Summer People

Chapter 2

T bree days later, Marcus felt like the main character in that Disney movie where the little boy is adopted by wild animals and lives among them in the jungle. Here it was, two o’clock in the afternoon, and he was lying on a beach. There was no one else for miles, except Winnie, who lay in a chaise next to him wearing purple bikini bottoms and her Princeton sweatshirt. She seemed intent on getting a tan-all shiny with baby oil- but she refused to take off the sweatshirt. Except for when she swam, which she and Marcus did whenever they got too warm. This, Marcus thought, was what people meant by “the good life.” Sitting on a deserted beach in the hot sun-no bugs, no trash, no other people kicking sand onto his blanket or blaring Top 40 stations on the boom box like at Jones Beach-and he could swim in the cool water whenever he wanted. Plus, he had a handmaiden. Winnie made lunch for both of them-smoked turkey sandwiches and tall glasses of Coca-Cola that she spiked with Malibu rum. At first, when Marcus tasted the rum in his drink, he balked. Because he did not want to have his summer over before it even began for getting caught drinking. He said so to Winnie and she promised him that they would just have this one cocktail-he loved how she called it a “cocktail”-and that her mother was out doing a two-hour jog and would never know. The Malibu rum had been sitting in the liquor cabinet for a couple of years; she and Garrett dipped into it all the time, even with her father around, she said, and they had never gotten caught.

The mention of Garrett made Marcus uneasy. Garrett was lying up on the deck, presumably because he never swam and didn’t like to get all sandy, but Marcus suspected it was because he wanted to keep his distance. And up on the deck he could watch everything Marcus and Winnie were doing. Like Big Brother. Like God.

Marcus squinted at Winnie. “If you’re so concerned about getting tan, you should take your sweatshirt off.”

“You just want a better look at my body,” Winnie said.

Marcus found that funny enough to laugh, but he didn’t want to piss her off. “Why do you always wear it?”

“It was Daddy’s.”

Immediately, Marcus’s reality kicked back in. Despite the hot day, he felt the chill of humiliation as he recalled the worst personal shame of his life. At the beginning of swim season, he’d come out of the showers to find the locker room abandoned, to find his locker jimmied open, to find all of his clothes missing, even his wet bathing suit. He stood in his towel, shivering, not because he was cold, but because he’d thought the guys on the swim team, at least, would cut him some slack about his mother. But no: they, too, wanted to expose him. Marcus sat for a long while on the wooden bench by his empty locker, too mortified to wander the school’s hallways for help, too ashamed to contact his father, before he thought to call Arch, collect, at his office. Arch came all the way out to Queens with a gym bag and Marcus got dressed in Arch’s sweats. The very same Princeton sweatshirt that Winnie was wearing. If Arch had asked a single question, Marcus probably would have broken down. But Arch just offered him the gym bag and said, Put these on and let’s get you home.

Winnie, it seemed, was trying to get his attention. “Marcus?” she said.

“Huh?”

“Now can I ask you something?”

“What?” he said, warily.

“Why do you lie out in the sun when you’re already black?” She giggled.

Marcus tried to relax. If she was going to wear the damn sweatshirt all summer, there was nothing he could do about it except let it be a reminder of how far he’d come. How he didn’t let other people get to him anymore. How he’d shown the jackasses on the swim team something by placing second in every single meet all season. Placing second on purpose so his name wouldn’t make it into any headlines. “Black people get tans, too, you know. Look.” He lowered the waistband of his shorts a fraction of an inch so that Winnie could see his tan line. “In winter I get kind of ashy. Besides, I like the feel of the sun on my skin.”

“Me, too,” Winnie said. She pushed up her sleeves and rolled up the bottom of her sweatshirt so that her stomach showed. “You’re right,” she said. “That’s better.” She picked up the bottle of baby oil and squirted some on her stomach and rubbed it in with slow, downward strokes that made Marcus think she was trying to be all sexy for him. The poor child, as his mother used to say.

Winnie had a crush on him. Anyone could see it. The past two nights she’d enticed Marcus into playing board games after dinner. Marcus asked if there were anything to do in town, and Beth offered to drive them in for an ice cream or the movies, but there were only two movie theaters showing one movie apiece that all of them had already seen, and Winnie turned down the ice cream without a reason. Not going into town left them with what Marcus’s mother used to call Nothing to Do but Stand on Your Head and Spit in Your Shoe Syndrome. So Winnie pulled a stack of board games out of a closet. The boxes of the games were disintegrating and some games were missing pieces and dice, and the bank in Monopoly only had three one-dollar bills but Winnie cut some more out of blank typing paper. They made do. Marcus and Winnie spent two long evenings building pretend real estate fortunes and getting out of jail free.

It was as different from his life in Queens as anything could be. Winnie kept apologizing because There’s practically nothing to do here at night, not until I get my license, anyway. She had some notion that Marcus went out every night at home, clubbing, or hanging out on the streets. But in fact, at home, Marcus stayed off the streets. He couldn’t afford to get into any trouble, and the best way to stay out of it was to stay home. Last summer, he’d worked all day on the maintenance crew at Queens College-mowing lawns, trimming hedges, recindering the running track-and by the time he got home, his ass was kicked. He ate dinner with his family and then either watched TV or went over to Vanessa Lydecker’s apartment and drank a beer with Vanessa’s brother and fooled around with Vanessa in her bedroom.

Before the murders, Marcus’s family was nothing special. His father worked at the printing press for the New York Times as a supervisor, and his mother, with one year of Ivy League education and three years of city college, was a reading specialist who split her time between I.S. 224 and P.S. 136. She tutored kids on weekends for extra money, which she tucked into Marcus’s college account. And then, on October seventh, Constance murdered her sister-in-law Angela Bennett and Angela’s nine-year-old daughter, Candy Cohut. Constance stabbed Angela to death, and in the process fatally wounded Candy. Even now, when Marcus thought about the murders, it seemed so incredible it was as if it had happened to somebody else.

“I’m going to eat my sandwich,” Marcus said. He’d drained his cocktail and the ocean began to take on a wavy shimmer. He needed food.

“Okay,” Winnie said. “Enjoy.”

“Aren’t you going to eat?” he asked.

“I’ll wait until later.”

In just three days, Marcus had learned what this meant: Winnie would let her sandwich sit for another hour or two, then throw it away, claiming the mayonnaise had gone bad.

“You know why you’re so skinny, don’t you?”

Winnie didn’t respond.

“Because you don’t eat. If my father had to sit here and watch you waste a sandwich with turkey on it that costs, like, ten dollars a pound, he’d throw a French fit on your ass.” Marcus took a lusty bite of his sandwich. Even the food here tasted better. These sandwiches he’d been eating, for example. The bread was homemade, the smoked turkey was real turkey, not some white meat paste that was processed to taste like turkey, the lettuce was crisp, the tomato ripe. Beth used gourmet mustard. It was so superior to any sandwich that could be purchased in Marcus’s neighborhood or in his school cafeteria, that it was as if he’d been eating cardboard and ashes all these years and only now had stumbled upon actual food. “I mean, really,” Marcus said. “Why don’t you eat? Do you have some kind of problem? There was a girl at my school who had anorexia. She walked around looking like she had AIDS or something.”

“I don’t have anorexia,” Winnie said. “And I don’t have AIDS.”

“But you look like a skeleton. I haven’t seen you eat the whole time you’ve been here.”

“I eat when I’m hungry,” she said.

Marcus finished the first half of his sandwich, then wished he’d saved some of his cocktail to wash it down with. He eyed Winnie’s cocktail. She’d give it to him if he asked her for it. Then he remembered that Beth had slipped two bottles of Evian into their beach bag. That woman was improving in his eyes. Marcus drank one of the bottles down to the bottom. He felt much, much better.

“There are people in Queens, you know, and the rest of New York City, who don’t eat because they can’t afford to.”

“I’m well aware of that, thanks,” Winnie said. “I do my part to feed the homeless.”

“Do you?”

She sat bolt upright. “For your information, I gave my lunch to homeless people every day this spring.”

“Good for you,” Marcus said. He believed her. Although he’d only known Winnie for three days, he could tell that was exactly the kind of thing she would do. She loved charity cases. Him, for example. “But you should take care of yourself while you’re at it.”

Winnie stood up and her sweatshirt dropped to her waist. She put on her sunglasses, snapped up her towel and headed up the stairs without a word. Marcus had pissed off his handmaiden by telling her the truth. She looked like a skeleton. If she didn’t start eating soon, she was going to make herself sick.

Well, fine then. Marcus concentrated on his sandwich. Actually, it tasted better now that he was alone. He noticed that Winnie had left her sandwich behind, and since there was no hope that she’d ever eat it, and since the rum made him extra hungry, he finished that one, too, and drank the second bottle of Evian, and while he was at it, polished off the remains of Winnie’s cocktail. Then he lay back on his blanket and listened to the sound of the ocean. It was almost pleasant enough for him to forget about his worries. His mother. The photo of Candy, all covered up except for her shiny black shoes. The unwritten book. The tactile memory of five crisp hundred dollar bills that his editor, Zachary Celtic, handed him on the day they sealed the book deal with a handshake. Zachary gave him the cash with the understanding that at the end of the summer Marcus would have fifty pages to show him, and an outline for the remainder of the book. Marcus spent the money in less than a week, buying items for his trip to Nantucket that he’d hoped would convince the Newtons that he wasn’t a charity case after all: the all-wrong leather bag, the uncomfortable dock shoes, the portable CD player. The best thing Marcus bought was his white shirt. He’d taken the subway into Manhattan to buy it-at Paul Stuart, where a young German woman waited on him as though he might pull a gun on her at any moment. He charmed her, though, and by the end of the transaction, she suggested the monogram and threw it in for free.

Now that the money was gone (there had been some idiotspending, too: two or three meals at Roy Rogers, a ten-dollar scratch ticket, a bouquet of red roses for his sister LaTisha as an apology for leaving her alone with their father all summer), Marcus felt an urgent pressure to write. But yesterday afternoon when he’d closed the door of his white bedroom and sat on the bed to write, he couldn’t think of how to start. Zachary Celtic had spewed forth all sorts of garbagy ideas when he pitched the book, but Marcus pushed those phrases from his mind, leaving a blank slate. And so instead of writing, he’d spent ninety minutes doing a line drawing of what he saw out his window-low lying brush, a rutted dirt road, the pond in the distance.

Zachary Celtic was a friend of Nick Last Name Unknown. Nick was the boyfriend of Marcus’s English teacher, Ms. Marchese. Nick showed up at school a lot wearing gold rings and suits paired with shiny ties, and since no kid at Benjamin N. Cardozo High School was truly stupid, it was agreed upon that Nick was in the mob. For this reason, everyone behaved in Ms. Marchese’s class and everyone, even the absolute lowlifes and basketball players, turned in the assignments. Marcus liked English class anyway, and he liked Ms. Marchese, because she was the only teacher whose attitude toward Marcus didn’t change after the murders, and plus, she was always telling him he was a gifted writer. So his guard wasn’t up like it should have been, maybe, when Nick stopped by at the end of class one day with a better-looking guy in a better-looking suit and Ms. Marchese said that the second guy was a book editor from Manhattan and he was there to talk to Marcus.

