Summer People

Chapter 6

J ust like that, Marcus’s summer was falling apart. He wished he’d never heard the secret news about Beth and David-it was family business and he’d been dragged in, first by Beth, then by Winnie. Marcus had promised Beth he would support Winnie, but her reaction to the news was so overblown, so immature, that Marcus could feel nothing but disappointment in her. Their relationship, whatever it was-boyfriend/girlfriend or just friends-was turning to rags faster than Winnie’s sweatshirt.

Marcus couldn’t figure out what the twins’ so-called revenge was, but there was a definite change in their behavior. They spoke very little to Beth, and when they did speak, it was in a cool, formal tone, the way you would talk to a stranger at a bus stop. One-word sentences, short, tired phrases, crisp and distant. Beth tolerated it for about a day and a half, then she confronted them at dinner. “All right, kids. What’s going on?” Garrett and Winnie didn’t blink, didn’t crack a smile; they simply looked at each other meaningfully and retreated into themselves, like a set of twins Marcus read about once in a magazine article who had their own spooky form of communication.

Winnie had also stopped talking to Marcus. When they occupied the same space-the kitchen, for example, while making breakfast or lunch-Winnie smiled at him benignly, like Marcus was someone she’d met once before but whose name she couldn’t recall. He wanted to shake her-this is not how you treat people when you’re angry! But Marcus didn’t want to give Winnie the satisfaction of knowing how much her behavior bugged him. After all, he had his own life. He had, he reminded himself with increasing guilt each day, a book to write.

He couldn’t stop himself from thinking of her, though, from listening to every word that came out of her mouth (mostly words directed to Garrett, or to Piper, if she was around). He couldn’t help himself from listening for her in the middle of the night; he knew her footsteps, and when they were in the house together, he kept track of her. One afternoon, as he hung out in his room, he heard her march up the stairs and stop just outside his door. He tried to steady his breathing as he waited for her to knock. Marcus was ready to forgive her-even to apologize.

Strangely, no knock came. Instead, there was a whooshing sound as an envelope skated across the wood floor. Marcus shook his head. It was just like a woman to write a note.

When he bent over to retrieve the envelope, however, he saw that it wasn’t a note and it wasn’t from Winnie. It was a Western Union telegram and that, he realized with a surge of fear, meant only one thing: Zachary Celtic. Zachary had bugged Marcus for a phone number, a fax number, an e-mail address-he wanted a way to contact Marcus to check on the progress of the book.

When Marcus reported that there was no computer at the house where he was staying, no fax machine, not even a phone,-That’s right, Marcus had said, I guess these people I’m staying with are old-fashioned or something-Zachary Celtic had grudgingly written down the address, saying he would send telegrams.

So here was a telegram, delivered by a person so angry with him that she couldn’t even knock on the door and hand it to him. Marcus slit the envelope with his pinky nail.

21 July

Dear Marcus,

How is the book coming along? No pressure, man, just checking in. September will be here before you know it! Call if you need guidance-that’s what editors are for! (And to rip the shit out of your first three drafts, of course-only kidding, man!)

Best regards,

Z

Marcus winced. Zachary Celtic wasn’t used to writing to black people if he thought the only name they related to was “man.”

The telegram reignited the panic that lay in the bottom of his stomach like cold kindling. With trembling hands, Marcus took the legal pad from his bureau drawer. My mother is a murderer. Even that was more than Marcus wanted to say. He tossed the legal pad onto his bed and opened the louvered folding door of his closet. His beautiful white shirt was the only thing hanging. Marcus’s black leather duffel lay across the closet floor, as hideous as a body bag. The only thing that made Marcus feel worse than the duffel was the pair of dock shoes, the left shoe stuffed with Constance’s unread letters. Those three things-the shirt, the duffel, and the shoes-were physical proof of the five hundred dollars he would never be able to pay back and thirty thousand dollars he would never see unless he could figure out how he wanted to tell his story.

Marcus lay back on his white bed. The dead bodies in your own apartment… your mother, pretty woman, too, strapped to the gurney, facing the long needle… the blood-splattered sheet… You get to tell the story in your own words, kid. I’ll bet that’s something you’ve been itching to do… Your mother as, like, an educated woman, a teacher and everything, and one day she just… snaps.

Yes, Marcus thought, she just snapped.

He didn’t know why his mother had killed Angela and Candy; he didn’t have an explanation and it wasn’t fair-to his readers or to his mother-to make one up.

Winnie and Marcus didn’t sit together at the beach anymore. Instead, Winnie sat on the deck with Garrett and sometimes Piper, and Marcus went to the beach alone. He swam the butterfly, some of his strongest swimming, because he knew Winnie was watching. He thought about how he could have won first place in every meet last season. He’d held himself back on purpose. Now that took skill, because nobody suspected he was throwing his races. Or maybe his coach did suspect and decided to keep quiet because he didn’t want Marcus to win. He didn’t want to face the headlines any more than Marcus did. MURDERER’S SON WINS ALL-QUEENS INVITATIONAL.

Marcus grew lonely, especially in the hours after dinner when he and Winnie normally played games. Now he stayed in his room, listening to his portable CD player, reading about spies, thinking about his mother.

For the first time all summer, he missed TV. And with utter dismay, Marcus realized that he wouldn’t be able to write a word while he was so agitated about Winnie.

He considered going home. It was nearly the end of July; he’d had six good weeks. The atmosphere in his white room wasn’t conducive to writing, that was a big problem, so the best thing was to get home-away from so much whiteness. Away from the Newtons.

He called home on a Tuesday night, enjoying the unconcealed intrigue on Winnie’s face when he stood up from the dinner table and announced that he was riding one of the mountain bikes into town. She didn’t say anything, but her eyebrows moved a fraction of an inch, belying her thoughts: What is he doing in town at night? It was likely she also had questions about the telegram-Marcus had checked the envelope and was relieved to discover there was no return address to give him away. Let her wonder. Let her wonder, too, when he disappeared for good.

It cost two dollars and fifty cents in quarters to get a line to Queens on the pay phone, and at first the answering machine picked up. Marcus listened for a few seconds to his father’s melancholy intonation, “We’re not in at the moment, please-”

Then, the voice was cut off, replaced by the breathless alto of Marcus’s sister, LaTisha. “Yeah? What?”

“Or ‘hello,’ ” Marcus said, thinking despite himself that even if the Newtons had a phone they would never answer by saying “Yeah? What?” “You could say hello.”

“Marcus?” LaTisha said, her voice interested, if not apologetic. “Is this Marcus?”

“Yes.”

“How are you?” LaTisha asked. “How’s Nantucket? Is it incredible? Dad says you never describe it.”

Marcus looked out at the darkened street. The shops were lit up and people strolled by eating ice cream cones. A Lincoln Navigator rumbled down the cobblestones and stopped in front of Twenty-one Federal. Two women climbed out wearing brightly colored sundresses, followed by a man wearing a navy blazer over what Marcus guessed was a Paul Stuart shirt. The man escorted both women up the steps of the restaurant while the driver of the Navigator-whom Marcus could only identify as a madras-clad elbow-called out, “Order my drink while I park this beast! Mount Gay and tonic!” How to describe such a place to his father or LaTisha? All Marcus could think was that this was the life Constance had visualized for herself-a life of glamour and privilege and ease.

“It’s fine,” he said.

“Fine?” LaTisha repeated. “That doesn’t help me any. What’s the beach like? And the house. Is it really, really huge? Is it a mansion?”

