Summer People

Chapter 1

D riving off the ferry, they looked like any other family coming to spend the summer on Nantucket-or almost. The car was a 1998 Range Rover in flat forest green, its rear section packed to within inches of the roof with Pierre Deux weekend duffels, boxes of kitchen equipment, four shopping bags from Zabar’s, and a plastic trash bag of linens. (The summer house, Horizon, had its own linens, of course, but Beth remembered those sheets and towels from her childhood-the towels, for example, were chocolate brown and patterned with leaves. Threadbare. Beth wanted plush towels; she took comfort now wherever she could find it.)

Three out of the four passengers in the car were related, as any one of the people milling around Steamship Wharf could tell. Beth, the mother, was forty-four years old and at the end of pretty with blond hair pulled back in a clip, a light tan already (from running in Central Park in the mornings), and green eyes flecked with yellow, which made one think of a meadow. White linen blouse, wrinkled now. A diamond ring, too big to be overlooked. One of Beth’s seventeen-year-old twins, her daughter, Winnie, slumped in the front seat, and the other twin, her son, Garrett, sat in back. That there was no father in the car was hardly unusual-lots of women Beth knew took their kids away for the summer while their husbands toiled on Wall Street or in law firms. So it wasn’t Arch’s absence that set their family apart from the others on this clear, hot day. Rather it was the dark-skinned boy, also seventeen, who shared the backseat with Garrett: Marcus Tyler, living proof of their larger, sadder story.

Beth lifted her ass off the driver’s seat. She’d driven the whole way, even though the twins had their learner’s permits and might have helped. She’d been awake since five o’clock that morning, and after four hours on the highway and two on the ferry, her mind stalled in inconvenient places, like a car dying in a busy intersection. In her side-view mirror, Beth checked on the two mountain bikes hanging off the back of the car. (It had always been Arch’s job to secure them, and this year she did it herself. Miraculously, they were both intact.) When she brought her attention forward again-she couldn’t wait to get off this boat!- her gaze stuck on her diamond ring, perched as it was on top of the steering wheel. This wasn’t the ring that Arch gave her twenty years ago when he proposed, but a really extravagant ring that he presented to her last summer. He called it the “We Made It” ring, because they had made it, financially, at least. They had enough money that a not-insignificant amount could be wasted on this diamond ring. “Wasted” was Beth’s word; she was the frugal one, always worrying that they had two kids headed for college, and what if the car got stolen, what if there were a fire. What if there were some kind of accident.

You worry too much, Arch said.

A rotund man wearing a Day-Glo vest, long pants, and a long-sleeved shirt in industrial blue, even on this sweltering day in June, motioned for Beth to drive off the ramp, following, though not too closely, the car in front of her. Seconds later Beth was not on the ferry anymore-not on the ferry, not on I-95, not in a parking garage on East Eighty-second Street. She was on Nan-tucket Island. The rotund steamship man waved at her (she could see him mouthing, “Come on, lady, come on,” as if she were just another elegant housewife from Chappaqua), but he didn’t know what had happened to her. He didn’t know that, along with the Pierre Deux bags and the expensive mountain bikes, they’d brought along the urn that held her husband’s ashes.

Beth’s forehead grew hot, her nose tingled. Here, again, were the tears. It was the new way she evaluated her day: On a good day she cried only twice, in the morning shower and before her Valium kicked in at night. On a bad day, a stressful day, it was like this-without warning, in front of the kids, while she was driving, in traffic. Tears assaulting her like a migraine.

“Mom,” Winnie said. She’d slept for most of the drive and the ferry ride, and now she gazed out the window as they cruised past the bike shops, the ice cream parlor, the Sunken Ship on the corner. The whaling museum. The Dreamland Theater. People were everywhere-on the sidewalks, in the stores, riding bikes, eating ice cream cones. As if nothing bad could happen. As if nothing could hurt them. Meanwhile, Beth negotiated the traffic surprisingly well at full sob.

“Mom,” Winnie said again, touching her mother’s leg. But what else could she say? Winnie pulled the neck of her sweatshirt up over her nose and inhaled. It was her father’s old, raggedy Princeton sweatshirt, which he’d worn often, sometimes to the gym in their building, and it smelled like him. Of all their father’s clothes, the sweatshirt had smelled the most like him and so that was what Winnie took. She’d worn it every day since he died, ninety-three days ago. Winnie tried to convince herself that it still smelled like him, but his smell was fading, much the way her father’s vivid, everyday presence in her mind was fading. She couldn’t remember the whole of him, only bits and pieces: the way he loosened his tie when he walked into the apartment at the end of the day, the way he ate a piece of pizza folded in half, the way he’d fidgeted with a twig when he told her and Garrett the facts of life one warm and very embarrassing autumn afternoon in Strawberry Fields. (Why hadn’t her mother done “the talk?” Winnie had asked her mother that question a few weeks after the memorial service-now that Daddy was dead, certain topics could be broached-and Beth said simply, “Your father wanted to do it. He considered it one of the joys of parenting.”) A whole life lived and all Winnie would be left with were snippets, a box of snapshots. She breathed in, listening to the atonality of her mother’s sobs as if it were bad music. The sweatshirt no longer smelled like her father. Now it smelled like Winnie.

The Rover bounced up Main Street, which was paved with cobblestones. Garrett shifted uneasily in his seat and checked for the hundredth time on the urn, which was a solid, silent presence between him and Marcus. It was embarrassing to have his mom losing it with a stranger in the car. Beth kept Garrett awake at night with her crying and he had a weird sense of role reversal, like she was the kid and he was the parent. The Man of the House, now. And Winnie-well, Winnie was even worse than his mother, wearing that sweatshirt every day since March sixteenth-every day: to school over her uniform, to sleep, even. And Winnie refused to eat. She looked like a Holocaust victim, a person with anorexia. And yet these two loonies were far preferable company to the individual sitting next to him. Garrett couldn’t believe their bad luck. The last thing Arch had done, practically, before his plane went down, was to invite Marcus Tyler to Nantucket-not for a week, not for a month-but for the entire summer. And since a dead man’s words were as good as law, they were stuck with Marcus.

Your father invited him to come along, Beth said. We can’t exactly back out.

Yeah, Winnie said. Daddy invited him.

Garrett tried to talk to his mother about it, using the most powerful words he had at his disposal, the words of their therapist, Dr. Schau, whom they all saw together and separately.

We need to heal this summer, Garrett said. As a family.

Your father invited him for a reason, Beth said, though Garrett could tell even she wasn’t sure what the reason was, and Garrett called her on it.

We need to help those less fortunate, his mother responded lamely.

Why is Marcus less fortunate? Garrett said. He has a father.

You know why, his mother said.

