe years ago, while “overseas,” Elizabeth herself had been involved in a love triangle with Clen, or had wanted to be. What did Dabney know? Regret overwhelmed her at that moment. She had made a spectacular mess of things. As she gazed at the tent, its pearly, incandescent walls containing light and music and food and conversation, she realized that among her regrets was that she wouldn’t dance tonight.

Elizabeth said, “I’m going back in. See you two later, I guess.”

Clen said, “Have a good night.”

Elizabeth strolled back into the party with purpose, and Dabney shuddered. Her good name was about to be destroyed.

Clen said, “Well.”

Dabney said, “Well, what?”

Clen said, “You’ll have to ride home on my handlebars.”

Agnes

There was a bottle of Grey Goose dangling from CJ’s left hand, two-thirds gone. Agnes noticed this, then his rumpled suit, which looked like he’d slept in it three days straight. His hair was standing on end, and he bared his glinting teeth. He was absolutely terrifying.

He said, “Hey, baby.”

“Hey,” she said. Her emotions surged at the sound of his voice, and at the raw physicality of him. He was here-he had skipped out on precious Bantam Killjoy and come to Nantucket to see her. There was something desperate and romantic about that, and she felt herself rethinking her decision.

He handed the bottle of vodka to Agnes and said, “You want?”

She accepted the bottle; it was icy cold. She brought it to her lips and threw back a little more than a shot, grateful for the cold burn down her throat and into her chest. Deep breath. She set the bottle down on the hood of the Prius.

What to say?

She wasn’t sure. She waited.

CJ took her face in his hands and kissed her hard, his teeth tearing at her lips. He grabbed her by the hair-it had grown past the nape of her neck over the summer-and yanked her head back like she was a doll he intended to decapitate.

“You sent back the ring,” he said.

“I…” She couldn’t talk; her neck was so stretched that the skin was taut, he was hurting her, and she was having a hard time getting air. “Let…go,” she said.

He lunged at her with his mouth, biting and sucking on her clavicle, chewing on her like a rabid dog. He was hurting her.

“Get off me!” she said.

CJ held her by the back of the head and grabbed her left wrist, right below her Cartier love bracelet. His grip was ironclad, a different kind of bracelet, a bracelet of fury. He shoved her up against the side of the Prius. She felt him hard against her leg, but she didn’t find it arousing. She wasn’t about to have sex with CJ here in Clendenin’s driveway.

She tried to push him away, but he only tightened his grip on her wrist.

Bruises, she thought. He’s going to leave bruises.

“Let go of me,” she said. He had a fistful of her hair. “You’re hurting me, CJ.”

“Hurting you?” he said. “Hurting you?” he screamed.“Let’s talk about who’s hurting who here. You sent back my ring! After all I’ve done for you!”

“Yes,” Agnes said, trying to placate him. “You have done a lot for me-”

“You don’t know the half of it!” he shouted. “Your little favorites, the ones you worry so much about? Quincy and…?”

“Dahlia,” Agnes bleated.

“I bought their mother an apartment!” CJ screamed. “A fucking apartment, so that they would have a home. I wanted to surprise you.”

“Oh my God,” Agnes said. CJ had bought Quincy and Dahlia’s mother an apartment? Agnes couldn’t believe it. And yet, it was exactly the kind of thing CJ did. He was insanely generous with material things, because there was some kind of deficiency in his heart.

“Thank you,” Agnes said. “That was very kind…”

“Kind? You think I did it to be kind? I did it because I love you!”

“Let go of my hair, CJ,” she said. “And let go of my arm.” She heard Manny Partida, clear as day: I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t tell you.

“I sent the ring back because,” Agnes said. “Because-”

“Because why?” he demanded.

“Because I don’t want to marry you, CJ.”

CJ brought her head forward, nearly to his chest, and then he slammed her head back against the Prius. Agnes gasped. In the morning there would be a lump, she thought. An egg.

“Stop,” she said. “Please, CJ.”

“Please, Charlie,” he said. “Please Charlie please Charlie please Charlie please Charlie.” He slammed her head against the car again, and then again. Agnes was confused about what was happening; she felt something warm and wet in her hair. Was she bleeding?

“You bitch!” he screamed. “After all I’ve done for you! You came up here and started screwing somebody else!”

“No,” she said. “I did not! I swear I did not!”

He slammed her head again and this time the pain made Agnes’s knees buckle. CJ lifted her up by one arm; he was going to rip it out of its socket. Hair pulling, arm twisting, some not-so-nice stuff. She was going to faint. Is your fiancé a nice guy? There was a sticky trickle down the back of her neck, and Agnes vomited into the shells of the driveway.

“What the hell is going on here?” Another voice, growling and bearlike. And then a high-pitched cry that Agnes knew belonged to her mother.

Darling!

CJ let Agnes go and she collapsed in a heap. She touched her head. Blood. Her left arm was numb.

She heard a struggle, heavy breathing, fists against flesh. CJ was fighting with Clendenin. Clen, who had only one arm.

Dabney cried out, “Clen, stop, you’re going to get hurt.”

Hurt, Agnes thought. Hurthurthurthurthurt.

The blood running down her neck was half Clendenin’s blood.

Agnes opened her eyes in time to see Dabney climbing the porch stairs and Agnes thought, Call the police, Mom! Go inside and call the police! She couldn’t say the words. CJ was punching Clen the way she used to see him go after the bag at the gym. Relentlessly. And yet Clen was still on his feet, still swinging his right arm.

