The sisters fell silent. They knew Liza was right; she would bear the brunt of the social fallout. And they knew Maggie was right that their resistance might be misplaced.

“At least we get to give Julia good news.” Liza said. “I’ll call her and set up a time for her to come by so we can tell her together. She’s been texting me ten times a day asking if I’m okay, but I think she’s the one who’s still in shock. I also want to put her in touch with our financial advisor so she doesn’t give all that money away to her family. She’s always bailing out her nephews who need new brakes or a cousin who lost a job. I want her to keep that money for herself and have a real safety net.”

“Good idea. She’ll listen to you,” Tricia said, rising from the table. “I’m going for a run. I need to work all this out in my head.”

“Sure you don’t want to skip the run and have some wine instead?”

Maggie asked, pouring another splash into her glass.

“Run first,” Tricia answered. “But save me some.”

“Oh, stop it. It’s rosé, not a tequila shot. It’s barely drinking.”

Liza declined as well. “I’m headed back to my house. I have to fill Whit in on all this before he leaves again in the morning.” She dreaded going home and facing her husband. Whit’s family led an uncluttered life with clear expectations and outcomes. There were no scandals in the Jones family, no unexpected relatives arriving on the scene after an affair, and Whit liked it that way. There was no need to control the narrative because the narrative was one long, respectable story of accumulating wealth and

staying out of the headlines. Everything Cap revealed today would be an issue with Whit.

Liza was only beginning to comprehend the ways in which her life might change with her father gone, the estate a mess, and this sudden sister showing up, never mind Gray Cunningham back in the neighborhood. Liza was the oldest sister. It was a role she relished, a responsibility she took seriously. In the past, she’d handled things. Now everything about that truth seemed to be unraveling. Serena was two years older than Liza. Serena was the oldest Sweeney sister now.

Her phone pinged, a text from Whit. Because she wasn’t home at five like she said she would be, he was going golfing. Maybe she’d like to meet him at the country club for dinner? The memory of Birdie Tucker in her Ellesse sneakers and coral lipstick flashed through her brain. No, she texted back; she wasn’t up for the club tonight. Please, feel free to eat at the bar, she told Whit, because she knew that’s exactly the sort of permission he sought.

They’d both be happier if she declined his invitation. Liza turned to Maggie. “You know what? I think I will have a glass of wine. I don’t need to rush home.”

Tricia’s sneakers pounded out the familiar steps. Willow to Old South to Pequot to Beachside to Burying Hill Beach and back again. She’d run this easy five-mile route hundreds of times since she started cross-country the year her mother died. At first, she ran to get out of the house, to smooth out the rough edges of anxiety she felt every day as her mother worsened. Then after, she ran to get away from the oppressive sadness, adding miles and hills and beach sprints to stay out as long as she could after school. She got faster and stronger. It was running that had taken her to prep school, along with a few strings pulled by Cap to get her in midyear, and probably some of his own money to pay the tuition. She ran competitively in college and to save her sanity in law school. Running will get me through this, Tricia thought, then she let the sound of the steps and the breathing work their magic. The ball of stress in her gut unraveled and her mind cleared more with every footfall. The first thought that popped into her clear mind: I can’t deal with another sister.

“What do you really think?” Maggie asked Liza as soon as Tricia was out of earshot.

“I don’t even know what to say to that. We have our thing, the three of us. You’re you. I’m me. Tricia is Tricia. I feel no connection to this person at all. I don’t see how we fit a fourth person in the band.” Liza poured out a swallow more wine and petted Jack on the head. Poor, sweet dog, lost without his owner.

“Especially one who’s tall and skinny. That pisses me off. Why didn’t I get the tall gene?”

“You’re a much better dancer.”

“That’s true.”

Liza looked out over the lawn, toward the water. The property had seen better days, for sure, but the memories made on Willow Lane were vivid, powerful. For all the sadness they had experienced here, the sweetness was stronger. “I hate to think of this house being torn down. That seems wrong.

It’s not like they’re buried here, but this is where I want to come to remember them. I want to come here.”

“Don’t make me cry again. Or we’ll finish this bottle before Tricia gets back from her run,” Maggie said, pouring a smidge more wine in each of their glasses. “But you’re right. This is where the memories are.”

William and Maeve Sweeney had bought the property on Willow Lane in the early eighties when real estate values in Fairfield County were down and home-heating oil prices were up. No one wanted a sprawling three-acre piece of waterfront property with a damaged dock, a moldy boathouse, and a rundown, weathered gray, five-bedroom house from the 1930s that today’s agents would brand “Southport Shingle Style.” No one except Maeve Sweeney, a poet who saw the romantic in the mundane, and her husband, Bill Sweeney, the newest literary light in the firmament, who wanted someplace to write that was halfway between New York City and his office at Yale where he’d just accepted a teaching job. With Maeve’s inheritance from her Boston aunt and Bill’s advance for his second book after his coming-of-age debut novel had spent three years on the New York Times bestseller list, the newlyweds bought Willow Lane and made it a home and a hideout. At the end of a long drive at the end of a dead-end street, the main selling point of the Willow Lane house was privacy.

Bill’s newfound fame was something that unnerved Maeve. She had wanted him to herself for a little while longer, like when they first met. She

was a new MFA student at Yale, fresh from Bennington, interviewing for a teaching assistant position in the undergrad creative writing department; he was the most-talked-about professor on the faculty because of his fame, his generous laugh, and his dark Irish looks. Their intense romance surprised classmates and colleagues who assumed Bill Sweeney had a few more years of playing the field before he settled down, and underestimated the intellect of the red-haired, well-born bohemian. The two writers connected immediately and deeply. He found someone he could trust with his talent.

Maeve brought out the brilliant in Bill.

It didn’t take Maeve long to learn that her husband loved, loved, loved the limelight, but when he was on deadline, he needed to burrow so deep underground, no party or opening could tempt him. Willow Lane provided both of them with what they craved. Plus, his college roommate, best friend and lawyer Cap Richardson, was within walking distance, across from the Yacht Club so he could be close to his boat. Cap provided the young Sweeneys with an instant social circle and protection at the same time. He was always looking out for Bill, insulating him from his own worst behavior but, as importantly, Cap was always looking out for Maeve, who had bewitched him a tiny bit. The arrangement worked for years with few hitches.

Bill created a writing studio out of the boathouse where he would spend the next forty years crafting some of the seminal novels in the contemporary American literary canon, as well as dozens of essays for The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Esquire, and The Paris Review of equal importance. When he wasn’t writing, he would spend hours in the boathouse reading, grading papers, or listening to Yankees games on the radio. Even on the weekends, you could find him napping on the rattan couches or in the attic bedroom in the boathouse that had served as a guest room for some of the greatest writers of the generation.

Almost weekly, then less so as the years went by, book and magazine editors or one of his agents, first the legendary Abe Eckstein and then after Abe’s death, his protégé Lois Hopper, would make the pilgrimage by train out from the city to see Bill, trying to convince him to write a piece on this or coax him to take a look at that, then end the day with a drink while overlooking the water. Lois had cultivated a trademark fashion accessory, a bold hat for every outfit. She was a throwback, out of step with younger agents who dressed in black and had law degrees to go along with their

literary sensibilities. But Bill liked Lois and her hats. Nothing about her tempted him. As he had said to Cap once, “There’s no amount of alcohol that would get me to sleep with Lois.”