“What are you doing?” he shouted. His voice was sucked into the dark woods surrounding the house. “Have you given any thought to footprints? Tire tracks? You just destroyed evidence!” He threw his hands up in the air and with them, his dinky notebook, which fluttered to the ground like an injured bird.

Raoul looked stunned. And exhausted. “Sorry, man. It was just a nervous thing. You know, something to do while you snooped around.”

“Well, shit,” the detective said. He couldn’t have been older than thirty. He wore wire-framed glasses and had dark hair turning gray around the ears. Funny, Kayla hadn’t really looked at him until then.

Paul Henry retrieved a coil of yellow police tape from the Suburban, and he and the detective wound it around Antoinette’s house, sealing off the doors. They were going to head back to the station to file a report and send the fingerprints and some other samples to a forensics lab on the Cape. The coast guard would do a sweep of the outlying areas in the chopper at seven, and the divers would start their recovery mission. But now it was clear that neither Paul nor the detective thought Antoinette was in the water. They thought something else was going on.

“We’ll have our men check the airport and the Steamship right away, see if they find her leaving the island,” Paul said to Kayla before she left. “Can you get us a photograph of Ms. Riley? I didn’t see any pictures in the house.”

“Antoinette isn’t fond of the camera,” Kayla said. “But I’ll look at home. I think I have one.”

“Thanks,” Paul Henry said. “We’ll call as soon as we get any news.”

Kayla drove home as the sun was coming up. The sky was a band of deep rose along the horizon, then yellow, then dark blue. A V of Canadian geese passed overhead. Val snored softly in the passenger seat. Kayla had insisted that Val ride with her. Besides, Raoul said he wanted to stop by the Hen House, where his crew gathered for breakfast every morning, to let them know he wouldn’t be working today.

“Tell Jacob I’ll call him,” Val said, and Raoul had simply nodded. So he knew about Jacob. Kayla wondered if that was what he and Val were discussing in the truck: Val’s secret was a secret no longer.

Well, now Kayla had a secret, too. Antoinette was more than just a missing woman. She was a missing woman with a long-lost daughter showing up; she was a missing woman with a house that had been ransacked; she was a missing woman who, at the age of forty-four, was pregnant. By whom? It wasn’t as if Antoinette had been celibate since she divorced-she had flings every once in a while, the most notable with a man who stumbled across her house by accident when he was on his bike looking for Jewel Pond. But these were week-long summer flings, or one-night stands, no one sticking around, and certainly no one leaving behind anything as lasting as a baby. Kayla was at a loss. Who had fathered the baby? That part of the secret Antoinette had taken with her, wherever she went.

Kayla woke Val up when they reached her house. Kayla didn’t know what to say. “Get some sleep? We’ll talk later?” The pregnancy test was practically glowing in her pocket, but she wasn’t ready to tell Val about it. Not yet, anyway.

Val nodded. “I want to leave John.”

Kayla groaned. “Oh, Val.”

“What?”

“Not today, Val, okay? Don’t leave him today.”

“I’m miserable with him. I’d like to be less miserable. I’d like to do something drastic, something dangerous.”

Kayla looked at the perfect façade of the house; it was hard to believe so much unhappiness lived inside. “Do you think Antoinette disappeared on purpose?” she asked. “Do you think she did this to be drastic?”

“Of course not,” Val said.

“So you think she’s dead?”

“They didn’t find her alive, Kayla.”

“They didn’t find her dead, either. They didn’t find her at all. It’s like she vanished into thin air.”

Val smiled sadly, and with obvious fatigue. “You’re right. Call me later.” Val shut the car door and limped across her manicured lawn to her house. Kayla sat in the driveway until Val disappeared inside, and then she headed for home.

Kayla’s house looked the same, which seemed odd, given all that had happened. It was almost as though she expected it to be burned down or torn apart, but it stood solid and steady. She had beaten Raoul home, and from the looks of it, Theo had already left for work. Island Air flights started at six, and since this was when Raoul usually began his day, Theo didn’t mind getting up early. He and Raoul rose together and drank coffee quietly in the kitchen before going to their respective jobs, although since his outbursts started, Theo had taken to getting up half an hour earlier and drinking his coffee at Hutch’s at the airport. Or so he told Kayla the one time she was brave enough to ask.

Kayla extracted herself wearily from the car, looked in the back at all the picnic stuff-the towels, the tub of lobster shells that would start to stink as soon as the sun came up, the empty Methuselah- but she didn’t have the energy to deal with it. The lobster shells, though. She opened the back of the Trooper and managed to lower the tub to the driveway, where she could just leave it for now. And then she saw Antoinette’s black Chuck Taylors and she welled up with tears and hurried into the house. She needed sleep.

As soon as Kayla entered the kitchen, she remembered that Jennifer was sleeping at a friend’s house, which meant Luke and Cassidy B. were here alone. An eight-year-old and an eleven-year-old-she was one hell of a mother. True, Theo had probably only left twenty minutes before, but still. She was lucky the house hadn’t burned down. Before she went upstairs, she checked the answering machine. There was one new message. Kayla imagined hearing Paul Henry’s voice pumped with the adrenaline of victory, We found her! Or better still, Antoinette’s voice. But it was dead air, a hang up: Kayla calling from the Wauwinet.

She checked on Luke and Cassidy B. All four of her children had Raoul’s thick, dark eyelashes, which curled against their cheeks when they slept. God, she loved them. She stumbled into bed herself, too tired to even take off her clothes. The sun was up now, peeking through the rosewood blinds. She put Raoul’s feather pillow over her head and let the waves of sleep wash over her.

