Belinda’s mouth dropped open. Laurel was… what? Accusing Belinda of…? Being inappropriate with Hayes? Of sleeping with him? Belinda felt a wave of nausea.

Eeeeeeeeee! She had made such a mess of things. She fled past Laurel, down the stairs.

She needed to get rid of the heroin. At the bottom of the stairs, she ducked into the powder room, a sad little bathroom with a sour smell. She would flush the packet. But then common sense warned her that the plumbing in the house was ancient and temperamental, and flushing something like this might cause a backup or a flood or a housewide contamination. She could just pitch the packet into the trash, but someone might see it. In the end, Belinda stuck the packet of heroin in the mason jar filled with beach glass that was sitting on the back of the toilet. At the top of the jar was the dark-brown, frosted, nearly round bottom of a beer bottle with a curled lip. The piece was so frosted, it looked as if it were encrusted with sand. Belinda had found this piece on the beach herself years ago, back when Angie was ten or eleven and collecting beach glass had been her life’s purpose. Both Deacon and Angie had been impressed by this piece-Not bad for a prairie girl!-and Angie had awarded it the top spot in the jar.

Now Belinda would use it to conceal Hayes’s heroin.

Belinda flushed the toilet, let the water run in the sink for a second, then emerged from the powder room in time to hear Scarlett shepherding Ellery upstairs for a nap. She heard Ellery say, “Do you like my hair, Mommy? Miss Kit Kat braided it.”

Scarlett said, “You know, honey, she’s not really Miss Kit Kat.”

“Yes, she is,” Ellery said.

“No,” Scarlett said. “She just played her on TV. A long time ago. That’s what an actress does for a living. She pretends to be other people.”

Pretends to be other people? Belinda thought. Up until five seconds ago, Belinda had been a person pretending to be civil to her ex-husband’s other wives-but no longer. That comment, delivered in the most condescending of tones, was the final straw. Belinda had had it.

She entered the kitchen to find Angie at the sink, scrubbing clams.

“I need to get out of the house for a while,” Belinda said. “Do you think I could use your father’s truck?”

Angie spun around. She had become so, so beautiful, Belinda thought. Belinda loved the curve of her neck, the length and thickness of those eyelashes. She and Deacon couldn’t have made a child this beautiful in a thousand tries. “Is everything okay?”

Belinda smiled, but she was acting. She loathed nothing more than sympathy. If I want sympathy, she had once said to Deacon, I’ll look it up in the dictionary between “shit” and “syphilis.” She didn’t want Angie feeling sorry for her, but the events of the day had taken their toll.

“There’s an errand I’d like to do in town,” she said. “May I take your father’s truck?”

“Sure,” Angie said. “Keys are in it.”

“Thank you,” Belinda said. “I’ll be back.”


Belinda climbed into Deacon’s antique pickup, a worthy successor to his beloved Willys jeep. Deacon had loved old cars, and what had Belinda bought him? A brand-new Porsche. If she’d been paying attention, she would have gotten him something like this.

Oh, regrets!

Belinda took off down the road.

She was so fed up with Laurel and Scarlett that she had half a mind to drive to the airport and fly home. But that would be like quitting a movie in the middle of filming. She’d put effort into being a part of this weekend, and she had gotten embroiled in the family drama. She couldn’t leave. She had to fix things.

Besides, she had an idea.

She drove into town on Pleasant Street, then took a left up Main. She remembered everything: the yellow house on the corner with the magnificent planters on the porch, the Three Bricks-one for each of the Starbuck sons-and the royal-blue Victorian for the daughter, which was prettier, anyway. The truck bounced over the cobblestones, jarring Belinda’s teeth. She passed the Civil War monument and continued on Main until she reached number 141, the George Gardner House, built circa 1835. Everyone who had ever spent time on Nantucket had a favorite house, and this one was Belinda’s. She idled on the street out in front, admiring the white-clapboard symmetry of the house, the decorative railings of the roof walk, the Ionic portico, the ornamental balustrade, the four crisp brick chimneys. The house was simple, elegant, and distinctive all at once. The front landscaping was lush, the hydrangeas in glorious lavender bloom, the boxwood meticulously pruned. It was divine! It evoked a gracious age, summer parties with men in straw boaters and women carrying parasols, everyone drinking spiked lemonade and sloe gin fizzes. Belinda caught a glimpse of the glassed-in porch off the back and a slice of the azure swimming pool. The white spire of the Congregational church was visible in the distance. Belinda was completely charmed.

She was going to do it.

She parked the truck in front of the house and walked up the brick path to the front door. She knocked.

“Mom!” a young man’s voice called from inside.

“Answer it!” a woman’s voice said.

The door swung open. A boy of about sixteen stood before Belinda. He was wearing American-flag swim trunks and a white T-shirt that said BUCKNELL WATER POLO in orange and blue letters. He was eating a nectarine.

“Hi,” he said to Belinda. “Are you here for my mom?”

“Well…?” Belinda said. He was too young to be a fan, or even to recognize her, she supposed. He would recognize Jennifer Lopez. He would know Reese Witherspoon. But not Belinda Rowe. She would bemoan her advanced age later; right now, she was on a mission. “Yes, I suppose I am.”

He held the door open. “She’s in the kitchen, making sandwiches.”

“I would expect nothing less,” Belinda said. “And the kitchen is…”

“That way,” the boy said, pointing down the hall. He then galloped up the stairs two at a time, leaving Belinda to wander in.


The inside of the house was even more captivating than the exterior. This-this!-was how people were meant to live: with Persian rugs and antiques and Scalamandré fabrics, with clean fireplaces behind gleaming brass andirons and thoughtfully chosen window treatments. Belinda walked slowly, soaking in the impeccable white wainscoting and the chandeliers and the soft Mozart piped in through unseen speakers. She popped her head into the kitchen, where a woman stood at the counter with slices of bread in a row on the butcher block before her. The air smelled vaguely of celery and herbs.