Agnes thought back to the moment when CJ Pippin was introduced to her, in the Waldorf ballroom, with a full orchestra playing in the background and canapés being served on silver trays. Their gala benefit had been the polar opposite of the cause they were raising money for. Agnes remembered being discomfited by this, even as she knew that throwing glamorous events was how one kept the doors open. CJ had asked Agnes to dance, and afterward he had brought her a glass of champagne. Then, during the Ask, he had raised his hand and donated a hundred thousand dollars. Agnes had gushed at his generosity. He had seemed like such a hero then.

“Leave him alone, you monster!” Dabney said. She was standing on the top step of the porch and she was holding a gun.

Gun? Agnes thought. My mother?

It was Clendenin’s BB gun, she realized then. But in the dark, the gun looked formidable, or at least it must have to CJ because he immediately backed off Clendenin and held his hands up in the air.

“You’re crazy,” CJ said to Dabney. “Crazy insane psycho nuts. You know that?”

“Yes,” Dabney said, walking toward CJ with the BB gun and pointing the muzzle straight into his face. “I’m well aware.”

Agnes closed her eyes. She was suddenly very, very tired. She thought, My mother is pointing a gun at CJ. She thought, My mother is crazy. But I love her. I love her so much.

Box

He packed a bag, nothing unusual in that; his entire life with Dabney he had packed a bag each Monday and unpacked it on Friday, his entire life with Dabney had been two lives, his life here on Nantucket with her, and his life in Cambridge-or Washington, New York, London-without her.

Had that been the problem?

Which had been his “real” life? He had never had occasion to ask himself this question, although in the early days of their marriage, Dabney used to badger him. Did he love Harvard more than he loved her? Did he love economics more than he loved her?

You are my wife, he always answered. I love you in a way that one cannot love a university or a field of study.

She had asked-fifteen or twenty years ago-because she loved something else more than him, someone else, the boy who had left. She had never lied to him about that. The day Box proposed, she said, I will marry you but you must know that I will never recover from my feelings for Clendenin Hughes. He didn’t only break my heart, he stole it.

She had warned him.

Another man might have backed away. After all, who wanted to be number two? But the truth was, the specter of Clendenin Hughes had never bothered Box. Clendenin Hughes lived on the other side of the world. He would never return, but if he did, he would be faced with the ruins of what he’d left behind. He would certainly not be in any position to reclaim Dabney or Agnes.

That was what Box had thought.

Maybe if Box had been a more attentive husband, Dabney would have been able to withstand the temptation of Hughes’s return. Box was guilty of being busy and distant, of taking Dabney for granted, of leaving enough space in their marriage for Dabney to slip back and forth undetected. In better, closer marriages, he knew, there were no such spaces. Or maybe Dabney’s feelings for Hughes had grown stronger and deeper only because she had given him up. Box had never been good at understanding the complexities of other people, or even, sadly, of himself, but he did realize that unattainability was a powerful aphrodisiac, nearly impossible to battle against. It was, he thought with no small amount of irony, the simple law of supply and demand at work. We always want what we can’t have.

Box packed a bag, two bags, three bags. He was taking everything of consequence, even things he had duplicates of in Cambridge. Childishly, perhaps, he wanted Dabney to walk into this room tonight and feel his absence.

I’m in love with Clendenin. I’ve been in love with him my whole life. I’m so sorry.

Sorry, Box thought. Sorry?

He could reason all he wanted, but the truth was, he was in crisis, his bank had defaulted, his personal economy had crumbled. He would leave this house. He would leave the finest woman he had ever known, indeed, the finest human being he had ever known-and yes, he still believed that. He was John Boxmiller Beech, the Harvard professor, the textbook author, the economic consultant to the President of the United States, but none of that mattered without Dabney.

Clendenin

He went down to the police station with CJ and the arresting officer while Dabney took Agnes to the emergency room. It ended up being a very long night. CJ was charged with aggravated assault, and Agnes received thirty-five stitches in her scalp and was held at the hospital overnight for observation.

When Clen and Dabney finally met back at Clen’s cottage around quarter of four in the morning, Clen poured a shot of Gentleman Jack for himself and a glass of wine for Dabney and they sat at his big oak table in the dark. Clen threw back his shot; he wasn’t feeling that great himself. CJ had bloodied his lip, bruised his cheek, and given him a nasty black eye. On her way home from the hospital, Dabney had stopped at the grocery store for a bag of frozen peas and a porterhouse steak.

“For your face,” she said.

He said, “And maybe tomorrow night, it will be dinner.”

Dabney sipped her wine. “The beautiful young woman you’ve been seeing? It’s Agnes?”

Clen poured himself another shot, but let it sit in front of him. He slowly spun the glass.

Yes,” he said. “She came out to the house looking for you, and she found me.”

Dabney’s eyes were shining with tears. Happy ones, he hoped, although he wasn’t sure. “And how has it been…between you and her?”

Clen knew that his answer was important; this had been an emotional steamroller of a night. There was no road to take but the true, straight one.

“Things between us have been lovely,” he said. He threw back the shot. “You have raised an intelligent, thoughtful, kind human being. She is your daughter, Dabney. I have absolutely no claim to her.”

“Box is an excellent father,” Dabney said. “I couldn’t have asked for better. But there are things about Agnes that are purely you.”

“I’ve seen those things,” Clen said. “Even in the short time I’ve known her.”

“Well, now that you’ve found her, don’t let her go.”

There were no words he could offer in response to that, so Clen took Dabney’s hand and led her to bed.

Agnes

When Agnes woke up in the hospital, Dabney was sitting in a chair by the bed. She was wearing her headband and pearls, but she looked exhausted.

