Winter Storms

JENNIFER

Patrick’s release from jail is delayed by three weeks.

Why? Why? Jennifer wants to know why.

“I’m not sure why,” Patrick says over the phone. “Maybe I understood it wrong to begin with? Janine in Processing was adamant. I get out the twenty-first, not the first.”

Patrick sounds like he’s just going to roll over and accept his fate rather than fight it. He has been in jail too long; he’s become submissive. Where is her take-charge, fix-everything husband?

“Have you called Hollis?” Jennifer asks.

“I called him, he knows, but there’s nothing he can do about it, and even if there were something he could do about it, it would likely take the same amount of time I have to wait anyway. It’s only three more weeks,” Patrick says. “I’ve gotten through eighteen months. I can wait three more weeks.”

Maybe he can, but Jennifer can’t. June 1 is decorated with a pink heart on her calendar. In her mind, the day is a starburst. She has rationed her energy and her patience to make it to June 1-not a day longer. And certainly not three weeks longer. She has already planned a family dinner for Patrick’s first night home-poached salmon with mustard-dill sauce and the crispy potato croquettes that Patrick loves. And then the following two nights, Jennifer has farmed the boys out on sleepovers so that she and Patrick can have the house to themselves. She has bought new lingerie and new sheets; she has ordered a tin of osetra caviar and chilled a vintage bottle of Veuve. She has told Jaime, their youngest, that Patrick will make it to his final lacrosse game of the season. The plans are so embedded in Jennifer’s mind that she can’t shift them forward three weeks. She just can’t!

“It sounds like you want to stay in jail,” Jennifer says. “Maybe you have a little romance going on with Janine from Processing.”

“Jennifer,” Patrick says. “Please.”

“Please what?”

“Please try to understand. This isn’t my fault. It isn’t anyone’s fault. It was a misunderstanding. A scheduling glitch.”

Jennifer nods into the phone but she can’t speak. She knows it’s not Patrick’s fault. She knows she should accept this news gracefully and adjust her expectations. She’s an interior designer. She, of all people, understands delays. It happens all the time in her business-carpets from India get stuck in Customs, quarries run out of a particular kind of granite, her son Barrett gets walking pneumonia and Jennifer has to postpone an installation by a week.

“Okay,” she says. “We’ll see you on the twenty-first.”

“That’s my girl,” Patrick says.

Jennifer hangs up the phone. Immediately, she calls Norah Vale.

It’s June 20, the first day of summer, when Jennifer drives out to Shirley, Massachusetts, to pick Patrick up. She can’t seem to control her nerves, despite eating two Ativan for breakfast. Her heart is slamming in her chest, almost as if she’s afraid. Afraid of what? She went to visit Patrick a week ago Thursday and talked to him yesterday afternoon, but this is different. He’s coming home. He’s coming home!

Patrick is standing by the gate with his favorite guard, Becker, a man even Jennifer has come to know and appreciate. Jennifer barely remembers to put the car in park. She jumps out and runs into Patrick’s arms. He picks her up and they kiss like crazy teenagers until Becker clears his throat and says, “You all need to get a room.”

Patrick shakes Becker’s hand and says, “Thanks for having my back, man. I’m gonna miss you.”

“No, you won’t,” Becker says with a smile. “Now get out of here.”

Patrick drives them home. He says, “It’s like the world is brand-new. I missed driving.”

“You hate driving,” Jennifer says.

“I’ll never complain about it again,” Patrick says. “I’ll never complain about anything again.”

It’s a good lesson about the things we take for granted, Jennifer thinks. Patrick reenters the free world with the enthusiasm of a child.

Jennifer says, “What do you want to do first?”

He gives her a look as if to say Do you even have to ask that?

She swats his arm. “After that.”

“I want to hug my children,” he says.

“Obviously,” Jennifer says. “After that.”

“I want to stop at the store and get a cold six-pack,” he says. “I want to smell a flower. I want to take a bath. I want to get into a bed with my head on three fluffy pillows. I want to swim in the ocean. I want to go to the movies and get popcorn with too much butter. I want a glass of water filled with ice. You have no idea how much I’ve missed ice. I want to walk across Boston Common and smell the marijuana smoke and get asked for spare change. I want to wear my watch. I want to download music. I want to watch the sun go down. I want to throw the lacrosse ball with Jaime. I want to meet my new niece. I want my electric toothbrush. I want to wear my shirts, my boxers, my loafers.” He pauses. He seems overcome. “There are so many things.”

“There will be time,” Jennifer says. “I promise.” She knows what he means. He’s here, right here next to her. She puts her hand on the back of his head. She never wants to stop touching him.

“And you,” Patrick says. “You are amazing. You held everything together. You were so strong. You deserve a medal. I wouldn’t have blamed you if you’d left me, Jenny.”

“I would never leave you,” she says.

“I don’t know how you did it,” he says. “I don’t know how you got through the days. It must have been so hard on you and yet you never complained. You are my hero, Jennifer Barrett Quinn.”

She longs to confess: I’m addicted to pills. Completely, pathetically addicted.

But instead she says, “Stop. You’re embarrassing me.”

AVA

June 20 is the first day of summer and the last day of school. Ava can remember only one other year when the two converged, but everyone finds it fitting: a seasonal passing of the baton.

The day is sweltering, and naturally, tradition dictates that the majority of the last day be spent with the entire school packed together in the gymnasium, the one room in the building that defies even the most powerful air-conditioning. Ava has begged Principal Kubisch to keep the two back doors propped open for ventilation, despite the fact that, in this day and age, it’s a security violation.

There is a pint-size version of pomp and circumstance for the departing fifth-graders, and Ava is overcome with nostalgia. She remembers Ryan Papsycki and Topher Fotea and the clique now headed by Sophie Fairbairn back when they were tiny kindergartners. Today, Sophie has seen fit to wear a lace bustier and show off her double-pierced ears. She’ll be a big hit in middle school.

Ava herds the fourth-graders into rows of chairs for their three minutes of fame. They have been practicing “Annie’s Song,” by John Denver, on their recorders ever since they got back from Christmas break and they’ve gotten proficient enough that Ava doesn’t have to put in earplugs when they play it. She and Scott have an ongoing debate about how teaching the recorder should have been banned back in 1974 after the first class of students learned to play “Annie’s Song.” The recorder is such a lame instrument! Ava would far prefer teaching something the kids might actually use later in life-the harmonica, say, or the ukulele, the xylophone or the bongo drums. Anything but the recorder.

Ava raises her arms and imagines for a moment that she is Arthur Fiedler conducting the Boston Pops. Ha! That’s funny enough that Ava nearly breaks into a grin. D’laney Rodenbough still has her recorder swaddled in a striped kneesock, but Ava can’t wait for D’laney. It’s too hot and everyone wants to get out of there.

You fill up my senses…

The song is over in two minutes and thirty-six seconds and as Ava zips her hands over her head, like she’s closing up the school year and all the laughter, learning, rule-breaking, and scolding that went with it, she sees, standing by the open back door, the tall, authoritative figure of the assistant principal, Scott Skyler, and, next to him, Roxanne Oliveria.

The assembled crowd applauds. Ava takes a shallow bow. The person inside Ava shakes her head in disgust. What is Mz. Ohhhhhh doing here?

Ava’s best friend, Shelby, the school librarian, grabs Ava’s arm as they’re walking out of the gym. “She’s shameless.”

“I’m sure he invited her,” Ava says.

“Only to make you jealous,” Shelby says.

Ava thinks that this is probably true.

Somehow, Scott and Mz. Ohhhhhh have teleported themselves from the back door of the gym to just outside the main office, where they are jointly waving good-bye to the students, like Mr. and Mrs. America on a parade float. Ava is so perplexed-what is Roxanne doing here?-that she allows herself to be carried along on a wave of students giddy with escape.

She gets close enough that Roxanne can grab Ava’s arm. “Congratulations!” she says.

“Thanks?” Ava says.

“This is my favorite day of the year,” Roxanne says.

Ava makes a face. Roxanne teaches high school English. The high school got out last week. For the past seven days, Roxanne has been reading the new Nancy Thayer novel and catching up on Netflix.

Whatever, Ava thinks. She wants to get away, but there are kids everywhere. Scott is involved in high-fiving all of the children from his special advisory group, kids who were considered “at risk” at the beginning of the year but who are now contributing citizens.

“… Tuscany?” Roxanne says.

Ava looks at her, alarmed. Is Roxanne still talking to her?

“I’m sorry?” Ava says.

“Did Scott tell you he’s taking me to Tuscany?” Roxanne says. “We’ve rented a villa.”

Ava is too blindsided to bluff. “No,” she says. “He did not tell me that.”

“We leave tonight,” Roxanne says.

Ava collects her things from her room. The previous year on the last day of school, she and Scott had stopped at Henry’s Jr. for sandwiches and Hatch’s for beer and then had driven Ava’s Jeep up to Great Point, where they stayed until the sun went down.

Tuscany. A villa.

Ava had had drinks with Scott on Saturday night at the Jetties. Drinks turned into a dozen oysters at the bar, which turned into dinner. Marshall sat them at the table he called Romance No. 1, set apart from all the other tables and lit only by candles. They ordered a crisp white wine and the lobster pizza and they listened to the guitar player do a pretty creative acoustic version of “Paradise by the Dashboard Light.” Ava went back to Scott’s place afterward and then in the morning, they’d gone to the Downyflake for breakfast, where they saw half the school faculty. Ava told Scott how excited she was to work with Kevin at Quinns’ on the Beach-four days a week, eleven to five.

