Husbands & Lovers

Chapter Seven Mallory

June 2022

Winthrop Island, New York

Paige pilots the Fjord into the marina in Little Bay, a mile or so away from the bigger harbor where the ferry and the fishing boats take care of business. Little Bay is where you keep your spinnaker or your runabout, where the kids learn to sail on their Optis. There’s no drizzle today, just a hazy morning sun that promises hot. The air smells of brine and wet wood. The kids jump onto the dock, one by one, carrying their beach things. They’re all decked out with hats and sunscreen and enthusiasm, even Sam. “Feeling okay, buddy?” I ask as he passes by.

He rolls his eyes and says Yes, Mom.

I have this picture in my head of Paige’s Yale friend, whose family summers on Winthrop Island, and I’m not wrong. She spots us first and squeals. Paige gives forth an answering squeal. I cast about until I find a long-limbed blonde in aviator sunglasses and a polo dress the color of key limes, waving a bracelet-stacked arm. She takes Paige into a delicate embrace of elbows and palms. The kisses vanish into thin air.

“It’s so good to see you,” says Paige.

“Oh my God, you haven’t changed a bit,” says Lola. She turns to me and raises the sunglasses to the top of her head. She wears no makeup except an apricot tan and a layer of peachy lip balm. “You must be Mallory!” She sticks out a hand. The bangles quiver and crash against each other. “Lola Peabody.”

Lola hauls us to her family’s place in a gigantic eight-seater Club Car, the Escalade of golf carts. Paige sits up front with Lola, I sit in the middle with Sam and Ollie, and Ida and Maisie cling to the rumble seat in the back while the cart charges up the perilous hill that is Little Bay Road. Ida shrieks with joy. Lola gives us the canned tour, pointing at this and that with so much enthusiasm she sometimes forgets to keep hold of the steering wheel and we veer toward the scrub grass on the shoulder.

“People think Winthrop is so old,” she says, “but it was only developed in the 1920s. They bought up the old farmland on the eastern end of the island and turned it into the Winthrop Island Association. I think that was right around the First World War?”

“So that’s the private end of the island, right?” asks Paige. “The golf club and everything?”

“Yep. Dave’s gran—Dave’s my husband—she descends from the last of the Winthrops on the island. Her dad became like the caretaker for the Peabodys? When they first built their place? And then she wound up marrying one of the Peabody boys. Dave’s grandfather.”

“That’s so cool,” Paige says. “Are they still around?”

“Oh, Gran’s still reigning like the queen she is. She’ll be ninety-eight this summer. Like not even Covid could kill her. Dave’s grandfather passed when I was in college, sadly.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“Heart attack. He was this enormous guy. Gentle giant. My family summers here too—the Pinkertons?—and we all like worshipped him. Dave remembers how Poppy used to carry him to the harbor on his shoulders during the blessing of the fleet every year. Like being on top of the world.”

I lean forward to her shoulder. “Blessing of the fleet?”

“Yeah, it’s this old Portuguese tradition. The Catholic priest comes down to the harbor and blesses the fishing fleet every year. Very cool ceremony. Not that we have much of a fleet anymore. They used to trap lobsters but the population’s crashed, apparently. Climate change or whatever.”

We crest the hill and Lola brakes for the crossing of West Cliff Road. The familiar scene hits me in the ribs. I shut my eyes and see the chunky burgundy dashboard of a Jeep Wagoneer, my bare feet propped up, ten chips of iridescent mermaid blue against the waving grass horizon. Monk to my left, kids piled like puppies in the back. Air smells of hot car and sunscreen. Katy Perry belting from the radio about kissing a girl. Monk took us sailing and we’re driving back home from Little Bay Harbor. My stomach hurts from laughing. We turn left on West Cliff Road. Monk waves to the guard in his shack. For some reason I keep staring at that wide, tanned hand until he turns to me and grins, like he always grins, but for some reason that grin lasts a second or two longer than it should, the gaze holds a second or two longer than it should, and (as you probably know) a gaze that lasts a whole couple seconds might as well last for an hour. It feels the same, like someone lit a torch to your nerves.

“Mom, are you carsick?” Sam asks, incredulous.

I open my eyes. We’re passing the guard shack now; Lola’s waving her hand at the guard, just like Monk used to do.

