Mansion Beach

Nicola

David calls on the first Saturday in August and says, without preamble, “Taylor wants you to come to dinner tomorrow night.

Six o’clock.” is sitting on her patio in her bikini, wondering if she can get rid of the tan lines she’s acquired from

spending too much time in her BIMI polo.

She almost laughs. Has David dialed the wrong number? “ Me ? Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure. She said she enjoyed talking to you at the party. She wants to get to know you better.” ( wonders

if the unspoken sentiment is: she thinks she underestimated you. ) David goes on: “She wanted to do more entertaining this summer, but, I don’t know, time got away from everyone. It’s already

August!”

“It is,” confirms .

“So she settled on dinner tomorrow. Sundays are pretty chill for us. I think she’s doing some sort of a cocktail party too,

in a week or two. That one’s more for the locals.” ( wonders if the unspoken sentiment here is: you won’t be invited to that one. )

“The locals? Taylor hangs with the locals?”

“Well, no. But she’s trying to win over the planning board, to get this hotel approved. And I guess the way to the planning

board—”

“Is through its stomach?”

David snort-laughs. “No. Through town council.”

“Ah,” says . “All politics really are local, I guess.”

“So you’ll come tomorrow?”

“Sure. Sundays are chill for me too.” Monday, she is leading a field trip to Andy’s Way, where the kids are going to try their

hands at clamming. They’ll also find horseshoe crabs and hermit crabs, and even though you get to Andy’s Way by following

a dirt road off Corn Neck, so it’s not so far from anything, they’ll feel like they’re a million miles away from the hustle

and bustle of downtown. She’s excited for the field trip, possibly more excited than the kids are. She wants to re-remember

what it is she’s come to love about this island: not the giant houses and the showy parties and the cocktails (okay, sometimes

those things are nice, especially the cocktails) but the pleasure in unadulterated nature, in the simplicity of a clam—to

be fair, though, clams have the most sophisticated heart of all the mollusks.

“I’ll send Jack to pick you up.”

’s stomach drops. She hasn’t spoken to Jack since the last party. He didn’t apologize, but he did send her a meme of

a humpback whale breaching with the words WHALE HELLO THERE . She left the text on read . In moments of strength, she’s completely fine with the dearth of real communication: they were never exclusive; they owe

each other nothing; he can kiss whomever he wants. But in moments of weakness she simmers in disappointment, nay, anger. She’d

thought at least he was honest , thought he’d at least tell her when he was back on the island. It stings that he wasn’t, that he didn’t. No, it more than stings: it burns. She hates when she allows herself to think better

of people than they deserve.

To ease the burn, she’s kept herself busy at work and hanging out with the interns. Wednesday they hit Poor People’s after work, and Thursday they went horseback riding at Rustic Rides. On Sunday, they have plans to hear some musician at Mahogany Shoals who apparently could pass for the love child of Ray LaMontagne and Shakey Graves. If she goes to Taylor’s dinner she’ll have to miss this, even though she loves Shakey Graves. She tries to sound chill but her words come out in a yelp. “Jack’s going to be there? At dinner?”

“Why wouldn’t he be? He’s living here.”

“You know what, David? I don’t think I can come. I just remembered plans I have with the work peop—”

David cuts her off. “No retractions. You already said yes.” He sounds like he’s sort of joking, but also sort of not.

“I can retract if I want,” she bristles. “I am my own person, David.”

There’s a beat of silence where she can feel him figuring out which fork in the road to take. “You are,” he says. “You are

your own person. But I really want you to be there. Okay? It’s important to me. After all...”

She wonders if he’s going to say, After all, you wouldn’t even be living here if not for me.

But he says, “After all, you’re my favorite cousin.”

Damn it. It gets her, the pull of the past, the nod to nostalgia. “Six,” she says, making her voice crisp and unemotional.

“See you then. But I don’t need a ride from Jack. I’ll ride my bike.”

Ten minutes later David calls back and says, “I have a better plan than Jack or your bike. You can get a ride with Juliana.”

“ David! You invited Juliana? What are you doing?” She whispers this, as though someone might hear her, even though she’s completely alone, it’s just her and

Great Salt stretching out in front of her, ponding for all it’s worth.

His voice changes, becomes sharper, even clipped. “Wasn’t my idea. It was Taylor’s.”

