Boat. Harbor.

Belinda shook two more Ativan from the bottle into her palm and threw them back. She had known from the get-go that the plan was to spread Deacon’s ashes in Nantucket Sound, but somehow she had ignored the fact that she, Belinda Rowe, would have to get in a boat.

Terror seized her. It was like asking someone afraid of heights to stand on a diving board at the top of the Burj Khalifa and bounce. She wouldn’t make it. She couldn’t go. She would go downstairs and break the news: she was staying home. She would offer to watch Ellery. Should a nine-year-old child really be asked to spread her father’s ashes?

Belinda sat on the edge of the bed, practicing her yoga breathing.

“Mom!” Angie yelled from the bottom of the stairs. “Let’s go! We’re leaving!”


She had meant to renege, offer her regrets, to say, I’m sorry, but there’s just no way I’m getting in a boat. But for some reason, maybe the quieting effect of the Ativan, she allowed herself to be herded forward like a sheep. The ranger, JP, had arrived in his silver Jeep; he would drive half of them to the harbor, and Buck would drive the rest. Laurel climbed in with Buck, of course, and then Scarlett and Ellery climbed in the back.

Joel Tersigni said, “Move over. I’ll go with you guys.” He climbed in next to Scarlett.

Belinda caught the poisonous look that Angie gave Joel.

“We’ll go with you!” Belinda said brightly to the ranger.

The ranger, too, was watching Angie. “You okay?” he asked her.

She shrugged and started to climb in the back of JP’s Jeep, but Belinda said, “No, no, darling. Hayes and I will sit in the back. You get up front.”

Hayes touched his face, as if making sure it was still there. He gallantly helped Belinda into the back of the Jeep, then smiled at her and said, “And how are you?”

She studied him. High or straight? It was impossible to tell. High pretending to be straight, most likely, but Belinda was grateful for his normalcy and that he didn’t seem to be holding her midnight visit against her. But he did remember that she knew his secret, right?

“Never better,” she said.


She had expected a garden-variety powerboat, white and utilitarian, but the boat JP steered toward the dock was an antique wooden launch with a hull the color of burnt honey. It was sleek and breathtaking and reminiscent of one of Bob’s Arabian horses. Even Belinda, who could write what she knew about boats on her thumbnail and still have room for the Lord’s Prayer, could tell this one was special.

Buck whistled.

“Her name is the Lena Marie,” JP said. “She’s a lapstrake mahogany harbor launch and was custom built in Denmark in 1950. She belonged to my grandfather.”

“What a beaut,” Buck said.

The boat was elegant. If Belinda was going to get into a boat-and she still hadn’t made a final decision-it would be this boat. An American flag waved off the back.

“JP, this is more than I ever could have hoped for,” Laurel said. “Thank you.”

Thank you, Laurel, our spokesperson, Belinda thought. She stole a quick glance at Scarlett to see what Scarlett thought about Laurel taking the number-one pole position or about Laurel clenching the urn of Deacon’s ashes as if it contained her own beating heart. Scarlett was holding on to Ellery with one hand and on to Joel Tersigni’s impressive forearm with her other hand.

“Yes, thank you,” Scarlett echoed. She let go of Joel and offered JP her hand. “I’m Scarlett Oliver, Deacon’s widow.”

JP nodded. “Nice to meet you. I’m sorry for your loss. Deacon was a good friend of mine.”

“And this is our daughter, Ellery,” Scarlett said, ushering Ellery forward.

“What do you say, Ellery?” JP said. “Want to help me drive the boat?”

“Yes!” Ellery said. She was in another party dress, this one a navy scoop-neck number with a handkerchief hem.

“Excellent!” JP said. “The person who assists the captain is called the first mate.”

Belinda smiled. She should have known the ranger would be good with children.

“I’m Joel Tersigni,” Joel said, stepping forward to shake JP’s hand. “I manage Deacon’s restaurant in Manhattan.”

“The dining room,” Angie said. “You manage the dining room, not the restaurant.”

Joel ignored Angie’s comment and stepped off the dock, into the boat, which Belinda thought was presumptuous. There should be some sort of hierarchy for who boarded first, and it certainly shouldn’t be Joel. However, he stood at the side and reached for Scarlett’s hand, then he lifted Ellery up and in. The boat had a horseshoe of seating around the front and two bench seats, one midboat and one in the back by the motor, which was where JP sat. Joel settled with Scarlett and Ellery on the middle seat, as though they were a family unit.

What is going on here? Belinda wondered. She was appalled at how this Joel person was ignoring Angie. Had they had a fight? Or was Joel simply abandoning Angie for Scarlett the way he had abandoned his wife for Angie? Once a cheater, always a cheater-look at Bob Percil. Belinda said, “Joel, I would really like to sit next to Scarlett, if you don’t mind.”

“Mother,” Angie said.

“Scarlett and I haven’t had a chance to catch up,” Belinda said. She took the ranger’s hand and stepped gingerly down into the boat. It rocked under her, and she wondered if she was going to do the predictable thing and faint, or vomit. But she felt spurred on by indignation. Joel Tersigni might be a heartbreaker, but he wasn’t going to humiliate Angie in full view of her family. Belinda simply would not have it. She lorded her five-foot-two frame over Joel until he got up and with obvious reluctance gave Belinda his seat.

Laurel sat with Buck along the horseshoe, and Joel sat on the other side of Buck. Hayes stood in the front of the boat like some kind of damaged figurehead. Angie ended up sitting next to Ellery, who was next to JP.

“Are we all ready?” JP asked.

