Ivy saw no bubbles or rubber duckies in the photo. The smooth brown of Sylvia’s back, the sinewy back of a teenager, was sliced in half by the surface of the water. Gideon’s brown legs were tucked between his sister’s in the small tub, which was a normal-sized tub but felt small in proportion to the long-limbed siblings inhabiting it. Ivy and Austin had never been allowed to sleep side by side, only head to feet, like sardines, and Nan always took great care to inform them that the genders were never to mix, Ivy should never let a boy see her nude, even her own brother or father. Was this perversity, then, this freedom between Gideon and Sylvia? Or innocence? But the innocent were often perverse, the perverse innocent.

Later that afternoon, the roof began to leak, staining the old floorboards in dark gray rivulets. Ivy and Gideon had been eating a cold pasta salad in the alcove when Poppy cried out, “Oh! Oh! Someone get me a bucket!” They hurried to the living room. Sylvia was covering her head with the coffee-table book Roux had been reading the other day. Roux, for some reason, was naked from the waist up and wringing his shirt into a potted plant. Ted came running down from upstairs, his hair flattened on one side, clearly having just awoken from a nap. “A bucket, Ted, hand me a bucket,” Poppy cried. Ted picked up one of the woven baskets by the fireplace. “A bucket, not a basket.” Ted’s face turned as bright as the tomatoes in the fruit bowl. Roux began to laugh. He draped his wet T-shirt like a towel around his neck. “You look like the plumber,” Ivy informed him. Soon they were all laughing, Poppy the hardest, shrieks of uncouth laughter emitting from her dainty bird mouth.

The small leak had the effect of a thunderstorm in clearing the stifling air. They placed basins to catch the drops falling from the ceiling and mopped up the remaining puddles. “Our old cottage has been showing its age,” said Poppy, “but we haven’t gotten around to repairs.” She gave a regretful sigh. When Roux said he knew a contractor in Boston who could do the job, Poppy said, “What a wonderful idea, I must think it over,” which was her way of deflecting unwanted suggestions. Afterward, they ate ice cream sitting on the porch, listening to the pitter-patter of the rain while Poppy and Ted regaled them with anecdotes about the storms their “dear Finn Oaks” had weathered throughout the years. The way the Speyers spoke about old objects, chipped teacups, rusted silver spoons, the old gramophone they found in the attic, as if they were living creatures, was absurdly charming to Ivy. Sylvia sat beside her on the love seat. “The ice cream made me so cold all of a sudden,” she said, shivering and dropping her head onto Ivy’s shoulder. Ivy felt an unexpected thrill, not unlike the feeling when the boy who’d bullied you in school suddenly confessed he’d done so because he liked you. She closed her eyes and breathed in the scent of rain and salt and soft female warmth, all the while keeping pace with Sylvia’s breaths rising and falling against her arm.

I must have been overreacting, she told herself. Sylvia has no reason to begrudge me.

The good mood carried over to the next day when they finally woke to a broiling sun and cloudless blue skies. The younger crowd decided to take the boat to Coven Island and go clamming for that night’s dinner. Poppy packed them turkey sandwiches and a huge Tupperware of new strawberries. Gideon filled the icebox with beers.

It was not yet ten o’clock on Friday morning and already the marina was teeming with families, dogs running off-leash, fishermen perched on the yellow and orange rocks jutting into the harbor. At the edge of the water a gray shingled shack had a placard that read CATTAHASSET YACHT CLUB. Farther up the road was Cattahasset Point Club, a multilevel estate with two enormous white wraparound decks in which couples and groups of middle-aged women brunched underneath striped umbrellas.

“It gets more crowded every year.” Sylvia frowned, narrowly avoiding being barreled down by two boys in matching sailor shirts. “When we came here as kids, there was hardly anyone around. Now look.”

She was right about the summer tourists, but Ivy was delighted rather than put off by the crowds. Vacation, in her view, should be a little excessive sometimes—it couldn’t always be solitary beach walks and books and restrained dinner conversations about politics and art—and the loud, happy voices of people in flip-flops and open-collared shirts drinking iced lattes seemed the perfect antidote to the hushed atmosphere of Finn Oaks. She slipped her arm through Gideon’s. He said, “Hey there,” and she said, “Hey there,” and they smiled at each other. He led them to the pier where the boats were bobbing up and down on the water, indistinguishable to Ivy’s eyes.