Since October seventh, Marcus had fielded hundreds of phone calls from reporters, producers, publicists-from New York One, the New York Post, the Daily News, The Geraldo RiveraShow. Everyone wanted the inside scoop on his mother. She was a black inner-city woman who had made it as far as the Ivy League-how did she end up a baby killer? In response to all publicity, Marcus’s father had issued these directives. Politely decline, then hang up! If photographers come to the door, tell them through the chain that they will never get a picture inside the apartment. But something about the phrase “book editor in Manhattan” got past Marcus’s radar. He thought, stupidly, that this guy was interested in him for a reason other than that he was a murderer’s son. He thought the editor had shown up at their high school in Queens wearing a thousand-dollar suit (which, when Marcus asked, Zachary told him he’d gotten at Paul Stuart) because Marcus was a gifted writer.

Nick and Zachary Celtic invited Marcus to lunch. Although it was two-thirty and Marcus had already eaten lunch in the cafeteria at noon, he agreed to go along. They went to a diner down the street from the school, and after Nick made it clear that Zachary was picking up the check, Marcus went crazy ordering a roast beef club, fries with gravy, chocolate milkshake, lemon chiffon pie. Zachary asked Marcus all kinds of questions about how he liked school (fine), why he liked English class (liked to read), who his favorite writers were (Salinger, Faulkner, John Edgar Wideman). It was as Marcus was slipping into a food coma induced by this second lunch that Zachary announced that he was the true crime editor at Dome Books and that he wanted to offer Marcus thirty thousand dollars to write a first-person account of life with his mother, before and after the murders.

Marcus dropped his fork. He worried he might be sick-not because he was disgusted at this man for suggesting such a thing or disgusted at himself for falling for it-but because he’d eaten too much and the whole idea of a first-person account and thirty thousand dollars overwhelmed him.

“There are a lot of people who will pay to read your story,” Zachary said. “I’m thinking of a real insider’s view. Your mother as, like, an educated woman, a teacher and everything, and Princeton in her background, and then one day she just… you know… snaps.” Zachary snapped his fingers with such force that both Marcus and Nick flinched. “Goes totally haywire on members of her own family. I’m thinking… you know… the blood-splattered sheet and how that made you feel. The dead bodies in your own apartment. The little girl in the shoes. God, everybody’s going to want to read this. And there was sex involved, too, right? I mean, in your mother’s testimony…”

Marcus belched, loudly, then worried once again that he might be sick. Zachary moved his hand like he was clearing smoke and said, “The mere mention of death row is going to have the citizens of this great city flocking to Barnes & Noble to buy your book. What it felt like to have your own mother, a pretty woman, too, facing the strap-down on the gurney, the long needle…”

It was Nick who finally stopped him. “You get to tell the story in your own words, kid. I’ll bet that’s something you’ve been itching to do.”

Marcus wondered if Ms. Marchese told Nick about Marcus’s isolation, his status as the class pariah. How he switched seats from the front row, where he could stretch out his legs, to the back row, where nobody could see him, throw shit at him, or mouth dirty words at the back of his head.

Marcus asked for time to think about it. Zachary held up his palms in agreement, saying, “Take as much time as you want. My offer stands.” He slid a business card across the table towards Marcus and an American Express Platinum card toward the check.

There was no one to ask for advice. Marcus couldn’t ask his father because his father would say no, absolutely no. And Arch was dead, he’d been dead for five weeks by that point, and all of the protection and hope that Arch provided had vanished. As awful as Zachary Celtic was, Marcus sensed this book deal was a way out. It was thirty thousand dollars which, Zachary promised, he wouldn’t have to pay back even if the book tanked. Thirty thousand dollars would buy a lot more college than Marcus could afford without writing a book. He’d seen the bank statement of the account his mother stashed her tutoring money in, Marcus’s “college” fund. The balance was $1,204.82.

Finally, Nick’s comment stuck with him. You get to tell the story in your own words, kid. That appealed to Marcus, even though he didn’t know how he felt. It was possible that he still loved his mother, but that love was buried under a huge, crushing anger. Marcus was furious. Constance had murdered their way of life that, although not luxurious, had at least been tolerable. If he was coerced into write terrible things about her, she probably deserved it.

The following morning, Marcus called Zachary Celtic from a pay phone outside the school cafeteria and agreed to write the book. That day after English class, Zachary appeared with Nick, and Zachary handed Marcus an envelope containing the five hundred dollars.

“An advance on the advance,” Zachary said. “You get me the first fifty pages and a complete synopsis by the end of the summer. I show it to my people. If they like it, the big money rolls your way.”

Marcus accepted the envelope. Ms. Marchese looked away, just like other teachers did when they saw a drug deal.

Now, Marcus lay on the beach, filled with turkey sandwich, buzzed on pilfered rum, and toasty in the sun-a better set of circumstances than he ever could have imagined for himself- except he should be up in his room writing. And now there was this problem of Winnie being mad at him. He should go up to the house and apologize before Garrett and Winnie formed a coalition and kicked Marcus off the island, like on that dumb-ass TV show. Or, worse, Winnie might tell Beth that Marcus was drinking. Frame him, then turn him in. That was the kind of thing that happened to black people all over America, getting blamed and busted for things that weren’t their fault. Marcus could write a whole book on that topic alone. He could write a book about a lot of things, once he found his groove. He decided to nap, take a swim, and think about everything else in a little while.

Beth left the house for a run at noon. This was her new way of torturing her body, by running ten miles in the heat of the day. She put on a white hat, tucked a bottle of Evian into her fanny pack, and kicked off down the dusty road. Tonight was her dinner party and she’d spent the morning cleaning every nook and cranny of the house with a giant sponge from the car wash and a bucket of bleach and water. Garrett had looked at her stonily and she read his mind-she was going to a lot of trouble for her old boyfriend.

“The house needed to be cleaned anyway,” she said, sounding more defensive than she intended. “It’s been sitting here all winter collecting dust and mouse droppings.”

Garrett shook his head and retreated to the deck. When had he gotten so judgmental? Well, she knew when. And he wasn’t judgmental so much as protective. He was the man of the house, now, and thus it was his job to protect his women. Fine. She would let it go.

Since Arch died, running had become Beth’s only pleasure. The motion placated her anxieties, the symbolism of it quenched her secret desire to run away. At home in New York, she ran four, five, six times around the Reservoir, or tackled the long, hilly route around Central Park. Both were cathartic, but nothing in the world was like running on Nantucket in the summertime. Beth ran past Miacomet Pond, which today was the deepest blue, bordered by tall dune grass that sheltered a clump of wild iris and red-winged blackbirds. It was beautiful here, and even in the heat, the air was fresh and clean. For the hour or two that she was gone, she didn’t have to be a mother. She didn’t have to be the problem-solver or the ultimate authority. Beth had discussed this sense of relief with Dr. Schau. It was wrong and unnatural, wasn’t it, for a mother to want to escape her kids? And especially Beth. Beth loved her children to distraction. When they were born, she felt she was the luckiest person on the planet-she’d hit the birthing jackpot-a boy and a girl. Two perfect healthy babies, one of each. The entire first year of the kids’ lives she and Arch would take a second every so often and marvel. How had they gotten so lucky? Why had they of all people been so blessed?

Beth adored the trappings of motherhood: the pacifiers, the wooden blocks, the Cheerios underfoot, the darling outfits (always matching boy/girl outfits until the twins went off to kindergarten.) She loved Sesame Street and playgrounds and Pat the Bunny and even nursing the kids when they had earaches and the chicken pox. Other mothers complained, secretly, that kids took up so much time, that they left the house a mess-fingerprints on the TV screen, and yes, Cheerios underfoot-that they sucked the intelligence out of everyday life. These complaints baffled Beth. She didn’t have a job outside of the home, maybe that was it, but she never expected Winnie and Garrett to appreciate Chagall or Bizet at age three. She didn’t care that they took all her time-what, she wondered, could she possibly be doing that would be more worthwhile?

As the kids grew, life got more interesting. There were friends and multiplication tables and soccer. Trips to the dentist, to the Bronx Zoo, to Wollman Rink for ice skating every Christmas Eve. Then high school-advance placement classes, soccer team (Garrett), swim team (Winnie), phone calls, proms, learner’s permits.

Beth loved it all. Yes, she did.

But when Arch died, one of the many, many things that changed was the way she felt about her children. It wasn’t that she loved them less-if anything, she loved them more. Especially since they were dangerously close to leaving home; a year from now, they’d be headed for college. What Beth felt was just an occasional sense of relief-when they walked out the door in the morning to go to school, for example. Dr. Schau assured her it was perfectly normal: Beth was alone now, her job was doubly hard. She’d lost not only her husband but her coparent, and so all the duties she once shared with Arch now fell to her alone. It was perfectly normal to feel relief at escaping the pressure, if only for a little while.

Beth ran all the way to Madaket, the hamlet at the western tip of the island. She stopped at the drawbridge that looked out over Madaket Harbor and drank her bottle of water, slowly, cautiously, to avoid getting cramps. There were sailboats and redand-white buoys bouncing gently in the breeze. Beth was dripping with sweat. She worried that she’d come too far and wouldn’t make it home.

But the way home was into the wind and that cooled Beth off somewhat, and the water helped, and she allowed herself to think about the dinner that night. David Ronan was going to set foot in her house for the first time since August 31, 1979, when Beth’s father threw him out. That morning was such ancient history, such a drop in the ocean by now, and yet it caused Beth’s chest to contract with guilt. The best thing was to have this dinner and put the past behind them.

Beth made it all the way back to where the road turned to dirt before she had to stop and walk. She judged it to be almost two o’clock and she was parched. The Evian bottle had a quarter inch of water left, enough to get the dusty film out of her mouth. She’d run eleven or twelve miles. She felt light, clean, and completely spent.

A car rumbled up behind her, a horn beeped. She stepped into the tall grass to let the car pass, but when she turned around, she saw it wasn’t a car and it wasn’t passing. It was David Ronan in his Island Painting van idling there in the road, window down.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hi.” Beth wiped her forehead. Well, here was the worst possible luck. She was slick with sweat and coated with dirt and certainly she stank to high heaven. Not to mention her hair. “Are you… working out here? You have a job out here?” Her teeth were gritty.

“No, actually, I was headed to your house. I need to talk to you.”

“Oh, really? Why?” Though Beth feared she knew: Rosie didn’t want to come to dinner. And who could blame her? Especially with Arch gone. It would be a sadly uneven equation; Beth had considered this numerous times since leaving the Stop & Shop on Tuesday.

“I didn’t think it was fair to show up tonight without telling you something first,” David said. “There’s something I have to explain.”

Beth looked nervously in both directions. No one was coming. She remembered from their conversation at the store that there was something David wanted to explain, but she hadn’t even let herself venture a guess. And now here was David tracking her down because clearly whatever it was couldn’t wait.

