The Beach Club

10 Windshift

October 3

Dear S.B.T.,

I almost gave in to you. I almost let myself relinquish the hotel-not for the love of money-but out of frustration. My daughter is gone, that much is true. I don’t know if or when she’ll be back. Her disappearance has left me with a hole inside. After much thought, I realized that you, also, must have a hole inside-because what else drives one man’s desire for what another man has? I hope that you find something to fill the void within yourself-but it will not be my hotel.

I have indulged this correspondence mostly for fun-it has been a piece of detective work, trying to discover your identity. I suspected everyone from Mack to Therese to my old, good friend Lacey Gardner, God rest her soul. I suspected hotel guests and Beach Club members. But now I would guess you are someone else entirely-someone on the outside looking in-possibly even a trickster without a penny to your name. It doesn’t matter, S.B.T. I want to thank you for showing me how valuable the hotel is-worth much, much more than $25 million. You can’t put a price on love.

And so, with this letter, I officially end our correspondence. I wish you luck in whatever else you pursue.

Yours truly,

Bill Elliott

Now that autumn had arrived, the front desk was a peaceful place to work. Love kept the woodstove fired throughout the day and a mug of warm herbal tea by the phone. She wore bulky sweaters and the fleeces she hadn’t touched since early May. Normally, wearing winter clothes and lighting fires got Love excited for winter. Love had a plane ticket back to Aspen leaving after the hotel closed on Columbus Day, and although she was going to use it, she wasn’t staying in Aspen. It was amazing, really, how her life had changed in less than six months. Not just the circumstances of her life but her way of thinking as well. Her whole life before coming to this island had been charted, graphed, strategized. What she realized now was that it was much more fun to let Life tell her how things were going to be.

Look at the way she announced her pregnancy. She’d resolved to keep it a secret, but then Lacey died, and although Love didn’t know Lacey that well, she felt something up on Altar Rock, some sort of movement, a rush, what Vance would call a “gut feeling” that Lacey’s death and her child’s conception were not unrelated. They were part of a cycle, they were part of how the big picture worked. And descending into the moors-the breathtaking green-red-gold moors of Nantucket, Love blurted out the news.

She stunned Vance and Mack, that was for sure. Vance’s expression remained unchanged for a split second, then his mouth opened and he laughed. Not a funny laugh, but a happy laugh. He hugged and kissed her and he laughed. He clapped Mack on the shoulder and Mack let go of the stick shift long enough to grab Vance’s hand.

“That’s terrific, you guys,” Mack said. “Man, is that great. Congratulations.”

“I’m going to be a dad,” Vance said. His voice was filled with awe, Love supposed, and fear maybe too, but no hesitancy. “I’m going to be a father.” The words didn’t frighten her at all; driving down the bumpy, sandy road she knew she loved Vance. He was totally wrong for her-ten years too young, too sullen and moody and utterly mysterious-and yet she loved him. She wanted to be with him, she wanted to know him and she wanted him to father her child, in every sense. Standing on Altar Rock, she felt her heart open up to include other people; she felt her life grow beyond just herself. This was a gift she had never expected from pregnancy, or wanted, but here it was. She was forty years old and she was growing up.

Love and Vance talked about what they were going to do. First they considered Vance moving to Aspen. He could get a job at the Hotel Jerome, or the Little Nell. After the baby was born in May, they could return to Nantucket. This plan had its appeal, but when Love thought about it, she realized she didn’t want to live in Aspen any longer. “Can we stay here?” she asked him. “Can we stay on Nantucket?”

He smiled. She wasn’t used to this-him smiling all the time now. “Sure,” he said.

Vance discovered that the house Mack and Maribel usually rented for the winter would be empty. So the house on Sunset Hill-the house Mack called the Palace-would be theirs. It was a house that fell out of the pages of Love’s book, Vintage Nantucket. The uneven wooden floors might throw her pregnant body off-balance, but the ceilings and the doorways were low enough that she had plenty of places to brace herself.

And so, they would stay on Nantucket, and this seemed the final piece of Love’s happiness. She was pregnant, she was in love with Vance, and over the past five months she had fallen in love with Nantucket. She was staying.

A couple wearning sweaters and gloves and hiking boots walked into the lobby, their cheeks bright with the cold. It was room 15, the Hendersons. They were young and laid back, the kind of couple Mack had promised would show up in the fall.

“We just walked the trails at Sanford Farm,” Mrs. Henderson said. She had gray eyes and thick black eyelashes. “This place is so gorgeous. It’s like make-believe. The houses in town, the shops, the restaurants. And then when you get out of town, the natural beauty is astounding.”

“The island is magical,” Love agreed.

Mr. Henderson approached the desk, one hand in his front jeans pocket, and one hand wrapped around a mug of coffee. “We’re schoolteachers in Vermont,” he said. “And Vermont is beautiful. But not like this. It must have something to do with being on an island, all that water, you know.” He looked at Love. “Do you live here?”

Here-Nantucket-the land of stars and clams, oxygen-rich air and romance?

“Yes,” she said.

Jem called his parents from the phone in Maribel’s apartment. He knew his family was waiting to hear from him. Waiting for him to come home.

His sister, Gwennie, answered the phone.

“It’s me,” he said. “Mom and Dad there?”

“That’s just great,” Gwennie said. “We don’t hear from you in six months, and then you can’t even say hello like a normal person? That’s just great, Jem.”

“Gwen, are Mom and Dad there, please? This is costing money.”

“Don’t you want to know how I am?”

“Sure,” he said.

“I’m more blood than flesh,” she said. “But I’ve gained six pounds.”

“Excellent,” he said. “No more puking?”

“Not as much. When are you coming home?”

“I need to talk to Mom or Dad,” Jem said. “Put on whoever’s in the vicinity.”

