“I’m sorry,” the waitress said. “I can’t accept any cash.”

“Okay,” Grace said. “How about if I write you the check for the dues right now, and then, if you find my husband’s check, or if it comes in the mail, you can tear it up.”

“I’ll ask the manager about that?” the waitress said.

She left to do so, and Grace pulled her checkbook out. She rolled her eyes at Madeline. “I can’t believe Eddie,” she said. “I’m totally mortified.”

“Please,” Madeline said. “I’m your best friend. I wish I could help.”

The waitress reappeared. “Our manager said that would be fine.”

“Okay,” Grace said. “Good. How much is it?”

“Fifteen thousand dollars,” the waitress said.

Grace wrote the check out, feeling Madeline’s eyes on her. Fifteen thousand dollars. Back when Grace and Eddie had just met Madeline and Trevor, they would go for dinner on Saturday nights and split the bill. Madeline later admitted to Grace that the cost of the meal weighed on her mind every second, to the point where she almost couldn’t enjoy her food. What had they ordered? How much had the wine cost? (Eddie always chose it.) Did they have enough cash, or would they have to pile it onto their credit cards, which were already sagging like a rained-on roof?

Oh! Grace had said. She’d had no idea Madeline felt that way. If she’d known, she would have encouraged Eddie to pay each and every time. But Eddie wouldn’t have liked that. He was a naturally frugal person, a result of having grown up dirt poor, living over a dry cleaner’s in downtown New Bedford.

If he paid every time, he might argue, what would happen to the Llewellyns’ pride?

Now Grace wondered what Madeline was thinking. Thankfully, the waitress vanished with the check, and the issue was over.

Madeline said, “What’s going on with Benton?”

Grace didn’t have anything to describe except her longing. No, Grace, I’m not leaving you forever. But what if he was? What if he got back in touch with McGuvvy, called her up in San Diego and convinced her somehow to come back to Nantucket? Grace had stood at her window and waited for Benton’s truck to appear in her driveway every morning. She took care of the chickens because they would starve without her, but the rest of the garden she’d ignored, because she just couldn’t make herself cut back the roses or wipe their leaves with lemon water. She couldn’t deadhead the perennial bed. She couldn’t even mow the lawn, and that was her favorite task.

She said, “The morning it happened, he started talking to Hope about the books he’d read that he thought she would enjoy. And it killed me. He became this other person. There I was, standing in front of my daughter—and with every book he mentioned, I fell more and more in love.”

“Grace,” Madeline said. “You are not in love. I know you think you are. But you’re in love with Eddie and your girls.”

Grace sipped her wine and looked out over the flat, blue surface of Nantucket Sound. “You’re right,” she said.

But Madeline wasn’t right.

Three glasses of wine had turned Grace’s attitude around. When she and Madeline parted ways in the parking lot, Grace said, “Thank you for listening.”

Madeline said, “That’s what I’m here for.”

Madeline pulled out of the parking lot toward home, toward her perfect marriage to Trevor and their shared adoration of Brick. Grace decided to call Eddie and let him know about the yacht-club dues, but she was shuttled right to his voice mail, and when Grace called the office—which she was loath to do, because she really didn’t want to talk to Eloise or Barbie, and those two screened Eddie’s calls like he was the CEO of Microsoft—she got the recording.

She stared at her phone. The wine was coursing through her veins. She imagined it taking her good sense with it. My phone is always on.

As she texted Benton, the tops of her ears started to buzz. Will you come tomorrow and have lunch? Just friends, promise. Noon?

She decided she would not move from the yacht-club parking lot until he texted back. If she was there at midnight, so be it. But he texted back right away.

I’ll be there.

She was in the gardening shed, scrubbing the copper farmer’s sink, when Benton came strolling around the house.

“Hey!” she called out. “I’m in here.”

Benton stepped through door and said, “You’re a sight for sore eyes.”

Grace laughed. “It’s only been four days.”

He walked over to her, and his hands went immediately on her hips. Because it was so hot, she was wearing only a bikini top and a pair of shorts.

“Are the girls at school?” he asked.

She grinned. “Safely at school.”

“And Eddie?”

“Work,” she said.

His mouth met her mouth, his tongue met her tongue, which made Grace feel as if she were going to faint, or die. The kissing was sweet at first and then incendiary. The gardening shed was hot hot hot to begin with, but once she was kissing Benton, they were both sweating and pulsing with insane desire. He closed and locked the door and then lifted Grace up onto the lip of the sink. With a couple of deft movements, he untied her bikini top and pulled off her shorts, and then he knelt before her.

Later, they ate lunch.

Grace served a cold roast chicken, a fresh head of butter lettuce, a crock of herbed farmer’s cheese, and fat, rosy radishes pulled from the garden. She cut thick slices of bread from a seeded multigrain loaf with a nice chewy crust, then she went back into the fridge and pulled out sweet butter, a jar of baby gherkins, a stick of summer sausage, and some whole-grain mustard.