I can’t believe the wedding weekend is here. After six months of anticipating and planning everything in excruciating detail—from the guest list to the website to the paper stock for the invitation suite to the menus to the table assignments—it’s strange to think that in a few days, it will all be over. Burke and I will be married. I’ve been waiting for this weekend my entire life; for the longest time it felt as if it would never come, yet somehow it’s arrived too quickly.

I’ve always disliked the end of summer—the days leading up to the anniversary of Mom’s death—but this year it’s a relief to have made it to September. The slog of wedding planning is behind me; Jan’s new book has gone to print and is slated for publication the last week of November. I’m partway through my first-round edits of her next book, but those aren’t due until October when we get back from our honeymoon, and I can finish them on the plane. I purposely didn’t take on any new clients in advance of the wedding, so that’s all I have going on workwise. I’m feeling good. I’m feeling ready to get married.

The weather in Nantucket in September is chancy, but it’s where and when my parents tied the knot, so I’m willing to take the risk. Following in Mom’s footsteps whenever possible is the one thing that makes me feel close to her even though she’s gone. It’s the reason I applied early decision to Barnard. It’s why I’ve chosen a career in book publishing. It’s the reason I refuse to give up Gammy’s West Village apartment—the one my mother lived in after she graduated from college—even though I would kill to move somewhere with revolving doors in the lobby. I like to press my nose against the glass of the double-hung windows and look down onto West Eleventh Street after a productive day of editing and imagine Mom doing the same.

Burke says that even if it rains on our wedding day, it’ll be fine, because rain means good luck. I don’t believe that—I think that’s something people say because there’s nothing else remotely positive to say—but still, I appreciate my fiancé’s optimism. It’s one of the qualities I love most in him because I lack that innate cheeriness in myself. It’s something I’ve always had to work for, but it comes so easily to Burke.

According to AccuWeather, though—which I’ve been checking every twenty minutes since we landed on the island this morning—the forecast for Saturday is far from rain. The app shows seventy-five and a big fat sun—no clouds—and if that’s not good luck, then I don’t know what is.

Everything is on schedule. Burke and I arrived this morning along with my dad, Nancy, Nancy’s sons, my brother and Brooke, who’s almost five months pregnant and has the cutest bump. We’re all staying at Gammy and Pops’s, where the wedding reception will take place.

The house is beyond incredible, I will say that. It’s nearly forty acres of lush grasslands, wetlands, and woods, with views of Polpis Harbor and the ocean at almost every turn. There’s a guest cottage, gatehouse, boathouse, and two moorings. Pops bought the estate back in the fifties, right after he sold F&C Pharmaceuticals, and no one can argue with him when he says it’s the best investment he ever made. Just as he predicted, Nantucket real estate skyrocketed.

I can tell it makes my father sad to be here, and I hate that. I know that for him every corner of the island is filled with memories of Mom, and he’s kept his distance since she died. He’s certainly never been here with Nancy, and for a moment I’m racked with guilt imagining his pain. But I can’t imagine getting married anywhere else in the world.

“I’m so excited to marry you,” Burke says. The two of us are sitting on the balcony outside the bedroom that Gammy and Pops have designated as mine since I was little. Burke pours me more wine from the bottle on the table between us and gazes out at the expansive ocean. It’s after dinner, and we told everyone we were exhausted and wanted to turn in early. In reality we just need some time alone before the chaos begins on Thursday.

“God, me, too.” I pull my knees in toward my chest. “It’s hard to believe that a year ago we were going on our first date.”

“Hey, it’s been more than a year. Our first date was September twelfth, and today’s the eighteenth.”

I grin. “At least one of us has a good memory.”

“I couldn’t forget if I tried, Goose.” Burke looks at me, and I hold his gaze. I always do this with him—stare into his eyes as though I’m searching for something, as though the space beyond his irises contains the answers to every fear or uncertainty I’ve ever had. Mostly, looking into Burke’s eyes just feels like home. They are my haven of blue, and they have been since we met.