Because Marcus was the son of a murderer. Even as the Range Rover jostled up Main Street, Marcus’s mother, Constance Bennett Tyler, was locked up in Bedford Hills Correctional Facility because she had killed two people. Arch had been Constance’s defense attorney, and he’d gotten to know Marcus and like him. That was why Garrett shared the backseat with this huge black kid, this refugee from one of the most talked-about court cases in New York City in years. And because Marcus was the same age as Winnie and Garrett they had to be friends. Because of the tragedies in life that had converged on the four people sitting in this car, they had to join together. Empathize. It was the most twisted, unfair situation Garrett could imagine, and yet it was happening to him this summer.

Garrett glanced sideways at Marcus. Marcus was wearing an expensive-looking white dress shirt with his initials-“MGT”- embroidered on the pocket. It was the kind of shirt one wore to brunch or a college interview, though it was inappropriate for seven hours of car travel. Marcus had been sweating the whole ride and now the shirt looked like it’d been plucked from the bottom of a laundry hamper. Marcus had shown up at their apartment that morning wearing a squeaky new pair of dock shoes, which looked so unlikely on Marcus’s feet that Garrett wondered if he’d worn the shoes to mock them somehow, to mock this trip to Nantucket. He’d taken the shoes off before they even hit Connecticut and his enormous bare feet gave off an odor that nearly caused Garrett to gag. Before Garrett could dwell on the other aspects of Marcus’s appearance that bothered him-his closely-shaved head, his heavy-lidded eyes that made it seem like he was always half asleep-Garrett realized that Marcus had his elbow on the urn. He was using the urn as an armrest. Garrett held no fantasies about the contents of the urn-it was only ashes, another form of matter. There had been a few weak attempts at levity since the urn arrived from the crematorium- one night, Garrett set the urn at their father’s place at the dining room table-but Garrett didn’t believe the urn in any way contained his father. Only the remains of the body that once belonged to his father. Still, using the urn as an armrest was not okay. Garrett glared at Marcus, but refrained from saying anything. They’d made it all the way from New York City without incident and Garrett didn’t want to start trouble now, when they were almost at the house. An instant later, as if reading Garrett’s mind, Marcus lifted his oxford-clad elbow and Garrett moved the urn into his lap, where it would be safe from further indignities.

Marcus was the only one who thought to offer Beth a tissue. She seemed genuinely grateful, turning her head so that he could see her try to smile. “Thanks, Marcus,” she said. She stopped crying long enough to blot her eyes and wipe the runny stuff from her nose. “Here it is your first time on Nantucket and I’m blubbering so hard I can’t point things out. I’m sorry.”

“S’okay,” he said. He’d gotten the gist of the place already: the gray shingled houses, the cobblestone streets, the shops with expensive clothes and brass lanterns and antique rocking horses in the windows. White people everywhere all excited about summer.

Beth stopped crying and put on her sunglasses. Marcus wasn’t sure what to make of the woman. He couldn’t tell if she was being nice to him because she wanted to, or because she felt she had to-if pressed, he would lean toward the latter. She spoke to him like he was in nursery school. (At McDonald’s that morning for breakfast, with a pinched smile, “And, Marcus, what would you like? How about some pancakes?” As if he was too simple to navigate his way around the menu.)

Marcus had met the twins twice before. The first time was when Arch brought them along to visit Marcus and his family in Queens. The twins had stood in the apartment looking around like they were on a field trip about poverty; he could almost hear them thinking, “So this is where it happened.” The second time Marcus met them was at Trinity Episcopal Church on East Eighty-eighth Street, at the memorial service for Arch. The twins’ father, Arch Newton, had been the gold standard of human beings (Marcus intended to use this phrase in the book he was writing), the only white person in all of America who was willing to help save his mother’s life. And for free-an expensive Manhattan lawyer who offered to defend Constance Bennett Tyler against the death penalty, even though everyone knew she was guilty as sin.

I’m going to help your mom, Arch told Marcus. I’m going to see that she gets the best possible defense.

Arch was there through the worst of it: the hot hours in the courtroom, the cold visits to Rikers, the reporters, the TV cameras, the disturbing photographs in the New York Times, especially the one of Candy’s body being carried from the building, all of her covered by a sheet except for her patent leather shoes, the shoes that, ironically, Constance had bought for her. They reprinted this photo a lot; it became the icon for the case. Every time Arch saw the photo, he tore it in half. They love it because it screams, “Baby killer!” he said. If it weren’t for Arch’s powerful, steadying presence-his defense less a legal term and more like a physical shield that he held over Marcus and his family-Marcus never would have made it. But then, on the evening of March fifteenth, flying back from Albany, where Arch had traveled to meet with an attorney he knew who was close to the governor and might be able to speak out on Constance’s behalf, Arch’s plane crashed into Long Island Sound. Ice on the wings. It was a week before the trial was to start, and bizarrely, Arch’s death added an element of humanity that had been missing from the defense’s case; the media softened, hailing Arch as a hero for the common man, specifically, for a woman facing death row with no resources to fight it. Another attorney from Arch’s firm took the case to trial, which lasted only three days. The jury convicted Constance of one count of first-degree murder and one count of second-degree murder, but the judge spared her the death penalty and nobody protested. It was as if Arch had taken the punishment for her.

Offering Beth a tissue was the least Marcus could do. Because what all four people in the car knew but nobody acknowledged out loud was that if Arch hadn’t been defending Constance, he wouldn’t have died. And so, Marcus would be a slave to these people if that was what they wanted. He’d haul out the garbage cans, he’d sweep sand off the porch, he’d rub oil onto their backs so they didn’t burn in the sun. Yes, he would. Before Marcus left New York, his father, Bo, said, These people didn’t have to invite you, son. So be a big help, and make me proud.

As they drove out of town, the houses grew farther apart. Then Beth signaled left and they turned onto a dirt road. Bumpy. Dirt and sand filled the air, gravel crunched under the tires.

Marcus would offer to wash the car.

He saw the ocean-it was in front of them suddenly, glinting in the sun like a big silver platter. Beth shut off the air-conditioning and put down all four windows.

“We’re here,” she said. She pulled into a white shell driveway that led to a house-a big, old, gray-shingled house-which sat on a ledge overlooking the water.

“Whoa,” Marcus said.

Beth shut off the engine and climbed out of the car, raising her hands to the sky. “It takes my breath away every time. I feel better. Kids, I feel better already.”

Marcus stuffed his feet into his very uncomfortable white-person shoes, wondering if he should help unload the car, but before he could make a move, Winnie took his hand and pulled him to the edge of the bluff. “Look, Marcus. What do you think?”

