When the Jeep pul ed up in front of the cottage on Shel Street, Melanie’s spirits flagged. She didn’t want the ride to end; she didn’t want to have to face Vicki and Brenda like a child who had run away from home. Josh yanked the brake and hopped out of the Jeep to retrieve Melanie’s luggage.

“Thanks for the ride,” Melanie said.

“My pleasure.”

Melanie reached for the suitcase, and their hands touched on the handle. We’re touching, she thought. One second, two, three. Did he notice?

He didn’t move his hand. Slowly, Melanie raised her eyes and thought, If he’s staring at me, I won’t be able to bear it.

He was looking at the cottage. Melanie let her breath go. She felt like a thirteen-year-old.

“Wel ,” she said. “Thanks again.”

“Right,” Josh said. “So, I’l see you, I guess. Good luck with everything.” He smiled at her.

“Thanks,” she said. “You, too.” She smiled back. She smiled until he climbed into his Jeep and drove off. Then she took a deep breath. The air smel ed like steak on a charcoal gril , and miraculously, she felt hungry.

As she rol ed her suitcase down the flagstone walk, she met Blaine. His hair had been wetted and combed and he wore a fresh blue polo shirt.

“Where were you?” he demanded. The inquisition starts, Melanie thought. But then Blaine’s face broke open into genuine curiosity and, if Melanie wasn’t mistaken, a little bit of conspiracy. “Were you lost?” he whispered.

“Yes,” she said. “I was lost.”

That night, after dinner (cheeseburgers, Ore-Ida onion rings, iceberg salad), Josh drove to Didi’s apartment. She had cal ed during dinner and asked him to come over. He said no. When he sat back down to his father’s silence, Josh felt he had to explain. “That was Didi. She wants me to come over. I said no.”

Tom Flynn cleared his throat. “Dennis told me he saw you giving a girl a ride home tonight.”

“Huh?” Josh said, then he remembered Melanie. “Oh, right.” How to explain the “girl” Dennis was referring to was an airline passenger who was much older than Josh, and pregnant to boot? How to explain that he had driven her home in an attempt to catch another glimpse of Scowling Sister, who was another woman out of his league in every respect? “That was nothing.”

Tom Flynn cut his iceberg salad, took a bite, wiped ranch dressing from his chin. Drank his beer. The phone rang again. Again, Josh rose to answer it. Melanie had told him she was pregnant, but she hadn’t seemed happy about it. In fact, she had seemed gloomy. But she was too old to have gotten knocked up. Josh hadn’t thought to check if she was wearing a wedding ring. He wasn’t doing a very good job observing or absorbing.

“Hel o?”

“Josh?”

“What?” Josh said in an aggravated whisper.

“I real y want you to come over. Real y. It’s important.”

“You’ve been drinking,” he said.

“Just wine,” Didi said. “Please? Come over. I have something to tel you.”

She had something to tel him. This was how it always went, since the end of sophomore year in high school when they’d started dating. Didi took everyday truths and twisted them like a kid with taffy until they were soap-opera dramas. Her doctor told her she was anemic, her brother threatened her with a carving knife because she borrowed his favorite sweater and got makeup on it, her father’s friend Ed Grubb pinched her ass

—al these became reasons why Didi needed consoling, protecting, and extra heaps of attention from Josh.

“What is it, Didi?” he said.

“Just come,” she said, and she hung up.

Josh sat back down at the table. He stared at his onion rings, which had grown cold, limp, and soggy. “Sounds like I’d better go,” he said.

At nine o’clock, when Josh pul ed into Didi’s driveway, the sun was just setting. Summer, he thought. Drag-ass summer.

He could hear the music from fifty yards away: Led Zeppelin. This was not a promising sign. He approached the stairs down to Didi’s basement apartment in what might be considered a stealthy way and peered into the living room window, which was at ankle level. Didi was dancing on her coffee table wearing only a red negligee, waving around a glass of white wine so that it sloshed everywhere. During their senior year in high school, Josh’s friend Zach had referred to Didi as Most Likely to Become a Pole Dancer, and although at the time Josh had been obligated to punch Zach in the gut, watching her now, he had to agree. Didi had been a better-quality person when Josh was dating her, or so it had seemed. She was a cheerleader, she was on student council, she’d had lots of girlfriends with whom she was constantly conferring—by passed notes, in the bathroom, at sleepovers on the weekends. She had been fun—not as smart as Josh, maybe, not “academical y oriented,” not exactly the kind of girl Josh’s mother would have wanted for him in the long run, but perfect for high school.

They had broken up the first time a few weeks before Josh left for col ege. Tom Flynn had been away, in Woburn, renewing his control er’s certification, and Didi had spent the night at Josh’s house. It started out as a very pleasant playing-house fantasy—they ordered pizza, drank Tom Flynn’s beer, and rented a movie. Then they brushed their teeth and climbed into bed together. In the middle of the night, Josh awoke to find Didi sitting on the floor by the side of the bed, reading through Josh’s journal with a flashlight. They broke up that night—not because Josh was pissed at her for invading his privacy (though he was) but because Didi had either hunted for or stumbled across the pages in the journals that were dedicated to her. In these pages, Josh wrote about how needy Didi was and how he wished she would “locate her center” and “operate from a place of security.” Didi took enormous offense at these statements. She threw the journal in Josh’s face and stormed out of his bedroom, slamming the door, only to return a few seconds later, claim her overnight bag, and then slam the door again.

A little while later, Josh found her downstairs at the kitchen table, crying, with another of Tom Flynn’s beers open in front of her. He went to her and held her, marveling at how his writing about how needy she was had made her even needier. She was terrified to let him go away to col ege.