Gwennie didn’t bother to cover the receiver. “Mom! Dad!” she screamed. “Jem’s on the phone!”

His mother got on. “Jem! Thank you for calling, honey.”

“Hi, Mom.”

“How are you?”

“I’m great. It’s been quite a summer.”

“It sounds like it. I photocopied your letters for my bridge club. You don’t mind, do you? If it said something private, I blocked it out. But you really didn’t say anything too private. Everyone wanted to know about the people you were meeting. It sounds like that island is really something.”

“It is.” He imagined his letters being passed around the bridge table like a cut-glass bowl of nuts.

“When are you coming home? Daddy and I want to pick you up at the airport.”

Jem’s father picked up the other phone. “Hey, boy! We miss you down here. Feels like you’ve been away forever.”

“What’s going on, Dad?”

“I’m watching the Redskins lose and your mother’s making chili.”

“Gwennie’s just starting to get better,” his mother whispered. “She’s not purging nearly as often.”

“She said she gained six pounds,” Jem said. “That’s great.”

“I talked to Bob Beller about getting you an internship at Brookings,” his father said. “How about that? The Brookings Institution-now, there’s a high-powered place.”

Jem took a deep breath. Hearing his parents’ voices made him miss them-he pictured his house, the kitchen with the copper pots hanging, his bed and goose-down pillows, the den with the pool table and the organ that Gwennie hadn’t touched since she was nine years old. He missed it-and he wondered if maybe that was what kept him from calling all summer. He didn’t want to miss them too much.

“I’m not coming home,” Jem said. “I’m going to New York State for a couple of weeks, and then I’m going to California.” He coughed. “Actually, I’m moving to California.”

Gwennie must have been listening on a third phone because she yelled out, “He’s not coming home! I told you he wasn’t coming home and I was right!”

“You’re not moving anywhere,” his father said.

“Paul,” Jem’s mother said. “We can’t clip his wings.” She sweetened her voice. “Why do you want to move to California, Jem? That’s so far away.”

“I want to be an agent,” he said. “I want to open my own talent agency.”

“You need capital to open a business,” his father said. “Opening a business is not just something you do the year after you graduate from college.”

“I know,” Jem said. “I’ll work for someone else first, and save my money.” He thought about the fifteen thousand dollars sitting in Nantucket Bank with his name on it. He had not written home about that-his parents would think accepting Neil’s money was wrong. They would wonder what he’d done to earn it. “Anyway, I have to be in California to break into the business.”

“I was right!” Gwennie shouted. “I told you so!”

“What did you learn up there this summer?” his father asked. “That you don’t need your family anymore?”

“Did you meet a girl?” his mother asked. “Did you…did you get some girl in trouble?”

With the exception of Gwennie’s bulimia, his family was like something from the wrong decade. Did you get some girl in trouble? His mother couldn’t even say the word pregnant.

“No,” he said. “No one’s in trouble.”

“Except you,” his father said. “If you don’t get yourself home by the end of the month.”

“I don’t want to work at Brookings, Dad,” Jem said. “And I don’t want to tend bar at the Tower.” The Locked Tower: now the very name of the place gave him the shivers.

“You’re not going to California,” his father said. “I forbid it.”

“Paul!” Jem’s mother said. “We talked about this. If Jem wants to go to California, what can we do to stop him? He’s twenty-three years old.”

“I am not pleased, Jeremy,” his father said. “And I’m not sending you any money, so I hope you earned plenty up there. I’m going to call Bob and tell him to forget about the internship. Is that what you want me to do?”

“Yes,” Jem said.

“Okay, then.” His father hung up.

“Mom, are you still there?” Jem asked.

“Yes,” she said.

“Her name is Maribel Cox,” Jem said. “She’s blond and pretty and nice and incredibly smart. She works at the library and she runs and she’s a terrific cook. I love her, Mom.”

“You love who?”

“Maribel Cox,” he said. “You should be happy for me because this is, like, the best thing that’s ever happened to me aside from being born.”

“You love Maribel Cox.” His mother sighed. “It probably shouldn’t surprise me, but it does. You’ve always been so levelheaded about girls.”

“I’m being levelheaded now,” Jem said. “I swear.”

“Will you call us when you get to California? Will you tell us where you’re living?”

“Do you think Dad will ever speak to me again?”

“He’s disappointed, and I have to tell you, I’m disappointed, too, crushed, really. So when you hang up you tell Maribel Cox, whoever she is, that you hurt your mother’s feelings.”

“I’ll call you and tell you where I am,” he said. “I’m sorry about everything. I’m glad Gwennie’s getting better, and-”

“That’s enough, Jeremy,” his mother said. “We love you.”

She hung up.

“Whoa,” Jem said. He punched off the portable phone and fell back into the sofa cushions. “Whoa.” He thought back to what Lacey Gardner had told him, about how children should stop hoping for their parents’ approval and just live their lives. This fortified him for a minute, but then he realized that just because Lacey was dead didn’t mean she was right.

Maribel came into the living room. “How was it?” she asked softly.

“We’re going,” he said.

Of all the guests who stayed at the hotel, Cal West was Therese’s favorite. She didn’t know him particularly well; he wasn’t what she would call a friend. He wasn’t handsome or charming, and he didn’t have any egregious personal problems for her to work out-no divorce, no untimely deaths, no emotional or psychological conditions. Nothing about Cal West stood out. He was boring.

Cal West came from Ohio, a place Therese imagined to be even more dull and orderly and monochromatic than the town she grew up in on Long Island. Ohio-the name of the state was deceptively rounded; what Therese pictured was a square of dun-colored carpeting, flat, unattractive. What did people do in Ohio? Cal West worked in the provost’s office at Ohio State University. He processed papers having something to do with collegiate life.

