Summer People

Chapter 4

H e’d been on Nantucket for three weeks but it felt like three months. Or three years. His reality had changed. He was now a person who ate steak and lobsters, he was a person who lounged on the beach and took outdoor showers. He was a person who read Robert Ludlum novels and played Monopoly, amassing paper fortunes.

Now that Garrett was dating Piper, Marcus spent a lot of time alone with Winnie. Since the night he found her eating in the kitchen, they’d grown closer. Marcus saw that Winnie was like Arch-beneath her little-girl, noneating, self-pitying facade lay a decent heart. She listened, she asked questions, and she moved through her days utterly devoted to him, Marcus, a black kid from Queens with a now awful-looking Afro. Not because she felt sorry for him, but because she thought he was special. Marcus could tell she was genuine in this.

After nine months of losing people in his life, he had found a friend.

They spent practically every day at the beach together. Swimming in the waves-almost always the butterfly, which was Marcus’s stroke. He was teaching Winnie how to improve her form; he wanted her to be a kick-ass flyer in time for her senior year. When the tide was right, they swam out past the breaking waves where Marcus could still stand on the sandy bottom and he held Winnie-one hand under her stomach, one hand on the back of her thighs-and showed her how to strengthen her kick. He only touched her when they were in the water, and he had to admit, he was starting to like the way she felt weightless in his arms. He liked to watch her body do the stroke, her ass bucking through the water. He liked how she tried so hard to do exactly what he said, keep your head down, lengthen your reach.

One day when they were drying off, she said, “So what do you think? Are Garrett and Piper having sex?”

Marcus fell face-first onto his striped beach towel. This wasn’t a conversation he wanted to have. Especially since he knew the answer was yes; he’d seen a Trojan wrapper in the bathroom trash when he emptied the can three days before. “What do you care?” he said.

“He’s my twin brother.”

“I’d think that would make you not want to know.”

“Of course I want to know. I mean, I guess it’s no big deal if he has sex before I do. He is a boy.”

“Whatever that means.”

Winnie rested back in her chaise. “I just worry about getting left behind.”

“It’s not a race,” Marcus said.

Winnie rolled her sweatshirt up under her bikini top. “Piper is so pretty. Don’t you think she’s pretty?”

“She’s pretty,” Marcus said. “But not as pretty as you.”

Winnie whipped her head around. “Really?”

“Relax,” he said.

“You just implied that I’m prettier than Piper. You think that? Really, Marcus?”

“The correct response was ‘thank you.’ I never say stuff unless I mean it, but I’m not going to repeat it a hundred times so you can feel all wonderful about yourself.”

“How about repeating it once?”

“You’re prettier than Piper,” Marcus said. Winnie beamed and lay back in her chaise, smiling at the sun. Yes, she was prettier. Piper was good-looking, but she knew it. She wore outfits that put her commodities on display for the world to see. Winnie was pretty in a quiet, natural way, like Beth. Half the time, she looked terrible-hair wet, eyes red and puffy from crying, and always wearing that god-awful, misshapen sweatshirt-and yet her humanity made her beautiful.

As July approached, Marcus found himself with two new worries. The first was that twenty-one days had passed and he’d gotten nowhere with his writing. His legal pad was blank but for the one sentence: My mother is a murderer. The five hundred dollars, gone forever, took on Alice in Wonderland-like proportions in his mind. He now had three unopened letters from his mother, which he’d stuffed into his left dock shoe. His dock shoes were in the back corner of his closet where he didn’t have to think about them. He would only open his mother’s letters if he got really desperate. Marcus tried to banish the memory of Zachary Celtic (your own mother, pretty woman, too, facing the strap-down on the gurney, the long needle… ) and concentrated instead on Nick’s sole comment, “You get to tell the story in your own words, kid.” It was beginning to seem that Marcus had no words. Not on this topic, anyway.

Marcus’s other worry was that he was attracted to Winnie. Maybe because she had brought up sex, or because Garrett was having sex, sex became an invisible third party hanging around whenever Winnie and Marcus were together. And sex was out of the question. If it ever happened, Garrett would kill him and Beth would send him home immediately.

Marcus was supposed to call his father every two weeks, but since Horizon had no phone, Marcus only called when he got the chance. At the beginning of July, he called from a phone booth in town. Too anxious to sit, Marcus stood in the booth and stared at the street, all the white people in their fancy clothes shopping for scented candles and needlepoint pillows. The first question his father asked was, “Why haven’t you answered your mother’s letters?”

“How do you know I haven’t answered them?”

“I know,” Bo Tyler said, “because your sister and I visited her last week and she told me she’s written to you three times and hasn’t heard back.”

“I don’t feel like writing,” Marcus said. Man, was that the truth!

Bo made one of his hmmphing noises. Then he said, “Your mother needs our support.”

Here was the thing Marcus couldn’t get his mind around. Constance had committed murder-she was responsible for two deaths, three if you included Uncle Leon, four if you included Arch-and now she needed their support? The Newtons all went to see some kind of therapist to help them deal with their loss, and that sounded like what Marcus needed-someone to help him with his loss. He had lost his mother. She woke up on the morning of October seventh, and without warning, changed their lives forever.

On that day, Marcus was sitting in trigonometry class trying to file away what he would have to remember about sine, cosine, tangent, and cotangent for the next quiz, when the intercom buzzed and the secretary asked for Marcus to be sent to the office. The kids in his class all ooohed and uh-ohed, because a student generally got sent to the office for bad things, although Marcus was one of the least likely people in the class to be in trouble. Marcus himself thought uneasily of how, the month before, his friend Eriq had been called to the office because Eriq’s girlfriend had given birth to twin girls. And that was it for Eriq and Benjamin N. Cardozo High School. He dropped out the following week and Marcus hadn’t seen him since.