“It’s not a mansion,” Marcus said. “It’s just a house.”

“On the beach, right?”

“On a bluff overlooking the beach.”

“A bluff? That sounds cool. And the family-is the family okay, or are they, you know, snotty?”

“Snotty” was the wrong word, though Marcus understood why it was the word that came to LaTisha’s mind. Because that was what Marcus had feared, too, before he got here-that the New-tons would be snotty, snobby, that they would look down on him. That was the reason for buying the props-the shirt, the deck shoes, the leather bag. He had thought, before he spent any time with these people, that it would be about money. But it was ten times as complicated as that. The Newtons were just so very sad-as sad as Marcus was-and they kept getting sadder. Marcus cleared his throat and shook his head. He didn’t want to start feeling sorry for them now.

“The family is fine,” Marcus said. A blatant lie. “Listen, is Dad there?”

“It’s Tuesday,” LaTisha said. “He’s at support group until nine-thirty.”

“Oh,” Marcus said. He’d forgotten about the support group. The details of his life in Queens had all but vanished from his mind. “What are you doing?”

“Nothing,” LaTisha said. “Watching TV with Ernestine.”

Ernestine was a girl with learning disabilities from down the hall who had remained LaTisha’s steadfast friend through everything. Marcus suspected Ernestine lacked a full understanding of what had happened with their mother, but he was glad LaTisha had her for company, even if all they ever did together was watch TV.

“The house here doesn’t have a TV,” Marcus said.

“What?” LaTisha said. “You’re kidding, right? They don’t have TV? God, Marcus, what do you do all day? And at night?”

“I swim during the day, and you know, sit on the beach. I read. Listen to music. Hang out…” He almost said, Hang out with Winnie, but he caught himself. “I relax.”

Suddenly, LaTisha’s voice grew suspicious. “You’re calling Dad because you want to come home, right? Geez, Marcus, I don’t blame you. You must be bored to death. Well, I’ll be happy if you come home. I miss you. This place sucks when you’re not here. Pop is practically never home and I have this ridiculous curfew. Eight o’clock. It’s not even dark at eight o’clock. And if he’s not here he has Mrs. Demetrios check on me. I’m almost thirteen, for God’s sake!” She paused to catch her breath and Marcus pictured her young face and her skimpy braids. When Constance first went to jail, LaTisha cried all the time because Mama wasn’t there to do her hair. “I thought I might make a little money this summer, but nobody calls me to baby-sit anymore. They probably think… well, who knows what they think.”

“They probably think you’re going to kill their children,” Marcus said.

“Yeah,” LaTisha said, as though this were something she had realized and accepted long ago. “Anyway, things would be better if you came home.”

“I’m not coming home,” Marcus said. As bad as shit was, at least he wasn’t frying on the griddle of hot city blocks, or worse, trapped inside, supervising his sister, watching reruns of Three’s Company and begging the air conditioner to do a better job. He felt sad about this-home should be a place you wanted to run to no matter what. It should be a refuge. “I just wanted to check in is all.”

“Well, as much as I told you I was glad to get rid of your ass this summer, I’m really not. It feels like everyone is dropping out of this family.”

“I’m not dropping out,” Marcus said.

“I know,” LaTisha said. “It just feels that way.”

“You should… read more,” Marcus said. “Go to the library.”

“Library?” LaTisha said. “Now you sound like Mama.” Before Marcus could assert his obvious difference from their mother, LaTisha added, “I’ll tell Pop you called. You’ll call back-when?”

“Soon,” Marcus promised. “I’ll talk to you later, sis. Okay? Tell Ernestine I said hello.”

He hung up the phone then looked out at the charming Nan-tucket street. He was a person who belonged nowhere.

A few days later, there was a knock on Marcus’s bedroom door. Marcus had his legal pad out and was jotting down notes, if not actual sentences. It hardly mattered to Marcus-he was so relieved to have words on the page, even if those words had no more meaning than entries in a dictionary: “Princeton University,” “smack,” “petty theft,” “child prostitution,” “anger,” “social services,” “intent to kill???” Now that the ball was rolling, or if not rolling than at least moving, of course there would be an interruption. Marcus tucked the legal pad under his white pillows and grumbled, “Come in.”

It was Beth, a fact that both relieved and disappointed him. She looked awful-thin and desiccated like a plant that needed watering. She gave him a smile, though, and held out an envelope. Marcus’s first thought was, Another telegram. Leave me alone, man.

“From Constance,” she said.

Even worse! A fourth letter from Mama.

“Okay,” he said. “Thanks.” He took the envelope from Beth and dropped it on the bed in front of him as though he planned to read it once Beth left. Beth, however, remained in the doorway smiling at him. Then her friendly smile turned into a worried smile and she said, “Can I talk to you for a minute?”

This was the last thing he wanted, though he was surprised it had taken her so long to confront him. Garrett and Winnie had joined forces and so it only made sense that Beth and Marcus would do the same. Except neither of them wanted to. Marcus was used to being cast out on his own-that, after all, was what he’d expected from the summer: the twins wrapped up in their own exclusive cocoon, Beth lost hopelessly in the outer space of her grief. As for Beth, well, she believed she understood her kids well enough to know that whatever was bugging them would pass. But now their bizarre aloofness had lasted more than a week and showed no signs of abating. She needed help.

Beth closed the door to Marcus’s bedroom and sat on his bed. The letter from Constance lay between them, a boundary.

“I was just wondering,” she said, “if maybe you knew what was going on. In this house, I mean. With the kids. Winnie and Garrett. Their behavior. This isn’t like them.”

Marcus lowered his eyelids, an involuntary sign for her to stop. Obviously he knew what she was talking about; he wasn’t an idiot. The question was whether Marcus was going to tell her the bad news. He considered the consequences. If he told Beth the truth-that her secret was out-Winnie would never forgive him. Furthermore, the workings of this family were none of his business. He felt badly for Beth-yes, he did-but he couldn’t speak.

He shrugged.

Beth hooked his gaze, trying to pry him open with her eyes. “Winnie hasn’t said anything to you?”

“Winnie hasn’t said anything to me,” he repeated. “In about ten days.”

“They’re pushing us away,” Beth said. “It’s not like they’re openly hostile, but I’m beginning to feel like their butler. Know what I mean? I’ve been thinking of inviting our therapist to come for the weekend. Kara Schau-you’d like her.”

The therapist. Marcus supposed that’s what rich people did when they had family troubles-invited the therapist for the weekend. He shook his head, then eyed the letter.

“I’d like to be alone now,” Marcus said. “I don’t mean to kick you out of a room of your own house, but I really do want to be alone.”

What could Beth do but respect his wishes? She stood up to go.

“You’ll let me know if you learn anything?” she said.

The woman was just begging him to lie to her. Sometimes, he supposed, that was what people needed.

“Sure,” he said.

That night, Winnie went to the movies with Garrett and Piper. They didn’t invite Marcus along, and it took Beth to ask, “Isn’t Marcus going with you?”

They didn’t answer her, and Marcus quickly stated that he wanted to stay home. He went upstairs to his bedroom, listening through his open window to Winnie’s voice, her laughter, the sound of the car doors slamming. He felt so angry with her, and yet their separation didn’t seem to bother her at all. As the Rover drove off, Marcus pulled Constance’s most recent letter from the inside of his dock shoe and opened it. He decided he would read it, then throw it in the trash.

July 24

Dear Marcus,

Through everything I have never stopped loving you. I will wait as long as it takes.