Cal West had a triangular face-his forehead was wide and his chin narrow and the planes of his cheeks were straight edges. He had wispy brown hair which he combed down with water, a few faint acne scars, brown eyes. He stood five eight, wore sweater vests and loafers.

He’d started coming to the hotel six or seven years earlier for Columbus Day weekend. Therese might never have noticed him at all except the first year a strange thing happened. When she went in to clean Cal West’s room, the place was immaculate. The bathroom sparkled, the bed was made with perfect corners. At first, Therese thought she’d entered a vacant room, but Cal West’s suitcase was in the closet and his shirts and pants hung neatly on hangers. Therese checked the room the next day, and the next. His room was pristine. Therese could have gone through the motions of vacuuming the carpet and remaking the bed, but why? She had finally discovered a person as clean as she was.

Cal West spent hours reading in the lobby in front of the woodstove. One year he read the Bible, one year Shakespeare, one year every book that had won the Pulitzer Prize, in chronological order. In the evenings Cal removed his reading glasses, leaned back in the rocker, and listened to the music-Haydn, Schubert, Billie Holiday. Cal West seemed to have a quiet, contented life, and Therese envied that. She thought Cal West must be very wise. He’d done something right.

This year when Cal West walked into the lobby, he was as calm and unassuming as ever. He brought one plain black suitcase with a matching garment bag. He wore a maroon argyle sweater vest and a tweed jacket.

“Therese,” Cal said. “Hello.” He shook her hand. Always, with Cal, there was a warm handshake when he arrived and when he left. No more, no less.

“Hello, Cal,” Therese said. “Welcome home.”

Cal nodded; he took everything seriously. “Thank you,” he said. “It’s good to be home.”

“How was your year?” Therese asked.

“Fine, just fine.”

Just fine: The typical Cal West answer. But this year Therese wanted to know more. Surely there was something noisy, confusing, or messy in his life.

“How’s work?” she asked.

“Fine,” he said.

“What do you do again?” she asked. “You work for a university, but what do you do?”

“I work in the provost’s office,” he said. “I process complaints.”

“Really?” Therese said. “What kind of complaints?”

“Professors complain about funding, and students complain about professors.”

“Do you have a lot of student contact?” Therese asked.

“A little bit,” Cal said. He shifted his weight; he was still holding both pieces of luggage. To put them down might anchor him permanently in this conversation with Therese-something he clearly didn’t want. “I process written complaints only.” He laughed. “My God, if I accepted verbal complaints, my job…well, it would be chaos.”

Therese smiled at his sweater vest. “Any special women in your life, Cal?”

“No.” The answer was taut and clipped. He nodded toward the front desk. “I think I’ll check in now.”

Cal moved for the front desk as though it were home base, a place where he’d be safe. Therese puttered around her plants, checking the leaves for waxiness, checking the soil for moisture. She looked at Cal West’s back as he stood at the desk. What would it be like to be married to Cal West? To have life unfold evenly, without stumbling blocks, without unpleasant surprises like having a baby die inside you or waking up and finding your teenage daughter has disappeared? Therese would never know. She chose Nantucket, and the hotel, where things were always changing; she chose Bill. Bill, who climbed up on a widow’s walk during the worst storm in forty years out of devotion to their daughter.

Before Cal headed down the hall and outside to his room, Therese called to him. “Cal!”

Cal turned around. The expression on his face was both fearful and annoyed.

“Let me walk you to your room,” she said.

He stood, unmoving, until she was alongside him. She thought crazily, cruelly, of following Cal into his room and trying to seduce him. The idea of it was so completely out of the question that Therese laughed to keep from hating herself. She liked Cal West; what was her problem? Why did she have the urge to shake him up?

“You know,” she said as they moved toward the back door of the lobby, “I have a complaint to file. Or maybe it’s my daughter who’s filed the complaint. She’s run away.”

“Really?” Cal said. “Run away?”

“She ran away to Brazil,” Therese said. “After a very handsome boy.” They stepped out onto the boardwalk. Cal West always rented room 20, which was only one room away from the lobby. As soon as they stepped outside, they were at his deck.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Cal said.

“Never mind,” Therese said. Cal gripped his key tightly in his right hand; no doubt he wanted her to be on her merry way so that he could enjoy the hotel. “No, not never mind. I’m curious, Cal. I’m curious to know what you think about it. You work with young people. What do you think about an eighteen-year-old running away?”

“We don’t get many kids running away from college,” Cal said. “Especially not Ohio State. The kids love it. It’s paradise for them.”

“So you’re saying no one runs away.”

“No one I know of.” He pointed his key at the door of his room. “But I process complaints about grades and things. Bad food in the dining hall. Sorry I can’t help.”

“Okay. Look at it this way. What would you do if your daughter-your only child-ran away to another country for some boy?”

Cal licked his lips nervously and stared at his feet. She was torturing him by asking him such a question, by making him imagine such a thing could happen to him.

“I… I don’t have any children. I really don’t know what I would do.”

“What if you did have children?” Therese asked.

“Well, then, I’d be quite a different person.”

“Cal,” Therese said-her voice was growing belligerent, she could hear it. She was verbally abusing her favorite guest, her fellow clean freak-but she yearned for an answer. “What do you think I should do?”

“I don’t know, Therese. You’re asking me a question that’s impossible to answer.”

Therese touched his shoulder. “You know, Cal,” she said. “Sometimes I wish I could be you for a few days.”

He nodded. “I feel the same way about you.”

“You do?” Therese said.

“Of course,” Cal said. He unlocked the door to room 20 and somehow managed to get himself and his bags inside and turn around so that he stood on the other side of the door, as though he were bidding her good-bye. “You took the risk.”

