“I’m on Nantucket, CJ,” she said. “I’d like to go to the beach. Enjoy summer.”

“We can enjoy summer in the city,” he said. “We can walk in Central Park and put our feet in the fountain. We can go to a Yanks game. We can get reservations at any restaurant in the city. You want me to book at Le Bernadin? Minetta Tavern?”

“Um…” she said. “Maybe next weekend?”

“It doesn’t even sound like you want to see me,” CJ said.

“I do,” Agnes said. She had then sung out a chorus of apologies that she didn’t quite mean.

At the turnoff for Quidnet Road, Agnes gathered her campers. There were some fun personalities here—Archie, Samantha, Bronwyn, and Jamey (boy) and Jamie (girl). But everyone was hot and thirsty, the water bottles were down to the last inches, and the kids were eager for a swim and lunch.

Agnes gave the final directions—slight left onto Quidnet Road, half a mile to the pond, lock up, head to the beach, stay together, no one in the water until Agnes blew the whistle—and they all waited for Dalton to catch up. He was forty yards back, ChapStick break.

Just then, Agnes’s attention was snared by the sight of the Impala barreling up the Polpis Road. Her mother, sunglasses on, was at the wheel, singing. Agnes caught the strains of the Rolling Stones’ “Hang Fire.”

Agnes waved. She shouted, “Mom! Mom!” But the Impala cruised past; Dabney was too intent on where she was going to notice her only child.

Where was she going? Agnes couldn’t very well follow her.

The campers were intrigued. “Was that your mom?” Samantha asked. “Like, your Mom mom?”

Agnes realized that to her campers, she probably seemed too old to have a mother.

“Was that her car?” Archie asked. “A 1967 Chevy Impala?”

There was a motorhead in every group. Agnes nodded. “That was my mom,” she said. “My Mom mom. And yes, that’s her car.”

“Your mom must be cool,” Archie said.

That night at dinner, Agnes waited until Dabney had finished her first glass of wine and poured her second before she asked. Again, it looked like her mother had gotten sun. The freckles on her cheeks were plentiful and pronounced.

“I saw you on the Polpis Road today,” Agnes said. “By the Quidnet turnoff? I was with my campers. Where were you going?”

Dabney took a bite of her grilled salmon with homemade dill sauce, then made a face of ecstasy. Agnes had to agree: her mother cooked like a goddess. Agnes had gained three pounds since she’d been home.

Dabney said, “The summer between my senior year in high school and my freshman year in college, I got a flat tire on Main Street.” She dabbed her lips and took a sip of wine. “In the Nova. I popped it against the granite curb right outside of Murray’s Toggery. And no sooner had I gotten out of the car to look at the damage than a police car pulled up.” Dabney smiled. “And it was Grampy!”

“Oh,” Agnes said.

“What are the chances my own father would wander by at the exact moment my tire popped? I was very happy to see him, even though he made me change it myself. You remember what your grandfather was like.”

“Mom,” Agnes said. “Where were you going today?”

“I just thought of that story because of how funny it is to run into, you know, your parents, or your kids, when you’re out doing other things, living your life.”

“Mom.”

Dabney lifted a spear of asparagus with her fingers and nibbled it. “I had lunch at Sankaty Beach Club,” she said.

“Really?” Agnes said. This didn’t sound right. Dabney didn’t like to go to the Sankaty Beach Club, because her mother, Patty Benson, had been a member there, and thus Dabney had decided the place was cursed. “I thought you refused to eat there.”

“Well,” Dabney said, “I did today.”

Nina Mobley

Dabney was out of the office when Marcus Cobb came in to register with the Chamber. Marcus Cobb was actually Dr. Marcus Cobb, an ophthalmologist, who was setting up a practice on Old South Road.

A real eye doctor! Nina thought.

He was of medium height, had a shaved head, and was dressed in a shirt and tie. Nina loved a man in a shirt and tie, probably because she had grown up on Nantucket, where nobody wore a shirt and tie except for the high school superintendent and the insurance guys across the street.

Nina said, “You know, I could use a pair of glasses. I haven’t been able to see clearly in years.”

This made Dr. Marcus Cobb laugh. He thought Nina was kidding.

Couple #17: Genevieve Martine and Brian Lefebvre, married twenty-one years, five daughters

Genevieve: When I first met Dabney, I was twenty-one and she was seventeen and we worked together at Nantucket Cotton, a T-shirt shop which was the most successful retail spot on the island. I was from Canada, I had just graduated from McGill with a useless degree in French language and literature, and I had come to Nantucket because I had accidentally fallen in love with my cousin’s husband. I came from a large Catholic family and my mother, who was positively verklempt with me, told me to leave the country and pray to God for forgiveness.

I took the first job I was offered; the T-shirt shop was desperate for help. Dabney, although four years younger than me and still a teenager, was my manager. The owner, a man named Ed Law, told me I was to listen to Dabney and take all my direction from her. She was, he said, the best employee he’d ever had.