“I’m fine,” I say. “I’m reminiscing.”

“Reminiscing about what?” asks Lola, picking up speed.

“Oh, I spent a summer nannying here, back in college.”

“Stop it! Seriously? Which family?”

I rub Sam’s hair. He pulls away. “The Adamses.”

“Wait, Buzzy and Becca?” Lola smacks the steering wheel with her palm. “I used to babysit those kids! The Hell Twins, my mom called them.”

“They weren’t so bad,” I say. “Once you figured out what to bribe them with.”

“They’re all grown up now. Chippy played lacrosse at Bowdoin. He’s in London now? With Morgan Stanley. Dating some English girl, I heard, like the daughter of a lord or something. Which is like the most Chippy thing ever. And Blue’s a second-year at Penn Law?” Lola asks, glancing inquisitively at my reflection in the mirror, as if there’s some chance we’re connected by threads of law school. This is another Winthrop thing—like a pair of sniffing dogs, you establish your bona fides with a new acquaintance. Whom you’re related to, and how. She returns her gaze to the road ahead and says, with spectacular nonchalance, “But I’m sure they’ll both be back for the wedding.”

“Wedding? What wedding?” Paige asks innocently.

Lola hits her. “What wedding.”

“Oh, I see you. All desperate to spill the tea.”

“Tea is for basic bitches like you, honey,” Lola says. “I mean, God knows who leaked that story to the Globe. Nobody on-island, for sure.”

The golf cart bumps painfully over a pothole. From the rumble seat comes a pair of delighted squeals. Sam grabs the metal armrest and pretends to look for the ocean.

“It’s such a trip,” says Lola. “I remember when Monk Adams was just this annoying little tagalong. I mean, cute but annoying? Also he was like an outrageous towhead. By end of summer his hair would be white. And his skin would be nut brown.” She snorted out a chuckle. “I was best friends with his big sister since I can remember. Thayer? We’re the same age. She’s out in Cali now. Went to Berkeley and never looked back. You know their place is two houses down from ours? I saw the wedding planners heading over there last week.”

“He’s not around right now, is he?” I ask. Attempting to sound as nonchalant as Lola.

“Oh God, no.” She glances at the mirror again. “Wait a sec. You must have known him, right? If you were nannying for his dad and the stepmonster.”

“We hung out a bit.”

Paige swivels her head a few inches and winks at me.

Lola looks again in the mirror at my reflection, a couple of beats longer this time. A flutter of speculation appears and vanishes across her face. “So this must have been, what? The summer of oh-nine? Ten?”

“Oh-eight, actually. Fourteen years ago.”

“Oh, right. That’s the summer I was working in Paris. You remember that internship I got after college, right?” This was to Paige.

“That fashion thing?”

I turn my head to watch the meadows pass by. You don’t see a lot of trees on Winthrop Island, just meadows and ponds and shrubs. Maybe a vestigial orchard or two, missing most of its original members. I remember I asked Monk about it once, and he shrugged and said he heard that the trees were all wiped out in the hurricane of 1815, and they only came back—in the wild, anyway—after the hurricane of 1938 blew in some seeds from the mainland. He said he wasn’t sure if that was true, but it was a good story. At the time, we were sitting side by side on a stone wall, watching the leading edge of a squall bend the meadow grass. The wall divided the Adams property from the Monk property, where he spent the summers after his parents’ divorce with his mother’s family. His mother was a Monk, he told me; that’s how he got his name. His parents grew up summering together, Adams property and Monk property side by side. All nice and convenient, until it wasn’t. The first drops of the squall fell on our shoulders and Monk took off his jacket to hold over our two heads like a canopy. Just in time. While the rain poured down around us and soaked our legs and feet, he said to me, You want to know my darkest secret, Pinks?

I said sure.

He said, My first name is Barclay.

Barclay like the bank? I asked.

Like my dad, he said. Barclay Benjamin Monk Adams. So now you know.

I remember I tasted the name on my tongue. That’s just between you and me, Pinko, he told me. Circle of trust.

I swore I wouldn’t tell a soul. Then I asked about Benjamin, and he told me about how the Monks always named the first boy Benjamin, after his grandfather’s brother who was shot down over Germany in the Second World War.

