Mallory pulls over to the side of the sandy road. She has a million-dollar view of the dunes and the ocean beyond. The waves are good today; there are dozens of people out surfing.

“Coop?” she says. She wonders if the marriage has broken up already. On the honeymoon; that would be a new record (though not by much). “Everything okay?”

“Guess who called me this morning?” Coop says. “Well, you’re not going to guess so I’ll tell you. Ursula de Gournsey, that’s who.”

Mallory puts up the Jeep’s windows, turns on the air conditioning and aims the vents at her heart. She’s sweating. “Really?”

“Really.”

“What did she want?” Mallory asks.

“She wanted my assurance that I’m the one Jake goes to Nantucket with every summer,” Coop says. “She told me she didn’t need proof; she said she would take me at my word.”

Mallory feels like she’s the one riding a wave, but in a nauseated way, not a fun, beachy way. She pinches the skin of her bare thigh. She always thought that if and when she and Jake were discovered, she would have time to come up with a defense. But now she’s just…blindsided, a solid, stinging smack to the cheek. “What did you tell her?”

“I said yes. I said it was me that Jake goes to Nantucket with every summer. I lied, Mal. To a United States senator.”

“Thank you,” Mallory says. “Thank…Coop. Thank you.”

“I feel sick,” Cooper says. “I’m on my goddamned honeymoon, Mallory, trying to start a life with Amy. Trying to start fresh. And yet there I am, lying to protect my sister who has been conducting an affair with my best friend for…how long? How many summers?”

“A lot,” Mallory says. “A lot of summers.”

“A lot of summers,” Cooper says.

“Did she say why she was asking? Was it just out of the blue, or did something happen?”

“She said she read some blog post that put an idea in her head.”

“Blog post?” Mallory has a hard time picturing Ursula de Gournsey reading a blog post.

“That’s what she said. I didn’t ask for details. I said as little as possible. But what I did say was a complete lie.” Coop stops talking and Mallory hears irregular breathing. Is Coop crying? “I stopped speaking to Jake after I figured out what was going on…back when I married Tish. When was that, 2007? I haven’t had a meaningful conversation with him in eight years. My best friend. My big brother, the brother I never had, that was Jake. And if I ever have to lie again…I’m not saying I’m going to abandon you, I’m saying, Don’t make me lie again!” He screams this last bit—and can she blame him?

“I won’t,” she whispers.

“But you won’t stop seeing him. I know you won’t.”

Mallory doesn’t answer.

Cooper says, “Do you know why I lied, Mal? Other than because you’re the only family I have left?”

“Why?”

“Because I think you and Jake are probably really good together. You’re both…easygoing. And smart as hell. And you’re both kind. You’re good people. I can see why you like him, I can see why he likes you. But the two of you are doing something that, at base, just isn’t right. Which proves something I’ve suspected all along.”

“What’s that?” Mallory whispers.

“Everyone is human,” Coop says. “Every single one of us.”

That does it; tears drip down Mallory’s face. She moves her sunglasses to the top of her head and squints at the sparkling surface of the Atlantic until it blurs.

Blog post. Blog post?

When Mallory gets home from the beach, she Googles Most popular blogs, women.

Number one is Leland’s Letter.

Leland’s Letter is a blog? Mallory had thought it was…well, she wasn’t sure. It was Leland’s project, her platform. Mallory always felt bad that she hadn’t paid closer attention. She had looked at it right when it came out and read articles on self-defense on the subway and the true-life story of a woman in Utah held against her wishes by a polygamist, back when that was a thing everyone was talking about. The website had seemed angry and strident and edgy and urban, just like Leland herself, and Mallory simply wasn’t interested.

Mallory clicks on Leland’s Letter.

The lead article, right there on the front page under the masthead, is titled “Same Time Next Year: Can It Save Modern Marriage?”

“Gah!” Mallory shouts. “She didn’t!”

…late-night conversation with an intimate friend revealed a shocking secret…this friend, let’s call her “Violet,” has been conducting a clandestine relationship over the course of two decades that she calls her “Same Time Next Year.”

Mallory keeps reading. Leland did it. Right down to the sand dollars and the fortunes.

Mallory stands up, looks around her cottage as though there’s a crowd assembled, an indignant studio audience waiting to see just how Mallory is going to handle this.

She goes to the kitchen for iced tea, cuts a wedge of lemon, takes a sip. It’s cold, refreshing, minty because Mallory steeps her tea with fresh mint from the pot of herbs on her porch. She knows she lives a blessed life; she has never denied that. She was given this property when she had nothing else and it’s extraordinary by anyone’s standards. She has a healthy, strong, intelligent son. Fray’s son. Maybe Leland’s…betrayal—there’s no other word for it—has been long planned as revenge because Mallory slept with Frazier Dooley and bore his child. But Leland handled the news of Link’s sire with great equanimity. Was that all an act? Has Leland been patiently waiting all these years to stick a pin through the heart of Mallory’s voodoo doll?

Maybe Leland is angry that Fifi came to visit Mallory alone so many years earlier. Maybe Fifi told Leland that Mallory knew about their breakup before Leland did. That would have hurt. Leland cares about Fifi more than she ever cared about Fray.

Right?

Mallory realizes she has no idea who Leland loves—or has loved—other than herself. And hasn’t that always been the case? Mallory thinks back to childhood, adolescence, high school—although, to be fair, everyone was self-absorbed in high school. In young adulthood, there were those loathsome months they lived together in the city. Leland had snatched up the job that Mallory wanted, and even if Leland was better suited for that job, she had treated Mallory like her inferior. She hadn’t shared the duck or the lamb shank from the French restaurant on the ground floor of their building; she had eaten those meals ostentatiously, dipping pieces of golden baguette into the pan sauces, holding a forkful of potato purée in front of her mouth before she luridly licked it off and then groaned at how sublime it was. All this while Mallory ate her bologna sandwiches, her ramen, her dry scrambled eggs.

There was Leland’s disastrous first visit to Nantucket when she vanished with her New York friends, abandoning Mallory, abandoning Fray. And then the catastrophic second visit with Fifi. Leland had said such cruel things: Mallory is particularly suggestible…She’s a follower. Mallory understood that Leland had been angry at Fifi and jealous of Mallory, but she had meant those words; if she hadn’t, she would have chosen other derogatory things to say.