“Darling,” Dabney said. “I’m sick.”

Agnes suspended a perfect slice of golden-pink peach over her plate. “What?” she said. “What kind of sick?’

“Darling,” Dabney said.

Agnes dissolved into tears. They were the tears of Little Girl Agnes—Agnes when she cut her knee on the sharp stones of the jetty, Agnes when she had a bad dream—and the heartbreak of it was almost too much for Dabney to bear.

Some days were still okay. Some days Dabney made it out for her walk and said hello to the same people and petted the same dogs. She then drove out to see Clendenin, and they swam in the pool of the big house and Clendenin made sandwiches, and Dabney ate them slowly, never wanting to arrive at the last bite. Dabney napped in the afternoon, she had to nap, she was so tired now, and in pain nearly all the time. She slept in Clendenin’s large, white, luxuriously sheeted bed while Clen read his newspapers at the oak table.

Some nights Dabney stayed at his cottage and cooked for him, and some nights she went home to see Agnes. Agnes was spending a lot of time with Riley. She met him at the beach after work, and they went out for oysters at Cru, or they grabbed fish tacos at the Easy Street Cantina.

The rosy aura around Agnes and Riley was so bright that Dabney could have seen it in the dark. Dabney wanted to ask what was going on between them, but she had learned, after forty-two couples, when to push and when to leave well enough alone. After all that had happened that summer, Agnes needed a friend, not a boyfriend.

But still, Dabney could hope.

Dabney called Nina and asked to meet her on the bench in front of the Chamber. Dabney brought two coffees from the pharmacy, with a cup of ice for Nina, and a wad of napkins in case Nina spilled her coffee upon hearing the news.

But when Dabney told her, she set her coffee down neatly between her feet, then dropped her face to her hands and cried. Dabney gave her the napkins, so she could wipe her face and blow her nose.

Dabney didn’t know what to do, think, or feel about Box.

He’d left a pair of readers by the sink in the bathroom. Everyone else Dabney knew bought their readers at the drugstore, but Box’s one vanity was specially made readers, the square black frames that defined him. Dabney couldn’t look at Box’s readers without thinking of Box’s eyes, the startling blue, the blue of glaciers—cold, she’d always thought. Frosty, indifferent, superior, when she was ill-disposed toward him.

His eyes had been so hurt that night at Elizabeth Jennings’s and then again at the Levinsons’. She had never before seen Box hurt, she realized. And she was the one who had done it to him.

She wanted to talk to him, tell him she was sick—but she couldn’t bring herself to do it just yet. He might think she was fabricating a story in order to gain his sympathy; he might think she was using her illness as some kind of excuse for her actions. He might think it was the ultimate in histrionics—and wasn’t it? I’m dying, Box, please forgive me! She didn’t call him because she had no right to ask him for mercy, no matter what her circumstances.

Agnes said, “Does Daddy know you’re sick?”

“No,” Dabney said.

“Do you want me to tell him?” Agnes asked.

“No. Please don’t. It’s not your responsibility. It’s mine.”

“You need to tell him, Mommy. I might slip.”

“Yes,” Dabney said. “I realize this.” Hiding things from Box hadn’t gone well.

Dabney called him, and as ever, was shuttled to his voice mail.

“Box,” she said. “Please, please call me back.” She swallowed. “Please.”

Dabney missed her job. It was nearly wedding season, and time for the fall festivals. Who would judge the best cranberry chutney, who would pin the ribbon on the biggest pumpkin, if not Dabney? She thought about the Chamber all the time, night and day. She worried about it, as she might have about a child who had been removed from her care and placed in a foster home.

Dabney couldn’t believe that no one had called her for help or advice. The fall audit would soon be upon them, and their grant proposal for the tourist council would be due. Nobody could deal with those things but Dabney. What was happening up there?

Nina Mobley was immediately hired as the PR director at Nantucket Cottage Hospital. It was a great job with better benefits and a large jump in salary. Dabney actually felt guilty. Had she been keeping Nina from an opportunity like this all along?

“My job at the Chamber was never about the job,” Nina said, when Dabney first went to visit her at the hospital. Nina had a corner office that overlooked the Old Mill. “It was only ever about working with you. It was about being the pulsing heart of the island. It was about strawberry frappes and you chewing your pearls and making fun of Vaughan Oglethorpe and watching to see who was driving up Main Street and Diana’s perfect cup of coffee, and the cadence of our days, which became weeks, which became months, and then years. Together.” Nina blinked and tears fell. “Eighteen and a half years I worked with my best friend. I know I should feel blessed.”

“Nina,” Dabney said. “Stop, please. I’m still here.”

“I know,” Nina said. “There is no way I can deal with this, other than to tell myself that we’re both going to live forever.”

Riley took a job playing guitar at the Brotherhood of Thieves three nights a week. One night, Dabney and Clen and Agnes went to see him. Dabney felt like a spectacle—she was out in public with her lover! But she hadn’t announced the desires of her heart to the world just so the two of them could remain sequestered at home. And her bravery paid off: they ended up having a marvelous time. They ordered a cheese board for Agnes, a favorite from her childhood, and they got thick sandwiches and chowder and curly fries, and they drank frosted mugs of beer and listened to Riley play.