“Stop,” Amy says. “There will be no patronizing, please.” Her voice is surprisingly clear and firm, a welcome change from the singsongy tone she typically uses with JP in an attempt to sound charming, cute, lighthearted. “Does this have anything to do with Vivi’s death?”

“Kind of,” JP says. “I’ve taken a self-inventory. I don’t have the right feelings for you. You deserve to be loved and adored.”

“And you don’t love me? You don’t adore me?”

“No.”

There’s no hedging, no gray area, no room for any interpretation except one, and for this, Amy is grateful. JP is sparing her from believing there’s hope. And without hope, Amy is free to be honest.

“I should never have let you kiss me in the wineshop,” she says. “I knew it was wrong, I knew you were just unhappy in your marriage and looking for validation from an attractive female.”

“You were the answer to my prayers,” JP says. “Every day that summer, I was happy. I looked forward to waking up and going to work. You were the sun.”

“I was blinded by my feelings for you. You were older, you were sophisticated, so handsome, so…forbidden.” That was part of the allure, Amy knows—JP belonged to someone else.

“I wanted it to work, Amy. I gave it my best shot. I think when you moved in…”

Yes, three years ago when Amy moved in with JP, things became stressful, and that stress eroded the romance. The kids were older; they had opinions and allegiances. But Amy had needed a place to live, and she and JP had been together nearly seven years—it made sense. But she should have maintained her independence. She should have rented, or even purchased, her own place.

“I was always jealous of Vivi,” Amy says. “You were divorced, but the two of you were still codependent. Even after we’d been together for years, she was still the most important woman in your life. It was never me, it was always Vivi.” She expects JP to refute this, but he says nothing. “You used to tease me about being jealous of her. You said it was absurd, that I was insecure. But I was only reacting to always coming in second.” Now the anger surfaces. It feels like acid she wants to throw on him. “I shouldn’t have believed a word you said. I should have left years ago. You stole the best years of my life.”

“You’re only thirty-three. There’s still plenty of time for you to meet someone else and have a baby.”

He’s right. Now that Amy is free, she can meet someone and get pregnant, whereas with JP, that avenue was closed. He’d had a vasectomy after Leo was born.

“Do you remember the night you went to Savannah’s for dinner?” she says. “I spied on you through the back window of her house.”

“You did not.” He holds her gaze. “You did? Wow, that’s a new low for you, Aim. You do realize that Savannah and I are just friends—”

“You weren’t friends before. You hated her before.”

JP concedes this with a dip of his head. “Our relationship is complicated. Lots of history. I’ve known Savannah my whole life. Long before Vivi.”

Amy has heard it all before. JP and Savannah grew up together at the Field and Oar Club, two children of extreme privilege with shared memories of this tennis match, that sailing race, their parents laughing and drinking gin and tonics together on the patio. “You looked pretty cozy.”

“We were grieving.”

“Well,” Amy says. “When I left Union Street, I went to the Gaslight and bumped into Dennis.”

“Ugh,” JP says. “Poor you.”

“He asked me to dance,” Amy says. “We ended up making out in the front seat of his truck.”

JP recoils. Is he bothered by this? Jealous? Amy never planned on telling JP about this indiscretion, though she’s revisited the moment many times since it happened. Dennis had been surprisingly gentlemanly with Amy—respectful, kind, generous (he bought all her drinks)—and he’d also been insightful, funny, and honest. “Don’t stay with JP,” Dennis said. “He’s not good enough for you. Even Vivi used to say that you deserved someone younger, with more energy.”

And then, later in the night, while they were making out pretty heavily in his car, he whispered, “I’ve always thought you were so hot. I mean, so hot.”

Amy had leaned into these words because what woman wouldn’t relish hearing this? Amy had never found Dennis particularly attractive, although the size of the bulge in his jeans that night was intriguing. (She’s not vengeful enough to mention this detail to JP.)

“You made out with Dennis,” JP says, his voice flat. “Forget what I said earlier about a new low.”

“We were grieving,” Amy deadpans. She brushes sand off her shins. “We should probably go. I have to pack my stuff.”

“You don’t have to move out today,” JP says.

“Oh, but I do,” Amy says. She can already predict what Lorna will say: Of course you can stay with me, Pigeon. Stay as long as you like.

“It’s such a pretty day,” JP says.

“If you wanted to enjoy the beach, you should have strung me along until the end of the afternoon,” Amy says. “After ten years, what’s a few more hours?”

JP hangs his head, and in spite of herself, Amy feels sorry for him. He has worked every single day of the summer except for the day of his ex-wife’s memorial, which ended with Dennis punching him in the face. “You stay,” she says. “I’ll take the truck home, pack up my things, come back in a few hours to get you, and you can drop me off at Lorna’s.”

He flops back on the blanket. “Thank you. I don’t deserve that.”

He doesn’t deserve that. He deserves sand kicked in his face. He deserves to call an Uber to get home, and if he has no cell signal, too bad, he can walk. Amy puts on her cover-up and strides off the beach, thinking that although the pain is fresh and she’s likely in some kind of emotional shock that will wear off and she will realize that her heart has been exposed bare, she will survive this. She will grow from it. Relationships end all the time, every single day. Amy isn’t special.

She considers texting Dennis and telling him she’s now a free woman, that JP has given her the boot, but she figures he’ll find out soon enough through the Nantucket grapevine. Some people, no doubt, will say that Amy got what was coming to her. However, other people might feel sorry for Amy and decide that they judged her too harshly and should maybe give her a second chance.

And Amy will be so there for it!

Vivi

“Good for Amy,” Vivi says—to no one. Martha isn’t around. Vivi must not need her.

Vivi checks on JP on the beach. This couldn’t have been easy for him, ending a ten-year relationship.

JP has fallen asleep.

That night, Vivi goes back.

It is, once again, her first summer on Nantucket. She has left the Hamilton house on Union Street. After three nights of sleeping in the hostel out in Surfside, she found a room for rent in a house on Fairgrounds Road and she scores a job working the front desk at Fair Isle Dry Cleaning.