Okay, Melanie thought. There is something wrong with me. He is nearly ten years my junior. He is in col ege. I am an old woman to him, an old pregnant woman. And yet—what was it Woody Al en said?—“the heart wants what it wants.” (Were her desires as moral y ambiguous as Woody Al en’s? Maybe they were; who was she to judge?) Melanie couldn’t help what she felt, and what she felt when she heard the Jeep’s tires crunch over the shel s, when she heard the car door, the lifting of the gate latch, Blaine’s delighted cry, and Josh’s voice— Hey, buddy, how’s it hanging? —

was happy.

Melanie’s routine, then, included climbing out of bed and making it into the kitchen for tea and toast while Josh was eating breakfast. Ideal y, she would have liked to be home from a five-mile power walk, showered and dressed; she would have liked to be eating with him, buttering a scone, reading him something funny she had seen in the Globe. Instead, it was al she could do to sip her tea, nibble her toast, and make the most basic conversation.

She was dismayed to discover that he was a writing student—not because Melanie held anything against writing students, but because this gave him something in common with Brenda. Melanie heard them joking about writer’s block. Happens to the best of us, Josh would say. And Brenda would point at him and say, Keep telling me that. The writing linked them in a way that irked Melanie and made her dislike Brenda more than she already did. It seemed hardly worth mentioning that Melanie also appreciated literature. She read serious, literary novels as wel as trashy, commercial ones. She was a fan of Donna Tartt and Margaret Atwood— and Nora Roberts. She read the fiction in The New Yorker, maybe not every week, but often enough. Melanie understood, however, that reading was different from writing; she had no desire to write a short story or a novel. She wouldn’t even know where to start.

Melanie searched for details she could share about herself that would resonate with Josh. She had been a history major at Sarah Lawrence. She had spent a year in Thailand teaching English: she had touched the Reclining Buddha’s golden foot; she had commuted from her apartment to the school by water taxi; she had bought a parakeet at the bird market and named him Roger. Roger stopped singing after six weeks and then he died.

When Melanie relayed these tidbits of her personal history, Josh nodded and chewed his food and seemed interested, at least until Brenda walked into the kitchen to get her coffee. Brenda stole his attention every time. Josh looked at Brenda. It became part of Melanie’s routine to count the number of times Josh looked at Brenda and then feel jealous about it. How could Melanie blame him? Brenda was beautiful and oblivious; she lived in the house with the rest of them, but it was clear her mind was someplace else. On the lover back in New York, maybe, or on the lawyer whose phone cal s she avoided each day, or on her stupid screenplay. Brenda had been fired from Champion University in the midst of a sex scandal—

was Josh aware of this? Did he know she was in trouble with the law? Somehow Brenda rose above the smoldering fire of her recent past and managed to maintain a grip on her life. Not only was she writing a screenplay, which Josh found fascinating, but she had acquired something of a halo, taking care of Vicki and the kids in the hours when Josh and Ted weren’t there. Melanie found herself detesting Brenda and at the same time wanting to be more like her.

In the afternoons, while Porter was napping, Melanie enlisted Blaine’s help tending the gardens around the cottage. They weeded the front beds

—Blaine trailing Melanie with a plastic Tupperware bowl that she fil ed and he dumped, periodical y, in the kitchen trash. When the bed was weeded and the daylilies deadheaded, they patted down dark, sweet-smel ing mulch. Melanie cut back the trel ised New Dawn roses on the front of the house as wel as the rosebushes that lined the back fence while Blaine watched. (He was afraid of thorns, and the bumblebees.) That’s the funny thing about roses, Melanie told him. If you cut them back, they’ll be even lovelier next time.

Blaine nodded solemnly and then ran into the kitchen for a jel y jar fil ed with water. His favorite part of gardening was when Melanie cut flowers for the jar, which he then took inside and presented to Vicki.

“Those are pretty flowers,” Josh said once, about a bunch of cosmos on the kitchen table.

“Melanie and I grew them,” Blaine said. “Right, Melanie?”

“Right,” Melanie said. Josh no doubt thought that gardening was a pastime for old ladies, but Melanie couldn’t deny her proclivity for flowers, for privet hedge, for closely cropped lawn. She had always loved the sight and smel of things growing.

As the days passed, Melanie became more engaged in life on Nantucket, which meant Josh, the kids, Brenda—and Vicki. Melanie had been so consumed with her own woes that she had al but disregarded the fact that Vicki had cancer. Vicki went twice a week to chemo. Vicki was too sick

—too weak, too exhausted and confused—to walk to the beach with Melanie, no matter how hard or gently Melanie prodded.

“It wil be good for you to get out of the house,” Melanie said. “And good for me, too.”

“You go,” Vicki said. “I’l wait here until the kids get back.”

“I’l wait with you,” Melanie said. “We can sit on the deck and drink iced tea.”

They did this a few times, though for Melanie it was as awkward as a blind date. Vicki didn’t seem to want to talk about her cancer, and the one time Melanie asked how Ted was dealing with it, Vicki said, “Ugh. I can’t get into it.” So there was something there—angst, anger, sadness—but when Melanie pushed a little harder, Vicki changed the subject to Peter, which was, for Melanie, like scratching a mosquito bite or wiggling a loose tooth. Painful, but irresistible.

“Have you spoken to him?” Vicki asked.

“No, not since before.”

“So you haven’t told him about the baby?”

“No.”

“But you wil .”

“Eventual y, I’l have to,” Melanie said. “Does Ted know?”

“No. He has no idea. He’s in his own sphere.”

“Yeah, I guess. I just don’t want Peter to find out from anyone but me.”

