Clen had chewed on his answer for as long as he dared. The worst thing, he realized, would be not to respond at all. He wanted very much to buy a ticket to Paris and meet Agnes there. The whole idea of it was cinematic. He understood from the tone of her letter that Agnes didn’t need him to be a father; she had the economist for that. She did, however, require a connection. She was sixteen years old, on the verge of becoming a woman, trying to accrue self-awareness, and she wanted to fill in the missing link. Which was him.

What Clen couldn’t swallow was this meeting taking place without Dabney’s knowledge. He assumed that, seventeen years later, Dabney had made some sort of peace with his absence. She had married, she ran the Chamber of Commerce, and she had, he could only assume, a happy life. If he went behind her back and met Agnes in Paris and she found out about it—well, that wasn’t something Clendenin could risk.

Clen had written back to Agnes and tried to explain all this. The letter he’d sent had been ten pages long. It was an atonement of sorts, because that many years later he had come to understand that Dabney’s telling him she didn’t love him was the ultimate act of love. She hadn’t wanted him even to consider coming home because she knew he would be unhappy, unfulfilled. Not returning to your mother, and by circumstance, you, is the great shame of my life. I offer no excuse other than I was young and selfish, and I believed myself to be destined for great things. In the years since I’ve left Nantucket, I have seen sights both sublime and horrific, and I have tried to uncover truths and bring light and sense to this often misunderstood part of the world. But although I have never met you, I have always been aware that my greatest accomplishment is that I fathered a child. You.

Clen had both anticipated and dreaded a response. If he and Agnes started a secret correspondence, Dabney would be devastated as well. There was no good way for a relationship between them to proceed, and yet he wanted it to. He wanted it to.

But it was a moot point. Agnes never wrote back.

He couldn’t reel in a fish, or dig a grave, or change a tire. He couldn’t shuffle a deck of cards or deal a hand of poker. He would never be able to help Dabney fasten her pearls. This last thing bothered Clen more than he thought it might.

But he wasn’t disheartened, yet. He had the kiss, which redoubled his determination. He was going to keep trying. He was going to make Dabney take those words back, and admit that she had never meant them in the first place.

Couple #40: Tammy Block and Flynn Sheehan, married three years

Tammy: I am the match Dabney doesn’t like to talk about.

We’d all like our lives to be nice and neat. High school, college, marriage, kids, job, church, community, two-week vacations in Aruba or Tuscany—and then watch your kids, and then their kids, follow suit. Some people have lives like that, and some don’t.

I dropped out of Fairleigh Dickinson University (we all called it “Fairly Ridiculous”)—or, rather, I failed out—after three semesters. I just couldn’t handle the reading, it put me to sleep, plus I was drinking every night and smoking a lot of dope. I married a guy I met at a biker bar, a guy I barely knew. We drove to Atlantic City and got hitched, then we moved up to Rhode Island because my new husband was going to work as a fry cook for a buddy opening a fish restaurant. I got pregnant, had a son, then a year later, another son. My new husband left me for one of the waitresses at the fish restaurant and then those two ran off and I never saw a single support check.

I needed a way to make a living while being a full-time mom—at that point, I was qualified to be either a prostitute or work the register at the CITGO—and seeing that these were piss-poor options, I went for my real estate license.

I had a talent for selling houses, and my secret weapon was that which had served me well my whole life—apathy. You want the house? Great. You don’t want the house? Someone else will.

I landed on Nantucket ten years ago the way many people land here, I suppose—I came for a vacation and decided I never wanted to leave. I sold my Victorian on Prospect Street in Providence for three times what I paid for it, banked the profit, and rented a cute three-quarter house on School Street. (Three-quarter house meant two windows to the right of the front door and one window to the left. I was crazy for architectural terminology.)

Dabney Kimball Beech lived one block over, on Charter. I used to see her out walking every morning, and I have to tell you, she didn’t seem like anyone I would want to be friends with. It was the headband that put me off, I think, and the pearls. Who wore pearls at seven o’clock in the morning to go power walking? I quickly learned that Dabney was the director of the Chamber of Commerce and that she was quite beloved around the island. When I interviewed for an associate-broker position at Congdon & Coleman Real Estate and I mentioned I lived on School Street, the man interviewing me said, “Oh, you’re neighbors with Dabney Kimball.”

I said, “Yes.”

He said, “If Nantucket elected a president, she would win by a landslide.”

I decided it would be wise, as a Realtor brand-new to town, to meet Dabney Kimball, so I strategized to be out watering my front flower bed at seven in the morning when she walked past.

I thought she might ignore me, but she stopped and literally beamed at me. And that was my introduction to the magic of Dabney Kimball Beech.

She said, “Hey there! You just moved in a few weeks ago! I’ve been dying to meet you. I’m Dabney.”

I said, “I’m Tammy Block.” We shook hands.