Agnes said, “Have you been here all night?”

Dabney said, “No, I went back to Clendenin’s for a little while, took a shower and a nap, but I wanted to be here when you woke up.”

Agnes noted the phrase went back to Clendenin’s but she didn’t know what to do with it.

She said, “Where’s Daddy?”

Dabney said, “He’s in Cambridge. He caught the late ferry last night. He…had to go back.”

“Does he know what happened?”

“I called and left him a message,” Dabney said. “I’m sure he’ll call you, or come see you. He loves you very, very much.”

“I know,” Agnes said. She leaned back into her pillows. Her head hurt and she was thirsty. “You were right, Mommy. CJ wasn’t my perfect match.”

Dabney squeezed her hand. “There is going to be a perfect match for you somewhere down the road, darling,” she said. “That I can promise.”

CJ’s arrest got two inches in the sports section of the New York Post, and a call came to Agnes’s cell phone from a producer at ESPN who wanted to do a segment about “Charlie Pippin’s Fall from Grace.” Annabelle Pippin had already agreed to talk, the producer said.

Agnes did not return the call. Let Annabelle talk to the media about Charlie Pippin’s fall from grace. Agnes wanted to forget the man had ever existed.

He had been charged with aggravated assault, but he would plead down. There would be jail time, twelve to eighteen months; there would be anger-management classes and hours of community service. He had been fired from his firm. Bantam Killjoy was now being represented by Tom Condon.

It was his own fault. Agnes had broken the engagement and his heart, but there were other ways of dealing with this than bashing Agnes’s head in. CJ needed help. He would do it again to the next woman if he didn’t get help.

In the next few days, voice mails piled up on Agnes’s phone: Wilder from work called, as well as Manny Partida; Dave Patterson from Island Adventures called; Jane Meyer, Agnes’s roommate from Dartmouth, called (she had seen the Post); Rocky DeMotta called, saying how sorry he and the rest of the firm were; Celerie called, as did Riley.

Really, the only message Agnes cared about was the one from Riley. He said, “Hey, Agnes, I heard what happened. I’m going to give you your space, but when you’re ready, I’m here to talk. We can walk the beach and throw the ball to Sadie.”

Agnes would miss a week of work. She was taking Percocet; her head had to heal. There was lots of time to lie in bed and think.

Her mother delivered trays of food, her meds, ice water with thin slices of lemon; she brought DVDs and novels. Agnes wasn’t hungry, and she couldn’t focus to watch TV or read. The ice water and the meds were all she wanted, and the dark room and the soft pillows and the knowledge that Dabney was there. She had a repeated vision of herself and Riley walking along Ladies Beach with the sky pinkening as a tennis ball flew through the air. Go get it, Sadie! Run!

Her mother came in and sat on the bed. She patted Agnes’s leg.

“Do you feel any better today?” Dabney said.

“Yes,” Agnes said. “Actually, I do.” Her vision was clear, her head felt lighter, the pain was lifting. She was ready to get up, to get on with it.

But her mother had something to say. “You may have noticed Box hasn’t been here.”

“He’s called me every day,” Agnes said. “He wanted to come back, but I told him not to worry. I feel better.”

Dabney took a breath. “Box left, honey. He left me, he’s gone. He found out about Clendenin…he found out that Clen and I are friends again. That we’re in love.”

“Oh,” Agnes said.

“I’ve made a royal mess of things,” Dabney said. “A fine royal mess.” Dabney started to cry into her hands and Agnes felt well enough to reach out and hug her mother. She had not been blessed with any supernatural powers or special vision, but she was able to understand that her mother loved two men at once. Agnes would forgive her for that because she knew Dabney couldn’t help it.

Dabney

By Friday, Agnes was healed enough to stay home by herself, and Dabney could return to the Chamber. She had received numerous messages from Nina Mobley, asking Dabney to please call her-at the office or at home, no matter the time of day-but Dabney had been focused on Agnes. She had called Box daily with updates and was consistently treated to his voice mail. Aside from Clen, Dabney hadn’t talked to anyone.

At ten minutes to nine, Dabney found Nina Mobley sitting on the bench outside the Chamber office holding two cups of coffee.

Nina’s eyes filled with tears. “Thank God,” she said. “I’ve bought two coffees every day this week, hoping you would show up, and every day I had to drink them both myself. The caffeine has been hell on my nerves.”

Dabney took one of the coffees. It had been perfectly made by Diana across the street at the pharmacy, with cream and six sugars. Dabney sat on the bench next to Nina and gazed at the front of the Chamber building, which was so familiar to her that it was like looking into a mirror.

Nina said, “I don’t know how to tell you this.”

“Tell me,” Dabney said.

Nina said, “Vaughan Oglethorpe is upstairs waiting for you.”

Dabney sipped her coffee. She wasn’t sure why she felt surprised at this news. Vaughan had come to fire her. And why not? She was a tart and a floozy and an embarrassment.

“I guess I’d better go upstairs, then,” Dabney said. “He knows everything?”

“I wish you had called me back,” Nina said. “I nearly came to your house, but I thought you and Agnes deserved privacy.”

“Thank you,” Dabney said.

“Vaughan has the log,” Nina said. “I told you not to sign out. I told you I would cover for you.”

“I didn’t want you to have to lie,” Dabney said. More coffee. The coffee was the only thing that was keeping her from screaming. “You’ve got your ear to the ground. What are people saying?”

“It could be worse,” Nina said. “But you know how people on this island are.”