David motioned for her to come closer, which was not something she was particularly anxious to do. But she obeyed and stood only inches from his open window. She glanced into his van: it was messy with clipboards and newspapers and a couple of wadded-up bags from Henry’s. He was listening to NPR. Then Beth caught sight of something on the dashboard-a yellow stick-’em on which a single word was written “Beth.” Her name was stuck to his dashboard right where he could see it. Her name.

“Rosie’s not coming to dinner,” David said.

As Beth suspected. A host of indignations rose in her chest: Rosie was being childish, jealous, unreasonable. But she said, simply, “Oh?”

David turned down the radio and squinted out the windshield. His sunglasses hung around his neck on a Croakie. He wore a blue chambray shirt and navy blue shorts, the same black flip-flops. Beth was amazed at how clean he looked even though he was in the painting business. He was the owner, of course; Beth was pretty sure he didn’t go near any actual paint.

“Rosie left,” he said.

“What?”

“Rosie left. She left me and the girls.”

Beth pushed the lock button of David’s door down, then pulled it back up again. She heard an approaching engine and saw a car coming toward them.

“Oh, shit,” she said.

The other car slowed to a stop, waiting for Beth to move, but she could do nothing more than grind the soles of her Nikes into the dirt and will the road to swallow her up. She should never have asked David for dinner. She should have let him go on his merry way and forgotten all about him. She should have kept him safely in her past where he belonged-yet now, here he was, most definitely occupying her present. Right now-and tonight, without a wife.

“Shit,” Beth said again. The driver of the other car hit his horn then shrugged at Beth as if to say, What, exactly, would you like me to do?

“Will you get in?” David said. “Please? So we can talk?”

“Get into your van?” She tried to swallow but the inside of her mouth was like crumbling plaster. “Don’t you have work?”

“Work can wait. Hop in.”

Beth saw she had no choice. She ran around and climbed in the passenger side. She discovered a bottle of water hidden underneath The Inquirer & Mirror. This was a very small positive.

“Mind if I have a swig?” she asked. “I’m dying of thirst.” “Help yourself.” David said. “Sorry I don’t have anything stronger.” He started to drive. “Shall we go to your house?”

“No,” Beth said. “No, no. Let’s… well, let’s drive around or park somewhere.” She was sorry as soon as she said “park somewhere,” because it brought back memories of when she and David had parked at the beach right up the road and made love in the sand. “Let’s drive around.”

He stepped on the gas and Beth appreciated the cool wind through her window. She finished the entire bottle of water, trying not to panic. Trying not to think of Garrett. Trying not to bombard David with questions, the most obvious being, Why didn’t you just tell me at the store?

“So,” David said.

“So,” Beth said. “So Rosie left. Are you going to tell me what happened?”

“She moved to the Cape after Christmas. She said the island was suffocating her. It was too small, too limited, and suddenly after eighteen years of living here, not at all what she wanted. And she said I was emotionally cruel.”

“Emotionally cruel?”

“That’s what she said.”

“What about the girls?”

“Rosie didn’t want to take the girls. She said they were happy in school and that she could be an equally effective mother from the Cape. If not more so.” David spoke the words like a robot, like he’d committed them to memory then spoken them on a hundred separate occasions. “She rented a house in Wellfleet, which is to say, I rented a house, and she started a catering company, which is to say, I started the catering company, and I fly the girls over whenever their hearts desire. The three of them have a fine time, shopping and going to movies and spending my money in any other way they can find.”

“A catering company,” Beth said. “That makes sense. So the girls are all right with this, then?”

“They appear to be. Piper just turned seventeen, and she’s developed a very independent, very empowered personality. She’s thrilled that her mother has broken free of male domination.”

“Oh,” Beth said. “What about the younger one?”

“Peyton still loves me the best, thank God,” David said. “But she wouldn’t admit it in front of her mother or her sister. She’s not brave enough. She’s not brave at all.”

“How old is Peyton?”

“Thirteen.”

“I can’t believe you and Rosie split,” Beth said. “I just can’t believe it.” This was dangerous news. Beth stared at the stick ’em on the dashboard, wishing for clarity. David Ronan had split from his wife, and now he was driving around Nantucket with Beth’s name on his dashboard. “How are you doing?” she asked. “Are you… are you angry?”

“Shit, yeah, I’m angry,” David said. “And heartbroken and discouraged and deeply incredulous. I loved Rosie. She saved my life.”

This comment, Beth knew, was aimed at her. What David really meant was: Rosie saved me from you. Beth heard the old pain, the old intensity in David’s voice and she knew where the conversation was headed if she didn’t stop it-blame for Rosie that was really blame for Beth. The first woman who’d left him.

“We’ll have to cancel dinner,” Beth said, cringing at how hardhearted, not to mention rude, that sounded. But the whole point had been to invite the Ronan family. To prove to the kids and Beth herself, and Arch, wherever he was, that this was just a normal friendship.

“I already told the girls. They’re excited to come. But I guess you don’t want us now? I hope you don’t think I’m on the prowl.”

“No, I never-”

“My girls,” he said. “They think this is a date, even though I assured them it’s not. I mean, I told them about your husband. But I haven’t been out, anywhere, well, in six months, so they’re hopeful.” He smiled. “They want me to move on. I explained to them that I’m not ready to move on, and that even if I were, you weren’t ready to move on.” He glanced at her. “I’m embarrassed telling you all this. I came to find you because I knew it was unfair to spring it on you tonight. So we won’t come.”

The world’s most awkward situation. What should she do? If she disinvited David, what did that say? That she didn’t trust herself? That it wasn’t okay for two old friends to have dinner together? “Forgive me,” Beth said. “It’s just that this took me by surprise. You could have told me at the store.”

David tucked his chin guiltily. “You seemed upset at the store,” he said. “About Arch, I mean. I didn’t want to burden you with my problems.”

“It wouldn’t have been a burden,” Beth said. “It would have been useful information.”

“I guess subconsciously I wanted to come to dinner, and so that’s why I didn’t tell you,” David said. “Since Rosie left, the whole island has treated me like an untouchable.”

“You’re not an untouchable.”

David held out his hand. “Prove it.”

Beth stared at his hand, the knobby knuckles, the golden hairs, the clean, clipped nails. How many years had passed since she’d noticed David’s hands?

She squeezed David’s pinky. “I’m sorry Rosie left.”

“Thanks. It makes me feel better to hear that opinion expressed, even by a summer person.”

Beth smirked. She’d only spent ten minutes in David’s presence and already they’d resumed their old roles. Year-rounder versus summer person. How old would they have to be before they rose above. “I hereby cancel my cancellation,” she said. “Please come to dinner. I’d like to meet your girls and it’ll be good for Winnie and Garrett. Just come at seven and we’ll have a good time.” A good time. It sounded so refreshing that Beth almost believed it was possible. “But don’t bring me flowers or anything.”

“No purple cosmos?” he said.

That hit too close to home. Beth shut her eyes, remembering the flowers wilting in her hand because she held them so tightly. They left golden dust on her skin.

“I’m sorry, Beth,” he said.

“You don’t know what I’m like these days,” she said. “Boiled turnips can make me cry.” She wiped her eyes. “Just take me home. I need to shower. Take a nap. And I don’t want the kids worrying about where I am.”

They drove to her house in silence, and then Beth leapt from the van. She needed David to drive away before anyone saw him. “I’ll expect you at seven,” she said.

“You’re sure about this?” he said.

“I’m sure.”

He waved. “Looking forward to it.”

As Beth headed inside, she noticed the mail basket was full. Already, some of her mail had been forwarded from New York. There were two bills, a credit card solicitation addressed to Archer Newton, and a letter for Marcus. The return address was 247 Harris Road, Bedford Hills, New York. It was a letter from Constance Tyler.

Garrett watched his mother closely from the minute she walked in the door from her run. The first thing she did was to look in the hallway mirror-the one that she and Uncle Danny and Uncle Scott had decorated with scallop shells in their youth- and groan.

“I look like a dirt sandwich,” she said.

Although she hadn’t acknowledged him, Garrett assumed the comment was for his benefit, and that he was expected to refute it.

“What do you care what you look like?” he said.

She turned, apparently surprised to see him there, sitting at the kitchen table, eating a lunch that he’d made himself. It might seem a small detail, but Garrett was keeping track of the fact that three days into the summer, neither his mother nor Winnie had offered to make him lunch, although they both fell over themselves to prepare food for Marcus.

“Garrett,” she said. “It’s two-thirty.”

“So?”

“So, don’t you think it’s a little late to be eating such a big lunch? We’re having dinner at seven.”

As if he were likely to forget “the dinner,” which, judging by the way his mother cleaned this morning, was a bigger event than she originally promised.

“I’ll manage,” he said.

As his mother walked toward him, he saw that she was holding some envelopes. She waved one in the air. “Where’s Marcus?”

“I have no idea,” Garrett said, though he had every idea. Marcus was on the beach. Alone. Winnie had come running up about forty-five minutes earlier in a state. It seemed Marcus had given Winnie some flak about not eating. As if my digestive tract is his concern, Winnie said in this bitchy, conspiratorial way, nudging Garrett to agree with her. Although Garrett wanted nothing more than to gang up on Marcus, it wasn’t going to be for that reason. In this instance, Marcus was right: Winnie needed to eat. Garrett said as much to Winnie and she stomped up the stairs, her empty stomach clenched in fury against him.

“Well, can you find him for me, please?” Beth said. “There’s a letter for him.”

“I think he’s on the beach,” Garrett said. “He can read it when he comes up.”

“It’s a letter from Constance,” Beth said. “It can’t wait.”

There was faulty logic there somewhere, but clearly this letter had put ants in his mother’s pants and so Garrett walked out onto the deck and was about to yell down to the beach when he saw Marcus marching up the rickety stairs, loaded down like a pack mule with all the beach stuff-towels, beach bag, and Winnie’s chaise lounge. Once Marcus reached the deck, he dropped the stuff and rubbed his eyes.

“Whoa,” he said. “I fell asleep down there.”

Garrett studied him. He heard the clink of glasses in the beach bag and realized that Marcus and Winnie had been drinking. The Malibu, probably. How easy it would be to bust this kid, Garrett thought. He shook his head. “Mom has a letter for you. From Constance.”

Not even the faintest glimmer of interest crossed Marcus’s face. “Okay, man, thanks.” He headed for the outdoor shower and Garrett watched him step in and close the door. Then he heard the water. Garrett returned to the kitchen where his mother was drinking straight from the big bottle of purple Gatorade.

“Marcus is in the shower,” Garrett said.

Beth paused in her drinking. “Did you tell him about the letter?”

“Of course. I guess it can wait after all.”

“Hmmpf,” Beth said. Garrett noticed her staring at the envelope, and he moved closer to inspect it. A regular number ten business envelope addressed in blue ink. The return address said, “247 Harris Road, Bedford Hills, New York,” as if this were a domestic street address and not the address of the largest women’s correctional facility in the state. The penmanship was neat, pretty even, and European, like the handwriting of Garrett’s French teacher, Mr. Alevain. Of course, Constance Tyler was no dummy. She’d gone to Princeton, and that was how Garrett’s father got involved in all this in the first place.