“The risk?”

“The greatest risk there is. The risk of parenthood. You’re a mother. And who am I? I’m a nobody.”

“You’re not a nobody, Cal. You’re a man with a peaceful life.”

He smiled wanly and closed the door, leaving Therese standing on the steps of his deck, thinking that maybe this was why Cal West was her favorite guest-not because he was the cleanest guest or the quietest, or even the last guest but because something about his calm, safe life made her feel loud and daring and brave. Like a mother.

Vance cleaned his house, literally and figuratively. He’d lived all summer in a rental cottage behind a giant house owned by Frank Purdue’s chief financial officer. The house was called the Chicken and Vance’s cottage was called the Egg. This fact alone had been enough to keep Vance from telling people where he lived. He didn’t want to hear jokes about being an egghead or laying an egg or egg on his face, or which came first, the chicken or the egg-or any other stupid reference that people like Mack and Jem might come up with. Love had been to the cottage, but only a few times, and not for very long. It wasn’t a good place to bring women. Vance didn’t straighten often and so the cottage collected a jumble of CDs and books and tools.

That would all change now that Vance was going to be a father. Finally, after twelve years, Vance had two things that Mack didn’t-a woman and a child-on-the-way. Finally, after twelve years, Vance was released from whatever evil spell Mack cast on him. He was set free with this new life, as a lover and a father.

Carefully, Vance went through everything in his cottage. He packed his books neatly in boxes, he folded his clean clothes and made a pile for laundry. He threw away his poster of Vanessa Williams, his car magazines, he threw away beer bottles and wrappers from frozen burritos. In two weeks, he and Love were moving into the house on Sunset Hill-it was a chance to start over with everything clean and in order.

It was while going through his kitchen cabinets-tossing out any dishes that had chips or hairline cracks-that Vance found Mr. Beebe’s gun. The night after Vance pulled the gun on Mack, he brought it home and hid it inside a ceramic pitcher. As Vance lowered the pitcher from the shelf, he heard a rattling and instantly remembered the gun, a nickel-plated.38. Vance held it in his palm, marveling at himself. How had he ever summoned the guts to point this at someone? It was disgusting, and criminal, and Vance felt ashamed, stereotypical: a black guy with a gun. He’d held the gun to Mack’s head, he poked it into his chest. What made Vance feel even worse was that Love had no idea he’d kept the gun; she thought he sent it back to that creep, Mr. Beebe.

Vance had to get rid of the gun.

It wasn’t the kind of thing he could throw away in a plastic garbage bag with the flawed dishes. What if someone found it and traced the dishes back to him? No, it couldn’t simply be thrown away; he had to dispose of it.

Vance wrapped the gun in a pair of his ratty old underwear and climbed into his Datsun. He drove to the beach known as Fat Ladies’ Beach, which could only be reached by unpaved roads. Vance pulled up to the edge of the beach (the only problem with his Datsun was that he couldn’t drive it in the sand). He picked up his underwear and got out of the car.

It was gray and foggy, and gray waves smacked the beach. Vance trudged through the sand to the water’s edge. He looked to the left and the right to be sure no one was surf casting or digging for clams. When he was sure that he was all alone, he wiped the gun with his underwear to remove fingerprints and chucked the gun out into the water. He stuffed his dingy underwear into his jacket pocket and sat on the hood of his car for a minute to make sure the gun didn’t wash up on shore.

October was a great month. He could sit on this strip of beach all day and not see another soul. Vance liked fog, he liked the cool, damp, drizzly weather, especially now that he had Love. This winter, he would bring her to see the ocean every day.

Vance climbed into his car and backed up. He turned to look at the water one last time-and he saw something shiny wash up on the beach. Vance squinted; he felt the beginnings of heartburn and he reached into the console for a Rolaid. Then he pulled his brake and ran out onto the beach. The gun lay there, shiny and wet.

He picked up the gun, wrapped it in his underwear, and ran to his car. He drove away from Fat Ladies’ Beach, wondering what to do.

He drove to the dump.

The dump was crowded with end-of-the-season dumpers with their end-of-the-season rubbish. People hauled bloated, shiny black bags of trash, milk crates of bottles and cans, and decrepit furniture to the dumpsters and recycling center. The gun wrapped in underwear lay on the passenger seat, an unwanted passenger. And now Vance wished he’d brought a bag of some kind to hide the gun instead of his underwear. A pair of white BVD’s, with the telltale striped waistband. More gray than white.

Vance studied his choices for the gun. He could either toss it into a dumpster the size of a mobile home meant for household trash, or he could recycle the gun under metals. Vance decided immediately against household trash. A gun didn’t qualify.

He recycled the gun.

Or tried to. Shoving the swaddled gun under his arm, he walked, head down, for the recycling shoot.

“Vance?”

Vance raised his eyes. Pale orange hair. The white streak. Like a skunk, Vance always thought.

“Hi, Therese.”

She seemed upset, like maybe she’d been crying. Since Cecily had left, she cried a lot.

“I came to throw away some of Lacey’s old things,” she said. “Things nobody wanted.”

“That’s too bad,” Vance said.

“A life lived fully and so much ends up here at the dump.” Therese’s billowing skirt was too exotic for the dump. For the disposal of life rubbish.

“Yeah,” Vance said. “Well, see you.”

But Therese had eyes like no one else. Dirt-seeking eyes.

She tugged at the crotch of the underwear that was sticking out from under his arm.

“What’s this?” she asked.

“Old underwear.”

“You came to throw away a pair of old underwear?”

“Yeah.”

She smiled. “You men are so funny. I’ll tell you what. Give your underwear to me. I’ll use them as rags. That’s what I do with Bill’s underwear.”

Vance tightened his crab claw on the gun. “Sorry. No can do.”