She doesn’t ask Juliana for a ride. She’ll stick to her plan: She’ll take her bike. She’ll owe nothing to Jack, nothing to Juliana. Still, she can’t sleep Saturday night, thinking about it, twisting the different threads around and around to see what kind of knot they make. Is Taylor planning some sort of a showdown, and, if so, will be implicated as the link between David and Juliana? And how did she become some pawn, stuck in the middle of all of it? She flips her body over, flips her pillow over, flips them both back so that she’s right back where she started.

The thought she’s left with as she finally drifts off to sleep, way later than she meant to, is about another Taylor, Taylor

Swift, who, she read somewhere, is still and will always be the girl whose friends once lied and said they weren’t free to go to the mall and then went to the mall, together, without

her. Taylor saw them there—she was with her mom. Deep down, thinks, we’re all still walking around with our earliest

wounds just under the surface, scared of being re-cut at any time. What are Taylor Buchanan’s wounds? What are Juliana’s?

The best part of the night, discovers upon her arrival, is that David and Taylor are serving gin and tonics, and they’re

strong, and they come fast. She hasn’t been to David and Taylor’s since she babysat for Felicity. Cocktail hour takes place

on the patio where they ate the first night was there. Caroline, with the same pinned-up braids, the same no-nonsense

attitude, brings out a charcuterie board. tries to catch Caroline’s eye, desperate for some sort of connection, a hook

onto which she can hang her discomfort. She wants to say, It’s me! Hi! I’m the normal one!

Caroline, intent on her tasks, doesn’t look up.

If the best part is the gin and tonics, the worst part is that besides David, Taylor, Juliana, and Jack—already enough to

make the Cup of Awkward runneth over—there is a fifth guest, and that guest is the woman from the bathroom line at the last

party, who is also the woman saw with Jack at the end of the party.

That’s right, it’s Just My Luck, in the flesh.

Oh, come on , thinks . Seriously? She glances at Jack and, reflecting on the fact the bike ride was not a great idea, grabs a cocktail napkin and tries surreptitiously to wipe at the sweat that has collected around her collarbone. Even being quite generous with the euphemism, she’s not glowing. Jack smiles at . She looks away. How dare he. She looks back. He smiles again, even more charmingly. She grimaces and turns steadfastly, finally, in the other direction. No.

David introduces Just My Luck; her name is Shelly Salazar, and she’s doing some PR for Buchanan Enterprises.

“We’ve met,” says .

“She’s doing PR for me too,” Juliana says hastily, and watches as Taylor arches an eyebrow. Nobody, she will reflect

later in life, when she’s seen all kinds of eyebrows arched in all kinds of ways, can quite arch an eyebrow the way Taylor

did that night in her beautiful home on Block Island, on what was up to that point one of the last unsullied nights of the

summer.

“Juliana and I went to college together,” says Shelly. “Go Eagles!” Then, “Till the echoes ring again!” which supposes

is code for something. turns to Juliana, surprised she never mentioned that she had a college friend on the island.

“We just ran into each other one day, back in June,” says Shelly. “It was crazy!”

“We weren’t really close friends in college,” Juliana hastens to explain. “More like acquaintances.” She looks beseechingly

at .

“We lived on the same hall freshman year!” says Shelly. “I’d say we were pretty close.” Shelly seems like the type of person

who drinks too fast at the beginning of a party. And also at the end of a party, and probably in the middle too. glances

again at Jack, and feels her face grow warm with the humiliation of remembering Jack and Shelly on the couch at Juliana’s.

It’s extra humiliating that Jack doesn’t seem to think there’s anything strange about any of this.

Juliana says, “It’s more that you were friends with my roommate.” She looks more and more miserable as every second ticks

by. Be careful what you wish for, wants to tell her. You asked for this dinner, remember? You wanted it! And now here you are. Here you are, and what the hell, Juliana, are you

going to do with it?

“Same difference,” says Shelly. Is she staring longingly at Jack, or does she just have the sort of eyes that always look like they’re longing?

The seating arrangements don’t help, or maybe they do. David and Taylor each at an end of the table. Juliana and Shelly on

one side, and Jack and on the other side. Juliana and Shelly get the water view; and Jack are facing the house,

their backs to the water. In the pool, a giant swan float glides majestically by, urged on by a very slight breeze.

The salad course is a twist on a Greek salad. Why, wonders, must everything in this world be a twist on something else?

Why can’t anything just be ?

