Dabney was a cute girl—she always wore jeans, loafers, opera-length pearls, a headband, and, during her shift, a pink crewneck T-shirt that said NANTUCKET NATIVE in navy letters across the front. Ed Law had had the T-shirt custom made for her, she said. And I thought, Wow, Ed Law is a cool dude.

Dabney was the one who told me that Nantucket Cotton was the highest-grossing retail space on the island, outearning even the galleries and the jewelry stores. Every visitor to the island wanted to leave with a souvenir, Dabney said. A T-shirt was lightweight, inexpensive, and practical. Ed Law had been the first person on the island to branch out beyond the name of the island. He created a T-shirt satirizing the first line of the famously lewd limerick. The T-shirt said: I AM THE MAN FROM NANTUCKET.

We sold thousands.

What I quickly learned about Dabney was that not only was she a good manager—she was organized and fair with our work schedule, responsible with the cash register and the “bank,” and she led by example with her work ethic (she folded a T-shirt better than I’d ever seen it done, and stacked them in order of ascending size, which wasn’t mandatory by Ed Law’s standards, but that was how Dabney liked it done)—she was also a superstar when it came to customer service. She engaged the customers, and asked where they were from and where they were staying. She had encyclopedic knowledge of the island and would always suggest restaurants to people, or off-the-beaten-path places to bike and picnic. People loved it! Most customers ended up buying extra T-shirts because of Dabney, and then Ed Law got the idea to sell tourist maps for three dollars apiece, and Dabney would customize the maps for everyone who came in based on their individual needs and desires.

“You should work for the Chamber of Commerce,” I said.

She beamed at me. “You’re right!” she said. “I should!”

“But what would Ed Law do then?” I said. And we laughed.

Dabney had a boyfriend named Clendenin Hughes, who would wait for her at the end of every shift. He would sit on the bench out in front of the shop and read until Dabney was finished. Then he would take her hand and they would walk off.

I worked with Dabney for three summers, until I had an ill-fated love affair with Ed Law. I had just earned forgiveness for my cousin’s husband, when I had to start all over again. After leaving Nantucket Cotton, I waitressed at the Atlantic Café, and then I decided I needed a “real job,” and I was hired as a receptionist by Ted Field, who at that time was so new to the island, he made me feel like a local.

Meanwhile, I continued to get involved with married men, despite my best efforts to avoid them. It wasn’t me; it was them. They lied to me. Ed Law had insisted he was separated, on the verge of divorcing—not true at all. When Dabney was graduating from Harvard, I was dating Peter the Fireman, whom I later discovered had…a wife and two kids in Billerica, Mass. And when I found out Dabney was pregnant, I had just broken up with Greg, a pilot from Bermuda. Married.

I could ask for forgiveness all day long, but it wasn’t helping. It was like an affliction, or a disease I was carrying.

I saw Dabney at the grocery store—in the middle of February, in the middle of the night—her belly about ready to burst. I gasped at the shock of it. Hugely, roundly pregnant, Dabney Kimball, who had been so responsible with the cash register.

She was buying chocolate ice cream. She looked over and saw me, but she did not smile.

“Oh, hi, Genevieve,” she said.

My heart swelled with affection. Dabney was one of the only people who pronounced my name correctly, with four syllables. Ge-ne-vie-eve.

I said, “What’s this? Is the baby…yours and Clen’s?”

She looked at me with flat eyes. “No,” she said. And then she walked away.

Well, one can’t work as a receptionist at a doctor’s office and not hear all the gossip: yes, it was Clendenin’s baby, no, it wasn’t Clendenin’s baby, it was someone else’s, a summer kid’s, then no, it wasn’t the summer kid’s, it was Clendenin’s after all. Probably, maybe Clendenin’s, nobody was sure, and Clendenin himself was gone, off to be a reporter in the Sudan.

When the baby was born, I knew her name and weight within the hour: Agnes Bernadette, seven pounds fourteen ounces, eighteen and a half inches long. But there was no announcement in the paper.

And I thought, How did the sweetest, smartest, most together young woman I had ever met end up like this?

For a baby gift, I special-ordered a tiny pink T-shirt that said NANTUCKET NATIVE in navy letters across the front. An inspired gift, I thought. Dabney sent a card on her monogrammed stationery: Love the T-shirt…so many good memories…thank you for thinking of us. But that was the last I saw or heard from her for a while. At that time, Ted Field was not her doctor.

Then, a few years later, I received an invitation to Dabney’s wedding. She was getting married to an economics professor from Harvard! I was thrilled for her, if a little jealous. I was dying to meet someone suitable—someone single—and get married.

Dabney and Box wed at the Catholic church and held the reception in the backyard of Dabney’s grandmother’s house on North Liberty. It was a wedding exactly like one would expect for Dabney—there were lots of roses and champagne cocktails and tasty hors d’oeuvres and a string quartet played Vivaldi, and Dabney looked beautiful in an ivory lace dress. She was in photographs with everyone, including the caterers and the valet parkers. Agnes wore a little pink dress that matched the color of the roses and I thought, This is a more fitting ending for someone as magnificent as Dabney.