Belinda clenched the bench beneath her with one hand and the side of the boat with the other. The harbor was flat, and they cut smoothly through the water. The sun was hitting that place in the sky where it ceased to be hot and was merely warm as it cast a golden glow on the surface of the water and on the sails of the other boats. What did Deacon used to call it? The golden hour.

Sailors manning other boats waved and called out to the Lena Marie.

“She’s beautiful!” one man called out. “And so are her passengers!”

Belinda smiled, though it was wrong to assume they were speaking of her when Scarlett, Laurel, Angie, and sweet Ellery were all on the boat. And Buck, wearing a pink shirt and a pair of shorts embroidered with whales. He had certainly bought into the whole New England summertime fashion disaster.

JP maneuvered around the other sailboats and power yachts. He headed toward Brant Point Lighthouse. Hayes sat down next to his mother and leaned his head on her shoulder. Laurel clutched the urn to her midsection and put her arm around her son. Belinda closed her eyes and imagined herself on dry land.


Belinda had had no intention of “catching up” with Scarlett, or of even speaking to her. But almost involuntarily, she said, “How far out do you think we’ll go?”

Scarlett didn’t answer. When Belinda looked at her, her lips were set in a grim line.

“Oh, come on, Scarlett,” Belinda said.

“Come on, what?” she said.

“We need to get past our past,” Belinda said. “You, Laurel, and I are all in the same boat.” She laughed at her own joke. “Ha! We are literally in the same boat. We’re scattering the ashes of the man all of us were married to. Not just you, my dear. All of us.”

“I had a child with him,” Scarlett said.

“So did I!” Belinda said.

Scarlett sniffed. “That’s not the same.”

The breeze was blowing from the back of the boat, so it wasn’t likely that Angie was overhearing any of this exchange, but still, Belinda was… well, “furious” and “indignant” didn’t begin to cover it. She was egregiously offended. She leaned into Scarlett’s shoulder and lowered her voice. To everyone else, they probably looked like a couple of women sharing a trusted confidence.

“If you’re trying to tell me that Angie is any less Deacon’s child because she was adopted…” Belinda trailed off. “Or, even worse, because she’s black and adopted, then you are revealing just how ugly you are on the inside, Scarlett. Maybe I should have been more wary when I interviewed you in the first place.”

“I love Angie,” Scarlett said. “And I was good to her all those years you left her in my care. I practically raised her. Deacon and I raised her like a husband and wife.”

Belinda clenched the seat beneath her so hard, she felt the nail on her middle finger snap, but she was too afraid of letting go to inspect the damage. They were out of the harbor now, puttering around the stone jetty.

“The boat isn’t really built for this,” Belinda heard JP say to Angie, behind her. “But your dad wanted his ashes scattered in Nantucket Sound, so that’s where we’ll go. Besides, it’s a flat night.”

A flat night? The boat was now a Mexican jumping bean every time they hit a wave. Would it get any worse? Belinda imagined the front of the boat rising so high that the whole thing flipped over, dumping all of them in the drink.

Drink. When this was over, Belinda was going to have a big, fat glass of wine. Or, better still, a margarita.

All of these thoughts served to distract her from Scarlett’s last statement-but only for a matter of seconds.

“I didn’t leave my daughter for you to raise,” Belinda said. “You were her nanny. You watched her while I was working.”

“You were never around,” Scarlett said. “Ever.”

“And when you say that you and Deacon raised her as a ‘married couple,’ what does that mean? Were you sleeping with Deacon back then, Scarlett? I know now that it was Laurel he took to St. John, but that doesn’t mean you and he weren’t carrying on years before that. When I was in Scotland? When I was in Vietnam?”

“We were not,” Scarlett said. “But when I reconnected with him, he admitted to me that he fantasized about me all the time. So it’s probably safe to say, when he was making love to you all those years, he was thinking about me. Pretending you were me.”

Belinda wanted to slap her. She wanted to throttle her. “How dare you say that to me, Scarlett. How dare you.” Belinda stood up. She had to get away-but she was trapped. Belinda made her way to the back of the boat, where she lost her thoughts in the drone of the motor and the sharp smell of diesel fuel. The Ativan made her hazy and mixed up; she shouldn’t have taken so many pills.

But desperate times called for desperate measures.

ANGIE

The boat ride would have been excruciating without Joel present, but Joel was making it a thousand times worse. Angie should have told him to turn around the second he arrived. She could have talked to Joel later, back in New York, where she wouldn’t have had to witness him trying to make sweet love to Scarlett.

It didn’t matter, she told herself. He could pursue Scarlett, but he would end up falling on his face.

It did matter. It hurt. It was humiliating.

She tried to focus on the task at hand. JP maneuvered the launch over the building swells and into the sound, and then, just off the coast from the Cliffside Beach Club, he cut the motor.

Laurel stood up and held the urn out to Buck.

Buck said, “Are we ready?”

No, Angie thought. She would never be ready.

Hayes stood up. Belinda stood up. Scarlett stood up and took a few wobbly steps across the boat until she was tucked under Joel’s arm. Angie could not believe it. She felt a hand on her arm: JP.

You okay? he mouthed.

Angie got to her feet and gave JP a weak and defeated smile. It was both comforting and mortifying to know she wasn’t the only one who’d noticed Joel’s unbridled pursuit of Scarlett. JP had been through this. His girlfriend was now dating his best friend, and he had survived just fine.

Buck said, “I feel like I should say a few words, but I don’t know what those words might be.”

Hayes took a stumbling step forward and reached into the urn. He brought forth a handful of remains-chunks of bone, Angie supposed, and a powder that looked like talcum.

“I love you, Dad,” he said. Then he flung his handful into the water.

“I want to try!” Ellery said, darting forward. She reached into the urn, took a prodigious handful, and tossed it overboard.