Although the envelope was unremarkable in every way, it had power, and Garrett found himself wondering what the letter might say. On the one hand, there was so much to explain, but on the other, how could mere language convey the range of emotions Constance Tyler might be experiencing when she knew she would never be free again? She would never lie on a beach, ride a bike, dip her foot in the ocean. Garrett picked up the envelope and held it to the window trying to make out a word or two, and naturally, as soon as he gave in to this temptation, Marcus stepped into the kitchen, one beach towel wrapped around his waist, one wrapped around his head like a turban. Except for these two towels, Marcus was naked-dark and muscular and imposing, like some two-hundred-year-old tree.

He nodded. “That my letter?”

Beth spoke up. She, too, had an impulse to scrutinize the letter, though it was none of hers or Garrett’s business. “It’s from Constance.”

Marcus snatched the letter from Garrett’s fingers. “All right, then,” he said, and he disappeared upstairs.

At five o’clock, Garrett was slumped in the only comfortable chair in the house, reading. The chair was a bona fide La-Z-Boy recliner upholstered with worn fawn-colored velour; Garrett’s grandfather had brought it home one summer from the dump, and although all the women complained that it was an eyesore and smelled like mildew, they kept it around because it was so comfortable. Garrett was reading Franny and Zooey, the first book on his required summer reading list. He’d reached the part where Zooey was soaking in the bathtub reading a letter wishing that his mother would leave him alone. Garrett paused for a minute, identifying with Zooey’s frustration with Bessie Glass, except Garrett was frustrated by too little attention from his mother, or the wrong kind of attention. Something about his mother was really bugging him, although Garrett couldn’t put it into words. If Garrett were the one taking a two-hour bath, for example, Beth would knock on the door and explain that since Garrett was the man of the house now, it was his responsibility to offer the same hot bath to Marcus. Garrett honestly couldn’t believe that Marcus was here this summer. After all, if it weren’t for Marcus’s mother, Arch would still be alive. Garrett mentioned this glaring fact at one of their family therapy sessions, but Dr. Schau told him that was a small person’s point of view. Constance Tyler didn’t kill Arch, she said; he died by accident. It was nobody’s fault.

Garrett rested the open book on his chest and closed his eyes. It was embarrassing that he’d even found time to start his required reading. He needed to get a life.

Suddenly, he heard his mother. “This is going to be a low-key affair.” She said this as if trying to convince someone-herself, he supposed, or anyone else who might be listening. The ghost of his father, maybe. Garrett opened his eyes to see Beth come down the stairs wearing jeans, a pale pink T-shirt, and a pair of flip-flops. Her hair was still wet, and as she grew closer to him he caught the scent of her lotion. “I am not going to a lot of trouble.”

“Okay,” Garrett mumbled. “Whatever you say.”

“Oh, Garrett,” she said. She stopped at the hall mirror and inspected her face closely, much the way Garrett himself did when he was worried about acne. “Will you please just participate here? Will you play along?”

He dog-eared the page of his book and climbed out of the recliner. “Sure,” he said. “What can I do?”

Beth turned to him with narrowed eyes, suspicious of his sudden willingness. “Well,” she said. “You can help me in the kitchen.”

It was on the tip of Garrett’s tongue to ask Where’s Winnie? Where’s Marcus? Why can’t they help? But he kept quiet and followed his mother.

Garrett had helped with his parents’ dinner parties for years, and he knew from looking at the raw ingredients that tonight was a big deal disguised to look like no big deal. His mother pulled a bag of jumbo shrimp out of the fridge-all peeled and deveined and steamed to a lurid pink. At least fifty dollars worth of shrimp, which his mother shook out of the bag onto a hand painted platter that one of Garrett’s cousins had made on a rainy day. She took a bottle of cocktail sauce out of the fridge, then grinned at Garrett sheepishly and said, “I think I’ll doctor this a little.” She proceeded to mix in mayonnaise, horseradish, lemon juice, and a generous splash from the vodka bottle she kept in the freezer. “We have chives, I think,” she said. “For a garnish.”

“What do you want me to do?” Garrett asked. “You need help, right? When did you go to the fish store?”

“This morning before you got up,” she admitted. “Why don’t you set the table.”

“Okay,” he said. “How many of us are there again?”

Beth paused. “Eight, right? Isn’t that right? Set the table for eight people. The dining room table.”

“Do we have eight of everything?” he asked.

“If not, make do,” Beth said. “This is no big deal. The world won’t end if someone is short a steak knife.”

“Obviously not,” Garrett said. He checked a few drawers and found five disintegrating straw place mats and three green plastic place mats that were meant to resemble large cabbage roses. He laid these out on the dining room table, pleased by how awful they looked. As he headed back to the kitchen to find napkins, he bumped into Beth. She eyed the table over his shoulder.

“No, Garrett, sorry,” she said. “Those are hideous. I brought the place mats from home, the blue ones, and the napkins. They’re in one of the plastic bags in the pantry.”

“But you said-”

“Thanks, sweetie.” She collected the place mats quickly, like a poker player who didn’t want anyone to see her losing hand. “These are going right into the trash.”

For the next hour, Garrett watched Beth break all her promises. The blue linen place mats and matching floral napkins went on the table along with the “good,” meaning unchipped, china, three balloon wineglasses for the adults, and a bouquet of daisies and bachelor buttons that Beth had somehow found time to purchase at Bartlett Farm. Beth asked him to wash the silverware before he put it on the table, even though it was already clean. As Garrett stood at the sink, he catalogued all the effort that went into the dinner. The thick steaks seasoned with salt and pepper, the baking potatoes scrubbed and nestled in foil, the asparagus trimmed and drizzled with the special olive oil from Zabar’s. The butter brought to room temperature, the sour cream garnished with chives, and while his mother was at it, a little crumbled bacon.

It was the smell of bacon, maybe, that lured Marcus down from his room.

“What’s going on in here?” he asked.

“Don’t you remember, Marcus?” Beth said. “We’re having dinner guests.”

“Who?”

“Old friends of mine,” Beth said. “And their kids. Two girls. A little younger than you.”

“Okay,” Marcus said. “Can I help?”

“Where’s Winnie?” Beth said. “It’s five minutes to seven. They’ll be here soon.”

“Her door was closed,” Marcus said. “She must be napping.”

Beth let out a very long stream of air and Garrett knew this meant she was trying to hold back her tears. He wanted to yell at her. It was a terrible idea to throw this dinner party, what was she trying to prove, anyway? What made her think she could act like a happy, normal person? But as angry as Garrett was with Beth, he felt sorry for her, too. Her pain was as real as his own and Winnie’s; it was immense and unwieldy and it had a deeper element-she had lost the man she was in love with. Dr. Schau had gone over this with Garrett many times: losing a spouse was different, and yes, worse, than losing a parent.

“I’ll go get her,” Garrett conceded.

“Thank you,” Beth said. “Marcus, would you like a Coke?”

Garrett marched upstairs and tapped lightly on Winnie’s door.

“Go away,” she said.

“Winnifred!” Garrett said in his most playful falsetto. “Win-nifred, open the door this instant!”

“Fuck off, Garrett,” she said.

Garrett cracked open the door. It was a much-disdained fact that none of the doors in Horizon had a working lock. Winnie was curled up on her narrow bed wearing her sweatshirt and a pair of jean shorts.

“You have to come downstairs,” he said. He paused, then decided to try one of their father’s favorite jokes. “We’re having people for dinner.”

Winnie sat up. She’d been crying, of course, but she gave him a tiny smile. “I hope they taste good,” she said.

For the first time in a long time, Garrett felt a connection with his sister. No matter what happened with their mother, the two of them could keep their father’s spirit alive. “I’m serious. Mom wants you to come down.”

“Not a chance,” Winnie said. “I’m not hungry and I don’t want to meet anyone new.”

“Me either,” Garrett admitted.

“Teenage girls. Yuck. Marcus will probably fall in love with one of them.”

This was something Garrett hadn’t considered. He figured the daughters would be awkward and gangly, with braces and zits. But maybe Marcus would have the hots for one of them and then Garrett could stop worrying about Marcus and Winnie.

“Okay,” he said. “I’ll tell Mom you don’t feel well.”

“Thanks,” Winnie said, snuggling back down into her pillow. “You’re my best friend, you know that?”

“Yeah,” Garrett said. This little bit of affirmation from his sister made him happier than it should have. He really needed to get a life.

The doorbell rang as Garrett was coming down the stairs. Beth shouted, “Garrett, would you let our guests in, please?” He cursed to himself and considered running back upstairs to hide with Winnie in her room. His newly discovered sense of optimism dissolved. He dreaded opening the door.

But open it he did, to find a man and two girls.

“You must be Garrett,” the man said. He thrust a bottle in a brown paper bag into Garrett’s hands, then stepped aside and ushered the girls in. “I’m David Ronan, and these are my daughters, Piper and Peyton.”

“Hi,” Garrett heard himself say. His mind was grappling with two equally alarming facts. The first was that the mother, the wife, Mrs. Whomever, didn’t seem to be present-Garrett glanced out toward their car, a silver Dodge Dakota pickup, but no, she wasn’t lagging behind carrying a pie or anything. This was it: just the man and two girls. Garrett had been duped. This was a date for his mother, after all. But before he could deal with that thought, he needed to contend with the other pressing fact, which was that one of the girls, the older, taller one, was a complete knockout. As in, one of the hottest chicks Garrett had ever seen. “Hi,” he said, right into the girl’s face. “I’m Garrett Newton.”

“Piper,” she said. She had long light brown hair and green eyes and what looked to be an incredible body. She wore a tank top and tight white shorts and sandals with cork heels. She had two silver hoops in her right ear, and a diamond stud in her nose. She was a goddess. Beth appeared in the hallway and gushed, “Welcome to Horizon, let’s go out on the deck, we’ll watch the sun set, can I get you all something to drink?” Garrett nearly hugged his mother, despite the fact that she’d been lying to him about the purpose of this dinner for days.

Thank you, he thought, thank you for inviting this beautiful person to our house. He loved the way Piper moved down the hall, flipping back her hair, shaking Beth’s hand, saying “Thanks for inviting us, Beth. It was about time Daddy got out of the house.”

“I’m glad you could come,” Beth said. She felt Garrett’s judgmental gaze boring into her back and she tried to keep her voice light and steady. “It’s no big deal tonight. Just a casual cookout.”

Garrett remained in the hallway holding the bottle of wine while everyone else moved out to the deck. He needed a minute alone. He watched Marcus shake hands with Piper, then the other girl, who was also pretty, but younger. He watched Marcus and David shake hands. Then he watched Beth and David shake hands and kiss on the sides of their mouths. These greetings took a few minutes, then everyone seemed to appreciate the view, and Garrett heard Beth taking drink orders. The shrimp was on the table outside and Piper was the first to help herself.

“I’m absolutely famished,” Garrett heard her say, and he thought how that word, “famished,” would have sounded phony if anyone else had said it, but when Piper said it, it sounded retro and cool. Famished.

