The Beach Club

9 September

September 4

Dear Bill,

I am not one to say ‘I told you so,’ however, I do believe the abrupt departure of your daughter should send you a clear message. She isn’t interested in the hotel, as I suspected. She has deserted it, and you. Your manager, Mack, is in line to leave next if you don’t do something about it. The time has never been better for you to sell. What are you waiting for? A sign from God?

S.B.T .

September: It used to be Bill’s favorite month of the year. After Labor Day weekend, the Beach Club closed and the property quieted down; it gained serenity. But Bill couldn’t enjoy September without Cecily. He couldn’t stomach listening to one more back-to-school-sale commercial on the radio, knowing that Cecily wasn’t matriculating at the University of Virginia that fall. Bill didn’t know where Cecily was or what she was doing. He had a horrible, recurring image: Cecily wandering through the streets of Rio, trailed by a gang of brown-skinned Brazilian boys wearing gray camouflage, carrying switchblades and razors, intent on raping and killing her.

He read and reread his latest letter from S.B.T. Who the hell was this guy, some kind of spy? That ass Comatis who had hired away Mack? Bill ran through the list of Beach Club members, but he came up empty. One thing was for sure: the letters from S.B.T. were eating at him. What are you waiting for? A sign from God? Yes, he thought. Exactly.

Bill had lost all his energy, and worse, his chest pain returned, a dull ache around his heart. He missed his daughter and he feared for the future of his hotel. The only thing he could do with ease was lie in bed with the remote control, flipping between channels to make sure there were no news stories about young American girls raped and killed abroad. It was far easier to watch TV than it was to read poetry. TV was colorful, silly, full of laughter and melodrama. TV made Robert Frost seem as exciting as a pile of dry twigs. Mornings after Cecily had left, Bill let himself get sucked into the TV.

That was how he first heard about Freida.

September 8, the Tuesday after Labor Day, Frieda was born in the West Indies. The National Hurricane Center in Miami posted a bulletin: She was a mean storm. The newscasters on the weather channel showed fancy graphics-Freida, a swirling, multicolored eye, 210 miles wide with sustained winds of 93 miles an hour, moving up the eastern seaboard. They expected her to make landfall around Cape Hatteras, but the following areas could expect trouble from Freida as well: the Chesapeake Bay, Long Island Sound, Nantucket. Nantucket. The newscaster said the name of the island and Bill felt a surge of recognition, as though his own name were being spoken aloud on national TV. He wondered if Cecily was listening.

“Nantucket?” Bill said.

“Of course the storm may miss Nantucket altogether and head northeast out to sea,” the newscaster said.

By the time Bill made it down to the lobby, everyone was abuzz about Freida’s arrival. Love talked to a couple about where the experts tracked Freida, and how she might move along, or might lose energy and scatter, dissipate. They discussed Freida as though she were a person. Was she organized? Did she have weak spots?

Mack waited in Bill’s office, tensed, pumped up, ready to pounce. “Did you hear?” he said. “We’re going to get creamed.”

Out the window, it was the perfect September day, though still hot at eighty-five degrees. The sky was blue, the water flat. No clouds.

“We’ll see. They said it might veer off into the North Atlantic. That’s what they usually do. This island hasn’t seen a bona fide hurricane since 1954.”

“What’s our plan of attack?” Mack asked.

A wave of exhaustion swept over Bill. It was ten-thirty and he wanted to put his head on the desk and sleep. “We’re not going to do anything.”

“What do you mean?” Mack said. “We have to board up. We have to bring everything inside. It’s a hurricane, Bill.”

Bill took a deep breath and closed his eyes. The Brazilian boys were gaining ground on Cecily, getting closer. They were after his daughter. Somehow, Bill had to flush that image.

“Bill?” Mack said. “Freida is going to hit the island from the west. She’s two hundred miles wide. Do you realize how big that is?”

“It sounds like you want this hurricane to come,” Bill said. “It sounds like maybe you want to watch the place get flooded. That would be fun for you, wouldn’t it? Watch the place wash away and then take off for Fenway Park.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Mack said. “I don’t want the hurricane to come. But I’d like to be ready. There are people sitting in the rooms, facing the water.”

“What do you care if the hotel gets wrecked? You’re leaving at the end of the season.” Bill was short of breath. “Tell me,” he said. “I’d really like to know. What do you care?”

“I care,” Mack said. “I’ve worked here for twelve years. Believe me, I care.”

“Obviously not enough,” Bill said. His chest was on fire. “Get out.” He pointed to the door. “I don’t want to talk about the storm. Now get out!”

Mack’s eyes widened. He pressed his lips together and left the office.

Bill leaned back in his swivel chair and tried to take several deep breaths. In, out. In, out. His heart thrummed in his ears. He picked up the picture of Cecily that he kept on his desk. Cecily at fifteen, wearing her Middlesex Field Hockey T-shirt over her bathing suit, sitting in an Adirondack chair, on the pavilion, her bare legs tucked underneath her (scab on one knee), her red hair crazy and curly around her face. An heiress sitting on her throne. Where was she?

By Thursday, Freida had wreaked havoc in the Bahamas, and she moved along the eastern coast of Florida where she hooked up with a local low-pressure system and increased in size and speed. Class four, 230 miles across, sustained winds of 101 miles per hour. The newscaster hadn’t said “Nantucket” in twenty-four hours. Instead they showed clips of the Caribbean: palm trees with their heads ripped off, washed-out bridges, whole houses floating away. Every hour at fifty past, they flashed the international forecast. Rio was sunny, thirty-three degrees Centigrade.

Bill lugged his body out of bed and walked straight down to the beach. People lounged under the umbrellas, a man was swimming. No hurricane here. Then Bill heard someone coughing and he turned to see Clarissa Ford standing on the deck of room 7, smoking. She waved to him. He waved back. She waved at him, beckoning. Bill groaned inwardly. Clarissa was seventy years old, a widow, her very wealthy husband killed years ago by half a million cigarettes, and yet Clarissa continued to smoke. She stayed at the hotel for the whole month of September, spending over sixteen thousand dollars. A year’s worth of the college tuition that Bill would not be paying to the University of Virginia. He slogged through the sand until he was a few feet from her deck.

“Bill,” she said. Clarissa Ford’s face was tan and wrinkled; she looked like dried tobacco. “Bill, how are you, my dear?”

“I’m okay, Clarissa, how are you?”

“Fine, dear, wonderful.” She inhaled on her cigarette. “You see I’ve been obeying the little rule your wife set up for me this year. I’ve not smoked in the room once.”

“I find that hard to believe, Clarissa,” Bill said. Last year they had to air the room for three days after she left. And still room 7 had the faint smell of an ashtray.

“It’s true,” she said, “I’ve been out here morning, noon, and night.”

“Thank you,” Bill said. “We appreciate it.”

Clarissa ashed into the sand just off the deck. There was a gray spot the size of a saucer already. “How’s my darling Cecily?”

Bill looked out over the water. A ferry approached from Hyannis. “I don’t know,” Bill said. “She ran off to South America.”

Clarissa’s laugh sounded like wagon wheels rolling over gravel. It sounded like someone balling up a cellophane bag. “Tell her to come over and visit me when she gets a free second,” Clarissa said. “I haven’t seen her in eons. She must be all grown up! Is she ready for college?”

“I told you, Clarissa. She’s run off to South America.”

“Honestly, Bill. Will you send her over? I have some valuable wisdom to impart.”

“Impart it to me,” Bill said. “I could use it.”

“You take yourself so seriously, Bill, dear,” Clarissa said. She waved her cigarette like a magic wand. “Lighten up!”

“You know we’re getting a hurricane?” Bill said. “The hotel could wash away.”

Clarissa crushed her cigarette out on the railing of the deck. Bill winced. “Pshaw!” she said. “That’s exactly what I mean by too seriously, Bill. It won’t be a hurricane! It’ll just be a little rain here in paradise.”

On Friday, a phone call came to the house. It was Nantucket’s fire chief, Anthony Mazzaco.

“We’re going to get some weather here, Bill. It’s not a pretty picture. You need me to send someone down to help ya? Mack tells me you haven’t made a move. Now, you got people in those rooms, Bill, you have to make a move.”

“Look outside, Tony,” Bill said. “Do you see rain? Do you see a storm?”

“She’s coming,” Tony Mazzaco said. He, too, sounded excited. “She’s coming.”

On Saturday, Freida made landfall in Norfolk, Virginia. The newscaster on the weather channel drew a yellow arrow off the coast of Long Island, heading out toward the North Atlantic. Good, Bill thought, let Long Island take the hit. But for some reason, the man said, “Nantucket is in a position to catch Freida’s wrath. Nantucket is in her way.” Nantucket again. Bill sat up, and saw how, as Freida moved for the chilly North Atlantic waters, she would sideswipe Nantucket. She was huge, two hundred plus miles wide. The island was thirteen by four. Freida could gobble them up.

Freida, the mean woman. Only in Bill’s mind, Freida was a girl with crazy red hair-she was an angry teenager throwing a tantrum. The room blurred.

He sat in bed, trying to focus. He hadn’t showered in two days. The bedsheets had a smell. Bill tried to care about the storm, about the hotel, about himself. He tried to care, but he couldn’t. He would let her come.

It was all over the TV and radio; everyone in town was talking about it. Tourists booked flights and hopped on the steamship. Stop & Shop’s parking lot overflowed with people buying bottled water, bread, candles, Duraflame logs. Boats came out of the water, houses were shuttered, deck furniture stored. The Nantucket police and the fire station answered worried phone calls. There was a small-craft advisory and as of Sunday morning, the ferries were canceled. A hurricane watch and coastal flood warning were issued by the National Hurricane Center for the island of Nantucket. Hurricane watch became hurricane warning.