Therese tugged at the crotch of his underwear. “Come on.”

“Nope.” Vance backed up until he felt the Datsun’s hood against his legs. He opened the door and slid in, the gun pinched against him. Therese regarded him in a way he was used to-weirdo, oddity, freak. Little did she know he was trying to mend his ways.

Vance drove into town and parked at Steamship Wharf. The noon boat was barely visible on the horizon. The steamship workers took their lunch break. Vance walked behind the ticket office where a couple of benches overlooked the harbor, for tourists with enough ingenuity to find them. Some scallopers rigged their boats, but for the most part, the wharf and harbor were deserted. Vance stood on the very edge of the wharf and gazed down into the water. It looked deep, and still. Vance pulled out the underwear, wiped the gun and dropped it into the water. It made a satisfying plunk and disappeared.

Vance steadied his breathing. No cop approached to write him a ticket for littering, the steamship wasn’t cruising into its slip holding seven hundred eyewitnesses to what he’d done. It was October, Vance was the father of a living being, and he was getting his house in order.

He waited a few minutes more to make certain the damn gun didn’t come bobbing to the surface, and when he was confident the gun was gone forever, he walked back to his car.

Steamship Wharf: the place where twelve years before, he’d stepped off the boat thirty seconds behind Mack, thirty seconds too late. He’d spent a fair amount of time over those years bemoaning this fact. But now, he realized, it didn’t matter. He was going to be a father. A father! Vance climbed into his car and drove off the wharf, and it was as close to a fresh start as he’d ever hoped to have.

During her last week on the island, Maribel ran. That was how she wanted to say good-bye-by running, fast and long. It was true autumn now, high autumn, the best season on Nantucket. Colors were vibrant-the dark reds of the bayberry in the moors, the red-orange of flaming bush, the ambers of the dune grass. Some days she was glad to be leaving Nantucket when it was most beautiful; she could always remember it like this. Other days she asked herself, How can I possibly go?

Maribel ran through the streets of town. Not only Main and Federal and Centre and the streets the tourists knew, but the narrow, twisting back streets as well-Fair and School and Darling and Farmer and Pine, South Mill, Angola. She studied the antique homes, the postage-stamp gardens and friendship stairs, the screened-in porches and widow’s walks and transom windows. She loved the names of the houses-Fair Isle, Left Bank, A Separate Peace, Captain’s Daughter, Beach Plum, Aloft, Nana-tucket, Molly’s Folly, Hunky Dory, Independence Day, Life Savour. Good-bye.

Maribel ran to Surfside Beach and through the State Forest to the airport. She ran Polpis Road to Shimmo, Quaise, Quidnet. She ran out Cliff Road past the old golf course at Tupancy Links, down Eel Point Road by the truly huge summer homes on Dionis Beach. She ran to Madaket Harbor.

She ran to Miacomet on a perfect autumn morning-fifty degrees, bright sunshine, brilliant blue sky. She ran down Miacomet Road sheltered on both sides by pines, until the land opened up by the pond. Mallards paddled just off the banks, and three swans glided through the water. Three white swans like something out of a fairy tale, graciously curved necks, and white tufted feathers at their hind ends, fluffed like tulle. The swans looked like women in fancy dresses. They looked like women in wedding dresses.

At the end of Miacomet Pond, where she could see the ocean peeking over the dunes, Maribel stopped running. She sat down on the marshy bank of the pond and she cried. In the weeks since the hurricane, Maribel told herself that the turn of events was inevitable. Breaking up with Mack, getting together with Jem, leaving the island-all part of some larger plan for her life. But it wasn’t easy. She remembered the rides she’d taken with Mack in the Jeep with the top down, all the walks through town in the winter, holding hands. Mack and Nantucket were interchangeable, one and the same, and that was why she had to leave.

She didn’t want to chase love anymore, she didn’t want to pursue a futile dream. She couldn’t make Mack love her any more than she could make her father, whoever he was, wherever he was, love her. She wondered why God had created this kind of exquisite pain, a pain so awful and so complicated, it had its own word-unrequited. She was trading in unrequited for requited, for the opportunity to be loved, to be held and cherished the way she deserved. With Jem, she told herself, she would be loved more, she would hurt less.

And, too, Maribel felt the only way she might ever get Mack was to leave him. She didn’t think he’d change his mind immediately-but maybe someday. Maybe someday when she was a school librarian in some Los Angeles suburb, a huge bouquet of yellow zinnias would arrive with a card from Mack. Or maybe she’d have to wait until she was as old as Lacey Gardner. She imagined sitting on a porch in rocking chairs and talking with Mack in fifty years-not about what went wrong with their relationship, because by then they would have forgotten what went wrong. No, they would remember happiness. Living in the Palace, seeing the seals at Cisco Beach, listening to Christmas carols from outside the Unitarian church. They would remember all the things that were good about being young and healthy and together on Nantucket. If Mack asked her to marry him when they were in their eighties, she would say yes. And the wait would be worth it.

The day before she and Jem were scheduled to leave, Maribel found herself running down the familiar road to the hotel. She told herself she was headed down there to see Jem-he had to work right up until the very end, carrying bags for the last guest, stripping the last room. But she knew she was really running toward the Beach Club to see Mack. Six years earlier, this was how they met. He waited for her every morning in the parking lot, pretending to sweep, and then one day he gathered the courage to offer her some water. She couldn’t help but wonder, What if I hadn’t accepted it? What if I’d changed my course and never met Mack at all? Her life would be a different shape, different colors. Many hours could be wasted this way: pondering the way things might have been.

Mack must have sensed her because he was out front by himself, taking down the Nantucket Beach Club and Hotel sign. He turned as soon as he heard footsteps, and when he saw her his face brightened, but only momentarily.

