Celerie also said that Riley had called the next day to check on her, and that when Celerie launched into her serial apology, “I’m sorry, so sorry, so sorry!” he said, “Please don’t worry about it, happens to the best of us, my fault for forgetting the sandwiches, maybe we can try it again sometime.”

Celerie had looked imploringly at Dabney and said, “Do you think he’ll ask me out again?”

Dabney realized then that she was being asked her opinion as a matchmaker. I must be sick, she thought. Her radar for such manipulation was failing.

She smiled at Celerie. “One never knows.”

But of course Dabney did know: Riley was just being polite. He had been well raised. Riley needed someone a few years older; Celerie was scarcely twenty-two.

Riley needed Agnes.

But perhaps not as badly as Agnes needed Riley.

And while she was working on Agnes, why not Nina as well?

Dabney had tried to interfere in Nina’s love life once before, when she told Nina not to marry George Mobley. Nina hadn’t listened and Dabney hadn’t blamed her; Dabney had waited too long to speak up and the relationship had too much momentum to stop. It had been like a boulder rolling down a hill. Nina had been left with a mountain of debt on one side of the seesaw, and five bright, talented kids on the other. In the seven years since Nina’s divorce, she had not gone on a single date. She told Dabney she was too tired, too busy, and too disenchanted.

The name that kept presenting for Nina was Jack Copper. Dabney was stuck back in the conversation where she told Nina about Clen’s return, and Nina had confessed to nearly hooking up with Jack. Jack Copper was single, he had always been single, and he was wiry, perpetually sunburned, craggy, salty. He had a South Boston accent that drove people like Box nuts, but that Dabney happened to adore. Arararar, wicked pissah, I gotta stop smokin’, arararar, kinda tough when you live at the bah. Jack Copper ran a fishing charter off his forty-two-foot Whaler; he always caught fish, which attracted a lot of fancy clients. He drank beer at the Anglers’ Club, he shot darts at the Chicken Box, he drove a Chevy pickup truck. He always talked to Dabney about her Impala, and he, too, dreamed of a Corvette Stingray split-window with matching numbers in Bermuda blue. Jack Copper wasn’t a bad choice. Dabney might not have come up with his name on her own, but she was intrigued that Nina regretted passing him up.

Dabney dialed the number for Eleanor Sea Fishing Charters. “Eleanor Sea” was named for Eleanor C.—Jack’s mother, who had once owned a boardinghouse on India Street.

Dabney had been expecting to leave a message on the machine; guys like Jack never answered their office phones, especially not during the summer. She was surprised when Jack picked up.

“Coppah heah.”

“Hi, Jack,” Dabney said. “It’s Dabney Kimball!”

Dabney told Jack that he had won the raffle at the last Business After Hours and that the prize was a hundred-dollar gift certificate to Hatch’s liquor store, and could Jack come into the office and pick it up that afternoon?

She knew Jack would not turn down free beer.

“Hell yeah!” Jack said. “I’ll be theah at three o’clawk.”

Dabney was delighted when Nina appeared at work wearing a sassy red tank dress that slowed off her cleavage. Nina rarely dressed like that. It was almost as if she knew.

At two thirty, Dabney said, “I’m going to take a late lunch. I should be back in an hour or so.” She signed out on the log.

Nina said, “I don’t know why you do that.”

Dabney said, “I’m a goody-goody.”

Nina said, “Well, you used to be. I’m not sure I would use that term to describe you anymore.”

Dabney said, “I think Jack Copper is stopping by to pick this up.” She dropped an envelope on Nina’s desk.

Nina said, “What is it?”

“A gift certificate for Hatch’s. He won it in the raffle at the last Business After Hours.”

“No, he didn’t,” Nina said. “Hal Allen won the raffle.” She squinted at Dabney. “You weren’t even at the last Business After Hours.”

“Make sure Jack gets that,” Dabney said. “He’s coming at three to pick it up.”

“Dabney,” Nina said, “what are you doing?”

But Dabney was halfway down the stairs, and she pretended not to hear.

When Dabney returned an hour later (after going out the Polpis Road to spend “five minutes” with Clen), the office was filled with green smoke. Dabney raced up the stairs, as panicked as if she’d set the building on fire.

The front room, where Dabney and Nina sat, was thick with the green fog, but Nina’s desk was unoccupied. Dabney poked her head into the back office. Both Celerie and Riley were on the phone, yammering cheerfully away, oblivious to the atmospheric disaster right outside the doorway. Of course, Dabney reminded herself, they couldn’t see it. Only she could.

She waved her arms until Celerie put her call on hold.

“Yes, boss?” she said.

“Where is Nina?” Dabney said. “She’s not at her desk.”

Celerie shrugged. “She was here a minute ago, talking to some guy in a white visor.”

Dabney zipped back out to the front office, waving away the pea-green soup, and checked the log. Nina hadn’t signed out, but Nina wasn’t the stickler about it that Dabney was. She might have left with Jack to get a coffee, or a drink.