Marcus thought he might be experiencing some kind of reverse claustrophobia. Because he felt queasy, unsettled, unable to place himself. He was used to the Elmhurst section of Queens, and Main Street, Flushing. He was used to dirty streets and bodegas that smelled like too many cats and the long line outside the yellow brick public health building on Junction Boulevard. He was used to Shea Stadium and LaGuardia Airport-obnoxious Mets fans in their blue and orange hats crowding the subway cars, jumbo jets overhead at any given moment. He was used to sitting in the back row of the classrooms at Benjamin N. Cardozo High School so nobody could stare him down. He was used to a dark, low-ceilinged apartment that he shared with his father, his sister LaTisha, and the belongings of his mother-her head scarves, her record albums, her knock-off Prada bag-things that now simply took up space because she would never be back to reclaim them. He was not used to this-a Range Rover with leather seats, a white shell driveway, a golden beach, the Atlantic fucking Ocean, not to mention people who were civil to him even though they knew his mother was a murderer.

“It’s cool,” he said.

Winnie steered him toward the front door. “Come inside,” she said.

Beth pulled the key out from under the welcome mat.

“Has that been there all winter?” Marcus asked.

“It has,” she said. “And this is the last time we’ll use the key until we leave in September.”

“You’re kidding,” Marcus said. “What if somebody steals your stuff?”

Beth laughed. “That’s the beauty of this place. Nobody’s going to steal our stuff.”

When Marcus got inside, he realized there wasn’t much worth stealing. He followed Beth through the rooms, nervously thinking of Garrett behind him carrying bags. He should be helping Garrett. But Winnie had taken his hand and now he was sandwiched between Beth and Winnie both asking him, Didn’t he just love it? Didn’t he think it was magnificent?

The house was big. Marcus could say that with confidence. There was a hallway where you walked in with a living room on the right. A flight of stairs on the left. Past the stairs were a kitchen and dining room that had a row of windows and glass doors looking out over the water, and a deck beyond the kitchen with a green plastic table and chairs. The house was big but not fancy. The furniture was white wicker, except for one nasty-looking recliner the color of a dead mouse. The pictures on the walls were faded watercolors of the beach; the curtains were a creepy filmy material. The floorboards creaked and the house had a smell. An old, grandmother smell. Marcus wasn’t sure what he’d expected-he guessed he pictured something like a fashion magazine, something more like the Newtons’ apartment on Park Avenue which he’d seen for the first time that morning-with real antiques and Oriental carpets and brass candlesticks and sculpture. This house didn’t feel like poverty, just like a house owned by white people who’d stopped caring. How had Arch described it? A funky old summer cottage-and Marcus had pretended to understand what that meant. Now he knew, it meant this. This was how white people lived when they relaxed at the beach.

Marcus checked out the view from the deck and then wandered back through the first floor. Garrett brought in a second load of stuff and dropped it at Marcus’s feet in the living room. Marcus was looking for the TV; he didn’t see one anywhere.

“Is there TV?” Marcus asked.

“No,” Garrett said. “Sorry, man, you’re going to have to do without Bernie Mac for the summer.”

“Hey,” Marcus said, straightening his shoulders in his new white shirt that was so fine it felt like money on his back. Fuck you was on the tip of his tongue. What the fuck was that supposed to mean? Was that a racial comment already? Well, why not? Why not put him in his slave’s place right away? Before Marcus could prepare a response, Garrett was headed out the door again, aiming for load number three. Marcus followed him out.

“I don’t appreciate your tone,” Marcus said. He sounded, ridiculously, like a homeroom teacher. Garrett didn’t even turn around. “I’m sorry I’m bumming you out. I don’t want to ruin your summer with your family.” Marcus couldn’t believe he was talking like this. What he’d learned in the past nine months was that the easiest response to other people’s shit was silence. Let his eyes drop to half mast, pretend like he hadn’t heard. Pretend like nothing they said could bother him. Marcus would get his revenge on everyone later, once his book was published.

“Why did you come then?” Garrett said. “I know my mother offered. But you could have said no. You could have spent the summer at home. Closer to… your own family. Why did you come with us?”

Marcus felt guilt rising in his throat along with his long-ago-eaten breakfast. He should be at home. His father was going through a very stressful time trying to live without Mama. But things at home had gotten so horrible that Marcus needed to escape. At home, the phone was always ringing, the press calling, or people who had somehow gotten their number who wanted to share their feelings about what a monster Constance was. Marcus had lost all his friends, he suffered cold-eyed glares from his neighbors and teachers and people he didn’t even know. He couldn’t get an aspirin from the medicine chest without seeing all of Constance’s half-used make-up, the tubes of lipstick, the skin stuff she loved that made her smell like apricots. He couldn’t walk in or out of the apartment without thinking of Angela and Candy’s bodies bleeding onto the floorboards. The worst had passed-the weeks after the murders when they were forced to stay in that fleabag motel, the humiliating afternoon in the swim team locker room-but Marcus’s life in Queens, his new identity as the murderer’s son, suffocated him. His mother was gone forever but at the same time she was everywhere, tainting every moment. He wanted out. On the whiter, brighter side, there was Marcus’s book deal, Mr. Zachary Celtic, true crime editor at Dome Books, the thirty thousand dollar advance that no one knew a thing about except for Marcus and his English teacher. At home, Marcus would have had to get a job. Here, he had the luxury of a summer without work-long days of quiet hours to write the truth about his mother, whatever that was.

But he couldn’t say any of that to Garrett. He reached past Garrett into the car for his own bag-a black leather duffel that had cost him nearly two hundred dollars. He’d bought it to impress these people, but in the Nantucket sun, Marcus saw it was all wrong. It looked like a drug dealer’s bag with garish brass buckles and a strong smell of leather.

“I don’t know,” Marcus said. “But here I am. A nigger boy on your turf.”

Garrett glared at him. “That’s a low blow. You’re calling me a racist, and that’s not what this is about.”

“What’s it about, then?” Marcus said. He felt himself sweating and worried about the expense of dry-cleaning his new shirt. It was at least ninety degrees out.

“It’s about us losing our father,” Garrett said. “That’s what this summer is about. That’s what every day has been about since his plane crashed. That’s the only thing anything’s going to be about ever again, okay?” Garrett got tears in his eyes, but because his hands were full, he wiped his face on his shoulder.

“Okay,” Marcus said. He was proud of himself because he understood not only what Garrett was saying, but what he hadn’t said. Our father is dead because of your mama. If he hadn’t been defending her, he wouldn’t have gone to Albany. If he hadn’t gone to Albany, his plane wouldn’t have crashed. Arch was another victim of the day Connie Tyler lost her mind. Marcus wanted to apologize on his mother’s behalf, but apologizing wouldn’t help. If Garrett hated him, Marcus would have to live with it. It wouldn’t be worse than the other stuff Marcus was living with.

Suddenly Winnie appeared, tugging on Marcus’s arm in an eager, excited way, like a little kid. All three of them were seventeen, but Winnie seemed younger. Maybe because she was a girl. Or because she was so skinny. She had no body to speak of, certainly not the way some of the girls at Cardozo had bodies-with huge tits like balloons under their sweaters and curvy asses. Winnie was a stick person-right now she was wearing jean shorts that showed two Popsicle-stick legs, and her torso was swimming in her sweatshirt. She had blond hair like her mother and she was cute in a way that elves are cute. But not womanly. Even Marcus’s twelve-year-old sister LaTisha had more action going on than Winnie.

