Summer People

Chapter 5

J ust like that, Piper was getting shipped off to her mother’s house-not for a long weekend, not for a week, but for ten whole days. Garrett was grounded from the car to boot, because his mother had caught him and Piper in the bathroom together.

“What were you two doing up there?” Beth had asked him as they drove home from the Ronans’ house.

He couldn’t believe she was embarrassing him like this. He’d held out hope that she would be cooler, that she would just let the issue drop. “It’s none of your business what we were doing,” he said. This, he suspected, was the answer Piper would give, and she was a master at handling her father. “If you want details of somebody’s sex life, get your own.”

Beth slammed the brakes of the car and they both pitched forward. “Out,” she said. “You’re walking home.”

“What?”

“I do not want you in this car. Get out.”

Garrett opened his door and the light came on. Beth’s face was a block of ice. “I’m going back to Piper’s,” he said.

“You can try,” Beth said. “But David won’t let you set foot in that house.”

Garrett stepped out onto the gravel road and slammed the door. “Bitch,” he muttered. The Rover took off sending a spray of stones and dust from its tires. “We were having sex!” Garrett called out after the car. He stood where he was, waiting to see if his mother would stop, but she didn’t. She kept on going, leaving him there.

“Well,” he said, to nobody except his father, he supposed. “What do you think of that?”

He headed home because he suspected his mother was right about David. It had been Piper’s idea to fool around upstairs, to hurry up and do it before his mother returned. Garrett was nervous and it took him a while to relax and concentrate on her body. Then, when his mother knocked, he was so startled that he pushed Piper away and made a mess of the condom and everything. Piper laughed at his nervousness, then she got angry. “God, Garrett, calm down. We’re practically adults. Anyway, this is my house. Your mother is trespassing.” Garrett felt ashamed at himself for acting so flustered. Piper was right. His mother was trespassing, trespassing on his life.

As he walked, Garrett thought back to the previous autumn when Arch had taken him and Winnie to Central Park to give them the “sex talk.” Arch warned them in advance that this was going to be the topic of discussion and so they should think up all the questions they had and Arch would do his best to answer them. Winnie was nervous about it-she did everything in her power to get out of going along-but it ended up being the best conversation Garrett could have dreamed of. Arch was funny and honest and realistic. You two will probably have sex in the next few years. Enjoy it. Use condoms. Be considerate. And, most importantly, don’t mistake sex for love. They are two different things that feel the same in the heat of the moment.

Reviewing this advice, Garrett felt a little better. He’d followed it to a “T.” He wasn’t sure what his mother’s problem was. He’d done nothing wrong.

He wasn’t surprised, though, when all hell broke loose the next day. Marcus went to the beach early to swim in the waves, and as soon as he left, Beth began to lecture Garrett and Winnie about sexual responsibility.

“It’s a private thing, an intimate thing between two people,” she said. “It’s not something you flaunt in front of your mother or anyone else.”

“I hear you, Mom,” Garrett said. “But you walked into Piper’s house. You were, technically, trespassing.”

This sent Beth into a flurry of expletives, at the end of which she grounded him from the car. Two weeks.

“Good,” Winnie said. “Because I want to go for my license and I can’t practice with Garrett hogging the car.”

“What about Winnie?” Garrett challenged. “Not flaunting sex in front of Mom’s face means Winnie can’t have sex with Marcus.”

“We’re not having sex,” Winnie said. “Why don’t you figure out what you’re talking about before you open your big mouth, lover boy.”

“This is bullshit,” Garrett said. He walked out the front door and considered taking the car-but that was a line even he wouldn’t cross-so he hopped on a bike and pedaled to Piper’s. Garrett rode as hard as he could, over the dirt road, hitting all the bumps on purpose. He hadn’t ridden a bike since the year before, and it felt good to get the exercise. He’d have to be in shape for soccer in September. He should start jogging, like his mother. But Garrett didn’t want to think about his mother or September, when he would be separated from Piper. Nor did he want to think about the sex in the bathroom, although his mind kept returning to the subject, as he tried to gauge how much of an ass he’d made of himself. Pushing Piper away, disengaging, fumbling with the condom, trying to hide the evidence as he heard his mother pounding on the door. At the time he hadn’t thought of Beth as trespassing; he’d thought of his mother catching him having sex with his girlfriend. That was enough to make anyone act like a moron.

He reached Piper’s house in less than ten minutes, but when he arrived, he was chagrined to see that both David’s pickup and the painting van were in the driveway. Meaning, David was home.

And not only home, but right there in the kitchen, sitting at the island with Piper and Peyton, the three of them drinking coffee. Garrett knocked on the frame of the screen door, although he had an urge to eavesdrop on the conversation. It looked serious-it was serious, definitely, if David stayed home from work.

All three of the Ronans looked up at the knock. Garrett expected Piper to run to the door, but seeing him seemed to cause her physical pain. She winced.

David was the first to speak. “Come on in here for a second, Garrett.”

Garrett sensed that his timing was bad. “I’m interrupting?”

“Not at all,” David said. “Because we have something to tell you. Both girls are leaving this morning to see their mom in Wellfleet. They’ll be gone until the fifteenth.”

“The fifteenth?” Garrett repeated. He tried to locate himself in the month. Yesterday was the fourth, today the fifth. The fifteenth was ten days away-ten precious summer days that he would not be spending with Piper. He gazed at her, asking her with his eyes if this was anything she had control over, but her face was deep in her coffee cup. So he guessed not. This was more parenting gone haywire.

“You and Piper may talk for five minutes in the driveway, alone,” David said. “And then she’s going upstairs to pack and I’m taking her and Peyton to the airport.” He checked his watch and carried his coffee cup to the sink. “Understood?”

Garrett, speechless, was already outside. He kicked at the pebbles of the driveway and waited for Piper to follow him out. Instinctively, they walked to the very end of the driveway, which was shielded from the house by a Spanish olive tree. Garrett took her in his arms and noticed for the first time that she’d taken the diamond stud out of her nose, revealing a sore-looking divot.

“What happened?” he said.

“I have to go. He’s seriously pissed this time. Because you and I were upstairs, but also because of Peyton. He thinks you and I, whatever, our behavior was one of the reasons Peyton ran away last night. He called Mom and they talked for, like, two hours. They both think this is the best thing.”

“You don’t think it’s the best thing, do you?”

She dropped her chin to her chest. “I don’t know, Garrett.”

“What do you mean you don’t know?” he said. “Do you want to be separated for ten days?”

“Not really.”

Not really? Garrett felt like his heart was going to explode. He wondered if she thought less of him because he acted like such a buffoon in the bathroom.

“I love you,” he said, and his father’s words popped into his mind: Don’t mistake sex for love. But Garrett wasn’t mistaken here. He did love Piper. Just the thought of not seeing her for ten days made him want to do something drastic.

She didn’t respond to his declaration. He’d always been good at reading other people’s thoughts, but here he was drawing a blank.

“You love me, too, don’t you?” he asked.

She touched her nose. “Yes.”

Garrett let out a long stream of highly relieved air. Then, he felt buoyant. They were in love!

“Five minutes is up!” David yelled from the house, though clearly it had only been three or four minutes. “Inside, Piper. Pronto!”

Piper kissed Garrett on the mouth, but chastely. “I’ll see you when I get back,” she said.

“Wait,” he said. “Give me your mom’s phone number. I’ll call you from town. I’ll call every day.”

She took a few steps backward, shaking her head. “I don’t think you should,” she said. “I’ll see you when I get back.” She waved, but in a way that looked like shooing.

Garrett watched her retreat to the house. His lungs ached; he felt like a scuba diver descending deeper and deeper where the pressure of the water was unbearable and there wasn’t enough oxygen to survive. Ten days! He waited until Piper reached the door, hoping she would turn and wave, but she didn’t. She stepped into the house-or was pulled in, Garrett couldn’t tell- and the door closed very tightly behind her, leaving him with nothing to do but climb on his bike and pedal morosely away.

Under certain circumstances, ten days could seem like a very long time. For example, Garrett imagined that ten days in prison would seem like a long time. Ten days of hard manual labor would seem like a long time. The first ten days after Garrett’s father died had seemed like an eternity. But even that didn’t drag on quite as long as ten days without Piper. Especially when Gar-rett’s favorite pastime became reviewing those minutes with her in the driveway in his mind.

