The toilet flushed inside one of the stalls, and Jenna stepped out.

When Margot saw her sister in the mirror, she grinned. She felt like she hadn’t seen Jenna in weeks.

“Hey!” Margot said. “That dress is foxy.”

Jenna’s rehearsal dinner dress was one place where Jenna and Margot had blatantly disregarded their mother’s advice in the Notebook. Beth Carmichael had suggested something conservative-a linen sheath, or a flowered print.

“Linen sheaths and flowered prints are what I wear to work,” Jenna said. “I want something sexier!”

Margot and Jenna had shopped for a dress in SoHo, and Margot had to admit that it had been almost the best part of the wedding preparations, probably because the task was infused with a sense of lawlessness. They were defying the Notebook!

They found the peach dress at the Rebecca Taylor boutique. It was a backless halter dress with delicate petals embellishing the short skirt. Jenna had a perfect body, and the dress showed it off.

Jenna did not smile back at Margot. Instead she opened her straw clutch purse and took out lip gloss. “What is going on with Dad?” she said.

Margot grabbed fifteen paper towels in a nervous flurry. “Dad?” she said.

Jenna leaned toward the mirror and dabbed at her lips with the wand. “I know you know,” she said. “Please just tell me.”

“I’m not sure what you’re talking about,” Margot said.

“Don’t bullshit me!” Jenna cried, waving the gloss in one hand and the wand in the other like an irate orchestra conductor. “I’m sick of it!”

“Sick of what?” Margot said.

“Of you and Kevin and Nick always keeping things from me. Trying to protect me. I’m twenty-nine years old; I can handle it, Margot. Just please tell me what the hell is going on with Dad.”

Now was the moment in the family wedding saga when Margot had to weigh her loyalties. But she still had one more chance to stall.

“I think he’s feeling melancholy about tomorrow,” Margot said. “Giving away his little girl, throwing this wedding without Mom. I suggested he finally read the last page of the Notebook. Do you know if he did that?”

“Margot,” Jenna said.

“What?”

“Tell me.”

Margot studied herself and her sister in the mirror, and Jenna did the same.

Sisters, Margot thought. Eleven years between them, but still, there was no bond closer than sisters.

“He asked me not to tell anyone,” Margot said.

“Tell me anyway.”

Margot sighed. The yacht club ladies’ room wasn’t a great place to tell a secret. And yet it had been in this very bathroom that Margot had told her mother she was pregnant. It was during the Commodore’s Ball, Labor Day weekend, 2000, at the end of Margot’s second summer of dating Drum. Drum’s father had set up an internship for him at Sony, but Drum had decided to turn it down. He wanted to go back out to Aspen to ski one more time, he said. Margot had just accepted an entry-level position with Miller-Sawtooth; she was headed to adult life in the city. It looked like a breakup was imminent.

But then Margot had started feeling funny: tired, dizzy, nauseous. She had abruptly left the table during the Commodore’s Ball after being served a tomato filled with crab salad. And her mother, sensing something wrong, had followed Margot into the ladies’ room and had crowded into the stall with her and held her hair while Margot hurled.

Margot, teary eyed, had stared into the pukey toilet water and said, “I think I’m pregnant.”

Beth had said, “Yes, I think you are.”

Whoa. Margot sensed her mother’s presence so strongly at that moment that she steadied herself with both hands on the cool porcelain edge of the sink.

Looking at Jenna in the mirror-so much easier than looking at her directly-Margot said, “Dad is going to ask Pauline for a divorce.”

Jenna closed her eyes and bowed her head. “Please tell me you’re kidding.”

“Um, no,” Margot said. “Not kidding. He said he doesn’t love her. I think… I think he’s just still really in love with Mom.”

Jenna’s eyes filled with tears, and Margot became confused. Did Jenna have a strong alliance with Pauline that Margot didn’t know about? Did Jenna love Pauline? Pauline was fine, she was okay, on a good day she could be sort of fun-at Halloween, she dressed up as a witch to give the children of Silvermine candy bars-but Margot had no attachment to Pauline, and she assumed her siblings didn’t, either.

“Hey,” Margot said, patting Jenna’s back.

“It’s just…” Jenna said.

The door to the ladies’ room flew open, so that music floated in. The band was playing more Sinatra-“I’ve Got the World on a String” (her mother’s suggestion of “only standards” had been obeyed). By now, Margot guessed, the blueberry cobbler had been served. She glanced up to see who was coming in.

For the sake of poetry, Margot half expected to find Rhonda, or possibly even Pauline herself, entering, so she was taken aback to see… Finn.

Finn wore a silver Herve Leger bandage dress, which Margot knew to cost fifteen hundred dollars. Finn’s hair was a mess, and she appeared flushed. Her cheeks were bright red with sunburn, and her eyes were shining and manic.

Margot thought, Oh, God, no. He didn’t.

“Hi!” Finn said. She was glowing. She would have glowed with a paper bag over her head.

He did.

Jenna spun around so quickly that her skirt flared; it was like a Solid Gold dance move, and Margot would have laughed had it not been for Jenna’s tone of voice. In twenty-nine years of knowing her sister, Margot had never heard Jenna speak sharply to anyone, but now her voice was a glinting dagger.

“Where the hell have you been?”

Finn gnawed her lower lip, and Margot could tell she was trying not to burst out in an explosion of bubbles and rose petals.

Jenna looked at an imaginary watch. “It’s eight thirty. You were supposed to be at the church for the rehearsal at five. Three and a half hours ago. Where have you been?”

“Um…” Finn said.

“You’re my best friend!” Jenna cried. “I needed you with me. When you needed me last night, what did I do?”

Silence from Finn, who now looked appropriately contrite.

