He made her so happy. Even before the kissing, back when they were “just friends,” seeing Benton had given her days meaning.

She took two more pills. The sixth pill sent Grace into a kaleidoscopic stratosphere—an Alice in Wonderland tea party in a field of poppies with Toto and Timothy Leary.

She pulled the shades down in her study and lay on the crushed-velvet sofa, marveling at how comfortable it was. She wondered that she had never thought to sleep there before.

In the morning, Grace awoke with a sensation of having been buried alive. She was parched, her eyes burned, her nostrils stung. She experienced a moment of profound befuddlement. Where was she? Who was she?

Grace Harper Pancik, she thought. In the study of her house on the Wauwinet Road. And there was someone knocking on her front door.

Grace staggered through the house, trying to bring herself back to reality; she might have been Rip Van Winkle, asleep for twenty years. She might have been just back from a journey on a time machine. It was Thursday. The clock said ten minutes after ten. Eddie would be at work, the girls at school.

On the kitchen counter sat an open pizza box, displaying one cold, congealed piece of mushroom-and-green-pepper pizza from Sophie T’s. That explained what her family had eaten for dinner. There were dishes in the sink, and there was one of the Baccarat wineglasses holding the residue of red wine. Next to it, an empty bottle of the Screaming Eagle.

Eddie had clearly thought nothing of drinking his precious, prized wine without her. He hadn’t managed to get the dishes into the dishwasher, nor the pizza box into the recycling bin. He had decided to wait for Grace to wake up and do it.

Still, the knocking.

Who would it be? Grace wondered. UPS and FedEx knew to just drop off.

Then, Grace thought: Benton? She hurried for the door. Normally, he just walked around the side of the house, into the yard, but he might not feel comfortable doing that under present circumstances.

But when Grace opened their massive front door—it was made of oak and was heavy enough to withstand a battering ram—the person she found standing before her was Madeline.

“Thank God you’re alive,” Madeline said. “Eddie called me. He said you’d locked yourself in your study and spent the night there?”

Grace opened the door so that Madeline could enter. She was getting a rebound headache, which was nearly as bad as a migraine and would require Excedrin and strong coffee to combat.

“I’m alive,” Grace said. “But barely.”

“It’s a beautiful day,” Madeline said. “I think we should go to lunch, sit outside, share a bottle of wine.”

Grace peered out at the bright, warm day. It hurt her eyes to look at the sun.

“Don’t you have to write in your apartment today?” When Grace had talked to Madeline on Monday, Madeline said something about a deadline she had to meet for the new book.

“I’m taking today off,” Madeline said. “I’m devoting myself to you.”

Grace felt stupidly grateful. She would take a shower, put on a dress, and go to lunch with Madeline.

She didn’t know how any woman anywhere conducted an affair without having the ear of a best friend.

They went to the Great Harbor Yacht Club for lunch, since it had just opened for the season. The summer people had yet to arrive, so they would have the place virtually to themselves for confidential conversation. It was a stunner of a day, the kind of day that promised more days exactly like it, for months to come. The hostess led Grace and Madeline across the grass to the premium outdoor table for two, with an uninterrupted view of the harbor and the huge summer homes in Monomoy. The waitress handed them menus, and Grace said, “We’ll have a very cold bottle of Sancerre, if you have it.”

Madeline regarded her menu. “Definitely worth giving up work for,” she said. “I love it here. You are so lucky.”

Grace knew she was lucky. She and Eddie had languished on the wait list at the Nantucket Yacht Club for years before Grace realized that they would never get in. She supposed Eddie had pissed too many people off, or possibly the old Nantucket families who belonged there didn’t want a man nicknamed Fast Eddie to join their ranks. But then the Great Harbor Yacht Club opened, and Eddie jumped at the opportunity; he was one of the first people to write a check for the six-figure initiation fee.

Grace studied the menu—oysters on the half shell, grilled Caesar salad with creamy Roquefort dressing, lobster club sandwich with shoestring fries—and tried to make herself feel hungry.

The waitress came with the wine, which Grace tasted and approved. The waitress poured two glasses, then set the bottle in a bucket of ice. Grace and Madeline touched glasses, and Grace said, “Thank you for making me do this.”

Madeline said, “Thank you for buying lunch.”

They laughed, but a short moment later, the waitress came back with an uneasy expression on her face. She leaned over to Grace and said, “I’m sorry to interrupt your drinks, but I just found out from our general manager that Accounting hasn’t received your check for this year’s dues? So, technically, I’m not allowed to serve you?”

“What?” Grace said. She reached for her phone to text Eddie. He handled all their bills. But cell phones were verboten at Great Harbor. She smiled at the waitress. “I have two ideas. One is, I could just pay you cash for lunch, and then we can clear up the missing dues check later? I’m sure my husband sent it, or he meant to send it. But he’s got a lot going on at the moment with his business.” Grace wondered if the invoice for the yacht club had gotten mixed up with some of the bills for the spec houses. Or, possibly, he had left the bill for Eloise to pay, and she had forgotten. She was getting older and tended to let things slip. Grace had encouraged him to replace her, but, as Eddie pointed out, she was related to half the island. He couldn’t just fire her.