Maribel was terrified, her heart kept on its eight-minute-mile pace even after she stopped to talk to him. She was having difficulty catching her breath. This was ridiculous! she wanted to shout. How could they say good-bye?

Mack spoke first. “What boat are you on tomorrow?” he asked.

She swallowed. “Noon.”

He held the unwieldy wooden sign out in front of him. “Another season almost over,” he said. “Only Cal West is left.”

“You’re staying the winter?” she asked. “And next year?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I called How-Baby and turned down the job. I think you were right about me. I think I’m stuck here.”

She looked out across the beach at the water, at the ferry headed for Hyannis. Tomorrow, it would be her ferry. “You could be stuck worse places,” she said.

“Do you want me to see you off tomorrow?” he asked.

“Would you?” she said.

He kicked a hermit crab shell across the road. “I’ll be there.”

Maribel bit her lip; she was going to cry, but he didn’t have to know about it. She waved, turned toward home, and ran like hell.

Bill had survived another season. Barely. And not without profound loss. His daughter was gone, and the hotel needed colossal amounts of work-the floors and carpets on the Gold Coast had to be relaid, sections of the roof had to be repaired, and Clarissa Ford’s room-Lucky number 7-had to be totally renovated. Bill was leaving those projects until the spring, when he hoped he would feel more enthusiastic than he did now.

Bill couldn’t run the hotel without Mack’s help, that was for sure. Bill watched from his bay window as Mack walked into Lacey Gardner’s. Mack would stay there over the winter-he’d already agreed to pay Bill for the cost of heating.

Bill went over to Lacey’s. The cottage had a spare look to it inside, although the sign for Lacey’s hat shop still hung, and her Radcliffe diploma. But the Spode was down and the flowery Nantucket prints. It looked less like an old lady’s house and more like a monastery.

Mack came down the hallway carrying two empty boxes.

“You need some stuff for the walls,” Bill said. “I’m sure Therese can spare a few things from the hotel.”

“All the prints in our apartment were Maribel’s,” Mack said. “She’s taking them. But that’s okay. I’m going to bring some things from home.”

“From home?” Bill said.

“I’m going back to Iowa at the end of the month,” Mack said. “For Harvest.”

“You’re going to Iowa?”

“I’m selling the farm,” Mack said. “I need to meet with my lawyer. I need to clean out my parents’ house. So I figure I’ll put a trailer on the back of the Jeep and haul it all back here.”

“That’s a big step,” Bill said. “Selling your farm.” Bill felt ashamed. With all the other excitement, he’d forgotten Mack had to make this decision about his farm. If he’d paid attention, there might have been a way he could have helped. But maybe not.

Mack threw the empty boxes down. “I haven’t managed to make it back to Iowa in the last twelve years, I don’t see myself moving back there in the next twelve. This is my home.”

“Well, I’ve been rethinking your proposition about the profit sharing,” Bill said.

“Forget about it,” Mack said. “That was Maribel’s idea, not mine.”

“I want to give you something,” Bill said. “I want to thank you for staying.” An idea came to Bill then-an idea so crazy, so luminous that Bill flushed, his heart moved in his chest as though it were trying to escape. Where did the idea come from? From losing W.T., then Cecily, from Mack cleaning out his parent’s house, from standing here in Lacey’s cottage. It came from all of those places, and from the desert place inside of him. He should talk to Therese first, of course, they should think long and hard about this idea, they should have time to embrace it, shun it, and embrace it again. But Bill couldn’t wait. Mack stood in front of him, sandy haired, ruddy faced, handsome, saying he would stay. The son Bill had always wanted.

Mack shoved his hands in his jeans pockets. “You don’t have to give me anything,” he said. “You’ve given me plenty already.”

“I’d like to adopt you,” Bill said.

“Adopt me?” Mack’s brow folded and Bill felt like a fool. Just because he yearned for a son didn’t mean Mack wanted parents. He’d had two perfectly good parents-that was obvious from who the boy grew up to be. “You want to adopt me?” Mack asked.

Bill nodded, and then he was overcome with the fear that Mack would say yes.

Mack smiled. “I’m flattered, Bill. I’m… I’m touched. But I don’t know about that.”

Bill exhaled; he hadn’t realized he was holding his breath. “I don’t know either,” Bill said. “It was just an idea. You mean a lot to Therese and me. We want to do something for you.”

“How about a raise?” Mack said. “I am saving to buy a piece of land.”

“I’d be happy to give you a raise,” Bill said. “A big raise.”

“And full control next time there’s a storm?”

“You got it,” Bill said.

“And one afternoon off a week,” Mack said. “If I ever get another girlfriend, I want to be able to spend some time with her.”

“Agreed,” Bill said. “Do you want this all in writing?”

“No,” Mack said. “I trust you… Dad.” Mack grinned, then laughed, then reached out to shake Bill’s hand, and Bill embraced him. Dad. So it would be a joke between them from now on, that was fine. But Bill couldn’t help wishing that sometime in the next twelve years Mack would take him up on his offer, and become his son.

When Bill returned to his house, Therese was on the phone with the realtor from Aspen, setting up arrangements for their winter house.

“We’ll be there December fourth,” Therese said.

After she hung up, Bill said, “Maybe we shouldn’t go back to Aspen this year. After all, I can’t ski anymore, really. Maybe we should go to… Hawaii.”

Therese flashed him a disgusted look. “We can’t go to Hawaii.”

“Why not? It’ll be warm. We’ll get a condo with maid service and a cook. We can walk on the beach-”

Therese cut him off. “We can’t go to Hawaii because Cecily won’t know to look for us there. The only place she’ll look for us is at the house in Aspen.”

“Oh,” Bill said. Two good ideas shot down in one day.