Mama

Marcus crumpled the letter and threw it at the mirror. “It’s bullshit!” he said, louder than he meant to. “Bullshit!”

The fury in his voice bounced back at him from the white walls of his room. Beth was somewhere in the house but she didn’t call up to him. He opened the other letters; they all said basically the same thing: I love you, child… I think of you every… I pray to hear the sound of your voice…

“It’s bullshit!” Marcus shouted. God, it felt good to yell. It felt good to let go for once. At home, his father and sister would have been frightened, not to mention baffled, by his anger. He ripped the letters in half, though he yearned to destroy them more permanently-with fire or water. He stuffed the pieces of paper back into his dock shoe then threw the shoe at the door of his room, a fast ball. He pulled his notebook out of the drawer, tore out the single page that constituted the sum of his work this summer and started a fresh page.

Dear Mama, he wrote. If you loved me, you wouldn’t have done it.

Later, there was a thunderstorm. Marcus woke up to a loud crashing, loud enough to make him think lightning had hit the chimney. The house shuddered. Marcus lay in bed, listening to the deep rolls and sharp cracks of thunder. He’d never heard a storm like this before. He looked out his window-the sky flashed with light, bolts of lightning hit the pond in the distance, and rain poured down in sheets. Out in the driveway, he noticed the windows of the Rover were down. Winnie and Garrett had forgotten to roll them up when they got back from the movies. They deserved to have a ruined car-they were spoiled brats, both of them. But then Beth entered his mind. He’d already disappointed her once that day and so Marcus threw on a T-shirt and ran downstairs and out the front door. The rain pummeled his back. He dashed for the car. They always left the keys in the ignition, even when they parked in town. Any idea how fast this car would be gone in Queens? Marcus asked once. He turned the key in the ignition and put up the windows. Then he leaned back in the driver’s seat, straightening his arms to the steering wheel. He thought of driving away. But there was no escaping this island in the middle of the night. Marcus relaxed against the leather seat until it sounded like the rain was abating a little. But three seconds outside-from the car to the front door-left him soaked. He peeled his shirt off as he climbed the stairs, cursing himself for being such a slave. When he got into his room, he tossed the wet shirt onto his chair, missing Winnie by a few inches. She was standing there, in his room.

“What the hell?” he said.

She looked different. He switched on the night-light that Beth gave him the first day of their vacation so he could find his way to the bathroom. It was a scallop shell night-light and it glowed pink; this was the only time he’d ever used it. It gave off just enough light for him to study Winnie. She was staring at him. It occurred to Marcus that maybe she was sleepwalking. Then he pinpointed what was different-she wasn’t wearing the sweatshirt. She was wearing a short pink nightgown. Marcus felt his body temperature rise. He dug through his dresser drawer for a dry shirt.

“If your brother catches you in here, I’m dead meat.”

“He doesn’t care anymore, Marcus.”

“Yeah, right.”

“No, really, we talked about it.”

“I’m sure you did,” Marcus said. He imagined some elaborate trap-sending Winnie in here to give Garrett a reason to attack him again. “Where’s your sweatshirt?”

“I’m finished wearing it,” she said.

“How come?”

She moved closer to him. “I can’t explain it, really. I just don’t feel the need to wear it anymore. I might wear it once in a while, if I get cold.”

“Oh,” he said. Along with everything else, he felt betrayed that the shedding of the sweatshirt took place without his knowledge. Because Marcus knew that meant something bigger had happened, a change in Winnie’s brain or heart. He thought the retiring of the sweatshirt deserved some kind of ceremony, the sweatshirt that Marcus had worn once himself. He still hadn’t told Winnie about that, and now he figured he never would. “Well, congratulations.” Although he meant it, his voice was laced with sarcasm.

“Thanks,” she said. “It’s a good thing.”

The pink nightgown was sheer and through it, Marcus could see the outline of Winnie’s white panties. He was afraid to go near his bed, but there wasn’t anywhere else to sit, aside from the chair where his soggy shirt lay in a puddle. “Do you mind telling me what you’re doing here?”

“I came to apologize.”

“Did you?”

She lowered herself onto the bed next to him, and Marcus glared at the floor, allowing only the side of Winnie’s foot in his view. “I acted badly. I said mean things.”

“Yeah, and there was a lot you didn’t say.”

“I know.”

“You haven’t said shit to me in over a week, Winnie. You cut me out.”

“I’m sorry-”

“You can’t treat people like that. You’ve been horrible to your mother.”

“She was horrible to us.”

“She wasn’t horrible,” Marcus said. “She just kept a part of her past private.”

“An important part.”

“Fine, an important part. There’s no law saying that parents have to explain themselves to their children, Winnie.” He raised his head and looked at the brown smudge on the door where his shoe had hit. “My mother hasn’t explained herself. I don’t know why she killed those people and I probably never will. Everyone has their secrets.”

“I don’t,” Winnie said.

“Well, I do,” Marcus said. “I have a big secret that nobody knows about, but if I told you, you’d probably be mad at me for keeping it, even though it’s mine to keep.”

“I won’t be mad at you,” Winnie said. “What is it?”

“Why should I tell you?” he said. The nightgown left her shoulders bare-bare shoulders, bare arms, bare legs to midthigh. And her neck. For ten days there had been no Winnie, and now there was all this. “When you and I first became friends, I thought I wanted to be a part of this family. Now I don’t want to. You know the other night, when I went into town? It was to call my pop and tell him I wanted to come home early. Do you know how bad things must be for me to want to go back to Queens?”

Winnie touched his leg, and Marcus jumped up. This was a terrible room for confrontation because there was practically nothing in it. He crossed the room in three steps and sat on top of the wobbly dresser. His shirt was dripping, making a puddle on the floor under the chair.

“Please don’t go home,” Winnie said. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“What about the last ten days? What about not one kind word in ten days?”

“I was confused. And angry. And I thought you were angry at me. And Garrett-”

“Don’t even mention his name,” Marcus said, rocking the dresser back and forth. “I should have beat him blind when I had the chance.”

“Garrett and I have to confront my mother,” Winnie said. “We have to get this out in the open.”

“I told you that before.”

“I wasn’t ready before. I had a lot to think about.”

“Whatever,” he said.

“I’m sorry I slammed the door in your face,” she said.

“I’m used to people treating me that way,” he said. “I’m used to being shunned. That’s all I get at home. But here everything was different. Everything was better.”

“I was feeling better, too,” Winnie said. “Until.”

“Until.”

“My mother,” Winnie said.

“Your mother? What about my mother?” Marcus said. “Can’t you tell the difference between a misdemeanor and a felony?”

“No,” said Winnie. She rubbed her arms as if she were cold. “Anyway, I’m sorry I didn’t sit on the beach with you. That was mean.”

“I managed.”

“You looked good swimming.”

“Thanks.”

“Did you miss me?” she asked.

He shook his head. “I had other things to worry about.”

“I want you to forgive me.”

“What do you care if I forgive you or not?”

“I came here tonight because I want you to know how I feel.” She stood up and held her arms out like she was handing him something very heavy. “I feel like I’m in love with you. I’m in love with you, Marcus.”

It wasn’t until that moment that Marcus noticed the thunder was growing fainter, and so Winnie’s words seemed very loud to Marcus, so loud he felt the entire world could hear. His throat ached in the same place where Garrett had kicked him, and he realized he might cry.

“You’re in love with me?”

“Yes,” Winnie said.