“What sort of PR have you been doing for LookBook?” asks Shelly. She feels as unhappy as Juliana looks, but she’s excellent

at small talk, and she tells herself to buck up and small talk the hell out of everyone else.

(The twist, it turns out, is that the salad is served on oblong slices of whipped-feta toast.)

Juliana answers for Shelly. “So many things! She really elevated the last few parties.”

“The step and repeat was my idea,” Shelly says modestly. “It really helped our efforts on social. And the goodie bags!”

“I never got a goodie bag,” says . “What was in them?” She’s picturing the birthday parties of her youth, with Dum Dums

and small plastic games that broke during first use.

“Curated accessories from a few of our brands,” says Juliana.

“They were for VIPs,” says Shelly regretfully.

“I’ll get you one!” says Juliana. “I’ll have Allison bring one over tomorrow.”

“That’s okay. I’m okay, thanks.” wonders how “curated accessories” would look with her BIMI polo.

“I’ve really been on the ground this summer,” says Shelly. Is it ’s imagination, or does Jack clear his throat at this?

“I still have a few more ideas, you know.”

Here Taylor breaks in. “That’s great.” She looks at Juliana and says, “But our public relations situation is quite delicate on the island currently. We really can’t spare too much more of Shelly this summer.” Shelly looks enormously pleased with this vote of confidence; she celebrates by draining her gin and tonic glass, just in time for the arrival of the wine. “She committed to us first, you know. Shelly, it’s my turn for a party, and I want you to help me. I need to figure out how to get to these locals.”

“You got it!” says Shelly. “I’m all yours.”

The wine is a cold, welcome Sancerre. David pours generously, and tries hard not to gulp it. Shelly has no such compunction,

and she’s on her second glass by the time Caroline brings out the main course: rib eye steak with potatoes and green beans.

hardly ever eats meat, but she does that night, and it’s heavenly.

But she can’t enjoy it fully, because of Jack, and because of Shelly, and because of the love triangle with Taylor, Juliana,

and David at each of the points.

To take her mind off the awkwardness of the present she lets it wander into the past, landing on Zachary. Was she ever in

love with Zachary? Love makes a person do crazy things—reckless things, like hijacking a dinner, maybe even a marriage and

a life. She tries to imagine a world where she loves Zachary so much—where she loves anyone so much—that she’d sit through a meal like this, gulping expensive wine the way she and David as children guzzled lemonade

on July afternoons on Pokegama Lake, just to be near the person, just to exchange the looks David and Juliana are exchanging

right now.

What is going through David’s mind? she wonders. Through Taylor’s? Does Taylor know about Juliana and David, or does she merely

suspect?

Is anyone else seeing these looks between Juliana and David? To they seem as hard to miss as a total solar eclipse, and yet on and on goes the conversation around them, Jack telling a story has already heard about the Tiburon Golf Club in Naples (“Florida, not Italy,” he says to Shelly the same way he once said it to her), Shelly reaching over for the wine bottle.

When she misses Zachary, realizes, it’s never for the smoldering emotion that she can see on David’s face, on Juliana’s.

What she misses is her cold feet pressed against his warm ones in bed, or the way his mother always bought her a high-quality

scented candle for Christmas. She never even lit those candles, and now she feels nostalgic for them, and guilty too. She

didn’t take them with her when she left. Are they still there? Has Zachary ever lit them? Is some other woman enjoying the

SANTAL 26 in medium concrete?

She suddenly feels, much to her horror, like she’s going to cry, and the more she concentrates on not crying the more she

feels the tears build up behind her eyeballs, or wherever tears build up. What will she say if these tears come out? Will she tell Taylor, I’m crying because I’ve never experienced a love as real as the one your husband feels for my neighbor? Obviously not. She blinks and allows herself a deep inhale, a slightly less deep exhale.

She wishes that she had gone to Mahogany Shoals with the people from work. Just as she’s thinking that, and wondering if she

can go after dinner, Jack takes her hand under the table, resting both of their hands together on ’s knee. What the

actual hell? When she looks over at him, startled, he gives her one of his infuriatingly charming smiles.

cannot wait for this dinner to be over. She wants to peek under the table—does he have his foot tucked in between Shelly’s at the same

time he has his hand on ’s knee?—but she doesn’t have the stomach for a full investigation. She removes Jack’s hand

from her knee and puts it back in his own lap. She can’t. She just simply cannot.

