Sometimes the girls showed up at the Begonia “for dinner” in low-cut tops and lower-cut jeans, and when Delilah told them, at ten when the kitchen closed, that they had to leave because they were underage, they—well, they whined. I want to see Mr. Mac play. Just one song. Please? Delilah had small children at home, she knew how to deal with whiners. Off you go. Come back when you’re twenty-one.

They really love you, Delilah said to Greg.

Yes, he said. But do you?

Delilah swatted him, sashayed away. People talked about Greg and those girls, but the crushes were innocent and funny; it was an after-school special.

Until April Peck.

Why April Peck and not some other girl? Like anything, most of it was timing. Delilah had sensed things coming to a head between Greg and Tess. He complained about Tess all the time, and his complaints were angry and mean-spirited. He and Tess were in a rut—sexually and emotionally. The summer had brought the Debacle of the Roof. (Greg dwelled on the roof more than Delilah thought necessary. It was a home improvement project! Could it really fell a marriage?) Tess and Greg had had some serious leaking in the spring rains, and they’d discovered they needed a new roof. They were quoted a price of thirty-seven thousand dollars to replace the roof, which they couldn’t afford. Greg decided to replace the roof himself. He hired two Lithuanian day laborers; he bought twenty-two bundles of shingles at Marine Home Center. He rented the tools and the ladders, and with a DIY website as his professional reference, he got to work. They spent a week getting the old shingles off and a thousand dollars dropping them at the dump, then another two weeks reshingling in the brutal July sun, only to discover that the roof still leaked and had to be torn off and redone by professionals. Tess did not handle this well. There was a lot of innuendo about the roof caving in on the marriage, literally and figuratively. By the time school started in September, Tess and Greg were depleted, stressed out, and sick of each other.

There had been a lot of drives to Cisco Beach to talk that September, a lot of Greg pushing and Delilah resisting. He grew belligerent.

You don’t care about me.

Because I won’t sleep with you, I don’t care about you? Even you, Greg MacAvoy, are too emotionally mature to believe that.

I need… he said.

What? she said.

Something, he said.

April Peck was a senior. She had lived on Nantucket for two years. She lived with her mother in a huge beach house owned by her mother’s parents. There was a father and a brother in New York City. A bad divorce, apparently.

The night in question was October 23, a Sunday night. According to Greg, things at home had been okay: they were having a fire, Tess had roasted a chicken, football was on. Tess wanted to read the rest of the Sunday paper and watch 60 Minutes, and she had to make the kids’ lunches and get her lesson plans straight for the week. Chloe had a fever of 100.7—not anything to worry about, but still. They, the MacAvoys, had not gone over to Delilah and Jeffrey’s house for cocktails and a six-foot sub for the usual Sunday afternoon drunken free-for-all because of Chloe’s fever. If she had something, Tess didn’t want her to pass it on to the other kids. Tess also didn’t want Chloe to get run down. They were staying home, Tess had told Delilah over the phone, to have a “family night.” Delilah had been disappointed and a little hurt—weren’t they all family?

Greg had not wanted to stay home. He loved their friends and the tradition of the free-for-all Sundays. He loved Delilah and Jeffrey’s house, he adored Delilah’s cooking (her repertoire was straight off a sports bar menu—stuffed potato skins, Reuben sandwiches), he loved taking his guitar and getting everyone singing. Sundays, he said, were the days that made him glad to be alive—the drinking, the music, their friends, the kids running around. He could not believe they were turning down a Sunday just because Chloe felt a little warm.

“A hundred point seven is more than just ‘a little warm,’” Tess said.

Greg huffed and considered slamming around the house to demonstrate how pissed off he was, but then he got the great idea that he would put the kids to bed and head over to Jeffrey and Delilah’s alone. He switched immediately into model parent mode. He got the kids in the bath, he gave Chloe a dose of Motrin, he supervised the tooth-brushing and hunkered down with them through three chapters of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Downstairs, Tess finished the newspaper, made herself a cup of chamomile tea, and watched 60 Minutes.

Greg came down from reading to the kids, but he did not speak to Tess. If he told her he was going to Jeffrey and Delilah’s, they would fight. He didn’t want to fight. He wanted to be free. He felt like he was shackled to the house. He opened the fridge and got a beer.

Tess said, “Are the kids asleep?”

Greg said, “What do you think?”

He was angry. And resentful. He felt like a sullen teenager that Tess had grounded.

“Go over there if you want,” she said.

He did not appreciate the way she’d read his mind. She was so sure she was always one step ahead of him. He said, “I’m going into work.”

“Work?” she said.

“I want to play,” he said. “If I play here, I’ll wake up the kids.”

Sheer brilliance. Tess did not like it when Greg played the guitar or the piano at night because the kids did wake up, every time. They loved to listen to him, and would not go back to sleep until he was finished.

“Fine,” said Tess, and Greg left.