Thank you, Dad. I did then and I will again now.”

Tricia paused and let Maggie have her moment on stage. Maggie took it and then exited with a small bow and a fist-bump for her sister. Tricia wasn’t the slightest bit nervous. She had worked on her material late into the night, then got up, put on her running shoes, and rehearsed it several times on her run. Tricia went to where everyone in the audience knew she must go—back to the beginning.

“Like some of you, I read Never Not Nothing as a teenager, because it was a coming-of-age novel intended to be read by those coming of age.

Honestly, I couldn’t understand all the fuss, maybe because every character in the book seemed so familiar to me. My father as the main character Ethan, of course. Aunt Frannie as the little sister. Dear Cap Richardson as the more sophisticated best friend. I like to think that my mother Maeve was Elspeth, but my mother and father hadn’t met yet when he wrote the book, though I’m guessing that when my father met my mother, he knew

he’d found his Elspeth. These weren’t characters in a novel; these were the people in my life.

“But two summers ago, after a difficult personal situation, I found myself in a coffee shop in Greenwich Village and there was a copy of Never Not Nothing in their lending library, along with spy thrillers and self-help titles.

I started to reread it over a latte. When I finished it hours later in one sitting, I realized that I was the same age then as my father was when he wrote it, and the book resonated with me at a whole different level.

“Never Not Nothing is about establishing self-identity and the impossibility of living up to standards that somebody else created. That’s something you learn well past your coming-of-age years, isn’t it? My father needed the distance to write the story and that’s true of all of us. We need to look backward before we can move forward. But more than anything, what I missed the first time I read Never Not Nothing was the longing to belong

—to a family, to a friend group, to another person. I already belonged to those characters on the page, or so I thought at sixteen. But by thirty, I had lost that sense of connection. After rereading the book, I understood how essential growing up a Sweeney was to my being. Time and distance and losses made me hunger for belonging again. I think it’s why the book continues to be read and loved, because we’re all a little Ethan, searching for our people, for those essential connections. And look at you all here—

you were my father’s people and you made his life complete, even if there were days when he wasn’t completely whole himself. Thank you. Thank you so very much.”

Tricia paused again, this time for her moment, and then said, “Stay for food, drink, and carousing. You know my father would have loved the carousing bit. But first, from Never Not Nothing . . .” Tricia looked up as she spoke the well-known final lines of the book by heart and saw that many in the audience were doing the same, like singing along at a concert.

“Ethan knew it would never be the same. The moment, that had blistered the sun, cooled, then burned out. Walk along, young man, walk along.”

As the band segued into Van Morrison’s “Into the Mystic,” Maggie cued the lights and the sails and spinnakers came to life. The effect was breathtaking as the glowing fabric, lit from behind, blew in the breeze in the darkening sky. The crowd clapped as the band sang, “Let your soul and spirit fly.”

As Liza and her family led the informal procession from the boathouse to the patio, she scanned the guests. She wanted to remember who was there that day and how they fit into her life. Her father’s sister, Aunt Frannie, wiped her eyes and smiled at Liza. She still lived in Hamden, taught middle school social studies, and sent her nieces birthday cards with cash inside, as a kind of wink to the fact that they were all grown-up now.

There was David Remnick from The New Yorker, surrounded by several other editors, as well as writers and sometimes rivals like Richard Ford, John McPhee, and Don DeLillo. Her father’s publishing house, represented in person by the editorial team and the senior marketing staff, had sent flowers and a special selection of green-only M&M’s, a reference from Bitter Fruit. And, of course, his agent Lois Hopper in a black hat and sunglasses even after dark and her longtime assistant, Robert.

Here was a crew from the Pequot Yacht Club in blue blazers and matching club ties, and the regulars from the public boat ramp, fondly called Ye Yacht Yard, in slightly less-well-cut blue blazers and ties emblazoned with buoys, both groups there to pay respects to a fellow sailor.

Neighbors from up and down Willow Lane came, wives in navy or black Talbot dresses and husbands wearing sober faces because knowing Bill Sweeney had brought a special something to their suburban lives and now he was gone. Childhood friends of the sisters, the sons and daughters of Southport, showed up, the younger versions of their parents, now replenishing the gene pool with attractive children and expensively highlighted hair.

The Yale contingent turned out in full strength from tweedy deans to fellow lecturers to dazzled grad students, who seemed overwhelmed to be at their idol’s house. One tall blonde with a familiar face stood out to Liza.

Was she a colleague? Or something more? Liza had seen her before, for sure. Maybe she was one of the “after coffee” women she would see slip out the side door on Willow Lane as she came in the front door to check on her father. Liza couldn’t place her and didn’t really feel like talking to a stranger.

Even a few actors turned up, like Ed Harris and Willem Dafoe, both of whom wanted to option the Vietnam book for a movie, which Bill declined but they all became friends anyway.

Tricia had turned out the right people, Liza thought. She’d always understood the big picture. Then she locked eyes with an unexpected face in

the crowd. Jesus, what the hell is he doing here?

Maggie, walking behind her, noticed the same face at the same moment and whispered to Liza, “Holy shit. Is that Gray Cunningham? I haven’t seen him in fifteen years.” Maggie recovered from sobbing to man-spotting in an instant. “My God. He looks fantastic.”

Of all the events over the last few days, none rocked through Liza like the appearance of Gray Cunningham. The boy who was everything Liza wasn’t: cynical, dark, reckless. The boy who made her defy her father and disappoint her mother. The boy who broke her heart and left her for the West Coast when her mother was dying. Liza rebounded by having a whirlwind romance with steady, solid Whit Jones and walking down the aisle with him six months later, so her mother could be at her wedding.

After many years, she’d managed to contain her thoughts of being with Gray to middle-of-the-night hours when her mind wandered. She hadn’t even Googled him lately. Why was he here now? Was he a plus-one to one of Tricia’s friends from prep school or with Maggie’s small cohort of weed smokers from back in the day who had shown up uninvited, but somehow talked their way in?

Liza turned in the other direction, to look at Whit, who had waited a full forty-eight hours before getting on the plane home after her father’s death.

He’d avoided any confrontation by attaching himself to the twins, whose tear-streaked faces broke her heart. Good, a distraction. Liza was going to need a drink before she spoke to Gray Cunningham. She turned back to respond to Maggie, but her sister was already headed in his direction.

Of course she was.

As the night wore on, the mood went from somber to celebratory. The guests polished off all the food and most of the drink, including her father’s favorite lobster rolls, trays of roast beef sandwiches, and Garelick & Herbs jumbo cookies, plus a case or two of Jameson’s whiskey, several kegs of local beer, and a keg of Guinness. The more alcohol that was consumed, the faster the barrier between locals and literati disappeared. Dancing started, followed by singing. With every song break, there was another toast or tribute to Bill Sweeney, from bawdy stories to badly recited Seamus Heaney, courtesy of the local fire captain, to a terrible version of “Danny Boy” from the drunk fishermen because there had to be at least one at any Sweeney celebration. There were tears born of sadness from a handsome

Yale colleague, a librarian whose sincere admiration for William Sweeney was evident in the charming story he told about his last conversation with him the previous week, and tears born of laughter when Ed Harris did his

“Bill Sweeney in a Hollywood Meeting” imitation.