“I don’t see why I should believe you,” he said.

“I guess you should believe me because it’s true,” Winnie said, nodding at the bed. “I want to be with you. Really with you. We’ve been waiting all summer for this. You know it as well as I do.”

Did he know it? He was too aware of Winnie in her pink nightie to answer. What would happen if he got his ass off this fragile heirloom dresser and went to her? Winnie pulled him across the room and pushed him into the bed, her skinny arms surprisingly strong from so much swim practice. He wondered again if this were some kind of trap, the big trap, the one that would get him sent away. Winnie ran her hand up the inside of his T-shirt and suddenly Marcus didn’t care who came barging in. He felt vulnerable, but the swirling tornado of anger inside of him was stilled, just from having her in his arms. He had missed her, this blond girl from Manhattan with all her quirks and flaws and rays of light.

“All right,” he said, thinking that the best life would be one where they could exist in an alternate universe, without their families.

She kissed him very softly on the lips, and slid out of her nightgown. Marcus remembered again of all those swim meets where he’d held himself back. Now, Winnie had given him the green light; she was waving him on toward the finish. Tonight, he was going to win.

Beth couldn’t believe she’d been so dumb, so blind, so naive. For nearly two weeks the twins’ behavior had been so inexplicable that she’d called Kara Schau’s office twice, only to learn that Kara was on vacation in the Hamptons. It was by chance that Beth went to the liquor cabinet for vermouth for a recipe and found the nearly empty bottle of Malibu rum. She knew for certain that neither she nor Arch had touched the rum in years, and so the culprits had to be the kids. They were drinking! Beth was chagrined that she hadn’t guessed the problem sooner and yet relieved that the answer might be so simple. They were raiding the liquor cabinet. She decided not to say anything about the Malibu until she figured out exactly what was going on. She wanted to check the twins’ rooms, which she did under the auspices of dusting one incredibly hot and muggy August morning. If they were going to be sneaky, well, then, so was she.

Winnie’s room was an organized mess. She’d started wearing clothes again, instead of just the Princeton sweatshirt. Beth wondered at this development but didn’t dare question it. She found the sweatshirt folded neatly on a chair in Winnie’s room. There were other clothes on the floor, some books, a journal. A glass of brown liquid on the night table. Beth sniffed it, then took a sip: warm, flat Coke. Okay. She made a few cursory swipes over the dresser and mirror, over the bedposts, and over the win-dowsill with her soft yellow cloth. Her spirit balked at the thought that in three short weeks, she’d be dusting this room for real-the final clean before closing the house for the winter. Although it had been a difficult summer, Beth hated the idea of leaving. The only way she’d made it through the spring was by thinking of Nantucket. New York was beautiful in autumn, and crackling with excitement-new theater, new restaurants, getting the kids back to school, the leaves changing in Central Park- but this year none of it held any appeal. New York was funereal, depressing, the site of tragedy. Beth understood that after the kids graduated from Danforth, she may have to sell their apartment and move somewhere less painful.

She walked down the hallway to Garrett’s room, wiping the frames of the watercolors that hung on the walls. Garrett was out with Piper, and Marcus and Winnie were at the beach. Beth was relieved to see that Marcus and Winnie had worked things out, although neither of the twins had spoken to Beth in a normal way in almost two weeks. She confronted them several times, but this only made things worse, and so Beth forced herself to let it go-it was just some awful, weird phase-but now there was the alcohol to explain it, and possibly worse things: marijuana, ecstasy, LSD.

Beth poked around Garrett’s room until she found a box of Trojans in his nightstand drawer. This stopped her cold, and she sat on his bed with the box-a huge box-in her lap. Well, it wasn’t exactly shocking, and she supposed she should be relieved he was using protection, but it made her sick-hearted to be holding physical evidence of her son’s sexual life. She returned the box to the drawer and checked in the closet and under the bed. There she found the trunk of her uncle Burton’s traveling artifacts. No six-packs, no baggies of weed.

Beth dusted the bedposts and the top of Garrett’s dresser. The urn of Arch’s ashes was sitting on the dresser and Beth spoke to him in her mind. I’m in way over my head here, babe. Sex, alcohol- God knows what else. You’re supposed to be here to help me. This is the heavy lifting. I can’t do it on my own. It didn’t help that it was now August, the part of the summer when Beth would begin to anticipate Arch’s two-week vacation. He didn’t love Nantucket the way she did, but she adored having him on the island for those two weeks, even if he did spend too much time at the dining room table working.

Last year, on the night he’d arrived, he was the most relaxed she had ever seen him. He’d come off the plane wearing his Nantucket red shorts and his Yankees cap backward, his white polo shirt untucked. He convinced Beth to take a walk on the beach with him after the kids went to bed. There was a half-moon hanging low and phosphorescence in the water. They held hands and caught up on what had happened the previous week- this time last year Arch was defending a major magazine conglomerate against charges of lifestyle discrimination, a case he eventually won. They talked about what they wanted to do with the kids over the next two weeks-picnics and outings and lobster night. Amid all this happy chatter, Arch stopped and presented her with a velvet box-but shyly, nervously, like he was about to propose. Beth took the box, knowing that whatever was inside of it was way too expensive and absolutely unnecessary, but marveling, too, at the butterflies in her stomach-even after twenty years. Romance!

The diamond ring. The “We Made It” ring. Because it was a moonlit August night on the beach below their Nantucket cottage. Because Garrett and Winnie were healthy, bright, well-adjusted kids. Because Arch had a successful career. Because after twenty years they were still in love.

“We made it,” Arch said as he slipped the ring on her finger. “It’s easy sailing from here.”

Beth wondered if she was remembering wrong. She didn’t think so. Everything had been that perfect, momentarily. It would be two months later that Arch took Connie’s case. It would be seven months later that his plane crashed.

Tears blurred Beth’s eyes as she lifted the urn off the dresser. It was lighter than she remembered; it was light enough to make her pry off the top and check inside.

The ashes were gone, and in their place was a piece of paper. Beth set the urn down on Garrett’s dresser and unfolded the paper. It took her a minute to realize what she was looking at, but then the names and dates, typed in their little boxes, came together. It was a marriage certificate. Hers and David’s.

The room was very hot and close and Beth felt like she was going to faint. She flung open the door to Garrett’s small balcony and stepped outside, sucking in the fresh air and the sight of the ocean. Beth considered hurling the urn off the balcony onto the deck below. But instead she clung to the empty urn, the urn that once contained the remains of her husband, and she carried it downstairs. A glass vase of zinnias sat on the kitchen table, and Beth removed the flowers and carried the vase outside to the deck. It wasn’t a particularly good vase, but it had been in the house for as long as Beth could remember. It was a vase that Beth’s grandmother used for her favorite New Dawn roses, which had climbed up the north side of Horizon until Gran died and the roses withered from lack of care. It was a vase that Beth’s mother used for the flowers Beth’s father always brought on weekends from their garden in New Jersey. Beth lifted the vase over her head and flung it against the deck. It was satisfying, the honest sound of breaking glass.

Let them cut their feet to ribbons, she thought. She then filled the urn with water and arranged the zinnias inside, placed the urn on the kitchen table, where they couldn’t miss it. She thought about ripping the marriage certificate to shreds and leaving that on the table, too, but instead she just crumpled it up and threw it in the kitchen trash with the coffee grounds and eggshells.

They knew about David and they had scattered the ashes without her.