“—you guys know you were both here?” Taylor is asking Shelly when returns her attention to the conversation.

“Funny story!” says Shelly. “We were both on Clayhead Trail at the same time. I was just walking along, minding my own business, and I sensed someone beside me. I turned around, and there was Jade!”

“Jade?” says Taylor, and flashes back to Shelly clapping her hand over her mouth in the bathroom line.

Juliana shakes her head with perfect equanimity— doesn’t realize until later how much composure this takes—and says,

“Shelly, they don’t know the backstory of that silly joke.”

Shelly says, “You’re right!” and grabs the wine bottle, empties it into her glass. As if by magic, a fresh bottle appears,

slid onto the table by Caroline’s hand.

“I’d love to hear it,” says Taylor smoothly.

“They called me Jewel in college,’ says Juliana. “As a nickname. Juliana, Jewel. But then, because Jade is a stone used in

jewelry, and I used to wear a lot of jade, it evolved.” She shrugs. “I know, it’s really dumb.”

“That’s not what I rem—” says Shelly.

“College!” breaks in. She doesn’t know what’s going on with this name thing, but she’s desperate to make the situation

better for someone, even if she’s not sure for whom. (Definitely not for Shelly.) They were for VIPs. “Didn’t we all do the dumbest things?”

“I sure did!” says Shelly, merry as can be.

Taylor, notices, has eaten only half her dinner, and had no more than two sips of her wine. Jack and David are talking

about something else, not paying attention to the women. Taylor smooths her hair, which is already perfectly smooth, and says,

“There are a lot of coincidences in this group.”

“Oh, yeah?” says Shelly. “What else?”

Maybe she gives off an invisible signal, a stop-what-you’re-doing-and-listen sign, because at this point Jack and David pause their conversation and look at Taylor; everyone looks at Taylor. Under the table squeezes her hands together, as if she can halt time by squeezing.

“Well,” says Taylor. “As it turns out, Juliana and my husband met long ago. Isn’t that right, Juliana? You met my husband?”

She leans so hard on the word husband each time she says it that had the word been a tree branch it would have snapped in half.

Juliana’s glance skitters around the table before landing on , who she might see as a safe island in this potentially

hostile ocean. “That’s right. I met David at a party a long time ago,” she says. “During New York Fashion Week. When LookBook

was going through a third round of funding.” There’s something in Juliana’s eyes doesn’t trust: a dangerous gleam.

And she’s slurring a little. has been so intent on watching Shelly’s drinking that she hasn’t even paid attention to

Juliana’s. “You remember, right, David?”

David scrunches his eyes together and looks like he’s giving his memory a good, thorough scrub, to see what comes up. “I think

so,” he says finally.

“My husband has a terrible memory for unimportant details,” says Taylor. Has the word husband ever been employed so many times inside of ninety seconds?

sees now what Taylor is doing, why she invited Juliana here; not because she’s trying to figure out if there’s anything

between David and Juliana (she knows) but because she’s made a decision about what to fight for, and she’s ready to show Juliana

what’s hers.

“That party is one of the reasons LookBook took off,” Juliana says. “That’s when we really started to get the attention of

the high-end designers.” She reaches for her wineglass and wants, like a mother stopping a toddler from drinking his

juice too fast, to put her hand over Juliana’s. Juliana says, to the table as a whole, “I couldn’t have asked for a better

night.”

“Early publicity is everything,” says Shelly, nodding sagely.

Taylor arches an eyebrow. “You couldn’t have asked for a better night?”

Juliana says, “Life-changing.”

“When was this again?” asks Taylor.

“September 2019.” winces at how Juliana has the date immediately at hand.

“ That’s funny,” says Taylor. “Huh. That’s right when we were planning our wedding. We got married the following autumn. You were there,

. You were there too, Jack.”

“It was a beautiful wedding,” murmurs to her wineglass. She doesn’t want to look up because she’s not sure whose eyes

to meet and what to do once she’s met them.

David attempts, “Taylor—”

“Stop,” says Taylor. Can a voice be colder than ice? If so, Taylor’s is, by triple-digit degrees. “Just don’t.” becomes

enormously interested in the crumbs on her place mat, the design they make that looks almost like the Big Dipper.

David pushes his chair away from the table and stands suddenly. “Excuse me,” he says. What is he doing ? wonders . Is he reacting to Taylor telling him to stop? Is he hoping that if he leaves, the tension hanging over the

table like a dark cloud will diffuse?

