Kirby meanders toward the water and gets her feet wet. The water glows where she kicks it up.

“Look,” she says. “Phosphorescence.”

Tommy ventures in and the two of them spend a few minutes splashing, laughing when the water lights up. Then, on the beach, Kirby spies the bone-white shape of a quahog shell.

“Excellent,” she says, picking it up. “I’ve been looking for one of these.”

“Ashtray?” Tommy asks.

“Soap dish, actually,” Kirby says. She rinses it at the water’s edge; it’s perfectly intact, with a swirl of blue and white, like the ocean itself, inside the shell. “I’m on a tight budget.”

Tommy laughs at this and Kirby knows she’s forgiven. He takes her hand and pulls her to him and she knows what’s coming. Sure enough, when she lifts her face, he kisses her. His timing isn’t bad—it’s dark, they’re on the beach with their ankles awash in sparkling water. Things couldn’t really get any more romantic. It’s his execution that’s the problem. His mouth is open too wide; his tongue is thick and meaty and he seems intent on choking Kirby with it. She tolerates a second or two of this, wondering if things will magically improve, ruminating on the mystery of human chemistry. Will Tommy someday meet a woman who thinks his kissing is amazing and who can’t get enough of it?

Kirby presses her hand to his chest and, to his credit, he stops.

“We should get back,” Kirby says.

“I guess you’re right,” Tommy says miserably.

A few days later, Kirby hears from Rajani.

“The Aldworths have taken their boat and their bratty kids to Cuttyhunk,” she says. “They’re paying me to stay at their house with their cat.”

“You’re kidding,” Kirby says. She has had so little contact with Rajani that she knows almost nothing about the family she nannies for; she didn’t know they owned a boat, that their kids were bratty, or that they had a cat. All she knew was that they lived in Chilmark.

“Why don’t you come over?” Rajani says. “We can swim at their private beach and then go to Menemsha for lunch. They left me the keys to their Porsche.”

Kirby doesn’t have to be asked twice. She borrows Patty’s bike and rides all the way out to the address Rajani gave her on Tea Lane. It’s farther away than she thought, but it’s pretty along State Road; she passes rolling farmland and stone walls, ponds and big trees. The landscape is different from Nantucket, where the brush is low and windswept and most of the trees are scrub pines.

Finally, Kirby turns onto Tea Lane and pedals all the way out to the water. At the end of a shell driveway, the house number she’s looking for is carved into a stone. A little farther down, the house itself comes into view. It’s palatial—three stories, with a turret at one end. Around the side is a swimming pool and tennis court. As Kirby is kickstanding her bike, Rajani appears in the entrance, her arms spread wide.

“Welcome to my home,” she says. “Away from home.”

The house is grand. There’s a white piano and leopard-skin rugs and what Kirby thinks is an Andy Warhol hanging in the kitchen next to the fridge, in the same place that another family might hang their children’s crayon drawings. The kitchen is modern. All of the appliances are avocado green, a color that pops against the white tile floor and the pink-and-orange mosaic backsplash.

Kirby follows Rajani outside to the deck. The pool is off to the left. Down three steps and over one small dune is the ocean.

“Are you kidding me?” Kirby says. “You work here every day? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Too busy running after Eric and Randy,” she says. “The demon twins.”

Kirby is stunned. She was wowed by Luke Winslow’s place on Nashaquitsa Pond, and in some ways, she prefers it to this. Who needs a grand piano and leopard-skin rugs and a Warhol in a summer home? Kirby always felt privileged growing up because of their house on Fair Street, right in town, and the mural in the living room, and their long legacy at the Field and Oar Club. But now that she has seen this house and Luke’s house, she understands that Fair Street is nothing special.

“Wanna swim?” Rajani asks.

Kirby strips down to her bikini and races for the water.

At lunchtime, Rajani plucks the car keys out of a ruby-colored glass bowl (“I think the Aldworths have key parties,” she whispers) and they climb into Mrs. Aldworth’s Porsche 911 and zip across Chilmark to Menemsha.

Menemsha has been built up in Kirby’s mind because she’s been told it’s a can’t-miss destination, but when they arrive, she finds it’s a teeny-tiny fishing village, a working fishing village. There’s a small harbor crammed with fishing vessels. All of the boats now, at midday, are unloading their catches; the avalanches of slippery silver fish look like quarters running out of a slot machine. There are enormous wooden traps bursting with lobsters.

Kirby blinks behind her cat’s-eye sunglasses. “Who is going to eat all those lobsters?”

“We are,” Rajani says. “Come on.” She pulls Kirby into a nondescript building with a sign that says HOMEPORT. Guests at the inn rave about the Homeport, and Kirby loves how understated it is. If people aren’t coming for the decor, they must be coming for the food. Rajani marches up to the counter and orders two lobster lunches. Kirby marvels at how confident her friend sounds and how beautiful she looks with her bronzed skin and dark hair and hazel eyes. She’s so much more relaxed now that it’s summertime and she’s away from the pressure cooker of the college.

The lobster lunch turns out to be a pound-and-a-half boiled lobster, an ear of corn, a cup of chowder, a dish of coleslaw, a mini-loaf of dense white bread, and lots of butter, both in packets and drawn. Over Kirby’s protests, Rajani springs for both of their lunches. “What the Aldworths pay me is obscene,” she says.

They sit at the only unoccupied table and Rajani crushes a claw between the silver arms of the cracker. “So, what’s new with you?”

Kirby blows across a spoonful of creamy chowder flecked with fresh parsley. What to say? She has already filled Rajani in on her job—the serenity she finds in the wee hours, the kind guests and wonderful Mr. Ames, the pending visits from singers, movie stars, and senators. Should she tell Rajani about Patty and Luke? Should she tell Rajani about Darren? Rajani has known Darren for years, but if Darren told Rajani that he and Kirby met and that they went on a date to the carousel, wouldn’t Rajani have said something?