“I went home with you!” Jenna shouted. “I left my own bachelorette party, which Margot had been planning for months. I went home and let you cry on my shoulder about what an asshole Scott is. Oh-and he is an asshole!”

Margot watched her sister with near-anthropological interest. She was watching the first-ever fight between Jenna and Finn. Jenna could be a spitfire. Who knew?

Finn’s face dissolved. She was going to revert to type and cry. This Margot could have predicted, and she further predicted that, upon seeing Finn’s tears, Jenna would relent and apologize for her tone. But instead Jenna grew fiercer.

“Answer me,” Jenna said. “Where were you?”

“With Nick,” Finn said. “Paddleboarding at the beach, then trying to get home from the beach.” Here she flicked her eyes at Margot. “Then we took showers and got dressed at home, then came right here.”

No, Margot thought. It had not taken two hours for them to shower, dress, and walk the half mile over here.

“Did something happen?” Jenna asked. “Did something happen between you and Nick?”

Margot couldn’t bear to hear the answer. She didn’t want Finn to admit the truth, and she didn’t want to hear her lie. Margot put up a hand. “I’m leaving,” she said. “You two can finish this in peace.”

“Thank you,” Finn whispered.

As Margot pushed open the door to leave, she heard Jenna say, “Tell me the truth!”

Outside, in the corridor, Margot surveyed the happenings in the rest of the club. It was, from the look of things, a lovely party. The band was playing “One for My Baby (and One More for the Road).” Margot’s father was dancing with Beanie, Kevin was dancing with Rhonda, Ryan’s boyfriend was dancing with Pauline. Nick was standing in the doorway of the kitchen, eating what appeared to be a club sandwich off a paper plate. Unlike Finn, Nick was not radiating ecstasy and moonbeams. He seemed his usual nonchalant, nonplussed self, maybe even a little subdued. Perhaps he was bummed because he’d missed the lobster buffet, or perhaps he was suffering guilty pangs about the sex acts he had just performed with the newly married childhood neighbor girl.

But who was Margot kidding? Nick didn’t suffer guilty pangs.

Margot had to get out of there.

You can’t tell me you wouldn’t love an opportunity to vent your frustration with your family to a friendly acquaintance.

Goddamned Griff, Homecoming King, was right. She would love.

Margot told herself that the Boarding House was on her way home. She told herself that she would just poke her head in, and if Griff wasn’t instantly visible, she would leave.

She stepped into the welcoming energy of the Boarding House bar; the air smelled like roasting garlic and warm bread and expensive perfume. The lighting was low, the good-looking patrons were exuding a happy buzz, and “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” was playing.

Ha! Margot thought. Got that right.

She stepped up to the bar, where there was one leather stool available. She didn’t see Griff, and she considered leaving. But the barstool looked comfortable; it would be nice, maybe, to just sit and have a drink by herself. She was lonely nearly all the time, but so seldom alone.

She ordered a martini. She tried not to appear self-conscious, although the word described her exactly. She was conscious of herself sitting alone, sipping a stronger drink than she should be having at this hour, waiting for…

A tap on the shoulder.

She turned around. Griff.

“You came,” he said. He sounded full of boyish wonder at that moment, as if discovering the presence of Santa Claus on Christmas morning.

Margot sipped her martini. She would not let him rattle her. She would be her genuine self. But she was struck by the ocean of colors contained in his eyes; she felt as if she might drown in them.

“It was on my way home,” Margot said.

He was wearing a white button-down shirt and jeans and a navy blazer. He now sported three-day scruff, which was even sexier than two-day scruff.

“You came to see me,” Griff said. “Admit it, you did.”

There was the smug confidence that Margot had expected. She juggled a dozen possible replies in her head, but then she settled on the truth. “You were right,” she said. “This morning.”

Griff’s eyes widened. “About what?”

“I would love an opportunity to vent my frustrations with my family to a kindly stranger. I would like to detail the many ways they are destroying my spirit.”

Griff held up open palms. “By all means,” he said. “Detail away.”

“Have you ever lost anyone?” she asked.

Griff said, “You mean, other than when my wife walked out?”

Margot said, “Yes. I mean, has anyone close to you died?”

Griff said, “My younger brother. Highway accident. I was twenty-five, and he was twenty-one.”

Margot stopped for a second. She thought, My siblings, they drive me insane, I despise two out of the three of them right now. But what if one of them died? Impossible to imagine; they were her brothers, her sister. She couldn’t go on without them. “Oh,” she said. “Wow. That’s awful. I’m so sorry.”

Griff nodded. “This isn’t supposed to be about me. This is supposed to be about you.”

Margot said, “You’re a good guy, right?”

Griff shrugged. “My daughter seems to think so, but she’s only twelve, so what does she know?”

Margot’s guilt kept her silent. She thought about how painfully ironic it was that the one person she had really and truly wronged this year was the very same person she was now about to confide in. Griff would hate her if he knew what she’d done. He would be right to hate her. She should go. She couldn’t sit and tell him things with this insidious secret gnawing at her, but she couldn’t confess, either.

He said, “Have you ever lost anyone?”

“My mother,” Margot said. “Seven years ago, to ovarian cancer.”

She could feel his eyes on her face, but she couldn’t look at him.

Margot said, “My mother left a notebook behind for my sister filled with instructions for this wedding. She wrote them down because she knew she wouldn’t be around to see it.”

Griff pinched the bridge of his nose. “Oh, man,” he said. “That’s tough.”

“Tough,” Margot agreed.

The song changed to “Watching the Detectives.” Griff tapped his thigh. “You like Costello?” he asked.

Margot nodded. “Love him.”

“She’s filing her nails while they’re dragging the lake,” he quoted.