On the bright side, Piper had told him she loved him. On the dark side was her response of not really, when asked if she wanted to be separated for ten days, and the fact that she didn’t want him to call her, and the more awful fact that when she left she didn’t kiss him with any kind of passion. The conclusion Garrett drew-the only conclusion he could live with for ten days-was that David had said or done something to scare Piper right out of her normal personality. She was sheepish, she was timid. Without the diamond in her nose she hadn’t even looked like herself; she was Wonder Woman without her magic bracelets. The only part of the conversation Garrett could really take to heart was the part when Piper said she loved him-because that one word, “yes,” had sounded completely sincere.

Garrett called up a favorite saying of his father’s: It’s fruitless to speculate. Garrett would simply have to wait until the fifteenth. There would still be plenty of summer left. In the meantime, he tried to make it through the hours. The mornings dragged, even when he managed to sleep until nine, which wasn’t often now that he was falling asleep shortly after nine at night. The sun rose at five and a stripe of light fell across his face around six-thirty, and that usually woke him. He figured he might actually knock a couple of books off his summer reading list. He finished Franny and Zooey, which he liked, even if he didn’t fully understand it, but then he got bogged down in A River Runs Through It. Talk about a boring book! Ten days would seem like a very long time if you were standing knee-deep in cold water trying to catch a fish without any bait.

The worst punishment for Garrett was having to spend time with Winnie and Marcus. They were so happy, so obviously a couple now, that it turned Garrett’s stomach. Winnie practiced driving the Rover with Beth in the passenger seat and Marcus in the back; he went along for moral support, Winnie said. Garrett thought meanly that Marcus would probably never get his driver’s license; he would never own a car, and could probably count on one hand the number of times he’d taken a cab. Still, Marcus joined the driving lessons, leaving Garrett alone in the house to contemplate the injustices in his life.

On the fourth day without Piper, Beth asked where she was. Garrett was shocked by the question. Although he hadn’t told anyone about Piper being banished to Cape Cod, he counted on Beth, at least, to intuit it. Why else would he be moping around the house?

“She went to see Rosie,” Garrett said. “She’ll be back next week.”

His mother raised her eyebrows. “She went to see Rosie,” she repeated. “How about that.”

On the seventh day, it rained. Winnie and Marcus started a Monopoly marathon at the kitchen table. The wind was out of the southwest and the house shook. Garrett helped Beth close all of the shutters and the storm windows, while Marcus and Winnie rolled the dice. Garrett watched them, stupidly wishing that he could play, but resenting them too much to ask. Beth, probably taking pity on him, asked him to build a fire while she went to work making a vat of clam chowder. Garrett got the fire roaring, then helped his mother by peeling potatoes and dicing onions. Once the soup was simmering, he crashed in the recliner in front of the fire and vowed not to get up until he’d finished A River Runs Through It.

He was eighteen pages from the end when the electricity went out. He heard a cry from the kitchen-“Oh, no! Our game!”-and he knew Beth would be rummaging through the utility drawer for candles and matches. Garrett put down his book and leaned back in the recliner.

You love me, too, don’t you?

Yes.

A few minutes later, Beth brought him a candle. “How’re you doing?” she asked.

“Fine.”

Garrett was surprisingly grateful when she sat down next to him.

“I don’t like being angry at one another,” she said. “This thing with you and Piper…”

“I love her,” he said. It felt brilliant to admit it. “I’m in love with her.”

His mother searched his face. “Okay.”

“You think we’re getting too serious too fast,” he said. “I know you think it. But you’re not me and you’re not Piper.”

“That’s true,” she said. “Do twenty-five years of experience count for anything?”

“You don’t remember what it feels like to be young,” he said. “You don’t know what I feel like. She’s only gone for ten days, right? But it feels like forever.”

“I do remember what it feels like,” Beth said. “I was in love at your age.”

Garrett felt a split second of connection with his mother, until he realized what she was referring to. “With David?” he sneered.

“Yes, with David. I was in love with him. We were having sex.”

“I don’t want to hear about it,” Garrett said.

Beth faced the fire. I know what I’m talking about! she wanted to shout. Please believe me! Instead, she said, “You’re so young, Garrett. Piper is just one in a long line of girls.”

Garrett held his book up so that it blocked Beth’s face. “See, you don’t know what I feel like. Because if you knew, you wouldn’t say that.”

“Summer does something to the brain,” Beth said. “It’s intoxicating. Everything shimmers. And when you fall in love in the summer, it’s the best love you can possibly imagine. Especially here. Because there are sunsets and walks on the beach and fireworks. But summer loves aren’t meant to last. They burn very hot and bright, and then they go out. Eventually, Garrett, they always go out.”

“You’re not making me feel any better,” Garrett said. “You’re making me feel worse.”

“If I never split with David, honey, I wouldn’t have married your father.”

He felt a different kind of sadness then, a sadness because the ease with which he used to talk to his mother was gone. Now, every conversation was unpleasant for him. “Please don’t say anything else,” he said.

Garrett waited for Beth to leave the room, but she remained next to him in the candlelight, lost in thought. After a minute of listening to the howling wind and the rat-tat-tat of rain against the shutters, Garrett returned to his book. He wasn’t really reading, he was skimming, because damn it, he wanted to finish. And more important, he wanted Beth to understand that his relationship with Piper was his; it wasn’t some reincarnation of her and David. She couldn’t predict the ending based on something that happened a generation ago.

Garrett finished the book and set it victoriously on the side table. Beth was asleep, thank God, and since there was nothing else to do, Garrett blew out the candle, eased back in the recliner and closed his eyes. You love me, too, don’t you? Yes.

That night, a gust of wind pushed open Garrett’s bedroom door. Garrett was tired, and he contemplated leaving the door open, but he felt oddly exposed, so he got up. Then he saw something move in the hallway. Somebody: Marcus slipping into Winnie’s room.

Garrett’s first instinct was to sound an alarm. Hey! Stop! You can’t go in there! This isn’t allowed! If Marcus were sneaking around in the middle of the night then he must be having sex with Winnie. So Winnie had lied to Garrett and Beth, lied right to their faces. Garrett was suddenly wide awake. He crept down the hallway toward Winnie’s room.

He stood outside Winnie’s door and suspended his breathing, thinking of his mother banging on the bathroom door while he was inside with Piper. Winnie’s door didn’t close properly, and when Garrett pressed his forehead against the door frame and squinted, he could see in. He was a despicable person after all, a Peeping Tom, a pervert. If you want details of someone’s sex life, get your own. He was a hypocrite! But he was propelled forward by his desire for justice. It was bad enough that Marcus was here for the summer, but having sex with Winnie! Garrett would turn them in; Beth would be forced to send Marcus home, and she would have to admit she never should have invited the kid here in the first place.

When Garrett peered in, what he saw was this: Marcus and Winnie lying in bed, fully clothed. Winnie was wearing her sweatshirt and Marcus had on a T-shirt and shorts. Marcus was holding Winnie from behind, spooning her, his chin resting on top of her head. They appeared to be sleeping. Garrett stood there for several minutes, waiting for more to happen, but nothing did. They slept. Like an old, married couple. Garrett stepped into the room and yanked Marcus out of bed. Marcus hit the floor, ass first. Winnie sat up, confused. She nearly screamed because she saw Garrett in her room. Garrett stood over Marcus with his fists in the air. He’d never fought anybody in his life, but he was going to fight Marcus now.

“Get up,” Garrett growled. “Get up, motherfucker.”

Marcus blinked, rubbing his backside. He squinted at Garrett. Here it was, his biggest fear realized, but Marcus found he wasn’t scared. He was merely annoyed. “What are you doing here, man?”

“Garrett, get out,” Winnie hissed. She climbed out of bed, pulling the bottom of her sweatshirt down over her rear end.

“No,” Garrett said, in a loud voice that he hoped would wake Beth. “I’m not getting out until Marcus tells me what the hell he’s doing in your bedroom.”

Marcus held his palms up. “We were sleeping, man.”

And though he knew this was the truth, Garrett kicked Marcus in the chest as hard as he would have kicked a soccer ball if he had an open shot on goal. His adrenaline surged. He hated the guy.

