Summer People

Chapter 3

I can’t believe I’m not going to see you for three whole days,” Garrett said. He was at the airport terminal sitting on a bench with Piper until her plane was called. She was flying to Hyannis to visit her mom. Beth was parked outside, waiting in the car.

“Ssshh, don’t even say it.” Piper kissed him slowly with tongue. She tasted like the blueberry pie they’d shared at Hutch’s for lunch. Whenever Garrett kissed Piper, he felt like he was falling. A rush went to his head. He shifted on the bench and looked around the terminal: lots of people and dogs and guys carrying toolboxes who stole glances at Piper. Because she was gorgeous, sexy, a knockout. Looking especially hot today in a pink string halter and a little jean skirt. When she bent over earlier at the Nantucket Air counter to hoist her bag onto the scale, he caught a glimpse of her white panties.

“For God’s sake,” he said, blushing. “Bend at the knees.”

Now Garrett held her around the waist, trying to memorize how her skin felt against his fingertips. He couldn’t wait for three days to pass. By the time Piper got back, he was going to have his driver’s license. He’d convinced his mother that getting a Massachusetts license was the right thing to do. He could use the Nantucket address, and he might end up going to college in Boston anyway. He and Piper had already talked about applying to the same schools.

“That way,” Piper had said, “we’ll only have to be apart for one school year.”

The thought of nine months away from Piper was too much to bear. The thought of the next three days without her was nearly as bad, since the last two weeks she and Garrett had been inseparable. But she had to leave, she said. This was the longest she’d gone without seeing her mother since Rosie moved off-island in December, and Rosie called to complain, saying a new boyfriend was no excuse for staying away. Piper didn’t tell her mother Garrett’s name, and she wasn’t going to any time soon. David had asked her not to.

“He doesn’t want Mom to know that Beth’s around,” Piper said. “Don’t ask me why. Those were strict orders, punishable by a very long grounding, he said.”

“I think you should go ahead and tell your mom about me,” Garrett said. “If she gets angry at your dad maybe he’ll stop chasing after my mom.” One bad side effect to Garrett and Piper dating, and Garrett not having his license, was that every time they saw each other, David stopped in to talk to Beth. Or if Beth were the one driving, David came out into the driveway. One night he’d gone so far as to climb into the front seat and ride with them into town. He popped a cassette tape into the stereo without even asking, and he sang to Beth. Old-fashioned stuff, like Elton John. It made Garrett want to puke.

“I promised Daddy I wouldn’t,” Piper said.

“Since when do you keep promises to your dad?”

“Since now,” Piper said. “I’d die if I got grounded and couldn’t see you. Besides, I’m not ready to tell Mom your name yet. First you have to prove yourself.”

He kissed her and bit her lip. “I intend to.” As soon as Garrett got his license, they were going to drive out to the beach and have sex. They’d decided this together, last night, when they’d made out on the beach and Garrett’s shorts were down to his knees and Piper’s tank top was pushed up. She made him stop. She said she wanted to wait until they had a car.

She was a virgin, she said.

A voice came over the loudspeaker: “Anyone holding a green boarding card please proceed to the gate.” Piper’s plane. She stood to go, her purse hitched over her shoulder. She blinked rapidly.

“I’ll have Daddy bring me over the second I get back,” she said. “Tuesday at four. Or four-thirty. Okay? Promise you’ll be home waiting for me?”

“Promise,” he said. He kissed her again until he knew if he didn’t stop, he’d never let her go. “Be good.”

She skipped out onto the tarmac, waving to him the whole way.

Outside, it was hot. Beth sat at the wheel of the Range Rover reading the New Yorker. She smiled when Garrett opened the door.

“Piper got off okay?” she asked.

“I guess,” he said. “Can I drive home? I have to practice for my test.”

“Sure,” his mother said. They passed each other in front of the car, switching seats. Garrett got himself buckled in behind the wheel and started the engine. Shifted into drive and eased out of the parking space.

“You’re going to miss her,” Beth said. “But you’re probably ready for some time alone. You kids have spent every waking second together. That’s not usually your style.”

“My style’s changing,” Garrett said. He and Piper had been together so much that he felt weird now, without her. He checked the air for her plane, wishing she could see him driving. As he turned onto the main road, he thought about the past two weeks. He and Piper sat out on the deck in the afternoons drinking Malibu and Coke, they swam, they walked the beach at night and made out in the sand. They rode their bikes to Sconset one day and had lunch at Claudette’s. They walked to Bartlett Farm to get Beth the first zucchini of the summer. They went to two movies. They played Monopoly with Winnie and Marcus-with Piper there even that was fun.

There had been only one bad night, the beginnings of an argument. Piper took Garrett to a bonfire on Cisco Beach where kids from her high school were having a keg. They walked there from Garrett’s house-a long walk in the dark-and Garrett stepped in a shallow hole and twisted his ankle. Piper stopped to inspect his injury. A little tender, she said, but nothing you can’t handle, right? You don’t want to turn back?

No, he said, it’s fine.

He limped along, enjoying the way Piper held him closer, cooing in his ear, rubbing his lower back. Then they saw the distant flash of the fire and the silhouette of bodies. Piper hurried him along. Her friend Jenna was going to be at the party and her friend Kyle. Garrett was uncomfortable as he hobbled toward the group. The fire was in a pit; it was smoky and a couple of people fed it newspapers and paper bags.

“All the guys at my high school have a car,” Piper had told him earlier. Garrett saw the vehicles lined up on the beach: Jeep Wranglers, a rusty old Bronco, and one brand new canary yellow Land Rover Defender series with all the bars.

“We’re here,” Piper announced to the party in general. There were high-pitched screams and girls came running up to her, kissing her, touching her hair. Just the way the girls at Danforth acted when they saw each other outside of the classroom-freaking out like they’d been separated by continents and decades.

Everyone was looking at Garrett; he could tell even in the dark. So many orange glowing faces. Garrett nodded in the direction of the male population who were either feeding the fire or standing around the keg. He took a deep breath. His science teacher had once told the class that nearly all pain could be managed by deep breathing. His ankle swelled.

“I need a drink,” he said.

A kid with a shaved head wearing a fisherman’s sweater held up a plastic cup. “Beck’s.”

“Nice,” Garrett said. Piper was completely encircled by friends, and so Garrett made his way over to the keg, found the sleeve of cups lying in the sand and poured two beers. He drank his down right away. His ankle really hurt and he could tell already he was going to have a sucky time at this party. He tried to remind himself that these kids weren’t as smart or sophisticated as the kids at Danforth. They drove their Wranglers on the beach, but Garrett was pretty sure they’d get lost taking the cross-town bus.

Piper tugged on his arm. “My friends think you’re cute,” she whispered. “Jenna actually said ‘gorgeous.’ ”

Garrett couldn’t hide his smile. “Am I going to meet them?”