Scott had kissed Ava and said, “But I’ll never see you.”

“You can come visit,” Ava said. “I’ll make you a frappe.”

Scott had not said word one about taking Roxanne to Tuscany or renting a villa.

Ava bristles. Scott has never taken Ava anywhere except to Tuckernuck, which is a whopping half a mile from Madaket Harbor by boat. They had stayed two nights in the old schoolhouse, which was appropriate for two educators. The schoolhouse was home to field mice and spiders, and Ava had to relieve herself in a bucket. It was not a villa in Tuscany.

She considers sending Scott a text-but what would she say? That she’s hurt? Obviously, he realizes this. That he should have told Ava himself instead of letting Roxanne drop the news like a dirty bomb? Obviously, he realizes this as well. Next, Ava considers sending Shelby a text, but Shelby has a husband and a cute baby boy waiting for her at home. She claims she loves hearing about the drama in Ava’s life, but she’s lying.

Ava slogs through the heat out to the parking lot. Silence will be her weapon of choice, she decides. Scott can go to Tuscany tomorrow, he can have fun dancing Roxanne around their villa to “Brown-Eyed Girl,” Ava doesn’t care. She won’t call, she won’t text. She will be a stone wall of impenetrable silence, a fortress of noncommunication.

Then Ava finds a dozen pale pink roses lying across the front seat of her Jeep. Her heart lifts briefly-Scott? There’s a note on top: Congrats, babe! Meet me on the Straight Wharf tonight at 7:30 sharp. Love, N.

Nathaniel.

Ava can’t help herself; she feels let down. She wonders if this means she’s any closer to solving her quandary. Does she really love Scott? Or is it a false construct-she loves Scott only because Scott is taking Roxanne to Tuscany?

She lifts the roses and inhales. She stands in the parking lot sniffing her lavish bouquet a little longer than she might have normally, hoping that Scott will come out and see her. His Explorer is three cars away from her car in the parking lot. Has Scott ever expressed any interest in going to Italy? Africa, yes, the Peace Corps-a lifelong dream. But Italy? Scott doesn’t even like Italian food!

After another few seconds, Ava feels like an idiot. She tosses the roses onto the passenger seat and drives home to the inn.

At home, there is a bottle of Veuve Clicquot sitting on ice on the kitchen counter.

For me? she wonders. That doesn’t seem right. Ava’s family is wonderful and nurturing, but would anyone have remembered that it was her last day of school and chosen to celebrate it?

Mitzi and Kelley are both in the kitchen. Mitzi is reaching for the champagne flutes and Kelley is pulling the blueberry Brie out of the oven. Kelley never serves his blueberry Brie to the guests; it’s strictly a family treat. But what’s the occasion?

“Hey,” Ava says, “I’m home.”

“Just in time,” Kelley says. He sets the Brie on the counter and Ava gazes at it longingly.

“What’s going on?” she asks, and then her eyes bulge. Have they found Bart?

“Your brother,” Kelley says.

Ava starts to shake. Her chest constricts. She has imagined Bart’s return every day since he went missing. She’s imagined the instant she hears the news; she’s imagined her wondrous relief, the anxiety being lifted off her shoulders by a host of angels. But no, no, she thinks-Mitzi isn’t emotional enough. If it were Bart, Mitzi would be on her knees, weeping.

“My brother?” Ava says.

“Patrick,” Kelley says. “He got out of jail this morning.”

“Right,” Ava says. In a side pocket of her mind, she’d known this. “Is he here?”

“No,” Mitzi says. “He’s at home with Jennifer and the kids. But we decided to celebrate anyway.”

Ava nods and accepts a champagne flute. She feels a twinge of irritation. They’re celebrating the brother who broke the law and ended up in jail while the brother who set out to defend the country’s freedom is-best-case scenario-imprisoned by enemy forces. But… okay? They’re the Quinns! Ava supposes she should just drink her champagne, eat the most delicious cheese on earth, and celebrate Patrick’s release.

Kevin, Isabelle, and Genevieve stroll into the kitchen. Kevin swings Genevieve between his legs.

“You’re going to dislocate her shoulders!” Mitzi cries.

“She’s tough,” Kevin says, then he lifts her up and kisses her cheek. “My tough baby girl.”

The time with her family does wonders for Ava’s mood. After a glass and a half of champagne and two crostini smothered with the gooey, fruity cheese, Ava repairs to the shower. She’ll meet Nathaniel on the Straight Wharf, and she will wear a knockout dress and put her hair in a loose bun the way he likes it.

“Are you going out with Scott or Nathaniel tonight?” Mitzi asks as Ava heads out the back door of the inn.

“Nathaniel,” Ava says. “Scott is going to Tuscany with Roxanne.”

“Oh,” Mitzi says. “Oh my.”

Nathaniel is standing at the start of the Straight Wharf, just in front of the Gazebo. He’s holding a bottle of Veuve Clicquot and two champagne flutes.

This time Ava feels certain the champagne is for her.

“Where are we going?” she asks.

“Follow me,” he says.

He leads her down the dock to where the fishing boats are lined up and stops at the Endeavor. The Endeavor is a thirty-one-foot Friendship sloop that does charter harbor cruises, specializing in sunsets; Kelley and Mitzi recommend it for guests of the inn all the time. Ava loves seeing the boat on the horizon; she always imagines how lucky the people on board are. She hasn’t been on the boat since Mitzi rented it for Kelley’s fiftieth birthday.

“Are we going?” she asks Nathaniel.

“We’re going,” he says.

“By ourselves?”

“Just you and me, the captain, and the first mate.”

Ava can’t believe it. This is an extravagant gesture. In her mind, it’s even better than a villa in Tuscany. Ava removes her shoes and climbs aboard with Nathaniel following. The hot day has turned into a mild evening, and because it’s the longest day of the year, there’s still an hour of daylight before sunset. Ava stretches out on the bow-they’re the only guests; they have the whole boat to themselves!-and Nathaniel joins her. He pops the cork on the champagne and pours two glasses. They putter out of the slip and into the harbor.

Ava has lived on Nantucket since she was nine years old, but she is still dazzled every time she gets out on the water. It doesn’t happen as often as one might think. She takes the ferry, of course, and on the occasional summer Sunday, she will join Shelby and Zack in their whaler for a trip to Coatue or Great Point. But given that Ava’s usually at school or the inn, most of her Nantucket experience takes place on land.

The sails go up as the boat rounds Brant Point Light. There are a couple of kids on the beach collecting horseshoe crabs. Ava waves at them. The Endeavor sails around the jetty and out into Nantucket Sound. Ava sees the Cliffside Beach Club and the Galley restaurant. Piano music and the clink of glasses drift over the water. The sun lowers on the horizon, a ball of pink fire.

Nathaniel is wearing a white linen shirt and the faded madras shorts that are her favorite. Nathaniel’s a builder and works outside, so he’s already very tan, and he’s let the scruff on his face grow for three days. Ava loves it this way.

He is so handsome, she thinks. And talented and funny. He can have any girl he wants. She looks at the water.

“This is…” Ava says. She’s worried that by choosing a word, any word, she will be limiting the magnificence and beauty of the night. “It’s…”

“Ava,” Nathaniel says.

She turns. He’s holding a black box.

He opens the box. Diamond ring.

“I want you to be my wife,” he says. “Will you marry me?”

Ava blinks. She looks at the ring sparkle; she looks into Nathaniel’s green eyes, notices the slightly nervous set of his smile, and then casts her gaze up. Across the darkening sky are the contrails of an airplane. Ava imagines it’s Scott and Roxanne’s plane, heading to Tuscany.

“Yes,” she says.

Nathaniel stands up on the bow and raises his arms in a V. “She said yes!” he shouts. “She! Said! Yes!”

Ava laughs. She gets to her feet and kisses him.

From behind the wheel, the captain calls out, “Congratulations!”

“Thank you!” Ava says. Her eyes follow the trajectory of the contrails until they fade away.

Later, over a dinner of oyster sliders and lobster rolls at Cru, Nathaniel says, “I signed on for a new job today.”

“Yeah,” Ava says. “As Mr. Ava Quinn.” She can’t stop looking at the ring on her finger. She feels like a completely different person-a person who has been proposed to, and in the most romantic way possible.

“Well, yeah,” Nathaniel says. “And I also got a new building job. It’s a compound like nothing I’ve ever seen-a six-thousand-square-foot main house, a pool house, a four-car garage, and three guest cottages for the kids.”

“Wow,” Ava says. She greatly respects Nathaniel’s skills as a carpenter-he is held in very high esteem professionally-but where work is concerned, she has more in common with Scott.

She has to stop comparing them, she thinks. She’s made her decision, right? Nathaniel. She looks at the ring. She hates herself for imagining what Scott will do when she tells him, but the shocked, incredulous expression that will appear on his face keeps looping through her mind. Please don’t tell me you only said yes to Nathaniel in order to one-up the trip to Tuscany, she scolds herself.

“Where is it?” Ava asks. “The job?”

She’s expecting him to say Shimmo or Madaket, Quaise or Madequecham. Or, maybe… Sconset. (Like a true islander, she thinks: Please not Sconset. It’s so far away!)

“Block Island,” he says.