Beth stepped into the kitchen and Garrett moved toward her holding out the bottle of wine.

“They brought this,” he said.

“David just told me he lets Piper have a glass of wine at dinner parties,” Beth said. “Would you like a glass of wine?”

“Yeah,” Garrett said.

Beth took the bottle from him and brought another bottle out of the fridge. The Ronans had only been here two minutes and already she’d resorted to bribery. Arch had never approved of the twins drinking-not even watered-down wine at a fancy dinner. “We won’t overdo it though, okay?”

“Okay.”

Then, suddenly, Beth sensed something wrong. She checked her jeans pockets as though she’d misplaced her wallet. “Where’s your sister?”

“Upstairs. She’s sick.”

“Sick?”

“Yeah.”

They both paused for a minute, thinking the same thing: Winnie was sick, very sick, but not in a way that should keep her from this dinner party. Garrett could tell by the liberal way his mother poured the wine that she was going to let it go. She handed Garrett two glasses to carry out. “Let’s go socialize,” she said.

The world was treating him fairly again. That was what Garrett thought as he sat on the end of a chaise lounge at Piper Ronan’s feet, drinking wine, watching the sun set from the deck of his family’s summer home. The party had split up into three conversations: David chatted with Marcus, Beth talked to the younger daughter, Peyton, and that left Garrett to hang out with Piper, who immediately started asking him what it was like to live in Manhattan. It must be cool, she said, to actually live in the same city with the Empire State Building and Greenwich Village. The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Guggenheim and Soho. Garrett felt like a rock star. The wine went right to his head.

“Yeah, it’s okay,” he said. “I mean, I was born there so I don’t know what’s it’s like to live anywhere else. Except here, I guess, in the summer.”

“Do you take cabs all the time?” Piper asked. “Do you take a cab to school?”

“I walk to school,” Garrett said. “Danforth’s on the Upper East Side, where I live.”

“Upper East Side,” Piper said. “God, I just love the way that sounds! I can’t wait until I graduate from college. I’m moving to Manhattan. What about clubbing? Do you go clubbing?”

“Sometimes,” Garrett said. “But that scene gets old pretty quick. There are long lines and the people are fake, and you come home smelling like smoke.”

“Oh,” she said. She sounded crestfallen. “Really?”

He took a long moment to drink some wine. “Yeah. But some great bands play in the city. At Roseland and Irving Plaza. I saw Dave Matthews last year, and Fishbone.”

Piper lay back in the chaise and waved her wineglass in the direction of her father. “Save your money, Daddy!” she said. “I’m headed for the Big Apple!”

David groaned. Garrett looked at Piper’s ankles and let his eyes glide up her legs, over her tight shorts, the six inches of exposed midriff to her breasts, which he knew better than to stare at for too long, to her face. She was smiling at him.

“Want to go for a walk on the beach later?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he said. The wine made him feel like he was levitating. “Definitely, yeah.”

“There it goes!” Beth cried out. She leaned over the railing and pointed at the sun, which was just about to sink into the ocean. Beth led them in a round of applause. “Garrett, will you light the grill?” she asked. “It’s getting time to eat.”

Beth controlled the dinner conversation like it was a big, unwieldy bus that she had to keep on safe roads: What was it like to live on Nantucket year-round? How did Peyton like school? Where was Piper applying to college? Every time Piper opened her mouth, Garrett stopped chewing and listened.

“I’m only applying to three schools,” she said. “BU is my safety, BC is my probable, and Harvard is my reach.”

“Boston schools,” Beth said.

“I’m a city person. I wanted to apply in Manhattan, but Dad said no.”

Garrett looked at David Ronan. He was busy digging every last bit of potato out of the skin. He took a sip of wine and cleared his throat. “I have to keep the girls close otherwise they’ll never come see me and I’ll be left alone.”

“Where’s your wife?”

Everyone at the table stopped eating, or maybe it just seemed that way to Garrett who sat in utter confusion. The words had been right there in his brain, in his mouth, but he never would have had the guts to speak them aloud. No, it was Marcus who’d asked. Marcus who had already finished every bite of food on his plate and who was reaching for more salad had asked the question. Where’s your wife?

Quietly, David said, “She’s on the Cape.”

Marcus loaded his plate with salad. “The Cape?”

“Cape Cod,” Beth said.

“We’re separated,” David said.

“My mom is a caterer now.” This came from Peyton, the younger girl, who, Garrett noticed, had a piece of meat stuck in the front of her braces. It was the first thing Peyton had said at dinner other than “please” and “thank you.” “She makes little quiches.”

“She makes a lot more than just quiches, Peyton,” Piper said. “She’s chosen to pursue her life’s dream, and that’s one of the beauties of living in this country. Freedom to change your life if you don’t like the way it’s going.”

“Freedom to leave your husband and children if that’s what your heart desires,” David said. Garrett watched him empty the contents of the wine bottle into his glass and then carry the empty bottle into the kitchen. “Shall we open the bottle I brought?” he asked Beth.

Beth was cutting her steak into tiny pieces and moving them around her plate, a trick she’d learned from Winnie, to make it look like she’d been eating. She turned her head in David’s direction; her cheeks were hot. “It’s on the counter.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t drink any more, Dad,” Piper said.

“Maybe you should keep your opinions to yourself, young lady,” David said.

“God, you’re being so confrontational, I can’t believe you.” Piper touched the diamond stud in her nose with her pinky finger. “You’re angry at Mom and it’s causing you to drink too much. Or maybe,” she said, “maybe you’re drinking too much because you’re nervous about seeing Beth.”

Garrett’s stomach flipped. He put down his knife and fork with a clang. “May I be excused?”

Piper’s eyebrows shot up. “Did my saying that upset you?”

David came back into the dining room, pulling the cork from his bottle of wine. “This is a Bordeaux,” David said to Beth as he filled her empty glass. “I hope you like it.” He threw a killer look at Piper. “You, my dear, aren’t making many friends at this table.”

Peyton, too, dropped her utensils abruptly and held her face in her hands. “She does this all the time.”

“I do what all the time?” Piper demanded.

“Make trouble for Daddy.”

“I wasn’t making any trouble,” Piper said. “I was merely defending our mother and her choices. She’s running her own business, for God’s sake.”

Suddenly, Marcus spoke up. “It’s my fault,” he said. “I shouldn’t have asked.”

“It’s not your fault, Marcus,” Beth said, and this made Garrett angrier than anything else that had been said all evening. Of course his mother would jump to Marcus’s aid, and of course nothing was Marcus’s fault, even when it was.

Beth tried to change the subject. The bus was swerving. “We have ice cream for dessert,” she said. “Ben & Jerry’s.”

“I’ve lost my appetite,” Piper said.

“You’re being rude,” David said. “I expected more from you.”

Piper flipped her hair in response. “I’m only playing the role you cast me in,” she said. “The difficult child? I hear you say so all the time.”

“That’s enough, Piper,” David said and Garrett could tell he meant business. Garrett’s own father never raised his voice; when Arch got angry he became cool and polite in a way that let you know you’d disappointed him, and then you’d be willing to cut off your left hand to make him talk and joke with you again.

Piper stood. “Garrett and I are going for a walk on the beach,” she said, and with that, she stormed through the kitchen and out onto the deck.

Garrett remained in his chair, returning the stares of the other people at the table: Peyton, Marcus, David, his mother.

“Go ahead,” Beth said.

He almost stayed put just to spite her-he didn’t need his mother’s permission to walk on the beach-but his desire to be outside with Piper overwhelmed him. He went.

She was smoking a cigarette and he wondered where she’d gotten it until he noticed a jean jacket lying across a chair and he figured there must be cigarettes and a lighter in the pocket. She was sucking on the cigarette in an angry way, like the young, jilted, male lover in an old movie, and Garrett understood it was high drama for his benefit.

“I can’t stand it when people smoke,” he said.

“Why should I care what you think?”

“You shouldn’t care,” he said.

“I don’t.”

“Fine. Do you really want to go for a walk or were you just using me as an excuse to leave the house?”

“I’ll walk.”

“If you’re walking with me, please put out the cigarette.”

She stabbed it on the sole of her sandal and flicked it down into the dune grass. “There.”

“Yeah, except you littered.”

“So call the police.”

“You are difficult,” Garrett said.

“As advertised,” she said.

At home, in New York, Garrett had success with girls, mostly because they weren’t important to him. Soccer was important, his grades were important, and his friends were important-and by putting these things first, Garrett found he could have any girlfriend he wanted. Girls loved to sit on the sidelines at Van Cortland Park watching him play striker, they loved it when he left beer parties early because he had a math quiz the next day. Morgan, Priscilla, Brooke-they all went out with him whenever he asked and allowed him to touch their bodies in various ways. He’d lost his virginity the previous Christmas to a girl named Anna, who was a freshman at Columbia. He met her at Lowe Library while he was doing special research for a paper on Blaise Pascal; she showed Garrett how to access the university computer system, then later invited him back to her room and once they started making out, Garrett discovered he couldn’t stop and she didn’t force him to. His father had given him condoms for his sixteenth birthday and made Garrett promise to always use them. “I don’t want anything to happen to you or anyone you’re close to,” he said.

Garrett didn’t see Anna again-she went home to Poughkeepsie for Christmas break and never resurfaced.

Garrett didn’t tell his father that he lost his virginity; he was too embarrassed.

He got an A on the Pascal paper.

As Garrett led Piper down the steep staircase to the beach, he felt his attitude about girls changing. Maybe because this girl was so beautiful and spoke to her father with exactly the same rage that Garrett felt for his mother. He wanted this girl. That was what he thought as they took their shoes off and stepped on the cold sand.

There was no moon, but there were millions of stars. Garrett craned his neck to get a good look.

“I never see stars like this,” he said. “In New York, the sky is pink at night.”

Piper pulled her jean jacket close to her body. “I can’t wait to go away to college. I can’t wait to get off this rock.”

“You were hard on your dad,” Garrett said.

“He drives me nuts.”

“Which way do you want to walk?” Garrett asked.

She pointed to the left. The beach was dark-only a couple of houses along the bluff had lights on-and the ocean pounded to their right. Garrett felt pleasantly buzzed from the wine, pleasantly buzzed from the way Piper had managed to set them free from the dinner party. He felt bold and confident-he took Piper’s hand, and she let him. They walked, but the only part of his body that Garrett could feel was his hand. He was so consumed by it that he couldn’t think of a single thing to say.

“Do you have a girlfriend?” Piper asked him.

“Not right now,” he said. “What about you?”

“I have lots of girlfriends.” She giggled.

He tightened his grip on her fingers. “Boyfriend?”

“Sort of.”

“Oh.”

“I’m breaking up with him tomorrow.”

“How come?” Garrett said.

“Because I met you,” she said.

Garrett sent a message to his father, whom he sometimes thought of as a satellite dish in the sky, always there to receive information. Are you listening to this?

“He’s just a stupid football player, anyway,” Piper said. “He’s never been anywhere.”

Garrett imagined the hulking, unsophisticated brute who was currently Piper’s boyfriend. Garrett knew the type-the kind of guy who would pound Garrett into the sand like a horseshoe stake if he knew Garrett was holding Piper’s hand right now.

