The Love Season

Part Two: The Dinner Party

August 19, 2006 • 6:32 P.M.

Suzanne Driscoll said, “The Robinsons just pulled in.”

She and Renata were standing at the bottom of the staircase, a few steps to the right of the open front door. Suzanne touched her hair, her earrings, and then, reassured that she looked perfect, she inspected Renata. “My God, what is that mark on your chin? You look like you’ve been in a prize fight.”

Renata’s hand flew to her jaw. She had noticed it herself only a few minutes ago: a garish purple bruise where the surfboard had smacked her. The spot throbbed with dull pain, as did the sunburn across her nose and cheeks. Suzanne had given her a tube of aloe mask, and she had applied it liberally, then lain down for twenty minutes of dreamless sleep. When Renata washed the mask off, her face felt fragile, like if she smiled, it would crumble and fall apart in chunks. There was no way to explain the bruise without explaining about Sallie, so Renata said nothing. She was hurt that this was what Suzanne had chosen to notice, because she had tried to make an effort with her appearance: She wore a white T-shirt with a scoop neck and a short pink skirt. She wore pink thong sandals embossed with the letter R. And yet now Renata felt that what she was missing was the bag for over her head.

Attention was drawn from Renata’s wound with the appearance of the Robinson family in the Driscolls’ foyer. Renata had thought the Robinsons would be a couple, but there were three of them; they had brought along a daughter who was about Cade and Renata’s age. Someone Renata, no doubt, would be expected to make friends with. Joe Driscoll came out to the foyer to greet the Robinsons, as did Cade. Everyone kissed, shook hands, thumped backs, grasped arms, and then Renata was ushered forth-Suzanne placed a light but insistent hand on her lower back and moved her forward into the center of a circle they’d all unconsciously made.

“And this,” Suzanne said, “is the future Mrs. Cade Driscoll.”

Renata tried to smile, though being introduced in this way offended her. She had been reduced to an announcement in Town & Country. Her face felt like plastic. She held out her hand. Mr. Robinson who was tall and balding, wearing Ben Franklin spectacles and a bow tie, was the first to take it.

“Pleasure to meet you. Kent Robinson.”

“Renata Knox,” Renata said, because for all the pomp and circumstance of the introduction, Suzanne had neglected to mention her name.

Mrs. Robinson, a short-haired brunette who was as thin and made up as Renata’s future mother-in-law and as cheerful with the same kind of questionable sincerity, hugged Renata quickly but fiercely, kissed her burning cheek, and said, “Oh, Suzanne, you are so lucky!”

“Aren’t I?” Suzanne said. She beamed as if standing before her were not a sunburned, bruised, delinquent, vase-breaking, list-stealing, lying, cheating Renata but someone else entirely. “And Renata,” Suzanne said in the fetching voice she reserved for the cat, “this is Kent and Kathy’s daughter, Claire. Claire and Cade went to Choate together. They are old, old friends.”

Renata smiled at the Robinsons’ daughter, trying to remember that first impressions were just that. Look how things had turned around with Sallie. But Claire Robinson had failed even more miserably with her appearance than Renata had. She wore a long peasant skirt and a man’s white T-shirt, and a pair of leather sandals that had been mended with white medical tape. She had long, dark hair on its way to becoming dreadlocks, and the whitest skin Renata had ever seen-as white as a geisha under layers of powder-so that the freckles on her nose and cheeks looked like the black beans in vanilla ice cream. Renata looked at her and thought, Ragamuffin, waif-she reminded Renata of a street urchin from a Dickens novel-though her blue eyes were bright and overexcited. Renata wondered if she was on drugs.

“Hi,” Renata said. And in case Claire had missed the earlier introduction, she added, “I’m Renata.”

Claire was staring at Renata in a way that bordered on rude. Then she offered a limp, moist hand. “It’s nice to meet you. I couldn’t believe it when I heard Cade was engaged.”

“Right,” Renata said. “We’re kind of young.”

“Claire and Cade went to Choate together,” Suzanne said again. She took a sharp breath. “Let’s go to the big room and get a drink.”

They repaired to the big room in three groups: Mr. Robinson, Joe Driscoll, and Cade led the way, slowly, accommodating Joe’s occasional stutter step. (He was using a cane tonight because the sailing had worn him out.) Suzanne, Mrs. Robinson, and Claire followed behind, and Renata, feeling like a Sunset Boulevard streetwalker with her short, tight skirt and ugly bruise, brought up the rear. At least she thought she brought up the rear, but then she sensed a light, whispery presence behind her-Mr. Rogers, perhaps? She turned and was startled to find Nicole, dressed in black pants, a black shirt and black apron, quietly shutting the door and tucking away Mrs. Robinson’s turquoise wrap. Renata felt angry at Nicole-she was a snitch-and yet this anger was mixed with an odd sense of kinship. Nicole was a black woman, as was Renata’s best friend, whom she missed keenly, especially in these strange and compromised circumstances, and Nicole worked for the Driscolls, as did Miles, whom Renata still considered vaguely, though she might never see him again, to be her lover. On the strength of these two imagined connections, Renata felt it was okay to linger until she and Nicole were in step next to each other. She wasn’t sure what to say, but she wanted to let Nicole know that she, Renata, wasn’t like the rest of these people. As the future Mrs. Cade Driscoll (God, it made her shiver just to think it) she was as much Suzanne’s pawn, Suzanne’s servant, as Nicole was.

“You’ve worked hard today,” Renata said. “I hope you’re off soon?”

Nicole didn’t deign to meet Renata’s eye. “Miles was supposed to spell me at six. He phoned to say he wasn’t coming.” Nicole had a light and crisp British accent. It surprised Renata until she realized that this was the first time she had heard Nicole speak more than two words. The loveliness of her voice was poisoned by the disgusted look she shot Renata. “But you, I’m sure, know all about that.” She quickened her step and Renata hurried to keep up.

“His friend Sallie, you know,” Renata said. “She had a surfing accident and went to the hospital.”

Nicole dismissed this with a wave of her hand. “I have to fetch drinks,” she said.

Even as mentally anguished and physically battered as Renata was, she had to admit there was no room as perfect for entertaining on a balmy summer evening as the Driscolls’ living room. The room was lit only by candles and by a soft fluorescent light over the wet bar. The white couches had been connected to create a semicircle facing the out-of-doors. The coffee table had been cleared of Suzanne’s collection of porcelain eggs and her copies of Travel + Leisure and was now laden with platters of food-bluefish pâté, crackers, grapes, cheese straws, nuts, olives. The glass doors had been flung wide open to the night. The deck was festooned with tiki torches; the teak table had been covered with a red checkered cloth and set with butter-warmers and lobster crackers, cocktail forks and plastic bibs. Just seeing the table costumed like this made Renata pine for the dinner she was not having with Marguerite. The white cross! Beyond the deck, Renata could see the moon shining on the water; she could smell the water; she could hear the water lapping against the side of Joe Driscoll’s boat. Once you marry me, Cade had said, with the promise of a game show host, all this will be yours.

Renata tried to decide which of the two groups to join. She would be most comfortable with Cade at her side, though the second she had called Marguerite to cancel she had filled with a fury that could only be directed at him. She had thrown him several frosty looks since descending from her room (where, earlier, he’d knocked timidly, no doubt looking for sex, and Renata had told him brusquely and without opening the door that she was busy getting ready and to please go away)-but Cade didn’t look as apologetic or as distraught as he should have. He seemed oblivious to her, and he had done nothing to acknowledge the sacrifice she made so that she could have lobsters with the Robinsons. Renata also felt put out by Claire Robinson’s presence, primarily because it hadn’t been mentioned and thus felt like something secret, something the Driscolls were trying to pull over on her. If an old friend of Cade’s from boarding school was coming for dinner, why wouldn’t anyone have mentioned it? And yet Cade didn’t seem interested in Claire Robinson; Renata didn’t remember seeing them even greeting each other. At this moment, Cade was talking to Kent Robinson about his new job at J. P. Morgan while Joe Driscoll leaned on his cane with one hand and tried to discreet away his other hand, which shook violently.

Renata, unable to place herself comfortably with the gentlemen, stood with Suzanne, Mrs. Robinson, and Claire. Suzanne and Mrs. Robinson were as thin as blades and Renata could imagine them working a crowded room, alternately smoothing and cutting. They were talking about a third woman, a friend of theirs maybe, but maybe not, who had breast cancer. The cancer had metastasized; the woman was the mother of three small children.

“In the end, I can’t help but feel it’s her own fault,” Mrs. Robinson said. “All it would have taken was a yearly mammogram!”

At this, Claire gasped. “I can’t believe you just said that. Really, Mother!”

“Those poor children,” Suzanne said.

It was Renata’s least favorite kind of story-those poor, motherless children. Just as she thought, I can’t be a part of this, and made the slightest movement toward the men, Nicole appeared holding a tray of drinks.

“White wine spritzers,” she said. She smiled warmly at the women and especially at Renata. Renata couldn’t decide if Nicole had forgiven her or if she was being grossly insincere. Was there, Renata wondered, a genuine person in the room, including herself? She took a glass from the tray.

“Thank you,” she said.

Mrs. Robinson also took a glass, though Claire and Suzanne declined. Claire asked for a hot chai (“if it’s not too much trouble”), which Nicole assured her it wasn’t. Renata noticed a very full glass of white wine resting on a side table just below Suzanne’s fingertips, which, now that other guests had drinks, she felt free to pick up.

“Cheers,” Suzanne said. “Here’s to the end of the summer. And to Cade’s engagement. And to being together.”

The three of them clinked glasses while Claire stood among them, beaming, and cheerfully mimed as though she had a glass. Renata drank down quite a bit of her fruity, fizzy wine punch, hoping Nicole hadn’t poisoned it. She glanced at Cade, who was drinking a Stella, still deep in conversation with Kent Robinson about his future on the buy-back desk. Joe Driscoll had availed himself of the sofa-he couldn’t lean on his cane and hold a drink-and he smiled benignly at Cade and Kent’s conversation, though he wasn’t really a part of it any longer. Renata considered joining him. If there was a decent person in the room, it was probably Joe Driscoll. She could ask him about the sailing.

“We’re lucky to have Renata with us tonight,” Suzanne said. “She originally made other plans.”

“Really?” Mrs. Robinson said. She smiled as though she couldn’t imagine such a thing.

“I was supposed to have dinner with my godmother,” Renata said. “Marguerite Beale.”

“Marguerite Beale?” Mrs. Robinson said. “Marguerite Beale? The chef? From Les Parapluies?”

Suzanne smirked and nudged her friend’s elbow. All of a sudden she seemed about to burst with pride and excitement, as if she’d just announced that Renata was related to the queen of England. “Her godmother.”

“But why?” Mrs. Robinson said. “How?”

“She was my mother’s best friend,” Renata said. “Candace Harris Knox?”

“Renata lost her mother when she was terribly young,” Suzanne said, clucking. “Joe and I used to go to the restaurant all the time, of course.”

“Of course,” Mrs. Robinson said. “So did we. God, that seems like ages ago.”

“I think I remember your mother,” Suzanne said. “Though maybe not. I only ever caught glimpses of Marguerite Beale. She used to sit down to eat with friends after everyone else went home, or moved into the bar. I have to admit, I wasn’t really part of her crowd.”

“Nor was I,” Mrs. Robinson said. She sounded sad about this for a moment; then she cleared her throat. “So, Marguerite Beale. She’s better then? You heard the strangest stories, right after the restaurant closed.”

“Yes,” Suzanne murmured. She sipped her wine and touched Renata’s arm. “You must know all about it. Marguerite’s trouble?”

Renata’s face burned; her jaw pulsed. She sipped her drink and resolved to say nothing, to give nothing away. She glanced at Claire, who was staring at her again.

“It was rather like Vincent van Gogh cutting off his ear,” Mrs. Robinson said. She tittered nervously. “At least that was what one heard. I’m sure she’s better now; I’m sure she’s just fine. Your godmother! That’s simply extraordinary.”

To keep from slapping Mrs. Robinson or telling her to fuck off, which was what the Action-voice in Renata’s head was advising her to do, Renata made a move for the food on the coffee table. She had eaten nothing but the damned banana all day. She slathered a cracker with bluefish pâté and shoved it in her mouth. She could hear Suzanne and Mrs. Robinson whispering behind her. She heard Claire say in an aggravated whisper, “Mother, please! You’re a terrible gossip!” Cade appeared at Renata’s elbow.

“Are you okay?” he said.

Vincent van Gogh? she thought. She hated Mrs. Robinson. But before Renata could express this sentiment to Cade, Nicole appeared with a tray of fresh drinks.

“Renata?” Nicole said.

Renata slammed back the rest of her spritzer, placed the empty glass on Nicole’s tray, and took another.

“Thank you,” she said to Nicole. “I think you’re the only person in the room who knows my name.”

“Oh, come on,” Cade said. “I know your name.”

She glared at him. Nicole walked away. The four adults mingled in a group and then strolled out to the deck. Joe Driscoll leaned on his wife; he was moving without his cane.

Renata took a pull of her wine spritzer. She was feeling more dangerous every second.

“What’s wrong?” Cade said. “Tell me.”

Burn it down, she thought. But she was too afraid. If she told Cade about what had happened with Miles, he might forgive her. That was her fear. If she told him and he forgave her, she would never be free; she would always be indebted to him.

“Nothing’s wrong,” she said. She picked up a handful of mixed nuts. “I’m just hungry.”

“Are you sure?” he said. He was asking her, but his voice was revved up with a false playfulness; he sounded like he was acting. And then Renata realized why: Claire Robinson was standing a few steps behind them, alone, chuckling to herself over the witticisms needlepointed on Suzanne’s throw pillows. LORD, DO NOT LEAD ME INTO TEMPTATION. I CAN FIND IT JUST FINE BY MYSELF. She was listening to every word they said, and now that the adults were outside it was rude not to include her in the conversation. Cade, with his brilliant breeding, should know that.

Renata turned, forced her stiff face into a smile. “So you and Cade went to Choate together,” she said to Claire. “That’s exciting. I never met anybody that Cade went to Choate with.” This wasn’t strictly true. There was a girl at Columbia who had graduated from Choate a year behind Cade. She wore black capes and a lot of eye shadow. She had dyed her hair white, and when she saw Cade and Renata on campus she wolf-whistled and yelled out, “Cade-dee! Cay-dee, bay-bay!” The girl, her name was Esther, scared Renata; Renata wondered if Claire knew her; maybe they were friends.

“Yeah,” Claire said, twisting her dirty hair. “We’ve known each other a long time.”

“A long time,” Cade echoed. “My dad and Mr. Robinson went to business school together. And Claire and I grew up here together summers.”

Claire smiled at Cade over the top of her mug of tea. “All those JYC dances.”

“Right,” Cade said.

Renata bent over for another cracker. She was picking up an awkward vibe. Claire had a crush on Cade; she’d probably suffered from it her whole life.

There was a burst of laughter from outside. Renata, Cade, and Claire looked out at the two couples. Suzanne and Joe were arm-in-arm, as were the Robinsons, all of them gazing at the water. From here, they looked like nice people. How difficult would it be to just play along with this fantasy-to indulge Cade and Claire as they reminisced and used acronyms she didn’t understand, to drink more wine, to eat lobster drenched in lemon butter, to laugh and chat and revel in being one of the most privileged people on earth out on the deck of Vitamin Sea? Could Renata make herself do it? Could she pretend she was someone else entirely?

“So where did you go to college, then?” Renata asked.

“Bennington,” Claire said, and this sounded right to Renata. There seemed to be a lawlessness to Claire, starting with a blatant disregard for how to dress for this dinner party. Claire wasn’t wearing a bra; her nipples poked right through the threadbare white T-shirt. Action probably would have loved the girl, and Renata tried to love her, too-she was the exact opposite of her mother and Suzanne. But there was something about Claire that irritated Renata, a cool knowingness, a sense of superiority. She moved around the house with confidence, even a sense of ownership-as though, someday, it would all be hers. “Vermont’s a long way from New York City,” Claire said. “So I barely saw Cade at all during college. Except for the semester in London, spring before last.”

“You went to London, too?” Renata said. By Cade’s account, the semester abroad had been overrated, yet he went because that was what one did. One attended the London School of Economics and bought a closetful of hand-tailored shirts. Renata supposed that, being a married woman, a semester abroad would be out of the question for her, though she and Action were desperate to go to Barcelona. They wanted to stroll the Rambles at midnight, drink sangria, learn to flamenco dance. It would be so much better than Cade and Claire stuck in cold, fussy London. “That’s a coincidence. Both of you there at the same time.”

