Mallory checks in with Apple on Friday morning—Picnic prep, see you tomorrow, 5:30?—to which Apple responds, Kk, their faux-high-school-student response, but sends nothing else.

Mallory knows that Apple has been flattened by both exhaustion and nausea and she also knows that Apple will have an ultrasound at Beth Israel in Boston at eleven o’clock on Saturday morning, which has Apple on edge. She has a feeling that “something is up” with the baby.

At one o’clock on Saturday afternoon, Mallory finishes with the picnic. She has made Sarah Chase’s Asian carrot dip, which she’s serving with rice crackers; rare roast beef, Boursin, and arugula pinwheel sandwiches; chicken-and-potato salad with celery and chives; a marinated cucumber salad from the trusty Baltimore Junior League cookbook; and lemon bars with a coconut shortbread crust. Does a more perfect picnic exist? Mallory thinks not.

She hasn’t heard from Apple yet, which is a little surprising. And by two o’clock, Mallory’s mind travels to that forbidden place where “something is up” with the baby becomes “something is wrong” with the baby.

At two thirty, Mallory sends an exploratory but non-prying text: You good?

There’s no response, which is very unlike Apple. But they’re off-island so maybe her phone died or maybe, in the excitement of the day, she forgot her phone altogether. It’s possible.

By four o’clock there has still been no word from either Apple or Hugo, and when Mallory calls Apple, she’s banished straight to voicemail. Should Mallory and Link go to the Pops without them, set up camp as usual in the back, and just expect them to show?

Yes, she decides. She puts Link in a pair of star-spangled swim trunks and a white polo shirt and combs his blond hair and kisses each of his cheeks fifty times. She tickles him until he squeals, then sits him on her lap to secure the Velcro straps of his sandals. She is so lucky she has a healthy child.

Apple will have a healthy child too, she thinks. A girl, maybe, who will grow up to marry Link.

Mallory parks on North Beach Street and she and Link join the masses who are marching toward Bathing Beach Road. Mallory is holding the picnic hamper in one hand and Link’s hand in the other, so when her phone rings, she has to stop, put the hamper down, and tell Link, “Stay right there,” while everyone moving around them grumbles. Sorry, people, Mallory has to take this call. She knows it’s Apple.

Probably she’s calling to say they missed the boat and they’ll be late. “Apple?”

“Mal?”

“Everything okay?” Mallory asks. “Everything good?”

There’s a pause. Apple breathing. Apple crying? Mallory plugs her other ear. She locks her eyes on Link; this would be exactly the kind of situation where he would get lost. She feels a heavy dread. She’d prayed for something to happen but she had not wanted anything bad to happen to Apple or the baby.

Please God, no! Mallory thinks. I take it back!

“We had the ultrasound,” Apple says. “It’s twins. Twin boys.”

“Oh my God,” Mallory says. She’s relieved. Right? “That’s incredible. That’s what was up! Are they healthy?”

“Healthy,” Apple says, but something is strange about her voice. It’s loaded with something else. “Listen…don’t kill me.”

“You’re going to miss the Pops?” Mallory says. “Don’t worry about it. You received monumental news today. I’m sure you’re overwhelmed.”

“Overwhelmed is the word,” Apple says. “Hugo is…he’s…listen, don’t kill me.”

“I won’t kill you,” Mallory says. “What’s going on?”

“Hugo is overwhelmed, I’m overwhelmed, we were at each other’s throats even before we got this news because of the wedding and his family and, okay, yes, my family too. But this changes things.”

“What things?” Mallory asks. She’s worried again. Are Apple and Hugo going to split? “What things does it change, honey?”

“We’re at Logan Airport right now,” Apple says. “We’re flying to Bermuda tonight. We’re eloping, Mal. The wedding is off. I’m so sorry.”

Mallory wedges the phone between her ear and shoulder and scoops Link up before he wanders away. She bumps into an older gentleman in Nantucket Reds who says, “Watch where you’re going, missy.”

Mallory dislikes being called missy, but she’s so happy, she could kiss the man. Apple is eloping! She’s eloping! The wedding is off!

“Don’t apologize to me,” Mallory says to Apple, her person, her best person. “I’m so happy for you, honey. Go marry the greatest guy in the world. Congratulations!”

Summer #13: 2005

What are we talking about in 2005? Hurricane Katrina; Brad and Jen; YouTube; Terri Schiavo; John Roberts; the White Sox; Scooter Libby and Valerie Plame; Alinea; Xbox 360; Carrie Underwood; Marilynne Robinson; Russell Crowe; Jude Law; the New Orleans Saints; Avon Barksdale, Stringer Bell, McNulty, and Bunk; “I wish I knew how to quit you.”

Leland Gladstone and Fiella Roget have been together for ten years. They’re a fixture in the New York literary scene and get invited to twenty events per week: gallery openings, readings, author luncheons, secret high-stakes poker games, and midnight raves at the hottest clubs on Twelfth Avenue. They are their generation’s Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, only biracial and far, far better dressed.

Fifi is a professor in the MFA program at Columbia, a job that requires her to teach one workshop per semester in exchange for a generous salary. This leaves her long stretches to work on her new novel, which she’s having a hard time birthing. Her first two novels dealt with her childhood and adolescence in Haiti, and now Fifi is writing a novel set in the United States, but it feels wobbly and predictable. She tries not to let the novel shackle her. The inspiration comes when it comes, and her editor understands this; Fifi just wishes people would stop asking her when they can expect it. Leland knows enough not to mention the novel at all, though Fifi recently overheard Leland telling the cleaning ladies not to bother with Fifi’s office. She hasn’t been in there in weeks.

Fifi is invited to do paid speaking events across the country, and in the spring of 2005, she accepts an offer from the department of women’s studies at Harvard. Fifi decides to make a trip of it—maybe two nights, maybe three. She likes Boston. It’s charming and old-fashioned with its proper Puritan aesthetic. Boston doesn’t have a dirty mind the way New York does.

“I can maybe do two nights,” Leland says when Fifi shares her plans. “But I definitely cannot swing three.”

“I think I’d like to go alone,” Fifi says. “We each could probably use some space.”

Fifi can see Leland wavering between a bitter response and an offended one. Fifi finds both tiresome. She believes every relationship needs a little air, but Leland sees things differently. Over the past few years, she has developed the tendency to smother. She likes to travel everywhere with Fifi and make connections for Bard and Scribe, where she is now editor in chief and which is now failing because everyone is on the internet. Fifi used to be fine with Leland’s constant companionship, but now the phrase riding her coattails comes to mind.