David walks to the grassy area beside the pool, and then—No! thinks . No no no !—Juliana follows him. Taylor takes another sip of her wine. Her expression is sphinxlike, but when she lifts her wineglass

her hands tremble, betraying, figures, bigger emotions roiling on the inside.

“I love Fashion Week,” cries Shelly. can’t decide if she’s enormously clueless or if she’s actually quite masterful. “It’s

one of my favorite weeks of the year!” She looks around. “September is better than February, if anyone is wondering.”

Nobody, it’s clear, is wondering.

This whole time Caroline has been moving stealthily behind them, clearing plates, and then, in the pause they’ve all created, announces dessert is coming. Chocolate mousse, she tells them, unless anyone has something against cream.

“Cream has something against me,” says Shelly. “But it’s not mutual.” Jack snickers, and rolls her eyes.

“Caroline, thank you so much, you’re free to go. David and I will serve the dessert and clean up,” says Taylor. Her eyes haven’t

left the grassy area.

A silence falls, and into the silence pours Juliana’s voice. “When are you going to tell her?” David’s answer, if there is

one, is quieter, then comes Juliana’s voice again, which is strident in a way that has never heard it: “When are you

going to tell her that you love me ?”

It is a cliché to say that time stands still, or that everything moves in slow motion at a certain point, but in fact both

of these things happen, one after the other, and after time starts moving again everyone left at the table whips their heads

toward Taylor. Has she heard? How could she not have? Juliana’s voice was so loud and clear it seems like the moon itself

must have heard. What will happen now?

What happens now is that the color drains from Taylor’s face, leaving her blue eyes shining like cold jewels. She stands.

“If you’ll excuse me,” Taylor says, looking every inch the dignified one in the situation—looking, in fact, like royalty,

standing so tall and straight and composed. But there’s no way she isn’t dying on the inside. Whatever intentions she had

for the dinner—to show Juliana that Taylor has the upper hand, to spread out her home and family like a picnic for Juliana

to admire but not to touch— have just vanished. She clears her throat, and in the only concession to the pain she must be going through, the chaos roiling

internally, she repeats herself: “If you’ll excuse me. I’m going to go say good night to my daughter.”

“Ho, boy,” says Shelly.

Jack’s eyes go to , then to Shelly. “You want to get out of here?”

says, “Both of us?” at the exact same time that Shelly says, “Hell, yes .”

“I want to go home,” says . “If you could give me a ride.” She has to work not to say please. She’s had too much to drink to deal with her bike.

“No problem.” They all turn to find their hosts, but there’s nobody to find. Taylor is gone, and David and Juliana have moved

into the shadows, and if they’re speaking it’s no longer possible to hear them.

At Jack’s car (well, David’s), hesitates, not sure who will take the passenger seat. All she wants is to get out of

there. It’s early; maybe she won’t go home after all. Maybe she’ll meet up with the other interns.

The problem is settled when Shelly says (slurs), “Can you drop me in town? I’m supposed to meet someone.” She slides into

the back seat.

“Sure,” says Jack, opening the passenger door for , even giving a funny little bow, like he’s a hired chauffeur. “Whereabouts?”

“Oh, just in town,” says Shelly vaguely. She pulls her phone out of her handbag and keeps her eyes on it for the whole ride,

until Jack says, “Here?” pulling up outside Poor People’s.

Shelly looks up from her phone, confused.

“Is this where you’re meeting someone?” prompts. “Or should we bring you somewhere else?”

“This works,” says Shelly finally, after looking down at her phone, then back up again. “Yeah, this works. Thanks, babe.”

Babe ? thinks . Ew.

Jack’s window is rolled down, and Shelly leans in and tousles his hair, then kisses him noisily on the cheek. looks

out her own window and cringes.

Once Shelly has walked off— walk is perhaps too generous a word, and stumbled too mean, so maybe it falls somewhere in the middle—Jack looks at and murmurs, “Why don’t we catch the sunset?”

Is he serious right now ? Has he not felt the ice daggers coming from her all night? Is he not even going to ask what’s wrong?

“I don’t think so,” she says. She won’t dignify him with an explanation if he’s not going to ask for one.

“I think we have enough time to get to Dorry’s Cove.”