Yes, Dabney did know how people on this island were-they gossiped mercilessly, they tore people’s reputations apart like sharks with a bleeding seal. Her eyes fluttered closed as she remembered how brutal people had been to Tammy Block when the news about her and Flynn Sheehan hit. Dabney shuddered. She had been responsible for that, or partially. She alone had seen the pink aura around them.

“What have you heard exactly?” Dabney asked.

“That you admitted to being in love with Clendenin. That you’ve been seeing him secretly since he got back to the island. That you’ve been secretly communicating with him for the past twenty-seven years. That you’ve been sending him money in Asia.”

“Not for twenty-seven years!” Dabney said. “Not sending him money in Asia!” But even as she said this, she realized that where gossip was concerned, you didn’t get to make a distinction between what was true and what wasn’t.

“There’s also a rumor that you and Box have an ‘arrangement’ because Box is gay and is having a sexual relationship with the Federal Reserve chairman.”

“You must be kidding me!” Dabney said. “Someone actually said those words? Sexual relationship with the Federal Reserve chairman?”

“Yes,” Nina said. “Theater of the absurd. I don’t know where people come up with this stuff.” She stared into her coffee cup like it was a deep well. “Even weirder-someone heard that you have terminal cancer and you wanted to be back with Clen before you died.”

Oh, God, Dabney thought. She felt dizzy then, dizzy like she might faint, and she focused on her penny loafers, side by side, as steady as the horizon.

“I wish you had called me back,” Nina said. “I would have suggested that you call Vaughan and head it off at the pass. He adores you, Dabney. He’s hard on you, yes, but like a favorite teacher. You could have explained.”

“What is there to explain?” Dabney asked. “The man has known me my entire life. He can hardly have been surprised.”

“I would have burned the log, or dropped it off Old North Wharf,” Nina said. “I might not even have had to do that. Vaughan might have forgiven you the missing hours. After all, the Chamber runs like clockwork, and our coffers are at an all-time high, thanks to you.” Nina put her gold cross into her mouth, then took it out and slid the cross along its chain. “But there was one board member, there’s always one, who wanted your head on a platter.”

“Elizabeth Jennings,” Dabney said.

Nina nodded morosely.

Dabney said, “Well, I’d better go up.”

Vaughan Oglethorpe was sitting in Dabney’s chair with his feet up on Dabney’s desk, which she found offensive. It was her father’s old Dragnet desk, a desk Dabney loved more than any piece of furniture or objet d’art in her home. Vaughan had the log open in his lap; he was paging through it, making notes on a legal pad. When he saw Dabney, he got to his feet.

He was seventy-eight years old, the same age Dabney’s mother would have been. Vaughan and Patty Benson had gone steady one summer; it was all gin and tonics and dinner dances at the Sankaty Beach Club and rides down the Milestone Road in Vaughan’s convertible MG, which was what he drove when he wasn’t driving the hearse for his father. He was the only person Dabney still had contact with who had known her mother well. But Patty had dumped Vaughan, and Dabney suspected he had always hated Dabney a little bit for this reason, despite his outward displays of avuncular affection.

The room smelled of embalming fluid.

She would be cremated, she decided.

“Dabney,” he said. His voice was as heavy and somber as a thundercloud. He had never been replaced as board president, she guessed, because people were afraid of him the way they were afraid of the Grim Reaper.

“Vaughan,” she said. Bright smile. Fresh-faced in her headband and pearls, although she had slept a total of ten hours all week and she was down below a hundred pounds. Maybe he wouldn’t fire her. Maybe just a warning.

“It’s come to my attention that you’ve had personal issues that have kept you from doing your job.” He held up the log. “Since Daffodil Weekend, you’ve missed fourteen full days, and the days you have been present, you’ve been out of the office a total of a hundred and ninety-two hours.”

Could that be right? All those stolen lunches, entire afternoons at the beach with Clen. Days she was legitimately sick in bed. The past four days taking care of Agnes. The stupid lunch at the Yacht Club with Box. Clen Clen Clen. A hundred and ninety-two hours she had missed. She was appalled. She would have fired herself.

“The board isn’t pleased,” Vaughan said. “One member in particular. She feels your personal life has gotten in the way of your work performance.”

She wants Clen, Dabney thought. Hell hath no fury. What was Elizabeth doing on the board anyway? She didn’t own or work for a Nantucket business. But she had money and influence; she was a summer person who “cared” about Nantucket. She had used her charms with Vaughan Oglethorpe, batted her eyelashes, flashed her pretty manicure, and maybe promised him a back scratch.

Still, Dabney said nothing. Was he going to drop the hammer?

He said, “The board took a vote and it was decided that it’s time to ask you to step down.”

At that instant, Dabney realized that both Riley and Celerie were at their desks, quiet as church mice, staring right into the front office, listening to every word.

“Step down?” Dabney said.

“I’m asking for your resignation, Dabney,” Vaughan said.

Asking for her resignation? Asking her to step down? She, Dabney Kimball Beech, was the Nantucket Chamber of Commerce. She had, with Nina’s help, turned Nantucket into the thriving business community it now was. In 1992, the Chamber had 340 members, a budget of $175,000, and there were thirty thousand visitors annually. Twenty-two years later, under Dabney’s leadership, there were 620 members, a budget of $1.2 million, and seventy-five thousand visitors annually.

Should she quote these statistics? Surely he already knew them. But it didn’t matter, because she, Dabney Kimball Beech, had done what so many great people before her had done. She had proved to be human.