“Come on,” she said. “I’ll show you your bedroom.”

“In a minute,” Marcus said. He wanted to finish with Garrett, although he could see that the moment had passed. Garrett walked by them with his load of luggage and Marcus slung his bag over his shoulder and reached for another box. He needed to catch up.

“Come on,” Winnie said. “Please?”

Marcus managed to stave her off until he and Garrett had unloaded most of the car. In silence, except for the squeaky complaints of Marcus’s shoes.

“Come on, Marcus,” Winnie said.

Marcus picked up his leather duffel, which looked nothing but ugly compared to the Newtons’ luggage, and followed Winnie up the stairs.

“This is your room,” Winnie announced. She could feel herself gushing but she didn’t know how to stop. Ever since Marcus appeared at their apartment at, like, five that morning, it was as if Winnie were wearing some kind of electric bracelet that sent shocks up her arm to her heart. She’d had a crush on him since the minute she knew of his existence. More than six months ago now, since the morning that Arch took her to EJ’s Luncheonette to have breakfast (she and her father both loved the red flannel hash). They were supposed to be talking about grades, school, her prospects for college (he wanted her to apply to Princeton; she wanted to stay in the city-NYU, Barnard), but instead they got on the topic of Constance Tyler’s case and once Arch was on that topic, he couldn’t stop.

He’d read about the murders in the New York Times the day after they were committed. That was a second morning emblazoned in Winnie’s memory. Her father so engrossed in the frontpage story and the photograph of the dead girl wearing black party shoes, that he held his hand up for quiet when Beth asked him what his schedule looked like that day. He drank the story in, and then hurried with the newspaper into the living room where he plucked his Princeton face book off the shelf and rifled through it, holding up the paper for comparison-because next to the picture of the dead girl in the Mary Janes was a picture of the suspected murderer, Constance Bennett Tyler, a public school teacher.

“Bingo!” Arch shouted. “Constance Bennett, Queens, New York. I went to school with this woman.” He held the face book up. “Nineteen-seventy-five freshman class, Princeton University.” Then his expression crumbled. “Well, she killed someone.”

“That’s Dad for you,” Garrett said. “He loves all things Princeton. Even the murderers.”

“Did you know her, Dad?” Winnie asked.

“Never seen her before in my life,” Arch said. He tucked the paper into his briefcase and Winnie forgot all about it.

But not Arch. Although he didn’t generally handle criminal cases, he made a few phone calls that day, and discovered that the woman’s case had been taken by a P.D.-no real surprise- and the D.A.’s office had already announced it was seeking the death penalty. They wanted Constance Bennett Tyler to be the first woman to die of lethal injection in the state of New York. Arch decided to go to Rikers where Connie was being held and talk to her. She had been indicted for the murder of her sister-in-law and her sister-in-law’s nine-year-old daughter. She explained the whole story to Arch, and he was so intrigued by the circumstances and by Connie herself that he took the case and refused to be paid a penny.

Arch told Winnie all this as he sat across from her in EJ’s, moving hash around his plate, but not eating because he was too nervous to eat. If I save this woman, he said my life will have been worthwhile. Trent Trammelman, the managing partner at Arch’s firm, discouraged Arch from taking the case. It would bring too much unwanted publicity-every time the damn case was written up in the papers, the name of their firm would be mentioned. Arch countered that no publicity was unwanted, that the majority of New Yorkers were against the death penalty anyway. He was taking the case and that was final. Trent knows that when I say final, I mean final, Arch had said. Winnie understood that her father had power. He was a full partner and a top earner, and yet when he was with her, he was just a dad, motioning to the waitress for more coffee for both of them. Then he said, Connie has a son, you know. A son your age.

Does she?

She does, and that’s another reason I took her case. She has a son who’s on the swim team at Cardozo High School. You’d like him, Winnie. You two have a lot in common.

Winnie wasn’t sure what sparked her interest. It was everything, probably, in combination. She liked swimmers. Her last and, truth be told, only boyfriend, Charlie Hess, was on the swim team with her at Danforth. Charlie was all arms and legs, lean, muscular, pale. She liked the way he looked when his goggles were on top of his head and his wet eyelashes stuck together. But she hadn’t been serious about Charlie Hess. When swim season ended, they broke up.

Winnie also saw Marcus as her ticket into her father’s new, consuming passion. She championed this boy whose circumstances were so dire. When her father got home from work at night, she asked about Marcus as though he were an old, dear friend.

Winnie had loved him before she ever laid eyes on him.

His actual person won her over permanently. Marcus was six feet tall with gorgeous brown skin and hair shaved close to his head. He was a man, not at all like the boys she went to school with. He had dimples when he smiled, although Winnie had only seen him smile once-when Winnie and Garrett went with their father to Marcus’s apartment. As they were leaving, Arch made a joke and Marcus smiled, thus the dimples, which had now taken on the fleeting, mystical properties of, say, a rainbow. One of the reasons Winnie was thrilled to learn that Arch had invited Marcus for the summer was that she might, with good luck, get to see his dimples again. And yet every time she was around him she felt stupid and talked too much and couldn’t locate her sense of humor.

Not only was Marcus beautiful, but he was kind. He escorted his younger sister to the memorial service and they sat in the row behind Winnie and her family. Winnie heard Marcus crying. When she turned around to peek, she saw Marcus with his arm around his sister, wiping his sister’s tears. She decided right then that Marcus was a person to whom goodness came naturally. Unlike Winnie herself, who was selfish and mean-spirited at times, and petty. She tried to be good, but again and again she failed. There was a nagging part of her that suspected these flaws had caused her father’s death. That she somehow deserved it.

Marcus dropped his black bag on the floor. That was all he’d brought, just one bag. “The room’s fine,” he said. “It’s good.”

“You have your own bathroom,” Winnie said. “Well, toilet and sink. The bathroom with the shower’s down the hall. And there’s a shower outside. Actually, this used to be my room.”

“Did it?” Marcus sat on the edge of the double bed and bounced a little, testing the mattress. The room, just like the family and the population of the island, was white. White walls, white furniture, white curtains, white bed. He tried to imagine writing a memoir of darkness and death in this room; it wasn’t ideal.

Winnie noticed Marcus’s eyes falling closed, like she was boring him to death. He looked way too big for the bed with its white chenille spread. The bed, and the room in general, were too dainty. But all the other bedrooms had two singles, except for the master bedroom which had a queen. Winnie thought she was being generous by giving Marcus her room, but now she wasn’t sure. He didn’t look happy.

“Aren’t you happy?” she asked.