“Later,” she said. “Right now I want you to meet my friend Kyle. He’s definitely here. That’s his Rover.”

“Okay,” Garrett said. “Let me fill up.” He topped off his beer. It was warm, but it did lighten his mood. “I’m not sure how long I want to stay.”

“We just got here.”

“What time is your dad picking you up?”

“Not until eleven,” she said. “Come on, there’s Kyle.”

They found Kyle on the far side of the Rover, lying in the sand, smoking a cigarette. A girl sat on either side of him. Kyle wore jeans and a gray tank top. He, too, had a shaved head.

“You guys all use the same barber?” Garrett said.

“Football team,” Kyle said. “Who the fuck are you?”

Garrett stepped forward on his good leg. “Garrett Newton. I’m a friend of Piper’s. Nice to meet you.”

“Garrett’s a summer person,” Piper said. “From Manhattan, New York City.”

Kyle regarded Garrett and blew smoke out his nose. “ ‘Manhattan, New York City,’ ” he mimicked in a high voice.

Garrett swallowed half his beer. He looked up into the sky and heard, despite his wishes, words from his father. These are her friends. This is her life. She wants to show it to you. Yes, it’s difficult, life is difficult. If you want easy, date a girl from Danforth. Date Tracy Hayes whom you’ve known since Montessori.

“I like your car,” Garrett said.

Kyle nodded, then he touched Piper’s leg. “Ronan,” he said. “Where’ve you been lately?”

“With Garrett,” she said.

“You were supposed to meet us at Ego’s on Tuesday.”

Piper swatted Kyle’s hand away, like it was a fly on her food. “I was busy Tuesday. With Garrett.”

Garrett laughed nervously. “You actually know someone named Ego?”

“Nickname,” Piper said. “My old boyfriend. They call him that because he’s so full of himself.”

One of Kyle’s girls stood up to get Kyle another beer and Kyle pulled Piper down into her place. Then he passed her his cigarette and she took a drag. Garrett shifted his weight. He couldn’t believe she was smoking. He was about to say something when Kyle slid his arm around Piper’s waist and pressed his face against her stomach to make a farting sound. The girl on the far side of Kyle, who looked completely stoned, burst out in giggles, and Piper pushed Kyle’s head away. “Gross,” she said. “You need to grow up.”

“I thought you loved my boyish charm,” Kyle said.

“I’m out of beer,” Garrett said.

He limped back to the keg and filled his cup, taking the tap from Kyle’s minion, then decided he was angry. Piper was smoking, she was letting this asshole Kyle touch her, she wasn’t introducing him to her girlfriends which was the reason he came. She didn’t seem to care that his ankle hurt. Hurt so much that he dreaded walking home, except that home meant an ice pack.

He left the party without her, trying not to think about how uneasy he’d felt around Kyle or about the ex-boyfriend named Ego, or about how pissed Piper would be when she realized he was gone. He concentrated only on making the dark stretch of beach before him disappear.

She caught up with him an hour later. He was very slowly climbing the stairs to his house. Wishing he’d kicked sand in Kyle’s face, thinking he might be better off with Tracy Hayes or Brooke Casserhill or some girl whose idea of a good time did not include smoking Marlboros and fawning over someone who looked like Mr. Clean’s delinquent son.

But then he heard her calling his name and when he turned around he saw that she was close to tears.

“Thank God I found you,” she said. “I can’t believe you just left.”

“My ankle hurts,” he said. “I need to ice it.”

“You should have told me.”

“It looked like you were having fun.”

“Fun?” she said. “With those bozos? I can see them whenever I want. My time with you is precious.” She linked her arm through his and helped him up to the deck where Beth and David were playing cards. Garrett realized that David hadn’t gone home and come back; he’d been here all along.

“How was the party?” Beth asked.

“Fine,” Garrett said.

“Terrible,” Piper said. “I need to get out of this place.”

Now that Piper was gone, the memory of the party was even more painful to Garrett. Later, Piper had accused him of not liking her friends and Garrett pointed out that he hadn’t even met her friends, only Kyle. Kyle was her friend, she said, and Garrett admitted that Kyle seemed like a jerk. Yeah, Piper said, Kyle is a jerk. They’d left it at that, but somehow Garrett understood that he’d failed in her eyes. The people at that party were her real life, and he hadn’t fit in. He was a “summer person.” Now, in the car, a turn was coming up and Garrett signaled. He hit the brake kind of hard and the car bucked a little. His turn was tight. If there had been another car at the intersection, he would have smashed it. He sighed.

“What’s wrong?” Beth asked. “You’re doing fine.”

“Nothing,” he said. He never talked to his mother about girls, although truth be told, he felt differently this time. Maybe because his mother was connected to Piper through David. Maybe because Beth seemed different now that she was unmarried. Garrett couldn’t believe he was thinking such things. He checked his rearview mirror. The road was deserted, ahead and behind. He gave the Rover some gas. It surged forward.

“How did you and Dad meet?” Garrett asked.

“You know the story,” Beth said.

“I know the Disney version,” Garrett said. “Tell me the real story.”

Beth leaned her head back and closed her eyes. “I had just graduated from Sarah Lawrence. I was twenty-two. We met in July. I spent that summer in New York-it was the only summer of my whole life when I wasn’t here on Nantucket. Your father was in law school at NYU and he says he was studying on the subway platform when he got distracted by a pair of legs coming down the stairway.”

Garrett said, “And he vowed to himself, ‘I am going to marry the woman attached to those beautiful legs.’ ”

“See,” Beth said. “You already know.”

“But what was it like?” Garrett said. “When you first started dating? Did you know you were in love with him?”

“No,” Beth said. “I’d sworn off men at that point in my life. I wanted to make some money so I could pay my rent. But your father was persistent. Once a week he took me on what he called ‘Date Package A,’ which was a fancy restaurant and drinks at a club. Sometimes dancing. Then once a week we went on ‘Date Package B,’ which was the movies, and beers afterwards. Some nights we walked in Central Park or the Village or Chinatown. We went to the Frick or the MOMA on Sunday afternoons. We ate at the Turkish restaurants on Eightieth Street. Your father knew the city inside and out. I always teased him that he had the subway maps tattooed on the inside of his eyelids.”

“He knew every stop on every train,” Garrett said.

“He lived with Gram and Grandad on Sutton Place, so he had no rent to pay. They gave him plenty of money to take me out. They wanted him to get married.”

“What about you? Did you want to get married?”

“No.”

“Why did you, then?”

“Well, because. We dated for almost two years and then it was time.”

A stop sign up ahead. Garrett touched his foot to the brake gently. “You married Dad because it was time?” he said. “What about being madly in love?”

Beth pointed out the windshield, indicating that it was safe to proceed. “Why are you asking me this?”

“Because I want to know.”

“You and Piper just met, sweetheart. It’s infatuation. Puppy love.”

Garrett clenched his teeth. “Don’t tell me what it is.”