The cart slows. Lola points past Paige’s nose. “That’s it right there. The Monk place?”

A plain gravel driveway cuts through the wildflower meadow to the right, so exactly like they appear in my memory that for a second or two, I don’t know where I am. I don’t know who I am. I close my fingers around the armrest and everything returns to me in a bang. The vast, complicated present. I turn my head to find Monk’s blue eyes staring back at me in the face of my son.

Paige says, “So, what about the bride? Lennox Lassiter. What’s she like?”

“I don’t even know,” says Lola. “She doesn’t really mix with us?”

The Peabody estate is right on the water at the end of Serenity Lane—a big, rambling house of shingles and dormers and a single tower overlooking the beach that must be the coolest bedroom ever.

Lola brings the Club Car to a stop next to an ancient clapboard garage. “Here we are,” she says. “Summerly.”

Paige wants to know when it was built.

“Like 1920, I think?” Lola hops out to unspool the charging cord and plug it into the cart. “I warn you, Gran keeps everything immaculate but she doesn’t believe in, like, renovation, per se. I think Dave’s mom secretly can’t wait to get her hands on it after Gran dies. Which like God forbid. But it’s coming, right? And Gran and Dave’s mom are like the best of frenemies. The passive aggression, right? Sometimes I’m all, pass the popcorn.”

Meanwhile we’re extracting ourselves from the Club Car. In the quarter hour since we stepped from the boat to the dock, the temperature has climbed about ten degrees. The sun beats down on my neck. The kids start to clamor about the beach.

Lola puts her hands on her hips. “Tell you what. You guys head right down to the sand. You’ll see the cabana, it’s got all you need. I’ll let Jo know we’re back. She’ll put the kiddos in their suits and bring them down to hang out, okay? Make yourselves at home! Mi casa es su casa!”

She calls these last words toward their galloping backs as they stampede from the drive to the lawn, past the sea grapes toward the beckoning ocean, Paige in hot pursuit.

We look at each other. Again, that ripple of speculation. Lola Peabody is almost forty, like Paige, and bears a certain similarity to Summerly, in that she keeps herself immaculate but doesn’t believe in renovation, per se. There are pleats around the eyes, a touch of sag around the mouth and chin that says I don’t stoop to Botox or dermaplaning, my bloodlines are enough.

She smiles at me. “What a shame Monk’s not around this week. I bet he’d be jazzed to see you again.”

I hoist my beach tote to my shoulder and drop my sunglasses over my eyes. “Oh, I doubt he’d even remember little old me. Big famous him and all.”

By two o’clock in the afternoon, the three of us have pulled up to the bar at the Mohegan Inn and ordered cosmos. I don’t personally love a cosmo—give me a Manhattan or an old-fashioned, if you must, or a French 75 if you’re feeling frisky—but it seems like the sociable thing to do.

Blame Lola. The kids all wound up in the family room after lunch, tapping away on their phones and tablets. She looked at me and at Paige and turned a bright expression to the nanny. Jo, do you mind keeping an eye on the kiddos while I show these two the village sights?

The place hasn’t changed since the old days. Still murky even in the middle of the day, like a goblin cave; still reeking of decades of spilled beer soaked into the wooden floors. Same low ceilings, same barstools upholstered in peeling avocado-green pleather, same scattering of mismatched tables and chairs, polished with soot. Same cheap ceiling fan turning over the same stale air. Same fucking Babe Ruth bobblehead staring idiotically from the top of the same cash register. Same raised platform, about ten foot square, where they used to set up the live music on Friday and Saturday nights.

Another memory flashes behind my eyes—Monk on his stool, baseball cap, acoustic guitar, microphone. Turning to look at me while he plays this song he wrote.

And there’s Mike, behind the bar. Red hair now tarnished and thinning. He takes the drink order and lingers on me for a second or two, speculative frown, before he turns away to mix the cosmos.

“We used to come here in college, to get away from our parents,” says Lola. “Everyone would, like, shamelessly hook up with one another. Which was tricky because so many of us are cousins? Although I have to say that once we had enough drinks…” She lets the sentence dangle and giggles mischievously.

“That’s kind of sick,” says Paige, “and yet also weirdly erotic. In a sick way.”