Whatever Marcus was preparing himself for as he loped down the hall to the main office, it certainly wasn’t the sight of his father, Bo, in brown pants, yellow shirt, brown sweater vest, his face twisted into an unrecognizable, sobbing mess. What could Marcus think but that his mother or sister had died? Without a word, Bo led Marcus out of the school and into a waiting police car. Marcus’s sister, LaTisha, was sitting in the back screaming and crying like her limbs had been severed, and so, Marcus concluded, My mother is dead.

And really, Marcus thought now, wasn’t that the truth of the matter? With her incredible act of violence, Constance had ended her life. She had ripped herself from the family. Marcus and LaTisha no longer had a mother, Bo no longer had a wife. And yet here was Bo on the other end of the phone telling Marcus that they needed to support his mother. Marcus loved his father-Bo was a sturdy, hard-working man who went to church and put food on the table. But Bo had moments of ignorance and weakness and it took effort for Marcus not to feel sorry for his father. Bo worked at the printing press of the New York Times and so he had been one of the first people to read the incriminating articles, to see the ghoulish photographs. Right there in the newspaper that he himself printed! Marcus asked Bo why he didn’t quit on the spot, and Bo said, “I’ve had the job for seventeen years, son. It’s not something I would just walk out on.” The same was true for their apartment. The blood damage in the apartment was so bad that Marcus, Bo and LaTisha spent the subsequent twenty days in the Sunday Sermon Motel while disaster specialists cleaned up. Marcus and LaTisha had to share a room; the hotel had roaches and intermittent hot water, and it took Marcus an extra 40 minutes to get to school. The whole time, Marcus begged his father to consider moving. He couldn’t stomach the idea of living on the place where “it” happened.

“Where would we go?” Bo said. “Our apartment is rent-controlled. We’ll stick it out, and eventually people will forget. They’ll move on to the next thing. I’ve seen enough news pass before my eyes to know this to be true.”

Bo had remained loyal to Connie through it all, but Marcus felt differently. He was going to write this book, take the money, and leave his old life behind.

“Okay,” Marcus said to his father, just to say something. “I’ll give it some thought.”

“See that you do,” Bo said. “Are you having fun up there?”

“Yep.”

“Helping out?”

“Yes, Pop.”

“All right, then. We miss you, son.”

“I miss you, too, Pop,” Marcus said, feeling like he’d eaten nothing but guilt for breakfast.

“We’ll talk to you. Please write to your mother.”

“ ’Bye,” Marcus said. He hated to admit it, but he was relieved to hang up the phone.

That night, Marcus woke up when Garrett came home from his date with Piper. Marcus checked his clock: one-fifteen. He waited until Garrett used the bathroom, brushed his teeth, and returned to his room, then he went to the door and peered down the hallway. Dark. The door to Winnie’s room was a few yards away. It was hung crooked and didn’t close properly and something about that door, slightly ajar, was irresistible. But Marcus knew what would happen if he went into her room. Just the way Mama knew what would happen when she opened the door to see Angela. Marcus tried to steady his breathing; he should go back to sleep. But his throat ached with the need to talk to someone and Winnie was the best friend he had now.

The house made some eerie creaking noises beneath his feet. He stood at Winnie’s door and held onto the frame on either side, steadying himself. He was afraid that if he knocked, the door might swing open and she would be frightened and yell. So he knocked on the frame. The wood was dense and the sound of knocking was hard to hear, even to Marcus’s own ears. Three tough knocks, indistinguishable from the house’s other settling noises. Marcus was terrified that Garrett or Beth would come out into the hallway. He figured Garrett had stayed up late many nights trying to catch Marcus in this very act: going after his sister. And then Marcus remembered the horrible scene from Native Son where Bigger Thomas goes in to the rich white girl’s room-she asks him to-and he’s so afraid of getting caught that he kills her. Marcus shook his head. When they’d read the book in Ms. Marchese’s English class, Marcus never imagined he’d be involved with a white girl. But here he was, scaring himself. He would go back to bed.

Right then the door opened and Marcus saw a very narrow slice of Winnie. One eye, a sliver of gray sweatshirt, one toenail painted pink.

“I’m sorry to bother you,” Marcus whispered. Already, he felt like a fool. He hadn’t considered what he would say if Winnie actually answered the door, and now that she had, he sounded like a Jehovah’s Witness. “Do you mind if we talk?”

She opened the door a little wider. He could see most of her mouth. “You want to come in?”

He noticed she was wearing only the sweatshirt and some underwear. He looked beyond her to her rumpled bed. He was making a huge mistake. He should wait and talk to her in the morning, on the beach. But he couldn’t make himself move away. He was sucked into Winnie’s gravitational pull.

Winnie took his hand. She had prayed to God every night since they got here that this would happen, and now she was so elated she practically pushed Marcus into her bed. She’d made out with Charlie Hess in the humid, chlorine-smelling corridors outside the pool, but that was the extent of her sex life. She was ready for more.

Kissing her, really kissing her, lying down on the bed, Marcus almost cried. Winnie fit in his arms perfectly, like a child would have. She was so small, so slender. He wanted to go slowly. He wanted to kiss her until sleep carried them both off. But Winnie was going crazy. Her hands were all over him, and she was warm. He was overwhelmed by having her so close, and he willed his body to relax. He had a sense that sex would change things, possibly even ruin them, and yet he was so turned on, he was rigid, pulsing, and utterly confused. He should have stayed in his own bed, in his own room! He pulled away from her and tried to get his bearings-they were falling off the bed. Talk-ing-what was the right posture for talking? He sat against the headboard and gathered the covers into his lap to hide himself from her.

Winnie sat up next to him. She knew she’d gotten him worked up and it made her proud. “So,” she said, teasing him. “What do you want to talk about?”