And Bill would do nothing about it. Mack had never seen him act like this. Since Cecily left, the guy had crumbled, caved in. He accused Mack of wanting this storm, wanting it! But nothing could be further from the truth. Mack loved the hotel and he would do whatever he could to protect it.

Even if it meant going over Bill’s head.

Mack found Therese bringing her plants in from the front porch. A good sign-maybe she believed in Freida even if Bill didn’t.

Mack kicked a hermit crab shell across the parking lot. “I’m going to gather Vance and Jem and start shuttering this place if that’s all right with you.”

Therese ran her hand through her pale orange hair. She looked tired, and sad. “What does Bill say?”

“He says don’t do it. He doesn’t seem to care what kind of hit we take.”

“You’re right,” Therese said. “He doesn’t care. Why should he care?”

“When Cecily comes back, Therese, it might be nice if there was a hotel left to pass on.”

She touched the leaves of her geraniums. “I wish you’d asked her to marry you…just asked her, you know?”

“Therese,” Mack said. “Can I please do my work?”

“Go ahead,” she said. “Do what you have to do.”

Mack began the time-consuming task of screwing wooden shutters over every window. It only took two or three minutes to put up a shutter-but there were so many windows. He raced to finish the lobby and office before it grew too dark to work. He hauled the wooden shutters out of storage, grabbed fistfuls of screws and kept two or three pinched between his lips as he worked. Just as he was finishing the windows of the lobby that faced the water, he smelled smoke. He looked around. Clarissa Ford stood behind him in the sand, the ubiquitous cigarette dangling between her fingers.

“You’re not going to shutter my room, are you?” she asked.

“Tomorrow,” he said. “Not tonight.”

“Not tomorrow,” Clarissa said.

“Yes, tomorrow. I’m sorry, but there’s a storm coming.”

“I don’t want you to shutter my windows. And certainly not my door.”

“I’ll leave the back door alone,” Mack said. “I don’t want to trap you in there. But I’m sealing up the front. Especially your room, Mrs. Ford. Your room faces the water.”

“I don’t want you to do it. I’ll sign whatever I have to, a release for my safety.”

“Your safety’s important to us, Mrs. Ford,” Mack said. He wiggled his feet in his boots; talking to her was slowing him down. “But we’re also concerned about the hotel room.”

“I’ll talk to Bill,” Clarissa said. “He’ll say to leave my room alone, I guarantee you.”

Mack shrugged. “You’re right,” he said. He turned back to the shutter in his hand. “Fine, then. You’ll go without.”

At dusk, Jem and Vance came off the beach, sweating. They’d put up snow fencing, and stored the deck furniture from every room. Mack finished with the lobby windows and called it a day. He looked over at Bill and Therese’s house before he pulled out of the parking lot. It was dark and still, as though nobody lived there anymore.

At home, Maribel cooked a huge lasagna. “We can eat it for dinner over the next few days,” she said.

“I may have to stay down at the hotel tomorrow night,” Mack said.

“Stay at the hotel?” she said. “Are you kidding?”

“As it is, I left forty windows facing the water totally exposed. One of them could shatter. Someone could get hurt. I probably shouldn’t have left tonight. I should have stayed down there.”

“And worked in the dark?” Maribel said. She took a bite of lasagna. She’d been argumentative lately, like she didn’t believe a word he said about anything anymore. “If you’re staying at the club, I am, too.”

“You’ll be safer here,” Mack said.

She stabbed a piece of lettuce. “I’m not staying here without you.”

“Maribel, you’ll be safer here. That’s the only good thing about living mid-island. Away from the water you should be okay.”

“Okay?” Maribel put her fork down with a clang and stared at him. “I should be okay here alone during the biggest storm this island has seen in forty years? What if a tree falls down? What if we lose power?”

“You probably will lose power,” Mack said. “But you have candles and a flashlight.”

“Great. So I spend three days in the dark by myself. We’re engaged, Mack.” She flashed her diamond in his face. “See this? It means we’re part of a team. And I’m coming to the hotel with you.”

“No, you’re not.”

“You don’t want me around,” she said. “You don’t want anything to do with me.”

“I’m thinking of your safety.”

“You’re thinking of yourself. As always.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he said.

“What do you think it means?” she asked. Her mouth twisted in an ugly way. “It means you only think about yourself and your stupid fucking job.”

Mack tried to keep his voice steady. “You’re not staying at the hotel, Maribel,” he said. “Now stop acting like a five-year-old.”

Maribel stood up. She pushed Mack’s shoulders back, and then she moved to hit him. He raised his hands to shield his face. “What are you doing?” She clawed his arm so ferociously that he started to bleed. “What’s wrong with you?” he asked. He went to the kitchen sink and washed his arm. Maribel collapsed in her chair, crying. Mack was afraid to look at her; he examined the marks on his arm. Then he heard a clatter, and he saw Maribel put her bare elbows in her food as she cried into her hands.

“Maribel, what’s going on?”

She picked up her plate and threw it across the room. It crashed against the coffee table. The plate broke; lasagna and salad went everywhere. “What is wrong with you?” Mack said. “You scratched me. Do you see this? You made me bleed. Are you crazy?”

She nodded; her elbows were greasy with red sauce and salad dressing. “You don’t love me,” she said. “You’ve never loved me.”

“I do love you,” Mack said. “I asked you to marry me. That was what you wanted, wasn’t it? I gave you what you wanted.”

When Maribel stood up, she knocked her chair over. “I want you to want it!” she said. “I want you to want it as badly as I do. But you don’t.”

Mack tried to get a hold of her, but she smacked him out of the way. Her face was purple, she cried so hard he couldn’t even see her eyes. “Maribel, people are different. I can’t feel the way you do because I’m not you. I’m me. And I’m doing the best I can.”

“It’s not good enough!” she screamed. “You don’t love me enough!” She hit herself in the face with her open palms. “There’s something wrong with me! You don’t love me enough. You don’t! You don’t love me enough.”

Mack grabbed her arms, and she fought him. She snarled and cried in his face and he smelled her warm, garlicky breath. He held her by the wrists.

“I do love you enough,” he said. A red mark surfaced where she’d hit herself. A red mark on her pretty face. How could he love her enough when she always wanted more?

“You’re hurting me!” she said. Mack let go of her wrists. He’d gripped them so tightly, he left white marks. She darted into the bedroom, slamming the door behind her and locking it. Mack knocked on the door. “Maribel? Please open up. Mari, I don’t know what’s happening.” He heard nothing from the other side of the door but her muffled crying. Her brokenhearted crying. Even with his best intentions, the best he could give, he’d somehow failed. Mack listened for a minute, and then he cleaned up the shattered plate and the thrown food, wrapped the tray of lasagna with foil, put it in the fridge. He washed his bloody scratch marks and held a clean dishtowel against them. He knocked on the door again. “Mari, please. Tell me what’s wrong.”

“You’re what’s wrong!” she screamed. “I’m what’s wrong. This whole thing is wrong.”

“Maribel, open the door, please. Please?”

“Leave me alone!” she shouted.

He tried the doorknob. Locked. He could jimmy it with something from the utensil drawer, but why? What was the point? This whole thing is wrong.

Mack went to the sofa to watch the weather channel. Freida was off the Jersey Shore.

Lacey Gardner couldn’t concentrate on the storm because something else was bothering her. She had forgotten what Maximilian looked like. It was the oddest thing. She closed her eyes and concentrated on the things Max used to do-reading in his chair, making a tricky putt in golf. But she couldn’t picture him at all. She couldn’t imagine him in her mind.

She collected all her photographs of Maximilian and spread them out on the coffee table. Twenty-one pictures of Max-from the age of thirty-three in his military uniform to the photo of Max on the porch of the Cliff Road house during his last summer. Lacey studied each picture, and then she leaned back on the sofa and shut her eyes.

Nothing.

He had vanished. She could think his name, think of a hundred thousand moments with him, right up until the moment in bed the last night when he took her hand. But she couldn’t see his face in her mind. She opened her eyes and there were twenty-one images of Maximilian smiling at her. Then she closed her eyes, and there was darkness.

Lacey started to weep. It might be a passing phase, brought on by all the stress, the heat, the impending storm. Or it might be that now, at age eighty-eight, she was slipping away. The best part of her-the part that remembered Maximilian and kept him alive-was gone.

There was a knock at the door. Lacey wiped her face quickly with her handkerchief, but not before Mack saw her.

“You’re crying,” he said.

“No, I’m not.”

Mack waited a minute, then he said, “If something’s bothering you, you can tell me. You don’t have to be everyone’s pillar of strength and wisdom all the time.”

“Nothing’s bothering me,” she said. She nodded at the coffee table. “I’m just looking at old pictures.”

Mack surveyed the table. “Maximilian was a handsome man.” He pointed to the picture of Max in uniform. “He looks like me in this picture, don’t you think?”

“Yes,” Lacey whispered. Her Max, her Mack. She took Mack’s hand. “I love you. Do you know that? Have I ever told you that? I love you.”

Mack knelt beside her. “Lacey, what’s wrong?”

The tears started up again, out of her control. “I miss him,” she said.

“I know, Lacey,” Mack said. “I know you do.”

She cried more tears, tears she thought had dried up long ago. Mack held her hand, saying nothing. After several minutes, she snuffled into her handkerchief, and blew her nose. “I’m okay now,” she said. She noticed a bandage on Mack’s arm. “What happened to you?”