“Yeah, well. The Puritans had this kind of low-key tradition of intermarriage, back in the day. I mean, what else could you do? We just don’t talk about it. Like everything else.” She grabs the stem of a cosmo glass, which Mike has just delivered to the counter in front of us. “Cheers, ladies. To the good old days of kissing your cousin and remembering nothing the next day.”

We sip. I have to say, Mike mixes a decent cosmo, even though he probably died a little inside as he measured the Cointreau. Paige waggles an eyebrow at me, the way she used to do when we were kids, on the rare occasion she was about to commit some outrageous act of daring.

She turns to Lola. “So? Did you ever hook up with Monk Adams?”

“Eeeww. He was like my best friend’s kid brother.”

“So?”

Lola plucks at the curl of lemon on the rim of her glass. “No comment.”

“Or don’t you remember?” Paige sticks her with an elbow.

“The truth is…” Lola gulps down a long drink. She settles the glass back on the bar, swishes the sides, and says to the pink wavelets that remain, “The truth is, Monk was always kind of pure? I mean, he had girlfriends and everything, but he wasn’t a hooker-upper. Wouldn’t you say, Mallory?”

Lola turns to me. I cough on some liquor and set down my glass.

“Say what?”

“Whether Monk Adams liked to hook up on the weekends? I mean, I’ll bet you used to hang out here at the Mo. Right? On your evenings off. I remember he played a lot of gigs here in the summer.”

“He did. Whenever I see one of his album covers, I always think of him on his stool with that old guitar, right over there.” I point to the platform in the corner. “Playing to a bunch of drunk locals.”

Lola tilts her glass at me. “That doesn’t answer my question, though. Smarty-pants.”

“To answer your question,” I drawl out, taking my time, “no.”

“No, what?”

“No, I don’t think Monk was that into the hookup scene.”

A few hours and several rounds of cosmos later, I remember to check my phone. “Oh, shit. It’s almost dinnertime.”

Paige looks at her watch. “Oh, shit. You’re right.”

“You can’t drive home,” I say.

“What do you mean? I’m fine. It’s a boat. On the water. Not like a highway.”

“Drinking and boating is literally illegal. Also stupid. Especially this much drinking.”

She wags a finger at me. “Now who’s the responsible sister?”

“Ladies,” says Lola, “don’t worry. I got you. Plenty of spare bedrooms at Casa Peabody.”

I look again at my watch, as if that would help the situation. “But Sam has dialysis tomorrow in Barnstaple at nine sharp.”

“Not a problem.” Paige lurches off her stool and manages, miraculously, to land on her feet. “I’ll get you there. Swear. Dawn launch. With the fisherfolk.”

“What about Jake?”

“Jake’s away at some lov-e-ley golf course in Arizona. No, Palm Springs? No…no, definitely Arizona. Scottsdale. Corporate retreat-y thing. Back on Monday.”

“While the cat’s away,” says Lola.

Mike steps over, wiping a glass with a bar cloth. “Ready to close out?”

Paige opens her wallet and pulls out a magnanimous credit card. “I’ve got it, girls.”

Mike shakes his head. “Cash only.”

“I’m sorry. Did you say cash? Only?”

“There’s an ATM on Harbor Street.”

Lola rummages in her handbag. “Don’t be silly. I’ve got it. I should have warned you about the cash thing. You’re just a bunch of old schoolers around here, aren’t you, Mike?”

“Aka tax dodgers,” Paige mutters.

“Say.” Mike points at me. “Now I remember you. You and Monk used to come around here a bunch of years ago. Mallory, right? Nannying for his dad.”

Both heads swivel in my direction.

Lola purrs, “You and Monk?”

“That was a while ago,” I say.

“Steel trap.” Mike wipes his hand on the bar cloth and sticks it out to me. “Nice to see you again, Mallory. You two were a real cute couple. You stay in touch at all?”

“Not really.” I take his fingers in a brief clasp. “Not at all, actually.”

“That’s a shame.” He glances to the door and lowers his voice. “You know he’s playing a couple sets here tomorrow.”

“What?” screeches Paige.

I’m feeling a little dizzy. “I thought he was out of town.”