“Don’t you see how it’s going to work?” Therese said. “One morning we’ll be sitting on the sofa drinking coffee and staring out at the back of the mountain, and we’ll see a bright spot. Cecily’s hair. She’ll be trudging up the road from town with her backpack, and we’ll see her beautiful hair. That’s how it’s going to work. That’s how it’s going to be.”

Therese spoke adamantly. She was nuts, of course, as delusional as Bill had been during the storm. They were taking turns being crazy. That’s how it’s going to be. Bill admired her confidence. He closed his eyes and hazily saw the scenario she painted. The cool, sharp evergreens that bordered the road to Independence Pass, the snowdrifts three feet high-and sticking out so that they couldn’t miss it, Cecily’s red hair. He guessed it wasn’t impossible. Maybe if they went through the motions of sitting on the sofa with their coffee every morning, God would recognize their pain, and more importantly, their devotion, the two of them sitting there like a kind of prayer, and He would let this wish come true. Okay, then, they would go to Aspen and look out the window and wait for their daughter to come home.

Bill nodded to let Therese know that he agreed, and then he took her hand and led her into the bedroom. She was alive and warm and she was staying, had always stayed and always would. She was his wife of thirty years. Bill made love to Therese, even though it was three o’clock in the afternoon.

When Mack was halfway to Steamship Wharf, he wondered why he’d offered to see Maribel off. He supposed he owed it to her-you dated a woman for six years and lived with her for three and it felt suspiciously like a piece of you was getting on the boat and leaving. Mack wished he owned a dog; he could talk things over with a dog without worrying about a response. He needed someone to bounce ideas off; he was sick of himself. In Iowa, he would pick up a Labrador or a German shepherd from a large farm litter. A new best friend.

Mack occupied his mind with thoughts of his new dog until he reached the steamship parking lot. It was ten to twelve; Maribel’s Jeep wasn’t in the lot. He missed the statement she’d made, then, officially driving off Nantucket. Mack swung his Jeep into a space and hopped out. There were tourists dragging suitcases on wheels, and there were the usual stout Steamship Authority workers in their Day-Glo vests. But no Maribel. She probably decided to forgo the good-bye; she probably found it too difficult.

Then Mack felt a tap on his shoulder, and there she was.

“Jem drove the car on,” she said. “I told him I was waiting for you.”

“You’ve spent a lot of time waiting for me,” he said.

She teared up immediately, and pulled a Kleenex out of her suede jacket. “I came prepared,” she said, wiping her eyes.

“You’ll be happier without me,” Mack said. “That’s why I did what I did.”

“You gave up,” she said.

“You deserve better.”

“It doesn’t help to hear you say that,” she said. “Because I love you and I believe in you.”

“I know,” he said. He opened his arms and took her in. He’d seen enough movies to understand that there were two kinds of endings-the kind where Maribel decided at the last minute to stay with him despite everything, and the kind where she got on the boat and left. Mack didn’t know which ending he was pulling for, a sign in and of itself. Maybe he had a warped sense of what love should be, but he thought that in love everything would be clear-instead of the muddy, confused, back-and-forths he’d had with Maribel. Still, as he held her, as she cried into his sweater, he thought, I will never watch her run in her sleep again. I will never see her jog toward me, ponytail swinging. I will never make her smile. It was his job now to play the uncaring ogre, so that she could leave and find happiness elsewhere. He owed her that much. But what about his own happiness? Where would he find that? Where would he even look if Maribel left?

Over the loudspeaker came the fuzzy announcement that the noon boat for Hyannis was ready to depart. Maribel lifted her face from his chest, her mascara ran and her upper lip quivered. But she said nothing. It was Mack’s turn to speak.

“I can’t believe this is happening,” he said. “Will I ever see you again?”

“Does it matter?”

“Of course it matters,” he said. “Maribel, I love you.”

“You love me?” she said.

“Yes.” He was sure that hearing this hurt worse than anything else he could have said, but what could he do? It was the truth.

Maribel blinked her blue eyes, more tears fell.

“I want you to stay,” he said. “Please stay.”

She smiled, and for a second Mack saw her as she was when it all began: Maribel standing in the stacks of the Nantucket Atheneum secretly reading a paperback romance. Six years younger and full of hope.

“I want you to stay,” he said.

“You’re lying,” she said. “But thank you.” Then, she turned and ran from him.

A Kleenex fell from her pocket and blew toward Mack. He picked it up-it was wet and stained with black splotches. He put it in his pocket and climbed into his Jeep. If he had a dog in the seat next to him, he might be able to watch the boat pull out of its slip and listen to its lonely moan of a horn. But he couldn’t do it alone, so he drove away.

Back at the hotel, things were quiet. The wind sang a bit, and Mack heard the thock of a gull dropping a hermit crab shell onto the asphalt. This was a taste of what the winter would be like-after Bill and Therese left for Aspen and it was just him, living alone in Lacey’s cottage. He hoped he’d learn to appreciate his solitude. That was what Mack wanted-to hear this quiet and be able to call it peace.

A man jogged into the parking lot. He was in his early fifties, with thick blond hair, wearing a Nantucket sweatshirt and navy nylon shorts. His legs were red with the cold. He looked familiar and Mack ran through the summer’s faces. Beach Club member? Hotel guest?

“You’re Mack,” the man said.

Mack smiled. Concierge to the very end. “That’s right. Can I help you?”

The man trotted up to Mack. Sweat dripped down his temples. He had clear blue eyes. “I’ve been wanting to introduce myself for a long time,” he said. “My name is Stephen Bigelow Tyler.” He said the name in such a way that Mack felt he should recognize it. Stephen Bigelow Tyler? The guy looked familiar, but nothing clicked.