He tasted different words: “my mother,” “Mama,” “Constance.” But he couldn’t bring himself to speak. There were so many things he wanted to tell her. About the sweatshirt for starters- how his own teammates had left him without a stitch of clothing and how Arch had come all the way to Queens with the sweatshirt, and how that afternoon proved to Marcus that Arch was one person in the world that he could trust. Everyone else had abandoned him-his friends, his teachers, his cowardly father. His mother. Marcus also wanted to explain to Winnie how dealing with all that made him stronger. How he knew he could have won every race of the swim season, but he held himself to second each time, so that Marcus’s swim coach seemed to forget that Marcus was the murderer’s son and presented him with the most consistent swimmer trophy at the end-of-the-season banquet. He wanted to tell Winnie about how he was going to write a book and with the money, put himself through college. Marcus was afraid that just saying the words, “book deal,” would sound like bragging and quite possibly the magic attached to those words would vanish.

Marcus felt badly because he came here with noble inten-tions-of talking-but now he found his body in stiff revolt. His body wanted to be kissing Winnie and rubbing her right up against him.

“I like you,” he said, finally. Because this seemed like a truth that had to be acknowledged.

“I like you, too,” she said, snaking a hand under the covers.

He banged his head lightly against the wooden headboard of her bed and moved her hand away. He remembered when Arch invited him to Nantucket. It was only a few days before his trip to Albany, it was early March-cold, wet, and miserable. Arch called Marcus at home, ostensibly to see how Marcus had fared in the All-Queens Invitational (second place) but really just to check in, take Marcus’s temperature, as it were.

Only ten days before the trial. How are you hanging in?

My life sucks, Marcus said. I can’t wait for this thing to be over.

Arch was quiet for a minute, then he cleared his throat and said, What are your plans for this summer?

This summer?

You like to swim, right? Do you like the beach?

Yeah, Marcus said. I guess so, yeah.

How about you join my family and me on Nantucket this summer? We stay in a funky old summer cottage that my wife inherited. It’s right on the ocean.

I don’t know, Marcus said. At the time, it seemed like Arch was offering too much and Marcus had the sinking feeling that Arch knew something Marcus didn’t. Like they were going to lose the trial and Constance was going to die.

I want you to consider it, Arch said. Seriously. It would be good for you to get away. It would be good for my family, too.

Marcus had doubted that, even at the time. The Newtons needed him around like they needed bugs in their beds.

“I shouldn’t be here this summer,” Marcus said now, to Winnie.

“What?” Winnie said. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. I love it that you’re here.”

“Garrett hates me,” Marcus said. “He looks at me funny.”

“He looks at everybody funny,” Winnie said.

This was true. As many times as Arch had said, My daughter, Winnie, you’ll like her, he’d never said anything similar about Gar-rett.

“There was something else I wanted to tell you,” Marcus said. “Something you should know.”

“What is it?” Winnie said.

“I miss him, too.”

“Who?”

“Your father,” Marcus said. “Arch…” H e didn’t know how to continue. What to say about Arch that Winnie didn’t already know or that hadn’t already been said by somebody else? In the New York Times a city councilman was quoted as saying “New York has lost not only a good attorney, but a good citizen, a hero for the common man.” A hero, Marcus thought, for one family on the verge of imploding. “Your dad. Arch. I miss him just like the rest of you do.”

Winnie covered her eyes with her hand. “Will you please stay here with me tonight?”

“I can’t,” Marcus said, though sex, that tangible presence, seemed to be standing next to the bed, egging Marcus on. “What if we get caught?”

“We won’t get caught,” Winnie said.

“Not tonight,” Marcus said.

“Tomorrow night?”

“Another night,” he said. Talking, too, would have to wait for another night. Real talking-telling Winnie all the secrets that were crowded into his heart. He couldn’t go into any of it while he was in Winnie’s bed with Winnie half naked and all over him. With enormous effort, he moved away from Winnie and put his feet on the cool wood floor. When he stood up, the floorboards squeaked. He pushed sex out of the way and tiptoed into the hall, closing Winnie’s door behind him. Arch was dead, Constance was alive. It was wrong and yet with all his anger and confusion, Marcus also felt gratitude, an enormous gratitude because he was here. Suddenly the summer seemed short and precious; he wanted it to last forever.

In the Elmhurst section of Queens, the Fourth of July was a huge, multicultural block party. Whole streets were closed off and the half-barrel bar-b-q pits appeared for jerk chicken and pork shoul-der-the Laotian women passed around hand-rolled lumpia. Kids set off bottle rockets and adults drank beer on the front stoops. The music was loud; there was a fist fight or two. Constance had always disdained the chaos-year after year she stayed inside with the air-conditioning cranked, drinking from a cold bottle of white wine while she prepared coleslaw for a hundred people. At dinnertime, she sent Marcus down to the street with the coleslaw mounded in her one good wooden salad bowl with more or less the same sentence: “Make sure nobody walks off with that bowl, child!” No one would confuse Connie for a patriot.

This year things were going to be different. Beth had gotten up at six in the morning to beat the rush to the grocery store, where she bought red, white, and blue napkins, plates, cups, miniature flags, and bags and bags of food. When Marcus woke up and went downstairs, he helped Beth put the groceries away.

“Are you, like, a member of the D.A.R. or something?” he asked.

“No,” Beth said. “But we’re taking a picnic to Jetties Beach tonight. We do it every year. And this year’s special because you’re here. And Piper and Peyton are coming.”

“And David?” Marcus asked.

“No, not David.” Beth didn’t explain why, and Marcus knew enough to keep his foot out of that mud puddle.

Every day on Nantucket was summer, but the Fourth of July was especially summer. Beth made blueberry pancakes for breakfast and then Marcus and Winnie rode their bikes into town to watch the small parade up Main Street, the water fight between the Fire Department and the elementary school kids, and the pie-eating contest. Marcus and Winnie held hands-which started as Winnie grabbing Marcus’s hand so that he wouldn’t get lost in the crowd, and ended up as just plain holding hands. They went into some shops, looking for a suitable souvenir to send home to Marcus’s sister. Marcus found nothing suitable, although he wasn’t really concentrating. He was too aware of Winnie’s hand in his, how good it felt, and yet he was concerned about what they must look like, a black boy and a white girl. Marcus felt as if he had a flashing red light on his head, announcing, INTERRACIAL COUPLE! But nobody even glanced at them sideways until they rounded the corner onto Federal Street and bumped smack into Garrett and Piper.

