“Really?” Hughes said. He rubbed the spot where Box’s punch had landed. “You want to fight? I will kill you, and I will do it with one arm.”

Box took a stutter step back. He had no doubt that Hughes could beat him bloody and blind with only one arm. He had started something he couldn’t finish—a fistfight in Elizabeth Jennings’s living room.

“Please,” he said, raising both his palms. “I’m sorry.”

“You hit me,” Hughes said. “And now you’re sorry.”

“Clen!” Dabney wobbled into the room, unsteady on her heels. “What are you doing?” Then she saw Box. “Honey?” She looked rapidly between them. “What are you two doing?” She bent over to pick up pieces of broken glass off the floor.

Box, with a similar instinct for propriety, righted the lamp. He said, “Darling, let me do that. You’ll cut yourself.”

Hughes said, “Your husband punched me.”

“Clen,” she said.

“He punched me, Cupe. He started it.”

Dabney looked at Hughes with the shards of glass in her upturned palm. “Go enjoy the party,” she said. “Please. We’ll get this.”

“Dabney.”

“We’ll get this,” she said. “Go.”

“I’m going home,” Hughes said.

Box was struck by the way the two of them spoke to each other. He was no expert on love or romance; he didn’t claim to have any special emotional insight. But he could tell just from hearing that brief exchange that they shared an intimacy. It sounded like they talked every day.

“No,” Box said. “I’ll go.”

Agnes

Riley had called with a favor.

Celerie had asked Riley to go with her to the fireworks at Jetties Beach. She had asked him in the office, with both Dabney and Nina listening, and thus he hadn’t been able to make up an excuse to turn her down. He couldn’t lie in front of Dabney and Nina.

Riley said to Agnes, “Listen, I need you to come with us. Please.”

“No,” Agnes said. “No way. The other night, I think you got the wrong idea…”

“I know you’re engaged,” Riley said. “It didn’t sink in before because you don’t wear a ring, and then your mother told me your fiancé canceled on the weekend…”

“My mother told you that? Of course she did.”

“But let’s be friends,” Riley said. “Buddies, pals, okay? That’s allowed, right?”

“That’s allowed,” Agnes said, although this wasn’t true. CJ was the most jealous man alive. Agnes had noticed this on their third date. They were having dinner at Peter Luger, and Agnes had bantered with their waiter. The next thing she knew, CJ was up out of his chair, asking the maître d’ to move them to another section of the restaurant.

Then there was the incident with Wilder from work. Wilder was the outreach coordinator at the Boys & Girls Club, and from time to time he and Agnes would go for a beer at the Dubliner. Once, CJ showed up at the Dubliner unannounced, with one of his clients in tow—a linebacker for the Washington Redskins—at the exact moment that Wilder was tugging on the ends of Agnes’s hair, in an imitation of Vladimir, the most annoying child at the club. When Wilder explained to CJ and the linebacker—a man who was the size of a tree and covered in tattoos—why he was pulling Agnes’s hair, CJ had laughed maniacally and asked him to do it again. We want to see you do it again, don’t we, Morris? Morris had grunted. Go ahead, CJ said, pull my girl’s hair again. Wilder had excused himself for the men’s room, then left the bar. The next day, CJ had taken Agnes to Bumble + Bumble, and he sat and watched as Agnes donated thirteen inches of her thick brown hair to Locks of Love.

Many things about this memory disturbed Agnes. She had never asked CJ how he knew she was at the Dubliner in the first place.

Agnes thought she would most likely never have a good male friend again, so she might as well enjoy Riley’s companionship this summer. Besides, she didn’t have any plans for the Fourth. Her parents were going out.

Agnes packed a picnic for three, following Dabney’s suggested menu and recipes: hero sandwiches, dilled potato salad, cherry tomatoes stuffed with guacamole, blueberries and raspberries with vanilla-bean custard. Beer, a bottle of champagne, cheese straws, spicy nuts.

So far this summer, Agnes had gained five pounds.

Riley brought his guitar. Celerie was in charge of blankets, trash bag, plastic cups, bottle opener, all paper products, and sparklers.

It wasn’t as bad as Agnes had expected. She had been certain it would be awkward—Celerie wanted a date with Riley and Riley wanted a date with Agnes. For this reason, Agnes had worn her engagement ring. The diamond was too big to be ignored. Celerie noticed it immediately, and Agnes sensed not only her relief—Agnes wasn’t a threat if she was engaged—but her enthusiasm.

“Your mother didn’t tell me you were getting married!” Celerie said, in her most upbeat cheerleader voice. “Will you get married on Nantucket?”

“Yes,” said Agnes. “At Saint Mary’s. Reception at the Yacht Club.”

“I want to get married on Nantucket,” Celerie said. She bobbed her head.

Celerie was all decked out in red, white, and blue. She wore red denim shorts and a blue-and-white-striped T-shirt and red flip-flops, and—this Agnes found both touching and strange—she had pushed her blond hair back with a navy grosgrain headband with white stars, the exact headband Dabney wore tonight.