Jake nearly responds, Yes, sir, I do—that’s how persuasive Dwayne Peters is. The Second Amendment is as ironclad as the right to free speech or freedom of religion. The nation’s forefathers weren’t wrong. But they were wrong, Ursula would point out. Because back then, only white men had the right to vote.

So instead, Jake says, “I’ll see you tomorrow, sir. I look forward to learning more about the NRA.”

That night, Jake is sitting at the coffee table eating a bologna sandwich—even with the AC running, it’s too hot to cook anything—when Ursula walks in. She’s in her travel clothes—linen pants and crisp white shirt.

“Hey,” she says. She drops her suitcase and her briefcase and drapes her garment bag over the railing. She looks sad. Or maybe just defeated. The bubble over her head is…empty.

Jake doesn’t care. He returns to his sandwich, cracks open the beer that’s sweating in front of him. He’s sitting around in his boxers just like she predicted he would be. He resents Ursula showing up without warning; if he’d known she was coming home, he would have put on pants.

“I’m not going to apologize for leaving,” he says. “And I’m not going to apologize for making you leave Vegas, because that was your choice.”

“You didn’t make me leave,” she says. “The deal is done. We closed.”

“Oh,” Jake says. He knows he should feel happy about this but he wants to believe that Ursula left Las Vegas because she’s putting their marriage first. “Well, you’ll be pleased to know I have a job interview tomorrow. With the NRA.”

“The NRA?” Ursula says, and she makes a noise that sounds like a cough or a laugh. Her expression is incredulous. “You might want to cancel that. Haven’t you seen the news?”

That very afternoon, in the town of Mulligan, Ohio, a seventeen-year-old boy whose name was being withheld walked into his summer-school class with an AK-47 and killed twelve students, his teacher, and himself. It’s all over the news. The boy purchased the gun at a Walmart. No one asked him for ID. He paid in cash, walked out of the store with the gun and thirty rounds of ammo, and drove to his high school to show everyone just how much he hated summer school.

“Don’t worry,” Ursula says. “Something else will turn up.”

Jake’s only worry is that he even considered working for the NRA. He remembers the long-ago phone conversation he had with Mallory while they were both still in college. I’m one of the good guys, Mallory. He’s going to make sure that’s true.

Ursula gets no downtime. The week following the shooting, she’s assigned as the lead attorney—a tremendous honor—on a case in Lubbock, Texas. Lubbock is closer than Las Vegas, but it takes longer to get there because there aren’t any direct flights. Commuting home on the weekends won’t be feasible, though staying in Lubbock is no treat; they’ll have her at a Hyatt Place near the Texas Tech campus. Ursula can’t see any reason for Jake to visit. There is nothing to do but work.

“I hope Anders is on your team?” Jake says when she tells him about the assignment, though he doesn’t.

“Oh, he is,” Ursula says. “We do well together. He gets me. They assigned Mark to a different case, so it’s me, Anders, a first-year associate named AJ, and two paralegals.” She pauses. “AJ looks like a supermodel. I bet she and Anders will be engaged by the time we finish.”

Jake knows Ursula far too well for him to relax at this statement. She never, ever comments on other women’s looks; to Ursula, the value of a woman is how smart she is, how competent, how interesting, so she is saying this simply to put Jake’s mind at ease. But why?

“I feel bad leaving you alone for the rest of the summer,” she says. “We didn’t get a chance to go away.”

“It’s fine,” Jake says. “Your career comes first.”

Ursula wraps her arms around him. “Will you go to Nantucket?” she asks. “On Labor Day weekend?”

“Yes,” Jake says.

He arrives on Nantucket on Friday and Mallory is there to pick him up at the airport in the Blazer. However, instead of driving down the no-name road toward the cottage, she heads into town.

“Uh-oh,” he says. “Are we changing up the program?”

“’Fraid so,” she says. She pulls into one of the reserved spots in front of the A and P and Jake feels a heightened sense of concern. Town means people and people means a greater chance of bumping into someone he knows. The past couple of summers they have frequently seen Mallory’s students or former students or parents of students while they were out and about. Mallory always introduces him as “our family friend Jake,” which makes their relationship sound platonic and innocent while also being true. But even so, Jake is uncomfortable. He feels like he’s wearing a T-shirt that says I’M CHEATING ON MY WIFE.

He lost all his chips in one fell swoop in Vegas, but the real gamble he takes is coming to Nantucket every year like this. He wonders what the odds are that they’ll never be discovered. A thousand to one?

“Where are we going?” Even across the parking lot, he can hear the end-of-summer revelry over at the Gazebo. He imagines that crowd peppered with people from Hopkins, Notre Dame, Georgetown, all waiting for him like land mines.

“I bought a boat,” she says. “We’re going to Tuckernuck!”

The back of the Blazer is packed with grocery bags and Mallory’s monogrammed duffel. They carry all the supplies down the dock to a slip where a sleek sailboat awaits. It’s called Greta, and it has one 250-horsepower Yamaha motor hanging off the back. The hull is painted teal blue and there’s a small cabin below. Jake can’t believe it.

“This is yours?”

“Meet my Contessa Twenty-Six,” Mallory says. She goes on to say that she got the sailboat the same way she got her bike and the Blazer—someone wanted to get rid of it. “When I broke up with the Newport guy, I realized that the thing I missed most about him was spending time on the water. So I took sailing lessons. I just finished the advanced course last week.”

Yes, Jake remembers her mentioning the sailing lessons the year before. He also recalls being jealous of her instructor, Christopher, until she let it slip that Christopher was nearly eighty years old. “Is this Christopher’s boat?” Jake asks. “Did Christopher die?”

“He’s still alive,” Mallory says. “But he can’t sail anymore, his wife made him stop. So he basically gave me his boat. All I had to do was hire his friend Sergei to do the overhaul.” She climbs aboard in bare feet and Jake sheds his shoes and follows. “And I bought a new motor. Not cheap, but completely worth it.”

“Good job, Mal,” Jake says. “I’m so proud of you.” He pops downstairs to the cabin, which is simple but cozy; there’s a galley kitchen, a navigation table, a V-shaped berth, and a head. “So where did you say we were going again?”

They’re going to Tuckernuck, which is a completely separate island within spitting distance of the west coast of Nantucket but a world apart. Tuckernuck is private; only the people who own property there and their guests are allowed. There are twenty-two homes serviced by generators and wells. There are no public buildings on Tuckernuck, not even a general store. There is no internet, no cable TV, and limited cell service.