Dabney also made a bourbon-glazed spiral-cut ham, a loaf of braided honey-curry bread, poached asparagus with hollandaise sauce, and a tortellini salad with herbed mayonnaise. She served lemon tarts from the Nantucket Bake Shop. She bought a bottle of Taittinger champagne for herself and Agnes, good white Bordeaux for Box, and a twelve-pack of Stella Artois to offer those who stopped to visit.

As Dabney was cutting the crusts from the Pepperidge Farm loaf, Box entered the kitchen. He had arrived that morning while she was at work; she hadn’t seen him since Monday at 7:00 a.m., when she’d dropped him at the airport as she did every Monday morning.

“Hello, dear,” he said, and he kissed her chastely on the cheek. His greeting alone summed up the way things were between them. Pleasant, civilized, sexless. He called her “darling,” or occasionally “dear.” When they were dating and first married, Dabney used to long for Thursday afternoons because back then, Box would leave Harvard when his last class was over at three, and he would often make it to the island by five. Dabney would meet his plane or his boat and they would head straight home to make love. Now, Box stayed in his faculty apartment on Thursday nights. He worked until seven or eight and then went out to dinner with colleagues. He tried to convince Dabney to come to Cambridge on Thursday evenings. There were so many new restaurants, they could attend the reading series at the Coop or go to the Symphony. But Dabney always declined. Box knew that asking Dabney to come to Cambridge was like asking her to scuba dive without an oxygen tank in Marianas Trench. She believed, in her own mind, that she simply would not survive.

Box grew weary at her refusal to travel, and Dabney grew aggravated at him for trying to prod her into it. I never pretended to be anyone else! she had shouted at him a few years back. The shouting had been startling to them both—theirs was not a marriage where emotions ran hot—and the discussion died there. Box stayed in Cambridge on Thursday nights, and Dabney stayed on Nantucket.

Now, as usual, Dabney said, “How was your week?”

“Good,” Box said. “My Turkish editor called. They’re picking up the new edition.”

“Oh, wonderful,” Dabney said. In addition to holding an endowed chair, Box had authored the macroeconomics textbook used by more than four hundred universities across the country. It had been translated into twenty-four languages. Box wrote an updated edition every three years; the amount of income this generated was nauseating. Box made somewhere between three and four million dollars a year off the textbook; his salary from Harvard was a mere three hundred thousand. The money meant little to Box and even less to Dabney, other than that they never had to worry about it. Their house on Charter Street was historically preserved in its every element, and they had slowly and carefully filled it with antiques and art. It would pass to Agnes. Dabney was the proud owner of a 1966 tomato-red Chevy Impala with a white vinyl top, which was something of a money pit, but she treasured it. Box drove a battered Jeep Wrangler on Nantucket and an Audi RS 4 on the mainland. They never took vacations, because of Dabney, although Box went to London for two weeks every June to teach at the School of Economics, and he attended a conference in November that switched locations—San Diego, Amsterdam, Honolulu. They anonymously donated a hundred thousand dollars each year to the Morningside Heights Boys & Girls Club, where Agnes worked, and a hundred thousand to the Nantucket Cottage Hospital. And that was the extent of their spending.

Dabney wondered if Clendenin Hughes knew she had married a celebrated and esteemed economist. She presumed he did. One could find out anything on the Internet now. Was Clen jealous? Of course, Clen had won a Pulitzer; Dabney had discovered this by reading the alumni notes in her high school newsletter. She had felt a surge of pride for him, followed by annoyance. She had thought, For what he gave up, he’d better have won a Pulitzer!

She wanted to stop thinking about Clendenin Hughes.

“How was your week?” Box asked. “I take it you’re all aflutter for the weekend? Can you give me the rundown again?”

“Dinner tonight at the Club Car,” Dabney said. “I made the reservation for two, but we’ll have to bump it to four, since Agnes and CJ are here.” She paused, thinking about how Box and CJ would fight for the check. That was another thing about CJ: he always had to pay for everything, otherwise he became downright sullen. “Parade at noon tomorrow, and picnic at one.”

“Collapse in exhausted heap by five,” Box said.

Dabney said, “I have an appointment with Ted Field at nine o’clock Monday morning.”

“Really?” Box said. “Are you not well?”

Dabney stared at the perfect squares of white bread on the cutting board. Those squares were her life—or like her life had been until the e-mail arrived that morning. “Not well,” she confirmed. “I’m thinking maybe Lyme.”

Box said, “Have you been bitten by a tick?”

“Not that I know of,” Dabney said. The last time Dabney had walked in the moors was the preceding fall, with their dog, Henry. Just thinking of Henry made Dabney weepy.

“It’s not like you to get sick,” Box said. “I can’t even remember the last time you had a cold.”

“I know,” Dabney said. Her voice was filled with impending tears. It was also not like Dabney to get dramatic or emotional. She knew that doing so now was making Box uncomfortable.

“I would offer to stay on Monday,” Box said. “But…”