Her instincts told her to get out of the house. She couldn’t see the twins; she would kill them. Strike them, at the very least. Garrett had the Rover, and so Beth changed quickly into running clothes, tucked two bottles of water into her fanny pack, and took off down the dirt road.

It was hot, and before Beth even reached the end of Miacomet Pond, she stopped to drink. How dare they-that was all she could think. How dare they delve into her past, how dare they unearth her secret, and how dare they punish her for it. They never thought what it might be like for her. They never considered how difficult each day was, each night alone.

She had visualized scattering the ashes at sunrise on the morning of their last day-out in front of Horizon, into the sand and the dune grass. She had planned to say something meaningful; she had wanted to write a prayer. Well, it hardly mattered now. The twins had stolen Arch from her.

Beth reached a section of dense woods on Hummock Pond Road. She wanted to disappear among the cool trees. Let the kids raise themselves since they thought living was so easy. Let them get from age seventeen to middle age without making any mistakes. Then Beth heard Arch’s voice in her head: Your mistake isn’t the problem, honey. It’s that you concealed it. She had hidden the truth from him, too, her own husband, dead now. On the ride home from the Ronans’ cocktail party six years ago, she had almost told him. Her joints were loose from too much wine, and just the fact that they’d spent three hours in the same house with David made Beth want to confess.

There’s something I want to tell you about David, Beth had said to Arch, as they sped through the night toward home. Something you should know.

Arch chuckled. I liked the guy well enough. You’d better not say anything or you might change my mind.

Even though she was drunk, those words registered. There was no reason for Beth to bring up the unfortunate, unchangeable past. There was no reason to upset Arch or herself. For years, she had felt her brief marriage to David Ronan was too private to share, and that was how it would stay. Her private history.

When she got home she was dismayed to find the Rover in the driveway. She had downed both bottles of water, she was slick with sweat and her vision was blotchy. She needed to eat, she needed rest. She couldn’t bring herself to face her children. What would she say? Where could she possibly start?

When she walked inside, the house was quiet and Beth removed her socks and shoes on the bottom step of the stairs. She might be able to forego lunch and just pull her shades and climb into bed. She was so overwhelmingly tired that she knew she could sleep until morning. But then she heard whispering and she forced herself to tiptoe down the hallway and poke her head into the kitchen.

Garrett and Winnie were sitting alone at the kitchen table staring at the urn now filled with flowers. The broom and dustpan were out, and beyond the twins, Beth could see the deck had been swept clean. When the kids looked up and saw her, Beth had a hundred simultaneous memories of their faces. She remembered seeing them for the very first time, when they were an hour old, sleeping in their incubators in the hospital nursery. She pictured them on their second birthday, their mouths smeared with chocolate icing. She saw them at age ten, the first time they ever took the subway alone-the six line down to Union Square where Arch was going to meet them. She visualized them in the future, walking down the aisle at Winnie’s wedding-Garrett in a tuxedo and Winnie in a pearl-colored slip dress, arm-in-arm, Garrett giving Winnie away. More times than Beth could count in the last five months, she had thought, It should have been me who died. But now, gazing at her children and the urn of flowers, that sense of guilt, guilt at surviving, vanished. She was their mother. They needed her more than they needed anyone else. Including Arch.

Beth poured herself a Gatorade. The only sounds in the kitchen were the cracking of ice, and the distant pound and rush of the waves outside. Beth drank the entire glass of liquid, then poured herself another. The silence was helpful. This was going to be the most important conversation she ever had with her children and she wanted to pick her words carefully. She couldn’t help herself from asking, “You scattered the ashes without me?”

Winnie traced a scar in the table. Garrett said, “Yes.”

Beth sat down; her legs felt weak. “Why?”

“We were angry,” he said.

Beth imagined Kara Schau as an invisible fourth party at the table. She would praise Garrett for identifying his emotions. Beth wasn’t as pleased. What she thought was: When you’re angry you break a vase, you yell, you resort to sarcasm. You do not deceive your mother in the cruelest possible way.

“Angry about what?” she asked.

“You were married,” Winnie whispered. “And you never told us.”

“That’s right,” Beth said. “I was married and I never told you.”

“And you never told Dad,” Winnie said.

“And I never told Dad.”

“You lied to all three of us,” Garrett said. “Your family.”

“I did not lie.”

“You lied by omission,” Garrett said. This was a legal premise that he’d learned from his father. What you didn’t say could be just as damaging as what you did.

“It happened a long time ago,” Beth said. “Before your father, before you. It has no bearing on your lives.” She swallowed some more Gatorade. “It is none of your business.”

“Except you’re our mother,” Winnie said. “We thought we knew you.”

“You do know me.”

“It doesn’t feel like it,” Garrett said.

“We want to know the whole story,” Winnie said. “We want to know what happened.”

“Oh,” Beth said. This she wasn’t ready for. She had devoted so much energy to not thinking about the details of August 1979 that to conjure them up would be like calling a voice or spirit back from the dead. “I’d like you to respect that it’s my private past. It’s not something I want to share-with you or anyone else.”

“Piper knows the whole story,” Garrett said. “But I wouldn’t let her tell me about it. I wanted to hear it from you.”

“Piper heard the story from David?”

“From Rosie, actually,” Garrett said, knowing that this detail, beyond all others, would prod his mother to speak. “So I wasn’t sure how accurate it’d be.”

“It wouldn’t be accurate at all,” Beth said. She was livid at the thought of Rosie giving away her secret. Rosie!

“Just tell us, Mom,” Winnie said.

Beth leaned back in the chair; it whined. “Where did you put Daddy’s ashes?”

They were both quiet and Beth watched them exchange a quick look. She wanted to tread carefully here because she wanted the truth.

“In Quidnet,” Garrett said. “We’ll show you where. Later.”

Later, meaning after Beth explained herself. It was blackmail, but what did she expect? These were teenagers.

“Where’s Marcus?” Beth asked.

“He’s in town,” Winnie said. When Winnie saw the broken glass on the deck and then the urn right there on the kitchen table, she’d warned Marcus that there was going to be a confrontation, and without hesitation, Marcus said he would make himself scarce.

“Go ahead, Mom,” Garrett said. “Tell us.”

It was nearly impossible to explain the romance of that sixth and final summer of Beth and David. But maybe not-because here were her twins, each experiencing love for the first time. Still, Beth feared she wouldn’t be able to convey the heat and light, the depth and weight of her love for David. It was their sixth summer together; they were each twenty-one. When they rejoined in late May they realized that they had grown into adults, or almost. David had moved out of his parents’ house and he rented the cottage on Bear Street. Beth was given full use of her grandfather’s Volkswagen bug, which still ran, though barely. It was the perfect summer. David worked as a painter six days a week from seven until three; Beth didn’t work at all. While David painted, Beth ran errands for her mother, helped out around the house, and sat on the beach in front of Horizon. Then at three o’clock, she disappeared. Beth’s mother was preoccupied with Scott and Danny, who, at fourteen and sixteen, were turning her hair white. Beth’s father flew in from the city every other weekend. And so Beth was free-she met David at his cottage at 3:15 and for her, the day began. They swam, they sailed, they went to the nude beach, and they raked for clams that they cooked up later with pasta for dinner. They went to bonfires and drank too much beer and fell into bed in the wee hours giddy and spinning. They made love.

David asked Beth to marry him in August. It was his day off, a Wednesday. Beth heard David rise early, before the sun was up, and when she opened her eyes, he was sitting on the edge of the bed holding a tray. A blue hydrangea in a drinking glass, a slice of cantaloupe, a bowl of strawberries. A bottle of Taittin-ger champagne.