Beth bit her lower lip. “Okay, sorry. You’re right. Yes, I married your father because he was smart and funny and I knew he’d take care of me. I’ll tell you something now that I’ve never told anyone else. I didn’t fall in love with your father until after we were married, and even then I can’t pinpoint a moment. It was a process-the process of shedding the cells of Beth Eyler and growing the cells of Beth Newton. I very slowly became a woman who was deeply in love with your father. That is the real story.”

Garrett turned onto their dirt road and his heart crumbled at the thought of three days in their house without Piper. He reviewed his mother’s story. It was funny to think of his mother as a single woman who at one time could have decided to resist his father’s advances. Who, in fact, had married his father without loving him.

“So you gambled on him, then?” Garrett said.

“I trusted myself,” Beth said. “I had a gut feeling that marrying Arch was the right thing to do.”

“If you’d married someone else, you wouldn’t be a widow,” Garrett said. He pulled into the driveway and shut off the car, hoping his mother wouldn’t cry. He wasn’t sure why he’d just said that.

“True enough,” Beth said. “But I don’t regret being married to your father for one second. If I’d known he was going to die at the age of forty-five, I would have married him anyway.”

“Really?” Garrett said.

“Really,” Beth said. “Because that’s what unconditional love is all about. The ‘no-matter-what’s.’ ”

Garrett walked into the house. It was quiet; Winnie and Marcus were probably at the beach. He would join them; he felt too lonely to hang out in his room by himself, although he needed to finish Franny and Zooey. He wondered, would he love Piper no matter what? Not yet, but Garrett felt the possibility growing. As he changed into his swim trunks, he eyed the urn of ashes on his dresser.

“I never thought I’d say this,” he said. “But you were a lucky man.”

With Piper gone, Beth figured she would finally get a break from David. She had seen him every day since the dinner party. When he came to pick Garrett up, he showed up early and knocked on the screen door, and just seeing his silhouette on the other side of the front door brought back a host of memories-David knocking on that door when he was still a teenager. His very presence in her life now was so astonishing that Beth couldn’t help herself from inviting him in for a beer. They talked about everyday things-his work on huge summer homes owned by twenty-eight-year-old millionaires, traffic, taxes, the new recycling laws. Every so often, he called Beth by her old nickname, “Bethie,” pronounced in a drawn-out New York accent, and as their conversations deepened, he unearthed a memory or two from their summers together: watching the meteor shower from First Point on Coatue, the time they went blackberry picking at Lily Pond and David got stung by a bee, fell into the prickly bushes and ended up the next day not only with awful scratches, but a bad case of poison ivy.

“I can honestly, say, Bethie, I haven’t eaten a blackberry since then.”

For the first time since Arch died, she found herself able to laugh.

Although she relished the companionship, she was still steeped in the morass of her sorrow. She still half expected to be picking up Arch at the airport on Friday afternoons. She still took a Valium in order to sleep. One night, when Garrett and Piper went to a party, David enticed her into a game of cards on the deck, and she made a point of telling David about her marriage to Arch.

“It wasn’t perfect by any means,” Beth said. “But it was good.”

She and Arch had laughed together. They enjoyed the kids. They took a vacation each winter by themselves, to exciting places-Tahiti, the Seychelles, Venezuela. Of course, it went deeper than that. Beth and Arch had understood each other on every level. They occupied each other’s psychic lives. They were each other, to the extent that this was possible in a marriage. Yes, Arch worked long hours in his office downtown; yes, Beth administered every detail of their domestic life. No, they didn’t have a lot in common in the way people understood that phrase. Rather, they were opposite sides of the same coin. They complemented each other, completed each other. They’d created a life that glowed.

“I just can’t get over him and move on,” Beth said. “He was my husband for twenty years.”

David appeared to be listening but it was as if he didn’t understand her language, or chose to ignore the meaning of her words. Beth grew close to screaming out, Yes. I loved you but that was years ago and now I need you to leave me alone!

Yes, I loved you, she thought.

Beth was grateful when Piper went away. She needed time to regroup. To strengthen her resolve.

Horizon had no telephone on principle. Living without a phone was the ultimate nod to a Nantucket summer, which in the mind of Beth’s grandfather, was reserved for long hours of undisturbed reading or beach time, leisurely meals. Interaction should be conducted as in the old days: in person. Or by mail. It was outdated, yes, but Beth respected it. She never considered putting in a phone line.

Once Piper flew to the Cape and Beth had a respite from David, she hunted down a phone booth in town. She wanted to call Kara Schau, her therapist. First to set up an appointment, and then, the next day, to talk. It was more than inconvenient to talk to her therapist in the booth outside of Visitor Services; it was embarrassing. She turned her body so that she faced the building. She would keep her voice low.

Kara Schau came on the line sounding chipper and enthusiastic, and Beth pictured her wearing a beige linen blouse and black skirt, her dark curly hair escaping its bun. Kara was a dream-the kindest, most perceptive woman Beth knew. In the months since Arch died, she’d become a friend, which Beth viewed as a problem. She wanted Kara to like her; she wanted Kara to praise her. She didn’t want to delve into the messy emotional situation at hand, but Beth needed to talk to someone, and Kara was a professional.

“How’s Nantucket?” Kara asked. “I’m terrifically envious, you know.”

“It’s fine,” Beth said. “Therapeutic.”

“As long as it’s not putting me out of business,” Kara said. “And since you called, I gather it’s not. How’s everything going?”

“Fine,” Beth said. “The kids seem to be coping okay. Marcus is adjusting. He and Winnie spend a lot of time together.”

“Good,” Kara said. “They both need peer support. Garrett, too, but he’s not as forthcoming. I would have been surprised to hear that Garrett and Marcus were close. That bond, if it forms at all, is going to take some time.”

“They’re not close,” Beth said. “At first I worried that they would, you know, fight, but that problem has been headed off, for the time being, anyway.”

“How?”

“Garrett found a girlfriend.”

“Already?” Kara said. “Someone he knew before?”

“Someone he just met,” Beth said. “Her name is Piper Ronan. Her father and I are old friends.”

“Is it serious?” Kara asked. “Are there sexual issues?”

“Oh, God,” Beth said. She took a breath and turned to inspect the street scene. Thankfully, it was a gorgeous day and town was deserted. Everyone was at the beach. “I haven’t given the nature of their relationship that much thought. They’ve only been dating a couple of weeks.”

“Fair enough,” Kara said. “So it sounds like the kids have found peer support. Winnie and Marcus with each other and Garrett with the new girlfriend. That’s excellent. They need it. But what about you? How are you doing, Beth?”

“I’m confused,” Beth said. Her nose tingled. She couldn’t believe the way crying had become such a natural instinct for her, like blinking or yawning. “I miss Arch.”

“Yes, you do,” Kara said.

Tears fell and Beth pulled a tissue out of her purse. “I really, really miss him.”

“It’s perfectly natural,” Kara said.

