Norah says, “I saw Jennifer at the liquor store last night. I think I scared her.”

“You saw whom?” he says. “Jennifer?”

“I saw Jennifer,” Norah says. “I heard Paddy is in jail.”

“Stop,” Kevin says. He’s at such a disadvantage here, and every second he stands here, he puts his family harmony in jeopardy. Isabelle can’t see him talking to Norah. He has to get away.

“And Bart,” Norah says. “Poor Bart! I remember when he was a baby.”

“Stop!” Kevin says. His voice is too loud; he feels the people in the immediate vicinity grow quiet. What Norah says bothers him because it’s true. She has known Bart since he was in diapers.

Kevin has an unfortunate memory of him and Norah babysitting Bart when Bart was ten or eleven months old. They were drunk and stoned, and they flipped Bart over in his stroller. Bart wasn’t hurt, thank God, just scared, but now that Kevin has his own baby, he shudders anew. He wonders how he could ever have been so cavalier with his brother’s young life.

“And I heard Mitzi and your dad split,” Norah says. “But I just saw them together a few minutes ago, so maybe that information was bad? I figured I’d ask you.”

Kevin can’t believe Jennifer saw Norah the night before and didn’t tell him! He had been completely blindsided. Some warning would have been very, very helpful.

“No comment,” Kevin says. “Listen, I have to go.”

“Go where?” Norah asks.

“Go find… people,” Kevin says. “My family.”

“Your girlfriend?” Norah says. “I’ll go with you. I’d like to meet her.”

“No,” Kevin says. “That isn’t going to happen.”

“Why not?” Norah says. “Are you ashamed of me?” She links her arm through his. “Let’s go find her.”

Same old Norah, Kevin thinks, eager to stir things up. She had led him astray so many times and he followed like a little lost lamb. He had first seen Norah in the breezeway of the high school. She had been wearing a black broomstick skirt that touched the ground, a white tank top, and a sequined bolero jacket. Norah had been smoking, and Kevin—brand new to the school, freshly wounded by his parents’ divorce—had been hurrying along with his trumpet case, late for class.

“Hey, bugle boy,” Norah had said. “Come on over here and play me some taps.”

He had barely glanced at her. He registered the cigarette and the goth-meets-vintage-clothing-store look and thought, Nope. No way. He didn’t even break stride.

What if he had stayed that course, never succumbing to Norah’s clear green eyes and that tiny gap between her front teeth? She would just have been Norah Vale, some troubled girl he’d graduated from high school with. He would have saved himself years and years of heartache.

After those first words in the breezeway, Norah had stalked him like a hunter. Later, she admitted it was because she’d heard he was from New York City where his mother was some hot-shot broadcaster. Norah had been born and raised on Nantucket; all she’d ever dreamed of was getting away.

Within six weeks of dating Norah, Kevin had both quit the trumpet and started smoking. He’d also shaved his red hair down to the scalp at Norah’s request; she thought it looked too wholesome long, she said. Margaret had cried when Kevin visited her with Norah in tow in New York.

“It’s your hair,” Norah had said. “It’s time to stop caring what your mother thinks.”

Kevin’s grades fell from good to completely mediocre. He got a weekend job at the Bar and as part of his “pay” received a six-pack after his Saturday night shift, which he and Norah would drink on the beach—always one beer for Kevin, and five for Norah. Things were out of whack like that.

He’d barely managed to apply to college, but he was accepted at the University of Michigan only because his mother, an alum, intervened. He married Norah two weeks after their high school graduation and Norah came with him to Ann Arbor. But as much as she claimed she wanted to get off the puny rock that was Nantucket, she didn’t like living in the married dorms in what she called “the piss-ant Midwest.”

He had lasted one year.

“I need you to leave me alone,” Kevin says, extracting her arm from his.

“Leave you alone?” Norah says. “I thought we were friends.”

“I’m not sure what gave you that idea,” Kevin says. “I’ve been quite happy without you in my life, and I intend to stay that way.”

“Well, I haven’t been happy,” Norah says. “Not at all.”

Kevin shrugs as if to say, Not my problem. Naturally, a part of him is gratified that Norah hasn’t been happy, and a part of him would like to hear this unhappiness detailed. Probably her relationships all failed and she got fired from a succession of crappy jobs. Probably her car had a faulty transmission or bad brakes and died in the middle of the Everglades. Probably she has been evicted from whatever squalid place she’s been living. Kevin has wished all the misfortune in the world on Norah Vale; he has stuck mental pins through her imaginary voodoo doll.

Before Kevin knows what is happening, Norah Vale has her hands on either side of his face and she is planting a juicy kiss on his lips. The kiss is so unexpected and so weirdly familiar that Kevin loses himself in it for a split second before he realizes what he’s doing. He puts his hands on Norah’s shoulders in order to get her off him without creating a scene or looking like he’s roughing her up. Out of the corner of his eye, he catches a glimpse of Isabelle and Jennifer approaching and he thinks, No! Please, no! What is this going to look like to Isabelle?

Isabelle gives him a brief look of wide-eyed horror before she turns and disappears into the crowd. Jennifer claps a hand over her mouth.

Kevin says, “Go after her!”

Jennifer either doesn’t hear him or doesn’t understand.

Kevin turns on Norah. “Get away from me. Leave me alone. You ruin everything!”

The people milling around in Kevin and Norah’s vicinity back away. Norah gives Kevin a hideous gap-toothed grin, and then she disappears into the crowd. Jennifer grabs Kevin’s arm.

“That was Norah,” she says.

“I know it was Norah! She said she saw you yesterday! Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I… I… honestly, Kev, I wasn’t a hundred percent sure it was her, and I didn’t want to upset you…”

“Upset me?” Kevin says. “How about forewarned is forearmed? She just accosted me out of the blue.”

Jennifer gapes at him and Kevin feels badly for raising his voice, but his far larger problem is Isabelle.

“I’ve got to find Isabelle,” he says. “I’m sure she’s upset. What did it look like from where you were standing?”

“It looked like you and Norah were kissing,” Jennifer says. “It looked really bad.”

“We weren’t kissing!” he says. “She kissed me!”

“Why did you let her?” Jennifer asks.

“I didn’t let her!” Kevin says.

“If I saw Patrick kissing someone like that, he’d be a dead man,” Jennifer says.

The words send Kevin into a tailspin. He sets his drink on a ledge and sweeps the crowd for signs of Isabelle. They have been there for twenty minutes and the night is over.

KELLEY

Mitzi asks him not to leave her side, and so they wend and weave their way through the crowd, much as they have in past years. Some people do a double take at the sight of them together, and some—those who are a year behind on their gossip—don’t react at all.

Mitzi can’t handle any questions about Bart, and so Kelley fields all the inquiries and well-wishes. We don’t have much information, held prisoner somewhere in Afghanistan, thank you for your concern, your prayers are appreciated.

Kelley tries to focus on the reason they came: admiring the trees, enjoying a couple glasses of wine, tasting the foie gras and the crab salad and Nantucket bay scallop seviche offered by the island’s restaurants. There are tiny pulled pork sandwiches on sweet potato rolls at Bartlett’s Farm; Kelley devours three.