Dabney stood up and stretched.

She said to Nina, “Do you mind if I open the window?”

“Be my guest,” Nina said.

Dabney threw up the sash and peered out to get a closer look. Was it Clen’s bicycle? Silver ten-speed with the ratty tape unraveling from the curved handlebars. A relic. Definitely Clen’s bicycle.

“It’s balmy,” Nina said.

“Huh?” Dabney said.

He had left it there on purpose, she decided. To taunt her.

She sat back down at her desk. She had packed herself a lovely BLT on toasted Portuguese bread for lunch, using the first hothouse tomatoes from Bartlett Farm. But she couldn’t eat a thing. She still felt awful. In the morning, she decided, she would start the course of antibiotics that Dr. Field had prescribed.

She said, “I’m going to run some errands.”

“Errands?” Nina said.

“I’m going to light a candle at church,” Dabney said.

Nina squinted at her. “What?”

“For my father’s birthday.”

“Your father’s birthday was last week,” Nina said.

“I know,” Dabney said. “And I forgot to light a candle. And I need some thread from the sewing center.”

“Thread?” Nina said.

“My Bermuda bag is missing a button,” Dabney said.

“You don’t know how to sew a button,” Nina said. “Bring it to me. I’ll do it.”

Dabney signed out on the log, writing “errands.” “I’ll be right back,” she said.

When Dabney got down to the street, she headed straight for Clen’s bicycle. He hadn’t even bothered to lock it up; he was still living in Nantucket 1987. Anyone might steal it. Dabney considered climbing on it herself and pedaling away.

Then she realized how difficult it would be to lock up a bike with only one arm, and she felt awful.

She looked around. Where was he? He had parked in front of the pharmacy. Was he at the lunch counter, having a strawberry frappe? She poked her head in.

Diana, a stunning West Indian with her head wrapped in a hot-pink bandanna, saw Dabney and waved. “Hey, lady!”

The hot pink caught Dabney’s eye. Pink pink pink. But Clen wasn’t at the counter. Dabney felt a stab of disappointment.

Dabney waved and said, “Hello, lovey, goodbye, lovey, I have to dash!”

“Busy lady!” Diana said.

Dabney hurried down the street to the Hub. Clen and his newspapers; of course, of course he was at the Hub. Dabney straightened her headband. The day was balmy, and she feared she was perspiring. Just the walk down the street had left her winded and a little dizzy. Tomorrow, the antibiotics.

Dabney stepped into the Hub, one of her favorite spots in town, with its smell of newsprint and penny candy. Greeting cards, magazines, fake Nantucket Lightship baskets, buckets of seashells and starfish, Christmas ornaments, saltwater taffy.

No Clen.

She left the Hub and stood on the corner. Where was he? She had been so strong, she had deleted his e-mail, she had not driven back out the Polpis Road, she had not given in to temptation, but it had taken nothing more than seeing the bicycle to start her chasing him.

And what would she do when she found him? What would she say?

She would say: I want you to leave. There’s no reason for you to be here. You said you came back for me, but your mere presence on this island is making me…ill. Ill, Clen. I can’t handle it. I’m sorry, I do realize it’s a free country, but you have to go.

She gazed down Federal Street.

Post office? Was he mailing a letter back to Vietnam, to beautiful Mi Linh?

Dabney was jealous of Mi Linh, a woman who had thrown a perfectly good strand of pearls into a lake for a turtle. Surely that had been a joke?

Dabney headed to Saint Mary’s to light a candle for her father. Her father had never really liked Clendenin; her father had found him smug. Her father used to say, That boy is too smart for his own good.

Dabney walked up the ramp of the church, holding on to the hand railing. She was sweating. One place she was certain not to see Clendenin Hughes was the Catholic church.

Cool, dim, quiet, peaceful: the inside of the church was a salve. Dabney inserted two dollar bills into the collection box and said a prayer for her father. Then, something she had never, ever done before: she fed the box two more dollars and said a prayer for her mother.

Bye bye, Miss American Pie.

She emerged from the church feeling calm, light, and virtuous.

When she headed back up Main Street, she couldn’t believe her eyes.

Clen’s bicycle was gone.

Exasperating!

That night, she couldn’t sleep.

The following night, no sleep.

The third night, at two o’clock in the morning, she called Box. He answered the phone on the eleventh ring. Anyone in her right mind would have realized the poor man was asleep and hung up.

“Professor Beech,” he said. He must have thought the call was a drunk student who had mustered the courage to complain about a grade.

“Do you love me?” Dabney asked.

“What?” Box said. “Dabney? What is it? What’s wrong?”

“Do you love me?” she said.

“Yes. Of course I love you.”

“Don’t ‘of course’ me,” Dabney said. “Tell me something real. Tell me how you really feel.”

“What on earth is wrong with you? Did you have a dream?”

“We aren’t close anymore,” Dabney said. “You’re always working! We never have sex anymore.”