“If you could go anywhere in the world,” he asked. “where would you go?”

“I already said, New York City.”

Garrett had been hoping for a more imaginative answer. “I want to go to Australia. I’ve wanted to go there ever since I was, like, six years old. I’m going to ask my mom to let me travel after I graduate from high school. I might not go to college right away.”

“Really?” she said.

Garrett could tell she thought that was crazy. “I’m different,” he said. “My father used to tell me I thought outside the box.”

She coughed a hacky, smoker’s cough. “Your dad died, right?”

The question took Garrett by surprise and he seized up with panic. He hadn’t encountered very many kids his age who wanted to talk about what happened to his father. Everyone knew, of course. Practically the entire student body of Danforth attended the memorial service. But no one wanted to talk to Garrett about the loss, not even his good friends. The other kids were afraid to talk about it and that made Garrett afraid. He felt that losing his father, that being fatherless, was something to be ashamed of.

“Right. My dad died.”

“In a plane crash?”

“Yep.”

Piper raised her face to the night sky, giving Garrett a view of her beautiful throat. “I can’t imagine how awful that would be. Even though I get angry at my dad, I want him alive. If anything ever happened to him or my mom, I’d go crazy.”

“Yeah,” Garrett said. “My sister’s pretty much gone crazy. That’s why she wasn’t at dinner. We have to keep her locked in her room.”

Piper stopped. “Oh, God,” she said. “You’re kidding.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I am.”

She swatted his arm and walked on. “How has it changed you? Losing a parent, I mean.”

It was an insightful question, and one he’d never been asked. How to explain? It was as if his seventeenth year were a bridge that had broken in half. His old life, his life before his father died, was on one side of the bridge, and now he found himself standing on the other side, with no choice but to move forward. What else could he say? He felt jaded now, hardened. The things that other kids worried about-grades, for example, or clothes, or the score of a soccer game-seemed inconsequential. In some sense, losing his father allowed Garrett to see what was important. This moment, right now, was important. Garrett stopped and slipped his hands inside of Piper’s jean jacket so that he was touching the bare skin under her rib cage. Her skin was warm; she was radiating heat. Garrett had no clue where he was finding the courage to touch Piper.

“I’m a difficult child, too,” he said. “That’s how my dad dying changed me.”

“So we’re two difficult children,” Piper said. She locked her hands behind Garrett’s back and pressed her hips against his. “However, I notice you haven’t pierced your nose.”

“Not yet,” he said. “But maybe I will.”

“You have such a pretty nose,” she said. “Don’t ruin it.”

“You have a pretty nose,” Garrett said. He leaned forward and kissed the tip of her nose, then lifted her chin and kissed her lips. She tasted smoky, but smoky like charcoal, not cigarettes. He kissed her again, parting her lips with his tongue. She kissed him back for a second or two, enough time for Garrett to marvel at his good fortune, but then she pushed him gently away.

“I’m difficult, as in, not easy,” she said.

“Oh,” Garrett said. He was dying, dying, to kiss her, but he liked it that she had boundaries. And he had all summer to knock them down, so he gave up without asking for more. He took her hand and led her down the beach.

At ten o’clock, Beth found herself sitting alone at the table with David. The candles were burnt down to nubs, and two quarts of Ben & Jerry’s Phish Food had been decimated-Marcus finished one quart single-handedly before he excused himself and headed upstairs. Garrett and Piper were still on their walk-they’d been gone for over an hour, a fact which embarrassed Beth-and Peyton had wandered into the living room, plucked a paperback off the shelf and fell asleep reading in the recliner. Her soft snoring was audible in the dining room where Beth and David nursed the last two glasses of wine.

“Was dinner a success?” Beth asked. Her words came out slurred. It had been a long time since she drank this much. Across the table, David had taken on a mystical aura. Was that really David Ronan in this house after so many years?

“Huge success,” David said. “If only because we managed to get rid of all the kids.”

“Winnie never even showed her face,” Beth said.

“I’d like to meet her sometime,” David said. “Is she beautiful like her mother?”

“She’s beautiful like Winnie,” Beth said. “But she’s very sad. I don’t know what to do to help her.”

“She needs time,” David said. He lowered his voice. “What’s the deal with Marcus? I asked him if he was a friend of the kids’ from school, and he said no.”

Beth dropped her head into her hands. “It’s a long story. I don’t want to get into it.”

David stood up. “Come on. Let’s go out onto the deck.”

“I don’t think we should.”

“Why not?”

“Because,” Beth said. Her voice was louder than she meant it to be, and she noticed a snag in Peyton’s breathing, but then the gentle snoring resumed. “Because,” Beth said again, “I’m drunk and I can’t help the things I’m thinking.”

“Such as?”

“Such as, what are you doing here?”

“Aside from drinking myself silly?”

“Why did I bump into you at the grocery store my first day here? Why did I ask you to dinner? Why did you have my name stuck to your dashboard?”

David extended his hand. “Let’s go out to the deck. Your grandfather built that deck for nights like this one.”

Beth rose but she didn’t take David’s hand. Instead she carried her wineglass forward carefully, solemnly, like a chalice. Out onto the deck they went.

The beach was dark below them. “Should we be worried about the kids?” Beth asked.

“Garrett seemed trustworthy.”

“Is Piper trustworthy?”

“With everyone but me.”

“She’s a lot angrier about you and Rosie splitting up than you realize.”

“She’s not angry about us splitting. She’s angry at me, alone, because I won’t give Rosie my blessing.”

Beth lay back in the chaise lounge and David pulled a chair up next to her. Beth closed her eyes. Six summers she’d spent with this man-from ages sixteen to twenty-one. That last summer was the most magical summer of her life, until it ended. Ended with Beth’s father throwing David out of this house, and Beth watching the whole scene from up in her room, like a princess locked in a tower. She was twenty-one, an adult, with only a year left at Sarah Lawrence; she could have defied her father. That was what David wrote later in the letters that arrived at her college post office box. You could have defied your father. You could have honored our commitment.

Beth thought fleetingly of the purple cosmos.

“I never told my kids about us,” she said. She took a deep breath. “And I never told Arch.”

“You never told Arch?” David asked.

“No,” she said, the guilt souring the back of her throat. On top of everything else, the guilt. “I decided to keep that part of my past private. What about your girls?”

“I’m not sure how much they know. Rosie might have said something. She was always jealous of you, because you were first.”

“Arch wasn’t jealous of anyone,” Beth said. “He wouldn’t have been jealous of you, even if I had told him the truth. Arch was a man who was perfectly confident in who he was and content with all he’d been given. He never looked sideways, only forward.” Just speaking this way about Arch revived Beth. She sat up. “I’m glad you came tonight, David Ronan,” she said. “It was good to see you. And to meet your girls. They’re beautiful.”

“Why does it feel like I’m getting thrown out?” David said. He leaned closer to her and lowered his voice. “The reason why your name was on my dashboard was because I wanted it there.”

It was chilly out, but Beth flushed. Heat bloomed in her chest. He wanted her name there.

“Where I could see it.” He let his hand fall onto her thigh, as lightly as a leaf.

“This is not okay,” she said, lifting his hand. “I’m not yours to touch.”

“But you were.”

“Yes, I was. Twenty-five years ago. In the interim, though, I married Arch and had two children and lived a very happy and fulfilled life that came to an end three months ago.”

“I understand,” he said. “You’re not ready.”

“I may never be ready.”

“Well, if and when you are…”

“David…”

“You don’t have to say anything else. I’m sorry I’m being forward. Is it okay if we see each other again?”

“See each other, how?”

“Can I take you to breakfast in the morning?”

“No.”

“Lunch?”

“No.”

“How about the sunset, then, in Madaket?”

“I can watch the sun set from here.”

“Fine,” he said. “Be that way.”

“You can call me,” Beth said.

He seemed placated by that, but only for a second. “This house has no phone,” he said.

“That’s right.”

“Do you have a cell phone?” he asked.

“In New York,” Beth said. “I didn’t bring it. I didn’t anticipate having suitors.”

“So how will I call you?”

“I guess you won’t. But we’ll bump into each other. It’s a small island, David. Right now, though, you must go.”

“Well, I’m not leaving without my daughter.”

“No, I guess you’re not,” Beth said. She felt guilty because she was the mother of the boy. If it were Winnie out there, she’d feel panicked. But before she could wonder too long about where Garrett had taken Piper, she heard voices, and a minute later, the kids ascended the stairs holding hands. Beth smiled. When Beth and David were seventeen, they’d been dating for a year already. They’d had sex already. They’d said “I love you” already and meant it with all their hearts.

And now here were Garrett and Piper, their children: Beth and David a generation removed. It touched Beth in a way she couldn’t name.

“We’re going to see each other tomorrow night,” Garrett announced.

“Fine,” Beth said, as if he’d been asking permission.

“Can you drop me off here tomorrow night around seven, Dad?” Piper asked her father. “If you say no, I’ll ride my bike. I don’t care if it’s dark.”

“I’d prefer you not hand me any ultimatums,” David said. “But, yes, I’d be happy to bring you here tomorrow.” He winked at Beth. Victory for him. Then he woke Peyton and directed his girls out to the car.

Beth and Garrett stood at the screen door until the Ronans pulled away.

“Piper seems nice,” Beth said. “She’s very pretty.”

“You told me his wife was coming,” Garrett said.

Beth closed the front door and turned off the porch light. The house was quiet. That was perhaps the most noticeable difference between Nantucket and New York. The absence of noise. “I thought she was coming. I didn’t realize they had split up.” A little background noise-some cars honking, people yelling or singing or hailing cabs-might disguise the lie in her voice. Here, the lie was naked, exposed. Garrett would hear it.

“Piper told me her dad considered this to be a date.”

“David might have considered this a date,” Beth said. “But I didn’t.”

Garrett looked at her in a way that let her know he could see right through her. She hoped and prayed that Piper didn’t know about her and David. Every man, woman, and child was entitled to a secret and Beth had hers; she didn’t want to fear its disclosure if Garrett and Piper started dating. She grew angry at the unfairness of it-it was her past, her secret, her history, years before she met Arch and had these children. It was not mandatory for her to share it-not even with Arch. Her husband and kids did not automatically own everything that happened in her life.

Beth sighed. This summer was going to be even harder than she’d initially thought. And she could blame nobody but herself. She’d invited David for dinner. Disinvited him, then invited him again.

“What are you and Piper doing tomorrow?” she asked.

“Don’t know yet.”

“But you had a good time tonight?”

Garrett’s stare softened into a smile. He looked at the floor. “Yeah.”

Beth hugged her son, who was rigid and unyielding in her arms. This was what it felt like to hold an angry teenager.

“Okay,” she said. “Sweet dreams.”