“Whoa,” she said, sitting up. “What’s this?”

“Will you marry me?”

Beth laughed. She remembered wanting to open the champagne. She remembered David wrapping his hand around the back of her neck.

“I’m serious. I want to marry you.”

“I want to marry you, too.”

“Today.”

“What?”

“We’ll get dressed, we’ll go to the Town Building.”

“You’re a nut.”

“Next week, then. Next Wednesday. Will you marry me next Wednesday?”

“You’re serious?”

“Yes,” David said. “Bethie, I love you.”

Beth never actually said yes, but she never said no either. She got swept along by David’s enthusiasm and by her own desire to have the summer last forever. They were going to get married. But Beth couldn’t bring herself to inform her parents. She didn’t dare breathe the word “marriage” under Horizon’s roof.

Beth and David went to the hospital to have their blood tested. Beth bought a white sundress in town. She savored the tingly, secret excitement, the outlandish daring of it-she was getting married! They bought rings, inexpensive ones, plain gold bands, a hundred dollars for both.

The morning they were to be married, David rose early again. He returned with a huge handful of purple cosmos.

“Your bouquet,” he said.

Only when Beth saw the flowers did she have her first pang of regret for what had yet to happen. This was her bridal bouquet. The white crinkled cotton sundress hanging in the closet was her wedding dress. She and David were going to climb into the bug, bounce down the cobblestone street to the Nantucket Town Building and get married. David was absolutely glowing- he looked the way she always thought she would look on her wedding day. But it was a different wedding day that she’d dreamed of: six bridesmaids in pink linen dresses and six groomsmen in navy blazers. Her father walking her down the aisle. She hesitated. The trappings of a wedding didn’t matter. Who cared about a cocktail hour, a nine-piece band, chicken Kiev, and chocolate wedding cake? She took the flowers from David.

“They’re perfect,” she said.

Winnie and Garrett stared at her. Not in many years had she held them in this kind of rapt attention.

“Are you saying you knew you were about to make a mistake?” Winnie said.

“I had mixed feelings,” Beth said. “But you hear about cold feet all the time-a bride and groom are supposed to have cold feet. And I loved David. I was twenty-one years old. If I’d wanted to back out, I would have.”

When she emerged from the tiny bathroom in her white dress and rope sandals with the cork heels, David fell back on the sofa with his hand over his heart. “You look so beautiful you scare me,” he said. “God, Beth…” His eyes filled and Beth felt a swell of pride. This was exactly the kind of reaction she wanted from her husband on her wedding day. She wanted to bowl David over; she wanted to bring him to tears. Beth was pleased with how she looked-young and blond and very tan. The dress, while not a wedding dress, was perfect for a girl like her on a summer day. Her spirits lifted.

David drove into town but had trouble finding a parking space. It was overcast, and the town was filled with people lunching and shopping. Beth remembered being terrified that her mother would see her, or a friend of her mother’s. She squeezed the purple cosmos; they left gold dust all over her hands, and she had to wash up in the public restroom of the Town Building before the ceremony.

The wedding itself was unremarkable. A judge wearing Bermuda shorts married them in a room without windows. The room was empty except for a conference table and three folding chairs. The judge stood on the far side of the table, looking not so much like a judge as one of Beth’s father’s golf partners. Two male law students who were working in the probate court for the summer were brought in to witness, along with a secretary from the selectmen’s office. Those three strangers sat next to Beth and David in the folding chairs. The law students were just kids not much older than Beth and David, and they looked put upon for being asked to watch for ten minutes in the name of legality. The secretary was older, with kids of her own probably. She dabbed her eyes with a tissue as Beth and David said their vows. Before Beth knew it, it was over. She signed the marriage certificate, the judge in the Bermuda shorts kissed her cheek and said, “Congratulations, Mrs. Ronan.” He left shortly thereafter to meet his wife at the Yacht Club.

David and Beth went for lunch at the Mad Hatter, a place they went when David got a cash bonus for a painting job or when Beth’s father slipped her extra spending money before returning to New Jersey.

Their table, Beth noticed right away, had a centerpiece of purple cosmos, and there was a bottle of Taittinger chilling on ice. For reasons beyond her understanding, these details, arranged by David ahead of time, made her heart sink. He was trying so hard and yet it didn’t seem like enough. That was what Beth thought as she sat down. The two of them, alone for their wedding reception, didn’t seem like enough.

Beth drank nearly the whole bottle of champagne herself. Throughout lunch, David talked nonstop about plans: getting her things moved into the cottage, her finding a job, the fall and winter on Nantucket, a vacation in March-a belated honeymoon-to Hawaii or Palm Beach. Kids. (Kids! At the mention of kids, Beth laughed. She was a kid herself.) Beth ate a plate of fried calamari, then a lobster roll, then a hot fudge sundae since the restaurant didn’t have cake. A glob of hot fudge sauce hit the front of her white dress and she blotted it with a wet napkin, but to no avail. There was a spot; she was sullied. She reached for the champagne bottle, and finding it empty, waved their waiter over and ordered a gin and tonic. She felt David watching her. When she met his eyes, she saw so much love there it frightened her. She urged him to get the bill while she bolted her drink. When it was time to go, she had to grab onto the table in order to stand up. The ring irritated her finger. David led her out to the car, and when they got home they made love. Beth fell asleep before the sun even set.

In the morning, David left for work. It was lying in bed, alone and dreadfully hungover, that Beth confronted the gravity of what she had done. She had eloped with David. She went into the bathroom and looked in the mirror, which was still foggy from David’s shower, and she held her hand up alongside her face. The ring told the truth: she was a married woman. She took three aspirin then went to the kitchen for coffee and found the bouquet of purple cosmos limp and wilting on the counter. It was enough to bring tears to her eyes, but she didn’t cry. She was too scared to cry-scared because she was going to have to tell her parents.

She got dressed in the same shorts and T-shirt she had left the house in two days earlier and drove home. Never had Horizon seemed so imposing. Beth understood as she walked into the house that her parents might be angry enough to disown her and ban her from both Horizon and their home in New Jersey forever.

Beth found her mother sitting at the kitchen table-the very same table where Beth sat with Garrett and Winnie now-smoking a cigarette and drinking coffee, sick with worry because Beth had spent two nights away from home.

“You’ve been with David, haven’t you?” her mother said.

Beth nodded and then held out her hand to show her mother her wedding ring and her mother dropped her cigarette on the floor and cried out, “You’ve gone and done it! Oh, dear child, I have to call your father!” Beth’s mother flew out the front door in her housecoat, and drove their woody wagon to town where she could use the telephone. Beth picked the cigarette up off the floor-it left a burn mark, which she pointed out now to Garrett and Winnie-then went upstairs and packed her things and left the house, in her mind, for the final time.

A few days later, Beth had a job as a teller at Pacific National Bank, a bank where her parents, pointedly, did not have an account. Her hours were similar to David’s and they resumed the rhythm of their summer. Swimming, sailing, dancing at the Chicken Box. David called her “Mrs. Ronan.” Beth scanned the streets for her parents before she stepped outside. She expected her father to show up on their doorstep any second, but he never came. This made Beth feel even worse. Her father was finished with her. She began to worry that she would never see either of her parents again.