“Called me up this morning. He’s sailing in tomorrow, on the down-low. I don’t know, maybe some kind of wedding surprise for the missus-to-be? Said he’d come around here in the evening and try out some new stuff on the local crowd. That’s a secret,” Mike adds, pointing a warning finger at each of us.

Paige zips her lips. “In the vault.”

For some reason, as we trudge outside to the Club Car, blinking like moles at the high midsummer sun, what socks me in the gut is not the news of Monk’s impending arrival nor the notion of him—literal rock star—playing sets on the beer-stained microstage of the Mo.

It’s the words missus-to-be.

Lola spanks me on the bottom. “Dark horse. You held that one close to your chest.”

“You have no idea,” Paige mutters.

“It was nothing,” I say. “It lasted about a minute.”

“Oh, I hear he lasts a lot longer than that.” Lola struggles into the driver’s seat. “Shit. What am I missing?”

“Your sobriety?”

“We’ll be okay. It’s just a golf cart, right? Can’t hurt anybody.” She snaps her fingers. “The brake. That’s it.”

We start forward, up Harbor Street toward West Cliff Road. I sit back in the seat and close my eyes. The sun scorches through my eyelids, not nearly enough to cauterize the memories underneath.

Missus-to-be.

Maybe it would be easier if I didn’t know what she looks like. It’s impossible not to know what she looks like, even if—like me—you turn away from every tabloid photo of Monk Adams on every supermarket checkout line and online news feed on which he flashes his famous grin. In that split second, you get an eyeful.

She’s not a bimbo. That would be too easy. No exaggerated Barbie features. She’s tall and graceful and looks equally fabulous in an evening gown (posing on Monk’s arm at the Grammys) or casual attire (laughing at Monk’s side in their engagement photo shoot in People—“Monk’s Getting Hitched!”) or, naturally, a bikini (splashing Monk in the ocean on vacation in Fiji). Paige once caught me glancing at one of those magazine covers and said, You do realize she looks like you, right? And Paige has a point. You could make a case that we have the same kind of hair, the same type of pretty. But Lennox is the shiny version of me, like somebody ran me through a few Photoshop filters until I came out perfect.

Which somehow makes it worse. I’m the rough draft; she’s the finished copy.

The Club Car crawls along. “I could walk faster than this,” says Paige. “Do you want me to drive?”

“It’s just the hill,” Lola says. She does that glancing thing in the rearview, except this time I’m sitting behind Paige so she has to adjust the mirror to get a look at me. “So tell me about it. You and Monk.”

“She doesn’t like to talk about it,” says Paige. “Trust me, I’ve tried.”

“All right, all right. I respect your privacy.” She drums her thumbs on the top of the steering wheel. The road flattens out as we reach the summit. The cliffs fall away to the right. Greyfriars swings by on its lonely point.

True to Lola’s word, the Club Car picks up a little speed. I close my eyes again and this time the canopy of the golf cart shields my lids from the sun. I hear Bessie’s bass rumble, hauling me up West Cliff Road for the first time. The drum of rain on the roof. Monk’s right hand on the wheel at twelve o’clock, his left elbow on the door. Window rolled down to let in the fresh, wet air. Monk’s reassuring grin, like nothing bad could ever happen to you on his watch.

I open my eyes and straighten my back. The sun must have gotten to me; I’m seeing spots. We pass the guard shack—wave, wave—and my heart starts to pound. My stomach lurches. I reach forward and tap Lola on the shoulder.

“I think I’m going to be sick,” I tell her.

The Club Car slams to a stop. I stumble out of my seat and bend over the meadow grass.

Back at the house, the kids are playing pickleball. I’m still a little light-headed, so I ask Lola for directions to the kitchen for a glass of water and find myself, five minutes later, staring into a small room resembling a junk sale.

“Can I help you?” asks a deep, attractive baritone.

I do a startled half-spin to find myself face-to-face with a dark-haired man about my age, wearing a faded green polo shirt untucked over a pair of yellow swim trunks.

“You know, you look exactly like your voice,” I tell him.

His eyebrows rise. “Is that good or bad?”

“It’s a start. I’m looking for the kitchen?”

He glances over my shoulder. “I don’t mean to hurt your feelings, but you’re not even close.”

“To be fair, the directions were pretty lousy.”

