What did she want?

“I want to find my mother,” she said. “And I’m starving.”

Riley held up the plastic cup with the five-dollar bill. “How about somewhere cheap?” He started the car, then looked over his shoulder as he shifted into reverse. “Food first,” he said. “Then find.”

They stopped at the Strip on Steamship Wharf, where Agnes got a cheeseburger with waffle fries (carbs and more carbs!), and Riley got three slices of pizza and two Cokes. They drove to Children’s Beach and ate in the car overlooking the harbor.

“I used to come here as a kid,” Riley said.

“Yeah, me too,” Agnes said. She didn’t mean to trump Riley’s childhood nostalgia, but the grassy expanse of Children’s Beach had been etched in her brain from her earliest memories. Her great-grandmother had pushed her on the swings and taught her how to pump her legs; Box used to sit on the green slatted benches reading The Economist while Agnes mastered the monkey bars. Her mother had planted her funny old red-and-white-striped umbrella, which exactly matched her red-and-white-striped bathing suit, in the sand at the shoreline while Agnes filled buckets with a slurry of sand and water.

“So what brings you home this summer?” Riley asked.

“I work at a Boys and Girls Club in Upper Manhattan, and we lost our summer funding,” Agnes said.

“Lucky break?” Riley said.

“Some people might see it that way,” Agnes said. “I worry about my members. This literally leaves six hundred kids without anywhere to hang out this summer.”

“Whoa,” Riley said.

“I’m trying not to dwell on it,” Agnes said. “I tell myself they’ll all go to the public library where it’s air-conditioned, and they’ll read.”

“That’s a good vision,” Riley said. He folded his pizza in half; a rivulet of orange grease ran down his chin. Agnes handed him a napkin. “I love kids. That’s one reason why I’m becoming a dentist. I mean, I’m interested in the medicine of it, but my dream is to build a strong family practice. I want to watch kids grow up, hear about their lacrosse games and their baton-twirling competitions, and their first dates.”

“I sometimes worry that I get too attached to the kids at the club,” Agnes said. She thought of Quincy and Dahlia, baking on hot squares of sidewalk. She had once told CJ that she wanted to adopt them and give them a safe home. But, as CJ had pointed out, Quincy and Dahlia already had a mother. And CJ didn’t want kids at all—not biological, not adopted. “Some of them have really tough lives. It’s difficult not to become overly invested in their well-being.”

Riley smiled at her. “You have a good heart,” he said. “Like mother, like daughter.”

Suddenly, Agnes felt anxious. “Is it okay if we go? Is it okay if we go find her?”

Riley tossed his pizza crust out the window, where it was pounced on by hungry seagulls. “Of course,” he said.

Nantucket was only thirteen miles long and four miles wide, but it was by no means a small or simple place. There were countless dirt roads and mysterious acres. Agnes didn’t know where to start looking. But wherever Dabney was, she was driving the Impala, and thus she would be hard to miss.

“Should we go east or west?” Agnes asked.

“East?” Riley said. “Maybe she went to Sconset?”

“Sconset?” Agnes said. Dabney had always had lukewarm feelings about Sconset, in much the same way Union soldiers had lukewarm feelings about General Lee. There had been a period of time, years before Agnes was born, when Sconseters had wanted to secede. They had wanted their own town building and their own board of selectmen—and this had rubbed Dabney the wrong way. Now, as director of the Chamber, Dabney had to embrace and promote Sconset—the entire Daffodil Weekend was celebrated there—but Sconset fell prey to Dabney’s rules: she would go once a year to the Chanticleer, once a year to the Summer House (but only for drinks and the piano player; she didn’t trust the food), and once a year to the Sconset Casino for a movie. Every single day of the summer, she suggested that visitors bike out to Sconset, where she advised them to have lunch at Claudette’s or ice cream from the Sconset Market—but she would never do these things herself. Agnes did not see her mother going to Sconset—for secret errands or otherwise. “Not Sconset. Let’s head west.”

Riley took a right onto Cliff Road, and Agnes began the lookout. She checked the driveways of all the grandiose homes on the right that overlooked the Sound. Maybe some friends had appeared from off-island and persuaded Dabney to play hooky from work and from Business After Hours? Her friends Albert and Corrine Maku sometimes showed up and demanded spontaneous fun. There might have been other people Agnes didn’t know about—maybe one of her couples from 1989 or 2002 or 2011?

Really, what other explanation could there be?

Riley fiddled with the radio and, finding nothing satisfactory, turned it off. He said, “So, Agnes, do you have a boyfriend?”

“A fiancé,” she said.

“Oh, okay. I’m sorry, I didn’t know. Your mother didn’t tell me you were engaged, and you’re not wearing a ring.”

Nope, Agnes thought guiltily. She had taken off her ring. Agnes had accidentally seen the receipt for the ring lying on CJ’s mail table; it had cost him twenty-five thousand dollars. Agnes had nearly fainted. A twenty-five-thousand-dollar ring. Agnes could never, ever wear it to Morningside Heights, nor could she wear it on Nantucket as she led biking and rock-climbing excursions. The ring was in its box on her dresser. It was pretty but useless, a caged parakeet.