“Rough night at home,” he said. “Actually, I came to ask you a favor. I’d like to stay here tonight, if I could.”

Relief flooded Lacey, replacing, almost, the emptiness, the blankness. “For Pete’s sake, of course. Stay here, please.”

Mack squeezed her hand. “Okay, I will. Thank you.”

She wouldn’t have to be alone, then. Maximilian was missing, but Mack would be here instead to help her fend off the horrible darkness. For one night more, at least.

Monday began as a mild, sunny day, and Mack made headway on the remaining eighty shutters. Around noon, the wind shifted from southwest to due west and by the time the chambermaids finished cleaning the rooms at one o’clock, the sky was low and gunmetal gray.

Again, Bill didn’t show up in the office. Therese fluttered around behind the chambermaids, but when they finished their work, she retreated to her house. Mack shuttered away. When the wind picked up, sand pelted the side of his face and the back of his neck, a thousand tiny needles. A gust lifted his Texas Rangers hat off his head. His hands were busy with shutter and drill gun, and all he could do was turn and watch his hat blow down the beach. It was eerie in a way; suddenly the beach was deserted. Bill and Therese had dropped the future of the hotel in Mack’s hands.

By three o’clock, waves pounded the beach so that Mack felt the vibrations through the soles of his work boots as he rushed to finish shuttering. He skipped room 7, Clarissa Ford’s room, and when he made it down to room 2, she stepped onto her deck with a lit cigarette. The wind plucked the cigarette from her fingers immediately; it was halfway to Jetties Beach before she even realized it was gone.

At 3:45, the first drops of rain fell. Mack screwed in the final shutters. The wind moaned; Mack’s right ear filled with sand. Then the rain picked up. Sand blew in drifts halfway up the snow fence. Mack held his drill inside his jacket, raised his arm to shield his eyes, and ran for the back door of the lobby. By the time he reached the back door, he was soaked and his boots were filled with sand. He stood under the eaves and looked at the roiled, black sea. Mack thought of Maribel, at home on the sofa reading, her feet bundled in an afghan. She hadn’t said a word to him when he left that morning. No apology, no explanation-nothing but the silent assurance that whatever he was doing, it wasn’t enough. Mack watched the waves crest and crash. One came halfway up the beach. The next one even farther. He didn’t understand her.

Inside, Vance and Love played gin rummy at the front desk. Jem was slumped in one of the wicker chairs, asleep.

“You can all go home,” Mack said. “I’m staying at Lacey’s tonight. I’ll take care of things until this bitch passes.” He shook Jem’s shoulder. “You can leave, Jem. Why don’t you take my Jeep? You can’t walk home in this.”

Jem opened his eyes. “The Jeep? What will you drive?”

“I’m not going home tonight.” And then, before he could think better of it, he said, “Take the Jeep and check on Maribel. She’s all by herself. I’m sure she wants company.”

Jem sat upright in the chair. “Is that supposed to be some kind of joke?”

Mack’s stomach prickled with jealousy, and with fear. He pictured Maribel crying, he pictured his fingers gripping her wrists, leaving behind white bracelets. “It’s no joke, man. I can’t get home tonight. You’d be doing me a favor if you checked on her.”

“I’d be doing you a favor? Really?” Jem said.

“Just go,” Mack said. He flipped Jem his keys.

Jem didn’t hesitate. He took the keys and ran, following Vance and Love out the door. Because the windows were shuttered, Mack couldn’t watch them drive away. And that kept him from yelling after Jem, and telling him it was all a mistake.

As soon as the rain started, Bill got out of bed and ran to the living room window. The ocean was huge, the waves bigger than any Bill could remember. The lobby was shuttered, and so were the rooms-Mack’s doing. Bill couldn’t bring himself to feel one way or another. He couldn’t feel anything except this crazy longing, this crazy sadness.

Therese came up the stairs. “You’re up,” she said. She stood with him at the window. “Our kingdom. I hope it doesn’t get washed away.”

“What does it matter?” Bill said.

“Bill,” Therese said, “she’s coming back.”

“She’s not coming back!” Bill said. “Stop saying that, Therese. Cecily isn’t coming back!”

Therese said quietly, “She is.”

“She’s not,” Bill said. The Brazilian boys chased Cecily now. One boy-Gabriel-grabbed Cecily’s bright red hair. He held a razor to her neck.

Bill went to the closet and put a slicker on over his pajamas. “I’m going up to the widow’s walk.”

“What?” Therese said. She collapsed on the leather sofa. “You’ve lost your mind.”

“What does it matter?” Bill said. He marched through the bedroom and opened the door to the attic. In the attic was a flight of stairs leading to a hatch that popped up onto the widow’s walk. Bill had trouble opening the hatch door; he pressed his hands flat against it and pushed with all his might. Then the door flipped open and the wind and the rain nearly knocked Bill down the stairs. He knelt on the stairs and clenched the railing. He would get up there, and sit on the widow’s walk. It might kill him, but what did it matter? He was the father of two children: one dead, one missing.

Then he heard a voice, footsteps. Therese climbed up after him.

“I’m coming up there with you,” she said. She was five or ten feet away, but it sounded as though she were calling to him from the end of a long tunnel. The wind lifted her pale orange hair; she looked like a ghost or a witch, but she looked beautiful, too-his bride, the woman he loved.

Bill gripped the railing with one hand and reached for her with the other. The wind was impossibly strong. Poetically strong-if they did manage to climb onto the widow’s walk, maybe the wind would pick them up and carry them away, to their son, their daughter.

Rain drove through the hatch. Bill was soaked to the skin. He was in bare feet.

“Come on,” he said. He raised his head through the opening. The sky screamed in his ears, the world rained down on him. All he could see was white. Bill tried to look around, but he couldn’t find the sea, he couldn’t find the hotel. The sky was blank, the color of wind. Wind filled his eyes, his ears, his nose-he was drowning in the wind. What are you waiting for? A sign from God? “You can have it!” Bill screamed to the sky. He was sure that somehow S.B.T. could hear him. “You…can…have…it!” He lost his balance and faltered in his footing, but Therese steadied him. He brought his head back inside. The stairs were wet and slippery; Therese’s blouse stuck to her skin. Mascara ran down her face, her orange hair was wet, the color of a pumpkin.

“He can have it.” Bill said. “I give up. He can have it.”

Therese held on to him. “Who can have what?” she asked. “What are you talking about? Who are you screaming at?”

Bill had lost his hope. He didn’t have the stuff in him; beneath his skin and bones and cartilage, he was dry, an empty gourd. He managed to close the hatch door, spurred on by what was now his hatred of this storm. Once the hatch was closed and locked, Bill followed Therese into the bathroom. He vomited into the toilet. He vomited up the Brazilian boys with their razor blades, and Cecily screaming with fear. He vomited up S.B.T. taking the Beach Club from him. He vomited up Dead and Missing. He vomited until it was all gone, and the inside of his mouth was puckered and sour.

Therese drew him a bath, and he gingerly lowered himself into the warm water. Therese sat next to him on the floor. He was the owner of a beach hotel waiting out a hurricane. Helpless. He was the father of a teenage daughter. Hopeless.

Maribel was on the phone with Tina when the power went out and the phone died in her hand. Maybe it was just as well. Tina had started to cry almost as soon as Maribel spoke.

“Mama, I’m going to break the engagement.”

“What?”

“It’s not meant to be, Mama. It’s not going to work.” Maribel had replayed the night before a hundred times in her mind. Something had broken inside her, and she lost control. She’d hurt Mack, she made him bleed. And he’d nearly snapped her hands off. They were finding new ways to hurt each other. It had to stop.

Tina hit full-blown snuffles, sobs. “You’re just angry, Mari. You’re angry at Mack now and you’ve been angry at him before. You’ll get past it.”

“I’m not angry anymore, Mama. I’m beyond angry. We don’t make each other happy. We don’t want the same things.”

“Why are you giving up?” Tina said. “Why after so long?”

Maribel heard the desperate note in her mother’s voice and she squeezed her eyes shut against it. I want this for her, Maribel thought. I want to get married because I know it will make her happy. It will take away the demons of her loneliness, to know that I, at least, won’t have to spend my life alone.

“Will you love me anyway?” Maribel asked. “Will you love me even without Mack?”

More sobbing. “You know I love you best of anyone in the world. You know you’re my number-one prize. If you made this decision, then it must be God’s will.”

“It’s my will,” Maribel said. “Mama, it’s my will.”

And then the power went out.

Maribel had candles and matches ready, and in seconds the apartment glowed with candlelight. She went into the bathroom and splashed water on her face, and then she opened a bottle of red wine.

Maribel toasted the air. “Fuck you, Freida,” she said. She sipped her wine. She would get good and drunk.

There were headlights in her window. Maribel saw the Jeep swing into the driveway. Her heart stood up. Mack hadn’t left her alone after all. He’d come home. Maribel’s mind stumbled over words for an apology.

Oddly, there was a knock at the door. A knock? Maribel flung the door open, and there, standing in the rain, was Jem.

As Jem drove the Jeep to Maribel’s apartment, he thought about the two words Neil Rosenblum had left him with: Get her. The wind was blowing so hard that Jem had to grip the steering wheel with both hands just to keep the Jeep on the road. The wipers flew back and forth, and at every low point, Jem drove through deep puddles that sloshed over the hood of the car. The rain was ridiculous, and Jem probably would have crashed if there had been other cars on the road. But from the look of things, Jem was the only one out. On his way to see Maribel, with Mack’s permission.