“Okay,” Dabney said. “I’ll just collect my things.” She looked around the office, wondering where to start. The desks were hers, the oriental rugs, the original Abigail Pease photographs, which every single visitor to the office commented on, the green-apple-candle smell. How could she pack up that smell?

“I’m asking Nina Mobley to take over as executive director,” Vaughan said. “I assume you approve of that choice?”

“Yes,” Dabney bleated. She couldn’t imagine that Vaughan Oglethorpe or anyone else on the board cared what she thought now. She was being discarded like a piece of trash.

Suddenly, Nina was at the top of the stairs. She said, “If you’re asking for Dabney’s resignation then you might as well ask for mine as well, because I will not work here without her.”

“Nina,” Dabney said. But Nina was already collecting things from her desk. She took down the calendar from Nantucket Auto Body, which they had each consulted a hundred times a day. Dabney realized that what Nina had said was true. She would never have been able to work in this office without her.

Vaughan clasped his hands together in front of him; the false sympathy required of a funeral director rose to the surface. “I’m very sorry to hear that, Nina. Let me encourage you to reconsider.”

“I quit, too,” Celerie said, standing in the doorway of the back office. “Dabney Beech is my idol! She is my hero! I have never known anyone like her! She inspired my love for this island! She made me appreciate its uniqueness and she made me want to serve as its advocate! She made me think of it as home, and I grew up far, far away from here! I am devoted to Nantucket, but more than that, I am devoted to Dabney Kimball Beech!”

“I’m leaving, too,” Riley said. He was holding his guitar case and a copy of The Grapes of Wrath and the framed photo he kept on his desk of Sadie, his chocolate Lab.

“Wait,” Vaughan said. “Everyone please just wait a minute. You can’t all leave.”

Just then, the phone rang, and this seemed to give Riley great joy. He smiled widely, showing off his perfect teeth.

“With all due respect, sir,” he said to Vaughan, “you’d better answer that.”

Box

He loved Cambridge in the fall, winter, and spring, but he did not love it in the summer. He wouldn’t have liked it under the best of circumstances, but now he found it unbearable-air-conditioning instead of open windows, the campus inundated with foreign visitors. Even the Charles was a disappointment; it looked like spoiled chocolate milk and smelled even worse.

Box ate every meal out, most of the time venturing across the river into Boston proper to do so, because it stretched out his night. He walked for the same reason. Now, there was nothing more depressing than his apartment after dark. If left to his own devices, he would sit in a chair facing the window and drink an entire bottle of wine by himself while listening to Mozart’s Requiem.

What had he done wrong?

His thoughts skipped like a broken record: he had put work first, he had taken Dabney for granted, he had become complacent with their arrangement, he had not always returned her passionate advances and especially not in years of late, he had settled into contentment, he had assumed she would create her own happiness and excitement-and guess what? She had!

He couldn’t pretend to be surprised.

If he had known twenty-five years earlier that it would end this way-Dabney would return to Clendenin-would he have married her anyway?

Yes. The answer was yes.

Coming out of Grill 23 one night, Box bumped into a fellow he recognized. It was…he couldn’t quite grasp it at first. He had drunk a lot of wine. It was…

The man stuck his hand out. “Box?” he said. “Christian Bartelby.”

“Oh!” Box said. “Hello!” And then once his brain processed who exactly Christian Bartelby was, he summoned some enthusiasm. “Yes! Hello, Christian Bartelby! The good doctor!” Box was swaying on his feet. He had eaten at the bar and the comely bar maiden had enticed him into ending his evening with a glass of vintage port. Box had gazed upon the bar maiden and had wondered why it was that no other woman in the world could maintain his interest, no matter how beautiful or charming she was.

Christian held on to Box’s hand for an extra beat. “I assume you’ve heard that Miranda has gone off to New York.”

“Yes,” Box said. “She’s left us both, it seems.”

Christian Bartelby let go of Box’s hand and ran a hand through his hair. He was wearing a navy T-shirt under a navy blazer and a pair of khakis and loafers with no socks. Box wondered if Christian Bartelby was going into the restaurant to meet a date. Was everyone moving on but him?

“And your wife?” Christian Bartelby said. “How is she?”

“Ah,” Box said. “She has left me as well.”

“Left you?” Dr. Bartelby said.

“It seems so,” Box said, but he couldn’t bring himself to say any more, so he saluted the good doctor and sidled away.

Every few days, a call came from Agnes, “checking in.”

“Daddy?” she said. “Are you working?”

“Yes.”

“Eating?”

“Yes.”

“What?”

“What what?”

“What are you eating?”

“Out, mostly. The usual places. Freddy at the Russell House is sick of me.” Box cleared his throat. “How is your mother?”

“She…lost her job,” Agnes said.

“What?” Box said.

“Vaughan Oglethorpe and the board asked for her resignation.”

“For what reason?” Box said. “Certainly not over the business with Hughes. That’s hardly legal. Her personal life is private and separate.”

There was a long pause. “She missed a lot of work this summer, Daddy,” Agnes said. “It was all documented. And Elizabeth Jennings sits on that board, and Mom felt like maybe it was a personal vendetta.”

Now it was Box’s turn to be quiet. She missed a lot of work this summer. Because she was with Clendenin, because Box was around and Agnes was home and thus Dabney had to conduct her rendezvouses during the workday.

Oh, Dabney, what have you done? Your life is falling apart. It didn’t have to be this way. Was he worth it? Was he?