Marcus dropped Winnie’s hand immediately but she made things worse by putting her arm around his waist and squeezing him. He moved away. He’d told her that one of the conditions of their being together was that they had to conceal it from Beth and Garrett. Winnie didn’t understand why he felt this way; she didn’t like hiding things from her mom and brother, but she agreed. She had said, Okay, I promise, and yet now here she was, in Garrett’s face, hugging Marcus.

Garrett frowned. Marcus couldn’t believe they’d run into him. He had still been asleep when Marcus and Winnie left the house on their bikes.

“What’s up?” Marcus said.

“Nothing,” Garrett said.

“We’re shopping for LaTisha,” Winnie said. Winnie pronounced the name like it belonged to a white person: “Leticia.” “We watched the pie-eating contest. This skinny girl won. She ate a whole pie in, like, thirty seconds.”

“You should have entered, Winnie,” Garrett said. “You could use a whole pie.”

“Okay, we’re going,” Winnie said, taking Marcus’s unwilling hand. “Hi, good-bye.”

“I’ll see you tonight,” Piper said. “I think my dad might join us even though he’s technically not invited.”

Winnie pulled Marcus down the street, like he was a stubborn dog. “See ya!”

Marcus said, “I thought we agreed to keep this a secret.”

“We all live in the same house,” Winnie said. “It’s been a secret for two days. You think they don’t know something’s changed between us?”

“They didn’t know until now.”

“Who cares what Garrett thinks anyway. He’s turned into such a jerk since Daddy died.”

“He’ll try to kill me.”

“He doesn’t care about you and me. All he cares about is having sex with Piper.” Winnie stopped in front of another souvenir shop. “What about pot holders? Do you think LaTisha would like some pot holders?”

When they got home, the Range Rover was in the driveway; Garrett had beaten them back. Marcus wanted to go up to his room and give writing a try, but Beth had made a special Fourth of July lunch. Grilled hotdogs, pasta salad, homemade lemonade. Marcus ate three hotdogs sitting next to Winnie at the picnic table. Garrett sat across from them, scowling. Even Beth seemed impatient. She snapped at Winnie for cutting her hotdog into pieces.

“I went to a lot of trouble to make this lunch, young lady,” Beth said. “You will eat it.”

This was so unlike Beth that everyone at the table stopped eating, except for Winnie, who actually put a piece of hotdog into her mouth.

When, after lunch, Winnie asked him if he wanted to swim, Marcus said no. He was going upstairs to his room. He wanted to let things cool off, then make Winnie come to her senses.

She knocked on his door later that afternoon. It was four-thirty; he had fallen asleep over his still-blank legal pad, which he shoved into the drawer of his nightstand.

“Come in,” he said.

Her hair was wet-from a shower, not the ocean. She wore the sweatshirt and a white tennis skirt with blue and red piping.

“A skirt,” he said. “That looks nice.”

She shrugged. “Fourth of July. Mom gets a big kick out of it.”

“I noticed.”

“No one cares about us being together, Marcus,” she said. “Trust me, I know.”

“Garrett cares. And your mother cares. She yelled at you at lunch. She’s never done that before.”

“She’s upset about something else. She’s upset about David.”

“What about him?”

“He’s coming with us tonight and I guess she doesn’t want him to.”

“Oh.”

Winnie closed the door and climbed on top of him. She lay her head on his chest and he could feel his heart pounding into her ear.

“Mom and Garrett don’t have time to worry about us,” Winnie said. “They have their own lives to worry about. So let’s just be ourselves, okay?”

Marcus looked around the room, which over the past four weeks had become as familiar to him as his own room: the wainscoted walls, the ceiling fan that didn’t work, his bed with the white cover. He wasn’t sure who he was anymore. He’d changed so much, he’d lost track. Last year everyone in his neighborhood stayed on the street until the fireworks over Shea Stadium ended. When Marcus and LaTisha went upstairs they found Constance asleep in front of the television; she liked to watch the Boston Pops. This year he applauded as little kids with streamers on their bikes rode up a cobblestone street in a procession. He had grilled hotdogs and homemade lemonade for lunch. And now he had a white girl lying across his body.

Sex grinned at Marcus from its post by the door. “You have to go,” Marcus said. “You’re driving me crazy.”

Winnie pressed her hips against his. “In a good way or a bad way?”

Marcus lifted her off of him. “Good way,” he said, knowing how this would thrill her. “Now go.”

Later, Marcus helped Beth pack the picnic into coolers: fried chicken, potato salad, cucumbers in vinaigrette, deviled eggs, oatmeal cookies, iced tea, beer. She had a special red, white, and blue tablecloth, and all of the matching plates and napkins.

“This looks great,” Marcus said. And then, before he could stop himself, he said, “My mom always made coleslaw. With horseradish in it. It was a big hit.”

Beth stopped what she was doing and stared at him, and Marcus got the awful feeling that followed whenever Constance was mentioned. Marcus wished Winnie would come down and rescue him-but she was napping, and Garrett had taken the car to pick up Piper and Peyton. Marcus tucked a sleeve of plastic cups into the picnic basket.

“Oh, Marcus, I’m sorry,” Beth said. She got an unsteady vibe in her voice, like she might start to cry. “I didn’t even think what this would feel like for you. With your mother in jail, you probably don’t want to celebrate Independence Day.”

“Uh…” Marcus was caught off-guard. “No, don’t worry about it. It’s fine.”

“It’s not fine,” Beth said. “It was insensitive of me. But we do this whole rigmarole every year, and I just thought that if I kept things normal they might start to feel normal.”