Jem pulled into Maribel’s driveway and switched off the ignition. The trees in Maribel’s backyard bowed in the wind, and a carpet of fallen leaves covered the grass. A heavy branch crashed to the ground. Jem ran like hell down the sloping side yard to the apartment. The gas grill lay on its side. Jem knocked on the door. Be home, he thought. Maybe this was all a joke-maybe Maribel was off-island.

But then she opened the door. The apartment was lit by candles.

“Jem,” she said. “I thought you were Mack.”

Jem’s heart sagged. Here he was standing out in the middle of a hurricane, and what did she say? I thought you were Mack.

“Mack’s at the hotel,” he said. “He sent me here to keep you company. Listen, can I come in?”

“He sent you here?” Maribel said. Her brow creased into lines that looked like an M. M for Maribel. Or more likely, an angry M for Mack. It occurred to Jem then that Maribel might not enjoy being handed off like a baton.

“Can I come in?” Jem pleaded. His shoes filled with water. The wind blew sideways. Another branch fell in the yard.

“For a minute,” she said. She ushered him in and slammed the door behind him. “So Mack sent you here. He sent you here.”

“Sort of.” Jem was afraid to move anywhere in the room. He dripped onto the welcome mat. “Can I take my shoes off?”

“You’re only staying as long as it takes you to tell me exactly what Mack said.”

Jem looked around, stalling for time. “You lost power,” he said. He needed to think. He felt hesitant to get Mack into trouble, since Mack was the one who gave him the okay to come. But that was the whole point. Mack was a creep. He was giving away his girlfriend.

“What did Mack say?” Maribel picked a glass of wine up off the coffee table.

“He said, uh…he said you’d be alone and that I should keep you company. And he gave me the keys to the Jeep.”

Maribel slugged back some wine. “So he’s pimping me out.”

“Excuse me?” Jem didn’t like the sound of that word anywhere near Maribel.

“He sent you over here because he wants us to have sex. That’s his way out of the relationship.” She finished her glass of wine and then she ripped her cardigan sweater right down the middle, so that the buttons popped off and disappeared into the shag carpet. Underneath the sweater, she wore a shiny blue bra, which she unhooked and flung onto the sofa. Jem was confused, but he couldn’t keep from looking at her breasts. They seemed fuller than they had at the beach that day.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

She unbuttoned her jean shorts and let them fall to her ankles. She slid her hands inside her flowered panties and slipped these off as well. She stood before him, completely nude in the candlelight. Jem thought he might faint.

“You can take your shoes off,” she said. “And the rest of your clothes, for that matter.”

“What’s going on?” he said. His body screamed out for her. Her ass, the curve under her chin, the backs of her knees. But something was wrong. She was steaming like a tea kettle, and it wasn’t from desire for him.

“You’re angry at Mack,” he said.

“You’re damn right I’m angry!” she said. “He set all this up. I’m sure he thinks he’s doing us both a favor! But he’s manipulating our feelings. And guess what? I don’t care. He wants us to have sex, we’ll have sex.”

Just hearing Maribel say the words almost knocked Jem out. The front of his shorts was pitched like a tent. But this was wrong, everything about it was wrong.

“I love you, Maribel,” Jem said. “And I’ve never been in love with anyone before, but I don’t want you to sleep with me because you’re angry with Mack. I’m going home.” He opened the door, afraid to turn around and see what she was doing. He thought he heard her pour another glass of wine. He geared himself up to make a run for the Jeep, thinking if he timed it right he could run between gusts of wind.

Another branch fell, and Jem took that as his sign. He ran from Maribel’s house as quickly as he could.

Once he was safely inside the Jeep, he thought it might be okay to cry, or yell, or do something to release all his haywire, fucked-up emotions. The rain pounded on the top of the Jeep; it was like sitting inside a tin can. He turned the key in the ignition, praying he hadn’t ruined the engine by taking on those giant puddles. Fortunately, the engine started and Jem backed out of the driveway. He couldn’t see where he was going, but that mattered very little. He pulled onto what looked like the road and hit the gas.

He made it about a hundred yards when he saw red and blue flashing lights-a police car blocked Bartlett Road, the road that led to everywhere else. A policeman in a fluorescent orange raincoat waved his arms at Jem. Jem rolled down the window.

“All the roads are closed,” the policeman shouted. “You’ll have to go back to wherever you came from.”

“I can’t,” Jem said.

The officer shrugged. “I can’t let you on the roads. You’ll have to.”

“I can’t go back,” Jem said. “I live on Liberty Street.”

All Jem could see of the officer was his light blue eyes and his nose and his lips, which were scrunched together by his tightly drawn hood. “You can’t go on the roads.”

“Will you put me in jail if I try?” Jem asked. Jail was far preferable to returning to Maribel’s.

“No, I won’t put you in jail!” the officer said. “What I’m saying is, you can’t pass. I’m sorry. Now turn around!”

Jem managed to turn the Jeep around and head back down Pheasant Road. He considered pulling into a random driveway and spending the night there. Spending the night in his wet clothes in a chilly, wet car without food or water when the woman he loved was a hundred yards away? Jem pictured Neil Rosenblum shouting at him. Get her!

Jem drove back to Maribel’s and sat in the Jeep, thinking of what he might say. Then he raced to the house and knocked once again on the door.

Maribel had put her clothes back on, although her cardigan hung open.

“I love you,” he said.

“Will you hold me?” she asked.

He nodded, and stepped inside.

Mack stayed at the desk by himself. At seven o’clock, when the power went out, he ran along the back of the hotel, knocking on the rooms’ back doors to make sure everyone was all right. Spirits were high. The guests lit candles, drank wine, ate sandwiches, read novels. When Mack was certain everyone was surviving, he returned to the desk. He sat by the light of three votive candles and listened. The wind was an opera-a baritone rumble and soprano whistle singing simultaneously. Mack heard sand hit the wall of the lobby, but not water. Not yet.

Mack wondered what was happening with Jem and Maribel. He wanted to race home and stop whatever was going on, but after the scene the night before, he knew he had no choice but to let Maribel go. Let her go? He gently removed the bandage from his arm and inspected his wound. He couldn’t believe she’d scratched him like that, he couldn’t believe he’d made her that unhappy. This whole thing is wrong. A six-year mistake.

By ten o’clock, Mack was tired of thinking. He stepped out the side door, and ran through a gust of sandy wind to Lacey’s.

She was sitting in her armchair with ivory beeswax candles burning and a Dewar’s on the table next to her. She wore her nightgown, a pink silk bathrobe, pink terry cloth slippers. The pictures of Maximilian had been collected into a neat pile.

“Max?” she said when he walked in. “Maximilian?”

Mack shook off water like a dog. “It’s me, Lacey, Mack.”

Lacey jumped. He wondered if he’d woken her. “Mack, dear, hello. How goes it?”

“Nothing’s flooding. That’s what’s important. There’s ankle-deep sand in the parking lot, but sand can be shoveled. Do you feel like talking?”

“Heavens, yes,” Lacey said. “You know me, I always feel like talking.”

Mack collapsed on the sofa. “What should we talk about?”

“Let’s talk about your wedding,” she said. “I want to buy a new dress. A bright red dress. I want people to call me a harlot!” She kicked her feet in their pink slippers. “You know, Maximilian and I actually got married twice. Have I told you that? We married the first time in November of ’41, just before Max went off to the war. Judge Alcott performed the ceremony on Madaket Beach and Isabel and Ed Tolliver witnessed. After the ceremony, the four of us went to the Skipper for lunch. Max left for Maryland ten days later for basic training. Then, a few months later, Max was shipped to the Philippines. Those were gruesome times, because the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor, and there was Maximilian, practically in Japan himself. While Max was in the Philippines, our friend Sam Archibald died over in Europe, and I had to write to Max and tell him that.” Lacey sipped her drink and stared into the candles. “Where was I headed with this story? Oh, yes, our two weddings. We had a church wedding when Maximilian returned. That was a waste of my father’s money. We were already married!” Lacey finished her drink. “Let’s talk about your wedding,” she said. “I only want to talk about things that are in our future. I spend far too much time talking about the past. And I’m stopping, right here, right now. Here’s to the future!” She raised her empty glass to him.

“I’m not going to marry Maribel,” he said.

“You’re not?” she said.

“No.”

“Have you told Maribel this?” Lacey asked.

“Not in so many words,” Mack said. Just thinking about Jem touching Maribel made him queasy. “But I think she has an idea. I don’t know how to explain it. I just can’t marry her.”

“You don’t have to explain it to me,” Lacey said. “I have long lived by the expression, ‘Nobody knows where it comes from, and nobody knows where it goes.’ Love doesn’t make sense most of the time and that’s what’s so wonderful about it.”

They were both quiet. Freida calmed down, too, but only for a second.

Lacey pushed herself up from the chair and took a few steps toward Mack. “Some days I think I’m old and wise, and other days just old. I’m going to bed. You’ll be in and out tonight, I suppose?”

“I’ll try to be quiet.”

“Don’t worry about it. Just make sure you blow the candles out. We wouldn’t want to burn down the cottage Big Bill left me.”

Mack hugged Lacey around the shoulders. “So you don’t think I’m crazy? Breaking my engagement?”

Lacey put her cool hands on his face. “What you must realize, Mack, dear, is that I will love you whatever you decide. That’s the definition of love.” She picked up a candle and teetered off down the dark hall. Mack stayed to make sure she reached her bedroom door safely. Before she opened it, she turned to him. The candle lit up her smile.

“You’re my boy,” she said.