She gapes. Her jaw drops, her eyes pop, her mind races. Block Island?

Last year, Nathaniel did an enormous project on Martha’s Vineyard. Chappaquiddick, to be specific. At least Ava has reference points for the Vineyard-it’s got seven towns to Nantucket’s one and it’s fifteen miles closer to the mainland. Ava has been to the Vineyard at least a dozen times. She has shopped at Nell’s in Edgartown, jogged down the bike path to Katama Bay, seen the requisite sunset from the bluffs of Aquinnah, and eaten ice cream at Mad Martha’s. But the only thing she knows about Block Island is that it’s part of Rhode Island.

“I’d like to get married before we move there,” Nathaniel says.

“We?” Ava says.

“Yes,” Nathaniel says. “We.”

Ava gulps and slides the ring off her finger.

KELLEY

Kelley and Mitzi are hosting Margaret and Drake’s wedding on August 20. Margaret calls the inn, and both Kelley and Mitzi get on the phone to discuss the details. Margaret wants to keep it simple, simple, simple. Just family and a few close friends, she says-but where to draw the line? Margaret and Drake; Kelley and Mitzi; Patrick, Jennifer, and the kids; Kevin, Isabelle, and Genevieve; Ava and Scott; Margaret’s assistant, Darcy; Drake’s nephew, Liam; Ava’s friends Shelby and Zack; Jennifer’s mother, Beverly, from San Francisco; Drake’s colleague Jim Hahn and his wife, but not their five children. Margaret has to invite Lee Kramer, the head of the network, and his wife, Ginny, who is the editor of Vogue, but Margaret is pretty sure they’ll decline. They’re Hamptons people.

Mitzi says, “Would it be too off-the-wall to invite George and Mary Rose?”

“Yes,” Kelley says.

“If you want to invite George, it’s fine with me,” Margaret says. “He has been a part of our larger story this past year.”

You can say that again! Kelley thinks. He knows that Mitzi and George Umbrau-the man Mitzi had been conducting an affair with for twelve straight Christmases when he came to the Winter Street Inn to play Santa Claus-parted on good terms. He also knows that George is now hot and heavy with Mary Rose Garth, a woman he met here on Nantucket last Stroll weekend during the Holiday House Tour. Who knew George was such a player? Kelley doesn’t feel threatened by George, not really; the attraction between him and Mitzi has run its course. And Mitzi is being very gracious in hosting Kelley’s ex-wife’s wedding.

“Sure, let’s invite George and Mary Rose,” Kelley says. George is fun at parties. And Kelley would basically do anything to keep Mitzi’s mind off Bart.

A few days earlier, Walter Reed National Military Medical Center finally issued a press release about the status of Private William Burke. The soldier had regained consciousness but was still unable to speak. He could answer simple questions by blinking his eyes. Kelley and Mitzi had hugged each other in celebration, although they soon realized they weren’t any closer to getting answers about Bart.

What kind of simple questions are the doctors asking the private? Kelley wonders. Is he alert enough to answer questions about what happened? About his fellow troops, still held captive? And what if…

The next thought is too difficult to articulate, even in his mind. What if William Burke says that he’s the sole survivor? What if William Burke’s regaining consciousness is the end of hope?

Again, Kelley considers driving ten hours south to Bethesda-but that won’t solve anything. He and Mitzi simply have to wait. They have to live their lives and concentrate on the family they do have.

Margaret and Drake’s wedding will be held on the beach out at Eel Point. Catherine, the town clerk, will marry Margaret and Drake, and there will be a harp player, a trumpet player, and a cellist. But Margaret keeps adding surprises. At the beginning of August, Margaret and Drake had dinner at the Club Car. When they visited the piano bar in the back, Margaret met Gordon Russell, a man with a deep, resonant, nearly professional-sounding singing voice. He had been belting out “Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’” from Oklahoma! Margaret (a lifelong sucker for show tunes) approached Mr. Russell afterward and asked him to sing at her wedding. And, because Margaret is an investigative reporter, she learned that Mr. Russell owned the Lilly Pulitzer store In the Pink, here on Nantucket, and that he was a twelfth-generation islander, descended from the Folgers and the Gardners. In all ways, Gordon Russell is a valuable, interesting addition to the group.

“What song is he singing?” Kelley asks.

“‘The Wedding Song,’” Margaret says casually.

This gives Kelley pause. “The Wedding Song”? The old chestnut sung by Paul Stookey of Peter, Paul, and Mary that was so in vogue forty years earlier when Margaret and Kelley got married? Hadn’t he and Margaret wanted Kelley’s brother, Avery, to sing “The Wedding Song” at their wedding? Yes, Kelley is pretty sure they had, but then the priest wouldn’t allow it, so one of the choir members had sung the Ave Maria instead.

“But that was our song,” Kelley says.

“It wasn’t our song,” Margaret says. “Our song was ‘Thunder Road.’ ‘The Wedding Song’ was only a song we considered for the ceremony. Don’t be sensitive.”

Is Kelley being sensitive? Probably. What does it matter if Margaret is recycling their first choice of song? This wedding requires adult behavior from everyone.

After all, Kelley will be giving Margaret away.

KEVIN

Quinns’ on the Beach is a gangbuster success, a beyond-his-wildest-dreams moneymaking machine. Kevin hasn’t slept since Memorial Day, but by the end of Fourth of July weekend, he is able to pay Kelley and Margaret back the money they lent him to get the business up and running. From the time the shack opens, at eleven o’clock in the morning, until it closes, at five, there is a line all the way through the parking lot to the road. Quinns’ on the Beach is written up in N Magazine, the blog Mahon About Town, and the Inquirer and Mirror. People are crazy about the striped-bass BLT made with Bartlett’s Farm tomatoes, gem lettuce, and lemon-herb mayonnaise and presented on a soft pumpernickel roll. On an average day, he sells two hundred sandwiches at fifteen bucks apiece.

If Kevin weren’t so bone-tired, he would be ecstatically happy. Finally, finally, finally, at the age of thirty-eight he has done it: found his calling. He is no longer slinging drinks at the Bar. He is no longer working for his father. By the end of the season-he’ll stay open seven days a week through Labor Day, then on weekends only until Columbus Day-he reckons he’ll have enough money that he, Isabelle, and Genevieve can find their own place to live.

There are many things Kevin loves about Quinns’ other than the money. For example, he loves working with Ava. He figures that could have gone either way, but the two of them have turned out to be an outstanding team. Ava is brilliant at taking orders and manning the register. He loves to hear her banter with the kids, especially her students from the elementary school. She also excels at the upsell-lobster tacos instead of beef tacos, frappes instead of sodas. And she has phenomenal taste in music. For the shack, she made a variety of playlists. There’s the Tropical playlist (Buffett, Bob Marley, Michael Franti), the Classic Rock playlist (Stones, Clapton, Zeppelin), and the Acoustic playlist (Coldplay, James Taylor, some long-lost Springsteen tracks).

Kevin sees every person he has ever known, and he meets new people every day. During the week, it’s mostly moms and kids, teenagers, and college students, but on the weekends, the fathers show up.

“I really wish you sold beer,” they all say.

“Me too,” Kevin says. “Next year.” As soon as the place closes for the season, he’ll figure out whose ass he has to kiss to get a liquor license.

Isabelle brings Genevieve every day at four thirty, and Ava takes the baby while Isabelle finishes with the customers and tallies the day’s receipts. Isabelle isn’t as good with people as Ava is but it’s important for Isabelle to get the exposure and practice her English.

One day, Haven Silva comes through the line with her son, Daniel. Kevin flashes back to their conversation that spring about Norah selling pills to Jennifer and he hopes and prays she doesn’t bring it up. If she were to mention it to Ava, Ava would have a cow. She would call Patrick and Jennifer as soon as she got home and demand answers. That’s because Ava likes to deal with problems head-on, whereas Kevin prefers to bury them in his mind at the bottom of the pile known as Quinn Family Dirty Laundry.

Haven orders lobster tacos, a kid’s bacon burger, and two frappes. She grins at Kevin and gives him an enthusiastic thumbs-up. “I’m happy for you!”

Phew, he thinks.

But then, sometime during the insanity that is the second week of August-when all the residents of the Eastern Seaboard have crammed themselves onto Nantucket-the inevitable happens: Norah Vale comes through the line. Ava has run to the ladies’ room, so Kevin is a sitting duck.

“Hey, Kev,” Norah says.

The line behind Norah is two thousand people long. Kevin doesn’t have time for any kind of scene or breakdown. If it were legal, he would have a sign on the front of the building reading OPEN TO THE PUBLIC (except Norah Vale).

“What can I get you?” he asks.

Norah scans the menu behind his head but it feels to Kevin like she’s trying to read his mind.

“You got your own place,” she says. “Proud of you.”

“Thanks,” he says. “What can I get you?”

“I’ll have the fish BLT,” she says. “Extra mayo. Side of coleslaw. And a coffee frappe. Please.”

Kevin scribbles the order down. Where is Ava? He’s so flustered by Norah’s presence that he can barely do the math. It’s only two fifteen, which is right in the middle of Genevieve’s nap time, so there’s no chance Isabelle will show up and see Kevin talking to Norah. But still.

“How’s your family?” Norah asks.

“That’ll be twenty-one dollars and sixty cents,” Kevin says.

Norah pulls out her wallet and makes a show of flipping through a wad of cash. Hundreds and hundreds of dollars, it seems. So the drug-dealing part is probably true.