“But this thing has happened,” Beth said. “This man I mentioned? Piper’s father? He’s sort of… well, he’s put himself in my life.”

Silence. Beth knew this meant she was to explain further, but she was ashamed to say more. Arch had only been gone for three and a half months and here she was on the phone to her therapist talking about another man. Kara would think she was a terrible person, a cheap, insincere person. But Kara didn’t know David Ronan.

“Listen, there are some things I can share with you about this man, and some things I can’t. He was my first love. We were together for six summers, from age sixteen to twenty-one. We were… very serious. Very. And then we split up and I haven’t really seen him since. Oh, once, maybe twice a summer. Arch and I went to his house for a party a million years ago. Then, my first day here, I bumped into him at the grocery store and later I found out he’d separated from his wife, and next thing I know, my son is dating his daughter and he’s started pursuing me.”

“Pursuing you?” Kara’s tone of voice was neutral.

“Well, it’s not as if he sends flowers every day,” Beth said. In fact, Beth half expected David to produce a big handful of purple cosmos from behind his back every time she saw him, but thank God he hadn’t gone that far. “He’s just always around. Wanting to talk, wanting to have a beer together. That kind of thing.”

“Any physical contact?” Kara asked.

“Minimal,” Beth said. This was true, thank God. David hadn’t touched her in any significant way. But the way he looked at her-the way his eyes ran up and down her body-made Beth feel like she was standing there naked. He made her feel self-conscious about her appearance. She had actually bought a hair dryer and mascara at the pharmacy last week. How to explain that?

“And yet you feel confused?” Kara said.

“Part of me feels drawn to this man,” Beth admitted. Okay, there, she’d said it. Part of her was flattered by David’s attention; if it suddenly stopped, she might miss it. But the guilt-God, the guilt was enough to weigh her to the ocean floor. “But it hasn’t been long enough. My grief for Arch is so raw, so consuming-it’s exhausting. And I feel disloyal because being with David makes me less unhappy.”

“Frequently, one sees a couple who is married for a long time, and then, let’s say, the wife dies, and the husband remarries right away. It causes confusion and anger in the people close to him because of the very issue of loyalty. One way to explain this behavior is that he believes in marriage. The second marriage as a tribute, of sorts, to the first. Now, I’m not saying this example applies in your case. But it might. You were married to Arch for a long time. This man fills needs that have been unattended since Arch died.”

“Maybe,” Beth said. Naturally, she and Arch had talked over the years about what would happen if the other one died. Beth had said she would not want Arch to remarry, mostly because she didn’t want another woman raising her children. It was a selfish response, but honest. It made her sick to think of Arch married to someone else. When Beth asked Arch if he would want her to remarry, he said, Oh, Beth, I would want you to be happy. As happy as you could be without me.

“What do the kids think?” Kara asked.

“They have no idea,” Beth said.

“It’s interesting, isn’t it, that your relationship with this man… what’s his name again?”

“David,” Beth said, her voice practically a whisper. “David Ronan.”

“That your relationship with David is directly tied to Garrett’s relationship with his new girlfriend. You can expect some conflicting emotions regarding that.”

“I do,” Beth said. She waited a beat. “So what do you think? It’s wrong, isn’t it? I have to stop this before it goes any further.” She laughed at her own absurdity. “It’s wrong to give him any hope.”

“It sounds like you want me to tell you it’s wrong,” Kara said. “And I’m not going to do that.”

There was more to it than just David’s advances. There was the whole problem of David himself, their shared past. Beth remembered the ride home from the Ronan cocktail party. She could have told Arch then; she could have come clean. But she clung to her privacy. Every man, woman, and child is entitled to one secret. Even from her therapist. Kara Schau was the wrong person to talk to about this. Beth was looking for absolution where there was none. Arch was dead. There was nothing Beth could do now except live with her decision. “I can remember when David was the only person who mattered to me,” she said. “His voice was the only voice I wanted to hear.”

“Couldn’t you pursue a friendship with this man?” Kara asked. “You need more friends, Beth. I’ve been telling you that for months.”

“We’re ‘just friends’ right now,” Beth said. “The reason I called is because I sense that David wants the relationship to head in another direction.”

“Do you want the relationship to turn into a romance?” Kara said.

“I can’t believe you’re asking me that.”

“But that’s the question here. That’s why you called me. You want me to ask you because you’re afraid to ask yourself. Do you want a romantic relationship with this man?”

“Arch just died.”

“That’s right,” Kara said. “I’m not going to tell you what to do, Beth. But I will tell you this one thing. It is very difficult, if not impossible, to relinquish and attach at the same time. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

Did Beth understand? The words brought up a series of perplexing images. She pictured herself relinquishing Arch, like he was a security blanket she was clinging to. Relinquishing Arch like he was a heavy suitcase she could put down. Relinquishing Arch like he was the string of a balloon she could just let go. She thought of her kids: Garrett with the urn of ashes on his dresser, Winnie in the raggedy Princeton sweatshirt. But was it that simple? When the ashes were scattered and the sweatshirt doffed, would the pain go away? Would Arch be gone, finally? And what about the word attach? Would she attach to David like a barnacle on his boat? Like they were two subway cars hooked together? Relinquish and attach; what Kara was talking about was the flow of energy in opposite directions. Beth twisted her diamond ring, then realized she was keeping Kara waiting.

“I’m not sure,” Beth said.

“You have mourning yet to do,” Kara said. “Grief to process. You’ve been through a lot, Beth.”

“I know. I think about it all the time.”

“Well, don’t do too much thinking,” Kara said. “Remember what I told you before you left: less thinking and more doing. Hug your kids. Walk the beach. Pick flowers. Appreciate the moment.”

“Pick flowers,” Beth repeated. Those damn purple cosmos! “Thanks, Kara.”

“Call me whenever you need me,” Kara said. “The kids, too.”

“Okay,” Beth said. “ ’Bye.”

She hung up and hurried across Federal Street to her car. She felt vaguely criminal, like she’d smoked marijuana or trespassed on private property, and she had to remind herself that what she’d done was perfectly legal. She’d just made a phone call.

At noon, Beth left the house for a run. It was hot outside, which suited her just fine. She wanted to sweat, she wanted to punish herself. She couldn’t believe she’d had the guts to tell Kara Schau about David. She thought again about Kara’s words: It is very difficult, if not impossible, to relinquish and attach at the same time. Like trying to drink wine while standing on her head. Like trying to raise a flag in a hurricane. The next time she saw David, she would repeat Kara’s line. And what would David say? That they had beaten odds before. They kept their love alive over six long winters. Every year at the end of August when Beth left Nantucket, she cried all the way back to her family’s house in New Jersey. Her mother was kind, offering new clothes for school, reciting the names of Beth’s friends whom she would see again after three months away. We’ll have a party! Beth’s father said. You’ll forget about that boy before you know it. But Beth never forgot. She and David wrote letters, they talked on the telephone at Christmas, and once they were at college-he at UMass/Amherst and she at Sarah Lawrence- they visited each other.