Cade and Claire just stared at Renata like she had two heads. She gingerly touched her bruise; it reminded her of Sallie.

“Claire and I went to London together, actually,” Cade said.

“Huh?” Renata said. There was some meaning to be extracted from the way he said “actually.” Renata looked at them, side by side now, as though they were standing at a front door, about to welcome Renata into their home. Then she got it. They had dated, been lovers. Really? It struck Renata as funny and sweet-almost. A part of her recognized how much they had in common: Their parents were friends; they had all that shared history. Cade could play the flaming liberal when he wanted; had he been antiestablishment when he was with Claire? Renata could picture him holding Claire in his arms. She was tiny, doll-like, featherlight; he could pick her up with one hand. Had he liked that? Mad he touched her nipples? Had he kissed her nose, with freckles so dark and distinct he could count them?

Renata twisted her ring to the inside of her hand; for the umpteenth time today it made her feel ashamed. And to make matters worse, Claire was staring at her again. What was her problem? Renata recalled the childhood retort: Take a picture, it lasts larger.

“I have to go to the ladies’ room,” Claire said. She disappeared into the front of the house.

Cade took Renata’s arm a bit more forcefully than was necessary.

Somewhere in the house, the phone rang. Renata wrested her arm free and snarfed another handful of nuts. Manners of a barnyard animal, but she didn’t care. Nicole rushed from the kitchen to the deck with a significant glance at Renata. Even Nicole knew about Cade and Claire; that was why she had suddenly been so friendly. It was amusing to see Renata made a fool of. Nicole fetched Suzanne from the deck and Suzanne sailed past, leaving Joe to plop in a teak chair.

“Renata,” Cade said. “Listen to me.”

“You dated her?”

“Renata-”

“She’s your ex?”

He sighed. “Yes. We were together, off and on, for a long time. Since we were freshmen in high school.”

Renata did the math. “Seven years?”

He nodded. “We broke up after London. But Renata-”

“But what?” Renata said; then she held up her hand. “On second thought, don’t say anything. Don’t explain. Please.” She felt like Cade had just handed her something precious-a legitimate reason to be angry. She could be angry because at no time during the ten months of their courtship had Cade mentioned his seven-year relationship with Claire Robinson. There had been occasional references to a “girlfriend in high school” Renata thought there had been more than one. She could be angry because she had been tricked into giving up dinner with Marguerite so that she could stay here and suffer through lobsters with Cade, his ex-girlfriend, and his ex-girlfriend’s parents. She could even be angry on Claire’s behalf; this couldn’t be pleasant for her, either.

There were murmurs about the phone call. Who was it? Was it Miles? Had Sallie died? Renata nixed this last thought; she wouldn’t be able to bear it.

“You’ve got quite a bruise on your chin,” Cade said. “Miles didn’t…hit you, did he?”

“Go to hell,” Renata said.

“I was going to explain it all when I came upstairs earlier,” he said. “But you told me to go away.”

“Please,” Renata said. “Don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t pursue this. I am not willing to talk about it right now.”

Suzanne approached, holding a fresh glass of wine. Renata doubted she needed it; her eyes were bright and wild, and she seemed unhinged. Her always-perfect hair was mussed, which was to say a thick strand fell across her forehead, into her eyes.

“Renata?” she said.

Renata raised her eyebrows, a gesture that hurt, physically, because of her face.

“That was your father on the phone.”

Renata’s heart plummeted and skipped at the same time, like a stone scudding across the road.

“He’s here, on Nantucket!” Suzanne said. “He’s joining us for dinner!”

7:18 P.M.

Everyone was in a hubbub about Daniel Knox’s arrival. Suzanne had given Nicole instructions to set another place at the table-thank God she’d had the foresight to order extra lobsters-and then make up the west guest room.

“He won’t have much sun in the morning,” Suzanne said. “But if we give him enough wine, he’ll be grateful for that.”

Cade was pacing. “We’re going to have to tell him as soon as he gets here,” he said to Renata quietly. “Maybe I should run out to the airport to get him myself; that way I could tell him alone. I should have asked him for your hand. People still do that, you know. If I hadn’t been so sure he would say no-”

“He knows already,” Renata said flatly. “I told him.”

“What?” Cade said. “You told him when?”

“This morning,” she said. “While you were sailing. I called him and told him.”

“I thought we were going to wait,” Cade said.

“I couldn’t just have him not knowing. He’s my father.”

“So that’s why he’s here, then,” Cade said. “He came to take you back.”

“You may find this hard to believe,” Renata said, “but I am an adult woman. A human being with my own free will. I’m not an object that can be handed over or taken back.”

“I never implied you were,” Cade said.

“You imply it all the time,” Renata said. “Just because we’re engaged doesn’t mean you own me.”

Claire appeared from the powder room. Her face looked dewy, like she had splashed it with water. “I finally figured it out,” she said. “Where I’ve seen you before. It was today, at the beach. You were at Madequecham, right? You were there with Miles? When they pulled that girl out of the water?”

Now it was Renata’s turn to stare. Claire had been at Madequecham? Claire had seen Renata there?

“Renata was there with Miles,” Cade said quickly, as though he sensed Renata might deny it. “He kidnapped her for the afternoon.”

“Lucky you,” Claire said. “I’ve always thought Miles was hot.”

“So what’s the deal with that chick, anyway?” Cade said. “Is she going to be okay?”

“Yeah,” Claire said, turning to Renata. “Did you know her?”

“My sunburn is bothering me,” Renata said. “I may run up and put on some more aloe before Daddy gets here.”

Outside, she heard Kent Robinson ask, “So what’s this fellow Knox’s business, anyway?”

“Insurance,” Joe Driscoll said. “Or reinsurance.”

“I’ll be down in a few minutes,” Renata said.

Once she was upstairs, she had to remind herself to breathe. She turned on the light in her room and threw all of her belongings into her duffel bag. She started whispering to Action, I am getting out of here. You could not pay me enough money to stay. She threw her damp bathing suit in, and the aloe mask, though she decided to leave behind the monogrammed beach bag, Miles’s shirt, and Suzanne’s list. Renata inhaled, exhaled. Her father, Claire, Sallie. On the one hand Renata couldn’t believe the way things were turning out, and on the other hand it made all the sense in the world. She was going to get caught, but it hardly mattered. No one could tell her what to do.

She heard the Driscolls and the Robinsons below her on the deck. Suzanne said, “I’ve never had this happen before, at the last minute like this. He said he’d get a hotel-”

“But really,” Mrs. Robinson said. “It’s August! What was he thinking? We have extra room, Suzanne, if-”

“Oh, we have room,” Suzanne said.

Renata did not hear Cade or Claire. They were, no doubt, huddled in the living room, where Claire was describing Renata’s treachery. And then she followed Miles up into the dunes. They were gone for a while. Renata looked long and hard at her engagement ring. Three karats, twelve thousand dollars. She had owned it now for seven days, but not for a second had it felt like it was hers. The ring came off easily. Renata left it on top of the dresser.

Renata checked the hallway. Clear. She hitched the strap of her duffel bag up over her shoulder and took off down the hall toward the back staircase. A light was on in one of the bedrooms. Renata stopped and peered in. She was so nervous, so giddy with her crime-movie escape tactics that she nearly laughed. Nicole was in the room, making up the bed. She snapped out the fitted sheet and it billowed. Renata watched her for a second, studying her face. It was grim, disgusted, and melancholy. Renata felt like she had X-ray vision; everything that had once been hidden in this house was now crystal clear. Nicole and Miles shared the apartment above the garage. I have a roommate. But he never said who it was. Miles and Nicole were sleeping together. I’m sorry, Renata thought. I am truly sorry. She snuck past, her bag bumping against her hip. At least she knew the kitchen was empty. She tiptoed down the back stairs (The Driscolls have servants, Action’s voice said; they have slaves) and out the side door. Renata’s sunburned skin puckered in the night air. She was standing in gravel by a row of trash cans next to the tall hedge that shielded Vitamin Sea from the western neighbors. Renata waited in the near dark until she heard the Range Rover start up and saw the headlights looping round.

Now, she thought. Now!

She heard a sound. Mr. Rogers was at the side door, mewing. He wanted to come with her, maybe.

“Good-bye,” Renata whispered.

And she ran.

7:33 P.M.

Four glasses of champagne and nothing to eat-no wonder the room seemed off-kilter-and yet Marguerite couldn’t bring herself to move. She poured another glass of champagne, already dreading the headache she would have in the morning. She should go get the mussels from the fridge, the aioli. She should tear off a hunk of bread; it might act like a sponge. The problem with having no sense of taste was that food held zero appeal and eating fine, beautiful food was an exercise in frustration. Marguerite would know, intellectually, that the mussels tasted like the ocean and that the aioli was heady with garlic and Dijon, and yet in her mouth it would be mush. She didn’t dwell on the loss of this sense much anymore-after fourteen years it was a fact of life-though she often wondered what it felt like to be blind, or deaf. Was it as disheartening to imagine a painting by Brueghel or Vermeer, or a sunset on a winter’s night, or your own child’s face, but be trapped in darkness, even with your eyes wide open? Was it as ungratifying to remember the exultant tones of the “Hallelujah Chorus” on Christmas Eve, or a guitar riff of Eric Clapton, or the sound of your lover’s voice, but be wrapped in baffling silence?

The grandfather clock went through its half-hour spiel. Seven thirty: the very moment this whole tumultuous day had been about. Can I feel sorry for myself now? Marguerite wondered.

There was a knock at the door. Surely not. But yes, Marguerite heard it: three short, insistent raps. She looked in the direction of the front hall but was too petrified to move. She sat perfectly still, like a frightened rabbit, well aware that if someone looked through the proper window at the proper angle, she would be fully visible.

Another knock, four raps, more insistent. Marguerite didn’t fear someone trying to hurt her as much as someone trying to help her. She rose slowly, got her bearings with the room, eyed a path from her seat at the dining-room table to the front door. She cursed herself for not getting dressed; she was still wearing the kimono. She thought about all the brilliant minds who had written about drinking-Hemingway a master among them with his wine bags made from the skin of animals and the simple repetition “He was really very drunk.” And yet no one had ever captured the essence of four glasses of champagne on an empty stomach. The way the blood buzzed, the way the eyes simultaneously widened and narrowed, but most of all the way one’s perception of the world changed. Everything seemed strange, funny, outrageous; the situation at hand became blurred, softened-and yet so clear! Someone was knocking on the door and Marguerite, drunk, or nearly so, rose to answer it.

There had been many, many nights of serious drinking at the restaurant. The cocktails, the champagne, the wine, the port, the cordials-it was astounding, really, how much the customers drank, how much Marguerite herself had consumed on a nightly basis. Lots of times she had stumbled home, leaning on Porter, singing to the empty streets. Lots of times her judgment had been compromised-she had said things that were indiscreet, unwise, and possibly even cruel; she had done things she regretted (the episode in the pantry with Damian Vix came to mind), and yet she kept on drinking. She loved it to this day; she thought it was one of God’s marvelous gifts to the world-the sense of possibility alcohol inspired. As her hand turned the doorknob, she conceded that she had been lucky; alcohol had never gotten the best of her the way it had, say, Walter Arcain. She had never tipped back whiskey at ten in the morning and then hit an unsuspecting jogger from behind while driving erratically over the speed limit on icy roads. The mere thought sobered Marguerite so that when she swung open the door, heedless of who it might be-hell, it could be the mailman with his irregular hours-she was frowning.

“Aunt Daisy?”

Marguerite heard the words before she focused on the face. She came after all, Marguerite thought, and then checked to see if it was true. Renata Knox, her godchild, stood before her-red in the face, panting, sweating, with a plummy bruise to the left of her chin. Her white-blond hair was in a ponytail, she wore a white shirt and a pink skirt, and slicing through her small breasts was the strap of an unwieldy duffel bag. It looked like she had run in her sandals all the way from Hulbert Avenue; it looked like she was trying to escape the Devil himself-and yet she was utterly beautiful to Marguerite. She was Candace.

“Darling!” Marguerite said.

“Can I come in?” Renata asked. “I’m kind of on the lam.”

“Yes,” Marguerite said. “Yes, of course.” She ushered Renata into her hallway, still not quite believing it. Was this really happening? She came anyway? Marguerite shut the door, and when Renata kept a steady, worried gaze on the door, Marguerite locked it.

“Thank you,” Renata said.

“Thank you,” Marguerite said.

Marguerite pulled the second champagne flute from the freezer and filled it to the top. Meanwhile, Renata dropped her heavy bag.

“Is it all right if I stay the night?” she asked.

“Of course!” Marguerite said. She was so happy for herself, and for whichever of the upstairs bedrooms that would finally be used, that it took her a moment to realize something must have gone terribly wrong at the house on Hulbert Avenue. Marguerite handed the champagne to Renata, who accepted it gratefully. “Go right ahead and drink. You look like you need it. We’ll have a proper cheers in a minute.” Marguerite had planned to serve the hors d’oeuvres in the sitting room, but it suddenly seemed too stuffy; the grandfather clock would watch over them like an armed guard. So, the kitchen table. Marguerite fetched the polka-dotted cocktail napkins, the toothpicks, the mussels, the aioli. She decided to stay in her kimono. She didn’t want to leave Renata for even a minute; she might disappear as quickly and unexpectedly as she had come.

“Sit, please, sit!”

Renata collapsed in a kitchen chair. Her face was still a bright alarm. Sunburn. She impaled a mussel on a toothpick and zigzagged it heavily through the aioli.

“Can you tell me what happened?” Marguerite said, settling in a chair herself. This was supposed to be an evening when Marguerite did the talking, and she had worried about how she would negotiate the requisite small-talk-to-start. Now there was no need.

Renata didn’t seem keen on explaining right away. She was too busy feasting. She brought the mussels successfully to her mouth a third of the time-otherwise, dollops of aioli landed on the table, which she didn’t notice, or on the front of her white shirt, which she did. She swabbed those drops with her cocktail napkin, leaving behind pale smudges.

“Sorry,” Renata said. “I’m starving.”

“Eat!” Marguerite said. “Eat!”

“These are delicious,” Renata said. “They’re divine.”

She finished her glass of champagne, burped quietly under her breath, and tried to relax. She was safe, for the time being, though her whereabouts wouldn’t be a secret for long. Someone would come sniffing around shortly, but Renata wasn’t leaving. They couldn’t make her.

“Darling?” Marguerite said.

Renata had seen pictures of Aunt Daisy in her parents’ wedding album. In these pictures, she wore a purple dress; her hair was in an enormous braided bun that sat on top of her head like a hat. There were different pictures of Marguerite in the back of the album, pictures taken during the reception. In one photograph, Marguerite’s hair was down-it was long and wavy, kinked from the braiding-she had changed into a black turtleneck and black pants; she was holding a cigarette in one hand, a glass of red wine in the other. Renata’s parents were also in the photograph, her uncle Porter, her uncle Chase, and one of the restaurant’s waitresses. It looked like a photograph from a Parisian café-everyone was half-smiling and sexy and smoky. Marguerite, though she wasn’t pretty like Renata’s mother, appeared very glamorous in these pictures, and that was the image Renata had clung to. Her godmother, a famous chef with sophisticated sensibilities, her mother’s best friend.

The Marguerite sitting next to Renata now had a short, shaggy haircut (truth be told, it looked like she’d cut it herself) and she seemed much older than she had in the pictures. She was wearing a pink silk kimono, an article of clothing that intrigued Renata; it was exactly the kind of thing Action would have picked out of a vintage shop and boldly made her own. The kimono looked like it had history, character; if Suzanne Driscoll owned such a kimono she would have stored it in the attic, pulling it out only for costume parties, Halloween. But here was Marguerite wearing it to dinner. Despite the haircut and the aging, Marguerite had style. And more important, most important, the thing Renata had counted on, was that she exuded generosity, tolerance, acceptance. Renata felt she could confide everything, just from the way Marguerite had said, Can you tell me what happened? Just from the way she said, Darling?

“Well,” Renata said. “I ran away. Again.”

Marguerite nodded, and gave a little smile. “So I see.”