Winnie woke up in the middle of the night, hungrier than she’d ever been in her life. A voice in her head screamed out for food. She waited until her eyes adjusted to the dark and then she padded downstairs to the kitchen. Her mother, of course, had cleaned everything up. (Winnie’s father used to say, “Mom can’t sleep at night if there’s an unwashed dish in the house.”) All of the leftovers were in the fridge, covered with plastic wrap. Sliced steak, two baked potatoes, some sour cream. Winnie fixed herself a plate, poured a glass of milk and sat down at the kitchen table. The trick was to keep from thinking about her father. Thinking about her father made eating impossible. Even thinking that one stupid thing: her father lingering in the kitchen after a dinner party while Beth cleaned up. Wearing his blue pajamas and his tortoiseshell glasses because he would have taken out his contacts, the top of his head grazing the copper pots that hung from the ceiling. Drinking ice water from the Yankees mug he’d gotten as a kid that he kept by his bed every night. Saying, “Mom can’t sleep at night if there’s an unwashed dish in the house.” That was Winnie’s father in one of his simple, human moments, a moment she never would have given a second thought, except now he was dead and every memory seemed unspeakably precious. It made Winnie upset enough that she stared at her plate of food. Yes, it looked delicious, yes, she was hungry, but no, she couldn’t eat.

Then she heard a whisper. “A-ha! Caught you.”

It was Marcus. Wearing boxer shorts and a gray Benjamin N. Cardozo swim team T-shirt. Holding an envelope in one hand and his CD player in the other. He opened the fridge and brought out the platter of leftover steak. Popped open a Coke, found utensils, and sat next to her. Winnie felt so happy that she managed to poke open the top of her potato and stuff it full of sour cream. It wasn’t eating, exactly, but it was close.

Marcus started in on the steak, eating right off the platter. He noticed her staring at him. “I didn’t get myself another plate because I plan to finish all this.”

“You eat a lot,” she said.

“I’m hungry a lot.”

“Me, too,” she said.

“You don’t eat in front of other people?” he said. “Is that it? Because if I’m keeping you from eating, I’ll go into the other room. You need to eat, Winnie.”

“I have a problem,” she said. She wished she’d just been able to say those words that afternoon at the beach instead of getting angry at him. Sustaining anger at Marcus was not something that made her happy. She loved Marcus! “I have an eating problem.” She expected him to say, Yeah, no shit, but he didn’t. He just chewed his steak, waiting for her to say more.

“What’s that envelope?” she asked.

“A letter from my mother.”

“Really?”

“Yep.”

She paused, hoping he would offer more information. He downed half the Coke, then he belched.

“Excuse me.”

Winnie stared at her cold, cream-filled potato. She reached for the salt and pepper. “What does it say?”

“I have no idea,” Marcus said.

“You haven’t read it?” Winnie asked.

“Nope.”

“How come?”

Marcus chewed his steak and drank some more Coke. Winnie trembled internally. She wanted to have a real conversation with Marcus. If they couldn’t talk here, in the dark kitchen in the middle of the night, intimacy would be hopeless.

Finally Marcus said, “I don’t read my mother’s letters.”

“Why not?” Winnie asked.

“Because I don’t want to,” Marcus said.

“But you brought it down here with you,” Winnie said.

“To throw it away.” He pointed the tines of his fork at her. “Are you going to eat or what?”

Winnie picked up her knife and fork, cut a piece of steak and deposited it into her mouth. Chewed. Swallowed.

It was delicious.

“Good job,” Marcus said.

She ate another piece of steak, then some potato, which was good even cold, and she felt her body thanking her. She drank some milk; the screaming in her head quieted.

“Why don’t you want to read her letters?” she asked.

Marcus put down his utensils and sank back into his chair, which squeaked. “Girls just have to know everything.”

“Your mother’s in jail for the rest of her life,” Winnie said. “I’d think you’d want to read her letters and maybe write some back.”

“My mother’s in jail for the rest of her life because she killed two people, one of whom was only nine years old. You know the story.”

“I know what I read in the papers,” Winnie said, though this was a lie. Arch had asked both Winnie and Garrett not to read the papers, and out of respect for him, they didn’t. All Winnie knew about the case were the most basic facts. She’d seen the photographs, naturally, the one they showed again and again of the little girl in black Mary Janes covered with a bloody sheet. Winnie had also caught a clip on TV of Constance Tyler, hands cuffed behind her back, being led from the courthouse in Queens. Winnie was surprised by how pretty she was. No one expected a murderer to be pretty. “My dad said that Constance didn’t deserve the death penalty. He said killing the little girl was an accident.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Tell me then,” Winnie said. She stared at her plate, then to prove to Marcus that she could do it, she devoured her potato until the empty brown skin sagged like an old shoe.

Marcus dragged the last slice of steak through the juices and popped it into his mouth. When he’d left the dinner table earlier that evening, he’d gone up to his room, pulled out his legal pad and tried to write, but nothing happened. He groaned at the memory of the five hundred squandered dollars and the items he now owned in their place. The spent money was a shackle on his creative spirit. Now the writing felt like a job at Mc-Donald’s-he had to do it to earn money! He closed his eyes and conjured the face of Ms. Marchese, her full Italian lips painted dark purple. You’re a gifted writer, Marcus. He’d even considered opening his mother’s letter, thinking it might give him a place to start other than with the blood-splattered sheet, dead bodies in your own apartment. There was far more to the story than Zachary Celtic knew. But just looking at his mother’s handwriting on the envelope pissed Marcus off. How could you? You killed them! Before he went to bed, he wrote one line at the top of his tablet: “My mother is a murderer.”

Now here he was being egged on to write the next sentence. Only this time by Winnie, and she wasn’t paying him thirty thousand dollars. The murders: How? When? Why? He felt his eyes drooping closed in defense, even though the reason he came downstairs was because he couldn’t sleep. Maybe if he started slowly, it would come to him. “My mother killed her sister-in-law, Angela Bennett, and Angela’s daughter Candy. My uncle Leon has basically killed himself, but you could hold Mama responsible for that one, too.”

“Why did she kill them?” Winnie said. “Do you know why?”

“Well, the newspapers made it sound like she woke up one morning and decided to kidnap and kill people, but it wasn’t like that.”

This much Winnie knew. Her father hated the newspapers. He even went so far as to suspend their delivery of the New York Times; Winnie hadn’t seen a single edition the whole time leading up to the trial-until the day her father’s obituary came out. Arch used to rant, They’re making her out to be a monster! The most esteemed paper in the country and they aren’t reporting the facts! Thankfully, Danforth was a liberal school. Most teachers and kids thought Arch was doing the right thing. The death penalty is abominable, inhumane, everyone said out loud. Still, Winnie sensed a lack of understanding because murder was also abominable and inhumane and Constance Tyler was guilty of murder. She could almost hear everyone’s unspoken thoughts: How did Arch Newton get involved in this mess?

“What was it like?” Winnie asked. She wanted details so badly, but she was embarrassed to pry. She turned her attention to finishing what was left on her plate.

Because Winnie wasn’t looking right at him, demanding an explanation, Marcus felt okay to speak. “First you need to know who Angela Bennett is. Angela Bennett was married to my uncle Leon, my mother’s older brother.”

Winnie nodded, head down. She had only two bites of steak remaining.

“Uncle Leon and Angela were married for twenty years.”

“I didn’t know that,” Winnie said. She was mortified to find this surprised her. But why? Lots of black people were married for that long and longer. She needed to get in touch with reality. As Arch used to say, The world includes more than Park Avenue and Nantucket.

“They met in the seventies. At a party somewhere. Angela was white, Italian, and her parents had some money. Not a lot of money… not like you people… but some money. Except Angela’s father disowned her when he found out she was marrying Leon.”

“Because he was black?” Winnie asked. “That is so backwater.”

Marcus waited until Winnie finished her last two bites and then he cleared their dishes. Doing something with his hands made talking easier.

“It was the seventies,” he said. “Everyone was supposed to be in tune with civil rights, but nobody was.”

“So what happened next? The father disowned her…”

“And she moved into my grandmother’s apartment with Leon. My mother was a senior in high school.”

“Our age,” Winnie said.

“Yeah. And she told me about the weird stuff that happened when they all lived together. Like one time my mother woke up in the middle of the night and Angela was sitting on the end of her bed staring at her.”

“What do you mean, ‘staring at her’?”

“She was just staring at her. It really freaked my mother out. She thought from the beginning that Angela was bad news. But then, a while later, my mother found out that Angela was into drugs and the reason she was in my mother’s room was because she had lifted money and jewelry and stuff from my mother’s dresser. Angela and Leon basically robbed my grandmother of everything she had and spent it on smack. Somehow Angela accessed my grandmother’s savings account and emptied it. My mother’s college money. That was why she only stayed a year at Princeton. Angela spent Mama’s college money on drugs for her and Uncle Leon.”

“Your mother must have been angry,” Winnie said.

“That was only the beginning,” Marcus said. Oh, was it ever. He washed the plates and left them to dry in the rack, then he turned off the light over the sink and came back to the table and sat next to Winnie. The kitchen was dark now and they could hear the sound of the waves through the open window. Marcus lowered his voice.

“Angela was like a disease in the house, my mother said. She basically caused my grandmother to die of a heart attack, and once my grandmother was dead, Angela and Uncle Leon kicked Mama out of the apartment. But she said she was glad to go. She married my father a little while later and then I was born.”

“It must have been the proudest day of your mother’s life,” Winnie said.

Marcus smiled sadly. “Except my mother never wanted to be young and married with a child. She wanted a career, you know, something better.” This was easy for Marcus to understand but difficult to swallow. What his mother had dreamed of her whole life was something other than Bo Tyler, Marcus, and LaTisha. Constance was the smartest person Marcus knew-she had a near-perfect score on her SATs, a fact she’d reminded Marcus of since he was in the ninth grade. She used words like “egregious” and “polemic.” She did the puzzle in the back of the Times magazine. Once Marcus was old enough to understand how smart she was, he began to wonder what she was doing still living in Queens. In his earliest memories, Constance’s favorite topic of conversation was what her life could have been like. Her year at Princeton had taken on a romantic shimmer that Marcus was pretty sure hadn’t existed at the time-the tailgate parties, the eating clubs, the fireplaces in the living suites that they kept lit as they studied for finals. One of Constance’s English professors reading aloud from a paper Constance had written on James Baldwin. Constance had sung madrigals in Latin and Italian and French. She ran the one-hundred-meter hurdles for the track team in the spring.

From his father, Marcus also knew a few of the less glamorous details. His mother had a work-study job in the dining hall that required her to wear high rubber boots and long rubber gloves and spend fifteen hours a week scraping trays and loading an industrial dishwasher with a crew of university-employed food service workers, all of whom were black women from Trenton. Marcus learned that Constance had initially been assigned to a living suite with a girl from Hattiesburg, Mississippi, who pitched such a fit about having a Negro roommate that Constance was moved, for her own good, the dean of students said, to a living suite with twin girls from Pakistan. But to hear Constance tell it, if it hadn’t been for Angela and Leon, her life would have been a cake walk. It would have meant a real career as a college professor; it would have meant a brownstone apartment in Manhattan filled with books and leather furniture. It would have meant a husband, possibly even a white husband, who sat on boards and took her to the symphony.