Marcus took the blow with a sharp release of air, and fell over his knees, guarding his chest with crossed arms. His breath was gone and he flashed back to a time, years earlier-before he became a master at holding his breath underwater-when a cousin had dunked him in the municipal pool and Marcus thought he was going to die. Where was the air? Marcus’s vision turned red, and when it cleared, he saw Garrett dancing in place, waving his fists. “First your mother causes our father’s death,” Garrett said. “And now you’re trying to screw my sister.”

Garrett’s leg shot out again, and Marcus felt like a dog being kicked by a cruel child. It felt like every mean word and deed of the past nine months was contained in that second blow, which caught Marcus in the windpipe. He fell over backward. Thinking of the hour and a half he’d sat, all alone and completely naked, in the swim team locker room as he waited for Arch; the way his father sprayed the baseboards of their room at the Sunday Sermon Motel with Raid to get rid of the roaches; how not one of their neighbors had spoken to them since the murders, and Vanessa Lydecker wouldn’t even open the door to her apartment when she saw it was Marcus through the peephole.

All Marcus could do was wheeze. It occurred to Garrett that Marcus was really hurt, possibly even dying. Winnie picked up the lamp by her bed. She wanted to bash Garrett over the head, but she was afraid of showering Marcus with broken glass.

“You asshole! You jerk!” she screamed. “How dare you! You kicked him! You hurt him!”

“It’s not fair!” Garrett said. “He doesn’t belong here, Winnie. He doesn’t belong in this house and he doesn’t belong in your bed.”

With slow deliberation, Marcus sat up, then got to his feet. His chest and throat throbbed with a red, glowing pain, and from that pain came a power, monstrous and terrifying, a sudden knowledge that he was capable of really bad things. Marcus’s lungs felt like they were bleeding and he couldn’t swallow, but that hardly mattered. He grabbed the front of Garrett’s T-shirt and threw Garrett onto the bed. He had four inches and thirty pounds on the kid, and Marcus marveled that Garrett had had the guts to come after him in the first place. But it incensed him, too. Garrett thought he was superior because he was white, because he was rich. Marcus punched Garrett right across his pretty face and instantly there was blood everywhere. Marcus backed away. He coughed a loogie up into his hand. The room spun. Winnie shrieked and dropped the lamp onto the floor, where it shattered. She was screaming now, screaming for Beth.

Marcus cut his foot on a shard of glass from the lamp. Now his foot was bleeding and maybe his lungs, and certainly Garrett’s face. There was blood everywhere and Winnie was going hoarse in her upper registers trying to wake Beth. Marcus stumbled forward and looked at Garrett who had his arms up now, shielding his face. Marcus wanted to call him a baby, a sissy, a pussy, but what he said was, “I’m not going after your sister, not like that anyway. We’re friends.”

Garrett tried to spit at Marcus, but he only managed to dribble some bloody saliva.

“Do you want me to hit you again?” Marcus asked. Wondering if fighting back all along would have been this easy, this gratifying to the dark side of his psyche.

“No!” Winnie said. “Look at him, Marcus! God, he’s covered with blood.”

The bedroom door swung open and the light came on. Beth entered the room in her seersucker bathrobe.

“What,” she said, her voice hoarse and murderous, “is going on?” She saw the blood and gasped. “Garrett!” she said. “What happened?” She spun on her heels and pinned Marcus with her eyes. “What have you done?”

It was the blood that was the problem, Marcus realized. Gar-rett was covered with blood and Marcus wasn’t. His mind skipped beyond explaining the course of events, beyond being sent home, beyond being found guilty of assault, and sent to a juvenile detention center until his eighteenth birthday. It skipped to this: They all think I’m just like her.

“Marcus,” Beth said. “What have you done?”

“I punched him,” Marcus said.

“Mom, you don’t know what happened…” Winnie said.

Beth didn’t seem to hear. She helped Garrett up and led him to the bathroom where she dabbed at his face with a wet towel. So much blood, but thankfully not much actual damage-a swollen nose, maybe, and by the morning, a black eye. Winnie crowded into the bathroom with Beth and Garrett, crying now, because this was all her fault.

“We were just sleeping,” Winnie said. “And Garrett barged into my room and started beating Marcus up.”

“Garrett beat Marcus up?” Beth said. “Looks to me like it was the other way around. Just look at your brother! Look at his face.”

Back in Winnie’s room, Marcus sat on a clean part of Winnie’s bed holding a wad of Kleenex to the gash on his foot. They all think I’m just like her.

“Garrett started it,” Winnie said. “He kicked Marcus in the chest, twice, really hard. He came into my room, he pulled Marcus onto the floor and then he kicked him!”

There were splotches of blood now on Beth’s bathrobe. “Gar-rett?”

Garrett inspected his face in the mirror. It looked like someone else’s face.

“Garrett attacked Marcus in his sleep, like a coward,” Winnie said. “So Marcus hit him back. Marcus only hit him once.” Winnie had seen in Marcus’s eyes, though, the possibility of more, and it frightened her. She ripped off a long piece of toilet paper and blew her nose. This was all her fault.

Garrett touched his eyelid. He had a sharp headache.

“Garrett should mind his own fucking business!” Winnie said. She wasn’t sure yet if her mother realized she had broken a lamp. Every piece of furniture in Horizon had, like, seventy-five years of history behind it, and so her mother would blame that on her, too.

Garrett raised his eyes to meet Beth’s gaze. He had no words.

“I don’t know what to do,” Beth said. “I don’t know how to fix this.” She wasn’t crying but her voice was so defeated that it was worse than crying.

Marcus stood in the doorway of the bathroom. His voice was gravelly. “You’ve been wanting to kick me like that since the first day here,” he said to Garrett. “And I’ve been wanting to punch you for wanting to kick me. Because I, myself, have done nothing wrong. I am not a criminal. All I did was show up. Because your father invited me. Arch Newton invited me.”

Everyone was quiet. Beth opened the medicine cabinet and hunted for bandages. God, how she wished she could just keep the kids separated-locked in their own rooms like jail cells, like cages at the zoo. This is too much! she wanted to shout, loud enough so that Arch could hear her. This is too much for me to deal with alone!

“It doesn’t matter what happened,” she said. “I want you kids to get along. For my sake. This is the hardest summer any of us will ever have. The name-calling has to stop. The fighting is unacceptable. If Arch were here… frankly, I can’t imagine what he would think.”

“If Dad were here,” Garrett said, “none of this would be happening.”

“Well, he’s not here,” Beth said. “He’s not here and so we have to deal as best we can without him. We have to deal.”

Winnie glared at Garrett. “Why can’t you just leave us alone? God, I could kill you!”

“Winnie!” Beth said.

“I’m sorry,” Garrett said. He was suddenly exhausted, and his longing for Piper was worse than ever. He wouldn’t be surprised if she never wanted to see him again. He was a mean, evil person and his head hurt. And his foot hurt from where he’d kicked Marcus, like maybe he’d broken a toe against Marcus’s chest.

“I’m sorry, too,” Marcus said. He snatched a bandage for his foot. They all think I’m just like her. He limped back to his room, thinking what he was really sorry about was that he would never get to touch Winnie again, never get to hold her while she slept.

Winnie went back to her room to sweep up the pieces of the lamp. Sniffling, because this was her fault.

Beth put ointment and a small bandage on the cut under Gar-rett’s eye. “Oh, Garrett,” she said. When she first walked into Winnie’s bedroom and saw Garrett bleeding and Marcus looming over him, she thought… well, she thought Marcus had attacked him, and her instincts were to protect her son. But now, she faced a feeling ten times worse: her son was the bully. Her own child was bringing this pain down on his own head.

Garrett missed his girlfriend. Then he missed his father. Then he missed himself-the happy, good-natured person he used to be. He couldn’t even thank his mother for nursing his wounds. He hobbled back to his bedroom; outside, the wind groaned. He deserved to die in his sleep.

Garrett spent the next few days hiding in his room, emerging only for meals. His right eye was swollen shut and mottled purple and green, and his mother, taking pity on him, bought him a bottle of extra-strength Tylenol for the pain. Marcus had a lump on his windpipe and a bruise the size of an egg on his chest. Winnie had broken an antique lamp-the only valuable thing in the whole house if you believed what Beth said. Horizon took on a cautious hush, like a hospital where everyone suffered from hurt feelings.