Mack stuck out his hand. “Pleasure.”

Stephen Tyler glanced up at Bill and Therese’s house. “I run down here all the time. Usually at dawn when it’s quiet, but sometimes after dark.”

“It’s a beautiful spot,” Mack said.

“I’ve been trying to buy the hotel from your boss for years,” Tyler said, and he laughed, wiping his forehead against his shoulder. “Stubborn man you work for, he won’t sell. Though I guess I should be glad. I offered him twenty-five million for it.”

“You’re the one who’s been trying to buy the Beach Club?” Mack said.

“Quite unsuccessfully,” Tyler said. “Which is too bad because I wanted to give it to you.”

“Give what to me?”

“The hotel. I wanted to buy the hotel and give it to you.”

“Give me the hotel?” Mack backed up a step. Any crazy person could come down here now that it was off-season. This guy didn’t seem particularly dangerous-what seemed dangerous was that Mack felt he was telling the truth. Tyler wanted to give him the Beach Club? Mack thought of How-Baby, David Pringle, Vance pulling a gun on him in the middle of the night. Who was behind this?

“Who are you?” Mack said.

“I’m Maribel’s father,” he said.

A combination of fear and excitement spread through Mack as he stared at the man’s ruddy legs, his neat white socks, his Nike AirMax running shoes, the same brand that Maribel wore. Maribel’s father. Her father, for God’s sake. Then Mack’s eyes traveled back to the man’s face. There was no doubt. The hair, the eyes, and something unnameable in his face that Mack had seen in another face every day for the past six years.

“Does she know you’re here?” Mack asked. “Does she even know you exist?”

Tyler shook his head. “I found her years ago, by accident, when I spotted her with her mother at a shopping mall I was developing in upstate New York. I recognized her mother, and when I got a look at Maribel I had someone do a little research. I kept track of her all these years, although I never told her who I was. Because I have other children, and a wife, in Wellesley. I didn’t want to complicate things for myself or for her or for her mother.” He took a deep breath. “I just wanted to give her something wonderful, something huge, so that she would have a happy life.”

“And you’re telling me now because she’s gone.”

Tyler pushed up the sleeves of his sweatshirt, like he was getting ready to fight, but then his shoulders sagged. “I watched you two a few minutes ago, at the boat. I thought of introducing myself then, to give Maribel a reason to stay. But like I said, I didn’t want to complicate her life, I wanted to make it easier. So now she’s gone and she doesn’t know. It’s better that way.”

Mack disliked the thought of someone watching his last minutes with Maribel. “Maybe,” he said angrily. “Though I don’t see how it could be. I know far too much about absent parents. If she ever calls me or comes back here, I’m going to tell her.”

Tyler frowned. “I hate to say it, son, but I don’t think she’s coming back.” He kicked at some gravel. “We both lost her. But hey, maybe I’m wrong. In any case, let me give you my card. I think I can help you sell your farm.”

“My farm? You know about my farm? What are you, some kind of spy?”

Tyler shrugged. “I’m her father is all,” he said. “I’ve been watching out for her.” He took a business card from his shorts pocket, handed it to Mack, and before Mack could even read the scripted print: S.B.T. Enterprises, Boston, Nevis, Nantucket, Tyler jogged away.

Mack stood in the wind until Tyler disappeared down North Beach Road, taking Mack’s dream with him. Owning the Beach Club, running it with Maribel. Now it was nothing more than a great story to tell.

But to whom?

Mack walked into the office. A mistake, he realized, because out the window, he saw the ferry disappearing on the horizon.

The phone rang and it startled him, although it comforted him, too, the familiar sound, the reminder that summer’s end was temporary, and not a true end. Someone always wanted to book for next July or August.

Mack picked it up. “Nantucket Beach Club and Hotel,” he said.

“Mack?”

A female voice, distant-sounding, like someone calling from the other side of a long tunnel. Mack glanced back out the window, and fingered the Kleenex in his pocket. Maribel, calling from the ferry? It didn’t sound like Maribel; it sounded more like a woman who expected him to be excited to hear from her. Andrea, in Baltimore?

“Yes,” Mack said.

“Mack, it’s me,” the voice said. “Come on, I haven’t been gone that long.”

“Cecily?” Mack said. He plugged his other ear. “Cecily, where are you?”

“In Rio,” she said. “At the airport.”

“Are you coming home, kid? God, your parents are sick with worry.”

“I’m coming home.”

“What happened?” Mack asked. “Is everything all right?”

“It’s over between Gabriel and me,” Cecily said. “I feel like every bone in my body is broken, it hurts so bad.”

“I know what you mean,” Mack said.

“I’ll tell you about it when I get home. In fact, I really need to talk to Maribel.”

Mack could tell her about Maribel, and about Lacey, but they were subjects that required face time. Cecily thought she hurt now, and she was in for more.

“Listen, do you want me to put you through to your house? I know your parents are anxious to hear your voice.”

“I’m leaving in a few hours,” she said. “I should be back on the island tomorrow morning. I want to surprise them, Mack, okay? So don’t tell.”

“Okay,” Mack said. “I won’t tell.” He remembered Bill’s weak heart, but a heart wouldn’t fail from too much good news, or relief.

“I missed you, Mack,” Cecily said.

“I missed you too, kid.”

“I’m not a kid,” she said.

“Come home and prove it.”

“Okay, fine, I will!” Mack heard her old spunk and he knew just how she was standing, with her hip thrown out like an attitude. The slouchy, bright-haired princess of the Beach Club kingdom was coming home.

“So I’ll see you tomorrow, then?” she said.

What was home, really, but the place where a space just your shape and just your size waited for you. Here, on this island, at this Beach Club, a space for Mack, a space for Cecily.

“I’ll be here,” he said.