“Nope,” Mallory says. “No questions.”

“All freshmen in this dorm have a mandatory meeting at three o’clock and then there’s Convocation, where the university president will speak, and after that are First Night activities.” Jake pauses. There’s a vintage turntable in the common room playing Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours, which is a reason to love Jake beyond his name. But despite this, Mallory wants him to stop talking. It feels like the next words out of his mouth are going to be So now is probably a good time to say your goodbyes.

Mallory has learned from twenty-six years with Jake that a fast goodbye is better than a long, drawn-out goodbye. She finds Link in his room, putting shirts on hangers.

“I’ve been given my marching orders,” Mallory says. “You have a full docket, so I’m going to go.”

“Okay,” Link says. He shuts the closet door and then takes Mallory by the shoulders and looks at her with his ocean-colored eyes, eyes she knows better than anyone else’s. “I want to thank you for getting me this far, Mama. I’m going to study and exercise good judgment and check my Ubers and be kind to everyone I meet, just like you taught me.” He hugs her tight. It very much feels at that moment like he is the adult and she the child. “I love you. You did a good job.”

A week later, Mallory is out on her beach under an umbrella reading Dani Shapiro’s new memoir when she hears someone knocking on the door of her cottage.

She wants this to be a figment of her imagination—maybe she’s hearing things now as well as seeing things—but there’s no mistaking the rap-rap-rapping. Mallory considers not moving an inch. FedEx and UPS drop packages. Apple doesn’t stop by unannounced, but if she did, she’d just come down to the beach. It’s still two weeks until Jake’s arrival, and he never knocks anyway. There’s no one else Mallory wants to see.

There’s a reprieve, then more rapping.

Mallory heads up to the house. On the front porch, she stops to rinse off her sandy feet with the hose. She’s wearing linen drawstring pants over her bikini and a long-sleeved Gamecocks T-shirt. Ponytail, hat. She looks like a dirt sandwich.

Through the screen of the pond-side door, she sees the form of a woman and, beyond the woman, a black sedan, a car-service car, dusty after a ride down the no-name road. At the same time that Mallory wonders, Who is this? she gets a jolt of incredulous shock because she knows who it is.

The spot in her vision starts to expand and contract like it’s a living, breathing thing.

Mallory wants to go into her bedroom, close and lock the door, and shutter the house as if preparing for a hurricane. But the woman has seen her.

Mallory stops to look around. Without Link here, her house is spotless. Which is a good thing, because she fears the woman she’s about to invite inside is Ursula de Gournsey.

Yes; when Mallory reaches the door, she can see it’s Ursula. “Hello?” Mallory says. Her voice sounds bright, chipper, wholly unconcerned. She couldn’t have done any better if she’d been practicing how to nonchalantly greet Ursula de Gournsey surprising her at the door daily for the past twenty-six years. Meanwhile, inside of Mallory, a woman is releasing a high-pitched horror-film scream.

Mallory checks the car. Is Jake inside? No, it’s a driver. The screaming ratchets down one notch.

“Mallory?” Ursula says. “Hello. I’m Ursula de Gournsey.”

“Ursula?” Mallory says, still maintaining her cool. “Hello.”

“Do you mind if I come in?” Ursula says. “I was hoping we could talk.”

Now’s not a good time, Mallory thinks. I’m having a psychotic episode.

This is it, then—the reckoning. Mallory has long wondered if this day would ever come or if that was the kind of thing that happened only in movies. It notably does not happen in Same Time, Next Year. George and Doris roll merrily along right into their old age—and their respective spouses, Helen and Harry, remain none the wiser.

“Of course,” Mallory says. She pushes the screen door open and Ursula de Gournsey steps inside. She’s wearing a blue chambray linen sheath with matching pumps (also now dusty). Her hair is long and thick and luxuriously dark. There are lines around her eyes and mouth that don’t show up on television. “Would you like some iced tea? And I made chicken salad this morning if you’d like a sandwich.”

“Iced tea would be lovely, thank you,” Ursula says.

It gives Mallory something to do. She pours iced tea into two of her brand-new tumblers—to cheer herself up, she went on a nice-things-I-couldn’t-have-while-Link-was-around spending spree—puts some pita chips into a bowl, and gets out her silken, luscious homemade baba ghanouj. The other thing she has done to boost her spirits is cook.

“Baba ghanouj,” she says to Ursula as she brings everything into the living room on a wicker tray. “The eggplants from Bartlett’s Farm are like nothing you’ve ever tasted.”

Ursula murmurs something. She won’t touch the food, Mallory knows, because she doesn’t eat. She doesn’t read fiction either, and yet she’s drawing one finger across the spines of the books that Jake has sent Mallory over the years, from The English Patient to Less. Does she know they’re from Jake? Then Ursula picks up one of the sand dollars on that shelf, and Mallory has to suppress the hysterical laugh that’s gathering at the back of her throat.

“Let’s sit,” Mallory says. She places the tray on the coffee table and settles into Big Hugs while Ursula perches on the edge of one of the club chairs.

Ursula de Gournsey is here. In the cottage. In that chair.

Mallory hands Ursula an iced tea garnished with a wheel of lemon and a wheel of lime side by side on the rim, a hundred percent Instagram-able.

Ursula doesn’t seem inclined to speak, so Mallory says, “I didn’t realize you were on Nantucket.”

“I have a fund-raising dinner tonight,” Ursula says. “Private.” She takes a tiny sip of tea. “I’m running for president.”

“Yes, I know,” Mallory says. “Your vote on Judge Cavendish—I was proud of you. Every woman in America was proud of you.”

Ursula’s perfectly shaped eyebrows shoot up; maybe she’s surprised at the compliment. “Well, the election is still a long way off,” she says. “Anything can happen. Issues arise unexpectedly. Parts of your past come up, incidents you thought were long forgotten—hell, things you don’t remember…or even know about. When you’re running for president of the United States”—she sets her tea down—“your life has to be transparent. A clean window.”

And you’ve come with the squeegee, Mallory thinks.

“You and Jake see each other?” Ursula says. “Every year?”

She’s asking Mallory rather than telling her. She seems uncertain, which Mallory didn’t expect. Ursula has a hunch but not proof, maybe? Jake hasn’t told her. Jake doesn’t know Ursula is here. This whole thing, Mallory understands suddenly, has very little to do with Jake.

“What makes you think that?” Mallory asks. The spot in her vision has quieted, but it’s still there, watchful.