Renata wondered what kind of scene was enacting itself back at Vitamin Sea. Had her father arrived yet? Had anyone noticed she was missing? How long would it be until the phone rang? By leaving, Renata hoped she had made herself clear: She wasn’t going to marry Cade. She wasn’t going to conform to Cade’s idea of her, or the Driscolls’ idea, or her father’s idea. She was going down another road entirely.

“I cheated on my fiancé today,” Renata said. “I had sex with someone else.”

Marguerite’s eyebrows arched. The secret smile faded. Renata felt a wave of regret. Did Marguerite disapprove? Renata felt guilty about Miles, but mostly because she had been up in the dunes with him when Sallie had her accident. The act of sex bothered her less-though there were Cade’s feelings to consider, and now Nicole’s. The sex had seemed predestined, somehow, the inevitable result of the bizarre circumstances she found herself in today.

“If I tell you about it,” Renata said, “you won’t judge me, will you?”

“No,” Marguerite said. “Heavens, no.” She sipped her champagne, nibbled a mussel, and nodded her head. “Go ahead,” she said. “I’m listening.”

The clock ticked; it ding-donged out quarter till the hour, then the eight strokes of the hour. The number of mussels diminished as the number of used toothpicks piled up on the side of the platter. When the mussels were gone, Marguerite brought Renata a hunk of bread to wipe up the aioli. The girl remembered her manners from time to time, placing her hands daintily in her lap-then, as she got swept away by her own storytelling, she would forget them, downing her champagne in thirsty gulps, polishing the inside of the aioli bowl to a shine. Meanwhile, Marguerite tried to predict the girl’s needs-more champagne, more bread, a fresh napkin-while trying to keep track of the tale she was spinning. Renata started with the engagement only a week earlier-a diamond ring in a glass of vintage Dom Perignon at Lespinasse. Impossible to say no to, Marguerite had to agree. Then Renata moved on to the house on Hulbert Avenue, and the boy’s parents, Suzanne and Joe Driscoll. Did Marguerite remember them? Marguerite couldn’t say that she did. Renata described the mother, Suzanne, very carefully: the red hair swept back and curled under the ears, the big blue eyes, the skinny forearms jangling with gold bracelets. Marguerite didn’t remember anyone like this-or rather, she remembered too many people like this, so many years in the business, so many nights in the summer, it was impossible to keep track. Marguerite felt like she was letting Renata down by not recalling the couple who were to be her in-laws, but then Renata smiled wickedly and it became clear she was glad Marguerite didn’t remember them.

“How about the Robinsons?” Renata said. “She’s short with dark hair, weighs about eighty pounds. His first name is Kent; he wears half spectacles.”

“No, darling. I’m sorry. If I saw them, maybe…”

Again, the look of someone who had just won a secret point.

Marguerite heard about Renata’s jog to the Beach Club, the discovery of Suzanne’s wedding list, the conversation in which Renata told her father of her engagement, followed by the decision to go with this boy, Miles, to Madequecham Beach.

“I can see how that would be hard to resist,” Marguerite said.

“You don’t even know,” Renata said.

And then there was a change in Renata’s tone. Her voice grew somber; the words came more slowly. Marguerite heard about a girl named Sallie, decorated like a Christmas tree with tattoos and piercings. Sallie had a surfboard in the car; it got loose and smacked Renata in the jaw, hence the bruise. Renata disliked Sallie. But then came the discovery of the cross Marguerite had fashioned so long ago (she could remember pounding it into the ground with a mallet meant for tenderizing meat, her bare hands freezing) and Sallie was there, next to Renata as Renata knelt before the cross and kissed it. Next Marguerite heard about heavy surf Sallie handing Renata her sunglasses, Sallie kissing Renata on the jaw. Marguerite heard about the volleyball game, sandwiches smushed by beer bottles, Sallie and Miles sitting on either side of Renata, making her feel, somehow, like she had to choose sides. Marguerite heard the girl Sallie’s words, Will you keep an eye on me? And, Don’t go getting married while I’m gone.

“I said I’d keep an eye on her,” Renata said. “But as soon as she was back in the water I disappeared into the dunes with Miles.”

Marguerite nodded.

“And she went down. Hit her head on her board and went under and when they found her, when they brought her out, she wasn’t breathing.”

“Oh,” Marguerite said.

“It was like I caused the accident,” Renata said. “I said I would watch her and then I didn’t, I was off doing this other horrible thing, and I feel…not only like I was negligent, but like it happened because of me.”

“You feel responsible,” Marguerite said. “Guilty.”

“God, yes,” Renata said.

Marguerite stood up to slide the asparagus into the oven. Guilt, responsibility-these were topics Marguerite knew intimately. She should be able to offer some words-things just happen; we don’t have any control; we can’t blame ourselves for the fate that befalls others-but Marguerite didn’t believe these words to be true. Guilt lived in this house with her; it was as constant as the clock.

“I understand the way you must be feeling,” Marguerite said. She cut two pieces of tart and set them down on the table.

Renata blinked her eyes; tears fell. Marguerite replenished their champagne and touched Renata’s hand.

“Is the girl all right?” Marguerite said. “She went to the hospital?”

“She went to the hospital here,” Renata said. “Then they flew her to Boston in a helicopter. I don’t know if she’s all right. I have no way of knowing.”

Marguerite sniffed the air, as if she were a witch, or an intuitive person, capable of divining things.

“She’s all right,” Marguerite said. “I can feel it.”

“Really?” Renata said.

For a second, Marguerite felt cruel. The conversation with Dan seemed like aeons ago, but she did recall his words: You’re like Mata Hari to her, Margo. She’s going to listen to what you say.

“Really,” Marguerite said. “But if it makes you feel better, we can call someone. We can call the hospital in Boston and ask.”

Renata searched Marguerite’s face. More tears threatened to fall and Marguerite panicked. She wasn’t prepared for any of this. But then Renata’s features settled and she picked up her fork. She gazed at the tart. “This looks delicious,” she said. She took a bite, then eyed the dark glass doors that led to Marguerite’s garden, as though she expected the bogeyman to appear.

She started talking again-about Cade demanding that Renata stay for dinner, about the Robinsons, their daughter, Claire, the ex-girlfriend no one had mentioned to Renata, about the shared semester at the London School of Economics.

“The semester before he met me,” Renata said. “And he never said a word.”

Marguerite forked a bite of tart. The pastry was flaky, the cheese creamy, and although she registered no flavor at all, she could tell the tart was a success. Renata devoured hers, then pressed the pastry crumbs into the back of her fork. Marguerite cut her another piece, a small piece, because there was more food to come.

“Oh, thank you, Aunt Daisy,” Renata said. “Thank you just for listening. It has been the weirdest day. Nothing was as I expected it to be.”

“Indeed not,” Marguerite said. She marveled at Renata’s story. And Marguerite thought her day had been extraordinary-because she left the house, visited old friends, stopped by her former place of business, because she drove to the country side of the island and back, because she had telephone conversations, because she polished silver and drank tea, because she looked at old photographs, because she sacrificed her Alice Munro stories in favor of the old, useless stories of her own life, because she cooked a meal for the first time since Candace’s death. Ha! That was nothing.

“I’m glad you escaped,” Marguerite said, only a little ashamed at herself for lauding the girl for leaving a dinner party without any excuse, warning, or word of good-bye. Marguerite was being horribly selfish. “You’re safe here.”

“I haven’t told you the real reason I left,” Renata said.

“You haven’t?”

“No.”

“Okay,” Marguerite said. The champagne had officially gone to her head. She had lost her wits, or was about to. Water, she thought. She fetched a tall glass of ice water for herself, and one for Renata, who simply stared at it. “What is the real reason you left?”

“My father is here.”

Marguerite hiccupped, then covered her mouth and closed the top of her kimono with her other hand. “Here where?”

“On Nantucket. He flew in tonight. When I snuck out, Cade was leaving to pick him up at the airport.”

Marguerite let her eyes flutter closed. She remembered Dan’s promise to show up if he thought that was what it would take to save his daughter. But look, Dan, Marguerite thought as she gazed at Renata-bruised from the surfboard, sunburned, her two ringless hands pushing her corn silk hair back from her forehead-she saved herself.

“Daddy will call,” Renata said. “Once he realizes I’m gone. He’ll come here.”

“Yes,” Marguerite said. How it panicked her, knowing she didn’t have much time, knowing she still had a story of her own to tell. “I’m afraid you’re right.”

8:11 P.M.

Claire Robinson was the first one to notice Renata’s absence. She figured Renata was upstairs in her bedroom, pouting like a child, because no one, it seemed, had told her that Cade and Claire had been a couple for seven years. Either that or she was hiding, afraid Claire would tell Cade about her frolic with Miles in the dunes. Claire chuckled; this was just too good. She had battled her parents about coming tonight-haw could they possibly ask her to share a meal with Cade and his new fiancée? But when Claire saw Renata, a bell sounded. It took her a while to be sure-but sure she now was-Renata was the same girl that everyone playing volleyball at Madequecham that afternoon had watched Miles lure into the dunes. Eric Montrose had pointed it out. “There goes Miles with another Betty. Young one this time.”

Claire tiptoed up the stairs, grinning with the stupid pleasure it gave her to be privy to this scandalous information.

To the left, Claire spied the dark doorway of Cade’s room, a room she knew intimately. How many nights had she sneaked up and slept with Cade, both of them naked and salt-encrusted from a late-night swim, arms and legs and hair entwined until one of them woke up to the sound of the early ferry’s horn or the cry of seagulls. Claire sighed. She had thought, for certain, that she and Cade would be married. Now she was headed to graduate school at Yale to study Emily Dickinson, and she should be grateful she hadn’t married Cade Driscoll. Hell, if Miles had looked at her twice, she would have followed him into the dunes herself. She might even tell Renata this; they would conspire. Don’t worry, I won’t tell a soul.

Claire tapped on the guest room door. Light spilled out from the bottom of the door, but Claire heard no noise. Maybe Renata had fallen asleep; Claire noticed the way she had been pounding back the drinks. Claire knocked again. Nothing. She cracked the door. “Renata?” Claire hated to admit how much she loved the name; it was a poetic name, both harmonic and sensual. It meant “reborn.”

Claire peeked into the room. It was empty. The bed was made, though a bit rumpled; there was a head-shaped indentation in the soft, white pillow. One of Suzanne Driscoll’s canvas beach bags lay on its side on the floor among a scattering of sand. Inside the bag, Claire found a damp beach towel and a piece of folded-up paper. Did she dare? She checked the bathroom, empty, and the deck, deserted. Renata must have slipped downstairs.

Carefully Claire smoothed out the paper. It was a list, written out in Suzanne’s hand. Wedding stuff. Claire sniffed. The list was silly-flowers, cake, party favors-and yet Claire felt a pang of…what? Regret? Jealousy? She reminded herself of her disastrous reunion with Cade in London: He admitted that he felt nothing for Claire anymore, nothing but a great fondness, a brotherly love. Claire was quick to agree. Of course. I feel the same way. This wasn’t true, but at least she’d escaped with her pride.

Claire laid the list on top of the dresser. As she did so, she gasped. Sitting there all by itself like someone’s forgotten child was Renata’s engagement ring. The stone was huge, square, in a Tiffany setting; the stone must have been close to three karats. Claire turned the ring in the light. The diamond was clear, flawless. Claire’s hands were trembling. Did she dare? Why not? It was obvious at that moment, though perhaps only to Claire, that Renata was gone for good.

Claire slipped the ring onto her finger. It fit perfectly.

The ride from the airport to Hulbert Avenue was a quarter hour of hell for Daniel Knox, forced as he was to listen to Cade, a kid with a shirt and a watch and a car more expensive than Daniel’s own, make a twenty-point case about why he should be allowed to marry Renata. Daniel said very little during this presentation, figuring silence was the best way to put Cade on edge. Daniel had given his “blessing” to Renata that morning, in a panic. Never in fourteen years of raising his daughter had he used reverse psychology, but for some reason the announcement of her engagement cried out for it. If Daniel said yes when she expected him to say no, it would frighten her. And it must have worked, because clearly Renata had said nothing to Cade about Daniel’s cheerful response. Despite the tedium of listening to Cade describe how he would care for Renata, Daniel felt triumphant. He knew his daughter better than these people.

It was very dark, and Nantucket, out of town, had few streetlights, but Dan peered through the window nonetheless. It was a singular experience, returning to the place where your life had once been. He had lived here-alone at first, running the Beach Club, then he lived here with Candace, and then with Candace and Renata. He knew the streets, cobblestone, paved, dirt, and sand; he knew the smells of bayberry and of low tide on a still, hot day; he knew the sounds of the ferry horns and the clanging bell at the end of the jetty. This had once been his home, but now he was very much the visitor.

Cade hit the turn signal and pulled into a white shell driveway. The house loomed in front of them-it was huge, bedecked, terraced, landscaped, a castle of a place, and every light in the house was on; it was as bright as a Broadway stage. Dan couldn’t help thinking that this looked suspiciously like new construction; they had probably bought the lot and then torn down the fine old summer cottage that stood here in order to build this monstrosity. VITAMIN SEA, the quarterboard said.

“So I hope, Mr. Knox, that Renata and I have your blessing,” Cade said. “I know she’s young, but we wouldn’t be getting married until the spring.”

“Spring?” Daniel said, to show he was listening.

“Yes, sir. After school is out.”

Daniel Knox said nothing else, though he was dying to utilize his “one shouldn’t get married until one’s traveled on three continents” speech. He was cognizant of the fact that he had shown up without warning and would be relying on Cade’s family and their good graces for a place to sleep tonight. And dinner-Daniel wasn’t particularly hungry, but he’d gathered from something Cade said walking from the terminal to the parking lot that there was a dinner party in progress. Lobsters or some such, with family friends, and that was what had, miraculously, kept Renata from going to Marguerite.

A woman with red hair and the tight face of someone who’d had plastic surgery appeared in the door, waving a glass of wine.

“Welcome!” she called out. “Welcome, welcome!”

“My mother,” Cade whispered.

Uh-huh. Dan felt a familiar disappointment. Why was it that women his own age went to so much trouble to beautify that they ended up erasing any natural beauty they might have possessed in the first place? It was one of the things that had kept Dan from dating again after Candace’s death: the way women tried so hard. Cade’s mother, for example. Clearly a pretty woman, if you could get past the fact that she was fifteen pounds underweight, had suffered a chemical peel, colored her hair, wore too much makeup and too much jewelry. Women like this made Daniel long for Candace, who had looked her most beautiful first thing in the morning when she woke up, or after she got home from a run-when she was sweaty, sticky, and the picture of all-natural glowing good health. Candace would never have done these things to herself. Her idea of glamour was a shower and a clean dress.

Daniel Knox ascended the stairs and shook hands with the woman, Cade’s mother. She planted a wet kiss on his cheek, which seemed awfully familiar, though she was probably under the impression they were soon to be family-and what, really, was more familiar than showing up unannounced?

“I’m Daniel,” he said. “It’s nice to meet you.”

“Suzanne,” she said in an exaggerated way, as though she weren’t trying to tell him her name so much as sling it at him. Sha-zaam! “I’m so glad you could come.”

“I’m sorry it was last-minute,” Daniel said. He had no good reason to offer these people for why he’d shown up out of the blue, and he was counting on them being too polite to ask.

“Come in; come in,” Suzanne said. “Your timing is perfect. Nicole is just putting dinner on. And you must meet our dear friends the Robinsons. They’ve been so charmed by Renata that to meet you is just icing on the cake.”

“Icing,” Daniel repeated. He was ushered into the foyer, where there was a black-and-white parquet floor and a Robert Stark painting hanging on the wall-the lone sailboat with the flame red sail; every house on Nantucket must have that painting. There was a curving staircase to the left; down the stairs came a pale milkmaid of a girl with messy dark hair. She smiled at Daniel.

“Hello!” she said.

“Claire, this is Daniel Knox, Renata’s father. Daniel, this is Claire Robinson, a dear friend of the family. Claire and Cade went to Choate together.”

“I see,” Daniel said. He extended a hand to the girl, then began to wonder after the whereabouts of his own daughter. It didn’t surprise him that she’d skipped the airport run; Cade had obviously seen that as an opportunity for a man-to-man chat. However, now that Daniel was in this enormous house with perfect strangers, he wanted to set eyes on his own flesh and blood. Renata was not going to be happy to see him; she would be decidedly unhappy, angry, mortified. That was the risk he had taken.

They moved into the living room, which was decorated in seventeen shades of white. Suzanne asked what he was drinking.

“Scotch,” he said. “Straight up.”