By the time Garrett’s face resumed its normal shape and color, it was the fifteenth. He woke up on that morning in a panic. He didn’t know when or how Piper was arriving on-island, and he certainly couldn’t ask David. He considered staking out the house on his bike, but that was psycho, and since he was finished with psycho behavior, he decided his only alternative was to sit home and wait.

Which was pure torture, a hell unimaginable-far, far worse than waiting for Piper when she was off-island was waiting for Piper when she was on-island, or might be. The key was to keep busy, and so Garrett joined Marcus and Winnie at the beach. They looked surprised to see him, but they didn’t get up and leave, though he wouldn’t have blamed them if they did. He swam for the first time all summer and the water felt great. He bodysurfed in the waves until his nose stung and his lungs ached and then he headed up to the house and made sandwiches for everyone, including Marcus, who said it was delicious after the first bite.

After lunch, Garrett started to read the third book on his summer reading list, Animal Dreams, by Barbara Kingsolver. A chick book, he realized after twenty pages, something added to the list to appease all of the neo-feminist girls in Garrett’s class. He put the book down, incredulous that the reading list should be so ill-suited to his tastes, and he checked the clock for the very first time that day. Two-thirty. Garrett went to the front door and looked down the long stretch of dirt road that led to their house. No Piper. He tried to be rational. She would either ride her bike or have David drop her off as soon as she got home. And it was Sunday, so David wouldn’t be working. Garrett stood at the door for a long time, long enough to feel desperation seeping into his skin. Garrett hopped on his bike and rode to Piper’s house, just as he promised himself he wouldn’t.

He cruised by the house, checking for clues. The yard was empty, thank God, since the worst thing, which Garrett hadn’t considered until he sailed past, would have been David out mowing the lawn. But no, the house looked quiet; both of David’s vehicles were in the driveway. Which meant what? Either Piper was already home or not home yet.

It’s fruitless to speculate.

Garrett rode out to Cisco Beach, then back home. It was 3:30.

When she still hadn’t appeared at seven o’clock, he began to feel sick. Sick like he had stomach cancer and was dying. He told Beth he wanted to skip dinner-they were going out for dinner, she said, to Bluefin for sushi, didn’t Garrett remember? No, he answered, he didn’t recall hearing anything about it, and besides sushi would make him hurl. His mother and Winnie and Marcus left without him, which was just as well. He wanted to die in peace.

At eight o’clock, he stood on the small deck of his room and prayed: Please let her still love me. Please.

At nine o’clock, there was a noise downstairs and Garrett, who was lying in bed listlessly reading his chick book, jumped to his feet. But it was his mom and Winnie and Marcus, back from dinner.

“We brought you some food!” Beth called out.

Despite his deep agitation, he was hungry, and solitude had proved to be more excruciating than company, so he decided to go down and eat. It was fruitless to speculate, he told himself. Maybe Piper had been forced into staying another day, maybe she missed her flight or lost her ticket and was stranded in Hyan-nis. Maybe she decided she didn’t love him after all.

When he reached the bottom of the stairs, his mother was standing there, and then the front door opened and Piper stepped in. For a second, Garrett didn’t know what to do or think. He was transported to a state of elation and relief that was beyond anything he’d ever felt. Tears blurred his eyes.

“Mrs. Newton?” Piper said. “I know it’s late, but is it okay if Garrett and I go for a walk on the beach?”

Garrett wondered why Piper was calling his mother “Mrs. Newton,” when before she’d always just called her Beth. Beth may have been asking herself the same thing, but she just said, “Sure. Of course.”

Piper walked down the hallway, through the kitchen, and out onto the deck without acknowledging Garrett in any way. Gar-rett spied the plastic container of jewel-colored sushi on the kitchen table, but his hunger had vanished. All he wanted was to be at the beach, alone, with Piper.

Piper descended the stairs to the beach in a hurry. She was practically running, and because it was so dark, Garrett worried she might trip. But he understood her instincts-to get to the beach as quickly as possible, where they could be alone.

When they reached the beach, Piper jogged to the left. Gar-rett ran after her.

“Hey, where are you going?”

Finally, she looked at him. Her nose ring was back in place, and Garrett took this as a positive sign. “I want to get away from the house,” she said. “Far away.”

She wanted to make love, then, on the beach. Garrett allowed himself a joyful yelp as he raced after her. And then she stopped, and he was able to gather her up in his arms.

“I love you,” he said.

She raised her eyes to him. Her long hair spilled over the shoulders of her jean jacket.

“Let’s sit down, Garrett.” Her breath smelled like cigarettes; she’d gone back to smoking, then, while she was away. But Gar-rett decided not to say anything about it. You love me, too, right? he wanted to ask.

“I missed you so much,” he said. “It damn near killed me to be without you for so long.”

She sighed. “I have something to tell you,” she said. “Something big and you’re not going to like it.” She plopped down in the sand and pulled him down next to her.

She was going to break up with him. She went away and decided that she didn’t love him after all. Here, then, was his punishment for attacking Marcus, for being a person so unlike his father that it was hard to believe they were related. Garrett took her hand. “What’s going on?”

Piper fell back onto her elbows as if the weight of her news was too much to bear sitting up. “My mother and I had a long talk while I was over there. A lot of long talks. I told her all about you. I told her your name.”

“Yeah?” Garrett said. “That’s good, right?”

“She knows you’re Beth Newton’s son, Beth Eyler’s son.”

“That pisses her off?”

Piper squeezed his hand so hard he thought she might break his fingers. “There was a reason why my dad didn’t want me to tell my mom your name.”

“What reason is that?” Garrett asked.

“They were married.”

“Who?”

“Our parents.”

Garrett was confused. Piper sounded so grave, and well, so horrified.

“Of course our parents were married,” he said. “They’re our parents.”

“No, Garrett,” she said. “My father, David Ronan, was married to your mother, Beth Eyler. In 1979. They were married for two weeks before your mother filed for divorce. They were married, Garrett. This is a huge secret they’ve been keeping from us our whole lives.”

Garrett wanted to tell Piper she was nuts, off her rocker. There was no way that what she said was true. “Did you… ask… your dad?”

She nodded. “Affirmative.”

“Did he have an explanation?”

“An explanation that took three hours and kept us from eating dinner. Do you want to hear it?”

“No,” Garrett said. Could it be true? he thought. His own mother married to David.

“Not only did they keep it from us,” Piper said. “But my dad said, he said, Beth told him that your father didn’t even know.”

“My father didn’t know?”

“That’s what Dad said.”

Garrett felt heavy and cold, like a piece of petrified wood. His mother had been married before, married to David, and nobody knew. Arch had been kept in the dark with Garrett and Winnie, dragged along to Nantucket each and every summer, oblivious to what had happened in their mother’s youth.

“What are you going to do?” Piper said.

“I don’t know. What are you going to do?”

“Aside from never trust my father again, you mean?”

“Yeah, aside from that.”

“I don’t know,” she admitted.

“Maybe we should run away and get married ourselves,” Gar-rett said. “They couldn’t stop us.”

“No,” Piper said. “They couldn’t.”

In the middle of the night, there was a knock on Winnie’s bedroom door, and she assumed it was Marcus, although he swore that after the scene with Garrett, he’d never, ever come to her room in the middle of the night again.

“Come in?” she whispered.

The door opened. Winnie was crushed and indignant when she saw that the person staring at her through the darkness was not Marcus, but her twin brother, who these days ranked right up there with the biggest jerks she’d ever met.

“What do you want?” she demanded. “He’s not here, as you can see, though it wouldn’t be any of your damn business if he were.”

Garrett sat at the foot of the bed. Winnie rolled away to give him room, though she didn’t summon the energy to sit up.

“I have some really bad news,” he said.

Winnie doubted this was true. One of the consequences of her father’s death was that really bad news no longer existed. For Winnie, the really bad news was that her father had been killed in a plane crash-all other news was only bad news, or usually, not-so-bad news.

“You broke up with Piper?” she guessed.

“No!” Garrett hopped to his feet and lunged like he was going to sock her for even suggesting such a thing.

“Calm down,” Winnie said. She liked saying this. So often it was she who was hysterical and Garrett who was the cool customer. Recently, the tables had turned. Her brother was a nut case. He thought he was so much older than Winnie-getting his license, having sex-but what he didn’t realize was that Winnie was maturing this summer, too. Her friendship with Marcus was helping her to deal with her grief and move on. He was helping her to grow on the inside, as a person.

“Don’t you want to know what the news is?” Garrett asked.