Someone told when she first got to the island that Dorry’s Cove is where you can see the best sunsets, and she can’t

believe she hasn’t watched one yet. There’s one long log on the beach practically built for viewing, and if you get there

first, you get to sit on it.

“Come on, Nicky,” he says. “Watch the sunset with me. We can go see that dead whale.”

“You can’t see the whale from Dorry’s,” she says frostily. “It’s between Dorry’s and Grace’s.” When the BIMI people had gone

to see the whale, they had done it as scientists , not as curiosity seekers. Jack doesn’t care about marine mammals; Jack doesn’t deserve to see the whale.

“Fair enough,” he says. “The sunset it is, then!”

She considers this. It’s a long bike ride from her place out to Dorry’s, and she’s probably never going to watch a sunset

and then ride all that way home in the dark. Should she take advantage of the ride as well as the chance to give Jack, as

her mother would say, a piece of her mind? Okay, fine.

Fine!

“I want to sit on that famous log,” she says grudgingly.

“Life goals,” he said. “Let’s do it.” checks her phone. Sunset is just before eight o’clock, and they have to get over

to the west side of the island. It’s now twenty-six minutes past seven—not even ninety minutes since she arrived at David

and Taylor’s. Wow. A lot can happen in less than ninety minutes.

“Let’s do it,” she echoes, keeping her voice even.

“Pedal to the metal, then,” says Jack. “Should we pick up something to drink before we leave town?”

What is the kindest way to say, Are you fucking kidding me? She settles for, “Probably not. I had enough at dinner—and you’re driving.”

“Fair enough,” he says effortlessly, and he takes her hand and presses it to his lips, and that’s when she makes the decision

that once they get to Dorry’s, once they’re sitting on the log, she’s going to tell him exactly what she thinks of him. Before

the sun sets, she’ll tell him.

Because even though she’s repulsed by his behavior she could see herself getting caught back up, obsessing, even, always wondering,

always worrying that there’s a Shelly Salazar around the corner. She could see Jack Baker, with his unconcern, with his sexy

forearms and perfect abs and beautiful hair, turning her into just the kind of person she doesn’t want to be, the kind of

person who puts her hands on her hips and cries, Where have you been? maybe while wearing some sort of a kerchief, maybe holding a broom or a vegetable peeler.

In the meantime, though, is one of them going to address the elephant in the car? She sets aside her ire for a moment and

ventures: “Was that not the most awkward dinner you’ve ever been to?”

Jack glances over at her. “Which?”

“Which dinner ? The one we just came from! The one where we all heard Juliana say out loud that she expects David to leave Taylor for her!”

“Oh, yeah. Sure, I guess.” He shrugs. “It was going to happen, though, wasn’t it? I mean, at some point.”

W, thinks . T. F. She opens her mouth, wondering what words will come out of it, but she’s too stunned to think of any,

so she closes it again.

They take West Side Road, and they pass the turnoff to the homes Buchanan Enterprises is building, and wonders about the man she saw Taylor with—where he is, what happened. Jack turns too fast off the main road and onto the dirt road that leads toward the cove. There’s a yellow Jeep coming out, and the driver, a woman with curly dark hair, glares at them. There’s a teenage girl in the passenger seat and she glares at them too.

“Slow down, Jack,” says . She thinks of one of her first drives with him, earlier in the summer. It takes two to make

an accident, he’d said. That wasn’t true then, and it isn’t true now. It takes exactly one to make an accident.

There comes a point where you can’t drive down the road any farther, so Jack pulls over to the side and parks and they walk

down the dirt path that leads to the beach. Jack bounces on his toes, takes ’s hand, and swings both of their hands

between them, so at home in that athletic, jaunty body of his. She pulls away.

The beach is deserted; the log is available. Just after they settle themselves a family comes flying down the path: parents,

three kids in varying stages of tweenhood. starts to move over closer to Jack, thinking they can make room for the

new additions, and then she sees that Jack is doing the opposite, sliding away from . Marking his territory. She rolls

her eyes.

A big rock rises out of the water like a humpback whale. One of the tweens has gone into the water and is shouting for the

others to join. To the left of them the beach is covered with small rocks, and just ahead the sand is smooth. The sun moves

down and down and the sky becomes bruised by reds and purples, with tangerine streaks at the highest point, where there is

a little blue left.

takes a deep breath, readies herself. Now is the time.

But before she can speak: “I’m leaving soon,” Jack says, casually as you please.

starts. “For good?”