“You and my husband will get along just fine,” Suzanne said. She did not make the drink herself but called a young black woman in from the deck and asked her to make it. “Mr. Knox would like a scotch straight up.”

The woman nodded. Daniel grew warm around the neck. He hated to see people accept orders on his behalf.

“And how is dinner coming along?” Suzanne asked.

“All set, ma’am.”

“Okay, then, please bring Mr. Knox’s drink out to the deck. Cade? Claire? We’re ready to sit.”

“Yes, Mother,” Cade said.

They moved out to the deck. It was a stunning evening, warm but breezy, with a black velvet sky and a clear crescent moon. And to be on the water like this, with Nantucket Sound spread out before them like a kingdom-well, overdone house aside, Daniel Knox was impressed. He introduced himself to the father, Joe Driscoll, who did not stand to shake hands but merely nodded and said jovially, “So glad you could join us!” His hands were clasped in his lap, one hand was rattling around like a Mexican jumping bean, and it was then Daniel remembered that Renata had mentioned that Joe Driscoll was sick. Parkinson’s. Daniel bowed to him.

“Thank you for having me.”

Next, Daniel met the elder Robinsons, Kent and Kathy.

“We hear you used to own the Beach Club,” Kathy said.

“Years ago.”

“We’ve been languishing on the wait-list for what seems like forever,” Kathy said.

“Same here,” Joe Driscoll said. “It’s quite the exclusive place.”

“We belong to every club on the island,” Kent Robinson said. “Except for that one. So naturally that’s the only one my wife cares about.”

“Mmmmm,” Daniel said. They were talking like he was somehow responsible for their exclusion from the club. “I don’t have a thing to do with it anymore. I sold it in ’92, the year my wife died.”

The group nodded mutely, Joe Driscoll tipped back the ice in his drink with his good hand and they all listened to the clink of it in his glass. Suzanne came out, waving her wine. “Okay, everybody sit! Kathy, you’re next to Daniel, and Kent, you come over by me. Claire, you’re right there, and Cade-”

Daniel watched the Robinsons sit. Joe Driscoll stayed where he was, turning in his chair and raising an arm with his empty glass toward the young black woman, who whisked it away to be refilled. Claire sat, and Suzanne. Only Daniel and Cade remained standing, presumably wondering the same thing. The table was laden with a feast: A shallow bowl at each place held a two-pound lobster; there was a platter with twenty ears of steamed corn, an enormous bowl of green salad, Parker House rolls. But there was no Renata.

Daniel shot Cade a questioning look. Cade said, “She went upstairs to put some aloe on her face. She got quite a sunburn at the beach today.”

“Who?” Suzanne said.

“Renata.”

Suzanne glanced around the table as if double-checking each person’s identity. “My word,” she said. “Renata!”

“She’s upstairs?” Daniel said.

“She wanted to fix her face,” Cade said. “But that was a while ago. Maybe she fell asleep.”

Claire coughed into her napkin.

“I’ll go get her,” Cade said.

“I’ll go get her,” Daniel said. “If she’s hiding from anyone, it’s me.”

“Hiding?” Suzanne said. “Don’t be ridiculous. You both sit. Nicole will go up and get Renata, won’t you, Nicole?”

“Certainly,” Nicole said.

“Wonderful,” Suzanne said. “Thank you. The rest of us should start before everything gets cold.” She lifted her wineglass and waited with a pointed gaze until Daniel and Cade took their places. “Cheers, everyone!”

Nicole trudged up the back stairs. She felt cranky and venomous, like a snake ready to strike. She had worked nearly fourteen hours today, she had not had a moment to take her dinner break, and she was pretty certain that, despite all the beautiful promises he had made in order to lure her to Nantucket from South Africa, Miles was leaving her. It would be unfair to say this was all Renata’s fault. Things between Nicole and Miles had been strained all summer-he constantly asked her to take his shifts so he could hang out at the Chicken Box or go to the beach with the lesbian surfer girl. Since one of them was responsible round-the-clock for meeting Suzanne Driscoll’s needs and desires, there was no time to be alone together, no time for sex except the wee hours (when, quite frankly, Nicole was too tired), no time to enjoy each other’s company or even plan their winter escape-a three-month kayaking trip to Irian Jaya. No, it wasn’t Renata’s fault, though Nicole suspected they had slept together. Nicole heard it in Miles’s voice that afternoon when he’d called to say he wasn’t coming back. Miles had wanted Nicole to pack his stuff up and leave it hidden in the bushes at the end of the driveway; he wanted Nicole to tell Suzanne he was quitting. Nicole was incredulous. I am not going to do your dirty work. Come pack your things yourself. Come tell Suzanne to her face, like a man. But he claimed he couldn’t-he told her the whole sob story about the lesbian surfer girl hit in the head with her board, nearly drowned, and then he confessed that the real reason he couldn’t return to Vitamin Sea was because of a bad judgment call he’d made in regard to Renata. He’d kidnapped her for the afternoon; he’d convinced her to skip lunch with the madame. And you know what Suzanne will think, he’d said. Oh yes. It was what Nicole thought herself, it was what Cade thought, it was what everyone thought when they heard that Miles and Renata had slipped away together for the afternoon. Bad judgment indeed. Nicole had hung up on him, midsentence. She would never again trust an American.

Nicole knocked on the guest room door with authority, as though she were a dormitory proctor, or the police. “Renata?” she said. “Please open up, Renata. I’m afraid your absence has been detected downstairs.” She knocked again, with such force the door rattled in its frame. Renata had had…three wine spritzers? She was probably passed out facedown, drooling all over the linens. Nicole knocked once more for propriety’s sake, then opened the door. Simply telling Suzanne that Renata wasn’t answering wouldn’t be good enough; Suzanne liked tasks completed.

Nicole was no detective, but she was able to put two and two together and draw a conclusion in a matter of seconds-the room was empty; the duffel bag that, only that morning, looked as though it had exploded everywhere was gone; the much-celebrated engagement ring sparkled on top of the dresser. On the floor lay Miles’s shirt, his white polo with the small rip in the collar. Nicole picked it up. Sure enough. The little bitch, Nicole thought. Gone with Miles. Nicole hissed with anger. What a day. The worst of her life.

8:50 P.M.

They didn’t sit down to their proper dinner until nearly nine o’clock, and by that time they had emptied both bottles of champagne. Marguerite suggested a trip to the basement for a third bottle, and Renata, because she was younger and more sure-footed, led the way down the stairs. The basement wasn’t as scary as she imagined. There was a washer and dryer, a folded-up card table, a basic box of tools, and a wall rack that must have held five hundred bottles of wine.

“My secret cache,” Marguerite said. “What I took from the restaurant when it closed.”

“Geez,” Renata said. Marguerite slid a bottle of 1990 Pommery off the shelves, and they went back upstairs.

They decided to be brave and eat in the dining room, where the table was set and waiting. Marguerite pulled all the shutters on the front of the house closed and yanked the curtains firmly across.

“No one can see in,” she said.

Renata settled into a chair while Marguerite served pieces of rosy tenderloin ladled with béarnaise, crispy asparagus, and slabs of homemade bread served with the butter from Ethan’s farm. Marguerite filled their flutes to the top and set the bottle of Pommery in the wine cooler. She eased herself down across from Renata and raised her glass. Derek and the Dominos played in the background. Yes: This was what Marguerite had been dreaming of when she woke up this morning.

“Salud,” she said.

Their flutes clinked like a tiny bell. The clock struck nine.

“I feel so at home here,” Renata said. “Nothing at all like I felt on Hulbert Avenue. I feel so peculiarly at home.”

“I’m glad,” Marguerite said.

“Will you tell me about my mother?”

“Yes,” Marguerite said.

“I don’t have anyone else to ask,” Renata said. “Dad won’t talk about it.”

Marguerite cut a small piece of meat. “Have you thought to ask your uncle Porter?” This was something she’d been wondering. Porter had been there for nearly all of it; he could have shed a lot of light.

“Caitlin doesn’t let him see us,” Renata said. “She doesn’t like my dad, I guess, and she doesn’t like Uncle Chase. She has no use for anybody in Porter’s family.”

“That’s too bad,” Marguerite said. She wished she could say she was surprised, but Porter had gone against all good sense when he decided to marry Caitlin. “Surely you see him at school?”

“Never,” Renata said. “He only teaches graduate students now, and every time I stop by they say he’s busy.”

“Right,” Marguerite said. She cleared her throat. “Well, let’s see. Your mother.”

As Marguerite talked, Renata ate slowly. She laid her knife and fork down while she was asking a question; otherwise she savored every bite of the meat, the rich, lemony sauce, the asparagus, the chewy bread, thick with butter. When the clock struck the quarter hour, the half hour, the hour, Renata straightened, arched her back, stretched her legs under the table. Marguerite poured what seemed like an endless stream of champagne into Renata’s glass, which she didn’t need. She was very drunk-and yet, instead of impeding Renata’s concentration, it enhanced it. Renata absorbed every word: Marguerite and Porter meeting at the Musée du Jeu de Paume under Renoir’s Les Parapluies, Marguerite’s first minutes on Nantucket when Porter brought her to the new restaurant, the wormy chestnut floors, the driftwood mantelpiece, the prix-fixe menu, the night Porter first brought in Candace, the kiss, the tin of saffron. The walk with Candace through the moors after Porter’s picture appeared in The New York Times with another woman, the dinners when Candace and Marguerite sat by the fireplace in the very next room talking until well after midnight, the night in July when Daniel Knox first set foot in Les Parapluies and made it clear he wasn’t leaving until Candace agreed to go out with him. Their first meal alone together, Marguerite said, was one that she cooked them: cedar-planked salmon and potatoes Anna.

“I’ll bet your father never told you that,” Marguerite said.

“Never,” Renata said. “Do you think he even remembers?”

“He remembers,” Marguerite said. “He swore I put something in the food that made him fall in love.”

Renata smiled. She was wallowing in this talk like a pig in mud; she was sucking it in like a dog with his snout stuck out a car window. Her parents together, her parents in love-it was Renata’s own history she was hearing about.

“Your father thought I was back in the kitchen stirring potions in my cauldron, my uncut hair graying in its braid. Even before your mother died, he never fully trusted me.”

Renata kept quiet; she sensed this was probably true. She marveled that it was growing so late and no one from Vitamin Sea had called-not her father, not Cade.

“No one has called,” she said.

“I unplugged the phone,” Marguerite said.

“And no one has come by.”

“Not yet,” Marguerite said. She sipped her water and took a rejuvenating breath. She enjoyed telling Renata about the good times: the restaurant open, Marguerite and Porter together, Candace alive. Was she making herself clear? Could the child see her mother as Marguerite saw her-showered after a long day of exercise and sun, in one of the cocktail dresses that left her shoulder bare. Her blond hair freed of its elastic and spilling down her back. Her easy manner, like the best women of that time, full of simplicity and grace.

“She desperately wanted to go to Africa,” Marguerite said. “She wanted to open a restaurant in the Sahara.”

“She did?”

“We went to Morocco together, your mother and I.”

“You did?” In her mind, Renata heard the metallic rain of coins falling from a slot machine. Jackpot. This was something she never would have known about her mother if she weren’t sitting right here. Her mother had been to Morocco. She had gone running through the medina in a Boston Red Sox cap; the men who owned the carpet shops, the men who carved thuya wood, the men who served conical dishes filled with tagine, the men who drove the taxis, the men who pressed juice out of oranges on the Djemaa el-Fna, they had called after Renata’s mother in wonder. It was her blond hair, her smile, her sweet and awkward French-the whole country fell in love with her.

“Your mother was one of those people,” Marguerite said. “Everyone was drawn to her-friends, perfect strangers. She could do no wrong; she could get away with anything. I can’t tell you how many times I wished I could be like that. I wanted to…be Candace.” Marguerite arranged her silverware carefully at an angle on the side of her plate and folded her napkin. She had never admitted this to anyone; she hadn’t even thought it all the way through in her own mind-but yes, it was true. When Marguerite stood in front of Madame Verge’s mirror she thought she would grow up to be like Candace. Marguerite smiled. “I’m going to guess you take after your mother.”

Renata’s first instinct was to deny it. Her father loved her unconditionally, of course, and Action and Cade. She attracted people easily-like Miles and Sallie. Renata wasn’t sure what all these people saw in her; she wasn’t sure who they thought she was-she didn’t even know herself yet. Her mother had had a magnetism, something natural she emitted from her heart: love, maybe, patience, understanding. Whereas Renata felt like she was constantly giving pieces of herself away, she was engaged in a juggling act to keep everyone in her life happy. Yes, I’m being careful; yes, you’re my best friend; yes, I love you the most.

Renata shook her head. No, not me. I’m not like that. “Whatever happened with the restaurant in Africa?”

“Nothing happened,” Marguerite said. “While we were in Morocco, your mother discovered she was pregnant.”

“With me?”

“With you.”

“So I ruined her dream, then?”

“No, no, darling. It would never have worked out anyway, for a million reasons. It wasn’t meant to be.”

“You could still do it,” Renata said.

Marguerite laughed. “That time has come and gone.”

“No, really,” Renata said. “You could open a restaurant over there like you and Mom wanted. You could leave this place for a while.” Renata’s voice sounded concerned and Marguerite wondered if it contained any pity. The last thing she wanted was for the child to pity her.

“Leave?” Marguerite said, as though the thought had never occurred to her. It had, of course. Sell her house and move to Paris. Or Calgary. Start over someplace new, like she was nineteen instead of sixty-three. “I’ll have to think about that.”

Marguerite cleared away the dinner plates and left Renata in the dining room to enjoy the champagne, the flowers, the ticking of the old clock. All this information at once, it was a lot for a person to process; Renata could use a few minutes of quiet. As Marguerite rinsed the dishes she pondered the girl’s words. Out of the mouths of babes. You could still do it. Marguerite thought about the night Candace first mentioned the restaurant. She remembered Candace’s anger with her, her frustration. I want you to reimagine. She could reimagine now, with ease: A restaurant with walls of canvas, swathed like the head of a Bedouin. A place in the middle of the desert that would be hard to reach, where some nights it would be just Marguerite alone, enjoying enough romantic atmosphere for fifty people. She would wait those nights for the ghost who left footprints in the sand.

Before she set out dessert, Marguerite retreated to her bedroom to fetch the photographs from her dresser. There were only the two that Marguerite had to show, though there were hundreds of others-pictures from the restaurant opening, benefit nights, pictures from Candace’s wedding, from Morocco-that Marguerite kept in a wooden wine crate in the storage space of the smallest of the five upstairs bedrooms. Maybe one day down the road she would have the courage to pull that box out and sift through it, but for now there were just these two pictures. Marguerite set them down in front of Renata. Renata picked up the christening picture first and squinted. Admittedly, there wasn’t much light in the dining room, but Marguerite didn’t want to spoil the atmosphere by making it brighter.

“That’s me?” Renata said. “The baby?”

“That’s your christening party.”

“It was at the restaurant?”

“Of course. You’re my godchild. The one and only.”

Renata gazed at it with the most heartbreakingly earnest expression Marguerite had ever seen.

“You don’t have pictures of Candace at your house?” Marguerite asked.

“Oh, we do,” Renata said. “Just not this one.”

“Right,” Marguerite said. The girl’s life had more holes than Swiss cheese. But here was a hole Marguerite could fill. Renata, Marguerite, and Candace at the party following Renata’s christening. “It was probably the most glamorous christening party any child ever had. We had foie gras, black truffles, champagne, thirty-year port, Cuban cigars, caviar-”

“Really?” Renata said. “For me?”

“Really. For you.” Daniel had insisted on footing the bill for everything, though Marguerite had given a case of champagne and Porter had, somehow, conjured up the cigars. “It was a big deal, your arrival in the world.”

“I love this picture,” Renata said.

“Yes, so do I.” Marguerite studied it, trying to see with fresh eyes. Both she and Candace looked so proud, so awestruck, that they might have been the baby’s parents: mother and godmother.