“If you want to tell me,” Winnie said.

Garrett eased back down onto the bed. Winnie yawned, looked at the clock. 1:30. Her heart cried out. The usual time for Marcus.

“I found out something about Mom,” Garrett said. “Something big.”

He was baiting her. He wanted her to jump up and down, begging, “Oh, please, Garrett, please tell me!” But first Winnie considered the possibilities. Something big about Mom. The words had the unmistakable scent of gossip about them. And gossip meant sex, right? So Beth was having sex with David. Winnie had to admit she didn’t love the idea. She wanted her mother to be happy, true, but she wished that happiness would be found in a place that did not involve any man other than Winnie’s father. However, this was childish, and since Winnie now eschewed all childish thoughts and emotions, like the ones Garrett so grossly displayed the other night, she figured she would have to be happy for her mother. She would have to celebrate this relationship with David.

“God, Garrett, grow up,” Winnie said. “Mom is an adult. She can do whatever she wants.”

“She lied to us,” Garrett said.

“Didn’t you listen to what she told us a few weeks ago?” Winnie asked. “That sex is a private thing?”

“Sex?” Garrett said. “You don’t even know what I’m talking about. I’m talking about a lot more than just sex.”

“Okay, fine, tell me. What is it then?”

Garrett paused. Of course, now that she’d asked, he was going to make her wait.

“Mom was married to David,” he said. “The summer between her junior and senior year in college, 1979. They got married at the Town Building here on Nantucket.” He leaned forward and whispered viciously. “They were married, Winnie, and she never told us. And worse than that, she never told Dad.”

Winnie felt the bottom of her stomach swoop out. This was really bad news because this news altered the way the whole world appeared. Everything shifted, reconfigured. Winnie recognized the reaction in her gut. Her father dead? Of course not. Her mother married before? Impossible.

“Where,” Winnie said, “did you hear this?”

“From Piper.”

“Oh, please,” Winnie said. “Piper is lying. Or she has bad information. Like, if David told her that, he’s the one who’s lying. He probably wishes he was married to Mom.”

“I thought the same thing,” Garrett said. “Except Piper heard this from her mom, Rosie.”

“So Rosie’s lying.”

“It’s a matter of public record,” Garrett said. “It’s registered at the town clerk’s office. David told Piper this. Anyone can go check.”

“So tomorrow,” Winnie said. “We’ll check.”

“I don’t need to check,” Garrett said. “I know it’s true.”

“I’m going to check,” Winnie said, “in the morning.” She paused. “And Dad didn’t know?”

“That’s right. Mom told David that Dad didn’t know.”

“He died without knowing,” Winnie said.

Garrett stood up. “I can’t believe her! I can’t believe she’d keep a secret like that from her own family! I want to wake her up right now and make her admit it to our faces.”

Winnie thought about this idea. She wasn’t ready for another big, messy middle-of-the night scene. Besides, Winnie didn’t want to hear her mother admit it. It would be too heartbreaking for everybody. Winnie felt betrayed-of course she felt be-trayed!-but she also felt deeply ashamed for her mother. Who kept a huge secret like that? Lots of people, probably, all over the world, every day. But Winnie didn’t like lumping her mother into a category with other secret-keepers and cover-uppers: the Bill Clintons, the Richard Nixons. It made her mother seem too fallible, too human.

“How long were they married for?” she asked.

“Two weeks.”

“Only two weeks?” Winnie tried to decide if this made things any better. She decided not; getting married was an unalterable fact, like having a baby. You were either married or you weren’t; duration didn’t matter. Beth had been married before. “Un-fucking-believable.” Garrett probably thought she was cursing to show off, but truly, that was the only phrase that came to mind. Beth had been married before, to David Ronan. For two weeks. She never told Winnie and Garrett, and, even worse, she never told Arch. This was like a brick wall Winnie had to scale without a rope; she had no idea where to find a fingerhold of understanding. Her own mother. Among other emotions was a raw hurt, because Winnie and Beth were friends. They were the female half of the family, comrades, confidantes, or so Winnie thought. Aside from Marcus, Winnie considered Beth to be her closest friend. And not only a friend, of course, but her mother. The first and last person she went to with everything. Her safe place, her absolute, final refuge. And yet what Garrett just told her changed all this. Beth was now someone Winnie barely knew, a woman capable of hiding a huge secret.

Winnie stared at Garrett’s shadowy figure at the foot of the bed. He was waiting patiently while she processed the news. Reality settled over Winnie: there was no one left in her family that she could trust.

“What should we do?” she asked.

“I have an idea,” he said.

Garrett’s plan of action was drastic and mean, the kind of get-even scheme that only the mind of a teenager could conjure. But Winnie immediately recognized that in this instance he was right. The twins would exercise the only power they had left, and they would do it secretly, the following night. The plan was so awful and so irrevocable that Winnie insisted they be positive of their mother’s guilt before going through with it. She would check in town the next day.

The morning was as bright and beautiful as any morning on Nantucket had been so far that summer, and yet for Winnie it was the start of a day of subterfuge, and that cast a gloomy pall on her spirit. She climbed out of bed as soon as she heard the water for Marcus’s shower, pulled on her jean shorts, which she wore almost as frequently as her poor sweatshirt, and padded downstairs. She stopped and stared at herself in the hallway mirror. Her face was tan, her hair practically white. Although she and Garrett were twins, it was much commented that Garrett resembled Arch, and Winnie was a dead-ringer for Beth. This had always made Winnie pleased and proud to hear. Her mother was no super model but she had a kind of clean beauty that made people think of good diet and good breeding and lots of time spent in the fresh air. Now, Winnie was appalled at the features she shared with her mother. Would she do something awful like Beth had done?

No.

Winnie sat out on the deck with a bowl of Cheerios, gazing at the water. This news about Beth had at least restored Winnie’s appetite; she hadn’t voluntarily fixed herself breakfast in four months. Winnie heard noises in the kitchen and dread clutched her heart. She could not face Beth this morning, and maybe not ever again. She wished fervently that she and Garrett were leaving for college in the fall. But unfortunately there was still an entire year of living at home with their mother before their escape into adulthood.

Winnie listened to the rustlings in the kitchen until she was certain it was Marcus, and then she relaxed somewhat. When she finished her cereal, she propped her legs on a second chair and lay back, basking in the early morning sun. It was far too warm for the sweatshirt, but she wouldn’t take it off, especially not now. Not unless she replaced it with a T-shirt that said MY MOTHER IS A LIAR.

Marcus joined her at the table with his breakfast: two peanut butter and beach plum jam sandwiches on raisin bread, a hard-boiled egg, a nectarine, and a giant glass of Gatorade.

“Hi,” he said. “You’re up early. Did you eat?”

Winnie didn’t answer except to move her hand indicating, Hi, so what, of course.

Marcus took a huge bite out of one of his sandwiches.

“I’m going into town this morning,” Winnie said.

Marcus swallowed and took a long pull of his Gatorade. “Really? Why?”

One of the things that made today so painful was that Winnie and Garrett had agreed to keep this a secret, at least until their plan was executed. This meant no telling Marcus, even though Marcus would understand. He was angry at his own mother; he practically hated her.

“I have to buy some books for school,” she said.

Marcus nodded, unimpressed. The best kind of lie, Winnie realized, was a boring one.

The worst kind of lie was the kind that Winnie uncovered at the town clerk’s office less than an hour later. Winnie was nervous as she entered the Town Building-it was air-conditioned and hushed with polished concrete floors. It had long corridors like a high school. The building felt different from the rest of Nan-tucket-this was an office building, where people worked. Winnie stood for a minute outside of the town clerk’s office. A brunette woman wearing a melon-colored dress and stockings and heels sat typing at a desk. When she looked up, Winnie walked away, the soles of her running shoes squeaking against the polished floor. Now she felt like an idiot, but she didn’t know what to say. What if the woman asked her for ID? She didn’t even have a driver’s license! She should have insisted Garrett come with her; he was better at dealing with adults than she was, but Garrett hadn’t wanted to come. He was certain of their mother’s guilt; he didn’t need proof.

