Mallory starts taking Roxanne running with her. She lets Roxanne sleep on the green tweed sofa.

As Mallory is teaching her senior creative-writing class at the end of the day—it’s the first year for this; Mallory lobbied to make it an elective—there’s a knock on the classroom door. Mallory opens it to find Apple holding the most beautiful bouquet of flowers Mallory has ever seen.

“These arrived for you,” Apple says. “Guess who sent them.”

The card says: Just because. Love, Scott.

Mallory decides to do something nice and unexpected for Scott. The next day, she leaves school during her lunch period, picks up a Turkey Terrific sandwich from Provisions, and takes it to the office at the storage center.

Scott has an administrative assistant named Lori Spaulding; Mallory knows her slightly. She’s a single mom like Mallory and has a daughter a year older than Link. The two of them used to cross paths at Small Friends, dropping the kids off and picking them up. “Hey, Lori,” Mallory says. “I brought lunch for the boss. Is he in?”

Lori takes a beat. “He is. Let me get him.”

“Or if he’s busy, I can just drop it?” Mallory says.

“I’m sure he’ll want to see you,” Lori says. There’s an edge to her gravelly voice. “I hear you two are having quite the whirlwind romance.”

That night on the phone, Mallory says, “Were you and Lori ever involved romantically?”

Scott laughs. “Not at all. Why?”

Mallory isn’t sure what to say. She got a vibe. Lori likes Scott; she’s jealous of Mallory. Why Mallory and not me? she probably thinks. Why indeed? Lori is pretty; she has blond hair that’s always in an impeccable French braid. Mallory admired this long before Scott was in the picture and wondered how a single working mother could have such good hair. Did she get up an hour early to do it? Did she use two mirrors? And was it just a natural talent? Mallory would never in a million years acquire the skill because French braiding is one of the many mysteries of being a woman that has eluded her. She puts her hair up in an elastic, and even then, her ponytails are off-center.

“She’s attractive. She has that sexy voice. She’s single.”

“She does nothing for me,” Scott says.

The holidays approach. Mallory goes home to Baltimore for Thanksgiving; Scott stays on Nantucket. He cooks for all the guys who are working for him, many of whom are single and don’t have anywhere else to go but the bar.

Mallory misses him while she’s away. She calls him from behind the closed door of her childhood bedroom because she doesn’t want her mother or Coop to overhear her. She loves the sound of his voice. She loves how he’s deep-frying a turkey in the backyard for the guys and making cornbread dressing and brussels sprouts that he saw Tyler Florence make on the Food Network. He tells her he’s going into town the next night to see the tree lighting—at five o’clock, all the Christmas trees on Main and Centre will light up at once—and Mallory gets jealous, wondering who he’s going with, wondering if maybe he’s going with Lori and her daughter, wondering if they’ll go get a drink at the Brotherhood afterward.

Missing him and feeling jealous are good signs, she thinks. They’re on the right track.

Around Christmas, Link goes up to Vermont to spend the holiday with Fray and Anna, and Mallory and Scott become inseparable. They alternate between spending the night in town at his house, which Mallory likes because the Winter Street Inn across the street is all decked out for the holidays, and at Mallory’s cottage, which she likes because Scott “planted” a small Christmas tree on the beach and rigged it with white lights and it gives Mallory such joy to look out her kitchen window and see it. They attend the annual Christmas pageant at the Congregational church; they shop in town and get hot chocolate with homemade marshmallows at the Even Keel Café. Two days before Christmas, it snows, and they put on boots and walk Roxanne into town early in the morning to take pictures of Main Street, silent and shrouded in pure white. Then they let Roxanne off her leash and she skids down the street like a kid on skates.

On Christmas Eve, they go to the annual party at the Winter Street Inn and hang out with Kelley and Mitzi and the police chief, Ed Kapenash, and Dabney Kimball Beech from the Chamber of Commerce and Dr. Major and Apple and Hugo. Ava Quinn sits down at the piano and plays carols and Mallory nearly chokes up as they sing “O Come, All Ye Faithful” because she has now lived on this island for ten years and look at the community she has built. It was an act of faith, moving here. Aunt Greta had told Mallory long ago that Nantucket chose people and that it had chosen Mallory, but she feels this with absolute certainty only right in this instant.

Scott must notice her moment of introspection because he squeezes her hand.

They drink Mitzi’s mulled cider (it’s strong; Mallory can handle only a few sips before she switches to wine) and they eat the pine-cone cheese ball and stuffed dates, and by the time Mallory and Scott stumble across the street, it’s after midnight and already Christmas.

On the afternoon of New Year’s Eve, they take a long beach walk with Roxanne. The sun is low in the white sky; it’s cold. The waves pummel the shore like they’re trying to make a point. This is winter on Nantucket, and it’s only just beginning.

As they are about to go back up to the cottage to prepare for their New Year’s Eve festivities—Apple and Hugo are coming over for fondue and a bottle of Krug that Scott insisted on splurging on—Scott says, “Hey, I want to tell you something.”

The tone of his voice sets off an alarm. A confession is coming: He is married after all; he does have a child, or children, who are living overseas in Dubai. The project on Old South Road isn’t affordable housing but a front for the Mob. Scott has a gambling problem. He’s a cocaine addict. He’s sleeping with Lori.

“What is it?” she says.

“I love you,” he says.

Mallory closes her eyes. She is seized by panic. She isn’t sure what to do. Why is she not prepared for this? Any idiot could have seen this was where things were headed.

“I love you too,” she says, then immediately hates herself. She is suggestible and easily swayed, just like Leland told Fifi so many years earlier.

She’s lying to Scott. She doesn’t love him. She really, really likes him. She thinks he’s a wonderful person. He’s smart and kind and sexy and funny and absolutely wonderful with Link. She’s happy every time he walks in the door; she feels a ping of pleasure every time he calls. He has filled a void for her and for Link that she didn’t even realize was there. Her relationship with Scott has been a joyride. It has been heady infatuation. She loves having a partner in crime. And it has been luxurious, all the ways big and small that he’s made life on this island easier for her with his companionship, his ardor for her. She has spent the past three and a half months being adored. Flowers delivered to her classroom! A house in town and one at the beach! The little cartoons he leaves for her all the time now that he knows how much she enjoys them. This is the stuff other women dream of. Mallory and Scott can get married at the Sconset Chapel; Roxanne will wear a wreath of white roses around her neck, and Link a tiny tux. There is still plenty of time for Mallory to have another baby.