When Mack returned to the lobby, it was nearly eleven. Freida shook the hotel like a gambler shaking a cup of dice, as if she were trying to lift the hotel off its foundation. Mack pulled an extra pillow and blanket out of the utility closet and drifted to sleep lying on the floor behind the front desk. A loud crash woke him. He shined his flashlight around the walls of the lobby. Then he heard another crash. He walked out to the middle of the room and listened. Another crash, rhythmic crashing. Waves.

There was a knock on the back door of the lobby. Norris Williams, room 3.

“There’s water on the decks,” he said. He was wearing his white hotel robe; his hair was soaking wet, as though he’d just stepped out of the shower. “I can hear the waves crashing.”

“Is there water coming into your room?” Mack asked. He didn’t know what he was supposed to do. Where could the guests go? To Bill and Therese’s? To Lacey’s?

“Not yet,” Mr. Williams said. He was the bookish type, with soft hands, an estate-planning lawyer. The type that wasn’t good with emergencies of the physical kind. “My wife and I would like to come into the lobby, if you don’t mind. We’d feel safer.”

“That’s fine,” Mack said. No sooner had Mr. Williams left than there was another knock at the back door. Mrs. Frammer, from Denmark, room 6.

“The water’s coming in. The carpet by the front door is wet,” she said. “Are we supposed to stay on this ship until it goes down? I saw Titanic. We all did.”

“You can come into the lobby,” Mack said. He zipped up his jacket. Rain pelleted through the open door like machinegun fire. Mrs. Frammer scooted past him inside and Mack dashed into the rain and pounded on back doors. “Come into the lobby!” he cried out.

The guests grabbed jackets and their flashlights and ran past Mack toward the lobby. Mack knocked on every door, and all the guests got ready to leave immediately, except for Clarissa Ford. She came to the back door, saw everyone running, and said, “God help us.”

“I’m not kidding around this time, Clarissa. It’s time to get out.”

“I already told you, Mack, I’m not going anywhere.”

Mack nudged past Clarissa into her room. A window was cracked. Mack grabbed the knob of the front door with both hands and yanked it open.

The waves crashed over the steps of the front decks. A wave ran right over Mack’s feet onto the green carpet. But the carpet might be the least of their worries. The Gold Coast could break off and wash away altogether. Mack slammed the door shut and dead-bolted it. He jammed two bath towels into the crack at the bottom of the door.

He took Clarissa by the arm. “We have to get out of here,” he said.

She pulled her arm away; Mack thought of Maribel. “I already said, I’m not going.”

In the distance, over the screaming wind, Mack heard sirens.

“Fine,” he said.

A fire engine and two vans pulled up on North Beach Road. The parking lot was so clogged with sand that they couldn’t pull in. But it didn’t matter; Mack was relieved to see help of any kind.

Four men in fluorescent orange coats entered the side door of the lobby. “Someone called on a cell phone and said you needed evacuation,” one of the officers said. He was block shouldered and capable looking, the type who flourished in physical emergencies. “So we’re here to take everybody to the high school. They have a generator running. They have food, water, and bedding.”

“I was the one who called,” Norris Williams said, brandishing his phone as though it were a winning lottery ticket. He was still in his bathrobe. “I’m ready to go. Lead the way.”

Mack stationed himself at the side door and ushered the guests outside, handed them off to the block-shouldered officer, who helped them climb over the dunes to the vans. Mack counted heads. Mr. Sikahama from Hawaii, room 14, said he wasn’t paying six hundred dollars to spend the night in the hallway outside of geometry class, and he hoped he was getting a full refund. Mrs. Frammer kissed Mack on the cheek, as though she expected never to see him again. After everyone was delivered to the van, the officer came back to Mack. “Is that everybody?”

“Just about,” Mack said. “I’m staying here.”

“And is there anyone else?”

Mack saw the beam of a flashlight coming from Bill and Therese’s doorway. “Wait a minute,” he said. The beam bounced and jiggled, and then Mack saw Therese, wearing Cecily’s Middlesex Field Hockey windbreaker over her nightgown. Bare feet.

“I’m going with those people,” she said. “I think someone should go with them, and Bill refuses to leave.”

“Okay,” he said. “Go.”

“Lacey’s already in the van?” Therese asked.

“Lacey,” Mack said. He ran for Lacey’s cottage, flung open the door and charged down the hall to her bedroom. He knocked on her door.

“Gardner?”

He heard a muffled noise, a grizzled breathing. He cracked the door. Lacey was asleep, snoring softly. “Gardner,” Mack said. “Wake up.”

Lacey’s face was ghostly white in the beam of his flashlight. Mack toggled her shoulder. “Lacey, it’s me.”

Her eyelids fluttered. “Max?” She blinked.

“We’re evacuating the hotel, Lacey,” he said. “It’s time to go.”

“I knew it would be soon,” she said. “But I’m not ready.”

“Lacey, we’re going to the high school. The firemen are here.”

She opened her eyes. Blue eyes, sharply focused. “High school?”

“Water’s hitting the decks. It’s time to get everybody out.”

“It’ll take more than a little water to move me,” Lacey said. “Are you going to the high school?”

“No,” he said. “I’m staying here.”

“Me, too,” she said. “If we drown, we drown.” She sank her head deeper into her feather pillow. “Wake me when it’s morning, if you please. If you please.”

The sand in the parking lot was sculpted into dunes, some of which held water. The wind thrummed and shrieked. Mack clambered over hills of sand to the lobby porch. He positioned himself behind one of the porch columns to keep out of the blowing sand. He shined his flashlight onto the beach.

The waves crashed over the pavilion as though it weren’t there, and broke about ten feet shy of the lobby-ten feet, the length of a compact car. Mack was paralyzed, watching Nantucket Sound gone berserk. Attacking.

Mack heard someone call his name and he saw the beacon of a flashlight from Bill’s doorway. Mack spotted Bill climbing over the sand dunes, around puddles the size of a child’s swimming pool. He clenched a yellow slicker at the neck; underneath, he wore pajamas and a pair of galoshes.

“What’s happening?” Bill yelled.

Mack couldn’t speak; he was furious. What’s happening? Mack pointed his flashlight at the beach. What’s happening is called a hurricane. A natural disaster. A state of fucking emergency.

What Mack said was, “Everyone’s out except for Clarissa and Lacey.”

“How bad’s the water?” Bill asked.

“It’s pretty bad,” Mack said. As angry as Mack was, he didn’t want to have to break the news: water in the rooms, Bill’s ship going down.

Bill switched off his flashlight and Mack did the same. They stood together in darkness. All Mack could see was the white foam getting closer and closer to the lobby.

Bill took Mack’s hand and held it.

He’s terrified, Mack thought. First he loses me, then his daughter, then his hotel. Mack wasn’t sure what he’d do if Bill started to cry. Mack sneaked a sideways look at him. Bill was smiling. The guy’s lost his mind, Mack thought. He’s gone insane.

“I’m selling it,” Bill said.

“What?” Mack said.

“I’m selling the hotel for twenty-five million dollars. I have a buyer, and I’ve decided to sell it.”

Mack switched on his flashlight and aimed it at the water’s edge. A wave crested and broke and the white foam danced up the beach.

“I don’t believe you,” Mack said.

“What’s not to believe?” Bill said. “Cecily’s gone, you’re leaving, my baby son is dead. For me the hotel was never just the building, Mack. It was the people inside the building.”

Mack kept his flashlight on the water, mentally marking the water line. He marked wave after wave after wave, until he fell into a kind of stupor. The waves kept rolling and crashing, Mack’s eyelids drooped. In his standing dream-sleep, each wave that washed over him had a name. David Pringle, If you’re going to stick it out there in the East; Vance and his snarling lip; Maribel in a sheen of sweat, begging, pleading, Why did she always want? Lacey wearing pink fuzzy slippers, You’re my boy. Andrea and James, with their matching green-gray eyes. Therese, a dead-child white streak in her hair. Too-handsome Jem, Mr. November, running out the lobby door with his embarrassed happiness. Cecily crying into the phone, I love you, Gabriel, I really love you. Mack’s parents, in Oblivion. As if none of this mattered. The waves lulled Mack back to May, to before May, before Andrea and How-Baby and David Pringle’s phone call, back when things were normal, when things were easy. What had made him happy? The hotel-the front desk, the ringing phone, the beach. The guests, the staff. Bill, Therese, Cecily, Lacey. The Beach Club made him happy. Of course the hotel was more than just a building. For Mack it was a way of life. Even in the middle of a raging hurricane, this was where he wanted to be. Right here.

Mack snapped to attention; his legs were numb. The wind howled like a woman giving birth, but the water wasn’t getting any closer. Mack looked to his right; he was surprised to see Bill still standing there, his lips moving. Reciting poetry. Praying.

“You can’t sell the hotel,” Mack said. “You’ve put your whole life into it.”

“I can start a new life,” Bill said. “Take Therese and move to Hawaii, or Saipan, wherever that is.”

“Bill, you can’t sell the hotel. I won’t let you.”

“You can’t stop me,” Bill said.

“I can stop you,” Mack said.

“How?”

“I can stay.”

Bill nodded slowly.

“Am I right?” Mack said. “Will that stop you?”

“Will you stay?”

“Will that stop you?”

Bill turned to him. “Is it you who’s been writing me letters?” he asked. “Are you S.B.T.?”

“No,” Mack said.

Bill shook his head. “No,” he said. “I didn’t think so.”

“I’ll stay,” Mack said.

“Okay,” Bill said. He shined his flashlight over the parking lot and Mack followed the beam-a Toyota 4-Runner was up to the tops of its tires in sand, and the bikes in the bicycle rack were buried to their handlebars. The wind wasn’t letting up.