Marcus sat perfectly still, his hands resting on his knees. He wasn’t sure yet what kind of responses these people expected of him. Happy? There was a word that had lost its meaning. All he could think about was setting his feet free from these damn shoes and putting on his pool flip-flops with a pair of tube socks. “I’m just getting used to it here,” he said.

“Yeah, it’s different from where you grew up, huh? Different from New York, I mean. That’s why Mom likes it. It’s quiet. There isn’t even a phone in the house. Which is going to be a problem, I guess, if you want to call your family? Your dad? Or… do they let you call your mom?”

“They let me,” Marcus said. “But I don’t call.” His voice was dead; he had no desire to talk about his mother. He liked the idea, though, of no telephone, no TV, no papers, no connection to the outside world. He liked the idea of three months isolated at the edge of the water. He needed it. Arch had known he needed it, and that was why Arch invited him here.

The room, Winnie realized, was stifling hot. “Maybe we should open the window,” she said. “Maybe you’d like some air, for, you know, breathing purposes.” She checked for the dimples but Marcus just stared at her.

“I can do it,” he said.

“Right,” Winnie said. She could make a pest of herself no longer. Her mother always referred to the things “any self-respecting woman” would or would not do. In this case, any self-respecting woman would leave Marcus alone for half a second so he could get adjusted.

Winnie backed out of the room. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll see you, I guess? I mean, obviously, we both live here. Want to swim later? I’m on the swim team at Danforth, you know.”

“I know,” Marcus said. “Your dad told me.”

Winnie’s mouth fell open. She was filled with an incredible emotion that she couldn’t name: her father talked about her to Marcus. Bragged about her, maybe. “Did he?”

“He said I’d like you,” Marcus answered, truthfully, because Arch was always telling him that. My daughter, Winnie, you’d like her.

“That’s what he said to me about you,” Winnie said. “Those were his exact words.”

Marcus didn’t respond except to nod almost imperceptibly.

“Do you?” Winnie asked.

“Do I what?”

She almost said, Do you like me? But she felt her self-respect about to fly away forever, so she made herself leave the room. “Oh, nothing,” she said. “Never mind.”

Beth did feel better although she’d planned on saying so regardless, for the kids’ sake. Was it possible that Arch’s spirit resided here, that his soul had slogged through the icy waters of Long Island Sound to wait for them on Miacomet Beach in Nantucket? When Beth looked out over the water she felt a sense of peace, she heard Arch sending her a distinct message, It’s going to be okay, honey. It’s all going to be okay. That was, perhaps, just the healing property of water, of clean air, of open space. Of being, finally, in the place that she loved more than anywhere on earth. Her family’s house on Nantucket.

The house, the house. The house was named Horizon by Beth’s grandfather, her mother’s father, who bought the land and built the house in 1927. Beth had been coming to the island every summer since she was in utero, but her memories started at age five, the summer of 1963, when her grandfather bought a cherry red Volkswagen bug convertible and drove her around the island with the top down, while she ate lollipops in the backseat. She remembered sitting on Horizon’s upper deck with her grandmother at night, looking at stars, her grandmother singing, “Mister Moon.” Ordering take-out fried shrimp dinners from Sayle’s and eating them on the beach at sunset. The summers lined up in Beth’s mind like the scallop shells that she and her younger brothers collected and left to fade on the windowsill all winter. Starry nights, shrimp dinners, long days at the beach, outdoor showers, rides in a convertible with a fresh lollipop, bonfires, her first cold beer, falling in love, blueberry pie, riding the waves all the way back to shore, cool white sheets against sunburned skin-every detail that defined an American summer- that was what this island meant to Beth.

In honesty, Beth wasn’t certain that either of her kids felt the magic of Nantucket the way she did. Arch never understood it: he joined them every weekend, and for two weeks at the end of August, but even then he set up camp at the dining room table and worked. Even then the FedEx truck rumbled out to their spot on West Miacomet Road every day but Sunday. No, this was Beth’s place.

If they could just make it through the first day, Beth thought, things would be all right. If they could just settle into a routine. But that wasn’t going to happen instantly. Beth wanted to dive right in, she wanted to be in her bathing suit lying on the beach with a sandwich and a cold Coca-Cola five minutes from now, listening to the pound and rush of the surf, listening to the twins and Marcus, poor Marcus, playing Frisbee, laughing, getting along. But there had to be process first: pulling the cushions for the furniture from the dank basement and airing them out on the deck (she could ask Marcus to do that; she needed to start treating him like one of the other kids, and less like a charity case that Arch had left her to handle). They had to unpack-put the kitchen supplies away, move their shorts and T-shirts and sandals from their suitcases into the empty dresser drawers and closets that smelled like old shelf paper and mothballs. They had to let the hot and cold water run in all of the spigots to clear the residue out of the pipes. Beth would clean-dust the bookshelves that were crammed with bloated and rippled paperbacks, vacuum the floors, and convince Winnie to beat the braided rugs with the long-handled brush that hung in the outdoor shower.

Before Beth could organize her thoughts-new ones kept materializing like clowns popping out of a car-Garrett collapsed in one of the wooden chairs at the kitchen table. The chair groaned like it was an inch away from breaking.

“Mom,” he said.

Mom, Beth thought. The one-word sentence that both Garrett and Winnie used all the time now. It had so many meanings and it was up to Beth to decipher which one was relevant at any given time. Mom, I’m angry. Mom, I’m bored. Mom, please make the pain go away. Mom, stop harassing me. Mom, please stop crying, you’re embarrassing me. Mom, why aren’t you Dad? Beth twisted her diamond ring. The “We Made It” ring. A constant reminder of how sadly ironic the world could be.

“You have to be careful with this furniture,” Beth said. “It’s old and you’re big. You’re the man of the house now, don’t forget.”

“I’m hungry,” he said.

“Me, too,” she said. The McDonald’s in Devon, Connecticut, where they stopped for breakfast, seemed like another lifetime ago. She had to shop for food, cleaning supplies, paper towels. She had to go to the store. That would be first. “There’s cheese and stuff in the Zabar’s bags. Some bagels. Can you just make do for now? I’ll go to the store. You should really unpack. It would make me happy. Has anyone shown Marcus his room?”

“Why are you so worried about Marcus?” Garrett asked.

“Because he’s our guest,” Beth said.

“He’s not my guest,” Garrett said.