“Obviously.”

“Josh knows.”

“He does?”

“I told him accidental y. Did you know Josh gave me a ride home that first Sunday, when I tried to fly back to Connecticut?”

“He did?”

“Yeah. Isn’t that weird? I told him then, on the ride.”

Vicki stared at Melanie in an inscrutable way. Melanie felt like she had just confessed that she and Josh had a secret history. Did Vicki disapprove? It was just a ride from the airport, nothing more, but how to explain the bizarre, nascent feelings she now harbored for Josh? She should keep them to herself. It was probably just her hormones.

“I don’t know what to do about the baby, Vick.”

“You’re going to keep it, though, right?”

“Keep it, yes. But then what?”

Vicki was silent, sipping her iced tea. “There wil be people to help you. Ted and I wil help you.”

“The baby needs a father.”

“Peter wil come around.”

“You sound pretty sure about that.”

“He must miss you.”

Melanie scoffed. “He hasn’t cal ed once. Not once.”

“And you haven’t cal ed him. I’m proud of you.”

“I’m proud of myself,” Melanie said. She hadn’t cal ed Peter; she hadn’t tipped her hand. She was being patient, waiting things out. Along the back fence, the roses bloomed and the bumblebees were fat and happy. Ted had cut the grass over the weekend and it smel ed wonderful and fresh. The sun was warm on Melanie’s legs. Josh would return with the kids at one o’clock; this thought alone was enough to make Melanie glad she was here and not back in Connecticut. “Thank you for letting me come,” Melanie said.

“I’m happy you’re here,” Vicki said.

“Are you?” Melanie said. Before the tumultuous events of the spring, Vicki and Melanie had talked on the phone three or four times a day; there were no taboo subjects. They excavated everything, leaving no stone unturned. Now, here they were, living under the same smal roof, but they were each alone with their misery. Melanie worried that Vicki was angry at her for the things that happened the first week. Was she mad that Melanie had al owed Blaine to wander down the beach unnoticed, or that Melanie had fal en off the airplane steps with Porter? Was she pissed that Melanie had tried to leave Nantucket without saying good-bye? Did she resent having to hire a babysitter to take care of the children when her best friend should have been perfectly capable of doing so? Did she begrudge Melanie her pregnancy? Compared to Vicki’s, Melanie’s body was a piece of ripe fruit. And Melanie had done nothing to help Vicki with her chemo. Brenda had her role: She was the driver, the facilitator, the sister. Melanie was, and had been from the beginning, extra baggage. “Are you sure I’m not the worst friend you ever had?”

Vicki put her hand—which shook a little, like an old person’s hand—over Melanie’s, and instantly, the negative feelings receded. That was Vicki’s gift. Kiss it and make it better. She was everybody’s mother.

“Not even close,” she said.

Every Tuesday and Friday when she took Vicki to chemo, Brenda sat in the waiting room pretending to read magazines and she prayed for her sister. This was secret, and strange, because Brenda had never been particularly religious. Buzz and El en Lyndon had raised the girls as lazy Protestants. Over the years, they’d attended church sporadical y, in fits and bursts, every week for three months around Easter and then not again until Christmas. They’d always said grace before dinner, and for a while El en Lyndon attended early morning Bible study and would try to tel the girls about it as she drove them to school. Both girls had been baptized at St. David’s Episcopal, then confirmed; it was their church, they considered themselves Christians, their pastor performed Vicki and Ted’s wedding, a ful service where everyone took Communion. And yet, religion had not played a central role in family life, not real y, not the way it did for the Catholics or the Baptists or the Jewish people Brenda knew.

There were no crucifixes in the Lyndon house, no open Bibles, no yarmulkes or prayer shawls. They were so privileged, so lucky, that they had never needed religion, maybe that was it. Buzz Lyndon was an attorney in Philadelphia, he made plenty of money but not enough to cause trouble; El en Lyndon was a gifted housewife and mother. The Lyndon kitchen was, quite possibly, the happiest room in southeastern Pennsylvania—there was always classical music, fresh flowers, a bowl of ripe fruit, and something delicious about to come out of the oven. There was a blackboard in the kitchen where El en Lyndon wrote a quote each day, or a scrap of poem. Food for thought, she cal ed it. Everything had been so lovely in the Lyndon household, so cultivated, so right, that God had been easy to overlook, to take for granted.

But now, this summer, in the pearl-gray waiting room of the Oncology Unit of Nantucket Cottage Hospital, Brenda Lyndon prayed her sister would live. The irony of this did not escape her. When Brenda had prayed at al growing up in the Lyndon household—if she had prayed secretly, fervently

—then it was, without exception, that Vicki would die.

For years, Brenda and Vicki fought. There was screaming, scratching, spitting, and slamming doors. The girls fought about clothes, eyeliner, a Rick Springfield tape of Brenda’s that Vicki lent to her friend Amy, who mangled it. They fought over who sat where in the car, who got to watch which TV program, who used the telephone for how many cal s, for how many minutes. They fought over who col ected the most beach glass from their walks around the Jetties, who had more bacon on her BLT, who looked better in her hockey skirt. They fought because Brenda borrowed Vicki’s pink Fair Isle sweater without asking, and in retribution, Vicki ripped Brenda’s paper about The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn—

painstakingly typed on their father’s Smith Corona—in half. Brenda smacked Vicki, Vicki pul ed out a hank of Brenda’s hair. They were separated by their father, Vicki cal ed Brenda the c word from behind her bedroom door. El en Lyndon threatened boarding school. Honestly, she said, I don’t know where you girls learned such language.