The health scare was a mild heart attack, caused by stress and coffee and cigarettes—and cocaine, he admits. He quit the stress, the cigarettes, and the cocaine. “But not the coffee,” he says.

“But you did quit the cocaine?” Mallory asks. She knows she sounds like a federal prosecutor, but that’s because suddenly Krystel is at the table.

“Yes,” he says.

He likes to surf-cast and walk in the moors with Roxanne, his Lab, who’s six years old; he bought her right after the divorce. He plays golf and recently joined the club at Miacomet. He’s going to stay in his rental on Winter Street through next spring, though he’s looking to buy a house in town.

Houses in town start at a million dollars, Mallory thinks. She banishes Kitty from the table once again.

“This has been incredibly one-sided,” he says. “When are we going to talk about you?”

“Next date,” Mallory says.

Scott drives Mallory home to the cottage. There’s no question about inviting him in because Mallory asked Ava Quinn to babysit for Link. It was almost too convenient—Scott brought Ava over when he picked Mallory up, since Ava lives right across the street from him, and he’ll take Ava home.

Mallory lets Scott kiss her good night. The kiss is lovely—warm, sweet. There’s chemistry. Mallory tries not to think about kissing Jake goodbye in nearly the exact same spot two weeks earlier before he climbed into his rental Jeep and drove to the airport.

Just go away, she tells Jake in her mind. Let me see if this works.

Mallory and Scott go on a second date—to Le Languedoc for their famous cheeseburger with garlic fries—and then to the Club Car to sing at the piano bar. Mallory requests “Tiny Dancer,” and Scott throws twenty bucks in the glass jar. It’s a fun night. Scott knows people; the bartender greets him by name and they bump into two of his site foremen at the bar and Scott is gracious, introducing Mallory and buying them a round of drinks.

On their third date, they take both Link and Roxanne out to Sconset. They do the bluff walk with its uninterrupted views of the Atlantic Ocean to the right and magnificent homes to the left. For some reason, Link wants to hold Scott’s hand, so the two of them go up ahead and Mallory takes Roxanne’s leash and follows. This switcheroo is immediately unsettling to Mallory. Link and Scott could too easily be mistaken for father and son, and Mallory is talking to Roxanne like she’s her dog.

They wander around Sconset, peeking into pocket gardens, some of which are still lush with flowers and a second bloom of climbing roses. They peer at the tiny cottages, built in the 1700s, when people were smaller. Scott leads them down New Street toward the Chanticleer with the famous carousel horse out front and then farther down to the quaint, shingled Sconset Chapel.

“Could you ever see getting married here?” Scott asks Mallory.

“Did you just ask that on our third date?” she says. “What’s wrong with you?”

He puts his arm around her shoulders and squeezes. She still has Roxanne’s leash wrapped around her wrist, and Scott has Link’s hand, and they’re like a little family unit—except they’re not. “I like you, Mallory.”

You don’t know me, she wants to say. She’s told him basically her whole life story—Kitty and Senior, Coop and his two failed marriages, Aunt Greta and Ruthie, Leland and Fifi, Apple and Hugo, Dr. Major; she even told him the story about Jeremiah Freehold. They talked at length about Fray and why Mallory decided on single motherhood. Although Scott has learned all this—he’s a very good listener—he still doesn’t know her.

What does it take to know a person?

Time. It takes time.

Will Scott still think she’s so wonderful when she has the stomach flu or he hears her on the phone with the parent of a student who’s underperforming? Will he think she’s a good mother when she snaps at Link for splashing in the bathtub or when she skips reading stories because she’s too tired? Will he find her fun when she informs him that she can never see him on Fridays during the school year because Fridays are for Apple? She doesn’t like lima beans or beans of any kind; she has no sense of direction; she doesn’t care for the theater and last year went home during the intermission of the high-school musical. She has so many flaws, so many areas that need improvement, and yet Mallory lacks the time and energy to work on them. She doesn’t make a charitable donation to Link’s day care because she pays so much in tuition already, even though she could, technically, afford an extra hundred bucks. She never watches the news and doesn’t know who the prime minister of the UK is. Well, yes, she knows it’s Tony Blair, but don’t ask her anything else about Great Britain. The president of France? She would say Mitterrand, though she suspects that’s wrong; Mitterrand might even be dead. She reads the Inquirer and Mirror but only to make sure there’s no one she knows in the police blotter; she has never once attended town meeting. He couldn’t find a less informed person. Well, except she does know about celebrities because she did, this year, get a subscription to People magazine, which was thirty bucks she could have donated to the day care.

Will any of this bother him once he figures it out?

After their fourth date—they go to see Love, Actually at the Dreamland and then to the Pearl for tuna martinis and passionfruit cosmos—Mallory agrees to go back to Scott’s house on Winter Street, and they sleep together. The sex is good—better than good! Scott is the right balance of gentle and firm. He knows what he’s doing.

Later, as Mallory lies in his bed—which is high and wide and, because it’s now October, made up with flannel sheets in a navy plaid——he brings her a glass of ice water and a couple of coconut macaroons on a plate, and after she devours them he says, “Let’s get you home. And no arguing—I’m paying the babysitter.”

Full steam ahead; they become a couple.

They bundle up to watch the Nantucket–Martha’s Vineyard football game; they pick out pumpkins at Bartlett’s Farm and carve jack-o’-lanterns with Link. Mallory starts calling Scott at his office when she gets home from school to tell him about her day. He learns all the kids’ names—Max and Matthew, Katie and Tiffany and Bridget and the two Michaels—and their backstories. He memorizes her schedule.

The first week in November is unusually mild and Scott plays eighteen holes of golf. Mallory and Link go to meet him at the club when he’s finished and Mallory admires how lean and strong he looks in his golf clothes. Even his spikes look good on him. He finds a child-size putter and takes Link over to the practice green. He bends over and wraps his arms around Link to show him how to hold the club. They tap the ball into the cup again and again; Link loves pulling the ball out and starting over.

The towel bar in Mallory’s bathroom falls off and Scott asks if it’s okay if he comes over while Mallory is at school to fix it. She hesitates. She never let JD fix anything in the cottage and she certainly would never have let JD prowl around when she wasn’t home. However, she surprises herself by saying, Sure, that would be great. The towel bar has been lying on the floor for over a week; she’s been too busy to pull out her drill.

The towel bar is fixed the same day he offers and he leaves her a cute little cartoon of the two of them kissing. The cartoon is good—he’s a real artist, like his father must have been; Mallory tapes the cartoon to the fridge.