“Mommy.”

Dabney’s eyes opened—yes, they opened still. Agnes stood at the foot of the bed with Riley; they were holding hands and they were engulfed in pink clouds, fluffy as cotton candy.

Agnes at the carnival in the sticky heat of summer, cotton candy all over her face and in her hair, begging Dabney to go on the Scrambler.

I’m afraid! Dabney had said.

But you’re a grown-up, Agnes said. Grown-ups aren’t supposed to be afraid.

Agnes and Riley, all that pink. Dabney knew it. She knew it!

Clendenin was on her left, holding her hand, and Box was on her right, holding her hand. They were both there. Dabney felt that she did not deserve this, but she was grateful. She had everything she needed. Her heart was a kite, tethered to the earth by two strings, but it was time for them to let go so she could float away.

She was a dragonfly, skimming. Heaven was a Corvette Stingray in the sky, maybe.

Heaven was that they were all right there with her.

Clen squeezed. “Cupe,” he said.

Box said, “She’s going, I’m afraid.”

It was okay. In the end, after all, it was sweet, like freedom.

“Mommy!” Agnes said.

When Dabney closed her eyes, everything was pink. So pink.

Couple #43: Agnes Bernadette Beech and Riley Alsopp, together six months

Agnes: We buried my mother’s ashes on the Friday of Daffodil Weekend in the family plot where her father and her grandmother and great-grandparents and great-great-grandfather and great-great-great-grandmother, the original Dabney, were laid to rest. My mother used to say that she hated to leave Nantucket because she was afraid she would die and never return, so it was a relief for me—and for Box and Clen, too, I think—once she was safely in the ground. We kept the burial private, just the three of us, Riley, and Nina Mobley, but at the tailgate picnic following the Antique Car Parade the next day, people surrounded the Impala to pay their respects—laugh, cry, and share Dabney stories. Celerie had made a huge platter of ribbon sandwiches in my mother’s honor, and this year they all got eaten, and all I could think of was how happy this would have made my mother.

A year earlier, I had agreed to marry CJ.

Riley liked to say that he fell in love with me before he even met me, on the day he saw my photograph on my mother’s desk at the Chamber office. He said he saw the picture and stopped dead in his tracks and thought, That is the woman I am going to marry. He said that his heart had never been broken before but the closest he’d ever come was when he found out I was engaged.

My feelings for Riley developed more gradually, which he understood. My emotional plate was full—with CJ, with my mother, with Clendenin. I know that I love him, I know he is the kindest, most delightful, most handsome, most talented surfing dentist on earth and that I would be nuts to let him go—but I’m not ready to talk about marriage. Especially not this weekend. We have agreed to see what the summer brings—we will be together on Nantucket—and maybe, maybe, I’ll move to Philadelphia with him in the fall.

My mother would be ecstatic about that.

After the tailgate picnic was broken down and all the antique cars headed back out the Milestone Road toward town, I waved goodbye to Box. He was going to the Boarding House with the Levisons. In the morning, we would have coffee together and then I would drive him to the airport—the way my mother always had—so he could head back to Cambridge.

Clen had ridden out to the Daffodil festivities on his bicycle, and he was getting ready to ride home. I was worried about Clen in a way that I was not worried about Box. I left Riley to pack up our picnic and help Celerie with the last of her tasks, and I walked over to talk to Clen just as he was climbing onto his bicycle.

I said, “What are you up to tonight?”

He said, “Bourbon. Fried rice if I feel ambitious. Sox game on the radio, maybe.”

“Riley and I are breaking out the grill,” I said. “Ribs. Will you join us?”

He shook his head. “You’re sweet to ask, but I’m fine.”

“Are you fine?” I asked. There had been a couple of nights when I had gone to Clen’s cottage and we’d both drunk bourbon and one or the other of us had broken down crying because we just missed her so much. Where had she gone? She had been here, so alive, the most alive person either of us had ever known, and now she was gone. Snap of the fingers: poof, like that.

When it was Clen who broke down crying—great big heaving sobs that sounded like the call of some enormous animal, a moose, or a whale—I had thought, That is my father, crying over my mother. It was true, but it was so weird that I had to say it multiple times to make it sink in. What would our lives have been like if he had stayed on Nantucket and raised me? Or if my mother had been brave enough to go to Thailand?

“Agnes,” Clen said. And I knew something was coming.

“What?”

“I’ve been offered a job,” he said. “Running the Singapore desk for the Washington Post. It’s an assignment I’ve wanted my entire career. The job comes with a two-bedroom flat, just off the Orchard Road.” He must have noticed the look on my face, because he started talking more quickly. “Elizabeth Jennings mentioned my name to someone who owed her husband, Mingus, a favor or three. She feels guilty, I think, about the way she treated your mother.”

“You’re accepting favors from Elizabeth Jennings?” I said.

“It’s the job I’ve always wanted,” Clen said. “I’ll grow old drinking Singapore Slings in the Long Bar at the Raffles Hotel.” He smiled weakly. “Agnes, I can’t stay here without her. Every day is excruciating. I can’t stay here without her, and I have nowhere else to go.”