Winnie decided to walk around for a few minutes. She climbed the stairs and the first office she came to was the DMV. How ironic it would be if she took her driving test now and returned home with her license. Even that would be enough to hurt her mother’s feelings. Beth was excited about waiting in the awful DMV room while Winnie took her test. She wanted to be the first passenger that Winnie drove legally on her own. Winnie hesitated; maybe she should take the test. That would be enough punishment for Beth, and then she and Garrett could forget about their horrible plan for tonight. Winnie closed her eyes and tried to picture herself parallel parking, but when she did, she saw herself hitting the granite curb and popping a tire. Winnie moved on: past the court rooms, past the passport office, all the way to the stairs at the opposite end of the building. Then, without options other than leaving or finding out the truth, she marched back to the town clerk’s office. The woman in the melon-colored dress looked up and smiled in such a friendly way that Winnie decided it was okay to speak.

“I want to check and see if my mother was married in 1979,” Winnie said. “Is that something you can help me with?”

Melon stood up and walked over to a large gray filing cabinet. “Name?”

Deep breath. “Winnie Newton.”

“We’re looking in 1979,” Melon said. “What month?”

“Summer?” Winnie said. “July, August?”

“And you said the last name is Newton?”

“That’s my last name,” Winnie said.

Melon smiled at her as though Winnie were telling a joke and she was waiting for the punch line. “Is that the last name I’m looking for?”

“No,” Winnie said. Oh, God, Garrett! “I’m sorry. My mother’s last name at that time was Eyler. Elizabeth Eyler. E-Y-L-E-R.”

Melon nodded definitively as if this made much more sense. She started flipping through the cards in the filing cabinet. “Nope, nope, nope,” she whispered. “Nope, nope, nope.”

Winnie didn’t know what to do with her hands. Putting them in the back pockets of her jean shorts seemed too casual, too teenagerly. She decided it would be more reverent to clasp them in front of her.

“Nope, nope, nope.”

A very small part of Winnie held out hope that this was all a hoax, a mistake, even a lie concocted by the Ronan family. How Winnie would relish telling Garrett he was wrong. If there were no record of the marriage here, then she would never believe it was true.

“Here it is!” Melon said brightly. “Eyler and Ronan. Oh.” Her forehead crinkled. “David Ronan? Your mother was married to David Ronan?” She put a hand up. “Don’t answer that. It is none of my business.” She handed the card to Winnie. “It’s fifty cents for a Xerox copy, and a certified copy costs five dollars and takes three business days.”

Winnie pulled a dollar out of her pocket. Thank God she thought to bring money! “Just one copy, please.”

“My pleasure.” Melon took the dollar bill from Winnie, and removed fifty cents from her desk drawer. Five seconds at the copier and a bright flash of light later, Melon handed Winnie the change and the proof of her mother’s betrayal. Melon smiled again, in an intimate way, and Winnie felt her face turn red. Melon obviously knew David Ronan, and now the news of his secret first marriage would leak out. But, really, what did Winnie care?

When she gazed down at the marriage certificate, the first thing she noticed was the word “Divorced,” stamped in large black letters across the top. Winnie scanned the paper, line by line. Bride’s name: Elizabeth Celia Eyler; Bride’s D.O.B.: May 2, 1958; Groom’s name: David Arthur Ronan; Groom’s D.O.B: September 18, 1957; Date of marriage: August 16, 1979; Officiant: Judge Leon Macy; Witnesses: Kenneth Edwards, James Seamus, Kelly Wilcox. The marriage certificate was all signed, sealed, and official-looking. It was real. Winnie felt like she might vomit up her Cheerios right into Melon’s typewriter. She pressed the paper to her chest, whispered, “Thank you,” and ran from the building.

She sat outside on a park bench with her head between her knees. Okay, this was really bad. This was-not the worst-but the second-to-worst. Her mother and David all signed, sealed, and official on a card in the Town Building where anyone could look, where anybody could get a copy for only fifty cents! Well, she and Garrett had been betrayed, that was all there was to it. Winnie tried to imagine what her father would do if he were still alive and he’d found out this sickening news. She tried to imagine him getting angry, except he didn’t get angry at Beth. He would probably say he was disappointed-not because Beth had been married before, but because she chose to conceal it. Deeper down, he might be sad and maybe even a little jealous. Arch, though, had a way of understanding and then forgiving other people’s flaws-Constance Tyler’s, for example. Arch might even say it wasn’t any of their business-but that thought evaporated immediately. Beth was his wife, their mother! This was their business!

Winnie climbed on her bike. She would go home and lay low until nightfall, when she and Garrett would inflict their revenge. What they planned to do would break their mother’s heart, but Winnie no longer cared. She had a copy of the marriage certificate in her pocket, made official by a younger version of her mother’s signature. Now it was Beth’s turn to learn what it felt like to be shut out, to be excluded from life’s most important knowledge.

Beth was out for a run when Winnie got home. Winnie wrote a note and left it on the kitchen table. “Don’t feel well! Please do not disturb!!!-W.” But of course Beth knocked on her door as soon as she got home. Winnie had anticipated this very situation and moved her small dresser in front of the door as a blockade.

“Winnie,” Beth said gently. “Honey, what’s wrong?”

“Period!” Winnie spat out. How she loathed even the sound of her mother’s voice!

“Did you take any Midol?” Beth asked. “Can I make you some chamomile tea?”

“Go away!” This in the most venomous voice Winnie could muster.

“You’re not acting like yourself,” Beth said. “Are you sure there’s nothing else wrong?”

“I am a self-respecting woman,” Winnie said. Her point being that the woman on the other side of the door could not be described as such. The bigger point being that her own mother, who heretofore had been a paragon of virtue, was now someone else entirely.

Beth tried the door and found herself stymied by the dresser. Winnie couldn’t help smiling with self-satisfaction. There was something about a house with no locking doors-everyone felt justified to barge in on everyone else. But not this time.

“Winnie, what have you done?”

“I said, ‘go away!’ ”

Silence. Then, “Fine, fine, fine. If that’s the way you want it. I’ll be out on the deck eating lunch. Let me know if you need anything.”

When her mother was safely down the stairs, Winnie whispered, “Liar.”

Later, there was a distinctive knock on the door. A Marcus knock.

“Hey,” he said. “Open up.”

For him-yes. But only him. Winnie didn’t even want to see Garrett until later. Winnie shoved the dresser aside and it scraped some green paint off the floor. Oh, well! Winnie didn’t care; it was her mother’s house. She’d finally stopped feeling guilty about breaking the valuable lamp. She couldn’t be bothered anymore about her mother’s heirlooms.

She opened the door to find Marcus holding out a plate: a BLT on toasted Portuguese bread with a handful of Cape Cod chips. Winnie’s stomach reared up. She hadn’t realized she was hungry.

“Your mother told me to tell you that these are Bartlett tomatoes,” he said. “Also, she didn’t put on too much mayonnaise.”

“Mom made the sandwich?” Winnie asked dejectedly. She’d entertained a brief fantasy that Marcus made it.

“Yep.”

“I’m not eating it.”

Marcus walked past Winnie into the room and sat on the bed. Winnie closed the door behind him and slid the dresser against it.

“Well, then, I’m going to eat it,” Marcus said. He took a huge bite out of the corner and tomato seeds slipped down his chin.

“I’ll have half,” Winnie conceded. She was hungry and had no intention of going down for dinner. She and Marcus sat side-by-side on the bed eating the sandwich and all of the chips, using a couple of Kleenex as napkins.

When they finished, Marcus said, “You’ve been up here all day.”

“Yeah.”

“Girl stuff?”

Winnie sighed and lay back against her pillows. “Let me ask you something,” she said. “What if one of your parents did something really bad-”

“Like commit murder, you mean?”

Okay, she deserved that. She thought about how to start over.

“What if one of your parents kept a secret from you your whole life. Like, oh, I don’t know… like they flunked out of college or had a child out of wedlock. Would you be pissed?”

Marcus shifted on the bed and glanced up at the ceiling. Winnie followed his eyes-there was a light water stain and a tiny black spider. Without a word, Marcus stood up, collected the spider in a tissue, and let it go out the window. Winnie marveled. Any other guy would have squished the thing to death. When Marcus sat down again, his eyelids drooped. After two months together, Winnie knew what this meant: he was shutting her out!

“Wake up!” she said impatiently.

“What’s going on, Winnie?”

Winnie chewed her thumbnail. Garrett had sworn her to secrecy, but that wasn’t fair. After all, Piper knew about Beth and David. Winnie motioned for Marcus to come closer. He rolled his eyes-she was being silly-but he leaned in.