When we lock each other’s gaze like this, it almost always leads to sex. Burke pulls me into the bedroom and peels off my clothes. I love the moment before anything happens, when we’re just naked together, the hum of electricity on our skin. Something feels so pure—almost holy—about being naked with someone you love, the person that you know you’ll spend the rest of your life with.

I inhale the smell of Burke’s warm skin, the familiar mix of soap and pine. He pins me down against the bed and then I feel him inside me, full and all-encompassing in a way that makes me lose my breath.

Afterward we lay tangled together in the sheets, limbs interlaced as we listen to the sound of crashing waves in the distance. Tomorrow is going to be a busy day, with the bridal party arriving and the clambake Gammy and Pops have planned on the beach. Then Friday is the rehearsal dinner and welcome party, and Burke and I are sleeping separately that night, per tradition. I wonder out loud if this is the last time we’ll have sex as an unmarried couple.

“I don’t think so,” he says.

“You don’t?” I prop up on one elbow and study the details of his handsome face, the face I’ve grown to love with every ounce of my body. My husband. I truly cannot believe that in just three days, Burke will be my husband.

“No, I really don’t.” Burke’s grin broadens until his dimples appear, then he rolls back on top of me, burying his face into my neck.

“Round two?” I laugh. “I don’t believe it, old man.” When Burke and I first started dating, we used to have sex twice in a row all the time, but that dwindled down after a month or so, and now we only do it a couple times a week. Burke will sometimes attribute his lower sex drive to his “advanced age,” which makes me crack up. Burke is the youngest forty-seven-year-old I’ve ever met.

“You better believe it, lady,” Burke growls below my ear. “Because this old man loves you more than anything in the world.”

He presses his body against mine, and I clutch his warm back as a breeze rolls in through the open doors of the balcony, the salt air landing softly on our skin, the whole of our marriage on the horizon.

Twenty minutes later Burke is asleep beside me, and I check my phone for the first time in hours. I have more notifications than usual—twenty-two messages from the group text with my bridesmaids and several emails—but one name jumps out at me, a sock in the gut. It’s him. Again.

My fingers tremble as I open the three new emails from [email protected]

5:51 P.M.: You never got back to me about that drink.

8:02 P.M.: It’s rude to ignore someone, Starling. There are consequences for that kind of behavior.

10:36 P.M.: I’m not joking, Starling. Consequences.

I stare at the words on the screen, my heart beating fast, and the fear inside me is suddenly swallowed by a force of sheer anger. I won’t let Max take this from me—not my wedding weekend. He’s already taken too much, and I refuse to give him this. I power off my phone and shove it in the back of a dresser drawer, underneath a stack of old T-shirts.

I lie down on the bed and close my eyes, listening to Burke’s breathing beside me, deep and steady, willing the sound to calm me. But my mind won’t rest. I don’t know if it’s Max or wedding nerves or just my paranoid brain, but I’m suddenly overcome by the feeling that something has to give, that my life as it stands can’t possibly go on being this close to perfect. I sense the compulsion on the horizon before it’s there, and as I make my way around the room doing my knocks on the various wooden objects—bed frame, nightstands, bookshelf, baseboards—I wish so bad my mother were here that I can barely stand it. When I’m finished knocking on all the wood, I slide into bed beside Burke and check the digital clock on the nightstand, which reads 11:11. I sigh, defeated again. I press my lips to the clock and kiss the time stamp on the screen eleven times, then touch it eleven times with my right hand, then my left. I grab Burke’s phone from the bedside table and am about to do the same thing to his screen when the time ticks to 11:12. Air escapes my lungs; the knot loosens in the pit of my stomach. I’m safe, for now.

Chapter Twenty

Burke Michaels’s Diary

APRIL 7, 2019

Dear Dr. K,

I’ve had a productive couple of days. If you can believe it, I’m currently in Langs Valley. I haven’t set foot here since I left in ’91, and now, twenty-eight years later, I’m back.