The Speyers’ boat was small and white except for two green stripes running along the side. The four of them fit quite comfortably with Gideon taking the driver’s seat, Ivy perched on a bench in the cockpit, and Roux and Sylvia up front on the deck. A small set of stairs led down to a tiny cabin. Soon they were swerving past the other sailboats, the little yacht club where Gideon had parked shrinking into a flat square in the distance. Their boat was fast and light in the water. Gideon pointed out various landmarks on the coast; on the bow, Roux’s arm was draped around Sylvia’s waist. She’d already taken off her cover-up and was sunbathing in a black lace bikini.

Twenty minutes into the ride, Roux clambered to the back of the boat, clutching the handrail. He took a seat on the bench across from Ivy and lay down on his back. Sylvia arrived shortly afterward. She murmured something in his ear, he shook his head, she smoothed out his hair. After a while, she crossed over to Ivy’s side of the boat. Ivy asked if everything was all right. “He’s just feeling a bit nauseous,” said Sylvia. “He took some motion sickness medicine this morning but it’s not working.”

They looked over. Two buttons of Roux’s shirt had come undone, revealing a tuft of black chest hair, stark against his pale skin. His one leg was bent upright on the bench and his right arm was thrown over his eyes. “I hope he’ll be okay until we get to the island,” said Ivy. She felt little sympathy for Roux; her only concern was that he shouldn’t ruin their day. His sour moods could be toxic, even more than Sylvia’s, whose sulkiness could usually be ignored, while no one could ignore Roux when he made up his mind to be unpleasant.

“It’s probably all the sugar he eats every morning,” said Sylvia with an arrogant toss of her hair. “Sometimes I envy how easy things are between you and Gideon. You guys are basically the same person. You like the same food, read the same books, you even talk in the same bookish vocabulary. Pretty soon, you’ll be going around in matching outfits.”

But you two already do that, thought Ivy, thinking of the monogrammed pajamas.

“You and Roux seem close, though,” she said, sensing danger. “Sometimes it’s better to be complementary than similar.”

“I guess that’s true,” said Sylvia, mollified. “I tried to figure out our anniversary the other day. It’s confusing because we’ve taken so many breaks. I think it’s around eight months next week… Christ, only eight months! With all the fights we’ve had, I feel like I’ve married and divorced him twice over.”

Ivy asked what they fought about.

“I never remember afterward. He’s got a temper. But I hate fighting so I walk away until he cools down. He calls me the ice princess. I suppose both of us are stubborn. Our fights can go on for days.”

“That seems normal.”

“Actually, it’s not,” Sylvia said with a tolerant smile, as if Ivy had been trying to be unnecessarily uplifting. “My parents never fought. And there were some serious issues, believe me. Dad was gone most of our lives, commuting back and forth from Boston. He rented this house over in Back Bay. White walls, everything straight-edged, like a ruler, and boxed in. Every time Mom would bring us, we’d go to our bedrooms and everything—the bed, the desk, the windowsill—would be covered with fruit flies and gnats. And still Dad refused to get a housekeeper. He said it made him look elitist.” She paused to let the word, elitist, settle in the air. It was a common habit of the rich to talk about elitism and privilege, as if by pointing out the fact, they were disarming future accusations of being so.

“Mom didn’t like that,” Sylvia continued. “When they got married, she gave him all her inheritance so he could get into office, but he was always ashamed of her family background… there were some scandals, sure—our great-grandfather was rumored to have eaten human meat on his tour around Kenya… but in the end, Ted’s the real hypocrite.… our mom’s his second wife, did Gideon tell you about that?” Ivy shook her head. Sylvia said, “Yeah. Well. He was married once, for two years, after the navy. But we don’t talk about that… Anyway…” She laughed, a little pained ironic laugh. “I suppose you agree with Roux. I’m just a spoiled girl complaining about her frivolous problems.” Ivy was a beat late in her protests and Sylvia said disappointedly, “It doesn’t matter. I’ve long stopped giving a shit what people think about me.”