Her favorite moments of the year are the moments right before she sees him. He’s on the ferry. He has boarded the plane. He’s on his way. His rental Jeep is going to be speeding down the no-name road toward her cottage, bringing a cloud of dust and dirt and sand. The anticipation is ecstasy. It’s a perfectly ripe strawberry dipped in melted milk chocolate; it’s a roaring fire on a snowy night; it’s a double rainbow; the green-glass barrel of a wave; the first sip of ice-cold champagne.

And then…he arrives, he’s there. They lock eyes; he rushes out of the car—forget the luggage, worry about that later—wraps his arms around her, picks her up off the ground, sets her down, holds her face in his hands, and they kiss.

Stop time, she thinks. Please, God.

It’s the inverse when he leaves. The most excruciating pain she has ever known is watching him drive away, knowing it will be 362 days until she sees him again (and a day longer in leap years).

What will change in that year?

Will anything happen that will keep him from coming back?

Mallory’s fortune: An acquaintance of the past will affect you in the near future.

Jake’s fortune: Feeding a cow roses does not get extra appreciation.

Part Three

Forties

Summer #19: 2011

What are we talking about in 2011? SEAL Team Six; Osama bin Laden; the Affordable Care Act; Nicki Minaj; the Penn State football scandal; the debt ceiling; Gabrielle Giffords; Cam Newton; Occupy Wall Street; Don and Betty Draper, Peggy, Roger, and Joan; cake pops; Rory McIlroy; Eleven Madison Park; Anthony Weiner; Andy Rooney; “Rolling in the Deep”; Steve Jobs; Moneyball.

At the end of the school year, Dr. Major announces that the high school has received a large monetary gift from an anonymous donor that is earmarked to reward excellence in teaching. One teacher will be chosen each September to receive a seventy-five-thousand-dollar cash prize—which, in Mallory’s case, is the amount of her current salary. A committee of parents and community members will convene over the summer to evaluate candidates, and the winner will be announced the first week of school.

“You’re going to win the first one,” Apple says. “I can feel it.”

“Thanks for jinxing me,” Mallory says. “I know I’m a good teacher. I don’t need outside validation.”

“But you do need seventy-five large,” Apple says.

“Yes,” Mallory says. “Yes, I do.”

It was a cold, windy, rainy spring on Nantucket, and the roof of Mallory’s cottage leaks. She had a roofer named G-Bow come look at it and he found extensive rot and places where the wind had blown off shingles. It’s waterfront, built in the 1940s, G-Bow said. Roof was probably replaced sometime in the 1970s. It’s time for a new roof.

Mallory asked how much it would cost.

Not much, he said. Forty to forty-five grand.

Mallory has the money that Aunt Greta left her conservatively invested, but she has dipped into it for various home improvements and a new Jeep to replace the K5, which died on Eel Point the summer before.

Technically, Mallory has the money to replace the roof, but it will leave her very depleted.

She could ask Fray for the money, or part of it. He’s generous when it comes to Link; the child wants for nothing and Mallory knows that college will be handled. But it’s not Fray’s job to support Mallory. She’s the mother; she has primary custody. The roof over their heads is her responsibility.

Kitty and Senior?

No, never.

Announcing the teaching award was cruel, Mallory decides. It’s all she thinks about now. She wonders who’s on the committee—any parents of the kids she’s taught? Well, she’s taught everyone’s kids, so the answer is yes and it’s true that most parents love her. At Christmas, Mallory always receives the biggest haul of gifts—pumpkin muffins, scented candles, bottles of Sancerre, hand-knit scarves, monogrammed toiletry cases, cookies, cookies, cookies, gift certificates to Mitchell’s Book Corner, fancy hand lotion, Christmas ornaments, Whitman’s samplers, Bacon of the Month Club. Some of it is bribery—Mallory writes as least two dozen college recommendation letters each year—but most of it is due to genuine gratitude and affection. In teaching, as with everything in life, you get out of it what you put into it.

Mallory susses out her competition for the award. There’s Mr. Forsyth, who teaches biology. At nearly seventy years old, he’s a legend; everyone adores him. One year, his students made T-shirts that said RESPIRATION IS THE RELEASE OF ENERGY IN THE FORM OF ATP. He’s the sentimental favorite. There’s Rich Bristol, the music teacher and choral director of the Accidentals and Naturals. He’s young and handsome and the theater girls love him; he’s their heartthrob, though this might work against him. And then there’s Apple, but she’s guidance and therefore not eligible, which is unfair, though Mallory is also a bit relieved, which makes her feel like a terrible friend and a bad person. She doesn’t deserve the Excellence in Teaching award.

Yes, yes, she does. Positive thinking. One of the leaks in the roof is right over Link’s bed.

If she wins, she thinks, she’ll pay for the roof and donate the rest to the Boys and Girls Club.

Except she knows she won’t. Life has too many surprises for a single working mother to be that magnanimous.

She goes back to Rich Bristol. There were whisperings about him and a student named Danielle Stephens. Too chummy, someone said. Red flag. Mallory thinks back to her second year of teaching and the incident with Jeremiah Freehold. She shudders. She was so young then, and now, of course, Mallory would no sooner take a student off the property in her car than she would lop off her own hand. But back then she had; she was in the same space then that Rich Bristol is in now, maybe worse. Do people remember about Jeremiah? Is it a stain on Mallory’s reputation that will never fully come out?

Apple is asked to be the administrator of the committee. She has no decision-making powers but she will attend all the meetings. She will know the front-runners. She knows the committee members.

“I can’t tell you a thing,” Apple says. “I shouldn’t even have told you I’m the admin.”

“How about one thing?” Mallory says. “Is Mrs. Freehold on the committee?”

Apple inhales and Mallory’s heart slips a notch in her chest. “No,” Apple says.

Link is ten now, old enough to spend the entire month of August up in Vermont with Fray and Anna. Fray lives on Lake Champlain. He has a motorboat; they water-ski and fish for trout; they mountain-bike; they build fires to cook over. Link loves his Vermont summers, but this will be the last one. Fray is launching his Frayed Edge coffee brand this fall, and he and Anna are moving to Seattle.

Link is a well-adjusted kid. He knows he has to make the most of his trip to Vermont this year and he’s also excited about eventually visiting his dad and Anna in Seattle. The Space Needle is there, and Pike Place Market, and the Seahawks!

Mallory supposes Link will get used to flying cross-country. Fray will probably put him in first class—at least, until Fray buys a plane of his own. And here’s Mallory, trying to figure out how to replace her roof.