And still, Box felt indignation on Dabney’s behalf. Vaughan Oglethorpe was a pompous, self-important ass, and Elizabeth Jennings was petty and jealous. They had done an unconscionable thing in asking Dabney to resign. It didn’t matter how much time Dabney had missed. Box and everyone else in the world knew that Dabney could run the Chamber of Commerce in her sleep, or from an outpost on the surface of Mars.

Leave my wife alone! he thought.

“Is she there?” Box asked impulsively. Dabney had called every day with updates about the healing of Agnes’s head wound, but he hadn’t answered once, because even her voice on the message made him too upset for words. But it seemed impossible to him that Dabney would have been fired from the Chamber (the very phrase was inconceivable), and she hadn’t called him to tell him. But that, he supposed, was what their new arrangement meant. Separated.

“Um…” Agnes said. “No, she’s not home.”

Not home, he thought. Of course not.

Dabney

There was only one more secret she was keeping, and it was time for that to come out as well.

Clen took the news silently, as Dabney had known he would. She waited until after they made love because their lovemaking was precious to her and she wasn’t sure how much more of it there would be. It would be one of the things she missed the most-Clen thrusting into her, his hungry mouth on her breasts, his animal moans of joy and gratitude. He was so tender that he brought her to tears every time.

She lay spent and sweating, with her head on his chest. It was astonishing the way he could encircle her with one arm, how he could make her feel safer and more protected than any man with two. She thought back to when she had believed that her symptoms-the ache in her gut, the constant exhaustion, the breathlessness, the lack of appetite-were the result of the impossible position she had put herself in. Loving two men at once.

She would give up everything-her home, her morning coffee, the sunrise and sunset, the field of flowers at Bartlett Farm, the bluebird sky, the crimson moors in fall, the bump and rumble of the Impala’s tires over the cobblestones; she would give up good books and champagne and ribbon sandwiches and lobster dipped in melted butter and the rainbow fleet sailing around Brant Point Lighthouse and her dirty tennis serve and her pearls and her penny loafers and she would give up the chance of ever holding her grandchild. She would give it all up to Death, but please, she thought, please do not take away Clendenin.

“I’m sick,” she said. The dusk was gathering, but Dabney still heard birds and bumblebees outside the screened windows of Clen’s cottage. “I have pancreatic cancer, it’s terminal, a matter of months. A few more good months.”

Clen squeezed her until she thought she would break. It genuinely hurt; her organs, already so compromised, were being crushed like soft, overripe fruit. And yet it felt good. She knew what he was doing, what he was thinking; he wanted her so close that she became him. Come live inside me, we will be one, I will keep you safe, and you will not have to die alone.

Telling Agnes, of course, was even worse. It was one thing to leave a husband or a lover behind, and another thing entirely to leave a child.

Dabney told Agnes over breakfast-French toast with fresh peaches, crispy bacon, and home fries with herbs cut from the garden. It didn’t matter how beautiful the food was; as soon as Dabney opened her mouth, neither of them would be able to eat a bite. And yet it was Dabney’s nature to feed people. She couldn’t stop now.

“Darling,” Dabney said. “I’m sick.”

Agnes suspended a perfect slice of golden-pink peach over her plate. “What?” she said. “What kind of sick?’

“Darling,” Dabney said.

Agnes dissolved into tears. They were the tears of Little Girl Agnes-Agnes when she cut her knee on the sharp stones of the jetty, Agnes when she had a bad dream-and the heartbreak of it was almost too much for Dabney to bear.

Some days were still okay. Some days Dabney made it out for her walk and said hello to the same people and petted the same dogs. She then drove out to see Clendenin, and they swam in the pool of the big house and Clendenin made sandwiches, and Dabney ate them slowly, never wanting to arrive at the last bite. Dabney napped in the afternoon, she had to nap, she was so tired now, and in pain nearly all the time. She slept in Clendenin’s large, white, luxuriously sheeted bed while Clen read his newspapers at the oak table.

Some nights Dabney stayed at his cottage and cooked for him, and some nights she went home to see Agnes. Agnes was spending a lot of time with Riley. She met him at the beach after work, and they went out for oysters at Cru, or they grabbed fish tacos at the Easy Street Cantina.

The rosy aura around Agnes and Riley was so bright that Dabney could have seen it in the dark. Dabney wanted to ask what was going on between them, but she had learned, after forty-two couples, when to push and when to leave well enough alone. After all that had happened that summer, Agnes needed a friend, not a boyfriend.

But still, Dabney could hope.

Dabney called Nina and asked to meet her on the bench in front of the Chamber. Dabney brought two coffees from the pharmacy, with a cup of ice for Nina, and a wad of napkins in case Nina spilled her coffee upon hearing the news.

But when Dabney told her, she set her coffee down neatly between her feet, then dropped her face to her hands and cried. Dabney gave her the napkins, so she could wipe her face and blow her nose.

Dabney didn’t know what to do, think, or feel about Box.

He’d left a pair of readers by the sink in the bathroom. Everyone else Dabney knew bought their readers at the drugstore, but Box’s one vanity was specially made readers, the square black frames that defined him. Dabney couldn’t look at Box’s readers without thinking of Box’s eyes, the startling blue, the blue of glaciers-cold, she’d always thought. Frosty, indifferent, superior, when she was ill-disposed toward him.

His eyes had been so hurt that night at Elizabeth Jennings’s and then again at the Levinsons’. She had never before seen Box hurt, she realized. And she was the one who had done it to him.

She wanted to talk to him, tell him she was sick-but she couldn’t bring herself to do it just yet. He might think she was fabricating a story in order to gain his sympathy; he might think she was using her illness as some kind of excuse for her actions. He might think it was the ultimate in histrionics-and wasn’t it? I’m dying, Box, please forgive me! She didn’t call him because she had no right to ask him for mercy, no matter what her circumstances.