Then Mack heard a noise, a voice. The voice. Home. Home. It was the hum, loud and distinct over the scream of the wind. Home. Mack reached for Bill’s arm. “Do you hear that?”

“What?” Bill said.

“That voice. The voice saying ‘Home.’ Do you hear it? Please tell me you hear it. Do you? There-there it is again. Home. Just tell me you hear it.”

Bill climbed over a mound of sand, headed for the safety of his house. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.

What woke Mack up first was the smell of coffee, and the promise of light. Mack feared opening his eyes; he didn’t want to be disappointed. Then he heard whispers-giggles, laughing. Mack let himself rise to the surface of his sleep, enough to realize that his back ached, his arms ached, his feet ached. He opened his eyes. Vance and Love stood over him. Vance held two cartons of Hostess doughnuts and Love carried a cardboard tray of coffees.

Mack raised his head an inch. “Is it over?”

“It’s over,” Vance said. “But it’s not pretty. Get up and see for yourself.”

Mack managed to sit up on his own and with a hand from Vance, he stood. Light peeked in around the shutters all over the lobby.

“I can’t believe it,” Mack said. “That looks like sun.”

“Maybe you’d better wait a while before you look outside,” Vance said. “I’ll give you a hint. I had to park the Datsun a quarter-mile up North Beach Road.”

“We walked over the sand,” Love said. “Thanks to my cross-country skiing experience, I got the coffee here without spilling a drop.”

Vance threw his arm around Love’s neck and kissed her. “That’s my girl.”

Mack thought of Maribel. Suddenly, more than his body ached. “Anybody seen Jem?” he asked hopefully. “Or my Jeep?”

Vance and Love shook their heads; Love looked at the ground.

“Have some coffee,” Vance said. He handed Mack a cup. “Were you up all night?”

“Just about,” Mack said. “Do we have power?”

“Not yet,” Vance said.

“We evacuated all the guests,” Mack said. “The fire trucks took everyone to the high school. I didn’t want to leave the hotel.”

“You’re so loyal,” Love said.

“He’s crazy,” Vance said. “You sure you’re ready to go outside? Brace yourself, man. I’m warning you.”

“I’m ready,” Mack said. “It was pretty bad last night.”

“Let’s go,” Vance said. “I want to see your face.”

Mack and Vance walked out the side door. What struck Mack first was this: it was a beautiful day. The heat and humidity of the previous weeks were gone. It was crisp, and the sky was a brilliant, spectacular blue.

The Beach Club looked like the Sahara Desert. The sand in the parking lot was chest high in places. The front porch of the lobby where Bill and Mack stood the night before was buried-there were drifts of sand halfway up the lobby doors. The pavilion was entirely buried, with the exception of the peaked roof, which stuck out-a head with no body. The beach was strewn with seaweed, dead seagulls, rocks.

The hotel was still standing, although the decks were buried under sand. Mack and Vance walked around and entered the back door of each room. All the front deck rooms had saturated carpets-Mack’s shoes squished as he walked. The bottoms of the bedskirts were wet, some of the dressers had water marks.

“If we take up all the carpets and cut a big hole in the floor, we might drain these rooms someday,” Vance said.

“The carpet definitely has to be replaced,” Mack said. “That’ll be a big job.”

“I’ll bet you’re glad you’re leaving,” Vance said. “You picked the right time to get out.”

Mack didn’t say anything.

He headed down to room 7. Clarissa Ford stood in the back doorway, smoking.

“You survived,” Mack said. “How’s your room?”

“Demolished,” she said. She lowered her eyes. “I spent all night in the bathtub.” Mack looked into room 7. Clarissa had piled all her clothes on top of the bed, but they were soaked. The lamps had shattered, the TV set was smashed, the leather chair ruined.

“Oh, God,” Mack said. “It’s amazing you lived.”

Clarissa exhaled a stream of smoke. “I’ll pay for it all, needless to say. I wonder if Therese will let me help her redecorate. Then when I come back next September it will really feel like home.”

“Don’t count on it,” Mack said. “Anyway, what’s important is that you’re safe. It was quite a night.”

“Oh, darling,” Clarissa said. “I was part of it.”

Mack nudged Vance’s elbow before they reached the back door of the lobby. “Listen, will you call my house? If Jem’s there, tell him to get his ass down here.”

“I can’t believe what you did yesterday,” Vance said. “You gave her away, man. Why the hell did you do that?”

“I have my reasons,” Mack said. He rubbed his hands over Vance’s shaved head. “Will you call for me, man?”

Vance swatted Mack’s hands away. “I’ll call as long as you stop touching me. I don’t love you, you know, Petersen.”

“I know,” Mack said. “Thanks.”

When Mack walked around front, a school bus pulled up on North Beach Road and the hotel guests disembarked: Mrs. Frammer, Mr. Sikahama, Mr. Williams in his bathrobe. They climbed over the dunes toward the lobby. Therese, with Cecily’s windbreaker zipped up to her throat, crawled toward Mack wearily, a soldier returning from war. She shielded her eyes from the sun.

“How was it?” Mack asked.

“Did Cecily call?” Therese said.

He hated the desperate note in her voice. She’d only been away eight hours. “Not that I know of. The phones were down all night.”

“I was thinking if she watched the news or anything…” She dug her toe in the sand. “Our kingdom is destroyed. I thought maybe if she knew that, she’d call.”

“Not destroyed, Therese. We were lucky. Only room seven is gone. The rest of the front deck rooms have carpet damage and some other minor stuff. Vance is going over them with the Shop Vac. They’ll be okay for the guests by this afternoon.”

Therese squinted. “Really?”

“Not great, but okay.”

“Not ruined?”

“Not ruined.”

“The guests can sit on the beach until then. We ate breakfast at the school. Have you seen Bill?”

“Not since last night,” Mack said.

Therese glanced up at the bay window. “He’s probably up there watching. If he hasn’t keeled over from a heart attack. I don’t even want to tell you what he went through last night.”

“I saw him just before he went to bed,” Mack said. “He looked all right.”

Therese’s eyes watered and she blinked tears. Mack couldn’t remember ever seeing Therese cry. She looked like a child in her nightgown, the ill-fitting windbreaker, bare feet, her peach-colored hair tucked behind her tiny ears. He’d seen Cecily show an uncanny resemblance to Therese over the years, and now he witnessed the opposite: Therese slouched before him looking for all the world like her teenage daughter.

She sniffled and straightened up. “I’d better go see Bill,” she said. “Let me know when Vance is finished and I’ll send the chambermaids over.”

“Will do,” Mack said.

Therese turned back before she entered her house. “How’s Lacey?” she asked.

Mack took a cup of coffee to Lacey’s cottage. Her apartment was dim, light entered around the edges of the shutters, throwing stripes across the Oriental rug. “Gardner?” he called out. Mack tiptoed down to Lacey’s bedroom and tapped on her door. “Lacey, it’s safe to get up. The evil Freida has passed.”

He listened, but heard nothing. She was still asleep. She’d asked him to wake her when morning came. If you please. Mack opened Lacey’s bedroom door and peeked in.

Lacey’s eyes were closed. One hand was clenched in a fist over her heart, and her other arm dangled off the edge of the bed. On the floor was a beeswax candle, broken in half. Had that been there last night? He couldn’t remember.

“Lacey?” Mack said. He listened for her breath, for her soft snore. He listened, waiting for her eyes to snap open. Waiting for her to mistake him once again for Maximilian. He waited until he couldn’t wait anymore, and then he touched her cheek-it was cold.

Lacey was dead.

Maribel knew the power was back on when she heard the phone ring. She opened her eyes and was instantly aware of Jem’s arm draped over her waist. She didn’t rise to answer the phone. It was either Mack or Tina, and she didn’t want to talk to either of them. The phone rang four times, but no message played-the tape must have been erased with the power outage.

Maribel rolled toward Jem. He lay facedown in Mack’s pillow. His young, strong shoulders were bare, he had one arm folded under his head and one touching Maribel’s side. Maribel felt a wave of desire. She lifted the covers. Jem wore only his boxer shorts.

She lay back, weighing her options. She could slip off Jem’s boxers and make love to him, or she could let him be. Maribel looked out the tiny bedroom window. She saw actual sunlight, a good sign if ever there was one.

Before Maribel moved a muscle, she explained things to Mack in her mind. I am not doing this because I’m angry. I’m not angry. I’m hurt and disappointed because I loved you in as many ways as I knew how and in the end, those weren’t the right ways. So here I am now, about to do this thing because I think it will help me to be happy, if only temporarily. Although I’m coming to learn that all happiness is temporary.

Maribel pressed her lips to Jem’s shoulder. She moved her mouth a fraction of an inch lower, and kissed him again. She waited, but he didn’t stir. She picked a spot on the curve that ran from the side of his neck to his shoulder and she kissed him there, a ripe, wet kiss.

The phone rang again. Maribel counted the rings in her head. She looked hopefully at Jem. He breathed heavily, oblivious. What was it with men and their love affair with sleep? Maribel slid out of bed and hurried into the living room for the ringing phone.

“Maribel?” It was a man’s voice, but not Mack’s.

“Yes?”

“It’s me, Vance.”

“Hi, Vance,” Maribel said. “Mack’s not here. I thought he was down at the hotel.”

“He’s here,” Vance said. “I’m, uh… I’m actually looking for Jem. Is he there?”

Maribel dropped onto the sofa. “What makes you think he’s here?” she asked. Her heart thudded like heavy, scary footsteps. “Did Mack say he was here?”

“Mack wanted Jem to check on you last night. But I’m glad he didn’t. He shouldn’t have been out in the weather. I’ll tell you what, I’ll try Jem at home.”