“He’s your father’s guest,” Beth said. “And we have to respect that.” The subject of Marcus made Beth anxious. As if, she thought, as if we didn’t have enough to deal with. Now there was Marcus, a casualty of a complicated and excruciating murder case. But Arch adored the kid, and Beth suspected that he used Marcus’s merits to justify taking Connie Tyler’s case at all. Certainly a woman with such a fine son was worth spending months of unpaid time saving. Arch bragged about the kid-how he won second place in the All-Queens Invitational in the two hundred meter butterfly, how his grades hadn’t faltered since the murders and he hadn’t missed a day of school except to attend Connie’s important court dates. This was all leading up to the big announcement-only a week before the plane crash-that Arch had invited Marcus to Nantucket for the summer. Arch was glowing when he told Beth, so happy was he to be able to give yet more to this poor family. Beth, however, was not happy. First of all, Arch hadn’t asked her. Not only had they agreed long ago to confer about all important family decisions, but the house on Nantucket was her house. Furthermore, she was the one who spent the summer there while Arch worked; she wasn’t exactly thrilled at the idea of a third teenager to keep track of-fine young man or not. But Beth bit her tongue and said nothing, which was how she’d handled the Constance Tyler matter since the beginning. She let Arch fight Connie’s fight since it inspired him the way his regular work did not. Then, after Arch died, Beth felt obligated to re-extend the invitation to Marcus for the summer since it definitely fell under the category of “What Arch Would Have Wanted.”

The twins knew this as well as she did. Marcus is here out ofrespect to your father. She hoped she didn’t have to repeat this phrase too many more times.

“Now, are you okay with lunch?” Beth asked Garrett. “The bagels and stuff?”

“Yes.”

“Okay,” she said. “I’m off to the store.”

At the Stop & Shop, Beth was so caught up in her thoughts- Arch, the twins, Marcus, would this summer be okay?-that she didn’t even see David until he touched her shoulder.

“Beth?”

Her nipples hardened. Because it was chilly; they were standing in the produce section in front of the hydroponic lettuce.

“Oh, God. David.” Beth put her hands to her face in such a way that her elbows shielded her chest. She felt like she was going to cry, but no, she was just overwhelmed. Why him? Why now? She’d been in the store, what? thirty seconds, only long enough to chastise herself for not making a list, and here was David Ronan, her first love. Her first love and more. David fucking Ronan.

She peeked through her fingers. Yes, he was still standing there. Staring at her like she was from outer space. Of course- who acted this way upon bumping into an old friend at the store? Who hid like this? Well, he was still as handsome as ever-dark blond hair, a great tan. Wearing a red button-down shirt turned back at the cuffs, khaki shorts, and black flip-flops. Holding a head of lettuce. David Ronan, owner of Island Painting, year-round resident of Nantucket, father of two daughters, husband of Rosie Ronan who was a gourmet cook and threw notorious cocktail parties (Beth and Arch went to one, years ago). He had every right to be here at the Stop & Shop, and yet Beth felt taken by surprise. Affronted, even. Like he planned this somehow, to fuck her up.

“I heard about Arch,” David said softly. “I read about it in the New York Times. I wanted to call, or write, or something to let you know how incredibly sorry I am for your loss.”

“I can’t talk about it,” Beth said. She still hadn’t moved her hands. David reached out, circled her wrist and gently pulled it away from her face.

“It’s okay,” he said.

She blinked away her tears, was it the second time she’d cried today, or the third?-and then, because it was David Ronan standing before her, she began to worry what she looked like. Her hair, her wrinkled blouse. The bags under her eyes.

“I’m fine,” she said finally. “I am fine. Thank you for your condolences. How are you?”

“Surviving,” he said.

“That’s all we can hope for,” Beth said. “I want to ask about Rosie and the girls, but I can’t right now, David. I’m too… I’m too frazzled. We just got on-island an hour ago. Will you forgive me if I just shop?”

“I forgive you,” he said. “We can catch up later. I’ll stop by the house sometime.”

“Good idea,” Beth said. He was being polite, just like every time she happened into him. He wouldn’t come by the house; he never did. He was busy in the summer. If she bumped into him again in a few weeks, or a month, he would explain how busy he’d been.

David made haste in dumping his lettuce into a plastic bag and headed for the deli. Then around the corner, out of sight. Beth took a head of lettuce herself and breathed out a long stream of anxious air. David Ronan. Of all people.

Beth lingered in the produce section trying to transfer her angst into concentration on the mundane task at hand: Did she want strawberries? Yes. Grapes and bananas? Yes. What else? What kind of fruit would Marcus eat? The same as everybody else, she assumed. He was, after all, just a person. No different because he was black, because he was poor, because he was sad. David Ronan, too, was just a person. Why then did he seem like so much more? Beth was afraid to leave the produce section. She bought red and yellow peppers and some button mushrooms. It was too early in the season yet for really good zucchini or corn. She was afraid that David Ronan would be standing at the cheese case or in front of the cereal. She couldn’t bear to see him again. She would have to stay by the produce until she was certain he’d left the store.

The produce section, however, was freezing. Beth had to move on. Besides, she was an adult. That was one of Dr. Schau’s favorite refrains: You’re an adult, Beth. You have years of experience in how to cope. Use that experience. Okay, Beth thought. She saw David every summer, sometimes several times a summer, and that one year they’d even socialized at the cocktail party. (Arch was the one who’d wanted to go. Beth pleaded to stay home until Arch insinuated that her reluctance meant that she still felt something for David. So they went to the party and Beth drank too much.)

She’d never been this alarmed to see David Ronan before, so why now? Because Arch was gone? Yes, that was it. She was no longer happily married. Her fairy tale had come to an end, and so she felt vulnerable, somehow, to David Ronan and the memories of pain and love that came with him.

As she moved carefully into the next aisle, her insides filled with an awful, heavy guilt. She remembered Arch, years earlier, in the hour before they left for the Ronan cocktail party. Arch teased her because she stood in the closet in her bra and panties with a glass of white wine debating what to wear. She put on a sundress, then declared it too matronly and went with silk pants and a skimpy halter. Arch whistled in such a way that let her know the outfit was too sexy. She poured herself another glass of wine and changed her top.

You’re making a big deal out of this, Beth, Arch said.

No, I’m not.

The guy’s crazy about you. He always has been. He’ll think you look beautiful whatever you wear.

Shut up, she said. Why aren’t you jealous?

Why should I be jealous? I got you in the end, didn’t I? I’m happy to go. I want to gloat.

That was Arch through and through. Never jealous, only proud. That was the perfect way in which he loved her. At the party, Beth drank too much, laughed too loudly in conversation with Rosie Ronan, and stumbled on her way out, catching the heel of her sandal between the flagstones of the walk. The ride home was the closest she had ever come to telling Arch the truth about David, but blessedly, she’d kept her mouth shut. Back at Horizon, Arch put her to bed with two aspirin and a glass of ice water, kissed her forehead and deemed the night an enormous success.

Long ago, Beth had decided that every man, woman, and child had the right to one secret. One piece of private history, and hers was David Ronan.

But what did she care about David Ronan now? The way she reacted probably made him think she was still in love with him. She should find him and try to act like a normal person. Set things straight.

Beth abandoned her cart and hurried through the store until she spotted the red of David’s shirt in the dairy section. She stopped. He was buying-What? Milk, half-and-half, two packages of Philadelphia cream cheese. She moved in front of him.

“Oh,” he said. “Hi.”