You’ll forget all about me, she said, and he did not refute this, because Didi represented the things about high school that he wanted to leave behind.

That their relationship had endured three years hence—at least in its sexual aspect—was beginning to discourage him. Dealing with Didi was like Josh’s job at the airport, it was like his living on the island at al —too safe, too predictable, too familiar. And yet he had never been able to shake her. She made herself available, and Josh could never quite turn her down.

Josh knocked on the door. The music switched to Blue Öyster Cult. Didi had a drinking problem, Josh decided, in addition to a self-esteem problem. He knocked again. No response. He was about to escape when the door swung open. Didi grabbed Josh by the shirt col ar and dragged him inside.

They started kissing on the couch. Didi’s mouth was hot and sloppy, she tasted like cheap wine, and Josh tried to ignore the feeling of yuck that crept over him. Lola, Didi’s vicious cat, was lurking around somewhere—Josh could smel her, and the sofa was covered with her orange fur. Josh closed his eyes and tried to lose himself. Sex, he thought. This is only about sex. He reached up inside Didi’s negligee. She had put on weight since high school, and whereas once her stomach had been smooth and taut, it was now fleshy, and her thighs were heavy and dimpled. Josh could not get excited; in fact, the longer they kissed, the more depressed he became. He tried to think of Scowling Sister, but the face that came to his mind was Melanie’s. Okay, weird. She had a pretty smile and a perfect ass, but real y, was he demented? She had told him she was pregnant!

Josh pul ed away from Didi.

“I’m not into this,” he said.

At this announcement, she bit his neck and sucked. She was trying to mark him as her own. There had been so many hickeys in high school, his teachers had looked at him sideways. He pushed at her.

“Didi, stop.”

She persisted, in what she wanted him to believe was a playful way, her forehead boring into his jaw, her mouth like a Hoover on his neck. Josh took hold of her shoulders and pried her off. He got to his feet.

“Stop it, I said.”

“What?” Didi lay splayed across the disgusting sofa looking very much like a half-opened Christmas present in her red satin. Her makeup was smeared around her eyes, and one of the slinky shoulder straps had slid off her shoulders and threatened to expose her breast.

There was a bloodcurdling shriek. Josh jumped. Lola stood, back arched, on the top of the recliner.

“Okay, I’m out of here,” Josh said.

“Wait!” Didi said. She gathered Lola in her arms.

“Sorry,” Josh said. “This isn’t working out for me.”

Didi slugged back the rest of her wine and trailed Josh to the door. Didi draped Lola over her shoulders like a fur wrap. “We’re stil friends, right?”

Josh paused. He didn’t want to say yes, but if he said no there would be a barrage of sad-sack nonsense and he would never escape. “Sure,” he said.

“So you’l lend me the money?” she said.

This was another classic Didi trick: to refer to something completely out of the blue as if it were an already decided-upon fact.

“What money?”

“I need two hundred dol ars for my car,” she said. “Or they’re going to repossess it.”

“What?”

“I’m a little behind on my bil s,” Didi said. “I bought some summer clothes, my rent went up, my credit cards are maxed . . .”

“Ask your parents for the money,” Josh said.

“I did. They said no.”

“I don’t have two hundred dol ars,” Josh said. “Not to spare, anyway. I have to save. Col ege is ex-pen-sive.”

“I’l pay you back at the end of the month,” Didi said. “I promise. Please? I’m in real y big trouble. Would you drop it off at the hospital tomorrow?

I’m there eight to four.”

“I work tomorrow.”

“What about Tuesday, then?” Didi said. “Tuesday’s your day off, right?”

Josh let his head fal forward on his neck. How did things like this happen? He should just say no and leave.

“If you lend me the money, I’l leave you alone forever,” Didi said. “I swear it.”

This was as blatant a lie as was ever spoken, but it was too tempting to ignore.

“You’l stop cal ing?” he said.

“Yes.”

“And you’l pay me back? By the first of July?”

“With interest,” Didi said. “Ten dol ars interest.”

Josh managed to get himself on the opposite side of the door. Lola scratched at the screen.

“Fine,” he said. He was absolutely certain he would never see the money again, but if he could get Didi out of his life once and for al , it was a smal price to pay. “I’l see you Tuesday.”

According to Aunt Liv, there were only three kinds of women in the world: older sisters, younger sisters, and women without sisters. Aunt Liv was a younger sister like Brenda; Aunt Liv’s older sister, Joy, had been Brenda’s grandmother. Joy was prettier, Liv always thought, and luckier. They both got jobs working at a fabric store during the Second World War, but for whatever reason, Joy was paid a nickel more per day. The owner was sweet on her, Liv said, even though I was the one who made him laugh. Joy then married a boy from Narberth named Albert Lyndon, and they had four children, the oldest of whom was Brenda’s father, Buzz. Liv, meanwhile, inherited her parents’ stone house in Gladwyne, she attended Bryn Mawr Col ege, she taught literature there for years. She read, she lavished her nieces and nephews with attention and love and money, she kept meticulous documentation of the family history. Aunt Liv was the only person Brenda had ever confided in about Vicki because she was the only person Brenda knew who would understand.

I spent my whole growing-up thinking Joy was born a princess and I was born a scullery maid, Liv said. But then I realized that was my own delusion.

Brenda had cherished those words at the time of their delivery (Brenda was ten, Vicki eleven), but there were no delusions about what was happening in Aunt Liv’s cottage this summer. Brenda was not only serving as Vicki’s scul ery maid, but also as her nanny and her chauffeur.