The other photograph was black-and-white. It was taken one long-ago autumn; it was just Candace and Marguerite sitting at one of the deuces facing Water Street. Neither of them was looking at the camera; they had plates of food in front of them, but they weren’t eating. Marguerite was saying something, and Candace’s head was bent close to the table, listening. Marguerite doesn’t remember the moment the photo was taken or even the night; it was snapped by one of the photographers from The Inquirer and Mirror. It ran the week of October 3, 1980, on the Seen on the Scene page. Marguerite had been furious; she’d called the newspaper and threatened to sue, though the editor of the paper had laughed and said, The picture’s completely innocuous, Margo, a slice of life, and it’s a damn attractive shot of you both, I might add. The caption under the picture read: Chef Marguerite Beale engages in tête-à-tête with friend Candace Harris at French hot spot Les Parapluies. Marguerite never quite came around to the editor’s point of view-to her the picture was an invasion of privacy; it reminded her uncomfortably of the picture of Porter with Overbite Woman in The New York Times. It put Marguerite and Candace’s intimacy on display-however, it was this very thing that eventually endeared the picture to her, and she asked that the editor send her a print.

“Dessert?” she said. She spoke the word brightly, though inside she panicked. Dessert, no matter how sweet, meant the end. Marguerite would have to tell about the end.

“I’d love some,” Renata said.

Marguerite disappeared into the kitchen.

9:30 P.M.

The young black woman came out onto the deck with her eyebrows knit together and her mouth pressed into a flat line. Even in the night air, lit only by candles and tiki torches, Daniel could tell she was a few shades paler than she’d been when she left. Daniel stood up and the table grew quiet. They had just been talking about the Opera House Cup sailing race, and an old boat they all remembered called Christmas.

“Renata?” Daniel said. “She’s asleep?”

“She’s gone,” Nicole said.

Cade whipped around in his chair. “What?”

“The guest room was empty,” Nicole said. “Her things are gone.”

The Robinsons were quiet, except for Claire, who coughed into her napkin, in order to keep from laughing. She wasn’t sure why but she found this very funny. All except for Cade, who looked like he was fourteen years old again, dropped off for his first day of boarding school, abandoned by his parents, separated from his friends. He had been so forlorn that first day, whereas Claire had felt free at last.

Suzanne laughed, too, but shrilly. “That’s ridiculous,” she said. “Where did she go?”

Nicole felt like Suzanne was daring her to come right out and say it: She left with Miles. But Nicole couldn’t stand to think the words, much less speak them out loud to a tableful of people, and furthermore, she hated being the center of attention. Don’t shoot the messenger, she wanted to say, though she knew they would anyway. That was why she’d left the ring right where it was, on top of the dresser. There was no use bringing down all the bad news at once; they could find the ring themselves when they went upstairs to investigate.

“You’re sure her stuff is gone?” Cade said.

“I’m sure.”

“I know where she is,” Daniel said.

“Where?” Cade said.

“Where?” Nicole asked, forgetting herself. Then she thought, You don’t know where she is. You’re only her father.

“She’s with her godmother,” Daniel said. “Marguerite Beale.”

“No,” Cade said. “She called Marguerite to cancel.”

“That’s where she is,” Daniel said. “Trust me.” Faces around the table seemed unconvinced, or uncaring, but what these people didn’t understand was the allure Marguerite held. Daniel had kept Renata away from her for fourteen years. He didn’t want Renata to have to hear Marguerite’s side of the story, her teary admissions, her apologies. But Renata had sought it out on her own. In a way, Daniel felt proud of her. She hadn’t been taken in by these people; she hadn’t been hypnotized by their wealth; she had kept her eye on what was important to her-seeing Marguerite, and learning about her mother.

Suzanne exhaled loudly and cradled her pink cheeks in her hands. She looked completely deflated. Daniel thought he might feel gratified by this, but instead he was ashamed. He very calmly sat back down. The poor woman had put a lot of work into tonight’s dinner party and Renata had poked a hole in it. Despite Daniel’s overwhelming desire to see his daughter, he wasn’t willing to shred the evening further; he would salvage what he could. Renata wasn’t going anywhere; she was safe. Daniel buttered a Parker House roll and took a bite.

Cade glared at him. “I’m going over there to get her.”

Daniel swallowed the bite of roll and sipped his scotch. “Leave her be, son.”

“What do you know about leaving her be?” Cade said. “She left because you showed up. I’m sure that’s why she left.”

“I’m sure you’re right,” Daniel said.

And because she doesn’t want to marry Cade, Claire thought.

And because she had sex with Miles, Nicole thought. She was swept along by his beautiful promises. Just the way Nicole had been last winter when she was working as a breakfast waitress on the harbor front in Capetown. Miles had suckered her in with promises of love and money. Nicole was encouraged, however, by the confidence of the father’s words. Maybe Renata did go to whatshername Beale’s house. Hadn’t she been talking about it with Suzanne that morning in the kitchen? Nicole sensed a filament of hope. Maybe Renata didn’t go with Miles after all. For the first time all day, Nicole felt relieved. She felt almost happy.

“Let’s just eat,” Joe Driscoll said in a voice that would not be argued with. He held the end of an ear of corn with one hand and his butter knife with the other. Neither hand was shaking.

Cade noticed this, but he was too agitated to let it register. He threw his napkin onto his plate. “I’m going up to see for myself,” he said.

“Cade,” Suzanne said. “Listen to your father, please. Eat your dinner.”

The Robinsons returned to their dinner plates; Kathy Robinson murmured something complimentary about the salad dressing. Joe Driscoll buttered his corn. Claire Robinson sipped her tea, which had grown cold. She knew, as did Nicole, who slipped into the kitchen, as did Daniel Knox, as did the others deep down in their hearts, what Cade was going to find.

9:42 P.M

Nine thirty was Lights-Out at Camp Stoneface and had been all summer. The twelve girls in Action Colpeter’s cabin were doing their nighttime-whisper thing, which sometimes lasted until midnight if Action didn’t lay down the law. However, tonight, for some reason, Action was antsy, eager to wash her hands of Camp Stoneface and the million and one rules she hand to enforce. What she wanted more than anything was to be alone, so she could think.

“I’m going to be right outside on the stoop,” Action announced to her campers. “So do not attempt any funny business.” Such as drawing with indelible marker on the girl who fell asleep first, such as telling stories, real or made up, about doing drugs or having abortions.

Action took her flashlight and her pen and notebook and sat on the top step right outside the cabin door. If they thought they were escaping tonight to raid the mess hall for stale potato chips or to make mooning noises through the screens of the boys’ cabin, they were mistaken. Action started a letter to Renata. Hola, bitch-ola! But this sounded too cavalier. The truth was, Action was worried about Renata. Action had been born with nearly perfect instincts, and her instincts about Renata this second rang out: Doomsday.

Action heard a noise coming from the grass nearby. Even after eight weeks in the thick woods of all-but-forgotten West Virginia, Action was still freaked out by the wildlife-the bullfrogs, the owls, the bats, the mosquitoes. Action had grown up on Bleecker Street; her experience with wildlife had been limited to the freaks she’d seen on Christopher Street and in Alphabet City. The noise in the grass sounded suspiciously like a bullfrog. It made a buzzing, thrumming sound at regular intervals. Action shined her flashlight in the frog’s direction; if she kept her eye on it, it wouldn’t land on her-plop!-wet and slimy. She was wearing jeans and running shoes. She could step on it or nudge it away. The noise persisted. Action climbed down off the steps and hunted through the grass for the frog.

Her flashlight caught a glint of something silver. What was this? Action bent down, peering at the thing that was making the noise as if it were as unlikely as a moonstone. Ha! She snapped it up, triumphant. It was a cell phone, the ringer set to vibrate.

Eight weeks ago, discovering a cell phone in the grass would have made Action livid. Cell phones-and all other treasures from the world of IT-were strictly verboten at Camp Stoneface. Action and her fellow counselors took great joy in stripping campers of their cell phones, Game Boys, iPods, and laptops. But now, in the third week of August, discovering a cell phone in the grass, at night, while she was alone, was like a sign from the Virgin Mary herself. Action was supposed to call somebody.

She flipped the phone open. It was a Nokia, sleek and cool in her palm. And-would wonders never cease?-she got a signal.

Action felt a flash of guilt. Hypocrite! she screamed at herself in her mind. She hadn’t even let twelve-year-old Tanya, who was the youngest and best-behaved child at the camp, call her mother on her mother’s fortieth birthday. However, Action’s presiding sentiment was that enough was enough and she had had enough of West Virginia unplugged. If she had to sing “Take Me Home, Country Roads,” one more time, she would have a Tourette’s-like outburst. “Blue Ridge Mountains, Shenandoah River.” No, sorry.

One call, she thought. I’ll only make one call. The call should rightly go to her brother, Major. Action received a letter from him every single day, written out in Miss Engel’s neat block script. He wrote about how he went to Strawberry Fields, ate ice cream, watched some kid fly a kite that looked like a parrot. It was hot, he wanted to go on vacation to the ocean the way they did when Action was at home, but Mom had work and Dad had work. I miss you, Action. I love you miss you love you. He always signed his own name, and this was what hurt Action the worst. His name in wobbly capitals, a smiley face drawn into the O. Action had never gone eight weeks without seeing him, and what she missed the most was him needing her. Of course, she had twelve needy cases evading sleep inside the cabin, but it wasn’t the same.

Action should have called Major-woken him up if he was asleep-but she didn’t. She’d had a Doomsday instinct about Renata all day long in the front of her mind. Action was worried that something terrible had happened-she’d gotten hurt, or she died. The girl never looked both ways before she crossed the street; she was constantly getting her foot stuck in the gap between the subway car and the station platform; in nearly every way, Renata Knox acted like a person who didn’t have a mother. However, that was one of many things that Action loved about her. Renata was her best friend, the sister she never had; she was special. Their friendship couldn’t be explained any easier than one could explain peanut butter and jelly. Why? Just because.

Action dialed Renata’s cell phone number, praying she wasn’t sleeping over at Watch Boy’s new apartment on Seventy-third Street. The phone rang. Action stepped away from her cabin and closer to the bordering woods, despite the hoots of owls. She didn’t want her girls to hear. The phone rang four, five, six times; then Renata’s voice mail picked up. Hi! You’ve reached the voice mail of Renata Knox. Action grinned stupidly. Voice mail was still the old girl’s voice, which Action hadn’t heard in eight weeks. I can’t answer my phone right now-

Because I’m being held up at gunpoint, Action thought. But suddenly that didn’t feel right. Because I’m cuddling up with Watch Boy. Yep, that was probably more like it.

Action cleared her throat; then after the beep, she whispered, “Hi, it’s me.” Action had never had a friend whom she could say those three words to. Before she met Renata, Action had never imagined having a Hi, it’s me, friend; she never realized how important it was-to be recognized by another person, known instinctively, whether she was calling from down the street or the Tibetan Himalayas, whether she was calling from the woods of West Virginia or the D train. Action hoped that for the rest of their lives they would be each other’s Hi, it’s me. “I found a cell phone in the grass and I decided to break the first commandment of Camp Stoneface and call. I’ve been thinking of you all day. I hope you’re all right. I have a funny vibe, like something is happening. Maybe you joined the circus today, maybe you found religion, but something is happening; I can feel it. Don’t call me back. I’m about to turn this phone over to the authorities where it rightly belongs. So…write me a letter. Tell me you’re all right. I’ll be wait-” Action was cut off by the second beep. Renata always accused her of leaving the world’s longest messages. Action thought to call back, to finish, but she had promised herself only one phone call.

I love you, she thought. Love you like rocks.

10:10 P.M.

In Room 477 of the Trauma Unit of Massachusetts General Hospital, Sallie Myers opened her eyes.

Ohhhkay, she thought. Very strange.

She registered hospital, herself pinned to a bed, stuck in both arms and attached to machines that blinked and beeped; she noted a white curtain to her right, shielding her from someone else, or someone else from her. She tried not to panic, though she had no idea why she might be in a hospital. Think back, she told herself. Slowly. Carefully. But there was nothing.

She was afraid to move; she was afraid she would try and find herself unable. So she remained still, except for her eyes, which roamed the room, and thus it was that she discovered a figure huddled in a chair off to the left, at the edge of her field of vision. She turned her head. Her neck was stiff, but it worked. It was… Miles in the chair. He was asleep, snoring.

Ohhhhhkay, she thought. What did she do to deserve waking up in a hospital room with Miles? Miles, Miles. She was still drawing a blank.

A minute passed, or maybe not a full minute but fifty or sixty beeps of the machine, which might have been counting the beats of her heart. Her heart was beating. Sallie figured she might as well try her arms. She turned her wrist. The right one moved just fine, but her left side felt fuzzy and not quite attached, like it was a prosthetic arm. Sallie gazed down. It was her arm. She touched it with her right hand. She could feel her own touch but she couldn’t make the arm move.

At that second, some people walked in. There was a gasp from one of the people-a woman, Sallie’s mother. Sallie’s father followed right behind, and then a dark person, who towered over Sallie’s parents like they were little children. Pierre. Pierre was here? Sallie couldn’t recall ever seeing Pierre anywhere but at the bar.

Sallie’s mother rushed to the side of the bed and took hold of Sallie’s leaden arm. “You’re awake!” she said. “The nurses told us it sounded like you were awake. They can tell from the way they monitor the machines out there.”

Sallie’s father clapped his hands in a rallying way. He was the head football coach at the University of Rhode Island. “I knew you’d snap out of it.”

Pierre approached next, timidly. He was out of his element, away from the noise and the beer and the grime of the bar, away from his back office with the black leather couches and his computer where he played Tetris while the kids out front got smashed and slam-danced. “Hello, gorgeous,” he said.

Sallie turned her attention back to her mother, her beautiful mother, who taught classical music at Moses Brown, who wore bifocals when she read a grocery list, who had fretted and worried so much over Sallie’s three older brothers that she had been content to just let Sallie be. Bartending? Fine. Surfing? Good for you. A pontoon boat down the Amazon River? You only live once. Sallie’s eyes filled with tears. She’d had a dream that her mother had died. In the dream, Sallie was driving down a dusty road and she spotted a white cross in the brush. She stopped, checked it out. The cross was for her mother. Sallie had screamed when she saw the cross, Wait! Mom, wait! I’m getting married!

“Honey?” Sallie’s mother said. “How do you feel?”

“Confused,” Sallie said. The cross hadn’t been a dream. It was real. But how? Sallie’s mother stood right in front of her. “What am I doing here?”

“You had a surfing accident on Nantucket,” her father said. “You hit your head. They say you were underwater for a while.”

“Just a little while,” her mother said.

“And where am I now?”

“At Mass General. In Boston,” her mother said. “Pierre called us. And your friend…” She nodded at the chair where Miles slept. “…was here when we arrived.”

“Miles,” Sallie said. It all came back to her like something that fell from the sky and landed in her lap. Miles picking her up at the house with the girl, Renata, who was the cutest, sweetest thing Sallie had ever seen. So innocent, so young, so clean. It was her mother the cross was for. She had knelt before it. Kissed it.

“The doctors say they expect you to be fine,” Sallie’s mother said. “You may feel stiff and numb for a while, but there’s been no brain damage.”

“Thank God for that!” Sallie’s father said.

“You’re going to be fine, doll,” Pierre said.

“Did Renata come?” Sallie asked. “Did she come to the hospital with Miles?”

“Who?” Sallie’s mother asked.

Sallie watched Miles snoring in the chair. Wake him up! she wanted to say. Ask him if Renata came! But Sallie knew the answer was no. After all, why would she?

10:25 P.M.

Ethan Arcain couldn’t sleep. His wife, Emily, was dozing heavily beside him, her breathing deep and regular. His boys were asleep in their respective rooms; the house Ethan had built himself was solid and quiet. Out their open bedroom window Ethan could hear the occasional bleat of one of the goats. He and Emily had eaten grilled steaks for dinner with a fresh corn salsa and heirloom tomatoes drizzled with pesto. Such were the feasts when one lived on a vegetable farm. Ethan had drunk too much-he and Emily split a bottle of Shiraz from the Barossa Valley-and then he’d opened a second bottle to drink alone, despite Emily’s warning eyebrows.

He hadn’t been able to tell Emily about Marguerite coming to the farm that afternoon, despite Brandon announcing, “Dad introduced me to an old friend of his today.”

Emily had been pulsing basil and garlic and pine nuts in the Cuisinart. “Oh yeah, who was it?”

Brandon conveniently chose that moment to leave the kitchen. “Nobody,” Ethan said. “Someone who used to come to the farm back in Dolores’s day, when I was just a kid.”

“Someone you had a crush on?” Emily said.

“Oh God, no,” Ethan said. “Nothing like that.”

He hadn’t been able to tell Emily, and then he drank too much and now both things weighed on his mind. He had lived on Nantucket his whole life; lots of people knew his history: his parents’ brutal split, his father’s drinking. And yet no one brought home the guilt and the shame of being Walter Arcain’s son like Marguerite.