“Week, week and a half. Not sure yet. The Achilles is healed. Heading out to Illinois for the BMW Championship. Your neck

of the woods!”

“Illinois doesn’t border Minnesota,” says shortly. He doesn’t even know where she’s from.

“Close enough.” He flicks his fingers at the log, maybe at a bug. “But I’ll be busy wrapping things up before I go. So I guess this is adios, then.”

stares at the bruise of a sky. She won’t meet his eyes. She suddenly feels very busy, busy with the humiliation of

almost breaking up with someone she’d never been dating, of almost telling someone off who doesn’t care.

And just like that, it’s dark. It happens so fast, every damn day, and yet it’s always a bit of a surprise. The moon is suddenly

visible, as though it has just bustled over from stage left and found its mark.

“Okay,” she says finally. The unconcern she fakes is the greatest acting she’s ever done—she, who had one role in one middle

school play and then gave it all up for soccer. There was the cousin production of The Sound of Music, of course.

There’s a smile in Jack’s voice when he says, “Are you going to miss me?”

“No,” she says, wanting to hurt him, even though hurting him seems sort of like trying to hurt a pillow. “It’s not like I’m

staying here forever.”

“Liar,” he says, taking her hand. “Tell the truth, now. Are you going to miss me?”

“No,” she says again, pulling her hand away.

“I don’t believe you,” he says. refuses to look at him but she can tell by his voice that he’s still smiling. He’s

always smiling! “You know,” he said, “you got me, Nicky. You got me right here.” He makes a fist with his right hand and taps

his heart twice.

Bullshit, is what she wants to say. But she doesn’t say anything. That’s when she realizes something about Jack. He’s not intentionally cruel, or even truly unkind; both of those characteristics require an element of purpose, and she sees now that, save the effort and thought he must put into his golf game, nothing about Jack is purposeful. That’s where they’re opposites. is all purpose. Jack is bobbing along, a stick caught in a river’s current. He’ll probably bob along forever like that.

“But you know, if we ever find ourselves in the same place again...?”

“Yeah, then what?” She tries to sound carefree but she knows it has come out snarky.

“Then maybe we can... reconnect. You know?” A euphemism if has ever heard one.

She lets a long, long time go by before she says, “Maybe.”

She’s quiet on the way home.

“You mad?” asks Jack once.

“No,” snarls. “What would I be mad about?”

Jack says, “Whoa, okay.”

Okay, sure, yeah. She’s mad at Jack because he made her feel foolish. And because now she knows that what she’d taken to be

depth behind those liquid brown eyes is simply layer upon layer of emptiness that, taken together, gives the impression of

depth.

But she’s also angry at all of the wealthy for their ability to move through the world—no, not move through, more like skate over —without having to look beneath the surface at everyone struggling below.

They pass once again by the road that leads to the Buchanan construction site, but it’s too dark to see anything. imagines

what the island might have looked like hundreds of years ago, before Adrian Block discovered it for the second time, before

the first families from Massachusetts settled there, before privateers invaded, before the lighthouses were built, and the

construction of the breakwater created Old Harbor, and and and. She tries to think about how small her existence and the existence

of everyone from the summer is in comparison to the trees on either side of them that have been witness to it all.

It helps, but only sort of. Anyway, she still has her tanks and her squid and her Tuesday Talks—there are two left—and, somewhere in the background, her incomplete plans for the future, which, after these weeks of concentrated outdoor work, the sun and the salt air and the quality sleep, she not only believes she can but will figure out.

Someday soon this whole summer will seem like nothing but a fever dream.

Jack pulls up to ’s cottage.

“Goodbye, Jack,” she says. Almost, almost , she allows herself to see this as a romantic scene from a movie. Or at least from a Hulu limited series. Two lovers from different

backgrounds and circumstances, with two different futures ahead of them, saying goodbye. She imagines that the stars in the

sky might weep, watching them.

The stars don’t weep; the stars don’t even tear up. “Bye, darling,” he says. “What a summer, right?” He kisses her on the

cheek, and though the kiss itself is innocuous he lets his lips linger above her jawbone, and she knows if she were only to

turn her face their lips would meet and they’d be right back where they’d started at the beginning of the summer. would

invite him in, and he’d take off her clothes in that languid way he had that was just careless enough to drive her crazy.