Nothing was like the summertime, though. The warm days at the beach, driving David’s Jeep to Coatue, getting munched by mosquitoes when they sailed his Sunfish on Coskata Pond. Spending rainy days reading magazines at the Athenuem, skinny-dipping at the Sankaty Beach Club late at night. Dancing at the Chicken Box, back when it still had a dirt floor. Once a summer splurging on dinner at the Galley at Cliffside Beach where everyone applauded when the sun went down. Standing on Horizon’s deck looking at the stars while Beth’s brothers whistled out their bedroom windows. Driving to the beach at night to kiss, grope, and finally make love in the sand.

They had loved each other so completely. The last summer they were together, David rented a cottage on Bear Street, and everything grew more serious. They practically lived together. Beth invented a fictional friend from Sarah Lawrence-Olivia Marsh-whose parents owned a summer house. Several times a week, Beth told her parents she was spending the night at Olivia’s house, and because there was no phone at Horizon, and no phone at Olivia’s parents’ cottage, her mother never checked on her. Beth and David cooked meals, they lit a fire if it was chilly, they made love in the bed and fell asleep intertwined.

Beth didn’t want to think any further. She couldn’t. She was running down Hummock Pond Road towards Cisco Beach and she decided to take a left onto Ahab Drive, the road where David lived. This was a very stupid move, Beth knew. This was counterproductive. She wanted to stay away from David! But David wouldn’t be home. He was at work, and he ate lunch on the job. The last place she would be likely to see David was here on Ahab Drive. Peyton had camp until four; Piper was away.

Beth had been to the house the one time for the cocktail party, and then several times these past two weeks, but only as far as the driveway. As she ran past the house, she waved. Hello, David’s house. She glimpsed the manicured front lawn and the flagstone walk where she’d caught the heel of her sandal as she was leaving the cocktail party.

Beth jogged to the end of the street. The roads in this development all wound back into each other somehow, but Beth wasn’t sure exactly how, and so she returned past David’s house. It was a nice property, she thought. An actual house rather than a summer cottage like Horizon. It had heat, insulation, a garage. Without thinking, Beth ran into the gravel driveway. It was as if her feet weren’t connected to her brain. All Beth could do was narrate to Kara Schau in her mind.

I went inside David’s house when he wasn’t home. The door was open. I knew it would be. I wanted to look around.

The house was neat. The kitchen was painted bright blue and there was a package of hamburger defrosting on the counter. There were photographs on the refrigerator-of the girls and David mostly, but some of Rosie. I wasn’t surprised because Rosie is still the girls’ mother, she’s still part of their life as a family. It bugged me a little that Rosie was so beautiful in the pictures-the long hair and the long legs like Piper. And the stomach and ass like she never gave birth to one child, much less two. I spent a fair amount of time studying the pictures of Rosie. Then I went upstairs to David’s bedroom. His bed was made. He had a copy of the New Yorker on the nightstand. That caught my eye because I was reading the same issue, and then I wondered if he’d bought it because he knew I had read it.

I went into his bathroom, and this was when I began to wonder if I was losing my mind. What was I doing snooping around David’s house? I found a framed picture of Rosie and David on their wedding day. The picture was sitting on top of a small bureau and a reflection of the picture was in the bathroom mirror, which was how I noticed it. David looked so young. He was my David, but he had his arm wrapped around Rosie’s tiny waist. They both looked very tan and very happy. The picture made me strangely jealous. I was in Manhattan the summer they got married, the summer after David and I split, and I felt as if Rosie had somehow snatched away what was mine-though of course that wasn’t the case. Without thinking twice, I flipped the picture down.

Then I heard a noise downstairs and I nearly leapt out the window. A man yelled out, “UPS!” So I jogged down the stairs and there was the nice UPS boy holding out a manila envelope. He said, “Mrs. Ronan?” And Inodded. He showed me where to sign. Elizabeth Ronan.

Beth left shortly thereafter and ran home thinking, Forgive me, Arch. I am sicker than I thought.

That night, she bought lobsters for dinner. She lugged the big cooking pot up from the basement, she melted a pound of butter, quartered lemons, and shucked some early corn.

“We’re going to do it right,” she said to Marcus and Winnie when they came up the stairs from the beach. “Lobster dinner.”

Marcus eyed the dark creatures suspiciously as they lumbered across the counter. “They’re still alive.”

Winnie’s forehead crinkled. “She’s going to boil them alive. They scream. I’ve heard them.”

“They do not scream,” Beth said. “This is a treat. A luxury. Where’s your brother?”

“Upstairs in his room, moping,” Winnie said. “He spent the afternoon writing Piper a letter. I told him that by the time he mailed it, she’d be home. He said it’s for her to read when she gets back.”

“You shouldn’t give your brother a hard time,” Beth said. “It’s nice that he found a friend.”

“He said you’re taking him to get his license tomorrow,” Winnie said. “True?”

“True,” Beth said. “Does that bother you? Do you want to take your driver’s test, too? You haven’t practiced much.”

“I’m not ready yet,” Winnie said. “I’d fail.”

“Dinner’s in thirty minutes,” Beth said. As she set the table with the lobster crackers and plastic bibs and butter warmers, she thought about how, at heart, she didn’t want Garrett to get his driver’s license. Once the word “accident” popped into her brain, it was impossible to stop worrying. Another horrible accident. But the good news was that when Garrett got his license, Beth wouldn’t have to see David as often. In fact, she might not see him at all.

I’m sicker than I thought.

Beth dropped the lobsters into the boiling water, then left the kitchen, in case they did scream.

There was something festive about the way the table looked with a scarlet lobster sitting on each plate, but Beth seemed to be the only one who was excited about it. Garrett slouched miserably in his chair, and Winnie picked her lobster up by the claw and plopped it into the bowl meant for empty shells.

“I’m not eating that.”

Marcus was inspecting his plastic bib. “Weird,” he said. “This is a bib like a baby wears.”

Garrett and Winnie hadn’t even deigned to acknowledge their bibs. “It’s to keep the melted butter off your shirt,” Beth said.

Marcus frowned, but tied the bib behind his neck anyway. “If you say so.”

Beth secured her own bib in solidarity, then she lifted her glass of white wine. “Cheers, everyone! Happy summer.”

“What do I do with this thing?” Marcus asked, wielding his lobster cracker.

Garrett rolled his eyes and huffed a little.

“Sorry,” Marcus said. “We don’t eat a lot of boiled lobster in Queens.”

Beth showed Marcus how to crack open the claws, and she separated the meat of the tail from the shell. This, she knew, was the kind of scene Arch had in mind when he invited Marcus to Nantucket. “You’re going to love this,” she said. “When you get the meat free, you dip it in the melted butter.”