“Hey, Kev, I’ll take over here.” Ava is back, thank God! She squeezes his arm. “Hello, Norah.”

“Ava,” Norah says. “I was just asking after your family. Everyone good?”

“Good,” Ava confirms. She takes twenty-five dollars from Norah and gives her change, which Norah stuffs into the tip jar.

“That’ll be eight to ten minutes,” Ava says.

“How’s Jennifer?” Norah asks.

Kevin freezes.

“Jennifer?” Ava says.

“Norah,” Kevin says. “Come on, we’re busy.”

Norah shrugs. “I was just wondering,” she says.

AVA

Nathaniel has been away on Block Island since July 5, and quite frankly, Ava is too busy with her new job at Quinns’ on the Beach to miss him too much. And she certainly doesn’t wish she’d gone with him. Block Island is one-tenth the size of Nantucket; it wouldn’t have provided Ava with the stimulation she requires. If things with her family ever settle down to where Ava feels like she can leave Nantucket, she will go someplace bigger, not smaller. She was right to let Nathaniel go. She had had the world’s shortest engagement.

When Scott got back from Tuscany, he called Ava almost immediately. “When can I see you?”

Apparently, a week in Tuscany with Roxanne hadn’t been as romantic as Ava had feared.

“I was sick of her before the plane landed in Florence,” Scott said. “It was a very long week. I missed you like crazy. Did you miss me?”

“Nathaniel proposed to me on the Endeavor,” Ava said.

Silence from Scott, which Ava savored.

“What did you say?” Scott asked.

“I said yes,” Ava said.

Silence from Scott. The silence was delicious-like vanilla ice cream with hot caramel sauce, like the feel of silk sheets on her skin, like the first ocean swim of the year.

“So you’re getting married?” Scott said. “Really?”

“No,” Ava said. “He asked me to move to Block Island with him because he accepted a long-term job there. I said no. We broke up.”

“Wow,” Scott said. “For a second there, I thought I’d lost you forever.”

Is Ava any closer to solving her quandary? Yes, much. She and Scott see each other nearly every night, although Ava is aware that when Scott isn’t with her, he’s with Roxanne. Roxanne is fragile, Scott says. And especially lately. He can’t break it off completely; he’s afraid of what she’ll do.

Ava rolls her eyes.

She has created her finest playlist yet: a new 1980s mix-“Modern Love,” by Bowie, “Tainted Love,” “Life in a Northern Town.” She and Kevin dance and sing into imaginary microphones as they feed the masses. Men at Work, Wham!, Loverboy. It’s a good day, a very good day.

It’s made even better when Ava sees Shelby in line with her baby, Xavier, strapped to her chest in a BabyBjörn. Shelby gives Ava wide eyes and she mouths something, but Ava is bopping around to Cyndi Lauper and can’t make out what Shelby is saying. When it’s her turn to order, Shelby says, “I have to talk to you.”

“After work?”

“No,” Shelby says. “Right now. This instant.”

There is an expression of extreme urgency on her best friend’s face.

Bart? she thinks. Her stomach drops. But would Shelby be the one to deliver news about Bart? No.

“It can’t wait?” Ava asks.

“It can’t wait,” Shelby says. “I’m not even hungry. I just stood in this line so I could talk to you. I’ve texted you ten times already.”

“Okay, meet me out back,” Ava says. She grabs Kevin. “Watch the register for a minute?”

“Wha-” he says.

“Please,” Ava says.

Out behind the shack, Shelby reaches out to hold both of Ava’s hands. Xavier is fast asleep against her chest; his tiny lips make a sucking motion.

“Roxanne Oliveria…” Shelby says.

“Roxanne?” Ava says. “Did something happen?”

“She’s pregnant,” Shelby says.

That night, Ava is supposed to meet Scott at the Boarding House. They have plans to eat at the bar and then go to the Chicken Box to see Scott’s favorite band, Maxxtone. An hour before they’re supposed to meet, Scott calls.

He says, “I have to cancel.”

Ava has been thinking about how to handle this. She has decided to play dumb and let Scott lead the way. She says, “Really? How come?”

“Ava?” Scott exhales a long breath. “I’m going to be a father.”

I’m going to be a father. This statement tells Ava everything she needs to know. It doesn’t matter that Scott is in love with Ava; it doesn’t matter that he was planning on breaking up with Roxanne. Scott has a set of values made from solid gold. He always does the upstanding, honorable thing. Plus, he has always wanted a child, three children, ten children. He’s going to marry Roxanne and he is going to be a father. Ava can’t stand in his way.

“I’m sorry, Ava,” he says. They have to stop, cold turkey, he says. He can’t see her one-on-one ever again.

Devastation. Heartbreak. Loneliness.

Ava calls Shelby and cries over the phone. She tells Kevin the news and he gives her the next day off work. She drives out to the beach at Ram Pasture with a bottle of wine and a bag of peanut butter-filled pretzels. The beach is deserted-it’s the best-kept secret on the island-and this gives Ava the freedom to scream at the ocean and throw her pretzels to the seagulls. Roxanne is pregnant. Scott is going to marry her. Nathaniel is in Block Island, by now probably dating somebody else, some lucky Block Island girl that he met at the Oar, the bar that’s apparently the place everybody goes. Nathaniel has asked Ava to come visit, but she has declined. Until yesterday, she had been happy with Scott. She had chosen Scott, and Scott had chosen her.

That’s over now.

Scott will marry Roxanne, a woman he couldn’t tolerate for seven days even in the picturesque countryside of Italy, a woman who wears high-heeled, fur-lined boots and requests “Brown-Eyed Girl” everywhere there’s music playing. Ava pours herself a plastic cup of wine even though it’s only three o’clock in the afternoon. She used to have two boyfriends; now she has none. It serves her right. She toasts that old bitch Karma and drinks. There is today’s pain, which is bad, but she understands that today’s pain will pale in comparison to the pain she will feel when she bumps into Roxanne at the grocery store and is confronted with Roxanne’s burgeoning belly or when she sees the birth announcement in the Inquirer and Mirror or when, years from now, she sees Scott and his son or daughter having an ice cream at the soda counter of Nantucket Pharmacy.

There are emotional landmines everywhere, but there are also pragmatic landmines. It’s three days before Margaret and Drake’s wedding, and now Ava doesn’t have a date. All of the wedding-guest numbers include Scott; without him, the event will be lopsided, off balance, or so Ava convinces herself. She is so desperate that she considers asking Scott if he will break his cold-turkey rule and escort her to the wedding and reception out of mercy; he can tell Roxanne he was grandfathered in. Next, she considers calling Nathaniel and begging him to come from Block Island, but she immediately realizes this is unfair, bordering on cruel. She could always suck it up and go alone.

When she walks out of Flowers on Chestnut carrying the box that holds her mother’s bridal bouquet as well as the bouquet that she, Ava, will be carrying as maid of honor, she hears someone call her name.

She turns but can’t identify the source of the voice. Town is packed. There are people everywhere-parents, children, grandparents, dogs, college kids, and couples, couples, couples.

“Ava!”

Okay, she isn’t imagining it. Male voice. She stands still. And then, crossing the street in a diagonal she sees… she sees… a man heading straight for her. Tall, dark hair peppered with gray, blue polo shirt, blue-striped shorts. It’s… it’s…

He offers her his hand. “Hi, it’s Potter. Potter Lyons? I met you in Anguilla.”

MARGARET

She is sixty-one years old and in two hours, she will be getting married for the second time. She would have said that the details of her wedding didn’t matter, anything was fine-and yet, with two hours left, she finds that things matter very much. She is wearing an ivory gown designed for her by Donna Karan that is possibly more flattering to her figure than her original wedding dress was, even though she’d worn that one at the age of twenty-three. She doesn’t want to make comparisons like that-first wedding versus second wedding-because after nearly forty years, so much has changed. She’s a different person.

But she is still, apparently, type A. She relaxes only once Patrick, Jennifer, and the boys have arrived, and she puts her hands on the sides of Patrick’s face and gives her firstborn a kiss.

“You have no idea how good it is to see you,” she says.

“I have every idea,” Patrick says. “I love you, Mom. Thank you for not giving up on me.”

“Oh, honey,” she says. For a second, she is speechless. Is she thrilled that Patrick broke the law and went to jail? Obviously not. But she knows him well enough to realize that he has learned his lesson and he’ll bounce back just fine. As for her giving up on him, well… he has three boys of his own, so he understands that no parent ever gives up on his or her child.

Patrick says, “I can’t believe you gave Dad my job. I thought I would give you away.”

“Your poor father,” Margaret says. “He’s earned it.”

The ceremony is simple but that doesn’t mean it’s uncomplicated. There are two dozen white chairs lined up on the beach, twelve on each side with a sandy aisle between. At the end of the aisle is the altar-a white arched trellis dripping with roses. There is a harp, a cello, and a trumpet, and Gordon Russell to sing. When all of the guests are seated-including George’s girlfriend, Mary Rose, wearing a remarkably large hat-Darcy, Margaret’s assistant and de facto wedding planner, gives the signal, and the harpist and cellist launch into Pachelbel’s Canon in D.

Ava, Kelley, and Margaret are standing on top of the dune, watching the action below. Ava advances down the aisle, looking beautiful in a pink silk sheath that is exactly the color of her flushed cheeks.