“Don’t bother,” Maribel said. “He’s here.”

“He is?”

“Yes,” Maribel said. “What do you need him for?”

“Uh…” There was a pause. “We need him to come down and work.”

“I’ll tell him,” Maribel said. “I’ll send him down when he wakes up.”

“Okay,” Vance said, though she could tell from the sound of his voice that he thought it was anything but okay. “Thanks, Maribel.”

“You bet,” she said.

Maribel replaced the phone and stepped outside to inspect the damage. The backyard was a disaster area. The trees were stripped of leaves and branches. The detritus was all over the yard-twigs the size of pencils, branches the size of a man’s arm. A huge bough had fallen into Maribel’s garden and crushed the zinnias and impatiens. There were standing puddles in the lawn, ankle deep. But the sun was shining and it felt good on Maribel’s arms and bare legs.

She closed the door and went back into the bedroom. Jem was awake, sitting up. His dark hair was mussed and he had sleep marks on his face from the pillow. Maribel sat next to him on the edge of the bed.

“Who was on the phone?” he asked.

She placed a finger on his lips and chose a spot just below his collarbone, and kissed it. If there were going to be rumors, she thought, they might as well be true.

The phone rang five more times while Maribel and Jem made love, although Jem didn’t seem to notice. He concentrated on kissing her, caressing her. He was strong and young and sexy and he loved her. He said it over and over, “I love you, Maribel. I love you.” When he came, he cried out. He was overwhelmed with love, and Maribel knew just how he felt. Here was a flower where all the petals said the same thing, He loves me.

Jem hugged her close and kissed her hair. “I want you to come to California with me.”

“Oh, Jem.”

“I do. I really do. I asked you before, when I came for dinner. Remember?”

“I remember,” she said. The phone rang again-and again, Jem didn’t seem to hear it. “I don’t know what to say. I’m not sure I want to go to California.”

“Where do you want to go?” Jem asked. “Tell me where and I’ll take you.”

Maribel smiled. “I want to go to Unadilla.” She wanted to see her mother. She wanted to rock in Tina’s arms.

“I’ll go to Unadilla. I’ll go, I swear it,” he said.

It wasn’t hard at all, to be loved this much. This was the kind of love Maribel needed-unconditional, blind, devoted; it was the love she had missed in a father.

Later, when Jem was in the shower, the phone rang again, and Maribel answered it. I’ve made my decision, she thought, and whoever’s on the other end is going to have to hear about it.

“Hello?” she said.

“Mari?” It was Mack, but he sounded upset. It sounded like he was crying.

“What’s wrong?” she said. He sobbed into the phone. Maribel narrowed her eyes. Had she done this to him? “Mack, what’s wrong?”

“Lacey’s dead,” he said.

The words dropped in Maribel, like coins in a well. “Lacey’s dead,” she repeated. Lacey was dead. “Oh, God, Mack. I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

He cried into the phone like a little boy. He cried, Maribel admitted, the way she wanted him to cry over her.

“She was my best friend,” Mack said.

“I know,” Maribel said, and she felt a stab of pain. Lacey Gardner had filled the role of best friend while Maribel had tried so desperately to fill the role of wife. Maribel had missed what was most important. She listened to Mack cry, shushing him every once in a while, marveling at how her love for him was like something she held underwater-as soon as she let go, it bobbed to the surface. She wanted to repeat over and over, “I’ll be your friend, Mack, I’ll be your friend,” but she wondered if it was too late for that. Lacey was dead. The world as they knew it was ending.

Bill thanked god for Therese. People in distress were her specialty, her domain. No sooner had she returned to the hotel with the guests than Mack pounded on the door to tell them the news about Lacey.

Therese brought Mack inside and gave him a glass of water, she sat next to him on the sofa and held his hand. She cried with him a little, and said, “Lacey’s where she wants to be, Mack. She’s with her husband, finally.”

“But what if that’s bullshit,” Mack said. “What if there is no meeting place in the sky.”

Bill waited to hear what Therese would say. He wondered this himself-every time he had chest pains, and last winter when the ambulance rushed him to the hospital-what came next? It was a question without an answer. Nobody knew, not even Robert Frost. Bill had always believed in something bigger; for twenty-eight years, since W.T. died, something bigger planted itself in Bill’s mind. A reason. Lacey Gardner, here yesterday, gone today. Why?

Therese said to Mack, “We have to hope. When I’m dying and ready to go, you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to hope with all my heart. And then I’m going to let go. Hope I don’t disappear. Hope I land somewhere safely.”

The ends of Bill’s fingers tingled. He loved his wife. When he was dying and ready to go, he would hope, too. He would hope that death did not separate them.

Therese sent for the undertaker, and personally cleaned Lacey’s cottage from top to bottom. It was Therese who found Lacey’s will. Therese called the paper and put in the obituary. Therese contacted Father Eckerly at St. Mary’s and arranged for the service, to be held on Friday.

That night as she and Bill lay in bed, Therese said, “I read Lacey’s will before I sent it to her lawyer. She left Mack her cottage, you know.”

“She did?”

“You didn’t think she’d do otherwise?”

“I never gave it any thought at all,” Bill said. That was the truth: Therese had fussed over Mack and the rest of the staff who were upset-Vance, Jem, Love-but no one asked Bill how he felt. And he had known Lacey Gardner longer than anyone. He met Lacey when he was eight years old, an ornery, sullen little boy. Lacey and her husband, Maximilian, were Beach Club members and they were on property every day of the summer after the war ended. Lacey used to shake Bill’s hand like an adult, and say, “How do you do?” Bill would cross his arms across his chest and give her a withering look. Then Lacey promised she’d give him two pennies if he would smile. “Nope,” he said. “I don’t smile for money.” Bill could remember what Lacey looked like as a young woman (blond hair in a chignon, dresses that cinched at the waist)-throwing her head back and laughing, wiping the corner of her eye with an embroidered handkerchief. She reminded him of that moment many times in the years that followed; it was their shared punch line. I don’t smile for money. He supposed he meant his affections couldn’t be bought; they had to be earned. And Lacey Gardner had earned them.

He never thought of Lacey dying-she seemed superhuman, the one member of his parents’ generation who was going to live forever. But now she was dead. Not only was Bill deeply saddened by the loss but he knew what this meant: he was next.

“So she left her cottage to Mack,” Bill said. He recalled his conversation with Mack during the storm. “He promised he’d stay.” He took his wife in his arms and spoke into her sweet hair. “I just want someone to stay.”

Mack moved his things out of the basement apartment while Maribel was at work. He threw his clothes into garbage bags and sorted through the CDs. He packed his pay stubs and pictures of his parents. The TV was his, but he let Maribel keep it; the kitchen stuff was all hers, except for a bottle opener shaped like a whale that had belonged to Maximilian. Mack took that. They’d bought the gas grill together, but he let it be. He packed all his belongings into the back of the Jeep, and then he sat in the driveway. He considered leaving a note. A note saying what?

Back at the club, there was no shortage of work. Mack shoveled sand-it was like eating a giant plate of spaghetti-he couldn’t seem to make any headway. It kept his body busy and hurting; he tried to concentrate on the physical pain and not his other pain. Lacey gone. Maribel gone.

After work, Mack carried his bags into Lacey’s cottage. He dug out the whale bottle opener and popped the top off a Michelob. He settled down in Lacey’s chair. He had two phone calls to make.

The first was to How-Baby.

A sugar-voiced, southern secretary answered the phone. “Is this the Mack Petersen, as in, our new vice president of travel and hospitality?”

“Yeah,” Mack said weakly. “Can I speak to Howard, please?”

How-Baby came on the line, voice booming as though he were sitting three feet away. “I was worried about you!” he said. “We saw you take a real beating from Freida. Watched it on national news. How’s the hotel?”

“She’ll be okay,” Mack said. “But there’s a lot of work to be done.”

“So it doesn’t look like you’ll be getting out of there easily,” How-Baby said.

“I’m not getting out of here at all,” Mack said. “That’s why I called.”

How-Baby was quiet.

“I’m calling to turn down your offer, Howard,” Mack said. “I have to stay here. It’s not personal and it has nothing to do with money. Believe me, everything you offered is top-notch. It’s just what my gut is telling me.”

Still How-Baby was quiet.

“Howard, are you there?”

How-Baby coughed; Mack tried to imagine him upset, agitated, thrown off guard. Caught unaware. It didn’t seem possible.

“I’m here,” How-Baby said. “You know, just last night Tonya asked what we were going to do next summer when we came to Nantucket and you weren’t there. She said she couldn’t imagine it.”

“She won’t have to imagine it,” Mack said. New job gone.

“No,” How-Baby said. “I guess she won’t.”

The second phone call was to David Pringle. Mack took a long swallow of his beer before dialing.

“David, it’s Mack. Mack Petersen.”

David chuckled. “It’s only September, Mack. I was figuring you’d put off this phone call for at least another month.”

“Nope!”

“What’s happening?” David asked. “You had all summer to think about it. Come to any conclusions?”

“Has Wendell changed his mind?” Mack asked.

David whistled. Mack pictured him leaning back in his leather chair, shirt sleeves rolled up. “No, he hasn’t changed his mind. He’s rented a hall for his retirement party.”

“Oh.”

“You’re going to sell, then?”

“No one else has shown any promise?” Mack asked. “This summer, no one…”

“Mack, I told you how things were. Nobody will put forth the effort on a farm that’s not their own. Wendell did it out of love for your father, simple as that. There’s no one else.”

“Okay,” Mack said. “Sell.” Farm gone.

“I’ll put it up first thing in the morning,” David said. “We’re not going to get rich from this, you know.”