Garrett cracked his lobster. Winnie helped herself to a roll, which she tore into pieces. Once Marcus tasted the lobster, his face brightened. “This is great!” he said. “This is delicious.” He picked up the extra lobster. “I’ll eat Winnie’s if she doesn’t want it.”

“Go ahead,” Winnie said.

Beth sipped her wine. She felt empty, scooped out. As a kid, lobster night was magical. It was symbolic of a good, rich life. Her parents always drank too much wine on lobster night; they sang the old songs. Falling in love again… I can’t help it. Now here she sat, alone, with her recalcitrant twins and this boy whose life was anything but good and rich. Beth felt tears coming, but no, she wouldn’t ruin it. She was going to work with what she had. Garrett and Marcus were both eating. Winnie had torn up her roll and was now tentatively considering an ear of corn. Beth picked the snowy flesh out of her lobster claw, dunked it in butter and let the taste fill her mouth. She was doing the best she could.

“Piper comes home tomorrow?” she asked Garrett.

“Friday.”

“It’s nice to have you around for a change. We haven’t sat down to dinner like this in a while.”

“We should go out more,” Winnie said. “When Daddy was here, we used to go out more.”

“What do you care if we go out or stay in?” Garrett asked. “You never eat.”

“Shut up, man,” Marcus said. “I’ve seen Winnie eat plenty.”

“Thank you,” Winnie said.

“Maybe we should go out,” Beth said. “Maybe all of us should go out when Piper gets back.”

“Who cares about Piper?” Winnie said.

“I’ll take Piper out alone, thanks,” Garrett said. “And if you want to go out with David alone, then just go. Don’t use me as an excuse to see him.”

“Who said anything about wanting to go out with David?” Beth asked. She ripped off one of the lobster’s legs and sucked the juice out of it. “Are you ready for your driver’s test tomorrow?”

“You’re changing the subject, Mom,” Winnie said.

“What subject is that?”

“The subject of David,” Winnie said. “I think we should talk about it.”

“There’s nothing to talk about.”

“He likes you.”

“He’s an old friend. I’ve known David since I was sixteen years old.”

“If you want to date him, I think it’s okay,” Winnie said. “You don’t have to keep blowing him off because of us.”

Garrett gagged on his food, sending a shower of corn kernels across the table.

“Spare me,” Winnie said to Garrett. “It’s okay for you to be happy with Piper, but it’s not okay for Mom to be happy?”

Garrett reddened. “These are personal matters,” he said. “Family matters.”

“Oh, what?” Winnie said. “Now you’re going to blast me for bringing this up in front of Marcus? You suck. You really suck.”

“I love you, too,” Garrett said.

“I’ll leave,” Marcus said. “I can eat outside.”

“You’ll do no such thing,” Beth said. “This summer, you’re part of the family. You’re going to have to tolerate our squabbles.”

“I like David,” Marcus said. “He seems straight up and down. But he’s not Arch. Arch was one in a million.”

Everyone at the table was silent at those words. Beth put a finger under her nose. Don’t cry, she told herself.

“Thank you for saying that, Marcus,” she said. “That means a lot.”

Marcus shrugged and dug meat out of a lobster claw. “It’s true,” he said. “Arch will never be replaced. He died trying to save my mother.”

“Arch’s death had nothing to do with your mother,” Beth said. “It was an accident.”

“He wouldn’t have been on that plane if it weren’t for my mother,” Marcus said.

“That’s true,” Garrett said. He looked defiantly around the table. “I mean, no one can really deny that.”

Winnie glared at Garrett, then rolled the ear of corn away from her on the plate. “Let’s get back to the subject at hand. We won’t think you’re trying to replace Daddy if you want to date David, Mom.”

“I will not be dating David,” Beth said. Her voice sounded unusually firm. She wanted to set the record straight, for the kids and for herself. “We’re just friends. But thank you for your permission. It’s nice to know you realize I’m a person, too. I get lonely, too. In fact, sometimes it’s very lonely being the mom.”

“But you have us,” Winnie said.

Beth tried to smile. “Of course,” she said. “I have you.”

Beth sat on the wicker sofa drinking wine long after the kids went to bed, thinking about how unfair it was that David Ronan should reappear to haunt her this summer, which was already so painful. She couldn’t believe she had gone to his house. She had signed her name as “Elizabeth Ronan.” Beth cringed, thinking that in a million years she would never have the guts to admit that one to Kara Schau, much less anyone else.

She didn’t want to waste her time thinking about David Ronan. She should be thinking of Arch, remembering him. Remembering what was the freshest in her mind-their last day together. It was early March, not a romantic time of the year in anyone’s book, but Arch had called mid-morning from the office.

“Lunch at Le Refuge?” he said. “I can get out of here in ten minutes and meet you at quarter to one if traffic’s not too bad.”

“Sure,” she said. “What’s the occasion?”

“I have to go to Albany in the morning,” Arch said.

“For how long?”

“Just the day,” Arch said. “But for a good reason. Alex Benson has agreed to meet with me about Connie.”

Alex Benson was an old law school friend of Arch’s. He was close to the governor, politically and personally, and Beth knew Arch had been trying for months to set up this meeting. “Anything promising?” she asked.

“Oh, who knows,” Arch said. “To be honest, honey, the most promising thing in my life right now is our lunch date. I’ll see you in a little while.”

Beth could remember thinking, as she hung up the phone, that she wished Constance Tyler’s trial would start and finish, if only because the gravity of it sapped Arch of his usual sunny disposition. Since Arch had started working on the case, he’d become preoccupied, and less tolerant of frivolity. He’d snapped at Winnie the week before for complaining about her SAT prep course.

“Thank God you don’t have any real problems,” Arch said. “You could be sitting on Riker’s Island facing lethal injection or life in prison.”

He was impossible now, too, at cocktail parties. He took legal research to the gym and read on the StairMaster.

Taking on the case and taking it on for free made Arch feel righteous. He earned lots of money defending corporate Manhattan against charges of fraud, false advertising, sexual harassment, and general bad faith, but with the Constance Tyler case he felt he was helping someone who needed help. He knew she was guilty, but he was so opposed to the death penalty that to be able to fight it and win just once would make his career worthwhile. His partners at the law firm frowned on all the time the case was eating up, and the enormous expense, but this didn’t phase Arch in the slightest. He brought in twice as much business as any other part-ner-he’d earned the right to take this case, a point he made quietly at the monthly partners’ meeting. Constance Tyler was his top priority, period. At times, Beth actually felt jealous of Connie, so thoroughly did she consume Arch’s thoughts.

At lunch, Arch was in a surprisingly good mood. He arrived before Beth and was waiting at their favorite table with a bouquet of flame-colored roses.

“Look at you,” Beth said. “Look what you’ve done.”

“Orange roses,” he said, presenting them to her. “They seemed right somehow for a dreary day in March.” He kissed her. “I love dating my wife.”

“This is a great surprise,” Beth said. “I was just at home thinking about how I might clean out the china cabinet.”