He doesn’t get out. She doesn’t expect him to stay, but he doesn’t even walk her to the door. This is the way they want it,

she knows, young women like her, in the latest wave of feminism. And yet! It still would have been nice if he’d gotten out.

Not because he is a man and is a woman, but because they are both people, and deserving of each other’s respect.

The next day, she calls Reina. It’s unnervingly quiet in the background. She says, “Oh my god, Reina, are you okay? Have your

children been kidnapped?”

“Hang on, let me put in my AirPods. Can you hear me? Okay, good. Yes, they’ve been kidnapped, it’s all very sad. I told the

kidnapper that I’d pay ransom for him to keep them.”

“Twist,” says .

“I’m full of surprises. Actually, I’m taking a walk with the dog, my most well-behaved child. The children are at the park with their father, if you can believe it. He took a half day.”

“I believe it.” Hunter is a really good father. He just works a lot, and his job gives him almost no paternity leave. But he’s a really good father.

“Which means there are probably hotties falling all over him, telling him how a-maaaaaazing it is that he’s taking care of

the kids.”

“Ugh,” says loyally.

“Do you know how many hotties have told me it’s amazing when I’m at the park with the kids, which I am literally every day but today?”

“None?”

“Exactly none. Zero hotties.”

“It’s over with Jack.”

“Oh! Sweetie! I’m sorry. Wait, am I sorry?”

hesitates. “I don’t know. Maybe you’re a little sorry?”

“Tell me.” So tells her, and she can imagine her nodding sympathetically, walking Rosie (that’s the dog). Every now

and then Reina makes a little noise, a hmm or a tsk , and when ’s done talking she says, “Well, honey, I’m sad if you’re sad. But it sounds like he wasn’t your person.”

“Yeah, he wasn’t my person.” Who is ’s person? Does she have one? If so, where is he ? “It’s just, it was fun, Reina. I’m usually the pursuer, not the pursued. It was fun to be pursued. It was exciting , you know?”

“I know,” Reina says, then, “Okay, so now I can tell you.”

“Tell me what?”

“You know how you asked me not to do a deep dive on him?” nods. Then, realizing Reina can’t see her, she says, “I remember.”

“Hang on, Rosie’s doing her business. I need to pick it up... Okay, done. We’re moving again. So you told me not to do

a deep dive.”

“But you dove anyway?”

“I dove anyway. I’m sorry, Nic! I couldn’t help it. My brain was starved for a project. And I would have told you if I’d found something truly terrible, if I was worried about you, but I wanted you to have a fun summer, and what I found was really just more in the unsavory category. Not the

dangerous category. I would have told you if anything fell into the dangerous category.”

“Reina! Tell me. What was it? Is he not really a golfer?” But she knows he’s a golfer. She’s seen the photos, the visors,

the tournament entries.

“He’s really a golfer. But it’s not his Achilles that’s hurt.”

“What is it?”

“It’s his reputation.” In the dramatic pause that ensues imagines all sorts of things. A cryptocurrency company gone

bad? Public election denial? Racist remarks? Sexual harassment? “There was a cheating charge at a tournament last fall.”

waits.

“By that I mean Jack was accused of cheating.”

“Really? Wouldn’t that have been a big deal, like something that would have come up when I googled?”

“Not necessarily. I mean at the US Open, sure. One of the majors. There’s like, I don’t know, thirty-nine tournaments on the

Tour or something, the big ones you’ve heard of, and then a bunch of smaller ones, but still part of the Tour, and this was

at one of the smaller ones. He was accused of removing a leaf from his ball.”

“I’m sorry?” says. “Did you say a leaf ?”

“Yeah. Apparently you can’t remove something that isn’t a loose impediment. And the leaf in question was rooted.”

“Rooted?”

“Yup. And the charge wasn’t proven, but the player who accused him definitely talked like it wasn’t the first time your boy Jack had been suspected of cheating. His people covered up LeafGate, claimed an Achilles injury, and whipped him off the Tour before you could say foooooorrrreeee.”

“Ah,” says . She takes a minute to absorb this.

“See what I mean? Not dangerous, but definitely unsavory.”

“Yeah,” says . “That actually all makes sense. I never really heard about him rehabbing that Achilles. I mean, he mentioned

it a couple of times, but it’s not like he was always running off to PT.”

“Right,” says Reina.

“I never saw him limp.”

“I’m sure you didn’t.”

You got me, Nicky, he had said. You got me right here.