“Chicken salad,” Belinda said. “My favorite.”

The woman’s head snapped up. “Oh!” she cried. She was pleasant looking-pretty, even-with a mass of light-brown curls secured to the top of her head and large, brown eyes. She blinked about forty times as she looked at Belinda.

“Am I going crazy?” she said. “Or did Belinda Rowe just walk into my kitchen?”

“Yes,” Belinda said. So far, so good: the woman hadn’t screamed or threatened to call the police. The woman recognized her. “Hello. Your name is…?”

“Marianne,” the woman said. “Marianne Pryor. Are you…? Are you lost? Or… did my husband send you as a… prank? Am I on TV?”

“No, no,” Belinda said. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you. I just sort of wandered in off the street because… well, I wanted to talk to you about your house.”

“My house?” Marianne Pryor said.

“Yes,” Belinda said. “I’d like to buy it.”


One hour and two glasses of chardonnay later, Belinda climbed back into Deacon’s truck, her spirits crumpled like yesterday’s newspaper.

The house wasn’t for sale, not even to Belinda Rowe, not even for $6 million cash. It wasn’t that Marianne Pryor wasn’t a lovely or accommodating woman-she had been both. She gave Belinda a tour of the entire house and then the guest house and then the pool area, complete with shaded cabana and home gym. Every step Belinda took made her fall more deeply in love.

This is exactly what I want, Belinda thought. It was the polar opposite of Deacon’s house. It has style and taste; it has modern conveniences-a dryer, bathtubs that function, Wi-Fi, a warming drawer in the kitchen, a microwave!

The last place they toured was the basement, completely finished, with full windows. There were cedar closets and a pine-paneled bunk room for kids; there was a family room with big, comfy couches and a big-screen TV. The walls were decorated with movie posters: Rocky, Any Given Sunday, Fargo, and… Brilliant Disguise.

Now Belinda was the one doing the blinking. The poster for Brilliant Disguise featured Belinda at age seventeen, standing on Route 66 with her thumb out. Belinda stared into her younger face.

“You…?” she said, turning to Marianne.

Marianne shrugged. “I’m a huge fan. Brilliant Disguise is my favorite movie of all time.”

Victory! Belinda thought. She had been able to see herself in this house-and now she was actually seeing herself in this house.

She would pay anything, she decided. She would do anything. She would give the son, or one of the pretty daughters who had been sunbathing by the pool, a cameo in her next movie.

“Please!” Belinda had said close to the end of her second glass of wine. “Sell me this house!”

“I can’t,” Marianne Pryor said. “My husband’s mother grew up in this house, my husband grew up in this house, and my kids are growing up in this house. My husband proposed to me on the widow’s walk. We got married in the backyard.”

“I’ll give you six million dollars,” Belinda said.

Marianne had rested her hands on Belinda’s shoulders. Marianne had nice skin, lightly tanned, with just a few laugh lines around her eyes. She exuded a certain calm and wisdom and centeredness. Belinda could tell her life had been privileged but she didn’t take it for granted. She probably practiced yoga, gave thanks every day, made soup from scratch, took an annual weekend someplace warm with her college roommates, chaperoned school dances, and loved Christmas.

“Belinda,” Marianne said. “It’s not a house to us. It’s a home. And it’s not a home, it’s a way of life. Our summertime happens here. This house is part of our past, it’s our present, it’ll be our future. It’s who we are. It isn’t for sale.”

“But you could buy a house on the beach,” Belinda said. “You could buy a house on Hulbert Avenue fronting the harbor.”

“I can see you’re not understanding me,” Marianne said. “We don’t want to move anywhere else. We couldn’t. You might as well have walked in and asked to adopt one of our children.” She finished her own wine. “It’s nothing personal. If I were going to sell this house, I would most definitely sell it to you.”

Belinda had smiled, but she was acting. “I get it,” she said. “Thank you for letting me see it.” More acting. She should never have knocked. She should never have come inside.

“It was really nice to meet you,” Marianne said. “Having you walk into my kitchen is one of the most exciting things that’s ever happened to me.”

“But I can’t change your mind?” Belinda said.

“I’m sorry,” Marianne said. But now she’s acting, Belinda thought.

They said their good-byes, and Marianne waved from the portico as Belinda pulled away.

Back to Hoicks Hollow Road, she thought. And all the joys that awaited there.

BUCK

It was Margaret on the phone.

“Talk to me, Goose,” Buck said. It was nearly noon on a Sunday. Margaret should be out puttering in her garden.

“Are you sitting down?” Margaret asked.

“No,” Buck said. He eyed the rock painted with the green 33 that marked the end of the driveway. “Is it that bad?”

“I heard from Harv,” Margaret said. “That restaurant runs on a hundred-thousand-dollar-a-week budget. Food costs, rent, payroll, the hickory wood, the cleaners, the flowers, the linen service, heat, water, electricity… the list goes on. They spend seventy-five hundred a week on caviar alone. And all of those precious little farms Deacon loved so much? They must have been selling him eggs made from gold bullion.”

“But the restaurant charges a fortune,” Buck said.

“It doesn’t cover costs,” Margaret said. “The restaurant operates at a deficit, and don’t forget, they closed for a month after Deacon died, but the staff still got paid, and they took a huge loss due to food spoilage.”

“So there’s no chance of getting any of Deacon’s money back?” Buck said. In his heart, he had known this, but he’d thought… well, the prices were astronomical. To have a martini at the bar set you back twenty-eight bucks! He had thought maybe there was a refrigerator filled with cash.