Instead, Constance’s whole slumping, resentful demeanor suggested she had gotten stuck with Bo, Marcus, LaTisha, a job working for the New York Board of Education, and an apartment in the same neighborhood she grew up in.

Marcus noticed Winnie staring at him, waiting for more.

“Angela and Leon got hooked on smack,” he said. He cringed at how typically urban, how typically black this sounded. “Then Angela disappeared for a while. She ran off with another man for two years, and my mother managed to get Leon into rehab. But Angela turned up again with this baby girl, Candy. My uncle went right back to her.”

“Why?” Winnie asked. “If she had a baby with another man. Wasn’t your uncle angry about that?”

“Some people like what’s bad for them,” Marcus said, parroting his mother’s words on the topic. “Leon was under this woman’s spell. She asked him to do all this crazy stuff. Do drugs, steal money from his friends.” Marcus paused for air. He didn’t want to tell the story anymore. It was too gruesome. But this was the point Zachary Celtic had tried to make during their lunch: the grislier the content of the book, the more people would flock to buy it. Marcus eyed Winnie; he thought of the five hundred dollar bills slipping through his fingers like water.

“When Candy got older, and I’m talking, like, eight and nine years old, Angela used to pimp her out. Let men come to their apartment and have sex with her daughter for money. Because neither she nor Leon worked that was, like, their source of income.”

“I think I’m going to be sick,” Winnie said. Her stomach was churning in an unpleasant way and she concentrated on her breathing. Her science teacher, Mr. Halperin, told their class once that nearly all pain could be managed by deep breathing.

“I should stop,” Marcus said. He knew, though, that even if he stopped talking, he wouldn’t be able to stop the images: how Angela used to dress Candy up like a woman, in nylon stockings and high heels. Marcus and LaTisha joked about it-the way Candy teetered around in the heels, the nylons bunching around her skinny, eight-year-old ankles. They had no idea what was going on, that Angela was offering Candy up to the low-life men who hung around their apartment building. Marcus had no idea that this was why Constance bought Candy the pair of black patent leather shoes and thick white cotton tights-so that she would look like a little girl and not a prostitute.

“I’ll be okay,” Winnie said. “Go ahead.”

“When my mother found out what Angela was doing-when she found out how bad it all was-she demanded that Angela let Candy live at our house. She told Angela if she didn’t let Candy come to our house to live, she’d call the police. But it was tricky, see, because then Angela told my mother that Leon had been having sex with Candy, too, and so he’d be the first person to go to jail.”

Winnie felt herself shaking on the inside. Marcus took her hand, and this surprised her. His hand was huge and warm, which made Winnie realize how small and cold and brittle her own hand was. She stared at their interlocking hands. He stared, too, confused by his own gesture. He’d taken Winnie’s hand instinctively, like he was reaching out to steady himself.

“My mother decided she didn’t care about Leon and she didn’t think Angela would turn him in anyway since he did all the dirty work scoring their drugs. Angela never left the house; she just laid in bed all day, got high and ate Hostess cakes.” Marcus emptied the last few drops from his Coke can into his mouth, then with his free hand he pried off the tab and dropped it into the can. “My mother was a teacher so she planned it.” There it was, the premeditation. “On October seventh Candy had a half day of school because of in-service. My mother waited for Candy on the street at noon and brought her home. Like, to live with us.” Intent to abduct, the D.A. said. “Mama gave her some lunch and told her, you know, that Angela and Leon were sick and needed time to get better so Candy was going to move in with us. Candy nodded and said she understood but she was crying. Mama gave her a glass of milk and let her watch cartoons on PBS.” Marcus rattled the Coke can, a sound effect-his jittery nerves, his dried-out brain rattling in his skull. “Angela wasn’t as clueless as my mother thought. When Candy didn’t make it home from school she knew where to look. She came over to take Candy back.”

Here was where the story got convoluted-for the judge, for the jury, and for Marcus. Why did Constance let the woman in? In his mind, Marcus reconfigured the end of the story so that Mama just bolted the door shut and waited for someone else to get home-Bo, Marcus, even LaTisha. Or waited for one of the neighbors to call the police. There might have been an ugly scene, but no one would have been killed.

Marcus was in the room the first time Arch met with Connie at Riker’s. Bo and LaTisha had walked out-Marcus could tell his father was nervous about having a private attorney show up because how would they ever pay for it? Connie asked Marcus to stay. The public defender was a milky-skinned woman named Fiona Dobbs who got bright pink spots on her cheeks when she spoke to Constance. She was twenty-seven years old, eighteen months out of Pace Law School, and although there was no way her defense would be effective, Constance felt comfortable around her. Arch was another story-a tall, successful-looking man with such a cheerful demeanor that Marcus wondered if he realized the reason they were here was murder. Arch introduced himself, shook hands with both Connie and Marcus, smiling right into their eyes. To Connie, he said, “We were freshmen together at Princeton. 1975, right?”

“Right,” Connie answered warily, as if it were some kind of trap. “Did I know you?”

“No,” Arch said. “But that’s why I’m here. I looked you up in the facebook. I thought maybe I could help you.”

“I can’t afford your help,” Connie said.

Arch sat down and pulled a yellow pad out of his briefcase. “Free of charge,” he said. “Let me ask you a couple of questions.”

A couple of questions turned into her whole life history up until the murders. Marcus fell asleep, his head resting against the cinder block wall behind his chair, his arms crossed in front of him. When Arch started asking about October seventh, Marcus opened his eyes. Arch’s voice was much more serious.

You were holding the knife when you opened the door?

I was trying to scare her.

That doesn’t answer my question.

Yes, I was holding the knife. She was there to take the child, and I wasn’t about to let that happen. I hated the woman. I’d always hated her.

That’s not something you’re ever going to tell a jury. What happened, exactly, when you opened the door? What did you say? What kind of movements did you make?

I can’t remember.

You’re going to have to remember. They want to execute you, Connie.

My life was over a long time ago.

That’s not true. What about your family?

Connie glanced in Marcus’s direction, her eyes like a couple of closed doors. Marcus stood up to leave. His father and sister had the right idea. He didn’t want to listen to this. Poor child. It’s not his fault. My life was over before he was even born.

Arch nodded at Marcus, as if giving him permission to go. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. Can you tell me what happened with Candy?

Connie started to cry. She’s dead. God, she’s dead.

In Constance’s official testimony, there was a fight, a struggle, just like in the movies-a duel between herself, Candy’s savior, and Angela, who wanted her nine-year-old daughter to have sex with grown men for money. But in this day and age, you can’t lie about something like that. The forensic expert found no evidence of a struggle. Connie opened the door. Angela stepped in and Connie stabbed her.

“Whatever,” Marcus said now to Winnie, shaking the vision out of his head. “Mama stabbed her to death.”

Winnie swallowed sour saliva. “What about Candy?”

What about Candy? Marcus might someday forgive Mama for killing Angela-the woman was strung out every time Marcus saw her, with her dark hair wild and frizzy, her skin pasty, track marks like the red eyes of rats running up the inside of both arms. But the worst thing about Angela was her foul mouth, the trashy language she threw around even the youngest children. Words that the worst kid at Benjamin N. Cardozo High School wouldn’t dream of using. Angela, in Marcus’s opinion, could barely be considered human. But Marcus would never forgive his mother for killing Candy, nor understand how the sweet little girl his mother had tried to look out for-the tights, the patent leather shoes!-and had taken into her home to save ended up dead. Stabbed, just once, in the neck. Constance claimed all along that it was a “tragic mistake,” that Candy got in the middle of things, that when she saw her mother at the door she ran to her then started shrieking and kicking and lashing out at Constance. “Like she didn’t know I was trying to save her,” Constance had testified. “Like she didn’t understand the sacrifice I was making. I was trying to save the girl’s life and she starts fighting me and calling me a bitch.” The next thing Constance knew, Candy was bleeding from a dark spot at the base of her neck. Constance called 911 then pressed a bath towel over Candy’s wound, but Candy bled right through it.

“Candy got mixed up in it,” Marcus said. “Mama cut her, maybe accidentally, maybe on purpose. She bled to death.” Marcus squeezed Winnie’s hand. “My uncle Leon shot himself when he found out. He blew half his head off, but he lived. He’s retarded now. In a state hospital.” Head permanently tilted to one side, tongue hanging out like a thirsty dog. Marcus had been forced to visit him once, but would never go back.

Winnie leaned against Marcus’s shoulder and closed her eyes. It was the most horrible story she had ever heard, worse than a movie or TV. And it was true. It happened in the life of this person right here. Winnie was impressed by Marcus in a way she knew she’d never be impressed by anybody again. Because he’d survived. Because he’d just had the courage to tell her the truth, instead of making excuses. She was impressed by him because he had the courage to spend the summer with three people he barely knew when he had this nightmare to contend with.

“It’s going to be okay,” Winnie said.

“No, it won’t,” Marcus said. “My mother is a murderer, Winnie. She killed a third grader. Do you hear what I’m telling you?”

“Yes,” Winnie said.

“She’s a bad person. Everyone thinks so.”

“I don’t believe that,” Winnie said. “My father would not have died defending a bad person. He didn’t think Connie was bad.”

“No, he didn’t,” Marcus said. In fact, Arch’s confidence in Constance was the only thing that kept Marcus from drowning. Arch, for whatever reason, was able to see the good in Connie. He was able to make Marcus recall the admirable things about his mother-her beautiful singing voice (she was always a soloist with the church choir) and the way, when she tutored kids at the kitchen table, she would give them as much milk as they wanted, many times sending Marcus or LaTisha to the store for more. “But he was the only person in New York City who thought she deserved to live. Everyone else called her a monster. And they think I’m a monster because I’m her son. At my school… whatever, its like I have this permanent stink following me around.” He ran a hand over his hair. It needed to be trimmed already-it felt like a pilled-up vinyl rug. “If Arch hadn’t taken my mother’s case, he would still be alive. Have you ever considered that? Of course you have. Your brother knows it well enough.”

Winnie sat with this awhile. True, Garrett blamed Constance Tyler for their father’s death. But what Garrett didn’t understand was how strongly Arch felt about the case. If Arch had known he was going to die saving Constance Bennett Tyler, he probably would have done it anyway. If I save this woman, he told Winnie at EJ’s, my life will have been worthwhile. And he’d saved her.

“It was an accident that killed my father,” Winnie said. “Pilot error.”

“I guess we’ll all believe what we want,” Marcus said.

“I guess we will.” Winnie sighed. She waited to see if there was anything else Marcus wanted to say, but she could tell by the way his eyelids flagged that he was shutting down. Their conversation was over. Winnie wanted to talk to Marcus all night long for the rest of the summer. “Want to go up?” she asked.

“Sure.”

They ascended the stairs and when they reached Winnie’s room, she took Marcus’s hand and realized he was holding his mother’s letter. “I don’t want to go to bed now,” she said. “I’m scared.”

“Me, too,” he said. “I’m scared all the time.” He stood close to her in the dark. Winnie thought he might kiss her. She lifted her face and closed her eyes, but then she heard him whisper, “Good night, Winnie,” and by the time she opened her eyes, he had disappeared down the hallway to his room.