“It’s out,” Jake says. “Mal, it’s out.”

They both hear the sirens at the same time and all of a sudden it’s 1993 again and she and Jake are on the beach, screaming for Fray.

Mallory hears voices, then the slam of a truck door. “Hide in the bedroom,” she tells Jake.

Jake says, “Are you kidding me? I’m not going to hide. Go put clothes on.” Mallory is naked; she didn’t even realize. She grabs a robe off the back of the bathroom door and is just belting it when the door swings open. Three firemen in black uniforms, heavy army-drab jackets, and hats burst in. Mallory knows them: Mick Hanley, Tommy Robinson…and JD.

JD sees Mallory and takes in the sight of the smoking, dripping table. “Thank God you’re okay,” he says. “Your alarm company automatically calls the station.”

Yes, this is something Fray insisted on. The fire department has shown up twice before. Once for burning bacon, once for pine nuts that Mallory was toasting for a salad and then forgot about. After the pine nuts, Mallory invested in a hood for the stove, one with a strong exhaust fan.

Mallory stutters, “C-c-candles. One of the candles must have fallen.” She thinks about the tapers, slim and elegant in a pair of silver candlesticks that Cooper gave her for Christmas last year (re-gifted from his most recent wedding, she suspected). One of the tapers was a little loose, maybe, and fell over onto the story pages.

“Is your son here?” JD asks. He looks around and that’s when he sees Jake. Mallory wipes the tears and smoke out of her eyes. Mick opens the door to the porch, and a welcome breeze blows through the house.

“Hey,” Jake says. He’s wearing only the boxer shorts, so there’s no real question what was going on.

Please don’t introduce yourself, Mallory thinks.

It is very bad that JD has shown up, and here’s why. At the beginning of July, Mallory attended a graduation party at Corazon del Mar—it was, in fact, a graduation party for Abby Stewart, who was off to Sarah Lawrence—and Mallory saw JD there. JD and Tonya Sohn had long since broken up, and JD was known to be a confirmed bachelor, and although Mallory was still angry at him for spreading the awful rumor about her and Jeremiah Freehold, time (and margaritas) did their trick and Mallory and JD were able to talk, civilly at first, then fondly. He apologized to Mallory for the abhorrent thing he’d said to their driver in Puerto Rico—Were you a Fresh Air Fund kid?—something Mallory had tried to forget. The whole fire department had attended sensitivity workshops, he said, and now he had a new attitude. “Evolved, if you will.” Mallory won’t lie: She wanted to let bygones be bygones and get back in JD’s good graces. The island was too small for grudges. As the night progressed, real affection surfaced, and common sense departed. Mallory ended up going back to JD’s house and sleeping with him. In the moment, it had seemed harmless, possibly even sweet. Mallory had treated the whole thing as fun, a lark; she had left JD’s house at midnight so her babysitter could get home, and only when JD called the next day to see if Mallory wanted to go to Black-Eyed Susan’s for breakfast had she seen the error of her ways. In trying to make things better for herself, she had made them much, much worse.

She’d said, JD, we can’t do this.

He said, Why not?

She said, Because we can’t. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to give you the wrong idea.

JD had hung up abruptly—of course he had. That was what he did, who he was. Mallory hadn’t seen him since then.

“Hey,” JD says. His voice is friendly, even chummy, and he shakes Jake’s hand. It’s all an act, Mallory thinks. “I’m JD. I remember you from…jeez, years ago, back when your friend disappeared.”

Jake nods slowly. He must realize that this is the guy Mallory dated. She didn’t tell Jake too much about him, though she should have—she should have!—so he would realize how dangerous JD is.

“But I don’t remember your name,” JD says.

“Jake,” he says. (Mallory closes her eyes and thinks, This is where it all falls apart.) “My name is Jake.”

JD nods. He doesn’t ask for a last name. He says to Mallory, “The safest thing is if we move the table out onto the beach. Then tomorrow when everything has cooled down, you can figure out how you want to dispose of it.”

“Okay,” Mallory says.

“The table is probably a goner,” JD says. “Which is too bad. I have some fond memories of that table.” He chuckles in a way that makes it sound like they had sex on the table—if they did, it wasn’t memorable—but Mallory doesn’t care. Jake disappears to put on shorts and a shirt; Mick, Tommy, and JD maneuver the table out the door, off the porch, and into the sand.

(Despite the fact that there was a fire and every fire is serious, especially in a tinderbox like this cottage, Mick Hanley wants to laugh. When JD saw the address come up in the alarm system, he hauled ass, shouting in Mick’s face to Hurry the hell up—even though Mick had both legs in his pants and JD had only one. It was his girl out in Miacomet, JD said, Mallory Blessing, it was her house that was on fire. Mick thought JD and Mallory had broken up back in the ’90s, but then again, what did he know? To come in and find her basically naked with some dude…well, she is not JD’s girl, that’s for damn sure, or not only JD’s girl, and Mick is planning on giving JD a hard time about it all the way back to the station.)

The Excellence in Teaching award goes to Bill Forsyth. It’s announced in assembly the afternoon of the first day of school and the kids go wild. It’s a good result for sentimental reasons. Bill will be retiring this year after forty-four years of teaching at Nantucket High School. It was the right choice, the only choice, Mallory tells herself. Bill Forsyth has been teaching longer than Mallory has been alive. Still, her anxiety ratchets up until there’s a high-pitched noise in her ears. She tries to calm herself: she is healthy and Link is healthy. He came home on Monday lean and tan, his hair sun-bleached to white blond, wearing a concert T-shirt from Anna’s former band, Drank. He has a newfound love of Impressionist painters. Anna was an art history major at Bennington, and this summer she taught Link all about Renoir, Degas, Monet, Manet, and, his favorite, Camille Pissarro. He has flash cards of paintings, which he showed Mallory immediately upon his return.

Mallory has the money for the roof in the bank and if she’s squeamish about blowing the whole nut, she can replace the roof in stages. She can start this fall with the half that has the leaks over Link’s bed and do the rest next year. Lots of parents of these very kids work two and three jobs just to make the rent or the mortgage, so Mallory has no right to complain. In the end, the harvest table doesn’t even need to be replaced—just sanded and refinished.

She’s fine. She’s fine. She’ll replace the whole roof. She can always make more money. If she gets into a tight spot, she can ask Fray for money. She should be more concerned about the way Link comes home at the end of each summer so transformed by Fray and Anna.

Or maybe she should feel grateful for that. She’s not sure.

Apple grabs Mallory’s arm, hard, after the final bell. “That was bullshit.”