“Do you think she’s okay?” Margaret asks Kelley. Ava broke it off with Nathaniel back in June, and then only a week ago she and Scott broke up when it turned out that he’d gotten the other woman he was dating pregnant. Miraculously, Ava bumped into Potter Lyons, the nice young man she and Margaret met in Anguilla, and now he’s here as Ava’s date. Potter seems perfectly at home despite the fact that he knows exactly nobody; he is sitting with Kevin and Isabelle and Genevieve. Genevieve is old enough to stand on Kevin’s lap, and when she’s standing, she grabs Potter’s ear, but he doesn’t seem to mind. His eyes are glued to Ava as she proceeds down the aisle; Margaret can decipher the expression on his face even from a hundred yards away. He’s smitten.

“Now is not the time to worry about Ava,” Kelley says. “Now is the time to worry about yourself.”

But Margaret doesn’t have any worries. She is marrying a man she is madly, hopelessly in love with, a man she respects, a man she enjoys. When the music changes to Jeremiah Clarke’s Trumpet Voluntary, she and Kelley take their first steps forward. Margaret’s gaze is fixed on Drake, so handsome in his tuxedo at the altar. But she can also see the years of her future unfurling before her, and they are all golden.

KEVIN

He’s been watching Jennifer, paying closer attention to her than he has in all the years he’s known her. Is she thinner? Is she manic? Is she sluggish? Are her hands shaking? Are her pupils constricted? She seems the same, but he feels like he’s missing something. Her hair is longer; it looks nice.

Kevin remembers the first time Patrick brought Jennifer home. They had met in New York at one of the soulless bars on the Upper East Side-not J. G. Melon’s or Dorrian’s, but someplace like it. What Kevin recalls is how Jack-and-Jill Patrick and Jennifer were, like male and female versions of the same person. Not in how they looked, certainly-Patrick has red hair and a doughy face, whereas Jennifer has coal-black hair and sharp features-but in how they acted, how they viewed the world, how they spoke, the things they liked to do. They both got up early to go running; they both ate twigs-and-leaves cereal topped with fresh berries and skim milk; they both read the New York Times like it was the lost Gospel; they both took quick, efficient showers and then made a plan, with sub-plans, for their day. Kevin had thought he’d never come across anyone as anal as Patrick-until he met Jennifer. Together, they were almost too much, with their achieving and their problem-solving, their loquaciousness, their eagerness to discuss this foreign film, that Argentinean steak house, if Franzen was losing his touch, what the best use of forty million Starwood points was, which was higher on the bucket list-New Orleans for Jazz Fest or the Kentucky Derby? They’re going to implode, Kevin used to think, like a star. The couple they most reminded him of was Kelley and Margaret just before the divorce-back when Kelley had a cocaine habit and Margaret was consumed with breaking through the glass ceiling in broadcast journalism.

But Paddy and Jennifer had made it, an impressive feat, especially considering this most recent set of circumstances-indictment, jail time, public humiliation, and separation for eighteen months.

Maybe Jennifer did buy pills from Norah once or twice-could anyone blame her?-but she certainly isn’t an addict. This isn’t something Kevin needs to worry about.

The ceremony is stunning in its elegant simplicity. Margaret walks barefoot through the sand in her ivory gown with her famous red hair swept up in a chignon, decorated in the back with a single white calla lily. Drake grins like he’s the luckiest man on earth, which he most certainly is. Kelley hands Margaret over at the altar, but first he gives Margaret a hug. Kevin has never cried at a wedding in his life, but he feels tears prick his eyes when he sees the embrace between his mother and his father. They were married for twenty years. They had three kids and a brownstone in New York City and friends and traditions and a life together. And although that life didn’t last, here they are: friends, best friends, more than best friends. They love each other; they want each other to be happy.

It’s a beautiful thing, Kevin thinks, the relationship between his parents. Anyone can fall in love, but not just anyone can achieve forgiveness and acceptance and real, deep respect for his or her former partner the way those two have.

Kevin would never give Norah Vale away. Nope, not in a trillion lifetimes.

After the ceremony, there’s a reception on the beach. Kevin had offered to cater it, but Margaret didn’t want him working on her wedding day. She hired Nantucket Catering Company to do an old-fashioned beach picnic: hamburgers, hot dogs, fried chicken, potato salad, deviled eggs, pickles, watermelon, and grilled corn on the cob. Patrick has brought a football that he throws to his sons at the waterline.

Genevieve is being passed around. Everyone wants a chance to hold her, which gives Kevin the opportunity to make a plate. When he turns around to sit, he can’t find Isabelle. He sees Mitzi talking to George and Mary Rose; Ava introducing her date, Potter, to Lee Kramer, the head of CBS; Kelley chatting with Shelby and Zack. He notices Jennifer heading up over the dune by herself, which is odd. Maybe Isabelle has gone that way too? Kevin checks on Genevieve-Margaret’s assistant, Darcy, is holding her. Kevin sets down his plate and trails Jennifer.

When he crests the dune, he sees Jennifer on her phone. He can tell by her body language that this is a clandestine call, and whereas normally, Kevin would give Jennifer her privacy, today he gets right up on her.

“Okay,” Jennifer says. “I’ll see you tomorrow at nine at your place.”

She hangs up, and when she turns around, Kevin is in her face. She gasps and nearly loses her grip on the phone.

“Kevin!” she says.

“Who was that?” Kevin asks.

“Excuse me?” Jennifer says.

“Who were you on the phone with?”

Jennifer’s expression travels from shocked to indignant with a brief detour through fear. Kevin sees the fear, just a flicker, and knows she’s hiding something.

“Nobody,” she says.

“Nobody,” he says. He stares at her, wondering if she thinks he’s going to accept that answer.

“None of your business, I mean,” she says.

“You’re meeting someone at nine tomorrow,” he says. “Who are you meeting?”

“It’s not what you think,” Jennifer says.

“What do I think?” he says.

“I’m not having an affair,” she says. “I would never.”

Kevin is temporarily stymied. He supposes if he hadn’t heard the rumor about Norah and he’d stumbled across Jennifer having that conversation, he might have thought affair.

“Who was it, then?” he asks.

Before Jennifer can answer, Kevin hears crying and he looks around. About a hundred yards away, on the back side of the next dune, Kevin sees Isabelle sitting by herself, her face buried in her hands. It’s Isabelle who is crying.

Kevin gives Jennifer a stern look. “I’m not finished with you,” he says.

Kevin supposes that every wedding has its drama. Isabelle is crying because her heart is breaking, despite the fact that Margaret and Drake’s wedding is so beautiful and an occasion for celebration, or maybe due to that. Isabelle and Kevin have been engaged a year longer than Margaret and Drake; they have a child who is about to celebrate her first birthday, and they still aren’t married. Isabelle’s parents-devout Catholics-are scandalized. They have been waiting and waiting for Isabelle to tell them the date and send them tickets to America so they can see their grandchild. It is understood that they will come only once-on the occasion of Isabelle’s wedding.

“Oh, sweetheart,” Kevin says. “I’m so sorry. I’ve been such an idiot!” Kevin has noticed how subdued Isabelle is after her weekly call to her parents in Marseille, but he assumed that was because she missed them. He never considered that they might be asking her questions she isn’t comfortable answering, such as When will you be getting married? When will your baby be legitimate? Kevin has been so wrapped up with his own family that he never considered Isabelle’s family.

He hasn’t proposed any dates for the wedding because he has been waiting until Bart comes home. But now he sees that waiting for Bart might mean waiting forever.

“Let’s get married at Christmas,” Kevin says. “Christmas Eve at the inn, two years to the day after I proposed. How does that sound?”

Isabelle gives him a tiny smile. “Vraiment?”

“Yes, really,” Kevin says. “I’ll buy tickets for your parents tomorrow.” He loves that he now has the money to make such an offer. He takes Isabelle’s hand. “Will you marry me, Isabelle? Will you marry me on Christmas Eve?”

“Yes,” she says.

AVA

Margaret had described it as an “old person’s wedding” in that the whole event would be over by nine o’clock. Initially, Ava had counted this as a good thing; she’d need to hang with Potter for only four hours. But within minutes, she remembers why she likes this guy. He’s witty and articulate. He listens. And he is thrilled to be here, escorting Ava to her mother’s wedding. He doesn’t mind that Ava picked him up off the street and gave him less than twenty-four hours’ notice. He went right to Murray’s and bought a navy blazer and a Vineyard Vines tie.

“I can’t believe my luck,” Potter says. “I thought about stopping by at the inn when I got on island, but since you never sent my hat, I figured you’d forgotten about me.”

Ava gasps. “I never sent your hat!” She had gotten home from Anguilla and was sucked right back into her real life-Scott/Nathaniel/Nathaniel/Scott-and whatever flirtation she’d engaged in on the vacation evaporated. She had thought of Potter fleetingly a couple of times, but not long enough to remember that she owed him a hat.

Margaret and Drake cut the cake at eight o’clock and by eight thirty, they’re walking hand in hand over the path to where a dune buggy awaits to take them to an undisclosed location for the night.

Potter looks at Ava. “Are we going home, or are we going out?”

“Out,” she says, surprising herself. “Let’s go out.”

Kevin and Isabelle take Genevieve home, and Zack and Shelby do the same with Xavier. Mitzi and Kelley take Paddy’s three boys and they invite George and Mary Rose to join them for a nightcap back at the inn.