“What is it, Winnie?”

“Mom was married before,” Winnie said. “She was married to David.”

Marcus straightened. Married to David. Well.

Winnie studied Marcus’s face; she was interested to know how someone else would react. He seemed nonplussed, like he didn’t get it.

“When was this?”

“When she was twenty-one years old,” Winnie said. “They were married for two weeks. And she never told us.”

“How’d you find out?”

“Piper’s mother, Rosie, told her and Piper told Garrett. I checked it out this morning when I was in town. I made a copy of the marriage certificate.” She pulled it out of her pocket, unfolded it and presented it to him. “Here. This is it.”

That explained why she’d acted so strangely at breakfast. Marcus knew she wasn’t going into town for books. He looked over the marriage certificate. “Did you talk to your mom?” he asked.

“Hell, no. I’m never talking to her again.”

Marcus guffawed. “What, over this?”

“Yes, over this. She lied to us, Marcus.”

“Maybe she had her reasons. Maybe she was embarrassed.”

“That’s no excuse.”

“Why? You can’t tell me you’ve never kept a secret from your mother.”

Winnie thought for a minute. She couldn’t think of a single thing she had ever kept from anyone. “I don’t keep secrets.”

“Some people do,” Marcus said, thinking uneasily of the still-blank legal pad in his room. “It’s called privacy.”

“Privacy isn’t okay under these circumstances,” Winnie said. “Besides, there’s worse news.”

“What’s that?”

“She never told my dad,” Winnie whispered. In her mind, this was such a horrible fact that it couldn’t even be spoken aloud. Her dear, departed father deceived by the woman he loved.

Marcus set the marriage certificate down on the bed. Here was Beth’s secret, then-the one she kept from her whole family but almost told him on the Fourth of July.

“You need to talk to your mom, Winnie,” he said. “You need to work this out.”

“No way,” Winnie said. “Mom is going to pay.”

“Pay? What do you mean, pay? You’re being ridiculous.”

Winnie bristled at this. “Shut up! You don’t talk to your mother. I don’t see you ‘working things out’ with her! She’s sent you at least three letters that I know of, and you haven’t opened one of them.”

“First of all, my letters are none of your business,” Marcus said. “Secondly, my mother did something really bad. She killed a woman and a nine-year-old girl. She killed them inside our home with a knife from our kitchen. I have a reason to be angry.”

“I have a reason to be angry, too,” Winnie said. “This changes my whole life. I’ve been deceived, my brother has been deceived, and worst of all, my father! I feel like my whole life is a sham. Anyway, Garrett and I have planned some revenge.”

“Revenge?” Marcus said. Winnie kicked herself mentally-she shouldn’t have said anything about the revenge. “You want revenge because your mother was married to David for two weeks twenty years ago? That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.” Marcus felt a wave of exhaustion roll over him. He closed his eyes and lay back on the bed.

“Don’t pretend like you’re falling asleep!” Winnie said. “You do that all the time when you don’t want to deal with reality.”

“Oh, do I?” Marcus asked, his eyes still closed.

“Yes, you do. Anyway, why are you taking Mom’s side? You’re my friend. You have to take my side. My side is the right side.”

Marcus stood up and studied the dresser in front of the door. “You’re crazy, you know that?” He moved the dresser with enormous ease and stepped out into the hallway. “You need to put your shit into perspective. You wouldn’t know a problem if one bit you in the ass.” He sounded truly pissed and Winnie groped for words to reel him back in, but then she told herself she didn’t care what he thought. Marcus was the person who was supposed to understand. Okay, maybe Beth wasn’t a murderer but that didn’t mean Winnie’s feelings weren’t hurt.

“You know what you are?” Winnie said. “You’re self-absorbed.”

“I’m self-absorbed?” Marcus said. “Sister, look in the mirror.”

“Fuck you,” Winnie flung out. “I wish I hadn’t told you.”

“I wish you hadn’t told me either,” Marcus said. “Because I used to respect you. I used to think you had a decent heart.”

“I do have a decent heart,” she said. “And this is a real problem.”

“Don’t get me going,” Marcus said. “If you want to hear about real problems, I’ll tell you sometime. But what I’m hearing now is you judging something you don’t understand. You need to talk to your mother.”

“I told you, I’m never talking to her again,” Winnie said.

“Well, then,” Marcus said. “It sounds like you’ve made up your mind.”

“I can’t believe you’re being such a hypocrite,” she hissed. “You don’t talk to Constance.”

“This isn’t about me,” Marcus said.

Winnie was so furious-here was Marcus making her feel like the bad guy!-that she slammed the door, but it bounced back in her face. Marcus walked down the hall to his room without another word. Winnie closed the door as best she could and moved the dresser in front of it. Then she flopped face-first on her bed. She didn’t understand. That much was true. She didn’t understand anything anymore.

The plan was scheduled for one in the morning, to be completed by three. Garrett had read that these were the hours that the average person-one who went to sleep at ten-thirty and woke at seven-slept most soundly. Before one A.M. a person was in light REM sleep, and after three the average person woke at least once to use the bathroom. Garrett sounded convincing on this point and Winnie conceded. After all, she didn’t want to get caught. She found it impossible to fall asleep, and thus lay awake in a state of fearful agitation, replaying her conversation with Marcus. After she skipped dinner, she thought he might realize that she was depressed and come up to check on her, but he didn’t. On top of everything else she had to deal with, now she and Marcus were fighting.

At exactly one o’clock there was the lightest of taps on her door. Winnie stood up. Her body felt tingly and numb; she was shaking. She pulled on a pair of jeans and picked up her flip-flops; they would be too noisy to wear down the stairs. When she opened the door, she found Garrett standing there with a strange, peaceful expression on his face. He, too, was wearing jeans, and his Danforth wind breaker. He held the urn in both his hands.

They slipped downstairs. The house made noises, but these didn’t phase Winnie. She was used to being awake in the middle of the night because of Marcus, and had learned that the house creaked, as though complaining about growing older. There was a little bit of light cast through the living room windows by the stars and a crescent moon. Garrett eased open the front door.

Winnie said, “I think I’m going to eat something.”

Garrett whipped around. “What?”

“I’m hungry.”

“Tough.”

“Tough for you.” Winnie went into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. There were always leftovers when Beth cooked, the remnants of dinner, all wrapped up: BBQ ribs, Beth’s macaroni salad, and three buttermilk biscuits. Winnie had smelled the biscuits baking earlier.

“I’m taking the biscuits,” she said.

Garrett narrowed his eyes. “You went three months without eating and now you can’t wait two hours for biscuits?”

“No,” she said. “I can’t. And they have to be warm.”

“What?”

“Or the butter won’t melt.” She put the plate of biscuits in the microwave and set it for one minute. Every time she pressed a button there was a loud, electronic beep. Garrett lowered himself gingerly into a kitchen chair, the urn in his lap.

“I can’t believe you,” he said. “Do you want to get caught?”

Winnie didn’t answer. She watched her biscuits, bathed in light, as they circled around inside the microwave. She took the butter dish from the fridge. Maybe she did want to get caught. Maybe she did want her mother to come down and find them both there, with the urn.

The microwave beeped five loud times to let her know the biscuits were finished. Garrett said, “I’ll wait for you in the driveway.” Winnie got a knife from the drawer, sliced open the hot biscuits, and put a pat of butter inside each one. Then she wrapped them in plastic; she could eat them on the way. But she needed a drink. She opened the fridge again and took out a Coke. Popped it open right there in the kitchen; it sounded like a cap gun. Winnie waited, willing her mother out of sleep. If you wake up, you can say good-bye! But there were no stirrings from upstairs. Whatever Garrett read about human sleep patterns must have been correct.

She walked out to the driveway carrying her snack. She took a swill of her Coke, then followed Garrett to the car.

The hardest part had been deciding where. Winnie wanted to scatter the ashes right off the deck-that way their father’s remains would become one with their property, one with Horizon. Garrett disagreed; he wanted to really hurt their mother by scattering the ashes somewhere she would never think of. After they’d bandied about several possibilities-the cornfields of Bart-lett Farm, the marshes around Miacomet Pond, the Easy Street boat basin-Garrett claimed he had the perfect place in mind. But they needed the car. Winnie was going to drive because technically Garrett was still grounded from the car. Winnie was nervous about driving in the dark but Garrett said he’d be right there in the passenger seat, helping. It would be easier, he said, without so many cars on the road.

