“I love you, Ma,” Tiger says.

The obvious response to Tiger is I love you too, but instead Kate says, “I’m sorry.” She hugs Tiger so tightly that she feels his ribs beneath his spring jacket. “I’m so sorry, baby.”

Tiger kisses her forehead and doesn’t let go of her hand until the last possible second. When he finally goes in, Kate hurriedly gets back into the car. Out the window, she sees Tiger heading for the open door. A gentleman in a brown uniform barks something at him and Tiger stands up straighter and squares his shoulders. Kate stares at her fingers gripping the steering wheel. She can’t bear to watch him disappear.

Part One

June 1969

Both Sides Now

They are leaving for Nantucket on the third Monday in June, just as they always do. Jessie’s maternal grandmother, Exalta Nichols, is a stickler for tradition, and this is especially true when it comes to the routines and rituals of summer.

The third Monday in June is Jessie’s thirteenth birthday, which will now be overlooked. That’s fine with Jessie. Nothing can be properly celebrated without Tiger anyway.

Jessica Levin (“Rhymes with ‘heaven,’” she tells people) is the youngest of her mother’s four children. Jessie’s sister Blair is twenty-four years old and lives on Commonwealth Avenue. Blair is married to an MIT professor named Angus Whalen. They’re expecting their first baby in August, which means that Jessie’s mother, Kate, will be returning to Boston to help, leaving Jessie alone with her grandmother on Nantucket. Exalta isn’t a warm and fuzzy grandmother who bakes cookies and pinches cheeks. For Jessie, every interaction with Exalta is like falling headlong into a pricker bush; it’s not a question of whether she will be stuck, only where and how badly. Jessie has floated the possibility of returning to Boston with Kate, but her mother’s response was “You shouldn’t have to interrupt your summer.”

“It wouldn’t be interrupting,” Jessie insisted. The truth is, coming back early would mean saving her summer. Jessie’s friends Leslie and Doris stay in Brookline and swim at the country club using Leslie’s family’s membership. Last summer, Leslie and Doris grew closer in Jessie’s absence. Their bond made up the sturdiest side of the triangle, leaving Jessie on shaky ground. Leslie is the queen bee among them because she’s blond and pretty and her parents are occasionally dinner guests of Teddy and Joan Kennedy. Leslie sometimes gives Jessie and Doris the impression that she thinks she’s doing them a favor by remaining their friend. She has enough social currency to hang with Pammy Pope and the really popular girls if she wants. With Jessie gone all summer, Leslie might disappear from her life for good.

Jessie’s next older sister, Kirby, is a junior at Simmons College. Kirby’s arguments with their parents are loud and fascinating. Years of eavesdropping on her parents’ conversations have led Jessie to understand the main problem: Kirby is a “free spirit” who “doesn’t know what’s good for her.” Kirby changed her major twice at Simmons, then she tried to create her own major, Gender and Racial Studies, but it was rejected by the dean. And so Kirby decided she would be the first student ever to graduate from Simmons without a major. Again, the dean said no.

“He said graduating without a major would be like attending the commencement ceremony in the nude,” Kirby told Jessie. “And I said he shouldn’t tempt me.”

Jessie can easily imagine her sister striding across the stage to accept her diploma in just her birthday suit. Kirby started participating in political protests while she was still in high school. She marched with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. from Roxbury through the slums and dangerous neighborhoods to Boston Common, where Jessie’s father picked Kirby up and took her home. This past year, Kirby marched in two antiwar protests and got arrested both times.

Arrested!

Jessie’s parents are running out of patience with Kirby—Jessie overheard her mother saying, “We aren’t giving that girl another dime until she learns to color inside the lines!”—but Kirby is no longer their biggest concern.

Their biggest concern is Jessie’s brother, Richard, known to one and all as Tiger, who was drafted into the U.S. Army in April. After basic training, Tiger was deployed to the Central Highlands of Vietnam with Charlie Company of the Twelfth Regiment of the Third Brigade of the Fourth Infantry. This situation has rocked the foundation of the family. They’d all believed that only working-class boys went to war, not star receivers from Brookline High School.

Everyone at school treated Jessie differently after Tiger was deployed. Pammy Pope invited Jessie to her family’s annual Memorial Day picnic—Jessie declined out of loyalty to Leslie and Doris, who hadn’t been included—and the guidance counselor Miss Flowers pulled Jessie out of class one Monday in early June to see how she was doing. The class was home economics, and Jessie’s leaving inspired enormous envy in all the other girls, who were battling with their sewing machines in an attempt to finish their navy corduroy vests before the end of the term. Miss Flowers brought Jessie to her office, closed the door, and made Jessie a cup of hot tea using an electric kettle. Jessie didn’t drink hot tea, although she liked coffee—Exalta permitted Jessie one cup of milky coffee at Sunday brunch, despite Kate’s protests that it would stunt Jessie’s growth—but Jessie enjoyed the escape to the cozy confines of Miss Flowers’s office. Miss Flowers had a wooden box filled with exotic teas—chamomile, chicory, jasmine—and Jessie chose a flavor as if her life depended on picking the right one. She decided on hibiscus. The tea was a pale orange color even after the tea bag had steeped for several minutes. Jessie added three cubes of sugar, fearing the tea would have no taste otherwise. And she was right; it tasted like orange sugar water.

“So,” Miss Flowers said. “I understand your brother is overseas. Have you heard from him yet?”

“Two letters,” Jessie said. One of the letters had been addressed to the entire family and included details of basic training, which Tiger said was “not at all as hard as you read about; for me it was a piece of cake.” The other letter had been for Jessie alone. She wasn’t sure if Blair and Kirby had gotten their own letters, but Jessie kind of doubted it. Blair, Kirby, and Tiger were all full biological siblings—they were the children of Kate and her first husband, Lieutenant Wilder Foley, who had served along the thirty-eighth parallel in Korea and then come home and accidentally shot himself in the head with his Beretta—but Tiger was closest to his half sister, Jessie. Actually, they weren’t allowed to use the terms half sister, half brother, and stepfather—Kate flat-out forbade it—but whether or not anyone chose to acknowledge it, the family had a fault line. They were two families stitched together. But the relationship between Tiger and Jessie felt real and whole and good, and what he had said in the letter proved that. The first line, Dear Messie, made tears stand in Jessie’s eyes.