You never had to carry his load. Marguerite said. But he did. Despite the fact that he had worked hard to create a decent, peaceful, productive life, he did.

It had happened during the first week of February. Ethan had graduated the year before from Penn State with a degree in agriculture; he had confessed to his mother that he was in love with her new husband’s oldest daughter, Emily; he was working as a waiter at the Jared Coffin House to make money. He had a deal all worked out with Dolores Kimball; he was going to buy the farm from her when she retired. Everything was moving forward-not quickly, maybe, but in the right direction. And then, just before service for the weekly Rotary luncheon, Ethan’s mother came into the dining room to say that Walter had killed someone and not just someone but Candace Harris Knox. She was jogging out in Madequecham; Walter was driving the company truck, drunk out of his mind.

To a young man who had helped put vegetables and flowers on the table at Les Parapluies since he was ten years old, Candace Harris Knox was a living legend. She was much older than Ethan but captivating nonetheless. The blond hair, the way she could run for miles without ever looking tired, the successful husband, the adorable young daughter. Candace was royalty on the island; she was a goddess among women, Ethan knew it just from the way she carried herself, just from the genuine ring of her laugh. And Walter Arcain, Ethan’s father, had run her down like she was a frightened rabbit.

Ethan pulled the quilt up under his chin. He was freezing, and a headache was starting from the wine. When he rolled over, he checked the red numbers of the digital clock. Ten thirty. He figured Marguerite’s dinner with Renata must be nearly over.

10:41 P.M.

Cade Driscoll was nothing if not disciplined. He was nothing if not obedient. And so, in the end, he suffered through the world’s longest dinner-through lobster cracking, corn munching, and people talking just to cover up the obvious awkwardness of Renata’s desertion. Then he endured dessert-blueberry pie with ice cream, coffee, and port. He sent mental pleas to his mother: Let the Robinsons go home! Set them free! But his mother seemed to feel that the longer the Robinsons stayed, the less likely it was that they would remember the night as a disaster. Finally, finally, at nearly eleven o’clock, Kent Robinson stood up and offered to get his wife’s wrap. Good-byes were said. Claire kissed Cade on the mouth and said, “She wasn’t good enough for you, anyway.” As if she knew something Cade didn’t.

As soon as the Robinsons’ car pulled out of the driveway, Joe Driscoll excused himself for bed. When he shook Daniel Knox’s hand he said, “Any chance you’ll be up for sailing tomorrow?”

“Let’s see how things go.”

“Yes, yes,” Joe said. “Let’s.” He grabbed Cade’s elbow before going up, but he said nothing. Suzanne, in a moment of mercy, set her wineglass on the lowboy and said, “I’ll worry about cleaning up in the morning. Good night, all.” And she followed Joe up the stairs.

Once his parents were gone, Cade turned to Daniel Knox. “How about you?”

“I’m a night owl,” Daniel said. “I may sit on the deck for a while.”

“Okay,” Cade said. “Good night, then.” He marched up the stairs, as if dutifully going to bed.

He had sneaked out of dinner, just for a minute, pretending to use the bathroom, and he’d called Marguerite’s house, but he got no answer-the phone rang and rang. Then he called Renata’s cell phone. Voice mail. He hung up without leaving a message. He wanted to believe Renata’s disappearance had nothing to do with him per se. It was just a nineteen-year-old girl doing as she wished without thinking her actions through. She was upset with Cade for making her cancel dinner, and the whole thought of her father showing up freaked her out. So she bolted.

Cade pushed open the door to the guest room, thinking maybe she had left him a note. He turned on the light. He was looking for a piece of paper-and that was what drew his eyes to the list. He snapped it up, but seeing that it was just something in his mother’s handwriting, he balled it up and threw it on the floor. He looked out on the deck, the deck where only the night before he and Renata had made love while his parents entertained friends below them. But the deck was deserted. Ditto the bathroom. It wasn’t until Cade was ready to leave the guest room-and, quite possibly, make a surreptitious run over to Quince Street-that he noticed the ring. It was right on top of the dresser, as obvious as the nose on his face, so maybe he had seen it a minute ago and just not admitted it to himself.

He picked up the ring, squeezed it in his palm, and sat on the bed. Renata. He thought he might cry for the first time since who knew when. People had said he was crazy to propose to a nineteen-year-old girl. She’s too young-his own parents had warned him of that-she hasn’t had time to get started, much less be finished. And then there was Claire’s parting shot: She wasn’t good enough for you, anyway. Claire was jealous-either that or she suspected Renata had been indiscreet with Miles, which was, Cade had to admit to himself, entirely possible. Even so, Cade loved Renata fiercely. Yes, she was young, but she was going to grow into an amazing woman, and he wanted to be there for that.

He rocked back and forth on the bed. She didn’t want him. Cade had the urge to knock on his parents’ bedroom door and, like a three-year-old, crawl into their bed, have his mother smooth his hair, have his father chuck him under the chin. But his parents weren’t like that; they weren’t nurturing. They had given him every possible advantage and they expected him, now, to make his own way. He would have better luck seeking comfort from Daniel Knox. Yes, Cade thought, he would go down, pour himself a scotch, and confide in the man who might have been his father-in-law. Daniel knew Renata better than anyone. Maybe he could tell Cade something that would make him understand.

Cade walked down the hall, past the west guest room, in case Daniel had come upstairs. But the door to the west guest room was open; the room was dark and empty. Cade stumbled down the back stairs into the kitchen-it had been cleaned by somebody, Nicole probably-and into the living room. Empty. Cade walked out onto the deck. The table had been cleared, the tiki torches extinguished. The deck was deserted. Cade gazed out at the small front lawn, and down farther to the beach.

“Daniel?” Cade whispered into the darkness.

But he was gone.

11:00 P.M.

At eleven o’clock, with the old clock’s grand recital of the hour, its eleven ominous bongs, Marguerite brought out dessert. Two pots de crème, topped with freshly whipped cream and garnished with raspberries. Renata was fading; Marguerite could see it in the way her pretty shoulders were sagging now, her eyes staring blankly at her own reflection in the dark window. Marguerite set the ramekins down with a flourish. This was it. There was no more champagne to pour. Nothing left to do but tell her. Marguerite’s heart hammered away. For years she had imagined this moment, the great confession. Many times Marguerite had considered going to a priest. She would sit in the little booth, face-to-face with the padre, and confess her sins-then allow the priest to touch her head and grant her absolution. But it would have made no difference. Marguerite knew that God forgave her; his forgiveness didn’t matter. Forgiveness from the girl in front of her, Candace’s child, that did matter.

Marguerite had imagined this moment, yes, but she still couldn’t believe it was about to happen. Her chest felt tight, like someone was squeezing her windpipe. Heart, lungs-her body was trying to stop her.

“I’d like to talk to you about your mother’s death,” she said.

“You don’t have to tell me,” Renata said. “You don’t have to say anything else.”

“I’d like to anyway. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“A couple of years after you were born, your parents bought the house in Dobbs Ferry. They wanted a place to spend the winter. Your father thought maybe Colorado, but your mother wanted to be close to the city. She loved New York, and Porter was there. She wanted to put you in a good school; she wanted to be able to take you to the museums and the zoo. It made sense.”

Renata nodded.

“They bought the house when you were four.”

Renata swirled her whipped cream and chocolate together, like a child mixing paints. She had yet to take a bite.

Marguerite paused. Her task was impossible. She could speak the words, relay the facts-but she would never be able to convey the emotion. Candace had spent months preparing Marguerite for the news-saying that she and Dan were looking at houses off-island, saying they’d found a house in a town they liked, Dobbs Ferry, New York, less than four hours away. Marguerite never responded to these announcements; she pretended not to hear. She was being childish and unfair-they were all adults, Candace and Dan were free to do as they liked, they had Renata to think of, and Nantucket in the winter had few options for the parents of small children. The warning shots grew nearer. One day Candace had the gall to suggest that Marguerite join a book group or a church.

You need to get out more, she said. You need to make more friends.

What she was saying was that she couldn’t carry the load by herself. She was going to be leaving. But Marguerite, stubbornly, would hear none of it.

You can’t leave, Marguerite said. She picked Renata up, kissed her cheeks, and said, You are not leaving.

But leave they did, in the autumn, a scant three weeks after Porter returned to Manhattan. In the final days, Candace called Marguerite at the restaurant kitchen every few hours.

I’m worried about you.

Dobbs Ferry isn’t that far, you know.

We’ll be back for Columbus Day. And then at Thanksgiving, you’ll come to us. I can’t possibly do the dinner without you.

We’re leaving nearly everything at the club. Because we’ll be back the first of May. Maybe April fifteenth.

On the day that Candace left, Marguerite saw them off at the ferry. It was six thirty in the morning but as dark as midnight. Dan stayed in the car-Renata was sound asleep in the back-but Candace and Marguerite stood outside until the last minute, their breath escaping like plumes of smoke in the cold.

It’s not like we’ll never see each other again, Candace said.

Right. Marguerite should have been used to it, sixteen years Porter had been leaving her in much the same way, and yet at that moment she felt finally and completely forsaken.

“Your mother leaving was painful,” Marguerite said.

Candace had phoned every day during Renata’s nap and Marguerite-despite her claims that she would be fine, that she was very, very busy-came to rely on those phone calls. After she hung up with Candace, she poured her first glass of wine.

“I traveled down to the new house for Thanksgiving like your mother wanted. We cooked three geese.”

“Geese?”

“Your uncle Porter took the train up from the city. It was a very big deal. That was the only time in seventeen years that I ever celebrated the holidays with him.”

Marguerite closed her eyes for a second and was gone again. Three geese stuffed with apples and onions, served with a Roquefort sauce, stuffing with chestnuts, potato gratin, curried carrots, brussel sprouts with bacon and chives-Marguerite made everything herself, from scratch, while Candace did her best to help. Porter, bald and with a belly, did his old stint of lingering in the kitchen all day, drinking champagne, shaving off pieces of the exotic cheeses he’d brought in from the city, providing a running commentary on the Macy’s parade, which played on TV for Renata, who stacked blocks on the linoleum floor.

At the dinner table, they all took their usual spots: Marguerite next to Candace, across from Porter. It was a careful imitation of their dinners at Les Parapluies, though Marguerite keenly felt the difference-the strange house, the evanescence of the occasion-in three short days, she would be back on Nantucket alone, and Porter, Dan, and Candace would return to the lives they had made without her.

Later, though, Porter cornered her in the kitchen as she finished the dessert dishes-Dan was in the den watching football; Candace was upstairs putting Renata to bed. He pushed Marguerite’s hair aside and kissed her neck, just like he used to all those years ago in the restaurant. She nearly broke the crystal fruit compote.

I have something for you, he said. Call it an early Christmas present.

Marguerite rinsed her hands and dried them on a dish towel. Christmas used to mean pearls or a box from Tiffany’s, though in the last few years Porter’s ardor had mellowed or matured and he sent an amaryllis and great bottles of wine that he picked up at one of the auctions he attended in New York.

Marguerite turned to him, smiling but not happy. Porter sensed her misery, she knew, and he would do anything short of performing a circus act to get her to snap out of it.

He handed her an envelope. So not the amaryllis or vintage Bordeaux after all. Marguerite’s hands were warm and loose from the dishwater, too loose-she fumbled with the envelope. Inside were two plane tickets to Paris. It was like a joke, a story, something unreal, but when she looked at Porter his eyes were shining. She grabbed his ears and shrieked like a teenager.

“Just after the first of the year, your uncle took me back to Paris,” Marguerite said to Renata. “Finally. After nearly seventeen years.”

“How was it?” Renata said. “Was it like you remembered?”

“No,” Marguerite said. “Not at all as I remembered.”

Marguerite had convinced herself that Paris was the answer to her prayers, the key to her happiness; her expectations were dangerously high. There was, after all, no way to re-create their earlier time in Paris: Too much had happened; they were different people. Marguerite was nearly fifty years old, and Porter was beyond fifty. They were professionals; they were seasoned; they had money and tastes now. Instead of being caught up in the throes of fresh love, they were comfortable together; they were, Marguerite thought, a pair of old shoes. And yet she held out for romance-a promise from Porter, a proposal. She believed the trip to Paris was a sign that he was finished with his bachelor life in New York; he was done with his string of other women; the sparkle had worn off; the effort wearied him; he was ready for something lasting, something meaningful. Marguerite had won out in the end for her perseverance. She would finally belong to someone; she would finally be safe.

No, it wasn’t the same, though still they walked, hand in hand. Marguerite had compiled a list of places she wanted to visit-this fromagerie in the sixth, this chocolatier, this home-goods store for hand-loomed linens, this wine shop, this purveyor of fennel-studded salami, which they ate on slender ficelles, this butcher for roasted bleu de Bresse. It was January and bitterly cold. They bundled up in long wool coats, cashmere scarves, fur hats, leather gloves, boots lined with shearling. Despite the temperature, Marguerite insisted they visit the Tuilieries, though the gardens were brown and gray, dead and dormant-and afterward Le Musée du Jeu de Paume. The museum was smaller than either of them remembered; it was overheated; the bench where Porter had fallen asleep was gone, replaced by a red circular sofa. They revisited the Cathedral of Notre-Dame. When they opened the door, the draft licked at the flame of five hundred lit prayer candles. Marguerite paid three francs to light one herself. Please, she thought. At Shakespeare and Company, Marguerite lingered among the Colette novels and picked one out for Candace while Porter, to her astonishment, bought something off the American bestseller list, a thriller penned by a twenty-five-year-old woman.

“All my students are reading it,” he said.

They were staying in a suite at the Plaza Athenee-it was all red brocade and gold tassels; it had two huge marble bathrooms. It was sumptuous and decadent, though a far cry from showering together under the roses. One afternoon, while Porter worked out in the new fitness center, Marguerite lounged in the bubble bath and thought, I should feel happy. Why aren’t I happy? Something was missing from this trip. An intimacy, a connection. When she got out of the tub, she called Candace.

“Why are you calling me?” Candace said, though she sounded happy and excited to hear from Marguerite. “You’re supposed to be strolling the Champs-Elysées.”

“Oh, you know,” Marguerite said. “I just called to say hello.”

“Just hello?” Candace said. “This must be costing you a fortune. Is everything okay? How’s Porter?”

What could Marguerite say? Suddenly, with Candace on the phone, her worries seemed silly, insubstantial. Porter had brought her to Paris; they were staying in a palace; Porter was sweet, attentive, indulgent. He hadn’t so much as called his secretary. She couldn’t possibly complain.

“Everything’s great,” she said.

Each night, they dressed for dinner-Porter in a tuxedo, Marguerite in long velvet skirts or the silk pantsuit Candace had sent her from Saks. They went to the legends: Taillvent, Maxim’s, La Tour d’Argent. The service was intimidating; the food was artwork; the candlelight was flattering to Porter’s face as Marguerite hoped it was to hers. She worried that they might run out of things to talk about, but Porter was as manic and charming as ever; he was so filled with funny stories that Marguerite was surprised he didn’t burst from them. And yet she couldn’t combat the feeling that he felt it was his job to keep her amused.

One night, at a bistro that had been written up in Bon Appétit, they drank three bottles of wine and when they got in the cab they spoke to the driver in fluent French. When they reached the hotel, they were laughing and feeling extremely pleased with themselves. Porter looked at Marguerite seriously, tenderly; he seemed to recognize her for the first time during the trip and maybe in years. They were standing outside the door to their suite; Porter had the old-fashioned iron key poised above the lock.

“Ah, Daisy,” he said. He paused for a long time, searching her face. Marguerite felt something coming, something big and important. She wanted him to speak, though she was afraid to prompt him; she was afraid to breathe.

“This is the life,” he said.

This is the life? Marguerite nodded stupidly. Porter unlocked the door on his third try; then he shed his tuxedo and called her to bed. They made love. Porter fell asleep shortly thereafter, leaving Marguerite to brush her teeth alone among so many square feet of marble and turn off the lights.

As she climbed into bed she realized she felt like crying. She was too old for this kind of rushing emotion, this kind of searing disappointment, and yet the sorrow persisted; it lay down and embraced her.