What Beth remembered most about the two weeks that she and David were married was that David was so happy. Seeing him so happy made Beth realize that she wasn’t as happy as he was. In fact, she was miserable. As she took deposits and cashed checks at the bank, she thought longingly of returning to Sarah Lawrence. She’d already registered for courses-courses she knew David would find elitist and useless: Discourses on Gender and Ethnicity, History of the American Musical Theater, The Literature of the Lost Generation, Etruscan Art. Beth wanted to finish college and then move to Manhattan and get a real job in publishing or advertising. She didn’t want to be a bank teller living in a rented cottage on Bear Street, estranged from her parents who had provided her with every possible advantage in life. One evening at dinner, which Beth now felt a wifely responsibility to prepare, she broached the topic of returning to Sarah Lawrence.

“I won’t live apart for another winter,” David said.

She took his hand; his wedding ring was already flecked with paint. “You can come with me,” she said.

“To New York?” As if she had suggested Mongolia, or the moon.

“You’ll like it.”

He withdrew his hand. “There’s no way I’m leaving the island. I have a job here. I want to save money for our future.”

“I want to finish college,” Beth said.

“We wouldn’t be able to afford a year of your college,” he said. “Plus a place to live, plus food. Your daddy’s not taking care of you anymore, okay? It’s me.” His voice softened. “I love you, Mrs. Ronan.”

“Stop calling me that.”

“What?”

“ ‘Mrs. Ronan.’ It makes it sound like you own me. You don’t own me.” She started to cry.

“Hey, hey,” he said. “I know you want to finish your degree. I’ll help you make some calls. There’s a community college in Harwich. You could take the boat over a couple days a week, maybe.”

Beth pushed her plate away. They had been married thirteen days.

That night, she lay awake watching him sleep. She remembered back to the evening she met him, six years earlier. David had just inherited a dirt bike from an older cousin and he was giving it a whirl up and down West Miacomet Road. Beth was sitting on Horizon’s front stoop, shucking corn with a paper bag between her legs. She watched this boy zip past then back again. He was shirtless and barefoot; his hair glinted gold in the last of the day’s sunlight. Eventually Beth became so entranced that she stood up and watched him unabashedly. He stopped at the end of the driveway.

“Want to go for a ride?”

Up close, the bike looked hardly sturdy enough to support him, much less the two of them. But Beth nodded-she abandoned the pot of corn and the bag of husks and silks and climbed onto the back of this strange boy’s dirt bike. By necessity, she linked her arms around his bare torso and with a sensation like a rocket launching, they took off. Beth was sixteen years old, flying over the bumpy roads at a speed she’d never imagined. The wind tossed her hair. It was the first time she’d tasted freedom.

In the morning, after David left for work, Beth packed her things. She left her wedding ring on top of a white piece of paper on the kitchen table, where he would be sure to see it.

Winnie’s eyes were wide. “Then what happened?”

“I drove home,” Beth said. “My parents were sitting right here at this table eating breakfast with Danny and Scott. Grandpa was eating shredded wheat, Gramma was having a cigarette and coffee, and the boys had scrambled eggs with ketchup.”

“You can remember that?” Garrett asked.

“Like it happened this morning,” Beth said.

The house had grown silent as soon as the front screen door clapped shut behind her. By the time Beth made it to the kitchen, all eyes were on her.

“I’m back,” she said brightly, as though she’d just returned from a semester abroad.

Her mother shooed the boys out of the kitchen. Her father methodically finished his shredded wheat-it was well known that even a fire couldn’t keep Garrett Eyler from his shredded wheat-and then he approached Beth, kissed her on the forehead, and grasping her upper arm said, “You did the right thing.”

At these words, Beth broke down. Her mother took over- leading Beth upstairs to her bed, which was freshly made, lowering the shades and saying, “You stay right here until the worst has passed.” As though they were expecting a storm.

What her mother was referring to, of course, was David, who screeched into the driveway in his painting truck at half past three. He pounded on the front door. Beth sat up in bed, petrified. She heard him yelling, “Let me see her! I love her! Let me talk to her!” And then Beth heard the low, calm tones of her father. “I’ve contacted my lawyer. It will all be taken care of.” The conversation continued-David’s voice growing so hysterical that Beth had to peek out the window. She saw her father and David standing just outside the door. David’s expression was so anguished, his voice so desperate that Beth collapsed and pulled her two feather pillows over her head. She didn’t listen to another word; she didn’t even hear him drive away.

“And that’s it?” Garrett said.

“That’s it,” Beth said. “That’s the whole story. My father’s attorney took care of the divorce. I didn’t see David again for several years, and by that point, we were both married to other people. And I made the conscious decision never to think or speak of it again. To anyone, including your father. I’m sorry if you feel betrayed, and I’m even sorrier if you feel I betrayed your father. But that was my decision. It was an event from my past. Mine. Do you understand?”

The twins nodded mechanically, like marionettes.

Beth felt drained. There were other things she wanted to discuss with the kids-the Malibu rum, the whereabouts of the ashes-but those things hardly mattered to her at this moment. The only thing that mattered now was that she had told the one story she’d tried with all her might to forget. The reason she’d tried to forget was because of the expression on David’s face that final morning. It was the look of a man whose dream had been crushed without warning. It was the look of a man who would have loved her forever, who would have taken her for a ride on the back of his dirt bike into infinity.

Beth stood up. She made herself a piece of toast at the counter, ate it in four bites, then went upstairs to her room. Her business with the twins was finished for the time being; they would have to process all they’d heard. What Beth realized before she took a Valium and fell into bed for a nap was that there was one more person she needed to talk to about all of this before she put it to rest for good, and that person was David.

Beth thought of biking or driving out to David’s house that evening before dinner (it grew dark at seven o’clock now, a sign that August had arrived), but Beth didn’t want to talk with David in front of his girls. She let a few days pass. Her relationship with the twins returned to almost normal, however they seemed to bestow upon her a new kind of respect-maybe because she had finally owned up to the truth, or maybe because they had never before imagined her as a person capable of getting married on a whim by a judge wearing Bermuda shorts. When Beth saw Piper, she, too, treated Beth differently, more formally, always calling her “Mrs. Newton.” One night, Beth screwed up the courage to ask Piper where David was working.

“This week, Cliff Road,” Piper said. And then, as if she knew what Beth was planning, she added, “One of the new houses on the left just before you reach Madaket Road.”

Beth decided to go see him the following morning, climbing into the Rover at the ungodly hour of seven o’clock. She wanted to catch him early, say her piece, and leave. Unfortunately, there was a blanket of fog so thick that Beth couldn’t see any of the houses from the road and she worried that she wouldn’t be able to find the right one. But then she spied two huge homes with fresh yellow cedar shingles on the left, and she took a chance and chose the first of the two driveways. There were a number of vans and trucks-one of them David’s.

Beth parked in a spot well out of everyone’s way and climbed out of the car. She began to feel nervous about this plan-after all, David was working. He had a business to run, contracts to fulfill; he didn’t need his old girlfriend showing up to rehash something that happened back in the Ice Age. Beth glanced at her car and considered leaving, but what if he saw her? That would only make things worse.

The house was so new that there was no front door, only an extra-wide arched opening. The floors were plywood, but all of the drywall was hung, and a boy of about eighteen knelt in the hall sticking a screwdriver into an outlet, which seemed to Beth a perilous undertaking. When the boy saw her, he stared for a second-clearly there weren’t many women on these work sites- and Beth was able to ask for David.