“I’m excited about a picnic,” Marcus said. “I’ve never been on an actual picnic, with a picnic basket and everything.”

Beth sank into one of the kitchen chairs, thinking that this was another thing Arch would have loved: taking Marcus on his first picnic. “You’re sure you don’t mind? Maybe we should just forget it.”

“I want to go,” he said.

Beth threw her hands into the air. “I don’t want to see David!” she said. “I should never have invited the girls, but I thought a big group of kids would be fun. Plus, David goes to the same party every year, at this huge house on the Cliff. But no! This year as soon as he hears the girls are coming with us, he decides to forget the party. He’s only coming along because he knows I don’t want him to.”

Marcus began to wonder if what Winnie said were true. Maybe Beth and Garrett were too consumed with their own lives to give their little romance a second thought. But before Marcus could pursue this reasoning further, he heard Beth whisper something under her breath.

“I’m sorry?” Marcus said. “I didn’t hear you.”

“I said, I’m keeping a big secret from my children.”

She was crying now. Marcus handed her a red, white, and blue napkin. He sat quietly, wondering if she was going to tell him the secret. He felt extremely interested, but also ashamed at this interest. If she told him the secret, he might have to keep it from Winnie.

Beth crumpled her napkin and tossed it lamely in the direction of the trash can. Marcus had an urge to pick it up and throw it away, but he was rooted to his chair.

“It’s about David.”

Marcus let his eyelids droop, his standard defense when he heard something he didn’t like. “Please,” he said. He stalled, unsure of what to say. He liked Beth; he could see the woman was in pain, the kind of pain you felt when you had something to admit and couldn’t wait to get it off your chest. The kind of pain Mama had been in right after the murders. She had called the police and turned herself in. “Please don’t tell me.”

Beth looked crestfallen, and he felt bad. Beth was the reason he was here. She’d given him the great gift of this summer, with picnics and fireworks and everything.

“I wouldn’t be able to keep it from Winnie,” he explained.

Beth smiled. “You like Winnie.”

Marcus squeezed his eyes shut. “Yeah.”

“Just promise me that you’ll be there for her this summer when she needs you.”

“I’m here for her,” Marcus said.

“She’s so fragile, and your friendship is important to her.”

Marcus felt embarrassed and proud, and relieved, because it sounded like she was going to let him off the hook. He opened his eyes.

Beth lifted herself out of her chair and stood by him. She put her hand on his shoulder and left it there a second. Marcus’s throat ached. For the first time all summer, he missed his own mother, the way she used to be, when she put her hands on either side of his face if she couldn’t find the words to express herself.

Marcus heard a car pull into the driveway. Beth walked out into the hall.

“There they are,” she said. “Marcus, will you go up and wake Winnie? We have to get ready to leave.”

The screen door opened and Garrett walked in, followed by Piper, Peyton, and David. David was carrying a six-pack of Hei-neken.

“I hope someone made deviled eggs,” he said jovially.

As Marcus headed up the stairs he tried to imagine what the secret might be, and he figured it had to do with sex. An affair, maybe. Marcus was irritated; he could tell he’d be thinking about this all the time now, although he was interested to know that sex was plaguing people other than him. He knocked on Winnie’s door.

“Come on,” he said. “We’re going.”

Her hair was mussed and she was rubbing her eyes. “I’m grouchy,” she said.

Marcus felt a rush of emotion. She was so childlike, so funny and adorable that he flashed her his dimples. That worked. Her face brightened and she hugged him.

Walking down the cliff toward Jetties Beach, Beth noticed that Peyton was the only one without something to carry. In front, leading the way, were Garrett and Piper holding hands, each lugging a thermos in the other hand. Behind them were Winnie and Marcus holding either side of the big cooler. Beth had the picnic basket and two blankets and David was loaded down with folding chairs. Peyton slunk along at David’s side, empty-handed.

“Why don’t you catch up to your sister?” David asked her.

“I don’t want to. She’s with Garrett.”

“Well, go anyway. I need you to scout out a good spot for us.”

“I’m hungry,” Peyton said.

“Exactly why we need you up front. We can’t eat until we’ve found a place to sit.”

In her mind, Beth willed Peyton to stay right where she was, next to her father, but Peyton succumbed to her hunger. She ran ahead, if you could call stumbling forward in clunky sandals running, leaving Beth and David to bring up the rear alone, if you could call walking with four thousand strangers alone.

“You don’t want me here,” David said.

“I thought you had the Swifts’ party.”

“I wanted to be with my girls,” David said.

“Maybe,” Beth said. “Or maybe you wanted to be with me.”

“You have a high opinion of yourself.”

“The kiss was an accident, David.”

“An accident?”

That was the wrong word. An accident was breaking a glass in the kitchen sink, a fender bender; an accident was what had happened to Arch. The kiss was something more intentional- it was a mistake.

“It didn’t mean anything,” she said, cringing at how cruel that sounded. But didn’t he see? It couldn’t mean anything. “I was kind of drunk.”

“Drunk,” David said flatly. “That’s original. You kissed me because you were drunk.”

Beth pressed her lips together. She liked the way Winnie and Marcus were carrying the cooler. They made it seem effortless. Piper and Garrett, on the other hand, appeared lopsided, and a second later they stopped in their tracks. Piper had to set down her thermos and rest.

“I need you to respect my wishes,” Beth said. “I’m not interested in a relationship with anyone right now.”

“You sound ridiculous.”

“Why is it so ridiculous?” Beth said. Winnie turned around with raised eyebrows. Beth smiled at her reassuringly, then lowered her voice. “I need time and space to grieve for my husband.”

“I understand that, Beth.”

“You don’t understand. If you understood, you wouldn’t be here. You would be giving me space.”

“Don’t you ever ask yourself why it’s me you don’t want around? I’ll tell you why. Because you still have feelings for me and you’re afraid of those feelings.”

