Don’t overreact, Carter had said. It’s not exactly a fortune.

It damn well is so, Siobhan had countered. She was the one who counted the beans. When Carter decided to quit his job as head chef at the Galley Restaurant and start a catering business, it was because of the kids, because of the flexible scheduling, being his own boss. That was all well and good, but there would be no barter up in lifestyle if money kept flying out the door. For Siobhan, owning a business meant anguish and indigestion day in and day out.

They did one big job in November: the private Montessori school dinner auction. Siobhan liked doing this dinner. Because it was her only big job between wedding season and the holidays, she was able to give it time and careful attention, and each year, it was a masterpiece. This year the theme was the Far East. Siobhan dropped the boys at school and went straight to the catering kitchen, which was located in the back half of a commercial building out by the airport. It started to snow on her way there, which brightened her mood. Siobhan was a fan of layered sensory stimulation. She unlocked the door to the kitchen, made herself a cup of Irish breakfast, and put on a Chieftains CD, which Carter did not tolerate at home. The first snow of the year was falling in feathery bits out the window. Siobhan pulled her notebook out of her purse. She was in charge of the appetizers and dessert; Carter would do the entrée. Her appetizers were duck, mango, and scallion spring rolls for one hundred, sesame-crusted rare tuna on cucumber rounds with pickled ginger and wasabi for one hundred, and jumbo shrimp satay with peanut dipping sauce for one hundred. For dessert, she was making a complicated passion fruit and coconut cream parfait with macadamia nut brittle, which Carter called her crazy as Larry for even attempting. But hey, this was her masterpiece. Would he rather she was at home, picking up the boys’ disgusting excuse for a bedroom, or lamenting the many ways she might have spent the money that he had flushed down the loo with the disappointing Patriots? Siobhan loved Carter, and she had sworn on the altar that she would always love him, yes, but he was bringing her down.

The tea was steaming, the Irishmen keening, the snow piling up. Don’t think about a weekend in Stowe! Siobhan started with the peanut sauce. Technically, Siobhan’s mother had taught her to cook, though the porridge and cabbage and finnan haddie of Siobhan’s youth in no way resembled the delights that now came out of her kitchen. She was all about flavor and color and decadence; she was Liberace playing poolside, candelabra ablaze, while her mother’s cooking was like the parish organist, dutifully banging out another funeral dirge.

As Siobhan sautéed onions and garlic and ginger in peanut oil, the phone rang. She looked around the empty kitchen, confused. It was the kitchen phone and not her cell phone, which was unusual. On her way to answer the phone, she saw the machine held six messages. Six!

“Hello?” she said.

“Siobhan? Is that you?”

The voice. She laughed, not because she was amused, but because she was caught off guard.

“Edward?”

“Hi,” he said.

Well, he would be more nervous than she was. Edward Melior, her former fiancé. They lived on the same island, which was four miles wide, thirteen miles long, and yet she rarely saw him. Maybe once or twice a month they passed each other in their cars. Edward always waved, but Siobhan never realized it was him until he was in her rearview mirror. What was becoming more common was that Edward would attend an event Siobhan was catering—she had a way of sensing when he was going to be there—and she would stay in the tent, or give the whole thing to Carter. It wasn’t that she was avoiding Edward Melior; she just didn’t want to have to offer him a canapé.

“Hi,” she said. “What’s up?”

“How are you?” He said this the way he always said it: How are you? As if he really wanted to know. He really did want to know; he had a zealous interest in other people. He remembered their names, their children’s names, their situations—if they were thinking of buying a new car, or if they were caring for an elderly parent, or if their dog had just died. This was stuff he cataloged in his brain. It was unusual how much he remembered, how much he genuinely cared. It was feminine. But that was why he was a great (and wealthy) real estate agent. People lapped it up.

“Oh, I’m fine,” Siobhan said breezily. She recalled the flowers Edward had sent to the house when Liam broke his arm. They were pink calla lilies, Siobhan’s favorite, about fifty of them, fantastically expensive. She got rid of them before Liam and Carter came home from Boston. She hadn’t sent a note for the flowers, which was monstrous, but dealing with Edward was tricky. He loved her still. He took every communication from her as a sign that they would reunite.

They had been together during Siobhan’s first four years on the island. When she was scooping ice cream and making sandwiches at Congdon’s Pharmacy, he was handling rentals at the real estate office upstairs. Edward was charmed by Siobhan’s accent (which she found ludicrous); he fell in love immediately. Because Edward had far more money and knew far more people than Siobhan did, he assumed the role of Henry Higgins to her Eliza Doolittle. He believed he’d “discovered” her. Looking back, Siobhan was annoyed at how she’d played along with this notion. She became the pantry girl at the Galley and then the garde-manger, and then a line cook at lunch. Edward always referred to her as a chef, which wasn’t accurate, but she never corrected him. He, meanwhile, had acquired a broker’s license and was thinking of going out on his own, which sounded to Siobhan like a reckless idea. The Nantucket real estate market was a gold mine, a diamond mine; brokers were printing their own money, yes, but Edward was such a good, sweet, accommodating guy that Siobhan feared he would get swallowed up. (She came by this doomsday attitude honestly—she was Irish!) Before Edward set up shop, they got engaged—on a perfect autumn afternoon at Altar Rock. Edward had champagne and berries and melon and pink calla lilies, and he got down on one knee and presented a whopper of a ring. Will you be my wife? Siobhan laughed, covering her mouth, and nodded, because who would say no to such a beautiful, well-orchestrated proposal? It was only after the engagement was a publicly known fact, after it had been in the newspaper, after Edward’s parents had thrown a party at their house on Cliff Road, that Siobhan began to falter. She didn’t believe in Edward, and she realized that Edward didn’t believe in her. Why else would he tell people she was a chef, when in fact she stood at a sauté pan for twelve hours a day making goat cheese omelets and lobster eggs Benedict? She grew less fond of the idea that she was a piece of Irish white trash that Edward had picked from the rubbish bin, and she became increasingly annoyed by Edward’s interest in her every thought and mood. She had grown up in a family of eight children; no one had paid attention that closely to Siobhan, ever. She yearned to be left alone with her interior life rather than to explain it.