“Who’s the woman in the hat?” Potter asks Ava.

“Mary Rose,” Ava says. “George’s girlfriend.”

“And who is George?” Potter asks.

“He’s…” Ava isn’t sure how to explain. “He’s our Santa Claus at the inn every year.”

“Ohhh… kay,” Potter says.

Margaret’s assistant, Darcy, and Drake’s nephew, Liam, are young enough that they want to go to Straight Wharf, but Ava is dressed in a silk sheath and all she can picture is someone spilling a Goombay Smash down the front of it. She lobbies for someplace more adult. She and Potter and Patrick and Jennifer decide to go to the Summer House in Sconset. The Summer House has an old-time-Nantucket feel that Ava loves. There’s a piano player and a log burning in the fireplace and exposed beams and overstuffed chairs.

“I never do this,” Ava says once she settles down to order, “but I’ll have a martini. Dirty.”

“Me too!” Jennifer says, and Ava laughs. She has noticed a huge change in Jennifer since Paddy’s been back. She is joyous; she is loose.

After the first martini, which goes down way too easily, Ava and Jennifer excuse themselves and head to the ladies’ room.

Immediately, Jennifer grabs Ava’s arm. “I love him!” she says.

“Who?” Ava says.

“Potter!” Jennifer says. “He’s the best! He’s so smart! He’s an academic, but he’s not stuffy. He’s funny. And he’s worldly! He’s been everywhere on that sailboat. And he has emotional depth. That story about losing his parents and being raised by his grandparents had me in tears. He loves his grandfather.”

“Gibby,” Ava says. Potter has mentioned Gibby twice that evening. Apparently, Gibby isn’t doing well, and Potter is worried about him. It does give him soul, Ava thinks, the way he is so attached to his grandparents, sailing around in a sloop named after his grandmother. And he is smart, intellectual even-but without making Ava feel stupid. “I don’t know. When I met him, I thought he was too good-looking.”

“So you’re not going to date him because he’s too good-looking?” Jennifer says. “He is so into you! You should have seen the way he watched you when you walked down the aisle.”

Ava blushes. She did catch his eye for an instant, almost by accident.

“You should marry Potter,” Jennifer declares.

They’ve just come from a wedding, so obviously marriage is on everyone’s mind, but for some reason, Jennifer’s comment hits Ava the wrong way. It might be the vodka, or it might be the fact that, right after he delivered Margaret to the altar, Kelley sat down next to Ava and whispered, “I can’t wait to walk you down the aisle.”

Honestly! Ava thinks. It’s as if Ava won’t count as a person until she has settled down with a husband!

“I’m not marrying Potter Lyons,” Ava says to her sister-in-law. “I’m not marrying anybody.”

From the Summer House, they take a taxi to the Bar, where Maxxtone is playing. It’s Scott’s favorite band, but Ava tries not to dwell on this as they walk in. They are able to sidle in through the back door, avoiding the long line, because Kevin managed the Bar for almost a decade.

“Wow,” Potter says. “In all the years I’ve been coming here, I’ve never been able to pull this off.”

Patrick slaps Potter on the back. While Ava and Jennifer were in the bathroom at the Summer House, Patrick and Potter found they had half a million friends and acquaintances in common, the most amazing discovery being that Potter was a fraternity brother of Patrick’s boss, Great Guy Gary Grimstead. And Potter has sailed with guys who went to Columbia Business School with Patrick. Ava begins to see Potter as just another version of her older brother, but then Potter takes her hand as he leads her through the crowd at the Bar. It’s the first time he’s touched her all evening, and although the circumstances couldn’t be more different, Ava has an instant sense memory of walking along the sand in Anguilla and the three kisses on the beached Sunfish. Potter must be having the exact same memories because he stops and pulls Ava close to him. He takes her face in his hands and he bends down to kiss her. It’s wonderful. They are surrounded on all sides by people drinking and laughing. The Bar is pulsing with live music, and Ava feels young and wild for a second. It’s late, she’s drunk, and she’s kissing a near-perfect stranger. It’s been a while since she has experienced this particular trifecta.

Potter stops kissing her as Patrick approaches with their beers.

“Don’t let me interrupt,” he says.

Ava accepts her beer. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees a guy sitting at the bar who looks like Scott.

Is it Scott? His shoulders are hunched and he appears to be holding his head off the bar with his palm. His eyes are at half-mast. In front of him is a highball glass of brown liquid. Ava blinks; she doesn’t trust her eyes. Could that be Scott, visibly drunk and looking like Eeyore with a whiskey in front of him? She has never known Scott to drink whiskey. He’s a three-beers-and-done man.

It’s not Scott, she tells herself. And even if it were Scott, they’ve ended the relationship cold turkey, and so it’s not as though she can go up and say hello. Nope, even that is off-limits. But it can’t be Scott, because what would Scott be doing at the Bar at midnight when Roxanne is at home, pregnant with their child?

“Do you know the guy in the green shirt?” Potter asks. “He’s staring at you.”

“Kiss me again,” Ava says.

Potter doesn’t have to be asked twice.

Ava breaks away, breathless. “Let’s go dance,” she says.

GEORGE

When Mitzi told George that Margaret Quinn’s boss was married to the editor of Vogue and that both would be attending the wedding, he knew he had to RSVP yes, despite Mary Rose’s objections.

“I feel funny,” Mary Rose had said when the invitation arrived. “This is the wedding of my boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend’s husband’s ex-wife, who also happens to be Margaret Quinn. Do I belong?”

George had wondered himself at the source of the invitation. After much pondering, he decided Mitzi had been behind it. The invitation was a peace offering and to turn away an olive branch would mean twenty years of bad luck. They were all adults. George and Mitzi had conducted an affair every Christmas for twelve years, but when they tried to make their relationship work full-time, it had fallen apart. In a way, George’s failings with Mitzi were what had led her back to Kelley. Plus, he could say that he was one of very few non-family members to attend Margaret Quinn’s wedding.

Yes, they had to go. And George would design Mary Rose the hat of a lifetime.

They wouldn’t stay at the inn, George decided. That would be too awkward, returning to the lodging and possibly even the room where Mitzi had secretly come to visit him for so many years. Instead, George booked a room at the Castle, down the street. The Castle had a large, brand-new fitness center, which was a bonus, as both George and Mary Rose have been on a health kick since the first of the year. George has lost nearly thirty pounds. By Christmas, he hopes to be a very skinny Santa indeed.

All of George’s gambles have paid off. The night before the wedding, George and Mary Rose wander the streets of town. It’s the first time Mary Rose has been to the island in the summer. They stroll the docks and ogle the great yachts that are in Nantucket for Race Week. They have a romantic dinner on the beach at the Galley. And then, in the morning, at Mitzi’s invitation, they swing by the inn to enjoy one of Kelley’s famous breakfasts-lobster eggs Benedict, made especially for the wedding guests.

George had feared the initial interaction with Kelley and Mitzi would be strained-there was nothing like welcoming your wife’s former lover into the fold!-but it was surprisingly joyous. Kelley and Mitzi greeted George and Mary Rose like old friends; a stranger watching might have thought George and Kelley had once been college roommates or that the four of them had forged a lifelong bond on a cruise to Alaska.

And the hat! Well, the hat makes quite a splash. No sooner has Mary Rose taken her seat at the ceremony than a murmur ripples through the assembled guests. They are talking about the hat-a classic boater made from finely braided leghorn straw with a twelve-inch brim and a lime-green satin band that trails halfway down Mary Rose’s back. At the reception, Mary Rose is approached by none other than Ginny Kramer, the editor of Vogue, who asks who designed the hat.

“Why, my boyfriend, George Umbrau,” Mary Rose says as she tugs on George’s arm. “He’s a milliner.”

“I’d love to feature his hats in the magazine,” Ginny says. She hands George her card. “Send me a few samples?”

“Of course!” George says. He can’t believe his good fortune. His hat business has just hit a plateau after two years of upswing, thanks to a selection in Oprah’s Favorite Things, and he’s been wondering how to reinvigorate sales. A feature or even a mention in Vogue will do the trick. He is in his late sixties and ready to retire. He would like to sell his business to a large retailer such as Talbots or Ann Taylor, and he’d like to get a good price so that he and Mary Rose can travel the globe in style.

After the wedding reception, George and Mary Rose catch a ride back to town with Kelley and Mitzi, and George tells them about his stroke of good fortune.

“It’s not good fortune,” Kelley says. “She recognizes your talent.”

George can’t believe how generous Kelley is being with his praise. He feels almost embarrassed.

“They’re beautiful hats, George,” Mitzi says. George thinks about how Mitzi had gamely tried on several styles before admitting to him that she hated to wear hats. He had known then that things would never work out between them. Mary Rose is a woman who would sleep in a hat if she could.

“Well, thank you both,” George says as Kelley pulls up outside the Castle. “It was a most delightful evening.”

“Yes,” Mary Rose says. “Thank you for including us.”

“The pleasure was ours,” Kelley says. He gets out of the car to help Mary Rose to the curb and to shake George’s hand. “I want to let bygones be bygones. I don’t see why the four of us can’t be friends. Would you guys consider coming back and staying with us at Christmas? Maybe don the red suit one more time?”

“I’d love to,” George says. He can’t believe how happy the offer makes him. He dresses as Santa for a variety of Lions Club events in Lenox but nothing gives him more pleasure than playing Santa on Nantucket.