“I don’t have feelings for you.”

“You love me.”

Beth looked to see if he was being funny. But his eyes gave off a searing heat. He was serious; he was challenging her to deny that preposterous statement.

“I loved you twenty-five years ago,” she said. “Trust me when I say things have changed.”

“It didn’t seem that way the other night,” he said.

Beth didn’t have to respond because seconds later, Peyton found a spot on the beach large enough to accommodate all of them, and then there was the welcome distraction of setting up camp: spreading out the blankets, unfolding the chairs, taking out the food and pouring drinks. David opened a beer and hovered at the far edge of the blanket while Beth took charge of doling out fried chicken, spooning mounds of potato salad onto paper plates, and trying to keep pieces of plastic wrap from flying into the water. This time last year it was the same menu, but there was only four of them: Beth, Arch, and the twins. Arch loved drumsticks. He ate them all-a total of seven-then joked about the poor one-legged chicken that was limping around somewhere. Stupid, maybe, but the kids thought he was the funniest man on the planet, and so did Beth. She put a drumstick on Garrett’s plate, hoping he would remember, but he was too absorbed with rubbing Piper’s arms. She was chilly, it seemed. Well, yeah, Beth thought, that’s what you got when you wore a halter top to the beach at night. When Garrett finally did notice the drumstick, he ate it in three bites without comment. Beth almost said, Hey, Garrett, remember when Dad… but she knew she wouldn’t be able to pull off the happy nostalgia she intended.

As she ate her dinner, she thought about how one day Garrett and Winnie would get married and have families of their own, and Beth would be left to remember all of the funny jokes alone. She watched as David wandered away to talk to some people he knew, waving his beer around in defiance of the open container law. Maybe she should listen to him, otherwise she might end up old and alone, still clinging to her grief.

It grew dark. Beth collected the paper plates and the wadded napkins and passed around oatmeal cookies. David appeared back at the blanket with a box of sparklers and he gave one to everybody, including Beth, and lit them with a Bic he borrowed from Piper. He watched Beth’s face as he held the lighter to the tip of her sparkler and when the sparkler came to life, bright stars dancing and hissing, he said, “There you go, my dear. Now you can write your name.”

Garrett and Piper wrote their names in a heart, as did Winnie and Marcus. Beth turned her back to the group and wrote her name in the dark air over Nantucket Sound. Beth. She hoped that Arch would see it, from wherever he was watching her.

Beth collected everyone’s spent sparklers and the rest of the trash and settled back in her chair in time for the first burst of fireworks. Red, gold, purple. David sat in the chair next to hers and opened another beer. Beth loved fireworks, the whistle and crackle in the air, the smell of cordite, the oohs and aahs. When the sky was all lit up, she watched the silhouettes of her kids- both of them obviously paired up now. Marcus was leaning back on his hands and Winnie sat close to him, resting her head on his shoulder. Piper lay on her back and Garrett lounged on his side right behind her. They were kissing. Beth studied them for a minute, enough time to dispel any illusions about their innocence. They were having sex. Beth glanced at David to see if he saw what she saw: the tongues when they kissed, the way Garrett’s fingers tugged insistently on Piper’s belt loops. Beth didn’t know how to feel about the situation. She and Arch had always vowed to be honest with the twins about sex and the responsibility that came with it. Arch gave Garrett condoms, and, Beth assumed, informed him how and when they should be used. Beth herself had lost her virginity at sixteen with the man sitting next to her, but somehow she had seemed older then, at sixteen, than Garrett did now, at seventeen. She would have to say something to Garrett about the sex this week-and to Winnie, too, if this thing with Marcus developed. It would embarrass all three of them-really, Arch had been much better at dealing with the kids’ emerging sexuality-yet what could she do? Let her kids go wild in the sack without a few words of caution?

Blue spirals shot through the air, enhanced by a bunch of silver flashes that sounded like very loud popcorn. David applauded for that one. Beth was bothered by everything David had said earlier. Okay, maybe she did have feelings for him, but any fool could see that the feelings made her so uncomfortable that all she wanted to do was push them away.

The finale started and the sky was a messy artists’ palette of color, one bright burst inside another. The great thing about the finale was that just when Beth thought the sky was saturated, just when she thought it must be the end, they shot off more. It kept going and going. Beth leaned her head back against the webbing of her chair. She tried to conjure Kara Schau’s words: Don’t think. Smell the flowers. Don’t worry about packing up and fighting the crowds all the way back to the car. Don’t worry about David Ronan in the chair next to yours. Just enjoy.

Beth couldn’t help herself from doing a visual sweep of their area, mentally calculating how long it would take them to break camp. It was then that she noticed Peyton was gone.

She looked at David. He was grinning like a boy, his face catching light from the sky.

“Did Peyton go to the bathroom?” Beth asked.

David checked the blanket. His smile faded and he sat up straighter in his chair. “Piper,” he said. “Where’s your sister?”

Asking this was pointless. Piper couldn’t hear David over the noise of the fireworks. No one could hear him but Beth. Piper was so absorbed with tasting the inside of Garrett’s mouth that anyone could see the whereabouts of her younger sister was the furthest thing from her mind. David concluded as much after a few seconds, and he picked his way across the blanket, over the cooler and between thermoses, to ask Piper again. Piper sat up and looked around. Shrugged. David asked something of Winnie and Marcus, who mimicked Piper’s actions. We don’t know.

Beth stood up. She felt sorry for David-a missing child was a parent’s worst nightmare. Even when the child was thirteen. Even in a place as safe as Nantucket.

“They don’t know where she went?” Beth asked.

“No,” David said. He scanned the patchwork of blankets around them. “How long has she been gone? And how did she leave without my noticing?”

“You went to talk to some people,” Beth said. “Maybe she met up with friends.”

“Maybe,” David said. “Or maybe she just went to the bathroom.”