Agnes said, “Does Daddy know you’re sick?”

“No,” Dabney said.

“Do you want me to tell him?” Agnes asked.

“No. Please don’t. It’s not your responsibility. It’s mine.”

“You need to tell him, Mommy. I might slip.”

“Yes,” Dabney said. “I realize this.” Hiding things from Box hadn’t gone well.

Dabney called him, and as ever, was shuttled to his voice mail.

“Box,” she said. “Please, please call me back.” She swallowed. “Please.”

Dabney missed her job. It was nearly wedding season, and time for the fall festivals. Who would judge the best cranberry chutney, who would pin the ribbon on the biggest pumpkin, if not Dabney? She thought about the Chamber all the time, night and day. She worried about it, as she might have about a child who had been removed from her care and placed in a foster home.

Dabney couldn’t believe that no one had called her for help or advice. The fall audit would soon be upon them, and their grant proposal for the tourist council would be due. Nobody could deal with those things but Dabney. What was happening up there?

Nina Mobley was immediately hired as the PR director at Nantucket Cottage Hospital. It was a great job with better benefits and a large jump in salary. Dabney actually felt guilty. Had she been keeping Nina from an opportunity like this all along?

“My job at the Chamber was never about the job,” Nina said, when Dabney first went to visit her at the hospital. Nina had a corner office that overlooked the Old Mill. “It was only ever about working with you. It was about being the pulsing heart of the island. It was about strawberry frappes and you chewing your pearls and making fun of Vaughan Oglethorpe and watching to see who was driving up Main Street and Diana’s perfect cup of coffee, and the cadence of our days, which became weeks, which became months, and then years. Together.” Nina blinked and tears fell. “Eighteen and a half years I worked with my best friend. I know I should feel blessed.”

“Nina,” Dabney said. “Stop, please. I’m still here.”

“I know,” Nina said. “There is no way I can deal with this, other than to tell myself that we’re both going to live forever.”

Riley took a job playing guitar at the Brotherhood of Thieves three nights a week. One night, Dabney and Clen and Agnes went to see him. Dabney felt like a spectacle-she was out in public with her lover! But she hadn’t announced the desires of her heart to the world just so the two of them could remain sequestered at home. And her bravery paid off: they ended up having a marvelous time. They ordered a cheese board for Agnes, a favorite from her childhood, and they got thick sandwiches and chowder and curly fries, and they drank frosted mugs of beer and listened to Riley play.

He sang “Brown Eyed Girl,” by Van Morrison. Dabney had secretly requested this, and when Riley strummed the first chord, she grabbed Clen by his hand and they danced together in the small space in front of the tables. They were a broken couple-Clen with one arm, Dabney with cancer-but they could still spin like they had in high school and college, or almost, and the crowd cheered them on.

Making love in the green grass, behind the stadium with you…

She might never dance again, she realized, as she sat down, breathless, her pearls in a twist. She didn’t care. That had felt so good-wild, free, precious, lawless, the way dancing was supposed to feel.

The Brotherhood was packed with familiar faces-Julia from the office-supply store, Genevieve from Dr. Field’s office, Diana from the pharmacy lunch counter-and they all came up to Dabney, saying how sorry they were that she had retired from the Chamber and how Nantucket would never be the same.

It was Agnes who let Dabney know that Celerie wasn’t doing well. She had been devastated by the news of Dabney’s illness, and she had had her heart set on making a career at the Chamber, which wouldn’t happen now. Agnes said that Celerie had taken to her bed, and could not be persuaded to leave her house.

“Took to her bed?” Dabney said. She had a hard time imagining Celerie lying down at all; the girl was always on the move. “Really?”

“She’s like your…groupie…your disciple,” Agnes said. “I mean, look at her, Mom. The headband? The pearls? Come on.”

Celerie was working the occasional catering job, but she had no long-term plan beyond volunteering as the cheerleading coach at the Boys & Girls Club. She was considering moving back to Minnesota.

Dabney decided to call Vaughan Oglethorpe. Clen was in the room when she did it.

Clen said, “I can’t believe you’re calling that grotesque zombie bastard.”

Dabney said, “It’s the right thing to do.”

And as it turned out, Vaughan was happy to hear from Dabney. He sounded as he had always sounded, prior to showing up in the office to fire Dabney-like an uncle hearing from his favorite, long-lost niece.

“Dabney!” he said. “Your voice is music to my ears.”

Dabney heard actual music-the heavy, doomed chords of Bach’s Toccata and Fugue-in the background. Funeral-parlor music. Anyone’s voice would be an improvement over that.

“I have a matter I’d like to discuss,” Dabney said.

“I hope you’re calling to tell me that you want your job back,” Vaughan said. “Because ever since I asked for your resignation, I’ve been itching to retract my words. The Chamber is nothing without you, Dabney. The second you walked out of there, it started falling apart. I had to hire a temp, and Elizabeth Jennings agreed to handle the phones, but only during hours that are convenient for her. I’m at a loss. I need you to come back. I can even offer you a pay raise.”

Dabney stifled a laugh. What Vaughan didn’t understand was that Dabney would have done her job all those years for half, or a quarter, of her salary. Hell, she would have done it for free.

“I’m not coming back, Vaughan,” she said. “I do have a suggestion for a new director, however.”