“With your new svelte physique, you’ll have to get the suit altered,” Kelley says.

“Or I could fatten him up by Christmas,” Mary Rose says, and she and Mitzi laugh.

As Kelley and Mitzi drive away, Mary Rose and George wave good-bye, then George leads Mary Rose by the hand up the stairs of the Castle. He imagines his hats being featured in the windows of Bergdorf Goodman.

“They’re such a nice couple,” Mary Rose says. “I can’t believe you nearly broke them up. Shame on you, George.”

JENNIFER

At eight o’clock the morning after Margaret and Drake’s wedding, despite a tremendous hangover, Jennifer laces up her running shoes.

Patrick rolls over in bed and tugs on her shirt. “Don’t go,” he says. “Come back to bed.”

She turns around and smiles, but even that small effort feels like it’s enough to crack her face in half. After Ava saw Scott at the Bar, she and Jennifer ordered Fireball shots. What a rotten idea! And it had been Jennifer’s. “I’ll be back between nine thirty and ten.”

“Not only a run, but a long run,” Patrick says. “You go, girl.”

Jennifer hopes to slip out of the inn unnoticed, but she bumps into Kevin on the back stairs.

Kevin. Of all people.

“Hey!” he says. He checks his watch. “Where are you off to?”

Jennifer tugs on her tank top. “Going for a run,” she says. She wonders if Kevin remembers the conversation they had the evening before. Did he tuck away the particulars? He’s looking at her strangely, with his head cocked, as if he’s trying to see her from another angle. He thinks she’s having an affair; Jennifer would bet her life on it. Well, let him think that. In some ways, it’s preferable to the truth. “I’m off,” she says.

“Enjoy!” Kevin says.

She goes out the back door of the inn and heads down Liberty Street to Gardner. She figures it’ll take her forty minutes to run to Norah Vale’s house, ten minutes to do the deal, and forty minutes to run home.

She needs more drugs. She has been trying to wean herself off the oxy and at one point, when Patrick was first home, she had made it through an entire day with only one pill. But after that, she felt moody and headachy and sick and she deeply craved the high of the oxy, the sense of order and focus it brought her. She couldn’t live without it. Could not, would not. She had met Norah once in July at their usual spot on Route 3, thinking that would be it. But now that she’s on Nantucket where Norah lives, the temptation is too great to resist. She’s going to buy sixty pills. These sixty will be the end, she tells herself. But she has to get these sixty. The mere thought of so many pills puts her at peace.

Norah had been surprised to hear from Jennifer, or possibly she had only been acting surprised. She knows Jennifer is an addict, and as much as Jennifer would like to blame Norah and think her evil, Jennifer can’t blame anyone but herself. She wishes she had found a dealer who didn’t know her; the connection between her and Norah makes her very uneasy. When Jennifer called two days ago to say she would be on the island, Norah said, “Family vacation?”

Without thinking, Jennifer said, “Margaret is getting married, actually.”

“Really?” Norah said. She then pressed Jennifer for details, and what could Jennifer do but comply? Dr. Drake Carroll, pediatric neurosurgeon, ceremony on the beach at Eel Point, Kelley giving Margaret away. It was confidential information-no one wanted the paparazzi to show up-but Margaret had once been Norah’s mother-in-law, and if Jennifer remembered correctly, Norah had been fond of Margaret. And Margaret had been kind and gracious with Norah because Margaret was kind and gracious with everyone.

“Wow,” Norah said wistfully. “I bet it will be a beautiful wedding.”

Jennifer actually felt bad that Norah hadn’t been invited-which was crazy. The only thing that could confuse and frustrate you more than family was… former family.

Jennifer jogs into the driveway of the Vale family compound at five minutes to nine. Jennifer has been here only once, years and years earlier, when Kevin and Norah were still married. The compound is off Hooper Farm Road-it’s mid-island, where the island businesses are and where the locals live. There are four vehicles in the driveway: Norah’s black truck; an old Jeep Wagoneer, its bumper plastered with beach stickers; and two old taxis, one of which is on blocks, that Jennifer knows used to belong to Norah’s parents. Also in the driveway are two rusted-out bikes, a sun-bleached Big Wheel, half of a brass bed, a pile of scallop shells that stinks to high heaven, and a deflated kiddie pool.

A German shepherd fights its chain in the backyard, barking an announcement of Jennifer Barrett Quinn’s arrival at the low point in her life. She puts her hands on her hips and bends in half to catch her breath. She closes her eyes, but even the black is splotched blood red. Turn around, she thinks. You don’t need the drugs.

She does need the drugs.

Norah comes bouncing out of the house wearing… here, Jennifer blinks. Norah is wearing a Lilly Pulitzer shift dress. It’s light pink patterned with hot-pink flamingos playing croquet and it has white curlicue appliqué down the front that looks like icing on a birthday cake. The neckline is high enough to cover Norah’s terrifying python tattoo. Norah’s hair is in a French braid and she’s wearing pearl earrings and white Jack Rogers sandals. The transformation of Norah Vale is complete; she is indistinguishable from any of the women who lean over the railing of the party yacht Belle holding gin and tonics.

“You look great,” Jennifer says.

“Thanks,” Norah says. She gives Jennifer a shy smile. “I’m having lunch with one of my clients at the Wauwinet today.”

This statement pulls Jennifer up short. The Wauwinet! Even Jennifer and Patrick don’t splurge on lunch at the Wauwinet. And when Norah says “client,” she means… another woman she sells drugs to, right? It seems wrong somehow. Jennifer is an interior designer; she has clients. Then Jennifer realizes that, in some ways, she and Norah are doing the same thing. Jennifer is selling women Persian rugs and nautical prints, antique chests and silk drapes-things they don’t need but that they buy for the high, she supposes, the high of owning beautiful things.

Jennifer can’t dwell on this. She is not a drug dealer. And yet, any favorable comparison of herself with Norah fails at this moment. Norah looks successful and put together, whereas Jennifer looks like a sweating, jonesing junkie.

She pulls a wad of cash out of the back zipped pocket of her Lululemon shorts. “Here you go.”

Norah hands over the pills, this time in a jar of multivitamins. Smart girl; she knows Jennifer is going back to the inn.

Jennifer takes the pills and feels a wave of relief and elation and all-is-right-with-the-world. Sixty pills.

Norah’s eyes float over Jennifer’s right shoulder and before Jennifer can do anything more than blink, Norah turns and runs.

Jennifer swivels her head to see Kevin’s white pickup pull into the driveway.

Did he follow her here? Jennifer wonders. Instinctively, she tucks the vitamins into her waistband. She will come up with an explanation.

Kevin gets out of the pickup. And then… so does Patrick.

No, Jennifer thinks. No, this isn’t happening.

“Jennifer?” Patrick says.

AVA

She and Potter dance in the front row of the Bar until closing. The band plays “Add It Up” by the Violent Femmes as their last song but then the crowd chants, “One more song! One more song!” and the band obliges and plays “Just Like Heaven” by the Cure. Potter spins Ava around and dips her and she is as carefree as she has ever been in her life.

“Let’s go find your brother,” Potter says.

“I’m sure he left,” Ava says. Patrick is the responsible stick-in-the-mud of the family. There’s no way he’s still hanging around the Bar at one thirty in the morning.

As Ava and Potter weave and wend their way through the crowd, someone grabs Ava’s arm.

It’s Scott.

“Can I talk to you for a second?” he asks.

Before Ava can answer, Potter steps in. “Hi there,” he says. “I’m Potter Lyons. Is there a problem?”

“No problem,” Scott says. His lip curls in a way that makes him seem surly. What is wrong with him? Ava is pretty sure Scott has never struck anyone as surly in all his life. “I’d just like a chance to talk to my girlfriend, if you don’t mind.”

Potter holds his palms up and takes a step back.

Ava says, “Your girlfriend? I am no longer your girlfriend, Scott. Your girlfriend is at home, pregnant with your child.”

“Whoa,” Potter says. “I’ll be at the bar. I’m going to grab a glass of water. Come find me.”

He disappears and Ava glances up at Scott. He still doesn’t look like himself. “I can’t do this right now, Scott, I’m sorry.”

“I need to talk to you. I need to tell you something. Something bad.”

“Whatever it is, I don’t want to hear it,” Ava says.

“But-” Scott says.

Ava raises a hand like a traffic cop. “This is what cold turkey feels like, Scott. Cold.”

At the bar, Ava finds Potter with Jennifer. Potter hands Ava an ice water.

“You saw Scott?” Jennifer says. “What did he want?”

What did Scott-or Nathaniel, for that matter-always want? They wanted to make Ava’s life tumultuous and confusing. It was as if they waited until Ava was relaxed and actually enjoying herself before they pitched the next curveball.

Ava shrugs. Jennifer signals the bartender. “Two shots of Fireball,” she says.

Patrick offers to drive Ava and Potter home, but Ava says no, thank you. She and Potter will take a cab.

When they are finally alone in the quiet of the backseat, Ava says, “Thank you for a truly wonderful evening. It’s not everybody who could attend an intimate family wedding for a very famous woman at the last minute and rock it like you did.”

Potter laughs. “The pleasure was mine, I assure you.”

The taxi delivers them to Old North Wharf. Potter is staying on his sailboat, Cassandra.

“Would you like a tour?” Potter asks. “Or a nightcap?”