“That’s probably it,” Beth said. She, too, wondered how long Peyton had been gone. Beth remembered handing her two oatmeal cookies and then offering to refill her lemonade, but that was before the fireworks started. Beth tried to remember if she’d seen Peyton with a sparkler. The sparklers were a long time ago, certainly allowing enough time to go to the bathroom and come back. Unless there was a horrendous line.

As if reading her mind, David said, “I’m going to check the bathrooms. Will you stay here?”

“Of course,” Beth said. “She’ll probably make it back before you do.”

Beth’s optimism flagged once the fireworks ended, because at that point, chaos broke out. Children started to whine and everyone and his brother tried to jam their way through the narrow passageway between the dunes that led to the parking lot. People poured past them, like a stream moving around a rock. Beth stood on her chair and waved her arms so that Peyton might be able to locate them. Marcus followed suit, standing on the cooler, waving the flashlight that Beth had packed. Winnie folded the blankets and the unused chairs while Garrett and Piper clung to one another-Piper suddenly so concerned about her sister that she needed constant petting from Garrett. Beth almost snapped at them to separate and help, but what kind of help was needed? They simply had to stay put until Peyton materialized out of the crowd, and Garrett and Piper were doing just that-staying put with their hands all over each other.

David returned, his eyes darting everywhere. The key, he said, was not to panic because Peyton had a good head on her shoulders and she could find her way to the police station once she got to the road.

“It’s not like she’s a tourist,” he said. “This island is her home.”

They waited until the last stragglers left the beach. At this point, Beth was tired and had to go to the bathroom herself. She walked through the cold sand toward the now-abandoned portable toilets. Because she was from New York, she couldn’t help thinking of how the fingers of evil could touch anyone, even here. Beth eyed the dark ocean. With a missing child on the brain, it looked sinister.

On the way back she was more hopeful. But from a hundred yards away she could see David standing on the cooler; as she neared, she heard him calling out Peyton’s name. Beth joined Winnie and Marcus who were huddled nearby. They told her that Garrett and Piper had gone to the lost child tent, or whatever it was, that the police had set up.

Beth helped David down from the cooler. Even touching his hand made her feel conflicted.

“She’ll turn up,” Beth said.

“Oh, I know,” he said. “I’m not worried.”

“Of course you’re worried,” Beth said. “She’s your baby girl. You don’t have to play tough guy with me, not under these circumstances. Maybe she went home.”

“There’s no way she would have gone home without telling me. It’s too far to walk. It’s four miles in the dark.”

Garrett and Piper approached; Piper’s face looked ready to crumble. “The police haven’t seen her,” she said. “Your friend was there, Dad, Lieutenant Egan, and he said he’d send his guys out to scan the area. He said if she doesn’t turn up in the next twenty minutes, you should go talk to him.”

“Twenty minutes, my ass,” David said. “I’m going to talk to him now.” David charged through the sand toward the parking lot, calling Peyton’s name along the way. Beth stayed with the other kids.

“None of you saw her leave?” Beth asked. “Who spoke to her last?”

“I told her I liked her shoes,” Winnie said. “But that was during dinner.”

Piper nuzzled Garrett’s neck and ran a hand inside the collar of his polo shirt. Something about Piper touching Garrett made Beth uncomfortable. She wondered if this were a typical mother-son-girlfriend dynamic at work, or if there was actually something about Piper that was unlikable, which only Beth discerned.

“This isn’t like my sister,” Piper said. “Peyton is such a goody-goody. It’s not like she ran off to smoke and drink with her friends. She never does anything on her own unless she asks Dad, like, six times if it’s okay. So I don’t know what to think. Maybe she was abducted?”

“She wasn’t abducted,” Beth said. “But she may be lost.”

Piper sniffed. “We used to play on this beach when we were kids. If she got lost, she’d wait for us in the parking lot. Plus, the police tent is in the parking lot and she wasn’t there.” Piper’s tone was condescending-it was the tone of voice she normally reserved for David, and Beth was about to let her know that it wasn’t an okay tone to use with her boyfriend’s mother when David jogged toward them through the sand.

“They’re going to start a real search,” he said. “I’ll stay here. Beth, you take the kids home. To my house. Keep your eyes peeled for her on the way. The police seem to think she got bored, or angry, and decided to walk home. They said they see it every year. Also, check the machine, Piper, when you get in. Maybe she left a message. I’ll call you later to see if she’s turned up.”

Beth and the kids trudged back to the car, everyone so loaded down with stuff that there was no opportunity for kissing or hand-holding. It was a silent march out to North Beach Street and then up the Cobblestone Hill. They piled into the Range Rover and drove to David’s house, slowing to check the identity of each person walking on the side of the road along the way. No Peyton. The house was dark except for the onion lamp by the front door.

“She’s not home,” Piper said. “God, I hope she left a message.”

The kids trooped into the house while Beth stood at the back of the car and separated out David’s belongings from her own- his chairs, his thermos, his blanket. She knew there wouldn’t be a message. No one had spoken to the girl, no one noticed her missing until she was long gone. Peyton had been ignored, so she ran away. It didn’t take a brain surgeon to figure it out, only a mother.

When Beth walked into the kitchen, the kids were sitting on barstools around the island.

“No message?” she said.

Garrett shook his head. Piper started to cry quietly. Beth put a hand on her back.

“And you checked the whole house?”

Piper nodded, then moved into Garrett’s arms where she collapsed.

“Maybe she went to our house,” Winnie said. “It’s closer. Maybe she got tired and decided to wait for us there. She knows we don’t lock it.”

“Okay, we’ll check,” Beth said. “Piper, you stay here and wait for your father’s phone call. Tell him our plans.”

Piper clung to Garrett with a ferocity Beth had only previously seen in two year olds. “Can Garrett stay with me? Please? I’m freaked out to be here by myself.”