“Let the china cabinet go uncleaned!” he said. He called the waiter over and ordered a bottle of Sancerre. “I’m not going back to the office today.”

“You’re not?”

“No, I’m not. Once the trial starts next week I’m going to be slammed. So today I’m going to have a long, leisurely, wine-soaked lunch with my wife and then I’m going to walk her home in the rain and spend the afternoon in bed with her.”

What Beth remembered now was how fortunate she felt that afternoon. They drank not one, but two bottles of wine, they ate goat cheese and wild mushrooms and garlic-studded lamb and lemon tart. They talked about all of the things they never had time to talk about at home-trips they wanted to take once the kids went to college, the books they were reading, current events. After Arch paid the bill, Beth floated to the door inhaling the scent of her roses. She was certainly the luckiest woman on earth.

They walked home in the cold drizzle, giggling and falling against each other. Arch pulled Beth past their apartment building, up to Madison Avenue.

“I want to buy shoes,” he said.

They went into Giovanni Bellini’s, which was hushed and smelled of expensive leather. The sumptuous pairs of handcrafted loafers were lined up on the shelves. The first pair Arch reached for were an outlandish electric blue.

“To go with my seersucker suit,” he said. To the salesman, whose mouth was a grim line, he said, “Ten and a half, por favor. Oops, wait a minute, that’s Spanish. Beth, how do you say ‘please’ in Italian?”

She sat on the plush bench in the middle of the room. “Prego, I think.”

“Like the spaghetti sauce?”

They started giggling and the salesman disappeared and returned with a box. Arch tried the shoes on. He looked adorably clownish-his dark suit and the blue shoes.

“The thing is,” Arch said, “some people actually buy these. Europeans.”

Beth urged him to be quiet.

“You know,” Arch said to the salesman, “these are a little flamboyant for me. May I see the black tasseled loafers in a ten and a half?”

Arch bought two pairs of shoes and three pairs of dress socks. This improved the salesman’s humor. When they left the store, he bid them farewell with an authentic sounding “Ciao!”

Beth and Arch returned to the apartment and showered together, something they hadn’t done in years. They made love on the bathroom floor, then wrapped themselves in towels and fell into bed.

It was dark when Beth woke up. Arch lay next to her, snoring. She was confused for a minute, thinking it was the middle of the night, but then she remembered the lunch. It was still afternoon. Five minutes to five. Winnie had swimming until six, and what was today? Monday. Garrett had floor hockey on Monday. He’d also be home around six. Beth snuggled up to Arch. She loved to watch him sleep. He slept so devotedly, like he was giving sleep everything he had.

She switched on the TV and caught the last half hour of Love Story on TNT. Oliver buys plane tickets to Paris, but no, it’s too late. Jennifer has leukemia. She dies, Oliver sits alone in the snowy park. Beth was sniffling when Arch finally opened his eyes.

“Jennifer’s dead,” she said. She turned off the TV and sank back into the pillows. “I love that movie but I always hope that it will end differently. Of course it never does. We should get up. The kids’ll be home soon. They’ll need to eat.”

“Jade Palace?” Arch said. “Pu-pu platter for four?”

“After that lunch, I thought I’d skip dinner,” Beth said. “But I could go for a pu-pu platter.”

Now, at Horizon, Beth poured herself the last of the wine. She remembered that dinner, the four of them at Jade Palace eating potstickers and spare ribs and crab rangoons. She remembered Arch and her sitting in the backseat of the cab with Winnie on the way home-Arch in the middle with his arms around both of them, saying, “I love my girls.” She remembered getting home and listening to the phone messages-one message from Arch’s secretary, Polly, with his travel arrangements for the next day, and one message from Caroline Margolis inviting them to a dinner party on Saturday.

“Tell her we’ll come if she makes her key lime pie,” Arch said.

The day ended with Beth calling Caroline to accept, the kids going to their rooms to do homework, and Arch disappearing into his office to prepare for his trip to Albany. Later, Beth and Arch climbed into bed and read for a while.

“This was the perfect day,” Beth said. “Thank you.”

Arch kissed her. “If I could, Beth, I’d spend every day with you just like I did today.”

He was gone in the morning before she woke up, but when she rolled over she found one of the flame-colored roses on his pillow.

The painful part about remembering all the details from her last day with Arch was that these same details were cruelly present two days later-she didn’t find out Arch’s plane had crashed until very early on the morning of March 16th. Beth was wakened by the phone at quarter to six in the morning, and when she noticed Arch wasn’t in bed, she yelled to him to answer it. She didn’t realize he wasn’t home. He’d called the night before to say his flight was delayed because of weather and he’d be home late, and Beth assumed he came to bed then got up early to work in his study. When the phone didn’t get answered and the machine picked up, Beth groaned and reached for the phone through the fog of her sleep. That groan, that action of reaching, was the last innocent moment before learning the awful truth. At times, she wished she could freeze time and stay there, half asleep, in the not-knowing.

It was Trent Trammelman on the phone, the managing partner of Arch’s firm. The authorities had called him first because it was the law firm’s plane.

Beth screamed like she was falling into a hole she knew she would never escape from. And then, the absolute worst thing she’d ever had to do in her life: tell Winnie and Garrett, who were in their rooms getting ready for school, that their father was dead. Winnie was in her bra and panties, shrieking with embarrassment when Beth opened her bedroom door. Beth didn’t remember speaking any words, but she must have conveyed the news in some way because Winnie crumpled to the ground like she’d been hit by a bullet, and Beth sank to her knees and covered Winnie’s body with her own, the two of them moaning. Garrett found them there and he, too, started wailing, which really pushed Beth over the edge: her strong teenage son crying like a baby.

Before she knew it, the apartment was filled with people. People from the law firm, friends, Arch’s mother, kids from Danforth. In Beth’s mind, this happened instantly. The apartment was filled with people and the smell of coffee and cell phones ringing and talk of the black box, and there was Beth still in her nightgown, like one of those bad dreams where she was throwing a party but had forgotten to get dressed. The buzzer from downstairs rang again and again-the florist with sickly-sweet arrangements, her neighbor with a ham, Caroline Margolis with a key lime pie. Was she imagining this? It was all happening so fast, so soon, these condolences, that Beth grew confused. She was waiting for Arch to walk through the door to the apartment and send everyone else home. By evening, hysteria set in. Arch was never coming home. She would never see him again.

One of the people who came that first day was Dr. Schau, who was Trent’s wife’s therapist. She showed up after office hours and gave Beth a shot and finally everything slowed down. Beth was able to see the horrible things in the apartment that no one else could see: the eleven orange roses, the boxes with two brand new pairs of men’s shoes, the leftover moo shu pork in the refrigerator.

The vision, when she closed her eyes, of Oliver sitting alone in the snowy park.