“A few weeks after your uncle Porter and I returned from Paris, something happened that took me by surprise. Porter called to say that he had fallen in love with his graduate assistant. Caitlin. She was twenty-four years old. Now, I knew he dated other women in New York. It was a source of enormous heartache for me. He took other women to plays and dances and benefits and restaurants. Once, he took a woman to Japan. He wasn’t exactly open about this, but I knew it and he knew that I knew. I never learned a single woman’s name except for the woman he took to Japan; that was a favor he granted me. I presumed they weren’t important enough to be named. He told me he loved me; he used to say I hung the moon. But he would not commit. I thought maybe when we were in Paris…but no. Paris was good-bye. He already belonged to somebody else; every hour he spent with me, he was thinking of this other person. This girl. But I didn’t know that. Until.”

Until the phone call. Marguerite sensed something wrong immediately. Porter’s voice, always booming and upbeat, had been resigned and sorrowful. You’re the greatest friend I have in all the world, Daisy, he’d said. And I’m afraid I’m about to hurt you very badly.

Marguerite had listened, without comprehending a word he said. Back in September, he’d fallen in love with his graduate assistant, twenty-four-year-old Caitlin Veckey from Orlando, Florida. She was red haired and freckled, fresh faced, naïve, she was young enough to have grown up in the shadow of Disney and Epcot. Marguerite imagined her as a cartoon character, a two-dimensional, Technicolor fairy like Tinkerbell. It was all wrong. If Marguerite was going to lose Porter, finally, after so many years, she wanted it to be to a worthier opponent-a sultry, dark beauty who spoke seven languages fluently, a sophisticate, someone with European sensibilities. Or even one of the women Marguerite had imagined Porter with over the years: Corsage Woman, Overbite Woman, Japan Woman. An aging ballerina or show jumper with a degree from Vassar and a trust fund, a closetful of shoes. But it was not to be. Porter had been stolen away by a child, a Lolita. He was in over his head, he said, in love beyond reason, and the only way he could make things right-with the university, certainly, but also in his own heart-was to marry Caitlin.

I’m getting married, Daisy, he said.

She thought of Paris and felt deeply betrayed, embarrassed even. All the usual signs had been absent. There had been no mysterious phone calls, no suspect gifts purchased that she knew of. There was the book he’d bought, and the way he’d worked out religiously at the hotel’s fitness center. Twice he’d skipped dessert and he had passed up the Cuban cigars. Are you getting healthy on me? she’d asked him, teasing. Now she saw.

Marguerite held the receiver long after Porter hung up, staring out her bedroom window. Snow was falling, blanketing Quince Street. She remembered back to the first moment she saw him, she remembered the quiet sounds of him waking up on that bench in the Jeu de Paume, the way he’d blinked his eyes rapidly, unable to place himself for a moment. She remembered his worn leather watchband, and the first time his long, tapered fingers touched her hair. That was a Porter Harris this Caitlin person would never know, never understand.

“Your uncle Porter called to say he was marrying Caitlin,” Marguerite said. “He called to say our relationship was over.”

“You must have been devastated,” Renata said.

It was like learning of her own death; she’d always known it was coming, but so soon? In this ridiculous way? She was shocked, incredulous; her ego was like an egg found cracked in the carton; she was angry, insulted-and worried for Porter’s sake. He’d been tricked by beauty and youth, by sex. He didn’t know what he was doing. The end of a seventeen-year relationship seemed too fantastical to Marguerite to be taken seriously. Porter said it was over, he said he was getting married to this young girl from Florida, and he promised he would never bring the girl to Nantucket, meaning he would never return himself. So Marguerite would never see him again. It couldn’t just end, she reasoned; their relationship couldn’t go from a rich and layered creation to nothing. Her way of life, her identity, her whole world, was threatening to shift, to tilt, to dump her into cold, unfamiliar water. She and Porter were no longer together? It was impossible. So yes, devastated was a fair choice of words. But the hurt was located in distant parts of her-her brain, her reason, her nerves. (Her hands shook for hours; she remembered that.) Her heart cried out for one person, the way a hurt child called out for her mother, and that person was Candace.

“I called your mother to tell her what happened,” Marguerite said. “The weather was bad, it was snowing, it was horrible weather for traveling, and yet I asked her to come up. She wanted me to come to Dobbs Ferry, but I couldn’t move. I was immobilized.”

I want to come, Daisy, she said. Believe me, I do. But Dan is in Beaver Creek looking at a second property and so I’d have to bring Renata-

By all means, bring her.

I’m worried about traveling with her in this weather. Have you looked at the TV? It’s awful. Is it snowing there?

Snowing, yes. Quietly piling up outside.

Okay, Marguerite said. It’s okay. I’m okay.

Are you?

No, she said, and she dissolved into tears. Of course not.

Daisy, don’t cry.

Do you understand what’s happened? Marguerite asked. You cannot reasonably tell me not to cry.

Okay, I’m sorry. There was a long pause, the sound of shuffling papers, the sound of Candace’s sighing. Okay, we’ll come. We’re coming.

Marguerite should have backed down at that point; she should have listened to the reluctance in Candace’s voice. What did another day or two days or a week matter? It was blizzarding. Asking anyone to travel in that weather was absurdly selfish, cruel even. And yet those words, we’ll come, we’re coming, were the words Marguerite craved. She needed to know there was someone in the world who would do anything for her. That person had never been Porter.

“That night, your mother was on my doorstep, holding you in her arms.”

“I came here?”

“I remember it like it was yesterday. You were wearing pink corduroy overalls.”

Marguerite had been pacing her house for hours when the knock finally came. She opened the door and found Candace and Renata, bundled in parkas, dusted with snow. As soon as she saw them she felt ashamed. She had guilted her best friend into traveling three hundred miles through a blizzard with a child. Candace had caught a flight from White Plains to Providence, where she hired a car to take her to Hyannis, where she caught the freight boat, which was the only boat going. And yet, in her gracious way, she made it sound like an adventure.

It’s a miracle, Candace said. But here we are.

“I remember being embarrassed that I didn’t have dinner ready. All that jangling around the house, I could have been making a stew. Instead, we ordered a pizza, but the pizza place refused to deliver, so your mother trudged down Broad Street to get it. All those years I had cared for her, but she had turned into a real mother hen. She set the table, whipped up a salad, made me a cup of tea-I wanted wine, of course, but she said no, alcohol would only make things worse-and she stared us down until we’d eaten a proper dinner, you and me.”

Renata smiled.

“Your mother brought a prescription of Valium with her, thank God. She gave me two, tucked me into bed, and I fell asleep. I woke up at four in the morning and made a pot of coffee. Your mother woke up, too, and sat with me in the dark kitchen, but neither of us spoke. We didn’t know what to say. It was like we’d known all along the sky was going to fall and then it fell and we pretended to be taken by surprise. Then Candace’s face brightened like she’d had some inspiration, like she’d devised some fool-proof way to get Porter back, to make everything right again. But she did the strangest thing. She insisted on cutting my hair. My hair hadn’t been cut since I was a child. Candace said, ‘Time for a new look.’ Or a new outlook. Something like that. She’d cut her own hair that winter-it was short and she wore a bandanna to push it off her face. She wouldn’t let me say no. We pulled a chair over by the kitchen sink and your mother wrapped me up in an old shower curtain.”

Marguerite sat in the makeshift salon chair. As Candace wet her hair, massaged her scalp, combed the length, and snipped the ends, holding them up between two fingers, something dawned on Marguerite. Something transpired. Marguerite could barely breathe; the truth was so obvious and yet so startling. This was what she wanted, all she wanted, Candace here, her warmth, her voice in Marguerite’s ear. Marguerite filled with longing. It wasn’t Porter’s love she sought, and it hadn’t been, maybe, for years. Marguerite wanted Candace; she loved Candace. With Candace fussing and clucking around her, with Candace touching her, Marguerite experienced a new realm of emotion. It was terrifying but glorious, too.

“When she was finished, your mother blew my hair dry and styled it, and when she handed me the mirror I started to cry.”

Candace’s face had fallen apart. You hate it.

“I was crying; then I was laughing,” Marguerite said. “I put down the mirror and I took your mother’s hands and I told her that I loved her.”

I love you, too, Candace said. You’re the greatest friend I have.

The greatest friend I have. Marguerite faltered. Those had been Porter’s exact words and Marguerite thought, These are the words the Harrises use when they are leaving you.

I don’t care about Porter, Marguerite said. I loved the man dearly at one time, and we were intimate. Yes, we were.

You’re better off without him, Candace said. I’ve been wanting to say that since I arrived. You will be better off.

It doesn’t matter, Marguerite said. Because when I heard, when Porter told me, my heart cried out for you. You are the one person I cannot bear to lose. I love you. You are the one that I love. Do you hear what I’m saying? Do you hear?

Confusion flickered across Candace’s face. Marguerite saw it, though it only lasted a second. Did Candace understand what Marguerite was saying?

You’re the best person I know, Candace said. I can’t believe what my brother has done to you.

Say you love me, Marguerite said. Please say it.

Of course I love you. Daisy, yes.

I want you to love me, Marguerite said. I don’t know where this can lead. I Don’t know what I’m asking…

Candace’s hands were cold. Marguerite remembered that. She remembered the cold hands; her friend was frightened. Marguerite dropped the hands, and as soon as she did so Candace turned away.

I think I hear Renata, she said, though the house was silent.

You don’t want me, Marguerite said.

I don’t even know what those words mean, Candace said. What are you asking me for? You’re upset about Porter. He hurt you. You asked me to come and here I am. What else do you want me to say?

You don’t feel the same way that I do. Marguerite said.

What way is that? Candace said. Are you saying you’re in love with me?

Marguerite looked at herself in the mirror. The short hair now. She was a stranger to herself. What was she saying? Did she want to take Candace to bed, do things neither of them could imagine? Did love fall into categories, or was it a continuum? Were there right ways to love and wrong ways, or was there just love and its object?

I can’t help the way I feel, Marguerite said.

You don’t know how you feel. Right? Porter hurt you. You’re confused. Aren’t you confused?

I don’t feel confused, Marguerite said. I’m as sure about this as I’ve been about anything in my whole life. Since the second I met you, when you kissed me. I thought you were Porter’s lover, but you kissed me.

I kissed you, Candace said quickly, because I knew we were going to be friends.

Friends, yes. But more than friends. The hundreds of dinners, their mingled laughter, the walk through the moors, the winter evenings by the fire, the trip to Morocco. Candace there, that was all Marguerite had ever wanted.

It’s been since the second I met you, Marguerite said. This feeling.

You’re upset, Daisy. You don’t know what you’re saying.

You don’t feel the same way, Marguerite said. I’m an idiot to think you would. You have Dan. Dan and Renata. You belong to them.

Yes, Candace said. That’s right. But you’re my best friend and you have been for a long time. Things don’t have to change between us just because Porter’s gone. Don’t make them change, Daisy. Please. Do not.

Marguerite didn’t know what to say. Things had already changed. Marguerite had crossed a boundary; she’d handed herself over, a gift to someone who didn’t know what to do with it. No, not a gift, a burden. A woman nobody wanted. The girl in the mirror with the knobby knees.

“It was a big mess,” Marguerite said now, to Renata. “The messiest mess. I said things to your mother I should never have said. I loved her so immensely-and I wanted her to love me. She tried her best, but things were different for her. So she found herself stuck in this house with her best friend and this huge, unwieldy confession. Your mother would have done anything for me-she’d proved that just by showing up-but there was no way I could make her feel as I felt. There was no way. She tried to pretend everything was okay, that everything could go back as it was before, but we both knew it was impossible.”

Yes, Candace tried. She wiped Marguerite’s face gently with a dish towel, like Marguerite was the five-year-old. Then she gave Marguerite a long and beautiful hug. Looking back, Marguerite could see there was a good-bye in the hug, but she didn’t understand it then. She didn’t understand. Renata had started crying upstairs, and Candace went to her.

She needs me, Candace said.

Fourteen years spent thinking about it and yet there was no way to convey to Renata what had happened that morning. Marguerite said, “Here is the thing you need to know about your mother. Everyone loved her, everyone was drawn to her, but no one more than me. I loved Candace with my whole being. Do you have someone like that? The fiancé, maybe?”

“I thought I loved Cade,” Renata said. “I do love Cade. But it’s not like you described. Not with my whole being. I don’t even know who my whole being is.”

“You’re so young,” Marguerite said.

“I love my roommate, Action,” Renata said. “My best friend. I know it’s not the same. We’ve only known each other a year. But still, I feel like I would die without her.”

Marguerite could see the girl trying to process what she’d just heard, trying to relate. Marguerite wasn’t sure, however, if Renata was intuiting what Marguerite was telling her. I loved your mother too much, and the love destroyed her.

Marguerite looked down at her dessert. It was beautiful enough for a magazine shoot, and yet she couldn’t bring herself to eat a single bite. “Your mother brought you downstairs and she made the three of us breakfast. Tea and toast. Cinnamon toast, cut into squares. She did all this but she didn’t speak, except to soothe you. She didn’t speak to me; we didn’t speak to each other. What to say? Then, once we were finished eating and the dishes were washed, dried, and put away, she started talking about a run.”

You can’t run, Marguerite said. Look outside. The weather.

Candace had stared, said nothing, disappeared upstairs. She came down bundled in workout clothes.

Is it okay if I take the Jeep? she said.

Where are you going?

I need air, she said. I need to clear my head. I feel like you, like I…

What?

I need to get out of the house for a while. Is it okay if I take the Jeep?

Candace…

Please, Daisy? You’ll watch Renata? If not, I’ll take her with me…

You can’t take her with you. It’s too cold. You shouldn’t be going at all. I’ll bet the roads are a sheet of ice.

I have to get out, Candace said. I need to get out of this house! She was yelling now. Renata was scared, hugging her around the knees. What else could Marguerite have said?

Okay, yes, the Jeep. Take it. The keys are on the hook by the door. Renata will be fine. I’ll take care of her. We’ll have fun. And you’ll…be careful? It’s not the car I’m worried about, it’s you…

“But Candace didn’t answer; she was halfway out the door. She couldn’t wait to leave. She wanted to escape me.”

Renata nodded.

“I helped you crayon in a coloring book, I got down on my hands and knees and played with blocks, and when Candace still didn’t return I put you down in front of Sesame Street, where you fell asleep. I made myself a cup of tea. I swept up the hair trimmings; I started a stew.”

“Were you worried about her?” Renata asked.

“I tried to tell myself I was being silly. Your mother used to run for hours.”

“I remember being here,” Renata said. “That must be what I remember. I drank tea with honey and burned my tongue. You sang to me in French, or we read in French. I remember the pattern of flowers on the sofa.”

“Yes,” Marguerite said.

When Renata woke from her nap, she was crying. Her hair was tangled. She was thirsty. Marguerite fixed her a small cup of tea and added honey. Together they sat on the sofa and read from Babar. When the phone rang the first time, Marguerite ignored it.

Renata set her spoon down in her empty ramekin. Ching! Marguerite flinched.

“The roads were covered with ice. Walter Arcain was drunk; he was out on the very same road you were on today, joyriding, doing doughnuts, going way too fast. He claimed he didn’t see Candace at all; he claimed he felt a thump, he thought he’d hit a deer. He stopped the truck and found Candace underneath.”

Renata’s breath caught. Her mother. “It was his fault,” Renata said. “He went to jail.”

“For ten years,” Marguerite said. “And yes, technically, it was his fault. But it was my fault that Candace was here in the first place. I guilted her into coming. And then the things I said that last morning…undid her. She was not herself when she left here. I had scared her; I had created a rift, a horrible awkwardness. I had pushed our friendship beyond its limit. Your mother would have been thinking that it was all Porter’s fault; he had hurt me, made me needy; he had left me for her to sweep up; she would have been screaming at him in her mind. She would have wondered if the Valium was a mistake; she would have chastised herself for bringing it. I guarantee you she was thinking of these things, some, if not all, of them. She didn’t hear Walter Arcain’s truck; she didn’t sense the rumble on the road. She was preoccupied, muddled, distracted. By me.” Marguerite put her hand to her forehead. It was hot and damp, like she had a fever. “I should never have let her leave the house. But she wanted to get away from me. She said she needed air. She wanted to go.” Marguerite searched for words that would soften the blow, but if the girl had been listening, she would see the truth, plain as day. “I have always felt responsible for your mother’s death, Renata.”