“Lola?”

“Drunk Lola.”

He nods. “Follow me.”

Obediently I trail after him through a series of rooms until we reach the Summerly kitchen, which is like every kitchen on Winthrop—eighty years old, vintage appliances upgraded on an as-needed basis. In the middle of a seventies Formica table sits a seventeenth-century blue-and-white Ming dynasty bowl filled with lemons and limes. My tour guide opens the door of a Frigidaire that might have arrived here from the set of I Love Lucy and asks what he can get for me.

“Glass of water is all.”

“Rough afternoon?”

“Lola dragged us to the Mo.”

“Ouch.”

“No kidding. Can you point me to the cups?”

He closes the fridge and steps to one of the cabinets. A jumble of mismatched glass tumblers fills a shelf lined with curling floral paper. He checks a specimen for chips and fills it for me from the sink. “Ice? Lemon?”

“Ice, no thanks. Lemon, yes please.”

As he yanks a knife from the block and whacks a lemon into four quarters, I find myself studying the back of his tanned neck. The curl of his dark hair. He’s not quite as tall as Monk, but a solid inch over six feet.

“Voilà.” He hands me the glass.

“Much obliged, Mr….?”

“Peabody. Sedge Peabody. Son of the first Sedge Peabody.”

“Sedge Peabody the Second. Any relation to the owner of this dive?”

“My granny. I’m just down for a few days to keep an eye on her. You know, make sure she doesn’t throw any swinger parties. Drink up all the gin.”

“Kind of a wild child, Granny?”

“You have no idea. Lucky for me, she’s upstairs finishing up a book this week.”

“Big reader, then.”

“Not reading. Writing. Ms….?”

I transfer the water glass to my left hand and hold out my right. “Dunne. Mallory Dunne. The First. Apologies for invading your home and burglarizing your water.”

Sedge’s clasp is warm and firm. “Mallory Dunne the First. The invasion is a welcome one, trust me. And I don’t think it’s burglary if your host serves you the item in question? You’ll have to confirm that with Lola, though. I dropped out of law school after year one.”

“Oh, a screwup! Like me.”

“Every family’s got one.” Sedge Peabody folds his arms over his chest and squints upward at a faint brown stain on the ceiling. He has a thick jaw, a hockey jaw. A slight bump on the bridge of his nose. “So. Are you staying for the weekend, Mallory the First?”

“Just the night. You?”

“About to take Granny back to Boston for a doctor’s appointment, sadly. Just when the day was starting to get interesting.”

“Ships passing in the night. Story of my life. But I appreciate the pause for refreshment.” I knock back the rest of the water and set the glass in the sink. “Sedge the Second. Before you go, would you mind directing me to the pickleball court?”

An hour later, we’re lounging on the Summerly terrace, watching the kids run back and forth in the sand. Paige kicks up her feet on a wicker ottoman. “This is the life,” she says. “Seriously. I could stay all summer.”

“Seriously? I wish you would.” Lola cracks open a pink lemonade Spindrift to pour over her vodka. “Relieve the fucking boredom.”

I stare across the glistening ocean, the gold light. “Boredom?”

She sips her drink and closes her eyes. “Nine years ago I was a law associate in New York. Eighty-, hundred-hour weeks. Asshole boss. Couldn’t go on maternity leave fast enough. Now look at me. Just fucking look.”

“Looks pretty good from here.”

She rolls her head toward me and opens her eyes. “So, I hear you ran into Sedge.”

“Thanks to your shitty directions. How did you know?”

“He texted me.” She shrugs and turns back to the sun, closing her eyes. A smile bends the edge of her mouth.

Paige reaches out and pokes me with her toe. “You know what you should do, Mal? You should go for a walk.”

“A walk?”

“Memory Lane and everything? Go. We’ll watch the kids.”

“For sure,” says Lola. “Enjoy some me time before dinner.”

In my head, there’s a map of Winthrop Island that doesn’t bear much resemblance to the one you find on an atlas, or your iPhone. Take West Cliff Road almost to the village and then veer left toward the airfield and the deserted army base with the bunkers the kids like to explore on cloudy days. Keep walking past the eighth hole at the Winthrop Island Club and pass through the gap in the shrubbery to the Monk estate. Head right out of Seagrapes and follow the bluffs downhill toward the Huxley place and the Pinkertons. Skirt the inlet that gets a little marshy at high tide and you come to the edge of the Summerly beach, where I stand now, a million years later.