By midnight, Beth had finished the wine but she was still wide awake. She would be forced to take a Valium, but first she stood up and went to the screen door. It frightened her to remember how raw her grief had been. Now, after four months, she had coping mechanisms in place. The thing that helped the most was that she was here on Nantucket. Not only was Nantucket quieter than New York, it was darker. All she could see were the stars and a couple of tiny lights from her neighbors’ houses in the distance. Then, a pair of headlights approached. Kids headed to the beach. Drunk, probably. Beth shuddered: when she woke up, she would have to take Garrett to get his license. As the car drew closer to Beth’s house, it slowed down. Beth switched on the porch light. David’s truck. She blinked twice, certain she was hallucinating. Too much wine. But no-it was David, driving by her house in the middle of the night. Beth’s first instinct was indignation, until she realized it was no worse than her walking through his house that afternoon. She opened the door as quietly as she could and tiptoed down the shell driveway in her bare feet. She climbed into the truck.

David was in a T-shirt and shorts. His hair was mussed. Without a word, he drove toward the water. When all that was in front of them was ocean and night sky, he stopped. He undid his seatbelt and slumped against his door. “I couldn’t sleep.”

“Me, either.”

“I missed you so much. I managed twenty years without you, but the last three days almost killed me.”

Beth had no idea how to respond to this. Part of her felt the same way-she had gone to his house! But, as ever, there was her guilt and longing for Arch. She remembered back to March sixteenth. At night, after all the people went home, she and Winnie and Garrett slept in the same bed. They did that for two weeks.

“David, we have to stop this.”

“I feel like a teenager,” he said. “I used to do this all the time after you left for the summer. I’d drive by your house and imagine you standing inside the screen door, just like you were doing a few seconds ago. It used to make me feel better to look at your house because I knew you’d always come back to it.”

Beth put her hands over her eyes; he was so handsome she was afraid to look at him. The smart thing, she realized, would have been to stay safely inside her house. “We can’t recreate those days, David. Too much has happened in our lives.”

David rubbed his stubbly chin. “We were in love.”

“Yes, we were.”

“Were, Bethie?”

“Were,” she said.

“I’m in love with you now,” David said. “When I split with Rosie… when I read about Arch in the paper… when I saw you at the store… actually, no. Forget all that. I never stopped loving you. I had to live here, Beth. I had to live each day with all of our memories. It made getting over you impossible.”

“You managed fine without me,” Beth said. “You married Rosie the next year. You had kids.”

“It was never quite right,” David said. “Rosie finally realized it and left.”

“You’re not blaming me for your separation?” Beth said. “That’s absurd.”

“It’s only your fault in the larger sense,” David said. “In the sense that during all those years with Rosie, a part of my heart was missing.”

“Don’t tell me that, David,” Beth said. “Your problems with Rosie are between the two of you. They have nothing to do with me.” She remembered the wedding picture she found in David’s bathroom. Something about how it was placed so that there were actually two pictures in the bathroom-the picture itself and its reflection-made Beth understand that the picture was important to David. What it represented was important. After all, Rosie was still alive; her marriage to David was still viable. Maybe he’d go back to her. That would be for the best.

“The past two weeks have been the happiest weeks I’ve had in ages,” David said. “Just knowing I would see you, even for a few minutes.” He leaned over the console that separated the two seats and took her chin. He held her face and hooked her eyes, making her look at him. Making her see him. What did he want from her? Maybe he wanted her to admit the truth-that she felt the same way, that she, too, looked forward, a little bit, to seeing him, that he made her feel less sad, that he provided hope, a glimpse into what might someday lie beyond all this heavy grief. But a second later, Beth understood that what David wanted was beyond words. His face grew closer; he kept his fingers on her chin. He was going to kiss her.

He was kissing her; they were kissing.

Beth forgot herself for a second. She was tired, she’d had a lot of wine, and surely just one second wasn’t going to hurt anyone, one second of David’s lips, which tasted like the best young love imaginable, which tasted like summer, which tasted like home. One second then one second more. David’s tongue touched her bottom lip lightly, and that was enough. Beth opened her eyes.

“Whoa,” she said, pulling away. “Whoa. Wait.”

David stared at her. Her cover was blown, her lie exposed. She wasn’t a woman in mourning after all. She had kissed him back. A hideous blackness gathered behind her eyes and she gazed out the window at the water. She had kissed him back.

“There,” he whispered.

There? As in, take that? Beth wasn’t sure what he meant by “there,” but it didn’t make her feel any better. “Okay,” she said, fresh out of words herself.

“You can pretend that never happened,” David said. “I, of course, won’t be able to.”

Beth’s mind raced around in search of something to say. A kiss! What a perfect ending for today-she had walked through David’s empty house, she had signed her name Elizabeth Ronan, and for my final trick, ladies and gentlemen… the kiss. Only months after the death of her husband, she had kissed David Ronan.

“I’m taking Garrett to get his license tomorrow,” she said. “Once he can drive, the kids won’t need us to chauffeur them around.”

“So we’ll go out alone,” David said.

“We will not,” Beth said. “I know I’m sending mixed messages-and not only to you, but to myself. But I just lost my husband, and unlike you, a piece of my heart wasn’t missing. I loved Arch Newton with my whole heart. I loved him with my mind and soul and spirit.”

David straightened his arms to the steering wheel. “Because you left me with your heart intact,” he said. “You left me. I was the one who got his heart broken. I was the one who had to face your father at the front door of that house back there and listen to him tell me that you never wanted to see me again and that I’d be hearing from his lawyer.”

“I won’t talk about that,” Beth said. “And I don’t want you to talk about it either.”

“You do remember what happened, don’t you?”

“Of course I remember what happened,” Beth said. “But guess what? Splitting with you wasn’t the worst thing that ever happened to me. The worst thing was-”

“Losing your husband,” David said. “I know, I know.”

“You do not know,” Beth said. “I’m offended that you pretend to know.”

“I know about losing the person I loved most in the world,” David said. “That’s what it was for me when you left.”

Beth was quiet. She deserved this and worse, even twenty-five years after the fact. But she felt she needed to address the kiss; she had to let him know that there would be no more kisses and certainly no dating.

“I’m going to ask you to give up,” Beth said. “I’m going to ask you to leave me alone.”

“I will not give up,” David said. “Because some day you’ll recover. And when you do, I’m going to be here. I’m going to be waiting for you.”

Beth bumped her head against the passenger window. She felt sixteen, as emotionally inept as her children. “I’m tired,” Beth said. “Will you please take me home?”

They drove back to Horizon in silence. David let her out at the end of the driveway, but as she walked past his window, he grabbed her arm.

“You never once said you were sorry,” he said. “You broke a solemn vow without explaining why. I figured it out eventually- you were too young, you were scared-but you didn’t even apologize.”

When she looked at him, she saw the past in his eyes. She recognized the look of loss on his face as he stood at the front door of Horizon confronting her father. It was too painful to remember. Beth turned away.

“Good night, David,” she said.