Renata blinked. Marguerite hadn’t been driving the electric company truck, she wasn’t the one who was drunk at ten in the morning, and yet Renata could see why Marguerite blamed herself. She was here because I guilted her into coming. I abused our friendship. I upset her. She left the house upset… God, Renata thought. Yes. Marguerite had admitted to Candace what few people would ever be honest enough to say, even to themselves. I love you more. I need you more. Was it wrong to love someone too much, to love them in a way you knew they could never return? Was it possible to kill someone by loving them? Clearly, Renata’s father thought so, and that was why she’d been forbidden to see Marguerite, banned from this house, from hearing this story. Was Renata supposed to feel angry at Marguerite? Was she supposed to hate her, to shun her, to judge her the way Daniel had? Maybe she was; maybe she should. But strangely, Renata didn’t feel angry. She felt relieved that there was someone else in the world as confused, as guilty, as flawed, as Renata herself was. That very day she had taken her eyes off of Sallie; she had cheated on Cade, then deserted him. Was it possible to kill someone by not loving them? Renata’s head swam.

“I don’t know what to say,” she admitted.

“I’m sure not.”

“What if she wasn’t thinking about you?” Renata said. “What if it was just an accident? What if Walter Arcain ran her down on purpose? Or what if it’s all part of some predestined plan that we can’t control? It might not have had anything to do with you. Have you considered that?”

“No,” Marguerite said.

“In which case, all you’d be guilty of is telling her you loved her before you left. I wish I had told her I loved her before she left.”

Marguerite twirled the stem of her empty champagne flute. If anyone could have kept Candace from going running that morning, it was the little girl in pink overalls. Renata had wrapped her arms around her mother’s legs and refused to let go until Candace bent down, kissed her, and gently pried her arms away. You stay with Aunt Daisy, she said. I’ll be back in a little while.

At that moment, Marguerite understood why Renata had skipped out on Hulbert Avenue, why she ran all that way with a heavy bag, in her sandals. She had come not to hear Marguerite’s confessions but for another reason altogether. I feel so peculiarly at home. Home: The last place she felt her mother’s touch.

“You did,” Marguerite said. “You did.”

She could have stopped there, maybe. It was late, nearly the start of a new day, but Marguerite was determined to finish.

“You’ve heard people say I’m crazy,” Marguerite said. “Your father, and other people?”

Renata wanted to deny it, but the words were too fresh in her mind. Not stable, her father had said. Rather like Vincent van Gogh, Mrs. Robinson had said. And then there were all the things Renata had picked up in the past: She lost it, complete mental breakdown, miracle she didn’t kill herself, no one in her right mind would have…

Renata shrugged.

What words did Marguerite have left at her disposal to describe the days after Candace died?

Daniel flew in from Colorado. Marguerite picked him up at the airport, and during the twenty-minute ride in the dark car, she tried to explain what had happened.

This whole thing with Porter, she said, took me by surprise…

You made her feel like she had to come here, Daniel said. With my daughter. In the middle of a goddamned blizzard. Who does that?

Marguerite didn’t answer. They were in the Jeep, with the wind whining through the zippered windows like an angry mosquito. Even with the heat turned up full blast, it was freezing. Marguerite’s face was frozen, her fingers were frozen to the steering wheel. Her heart was frozen.

Daniel repeated himself in a louder voice. Who does that, Margo? Who asks her best friend and her godchild, age five, to travel in a blizzard?

I’m sorry, Marguerite said.

You’re sorry? Daniel said. He spat out a mouthful of air, incredulous. You spent all these years making her feel like she owed you something, but what you got in the end was her pity. She pitied you, Margo.

The words were awful to hear. But how could Marguerite deny them? You’re right, she said. She pitied me. And I frightened her. Here, she swallowed. If he were going to condemn her, he should condemn her for all of it. Someone should know what Marguerite had done, and a part of her held out hope that Daniel would understand. And so she told him about how she’d confessed her love, how confused Candace was by the confession, how addled. She was desperate to get out of the house, Marguerite said. There was no stopping her.

That’s twisted, Daniel said. It’s sick. You made her sick. You make me sick.

There was nothing sick about it, Marguerite said. It was a revelation to me-how I felt, how important she was to me. I wanted her to know.

Revelation? Daniel said. Revelation? She’s dead, Margo. My wife. Renata’s mother. Candace is dead. Because of you.

Yes, Marguerite said. It was almost a relief, hearing it spoken out loud. Marguerite blamed herself, others who learned the whole story or part of the story would blame her silently, but Daniel was angry enough to blame her openly. It was like a slap in the face-it hurt, but she deserved it.

When they reached the house on Quince Street, Dan snatched Renata away from the babysitter and marched upstairs, returning with Candace’s suitcase.

Every last thing that belonged to her, he said. Put it in here. You will keep nothing for yourself. He bundled up Renata and hurried her out the door. Marguerite believed she would never see the girl again.

She had lost everyone who mattered, making it that much easier to give up. After the funeral, she saw no one, spoke to no one-not Porter, not Dusty, not Ethan… She decided immediately that she would close the restaurant, but that didn’t seem like enough of a sacrifice.

“After your mother died,” Marguerite said, “I considered suicide. I did more than consider it. I tried it on like it was a dress, imagining how I would do it, and when. Eating the Valium was too much like falling asleep. I wanted to drive my Jeep into the ocean, or throw myself off the ferry with a weighted suitcase chained to my leg. I wanted to set myself on fire, like the women in India. I felt so guilty, so monstrous, so bereft, so empty. And then at some point it came to me that dying would be too easy. So I set out to destroy the part of myself that I valued the most.”

“Which was?” Renata was almost afraid to ask.

“My sense of taste.” Marguerite brought a spoonful of creamy chocolate to her mouth. “I can taste nothing. This could be pureed peas for all I know.”

“So how…?”

“I branded my tongue.” She had been very scientific about maiming herself; she had been meticulous. She made a fire of hickory, which burns hotter than other woods, and she set one of her prized French utensils among the embers until it glowed pinkish white. “I burned my taste buds so profoundly that I knew I would never taste a thing again.”

“Didn’t it hurt?” Renata asked.

Hurt? Marguerite hadn’t been concerned about the pain; nothing could hurt more than… But there had been nights in the past fourteen years when she’d awoken, terrified of glowing metal, of the hiss, the stink.

“When it happened, my tongue swelled up. I can remember it filling my mouth, suffocating me. I nearly lost consciousness, and if I had, I probably would have died. But I got to a phone, dialed the police. I couldn’t speak, but they found me anyway, took me to the hospital.” Insidious pain, yes, she remembered it now, but also a kind of numbness, the numbness of something newly dead. “A day later, stories were everywhere. Some people said I’d cut my tongue out with a knife; others said I went into convulsions and swallowed my tongue. Everyone said I had lost my mind. Some believed Candace and I were lovers; others thought I’d done it because of Porter. Self-mortification, they called it at the hospital. They weren’t willing to release me. They said I was a danger to myself. I spent three months in a psychiatric hospital in Boston. Posttraumatic stress disorder-that’s what they would call it now. Eventually, the doctors realized I was sane. My lawyer helped a lot; he fought to get me released. But even once I returned home, I couldn’t go back out into the world. I sold the restaurant and made a fortune, but I knew I was destined to spend my days alone and dreadfully misunderstood. And I was right. My life”-here Marguerite lifted a hand-“is very small. And very quiet. But that is my choice. I am not insane. Some days, believe me, I wish I were.”

Renata didn’t know how to respond, but like everything with Marguerite, this seemed to be okay. Silence seemed preferable; it seemed correct. And so, they sat-for a few minutes, fifteen minutes, twenty; Renata wasn’t sure. Renata was tired, but her mind wouldn’t rest. She had heard the whole story for the first time and yet what she found was that she knew it already. Inside, she’d known it all along.

The clock struck midnight. Marguerite snapped to attention; Renata realized that for a second or two she’d drifted off to sleep.

“We should go to bed,” Renata said. She stood up and collected the dessert dishes.

“Leave them in the sink,” Marguerite said. “I’ll do them in the morning.” Marguerite blew the candles out and inhaled the smell of them, extinguished. Dinner over, she thought. But before Marguerite could feel anything resembling relief or sadness or peace, there was a knock at the door. This time there was no mistaking it for something else; there was no wondering if it was a figment of her imagination. The knock was strong, authoritative. Renata heard it, too. Her eyes grew round; the dishes wobbled in her hands.

“We should hardly be surprised,” Marguerite whispered, ushering Renata into the kitchen. “We knew someone would come looking for you.”

Right, Renata thought. Still, she felt hunted down. “What should we do?” she said.

“What would you like to do?” Marguerite asked. “We can answer, or we can pretend to be asleep and hope whoever it is gives up and comes back in the morning.”

“Pretend to be asleep,” Renata said.

“All right.” Marguerite flipped off the kitchen light. There was no way anyone could see in the kitchen windows unless he scaled a solid eight-foot fence onto the garden patio. Marguerite reached out for Renata’s hand. “Let’s wait for a minute. Then we’ll sneak you upstairs.”

Renata could barely nod. She squeezed Marguerite’s bony fingers. There was a second barrage of knocks.

“Is there any way we could check…?” Renata said.

“And see who it is?” Marguerite said. “Certainly. I’ll go.” Marguerite crept into the dark hallway, telling herself she was not afraid. This was her house; Renata was her guest. She tiptoed down the hall and into the sitting room. She peered out the window, terrified that when she did so another face would be staring back at hers. But what she saw was Daniel Knox, sitting on the top step, his head in his hands. He had a small travel suitcase on the step next to him.

Marguerite hurried back to the kitchen. “It’s your father.”

“He’s alone?”

“He’s alone. He’s brought a suitcase. Perhaps you should come take a look.”

Renata followed Marguerite to the window. They pulled the curtain back, and both gazed upon Daniel sitting there. Marguerite’s heart lurched. She tried to forget that the last time he stood on the step it was to take his daughter away; it was to pass his terrible judgment. She pitied you, Margo. The words she would never forget. He had meant them-and worse still, they were true. But Marguerite found it hard to conjure the old pain. So much time had passed. So much time.

Renata bit her bottom lip. She tried to erase the sight of her father on a different front step, crying because someone in the world had been cruel or thoughtless enough to steal his little girl’s bicycle. All he’d ever wanted to do was protect her. He’d come to Nantucket tonight because of her phone call. He had heard it as a cry for help-and now Renata could see that’s exactly what it was.

“Shall we let him in?” Renata said. “Would it be okay with you?”

“Of course,” Marguerite said.

Together, they opened the door.

August 20, 2006 • 12:22 A.M.

Cade Driscoll pulled up in front of the house on Quince Street in his family’s Range Rover. Once he was parked and settled, however, he just sat in his car like a spy, Renata’s engagement ring clenched in his hand. On the first floor, the shutters had been pulled, though Cade could see thin strips of light around the edges of the windows. A light went on upstairs. Through the curtains, Cade discerned shadowy figures. Renata? Daniel? The godmother? He waited, watching, hoping that Renata would peer out and see him. Come down, he thought. Come down and talk to me. But eventually the light upstairs went off. A light came on downstairs, on the right side of the house, and Cade watched with renewed interest, but then that light went out and Cade sensed that was it for the night. They were all going to sleep. He would be well advised to do the same.

Cade opened his palm and studied the engagement ring. He hadn’t told Renata this, but he had bought the ring at an estate sale at Christie’s; the ring, initially, had belonged to someone else. What kind of woman, Cade had no idea; what kind of marriage it represented, he couldn’t begin to guess. He placed the ring in the car’s ashtray. Monday, when he was back in Manhattan, he would sell it on consignment.

He resumed his stakeout of the dark house. Like the ring, Number Five Quince Street contained a story, a secret history. The same could be said, no doubt, for every house on Quince Street and for every bright apartment window in Manhattan, for every igloo, Quonset hut, cottage, split-level, bungalow, and grass shack across the world. They all held stories and secrets, just as the Driscoll house on Hulbert Avenue held the story of today. Or part of the story.

The rest, Cade feared, he would never know.

1:05 A.M.

Marguerite lay in bed, used up, spent, as tired as she’d ever been in her life, and yet she couldn’t sleep. There was excitement and, yes, anxiety, about not one but two of her upstairs guest rooms occupied, about Renata and Daniel asleep above her head. In a hundred years she never could have predicted that she would have them both in her house again. To have them show up unannounced and know they would be welcome to stay the night, like they were family.

Marguerite had expected Daniel to be officious, gruff, angry, annoyed, impatient, disgruntled, demanding-but if she and Porter were playing their old game and she had only one word to describe Daniel, it would be “contrite.” He was as contrite as a little boy who had put a baseball through her window.

“I’m sorry,” he said when Marguerite and Renata opened the door. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” The apologies came in a stream and Marguerite couldn’t tell if he was sorry for showing up on her doorstep at midnight with his overnight bag, or sorry for coming to Nantucket to meddle in his daughter’s affairs, or sorry for keeping Marguerite and Renata away from each other for fourteen years, or sorry for his punishing words so long ago or sorry for feeling threatened by Marguerite since the day he showed up at Les Parapluies without a reservation, when he pulled out a chair and took a seat in their lives, uninvited. Possibly all of those things. Marguerite allowed Dan to embrace her and kiss her cheek, and then she stood aside and watched as father and daughter confronted each other. Renata crossed her arms over her chest and gave Daniel a withering look.

“Oh, Daddy!” she said. Then she grimaced. “Don’t tell me what happened over there. Please don’t tell me. I really don’t want to know.”

“I’d rather not think about it myself,” Daniel said. He sighed. “I’m not trying to control your life, honey.”

Renata hugged him; Marguerite saw her tug on his earlobe. “Yes, you are,” she said. “Of course you are.”

“Would you like a drink, Daniel?” Marguerite asked. “I have scotch.”

“No, thanks, Margo,” he said. “I’ve had plenty to drink already tonight.” He sniffed the air. “Smells like I missed quite a meal.”

“You did,” Renata said. She shifted her feet. “Can we talk about everything in the morning? I’m too tired to do it now. I’m just too tired.”

“Yes,” Daniel said. Marguerite noticed him peer into the sitting room. In the morning he would want to see the house; he would want to see what was the same, what was different. He would look for signs of Candace. It was fruitless to hope he might bestow a kind of forgiveness, but she would hope anyway.

“Yes,” Marguerite agreed. “You, my dear, have had quite a day. Let me show you upstairs.”

Marguerite led the way with Renata at her heels. Daniel, who had been left to carry the bags, loitered at the bottom of the stairs. He was snooping around already, reading something that he found on one of the bottom steps, something Marguerite hadn’t even realized she’d left there-her columns from the Calgary newspaper.

“Dad?” Renata said impatiently.

He raised his face and sought out Marguerite’s eyes. “Do you enjoy working with Joanie?” he said.

Marguerite raised one eyebrow, a trick she hadn’t used in years and years. “You know Joanie Sparks?” she said. “You know the food editor of The Calgary Daily Press?”

“Do you remember my best man, Gregory?”

Marguerite nodded. How would she ever explain that she’d been thinking of Gregory just today, and the relentless way he’d pursued poor Francesca?

“Joanie is his sister,” Dan said. “I dated her a million years ago. In high school.”

“You gave her my name then?” Marguerite said. “You suggested I write the column?”

He shrugged, returned his attention to the clippings for a second, then set them down. He picked up his overnight case and Renata’s lumpy bag and ascended the stairs with a benign, noncommittal smile on his face. “I did,” he said. “And not only that but I read the column every week. Online.”

“You do?” Marguerite said.

“You do?” Renata said.

“It’s a wonderful column,” Daniel said.

Forgiveness, Marguerite thought. It had been there all along.

“Well,” she said, trying not to smile. “Thank you.”

The grandfather clock eked out another hour. The announcement was mercifully short: two o’clock.

Sleep! Marguerite commanded herself. Now!

She closed her eyes. In the morning, she would make a second meal, breakfast. She and Daniel and Renata would drink coffee on the patio, read the Sunday New York Times, which Marguerite had had delivered every week since the year she met Porter. They would say things and leave many things unsaid. And then-either together or separately-Renata and Daniel would leave to go back to New York. They would resume their lives, and Marguerite would resume hers.

She was not optimistic enough to believe that, from this day on, she would see them often, or soon, though she hoped her status improved from a mere name on the Christmas card list. She hoped Renata would write-or e-mail! She hoped both Renata and Daniel would think of Nantucket on a bright, hot summer day and know they were welcome there anytime, without warning. For them, her door was open.

If nothing else, Marguerite told herself, she would be left with the memory of this day. It would be a comfort and a blessing to think back on it.

There was, after all, nothing like living in the past.