I look back over my shoulder at the terrace. Paige lifts her arm and makes a shooing gesture.

The sun strikes my hair. I forgot to bring a hat, just the oversize Chanel sunglasses I borrowed from Paige. I’m wearing a faded striped T-shirt dress, a pair of flip-flops. My mother’s bracelet. No watch or phone. Out to sea, a single white triangular sail arcs toward shore.

I turn to my left and the reeds that line the rim of the inlet. I pick my way around until I reach the firmer ground, where the shore starts its climb to the bluffs.

It’s funny, I must have walked this stretch dozens of times that summer. With the twins, with Monk. It hasn’t changed. Why would it? The long grass, undulating in the breeze. The shrubs huddled in the sandy soil. The beach rose, spilling almost to the edge of the bluff, so you have to tread with care until the ground curves back out to form a point—the tip of the cove that forms the beach—and the sea roses fall back and break off altogether where the Adams property starts.

Here, the slope reaches its peak and the view from this point grabs your breath from your chest. You can see everything from Rhode Island to Block Island to Long Island, the tide racing past the Fleet Rock lighthouse and the broad, wild Atlantic Ocean. There are tears in my eyes, but it’s just the wind. Not because of this feeling in my gut like a sucker punch.

Go back, I tell myself. Turn around and go back.

But my eyes can’t resist sliding down the side of the bluff to the beach tucked into the cove below.

Nobody there.

If I glance toward the house—hidden by the sea grapes that give the property its name—I can’t see a breath of movement, not a sign of human life. Thank God. I wonder if Monk ever goes inside, whether he’s still close with Chippy and Blue. Who spends the summers there now. On the other side of Seagrapes lies the Monk estate, which will be bustling tomorrow with staff and security, with entourage. With wedding planners, probably, doing whatever it is that wedding planners do. With Monk. Maybe his fiancée too.

Today, I might be the single person on the island. Only the wind moves.

I find the path and start down the bluff.

The beach is as still and soft as I remember. I kick off my flip-flops and the sand oozes between my toes. The light has just begun to turn gold. With my left hand I turn the bracelet on my wrist.

Like I said, I try to avoid the tabloids, if at all possible. But you know how you’re standing there at the supermarket checkout and you’ve got nothing else to do, nowhere else to look. If I’d opted for the self-checkout that day, eight months ago, I might have missed the headline altogether, and the next week they would have been screaming something else. But I had a lot of vegetables that needed weighing, so I went to the cashier lane and there it was, In Touch magazine, this picture of a grief-hung Monk Adams and his girlfriend, wearing tasteful black. My Father’s Son, the headline read, and underneath it, Monk Adams Pays Tribute to Father Who Supported His Dreams of Stardom, which just goes to show you how much truth you get in a tabloid article.

I went into a trance. I stared at Monk’s face, stared at the words.

Dead, I thought. Mr. Adams had died.

A hundred questions assaulted me. How did he die? When? Where? How was Monk coping, was he grieving, did he get a chance to say goodbye?

I remember leaving my groceries on the belt and walking out of the Stop and Shop. I got inside my car and stared through the windshield until the tears started flowing and turned into sobs. Someone knocked on the window and asked if I was okay. I nodded yes, I was okay. I turned the ignition and drove all the way home before I realized I’d left my groceries behind.

On my wrist, the cobra is warm from the sun. The eyes twinkle. I lift my gaze to the sea, rushing against the shore, and figure that if I drew a line along the globe from my eyes out across the ocean, I might reach Ireland. Where my mother was born. Where her mother gave her this bracelet that sits on my wrist, and then gave her away.

For a moment, I imagine I can see her rising from the water, gleaming, this mysterious grandmother and her secrets.

Then I realize it’s not my imagination. Someone really is rising from the water, shoulders wide, bare skin gleaming, dark trunks slung from his hips, feet kicking foam from the surf. He shakes the water from his hair and meets my petrified eyes.

His expression turns to shock.

“Holy shit,” he says. “Pinks?”