True, Celerie was young. But she had energy and enthusiasm and a fresh outlook. She was bright and she learned quickly. She had the fire. She also would have a direct line to Dabney. Dabney would consult with her until…

“Well,” Dabney said. “Until I’m not able to consult anymore.”

Vaughan made some phlegmy, throat-clearing noise that Dabney knew was meant to conceal his relief.

“Okay,” he said. “Have Celerie e-mail me her résumé. Pronto.”

Next, it was out to Celerie’s house-a sad little rental on Hooper Farm Road. As soon as Dabney pulled into the driveway, she realized that this was the house that her friends Moe and Curly used to rent. Moe and Curly had surfed at Madequecham Beach back when Dabney and Clen were in high school and college. Dabney had come to parties at this house; she had thrown up in the backyard after too many vodkas with grape soda.

Dabney chuckled as she walked up to the front door. She was Dabney now and she had been Dabney then, but they were two different people.

Sometimes life seemed very long.

And other times, not.

Dabney knocked, and Celerie opened the door right away. She was holding a paperback copy of Emma, by Jane Austen. She was wearing a short blue terry-cloth robe. And pearls. And the navy headband with the white stars.

Dabney knew she had been right to come.

Celerie’s mouth formed a tiny O of surprise, the way other girls her age might react to a visit from Justin Beiber, or the way Dabney’s grandmother, Agnes Bernadette, would have reacted to a visit from the Holy Father, Pope John Paul II.

“That’s my favorite book, you know,” Dabney said.

“Yes,” Celerie said, and her eyes brimmed with tears. “I know.”

“Can I come in and talk to you for a minute?” Dabney asked.

“Of course.” Celerie indicated the room before her, featuring a gray, tweedy-looking sofa, a large square rag rug, a boxy TV with rabbit-ear antennae, and a rotary phone. “We call this room the museum because nothing actually works.”

Dabney laughed. She could just barely smell the marijuana smoke of thirty years earlier, and see the hazy silhouettes of Moe and Curly and a girl they all called Meg the Drunk Slut, crowded around a red glass bong.

Celerie wiped at her eyes. “I just made a batch of watermelon lemonade. Can I offer you a glass?”

“Yes,” Dabney said. “I would love a glass of watermelon lemonade.”

Celerie vanished into the kitchen, which Dabney could see was outfitted with the same linoleum and Formica of three decades before. That refrigerator used to be filled with Miller beer and the dreaded vodka and Welch’s grape soda. Moe and Curly used to brag that they spent ten dollars a week on groceries, leaving the rest of their disposable income for booze, weed, and Sex Wax.

She was the only person she knew who salvaged such details.

Dabney sat on one end of the sofa; at the other end was a feather pillow that held the soft indentation of Celerie’s head.

Celerie returned with a pink frosty glass.

Dabney tasted the drink. “Delicious perfection!” she said, and Celerie actually smiled. She sat next to Dabney.

Dabney said, “First of all, I owe you an apology.”

“No,” Celerie said. “You don’t. I get it.”

“Well,” Dabney said, “you shouldn’t. You should be madder than hell at me. I skipped out on a lot of hours of work this summer. I cheated not only my husband, but I cheated Nantucket. I cheated you and Riley and I cheated poor Nina, leaving her to hold the office together.”

“You held the office together,” Celerie said. “Because it was like you were there even when you weren’t there.”

“Thank you for saying that,” Dabney said. “But I didn’t come here so you could compliment me. I came here so I could compliment you. You did an incredible job this summer, once again. I couldn’t have dreamed up a better information assistant. Now, that being said, I have a question for you.”

“A question?” Celerie said. “What is it?”

“Would you-please-submit your résumé to Vaughan Oglethorpe? Today, if possible? I want you to apply to be the new executive director of the Nantucket Chamber of Commerce. I will guide and advise you for as long as I’m able.”

Celerie stood very still, and then she broke out in a war whoop and raised her hands in a V over her head.

“Yes!” she said.

Box

There was no reason to continue putting off the inevitable, so he scheduled a dinner at Abe & Louie’s with Michael Ohner, the divorce attorney. Ohner talked all night about depositions, subpoenaing credit cards, tax returns, financial statements, shared assets, and alimony.

Ohner said, “Do you see giving Dabney the Nantucket house in exchange for a lesser payout? Because as unjust as it seems in this case, you are going to have to pay Dabney.”

Box waved his hand. “She can have whatever she wants.”

“I’m not going to let you give away the farm,” Ohner said. “Do you see naming this fellow Hughes as a third party?”

A third party? Box thought. There was a time, decades earlier, when Box would have considered himself a third party.

The next day, Box called Dabney to warn her that legal action was pending. He had a pile of messages from her in his voice mail in-box, including one desperate-sounding message from a week or so earlier. Possibly she’d had a few glasses of wine and was feeling guilty for the way she had publicly embarrassed him. Or she had woken up and realized that Clendenin Hughes wasn’t worthy of her in any respect. Her so-called love for him was little more than a leftover teenage romantic fantasy.

She answered immediately. “Hello?” she said. “Box? Is it you?”

Something in her voice caught his attention. For possibly the first time in twenty-four years, he had a gut feeling where his wife was concerned.

He said, “Dabney? Are you all right?”

“No,” she said. “I’m not.”

When he hung up the phone, he was shaking. He had only just begun to come to terms with the idea of living his life without Dabney by his side. But the news that she was dying, that he would, in a matter of months, be living in a Dabney-less world, pierced his heart like a long, sharp needle and drew out whatever lifeblood had been pumping through it.

He quickly wrote Michael Ohner an e-mail, saying that he would not need his services after all.