“I’m sorry I acted strangely back there,” she said. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

“You’ve been through a lot,” David said. “I was just thinking how awful it must be for you. And the kids.”

“And Arch’s mother, and Arch’s partners, and his clients, one of whom narrowly escaped death row. It amazes me. He was just one person but he left behind such a big hole.”

“He was a good man,” David said. “I feel lucky to have met him.”

“That’s nice of you to say.”

“I mean it, Beth.”

She looked at him and realized that she’d been avoiding his eyes this whole time. He smiled. His face was as familiar to her as the faces of her own brothers. She’d devoted so many hours to studying it when she was younger.

“Okay, listen, let’s not make excuses. Will you bring your family for dinner on Friday?”

He frowned. “Friday?”

“Are you busy? It would be great if Winnie and Garrett could meet your girls and we have another boy their age staying with us this summer. It’ll be fun. We’ll cook out?”

“Thanks for the offer, Beth, but I…”

“You won’t come?”

“Well, you haven’t let me explain.”

“Okay, explain.”

He put his hand over his mouth and wiped at his lips. “I’ll explain on Friday, I guess. It’s too much to go into here. What time would you like us?”

“How about seven?”

“Fine. We’ll see you then. Friday at seven.”

“You remember the house?”

“You’re kidding, right?” David asked.

“Right,” Beth said. How could he forget Horizon, the house her father threw him out of so many years ago? David left her with a little dance step, a wave and a half-turn in which he gathered up a dozen eggs and disappeared around a display of meringue cookies. Beth took a minute to regroup. The Ronan family was coming for dinner. Perfect. Right? Beth hoped she hadn’t made things worse by trying to make them better.

She found her cart and resumed shopping. She went back to produce and selected eight russet potatoes and three pounds of asparagus. An additional head of lettuce. Rib-eye steaks, butter, sour cream. Some Ben & Jerry’s. She wasn’t a gourmet cook like Rosie Ronan, but that was okay. She wouldn’t go to any great lengths; she would wear jeans and flip-flops. Having old friends for a cookout was no big deal. It was just one of the things you did in the summertime.

As soon as his mother got home, Garrett realized something had happened at the store. Or maybe it was just the effect of Nan-tucket on his mother’s brain. He heard the car swing into the driveway and then the car horn and his mother proclaiming, “Kids, I’m home!”

Garrett was the only one around. Marcus and Winnie were swimming together and Garrett watched them from the deck, the two of them trying to do the butterfly against the tough surf. Garrett wouldn’t admit to any racist feelings except for when it came to Marcus and his sister. Winnie fawned all over the guy, which wasn’t surprising considering how mentally unstable she’d become, but Garrett was damned if he were going to stand by and let Marcus fuck his sister. He was the man of the house, now. He’d kill Marcus before allowing that to happen.

Garrett walked through the house and out the front door to help his mother with the groceries. She looked different. She looked manic, overexcited; like a kid who’d eaten too much Halloween candy.

“Thanks, sweetie. Thanks a million. You’ve been such a big help today. Really, I mean it. You’ve been an angel.”

“Mom?”

Beth sailed into the kitchen and flung open all of the cabinet doors. “I forget, every year, where we put things. I guess it doesn’t matter. We can make it up as we go along!”

It occurred to Garrett that his mother had been drinking. Or maybe she’d popped the pills that Dr. Schau gave her (their mother was the only one to get pills). Garrett unloaded the bags and handed groceries to his mother. She was moving around the kitchen like she’d been shot out of a pinball machine. Bouncing around with all this extra energy.

Garrett is very sensitive to other people’s moods, Mrs. Marshall had written on his end-of-the-year student evaluation. He is tuned in to their needs, desires, and intentions. It was true, he thought. He could read other people in a matter of seconds. Some people might call it intuition, but that word sounded too feminine. Garrett preferred the word “perceptive.” Like a detective. Or a writer. Or like Dr. Schau, who could tell what you were thinking before you even opened your mouth. Right now, watching his mother, Garrett knew something had happened at the store. He pulled out the steaks.

“Why so many steaks?” Garrett said.

“Steaks?” his mother cried out. She knit her brow as though she didn’t know what he was referring to, as though it was easy to forget what must have been a hundred dollars worth of steaks in one of the bags. Just repeating that word, “steaks,” was as good as lying.

“Why so many?” Garrett asked.

“Well, because,” his mother said. “There are four of us and we’re having four dinner guests on Friday.”

Garrett dropped his ass into a kitchen chair. It squealed, but thankfully did not break. “Dinner guests?”

“Before you get all worked up, let me tell you who it is,” his mother said. “It’s my friend David from growing up, his wife, and their two teenage daughters. You know, girls, girls, girls. I thought you’d thank me. It seems like all your friends here are either at camp or their parents moved to the Hamptons.”

Garrett closed his eyes. More teenagers he was supposed to connect with. He couldn’t believe his mother. She barely kept it together in front of her family; what made her think she might make it through an evening with other people? The topic of Garrett’s father would inevitably come up. His mother would drink too much wine and start to cry. Maybe Winnie, too. The guests would sit dumbfounded and uncomfortable, the teenage daughters wishing they were anywhere but trapped in this house.

“No one’s moved to the Hamptons,” Garrett said irritably.

“The Alishes,” Beth said. “Carson Alish’s parents moved to the Hamptons.”

“That is so beside the point,” Garrett said.

“What point?”

“We’re supposed to be healing as a family,” Garrett said. “It’s bad enough you invited Marcus, and now we’re having some strange people over?”

“Just for dinner,” she said. “Besides, they’re not strange. David and I have known each other since we were sixteen years old. For six or seven summers, he was the best friend I had.”

The way his mother said the word “friend” tipped Garrett off immediately.

“So this is an old boyfriend, then?”

“He’s a friend. From a hundred years ago, Garrett. And he’s coming with his wife and kids.”

“Dad’s only been dead for three months,” Garrett said.

Beth fell into the chair next to him. “I know you’re having a hard time, sweetie. We all are. But I worry about you especially because you’re putting up such a strong front. You’re being tough for all of us. I’m sorry I keep telling you you’re the man of the house. That isn’t fair. I want you to know it’s okay to grieve- to cry, to scream, to be angry. But don’t misdirect your anger at me.”

“Except I am angry at you,” he said. “You invited your old boyfriend here for dinner. You invited Marcus here for the whole summer. We’re never going to have time alone, just our family.”

“We’ll make time,” she said, patting his hand. “We’ll take bike rides, we’ll walk on the beach, and we’ll find the right time and place to scatter Daddy’s ashes. Just you, me, and Winnie. I promise.”