They climbed in the Rover, just barely clicking their doors shut. Winnie held the keys. They felt foreign in her hand and Winnie was reminded of the only time she ever smoked a cigarette and she wasn’t sure how to hold it. She wiggled the key into the ignition and took a breath. This was the biggest risk: that Beth would hear the car. But, as Garrett pointed out, even if she did hear it, it would be too late. They’d be gone and she would have no way to follow them.

Winnie backed out of the driveway. Garrett peered through the windshield at the house and Winnie nervously glanced at her mother’s bedroom window. Nothing. Winnie pulled onto the dirt road, and when she was a safe distance from the house, she switched on the headlights.

Garrett leaned back in his seat, the urn in his lap. “Home free,” he said.

“Now will you please tell me where we’re going?” Winnie said. She resented the fact that Garrett got to choose their father’s final resting place. Winnie had also suggested scattering the ashes into the ocean-maybe because she was a swimmer, and felt more at home in the water than she did on dry land. But Garrett protested. No way, he’d said. Not the water. He’d referred to the map on his bedroom wall. Dad will end up in Portugal. Or the Canary Islands.

“We’re going to Quidnet,” Garrett said.

“Quid-net?” This was a part of the island Winnie had heard of but she couldn’t remember ever going there, and she certainly wouldn’t be able to find it on her own. “Why Quidnet?”

“Dad and I went there once, a few years ago. A secret road. A meadow surrounded by trees on one side and water on the other. It was a cool place, and I don’t know, it was like the two of us discovered it.”

“Where was I?” Winnie wanted to know.

“At home,” Garrett said. “With Mom.”

At home with Mom, the liar, while Garrett and Arch explored the island together. Winnie liked the sound of this less and less. Garrett was commandeering the mission.

“You know, Garrett,” Winnie said. “It’s not like it’s Daddy in that urn. It’s just the remains of the body that belonged to Daddy.”

“I know,” Garrett said defensively, but Winnie saw him clench the urn. Of all of them, Garrett was the most protective of the ashes-after all, they’d sat in his room all summer. To be perfectly honest, Winnie didn’t like to think about the ashes. Her father’s burned remains. She wanted to scatter them so they’d be gone. So she could be left with the memories of her father that lived in her mind. Dr. Schau, however, had reminded them in the final therapy session before they left for Nantucket, that scattering the ashes was an important symbolic act. It was one tangible way to say good-bye. Winnie felt a pang in her chest at the thought of Dr. Schau. After they did this, how would they ever be able to face Dr. Schau again? She would think they were evil children-stealing a coping mechanism, an avenue of healing away from their mother. And then there was Marcus: You wouldn’t know a problem if one bit you in the ass. It wasn’t as if Beth had committed a crime. She hadn’t hurt anyone physically, and she hadn’t broken any laws except for one that Winnie and Garrett held in their heart: We should know everything about our mother.

“I’m having second thoughts,” Winnie said. She clenched the wheel as they rumbled over the ruts in the dirt road, and yearned for her biscuits. She wanted one, now. She pulled over to the side of the road, located the biscuits in the console, and stuffed one in her mouth over Garrett’s protests. She drank some of her Coke. “Remember how Dad always said, if you have a choice between the right thing to do and the easy thing to do, choose the right thing?”

“Well, what about Mom?” Garrett said. “She chose the easy thing by lying to us for seventeen years.”

“It probably wasn’t easy,” Winnie said. “It’s never easy to lie because you’re always so afraid someone will find out.”

“Trust me, Winnie,” Garrett said. “We’re doing the right thing. She lied to Dad, too, don’t forget.”

“I guess,” Winnie said. Garrett was older than her by four minutes, and he had put himself in charge. But, in a brilliant twist of fate, she was driving the car. She could turn around and go back to the house; she could foil this plan. Winnie ate the second biscuit. The butter greased her lips. “I don’t know, Gar-rett.”

“Come on,” he said. “You’re the one with the marriage certificate.”

True, true. The marriage certificate was in the back pocket of her jeans. Winnie thought of Melon smiling at her with such compassion, as if to say, You poor girl. Your mother and David Ronan.

“You’re right,” Winnie said. She finished the second biscuit, drank some more Coke, and signaled left, even though there wasn’t another car for miles. “Let’s go.”

Nantucket was bigger than Winnie realized. She’d been coming here every summer since she was born and yet her experience of Nantucket consisted of the south shore from Cisco Beach to Surfside, and the roads that led into town. Once or twice a summer they drove out Milestone Road to get ice cream from the ’Sconset Market, and two or three times they’d done the Mile-stone-Polpis bike path as a family. But driving through the moonlight with Garrett and her father’s ashes, Winnie saw whole sections of Nantucket she never even knew existed. The winding dirt roads between Monomoy and Shimmo, for example. There were whole neighborhoods-lots of people lived here. How did Garrett find these roads? He went exploring with Piper, he said. He directed Winnie back to the Polpis Road and they cruised past Quaise, Shawkemo Hills, and Wauwinet.

Winnie put her window down and the night air rushed in. They had the radio on, the oldies station, hoping they would hear a song that reminded them of their father, and as it turned out, every song that played reminded them of Arch. “Here Comes the Sun,” by the Beatles, “Red Rubber Ball,” by Cyrkle, even “Puff, the Magic Dragon,” which he used to sing to them as kids. Winnie started to feel like they were doing the right thing. It was a perfect night, the island was as beautiful as she’d ever seen it, and their father’s spirit was filling the car.

Garrett gave her plenty of warning before her left hand turn on to Quidnet Road; she put on her blinker.

“You’re doing a good job driving,” he said.

This pleased her. “Thanks.”

He told her to take another left onto a dirt road. The road was bordered on both sides by tall trees that arched above them. A tunnel of trees, and every so often through a break in the leaves and branches, Winnie spied the crescent moon.

“We’re almost there,” Garrett said.

After a while, the trees on the left hand side opened up to a meadow, and beyond the meadow was the flat, calm water of Nantucket Sound. Winnie caught her breath. “This is it?” she said.

“Yeah,” Garrett said. “It’s cool, isn’t it?”

“You came here with Daddy?”

“That one time he and I went surf casting out at Great Point?” Garrett said. “We explored on our way home and found this place. He said he wanted to bring you and Mom here for a picnic.”

“Really?” Winnie said. “Where should we stop?”

“Up here,” Garrett said.

Winnie pulled onto the shoulder. The radio was playing Linda Ronstadt singing “Long, Long Time.” Garrett opened his door and they both blinked at the dome light. “Let’s do it,” he said.

Winnie’s heart pounded in her ears. She was unable to move.

“Garrett?” she said.

He came to the driver’s side and helped her out of the car. He kept his arm around her as he steered her into the meadow. There were Queen Anne’s lace, black-eyed Susans, and a thicket of low blueberry bushes.

Garrett opened the urn. He put the top of the urn by his feet, and when he straightened, he reached into the urn, but then he withdrew his hand.

“You first,” he said. “You throw first.”

“Why?”

“Because you were his little girl,” Garrett said. “He loved you best.”

Immediately Winnie’s eyes were blurred by tears. She sniffled. “Oh, Garrett, you know he loved us exactly the same.”

“He loved us a lot,” Garrett said. He was crying, too, and this made Winnie cry harder. She knew she would never forget this moment as long as she lived. Her twin brother, this hidden meadow, and the water beyond it, the music in her head, her mother’s secret in her heart. Winnie slipped her hand into the urn. The ash was fine and silky with a few chunks. The remains of her beloved father, the man she loved first, the man she would always love beyond any other man, even Marcus. Winnie called up the memories she had left: her father across the table from her at EJ’s Luncheonette eating his red flannel hash; her father in the balcony of Danforth’s indoor pool, whooping like a rodeo cowboy as a signal to her to give the last lap of the race all she had; her father on any one of five thousand nights coming in to kiss her good night on the forehead, never shutting the door without saying, “I love you, Winnie. You’re my only little girl.” He had been a great lawyer-that was why his obituary ran in all of the New York papers, including the Times-but he’d been an even greater father. This, she realized, was the highest compliment anyone could give a man.

With a wide, circling motion of her arm, Winnie scattered him, set him free, let him go.