“I know.”

“What should I do about the house?”

“Don’t do anything,” Mack said. “I’m coming back. I’ll clean it out myself.”

“You’re coming back?”

“After the hotel closes, I’ll drive out. Take a week or two.”

“Call me when you get here,” David said. “You can sign some papers. And, well… I’d like to see you, Mack. I’ll bet you’re all grown up.”

“I am,” he said.

The next day, Mack stood on the front steps of St. Mary’s Church on Federal Street in gray pinstriped pants that belonged to a suit he never wore, greeting the people who came to Lacey’s memorial service. This was no different from his job at the hotel, really-greeting people and making them feel welcome. Concierge of the funeral. Manager of grief. Vance and Love and Bill and Therese milled around the aisles of the church, seating people, but Mack didn’t want to be inside any longer than he had to. He had “hired” Clarissa Ford to work at the front desk of the hotel and answer the phone. (She showed up wearing a bright blue suit, smelling like lilies of the valley. “There’s no smoking in the lobby,” he said. “It’s okay,” she said. “I’m quitting.”)

Tiny arrived at the church, and with a man no less, a young man with a ponytail and a mustache.

“Mack,” Tiny said, “this is Stephen Rook.” She looked at Stephen. “This is Mack.”

Mack shook Stephen Rook’s hand. He wondered if this were Tiny’s boyfriend.

Tiny said, “Stephen is my husband.”

“Your husband?” Mack said. “I didn’t know you were married, Tiny.” He smiled apologetically at Stephen Rook. “She never tells us anything about her personal life.”

Stephen Rook raised his hand as if to say, Hey, that’s cool, and Tiny said, “Stephen is deaf, Mack.”

“Whoops. I’m sorry. Tell him I’m sorry.”

“He reads lips,” she said.

“Thanks for coming,” Mack said.

Stephen raised his hand again, and escorted Tiny into the church.

Many of the people at the service were elderly friends of Lacey from back in the day. They shook Mack’s hand, explaining how they knew Lacey from Sankaty, or the Yacht Club, or how they used to shop in Lacey’s hat store. Lacey’s doctor and dentist came from Boston, and so did the Iranian doorman from her Boston apartment building, a slight, dark-skinned man named Rom. Rom whipped out a Polaroid of Lacey standing with his children in front of the Charles River. “She always said she loved Nantucket best,” Ron said. “Now I’m here, I see why.”

The current class president from Radcliffe arrived with a female friend-Meaghan and Meredith-Mack couldn’t tell them apart once they introduced themselves. They called Lacey “Ms. Gardner” and said they were planning a fund-raising drive to start the Lacey Gardner Scholarship Fund for young women business owners. Mack was amazed. Here he was certain he knew Lacey better than anyone else, and yet he hadn’t met half these people.

Then, just as Mack was about to head inside, Jem and Maribel walked up. Maribel wore a black linen dress, her blond hair pulled back in a clip, no makeup. She looked beautiful. Jem had on a navy blue double-breasted blazer, like something a sea captain would wear.

“Mack,” Maribel said. She smiled sadly and hugged him, and Mack shut his eyes and squeezed her, thinking how if things were different, she might be coming to this church to marry him.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered in her ear. “I’m sorry.”

When they separated, her eyes were red; the crying had begun. “Me too,” she said.

Mack shook Jem’s hand. Mack wanted to thank him, and he wanted to toss him off the church steps. But before he could decide between the two, the church bells rang, and the three of them stepped into the sanctuary.

Mack hated organ music, he hated the cloying smell of funeral flowers. He hated coffins and pallbearers, although if Lacey had asked him, he would have carried her coffin on his back. Fortunately, though, Lacey had requested cremation, and Therese kept the urn of Lacey’s ashes tucked under her arm next to her pocketbook. After the service, they were going to scatter the ashes at Altar Rock.

Mack sat in the front row of the church next to Bill and Therese. Behind him, he could hear people crying. The priest, Father Eckerly, spoke of Lacey’s life: her years at Radcliffe, her tenure working for the State Health Department, her marriage to Maximilian, her shop on Main Street. Her model life as a Catholic, and as a working woman who was also a devoted wife.

“Lacey provided us with many lessons about how to live,” Father Eckerly said.

Mack shifted in his seat. He hated funerals because they all reminded him of the funeral service for his mother and father. His parents were rolled down the aisle of Swisher Presbyterian in matching coffins. Wendell gave the eulogy. He spoke of what a tragedy it was, how unfair, Mack, only eighteen, robbed of his parents. The church was packed with people-family, friends, neighbors, kids from school, farmers from as far away as Davenport and Katonah. They were there to pay their respects, but somehow the tragedy overshadowed his parents’ simple, good-hearted natures. Somehow, his parents got lost in all the sadness.

After the ceremony, they buried Mack’s parents in the cemetery behind the church. Mack watched stone-faced as they lowered his parents into the ground. When the minister threw a handful of dirt onto the coffins, Mack cut through the crowd and walked back to his house, which was over a mile away. He sat alone in his bedroom until his uncle came and fetched him. “They want to see you at the luncheon,” his uncle said. “You’re all that’s left of this family and people want to see you.” Mack went to his aunt’s house, where everyone said it was the saddest thing they’d ever known to happen, it was the saddest funeral they’d ever attended.

The problem with funerals, Mack decided, was that they never did a person justice. Father Eckerly could drone all day about Lacey’s balancing act of career and home-a woman before her time-but that didn’t get at the real Lacey. The real Lacey drank Dewar’s from the stroke of five o’clock until bedtime, she listened for hours without judging, she defended love and the strength of the human spirit.

Mack closed his eyes. He didn’t know what he would do without her.

By the time they made it to Altar Rock, Mack felt better. He drove Love and Vance in his Jeep, Bill and Therese and Tiny and Stephen followed in the Cherokee, and Rom and the two Radcliffe women wanted to come along as well-so Mack suggested they take Lacey’s Buick. The three cars twisted through the moors, which were just starting to turn red. Autumn was less than a week away. Mack ascended the steep hill to Altar Rock-the highest point on the island. He parked, picked the urn of Lacey’s ashes off the front seat (Therese gave the urn to him after the ceremony, saying, “I think Lacey would want to ride with you”), and climbed out of the car.

When Mack first read Lacey’s will, he wondered why she wanted her ashes scattered at Altar Rock-why not scatter them into the water at the Beach Club? But as soon as he stepped out of the car, he understood why. The panorama was spectacular-from here he could see Sankaty Lighthouse, Nantucket Harbor, and in the distance, Great Point Light. If they scattered Lacey’s ashes at the Beach Club, the water might carry her away. But when they scattered her ashes here, she would become one with Nantucket.

Mack waited until the group gathered into a semicircle, then he opened the urn. He expected ashes, like from a cigarette-he thought fleetingly of Clarissa Ford-but these ashes were chunky and hard, like pieces of coral. He took a handful and passed the urn to his left, to Bill. Bill took a handful and passed the urn to Therese, and so on, until the urn reached Rom and Rom had to turn the urn upside down so that the last few pieces of Lacey’s remains came loose in his palm.

Mack turned to Bill. “Do you want to recite a poem?” Mack whispered. “Or should we, I don’t know… should we all say something?”

Therese leaned over. “Why don’t we each pick a spot and say something privately before we scatter?”

Mack raised his voice. “Okay, uh…everyone can pick a spot and say something privately and then, I don’t know…bombs away, I guess.”

Love and Vance faced Sankaty Light, Bill and Therese faced south toward the airport, the Radcliffe women turned to the harbor. Tiny and Stephen Rook tossed their ashes out over the moors. Rom threw his into the air like a baseball.

Mack held his ashes. His hands were sweating and the ashes left a white, chalky residue. He stood next to the stone marker for Altar Rock, wondering what he could possibly say to Lacey, or to God. Lacey had no grandchildren, Bill and Therese had no son, Cecily had no brother, Maribel had no father, Andrea had no husband-and Mack had set himself down among these people like a piece in a jigsaw puzzle. He filled their gaps and they filled his. But now some of the pieces had disappeared, leaving Mack exposed. Lacey was gone. Whatever Mack held in his hand-the ashes of her bone, her heart, her brain-he wanted to keep, in a jar, or a sugar bowl somewhere. He wanted to keep this last little part of her with him.

Gradually he became aware that everyone else was finishing up, and while no one stared at him, he got the distinct feeling they were waiting. He couldn’t shove Lacey’s ashes in his pants pocket now.

He squeezed his eyes shut. I love you, too, Gardner, he said. Thanks for being my friend.

He let Lacey go.

The group stood around Altar Rock a few moments longer in silence. Then Stephen Rook said something in sign language.

“It is a beautiful day,” Tiny repeated.

Everyone nodded in agreement, and drifted toward their cars. They were going back to Lacey’s cottage for some lunch. After everyone went home, Mack wanted to sit in Lacey’s armchair, in Lacey’s cottage-now his armchair in his cottage-and drink a stiff Dewar’s.

He climbed into the Jeep and Love and Vance piled into the back, even though Lacey’s ashes were no longer up front. The empty urn rolled around on the floor.

“I feel like your chauffeur,” Mack said.

“We want to be together,” Love said.

“Yeah,” Vance said. In the rearview mirror, Mack watched him put his arm around Love’s shoulders. Mack thought of Maribel, and he wondered if the feeling of being the stupidest person in the world would pass.

Mack led the caravan back down the hill into the thick of the moors. He was deep in thought-about Lacey, about his parents, and about Maribel-but he did notice when Love abruptly cleared her throat.

“I’m pregnant,” she said.