Beth returned to the groceries and Garrett watched for a minute. Then he heard Winnie blabbering and he turned to see her and Marcus trudging up the steps from the beach. Winnie’s blond ponytail was dripping wet; she wore the sweatshirt over her bikini. Unbelievable. But she had taken it off before she went into the water. Garrett wondered if she felt lighter, freer, without it. It was an interesting concept: grief as something she could take off every once in a while, like when she wanted to enjoy the first swim of the summer. Garrett was almost envious of his sister and the way she’d appropriated their father’s sweatshirt and made it her own symbol: I’m sad. Garrett’s sadness churned inside of him like food that was impossible to digest.

Marcus wore a pair of cut-off jeans as his swimsuit. He looked like a kid who should be getting wet under a fire hydrant.

“Are you two hungry?” Beth asked. “I went shopping.”

“I’m not hungry,” Winnie said.

Garrett gauged Beth’s response to this, which was no response at all. She was definitely distracted. Winnie never ate anymore, and this was a manifestation of her grief that Garrett didn’t envy. Food made Winnie sick. If she was eating and accidentally thought about their father, she threw up. Every day at Danforth she bought lunch in the cafeteria and then walked it right out the front door and down half a block to where three homeless men in turbans camped out under some scaffolding. Every day Winnie gave them her lunch then walked back to school with the empty tray.

“Do you want anything, Marcus?” Beth asked. “A sandwich or something? We have smoked turkey here, and some cheese. Or I could fry you an egg.”

“Turkey’s fine,” Marcus said.

“I’ll make his sandwich,” Winnie said.

“I’ll make it,” Beth said. “You kids dry off.”

Garrett watched his mother make Marcus’s sandwich. It was as if she were entered in a sandwich-making contest. She’d bought three loaves of Something Natural herb bread, unsliced, so she brandished her serrated knife and cut two thick slices. Then mayonnaise, mustard, three leaves of lettuce that she washed and dried first, two pieces of Swiss Lorraine, and finally the smoked turkey that she draped over the cheese one slice at a time. She put the top on the sandwich, cut it in half diagonally. Arranged it on a plate with two handfuls of Cape Cod potato chips.

“Marcus, what would you like to drink?” she called out.

Garrett had seen enough. He’d made do with an untoasted bagel with cream cheese that had traveled with them in the warm car all the way from New York. But that wasn’t what got him mad. It was something else. Winnie and his mother fighting over who got to make Marcus’s sandwich, for starters. Garrett found the urn on the mantel in the living room and he carried it upstairs to his room. They’d been here all of three hours, and already he could tell this summer was going to suck.

Garrett’s room was on the side of the house that faced the ocean. The room had been built for Garrett’s great-great-uncle Burton, his great-grandfather’s brother. Burton had been a world traveler and insisted on a room where he could see the horizon. The room had two single beds with a nightstand between them. The lamp on the nightstand had a fringed shade. On the wall was a map of the world from 1932-no Israel, Garrett noticed, and the names and boundaries of the nations in Africa were different. The map was marked with multicolored pushpins, showing all the places across the planet where Uncle Burton had laid his head for the night. Singapore, Guatemala, Marrakech. Katmandu, the Fiji Islands, Santiago, Cape Town. Underneath the bed that Garrett didn’t use was Uncle Burton’s traveling trunk. Garrett and his father had sifted through it once, examining the masks, the kris knife from Malaysia, a ladle made out of a coconut, the postcards and cocktail napkins from fancy hotels in Europe.

Garrett placed the urn on top of the dresser. He wanted to convince his mother to let him take a year off before he went to college. He wanted to go to Perth, Australia. Garrett stepped out onto his one-person balcony, dreaming about a flat in Cottlesloe Beach, long drives into the Outback, sightings of emus and crocodiles and kangaroos, which he’d heard were as plentiful as rabbits. Arch had spent a year in Perth between college and law school, and he told Garrett all about the Fremantle Doctor, which was the name of a breeze that came off the water in January, and about the sheilas, a term for gorgeous Australian women with Baywatch bodies.

Garrett wanted to live a life exactly like his father’s-Austra-lia, college, law school. A career as a Manhattan attorney, a wife and two kids, including a son of his own. He could then pick up where his father’s life tragically ended. Arch’s plane crash was, quite simply, the worst disaster imaginable. The plane was a Cessna Skylark. It had been gassed up at the Albany airport, and checked by mechanics. The flight pattern was cleared by the FAA, by the tower in Albany, by the tower in LaGuardia. The pilot had over two thousand hours of flight time. But he was only twenty-five years old, and the plane had propellers, like the toy planes Garrett used to play with as a kid.

When they recovered the body, and the black box, two days after the crash, Garrett had wanted to see both. He wanted to see his father’s body; he wanted to listen to the flight recorder. But no one was willing to let him do either. The managing partner at his father’s firm, Trent Trammelman, identified the body. Garrett summoned the courage to ask Trent, What did he looklike? Please tell me.

He looked fine, Trent said. Peaceful. That word, “peaceful,” clued Garrett right in: Trent was lying. And so Garrett was left to imagine his father’s body. Blue, bloated, broken. Garrett’s father, his dad, whom he knew so well and had seen happy and healthy and handily in control of every situation that arose since Garrett had been born, was altered forever in a matter of seconds. Killed. Boom, just like that.

The cause of the crash was ruled as ice on the wings. There had been a driving freezing rain and it was dark-the worst possible flying conditions. There was a mechanical failure- something called a “boot” on one of the wings was supposed to expand and crack off the ice, but it malfunctioned, and one wing grew heavier than the other. The pilot changed altitudes several times, but nothing worked. The pilot couldn’t recover. The plane went into a spin and crashed. The thing that Garrett hated to think of even more than the condition of his father’s body after the crash was those seconds or minute when the plane spun toward earth. What could those seconds possibly have been like for his father? Did his father scream? Did his father think about Garrett, Winnie, their mother? He must have. The only reaction Garrett wanted to imagine from his father was anger. His father would have been yelling at the pilot to regain control. I have kids! he would have said. I have a beautiful wife! Garrett chose to believe his father was too angry to be scared, too furious to cry out in fear for his life. But those images slid into Garrett’s brain despite his best efforts to push them away: his father crying, stricken with terror.

Better to watch your parent die of cancer, Garrett thought. Like Katie Corrigan’s mother who got breast cancer and died a year later. Then, at least, you could prepare yourself. You could say good-bye. But Garrett’s father had been ripped from their lives suddenly, leaving behind a hole that was ragged and bloody, smoking.

Garrett stayed in his room until the sun sank into the water. His walls turned a shade of dark pink; the urn was a silhouette against the wall. There was a knock at the door.

“Who is it?” Only one answer would be acceptable.

“Mom. Can I come in?”

“Okay,” he said.

She stood in the doorway. “We miss you downstairs. I’m about to start dinner. What are you doing up here?”

“Sleeping,” he said. “Thinking.”

“What are you thinking about?” she asked. She glanced at the urn.

I’m a seventeen-year old boy. I need my father. As if there were anything else to think about. “Nothing,” he said.