“They’re painting on the third floor,” the boy said, finally blinking. Beth wondered if something was wrong with the way she looked-she’d taken extreme care in appearing casual. Khaki shorts, white T-shirt, flip-flops, her hair in a clip. Beth thanked the boy and proceeded up the stairs, two flights, to the third floor, which was comprised of a long hallway with many doors- bedrooms, bathrooms, a big closet. Beth found each one being painted a tasteful color-buttercream, pearl gray, periwinkle- but she did not see David. The kids painting were all teenagers, too. Beth asked one of them if he knew where David was.

“On the deck at the end of the hall, drinking his java,” the young man said. This kid was very pale and had black hair to his shoulders. “You his wife?”

Beth walked away without answering.

At the end of the hall were French doors, one of which was propped open with a gallon can of primer. The doors led to a huge deck that overlooked Maxcy’s Pond, which through the fog, had a dull silver glint, like a pewter plate. David sat in a teak chair, drinking his coffee, reading the newspaper. Beth watched him for a second, his right ankle was propped on his left knee and the paper rested on his legs. His sipped his coffee, turned the page, whistled a few bars from the music inside. Beth realized how enraged she was. At him, at Rosie-God, Rosie- and at herself.

“This is quite a view,” she said.

He swung around so quickly he spilled his coffee. When he stood up, the paper slid off his lap onto the deck.

“Beth,” he said. “What are you doing here?”

“I had a sneaking suspicion you didn’t actually work,” Beth said. “And I see now that I was correct.”

David wiped the coffee off his arm with a napkin, then he folded the paper up, but seemed at a loss for what to do with it, so he tucked it between the rails of the deck. It slipped through the rails and fluttered to the ground, three stories below. Beth took the chair next to his.

David gazed glumly at the newspaper below. “I’ve been here since five-thirty getting my guys set up,” he said. “I was taking my coffee break.”

“Not a bad life,” Beth said.

“Why are you here?” David asked. “You certainly didn’t come to praise my choice of career.”

“You know why I came.”

He looked at her in that old, intense way that made the bottom of Beth’s stomach swoop out. “I had nothing to do with it,” David said. “Rosie told them.”

“Oh, I know,” Beth said. “That only makes it worse.”

“She’s been wanting to tell the girls for years,” David said. “She was just waiting for the opportunity to present itself.” David sank into his seat. “Finding out that Piper was dating your son was irresistible.”

“It’s none of her business,” Beth said in a tight voice. She felt herself losing control and she reached for her mental reins. She breathed in through her nose; her ears were ringing with the injustice of it. Rosie kept the secret for twenty-five years only to let it splash at the worst possible time. “It’s nobody’s business but ours. Yours and mine.”

“We were married, Beth.” David looked at her, as if for confirmation, and she nodded. “It’s a part of your past you have to face.”

“But that’s what I mean,” Beth said. “Why shouldn’t I be able to face it when I want, or not at all? It belongs to me. But no one else thinks that way. You don’t believe I have a right to my own past, and neither do my kids. So I was forced to tell them the story about you and me and that summer, the cottage, the blood tests, the cosmos, the judge. I told them everything. Okay? I hope you’re happy.”

David was quiet for a moment. “How did you explain the part where you left me?”

“I explained it like it happened.”

“And how, exactly, did it happen?” David asked. He raised his palms and showed them to her, then he placed them on the sides of her face. She pulled back-this was already too much contact-but his hands held her steady. In her mind, she saw a struggle, she sailed over the deck’s railing to the ground where the newspaper lay in the mud.

“Let go of me,” she said, as calmly as she could.

“I loved you,” he said. “And you left me.”

“Yes,” she said.

He dropped his hands from her face and stuffed them into the pockets of his gray canvas shorts. Beth gazed at his tan legs fleeced with golden hairs, his crooked toes. His person was so familiar to her and yet he had changed. They were both different people now from the characters in the story she had told the twins. She noticed for the first time some gray hairs around his ears.

“I’ve thought about it so much this summer,” David said. “I haven’t seen you in what-three weeks? four?-and yet I’ve thought about you every day. I thought about kissing you.”

“David.”

“I thought about making love to you.”

“David!”

“And I asked myself over and over, What do you really want from this woman? She just lost her husband. What do you really expect?” He grabbed onto the rail and leaned forward as though he were the one contemplating a headlong dive. “Do you know what I decided?”

“What?”

“I want to know why you left me.”

Beth bounced on her toes. She felt the bike path calling her. She didn’t want to explain herself; she wanted to run away, just as she had twenty-five years ago.

“There were a lot of reasons,” Beth said. “Mostly, I wanted to finish college.”

“You could have finished on the Cape.”

“I wanted to finish at Sarah Lawrence.”

“You have no idea how snotty you sound,” he said.

“Maybe that is snotty, or maybe I just like to finish what I start.”

“Except in the case of our marriage,” David said.

Beth stared at the pond, which was a shade darker now. It was going to rain. “I couldn’t stand to disappoint my parents.”

“Now we’re getting somewhere.”

“I wanted to live my life the right way, David. Graduate, get a job, get married in a church with my parents’ blessing.”

“You were a coward,” David said. “You weren’t brave enough to follow your heart. When you actually agreed to marry me, I thought I had changed you into the kind of person who took risks. But when you left I saw that you were the same scared little girl you were at sixteen. Afraid of doing anything wrong, afraid of being your own person.”

He was trying to hurt her and she couldn’t blame him. At the time, Beth felt she had a choice between pleasing her parents and pleasing David, and, in the end, she chose her parents. But deep down, Beth also knew she was doing what was right. Thinking about that lunch at the Mad Hatter made her cringe inside, even now. She wouldn’t have lasted eighteen years as David’s wife. She would have taken off long before Rosie had. This, however, wasn’t a sentiment that ever needed to be spoken out loud, even if David was prodding her to admit it.

“I acted as my own person,” she declared. “I left of my own free will, because I knew it would be better for both of us.”

“Well, it wasn’t better for me.”

Beth stood up. “What is it you want me to say? That I’m sorry? Of course I’m sorry! Of course I remember what happened. When I was telling the story to the kids, I remembered every single detail down to what Danny and Scott were eating for breakfast the morning I went back home.” She glanced at David and was dismayed to see that there were tears in his eyes. Why was he ripping the scab off this old wound? Leave it alone! she pleaded silently. We’re old now. We have gray hair. “I was wrong for the way I left you. I was wrong not to tell you to your face, but I simply couldn’t. I was afraid. I knew I was going to hurt you and I didn’t have the courage to sit and watch. I loved you, David, in that blind way that teenagers love each other. But I was smart enough to realize that it wasn’t love for the long haul. When I left, I did us both a favor. That doesn’t make it right. I’m sorry. Even now, I’m sorry.”

“You didn’t do me a favor by leaving,” David said. He lay across the chair like he’d been shot. His neck was exposed, and his Adam’s apple; she could see his pulse. Beth imagined her young self climbing onto the back of his dirt bike, and holding on to him for dear life. Kicking up dust into the sunset. That was how this all started, and this was how it was going to end, here on the deck of a complete stranger’s house.

“I am sorry, David.”

“So am I.”

They remained silent until the first raindrops fell, and then Beth announced that she should let him get back to work.

“I’ll see you out,” he said.

They walked down the hall, past the rooms with their heavy smells of paint and blaring music and the teenage boys who would ask one another on their lunch break if Beth was David’s estranged wife. A few of the kids would say yes, a few would say no, and nobody, Beth realized, would be completely wrong.