Beth hesitated. Garrett staying here meant only one thing: sex. In a bed, probably, which would have irresistible appeal. Beth fought off images of the cottage on Bear Street with David. All summer long, sex on a bed, sex every which way.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Beth said. “Because how will he get home?”

“I’ll have Dad run him home when he gets back.”

“David shouldn’t have to do that,” Beth said. “It’s late. Garrett will see you tomorrow.”

Garrett threw Beth a dirty look. “I’m not ten years old, Mom. I’ll stay here with Piper and if David won’t take me home then I’ll walk.”

“In the dark?”

“Yes,” Garrett said.

Beth heard the challenge in his voice and decided she wasn’t up for it. “Well, if Peyton’s at our house, we’ll come back. Obviously. And if she’s not there, I guess we’ll come back anyway and wait to hear what David says. Or I will. Marcus and Winnie may want to go to sleep.” Beth closed her eyes. Teenagers were going to be alone in a house full of beds no matter what she decided, that much was clear. “So I’ll be back in a short while, then. A couple of minutes.”

Beth drove to Horizon saying a prayer to God and Arch and anyone else who would listen. Please bring the girl home safely. Horizon, too, was dark, except for the porch light.

“She’s not here,” Marcus said. “Man, this is getting weird.”

The three of them went in, Beth and Marcus each carrying a load of picnic stuff.

Winnie said, “Mom doesn’t care who’s dead or missing as long as the dishes get done.”

“Winnie, that’s not fair.”

Winnie acknowledged as much with a pat to Beth’s head. “Sorry, Mom.”

Beth turned on some lights and checked all the rooms on the first floor. She checked the deck then went upstairs and poked her head into the bedrooms, hoping to find Peyton asleep, like Goldilocks. No such luck. Beth returned to the kitchen. “Listen, you two stay here. I’m going back to the Ronans’ house in case another vehicle or another set of hands is needed. You guys get some sleep.” She wanted to get back to Garrett and Piper as soon as possible.

“We’ll clean up,” Marcus said.

“If you want,” Beth said, so grateful for this offer that she wondered if Winnie’s statement weren’t right on the money. “Garrett and I will be home shortly.”

“Okay, Mom, good luck,” Winnie said, and Beth could tell Winnie was anxious for her to leave. Are you watching this? she asked Arch on her way out to the car. Everyone wants me to leave so they can fool around! Somehow the prospect of Winnie and Marcus didn’t worry her nearly as much as Garrett and Piper, and so she hurried back to David’s house.

The house was as she left it, with the front light on and a light in the kitchen. Beth slammed the car door to warn of her impending arrival. But no one was in the kitchen. Beth called out, “Hey, I’m back!” and was met with silence. She listened to the hum of the refrigerator and the drip of the sink, her heart racing. She twisted the spigots of the sink and the dripping stopped.

“I’m back!” Beth shouted.

Silence.

“Garrett!” she hollered. “Garrett Newton, get down here this instant!” She marveled at how much like a typical mother she could sound.

Still nothing. Either the house was remarkably well built or they, too, had disappeared. Beth was faced with having to go upstairs and check on them. She was starting to boil inside. How dare they put her through this! She stormed up the stairs, only partially cowed by the fact that she’d been up these stairs two weeks earlier when she was snooping around. She heard noises coming from the bathroom. Beth moved toward the door. She heard a groan, her own son’s distinctly sexual groan. Okay, that was it. Beth couldn’t stand to hear anything more. She pounded on the door.

“Meet me downstairs, Garrett,” Beth said. “We’re going home.”

There was silence, then some shuffling, then an, “Okay, Mom, give me a minute?” As though she was supposed to believe he was in there alone.

Beth returned to the kitchen, furious. She started rehearsing a lecture for the drive back to their house-God, what was she going to say? She should have stayed at home in blissful ignorance. They were upstairs in the bathroom. Unbelievable. No parent would tolerate this! Beth studied the pictures on the refrigerator, but only for a second. The pictures of David, whom she had kissed! The pictures of Piper who was having sex with her son upstairs! Suddenly, Beth was distracted by flashing lights. A police car pulled into the driveway. Beth went to the door. David and Peyton stepped out of the car.

“Oh, thank God,” Beth said. The girl looked defiant-arms welded across her chest-but fine, otherwise. David chatted with the officer at the wheel for a second, clapping him on the arm, and then the police car drove off. Beth opened the door for them.

“What happened?” she said.

Peyton glared at Beth, a look so hateful that it startled her.

“I’m going to bed,” she spat.

When she disappeared, Beth looked to David. “Where was she?”

“One of the cops found her sitting by herself on Steamship Wharf,” David said. “She was waiting for the early boat so she could sail to Hyannis to see her mother.”

“Why?” Beth said, though of course, she knew why. “What’s wrong?”

“She thinks everyone is paired up but her. The other kids, and you and me. She felt left out, so she ran away.”

“Ouch,” Beth said.

“I reminded her that she was my date tonight,” he said.

“You didn’t treat her like your date,” Beth said. “You kept trying to get rid of her so you could talk to me.”

“Ouch,” David said.

“It’s true,” Beth said. “And I hate to open your eyes to other unpleasant realities, but when I got here a few minutes ago I found Garrett and Piper locked in the upstairs bathroom together. One doesn’t have to be a Rhodes scholar to figure out what was going on in there.”

David’s face fell. “I guess not.”

“We have to keep our families separated. Maybe the girls should go visit their mother.” Beth put a hand up to stop his objections. “I’m not telling you what to do with Piper-”

“Yes, you are.”

“I just want you to know that the Newtons will be keeping a low profile at Horizon for a while.”

Garrett appeared then, eyes cast to the floor.

“We’re going,” Beth said. Garrett was already headed toward the door, which David held open for them.

“At least everyone’s safe,” David said. “Happy Fourth of July.”

“And don’t drive by my house tonight,” Beth said.

“I wouldn’t dream of it, Bethie,” he said.