She’s not surprised he’s asking; it’s the natural way to end their night-with some good old-fashioned making out that may or may not turn into rollicking boat sex.

But Ava can’t do it.

She reaches her arms around Potter’s neck and gives him a kiss on each cheek. She still thinks he’s too handsome for her, and now she knows he’s also socially savvy, oodles of fun, and a better dancer than Nathaniel and Scott put together. But she doesn’t have the energy for another relationship or even a one-night stand. The run-in with Scott has left her addled.

“Thank you for tonight,” she says.

He nods slowly, understanding her. “How will you get home?”

“I’ll walk,” she says. “I need to clear my head.”

He holds her face and gives her one soft but insistent kiss on the lips, and immediately Ava remembers the desire she felt when he kissed her on the Sunfish in Anguilla. It is almost enough to flip her.

“Text me when you get home so I know you’re safe,” he says. “And Ava?”

She raises her eyebrows. Those blue eyes. Whoa.

“Come see me in New York.”

MARGARET

She has asked for one thing, discreetly, as a wedding present from her three children, and that is a lunch at Something Natural, just the four of them. She thinks about how selfish it is for her to request this-no Drake, no Isabelle, no Jennifer, no grandchildren, no Kelley or Mitzi-but Margaret doesn’t care. She wants an hour eating sandwiches in the sunshine with her children.

Not on Sunday, when everyone will be hungover and exhausted. Margaret wants to spend Sunday with Drake alone. But on Monday, at noon.

Margaret bikes to Something Natural all the way from her and Drake’s hideaway in Sconset. She wears a hat and sunglasses so as not to be recognized.

Ava is already waiting for Margaret, sitting on the steps in front of the sandwich shop.

“I got us seats,” she says, pointing to a picnic table tucked in the back corner of the property, partially under the shade of a giant elm.

“Shall we wait for the boys before we order?” Margaret asks. She can’t believe how excited she is about this lunch date. It’s the most difficult for Kevin, she knows, who has had to leave Quinns’ on the Beach in the hands of his newly appointed assistant manager, Devon, two of the past three days. Both he and Ava will head to Quinns’ as soon as lunch is over.

“They were right behind me,” Ava says.

And sure enough, a few seconds later, Kevin’s white pickup pulls into the already congested driveway; he squeezes the truck into a spot between two Range Rovers, and then both he and Patrick shimmy out through their open windows.

Patrick has lost a lot of weight in jail; Margaret noticed that on Saturday.

They all get in line and order their sandwiches. Margaret gets the Sheila’s Favorite on oatmeal; Ava gets avocado, cheddar, and chutney; Kevin orders smoked turkey, Swiss, and tomato on herb bread; Patrick gets the lobster salad on pumpernickel.

Margaret adds chips, Nantucket Nectars, and four huge chocolate chip cookies to the order.

“I’ve had a rough twenty-four hours,” Patrick says.

“The kids?” Margaret asks.

“The wife,” Patrick says.

“Jennifer?” Margaret says.

“She’s the only wife I have,” Patrick says. “Although there were some guys in prison who wanted the job.” He smiles wanly. “I’m kidding. It wasn’t that kind of prison. And if it were, I wouldn’t tell you.”

Margaret is surprised to hear that there’s a problem with Jennifer. She single-handedly ran the family for a year and a half, and, as far as Margaret could tell, she did it beautifully. She cared for the boys, kept their routines, loved and nurtured them. She stayed true to Patrick, visiting him at every chance, calling every week, sending letters and noncontraband care packages. She ran her business and held her head high in the community-and that couldn’t have been easy. Patrick married Jennifer Barrett because she was strong and an achiever like him, but as Margaret has learned, it’s easy to be strong when life unspools as it should-kids, house, cars, vacations, money-and another thing when the man you love lies to you and everyone else, loses his job, and disgraces his name by going to prison for fraud.

Fraud. Margaret loathes the word now. It chills her.

Margaret can’t imagine Jennifer giving Patrick a rough time but if she has, she should be forgiven.

“Let’s sit,” she says.

The four of them settle-they unwrap their sandwiches, open chips, pop the tops off their Nectars and read the factoids on the caps.

Margaret’s says: The body of water between Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket is the Muskeget Channel.

“I did not know that,” she says. She hoists the bottle in a toast. “Thank you for indulging me in this one wish. I really want to catch up with the three of you before I go on my honeymoon.”

They all clink bottles. Cheers.

“I want to know what’s going on in your lives,” Margaret says. “Little stuff, big stuff.”

“Let’s start with the overlooked, underappreciated middle child,” Kevin says. “Isabelle and I have set a date for our wedding.”

“Hold on,” Ava says. “I thought you were going to wait until Bart got home.”

“Yeah,” Patrick says. “You should wait, man.”

“I can’t wait,” Kevin says. “It’s not fair to Isabelle. Or to Genevieve.”

“But…” Ava says.

“Ava,” Kevin says. “We don’t know when Bart is coming home.” He stares at his turkey sandwich. “We don’t know if Bart is coming home.”

They all sit in silence with that for a second and Margaret thinks about how incredibly gracious it was for Kelley and Mitzi to host her and Drake’s wedding when their son is still missing. Back in December, with the news that William Burke was still alive, the family’s optimism peaked, but Burke still isn’t far enough along in his recovery to shed any light on the location of the other soldiers.

“When is the date?” Margaret asks, laying a hand on Kevin’s arm.

“Christmas Eve,” Kevin says. “Isabelle’s parents will fly in from France.”

“A Christmas wedding,” Margaret says. “It’s a beautiful idea. Have you told your father?”

“Not yet,” Kevin says.

“He’s not going to like it,” Ava says. “He’ll probably think you’re giving up on Bart. Mitzi most definitely will.”

“I’m sorry, Ava,” Kevin says. “I mean no disrespect to Bart, but I have to consider the women in my life.”

“Drake and I will plan to come for Christmas, then,” Margaret says. She takes a bite of her sandwich, then wipes her mouth and says, “And who knows? Bart might be home before that.”

Ava looks like she’s teetering on the knife-edge of tears. “Another wedding,” she says.

Margaret says, “Potter certainly was a lot of fun.”

Ava shrugs.

Kevin nudges her. “Yeah, maybe Potter’s the one.”

“I’m taking some time alone,” Ava says. “No Nathaniel, no Scott, no Potter. No wedding on the horizon for me. Everyone is just going to have to love me for who I am.”

“Oh, honey,” Margaret says. “We do love you for who you are. We always have and we always will.”

“Speaking of Scott,” Patrick says, “Jenny said he tried to talk to you at the Bar the other night.”

“Yeah,” Ava says.

“Scott was at the Bar?” Margaret says. “Was he with Roxanne? Was she drinking? That seems pretty risky for a pregnant woman.”

“He was alone,” Ava says. “I refused to talk to him. But Shelby called me this morning to tell me that Roxanne miscarried.”

“Oh no!” Margaret says. “I’m so sorry for her.”

“Are you sorry for her?” Kevin asks Ava.

“Of course I’m sorry for her!” Ava says. “I’m sure Scott is crushed. He was put on this earth to be a father. And now he and Roxanne have broken things off.”

Margaret takes a bite of her sandwich. She wonders if that means Ava and Scott will start seeing each other again, but she knows better than to ask. In the former matchup between Nathaniel and Scott, Margaret was on Team Scott. Scott is responsible, solid, steady, and clearly besotted with Ava, whereas Nathaniel seems a little more like Peter Pan and a little more cavalier with Ava’s affections. Margaret had frankly been shocked when Scott started dating the hot-to-trot English teacher.

Patrick says, “Well, I have some news, but it’s not very good.”

Kevin says, “Paddy, man, this is neither the time nor the place.”

Patrick shrugs. He lifts his sunglasses to the top of his head so Margaret can see his whole face. There are crow’s-feet around his eyes; he looks old. And if her child looks old, what does that mean for Margaret? Nothing good, she’s sure.

“What is it, honey?” she says.

“Jennifer is addicted to pills,” Patrick says. “Oxy and Ativan.”

“Oh, Paddy,” Margaret says. Immediately, Margaret flashes back to this past December, Stroll weekend, the lunch at the Sea Grille after Genevieve’s baptism. Jennifer had become completely unhinged, and Margaret had thought-hadn’t she?-that Jennifer seemed like she was on something. Her behavior had reminded Margaret of Kelley back in the late eighties when he was snorting cocaine night and day.

“You’re kidding!” Ava says. “Jennifer? I always thought Jennifer was… I don’t know… perfect.”

“That’s the problem,” Patrick says. “Everyone always thought both of us were perfect. Then I proved I wasn’t, and Jennifer-well, she’s human too. She needed something to help her cope. Her friend Megan, the one who had breast cancer, gave her a couple of Ativan to take the edge off, then a couple of oxy to pep her up. And when those were gone, Jennifer found a dealer.”

“A dealer?” Ava says. “I can’t believe you just used the words Jennifer and dealer in the same sentence.”

Margaret noticed Kevin bow his head.

“It gets worse,” Patrick says.

Margaret finishes the first half of her sandwich. She’s not sure she wants to hear about worse.

“Her dealer is Norah.”

“Norah?” Ava says. “Norah Vale?”

Good God, Margaret thinks. She closes her eyes and wishes she were back on the porch of her and Drake’s romantic, rose-covered cottage in Sconset, enjoying blissful ignorance.