Twice Kayla tried to float to the surface of her sleep and break into consciousness-once when Raoul joined her in bed, and once when Luke padded in wearing his blue pin-striped pajamas, like a little business suit-and both times she failed. Her eyelids fluttered, and she was sucked back down.

She finally awoke with Raoul shaking her. “Kayla. Kay-la.”

Kayla focused her eyes. The blinds were up, the room filled with sunlight. It was hot, and she felt sticky and hazy and uncomfortable. She had a pounding headache; the inside of her mouth was powdery and tasted like egg yolk, her hair was stiff with salt. Then it all flooded back: too much champagne, Antoinette gone.

She blinked. “Are the kids okay?”

Raoul touched her cheek. He was showered, dressed, his dark hair damp. “Of course they’re okay. Jennifer came home and left again to sit for the Ogilvys. She ate a banana, but that was all I could interest her in. Cass and Luke are downstairs watching TV. I told them it was okay until you got up. They want to see you. They’re worried about you.”

“What did you tell them?” Kayla asked. “Do they know Antoinette is gone?”

“Gone is a strong word. I said you had a rough night. I said Antoinette got lost and we’re having trouble finding her.”

“Fair enough,” she said. “Can you get me some water? What time is it?”

Raoul went into the bathroom and brought her water in the green plastic cup that held their toothbrushes. Not a cup she wanted to drink from, but she kept quiet. “It’s twenty past eleven,” he said.

Kayla drank the water, handed Raoul the cup, and swung her legs so that they rested on the floor. It felt wildly luxurious to have him at home waiting on her like this, and she wanted to stay and enjoy it, but she couldn’t. With effort, she stood up.

“I have to go,” she said.

“Kayla.”

“I have to go to the airport to meet Lindsey,” she said.

“Lindsey who?”

“Antoinette’s daughter,” Kayla said. “A daughter that she gave up for adoption a long time ago and who is coming to visit today. I can’t explain it all to you right now, but I have to go meet her.”

“Whoa,” he said. He stuffed his hands in the back pockets of his jeans. He was wearing a crisp white polo shirt instead of his usual MONTERO CONSTRUCTION T-shirt. He looked so beautiful: clean, tan, barefoot in his jeans and white shirt. What a handsome, lucky man. Kayla felt sure right then that she would never get enough of him, even if they both lived to be a hundred, and especially not if he continued to work the way he did. “What are you going to tell her?”

“I don’t know,” Kayla said. “But if she wants to stay here tonight, I’m going to let her.”

“She’ll stay where-on the pullout?”

“We’ll put her in Luke’s room,” she said. “Luke can sleep in here with us.” Luke would pretend not to like that-he would say he was too old to sleep with his parents, but secretly he’d enjoy it. Kayla’s mind traveled a predictable path: changing the sheets on Luke’s bed, vacuuming, clearing space in the closet. God, she was such a housewife.

“She might not show up,” Kayla said. This was, of course, her hope-that this girl the color of a wine cork would get cold feet about seeking out her birth mother and find an excuse to miss her plane. Nantucket was tricky to get to, she reasoned, especially on a holiday weekend.

“It’s possible,” Raoul said, but Kayla heard doubt in his voice. He was lucky; she was not.

Kayla showered quickly and put on a pink sundress with thin straps. It looked summery and nonthreatening, and it flowed nicely over her stomach and thighs. She took three Advils, spritzed on a little Coco, which she hoped would mask the smell of hangover, and went downstairs.

If Luke and Cassidy B. were worried about her, she couldn’t tell. They were engrossed in a wildlife program about the Komodo dragon.

“Here it is almost noon on a beautiful day and you’re inside,” Kayla said. “Are you being punished?”

Cassidy B. jumped up from her position on the floor-probably half out of excitement to see her and half out of fear that Kayla would scold her. Sitting too close to the TV was a no-no. Kayla couldn’t even remember why anymore.

“Mommy, you’re home!” she said. She hugged Kayla in an exaggerated little-girl way. “Daddy said Auntie A. got lost.”

Kayla pressed her close and glanced over her head at Luke, who was wearing his green Nantucket Day Camp shirt even though today was Saturday, even though camp was now over.

“Good morning, Luke,” she said.

“Good morning,” he said seriously. “Did Auntie A. drown?”

“No. Who said that?”

He shrugged. “Nobody.”

Raoul must have let more slip than he intended, although it was impossible to keep the truth from an eight-year-old. Eight-year-olds were perceptive and suspicious by nature.

“I have some exciting news,” Kayla said. “We may have a sleepover guest tonight.”

“Who?” Cassidy B. said. “Is Sabrina coming?”

Sabrina, Raoul’s mother, who never visited without her head scarves and séance candles, was another one of the kids’ favorites.

“Not Sabrina,” Kayla said. “It’s someone you’ve never met before. It’s a woman named Lindsey…” Lindsey what? Not Riley. “She’s Auntie A.’s daughter.”

“Auntie A. doesn’t have any children,” Luke pronounced. He glared at her as if to say: Can you please get the facts straight?

“Yes, she does. Antoinette hasn’t seen her in a long time, and that’s why you’ve never met her. But I’m going to pick her up right now, and she may stay the night. We’re going to let her sleep in Luke’s room and Luke can sleep with Daddy and me.”

Before Luke could protest, Cassidy B. said, “Lucky.” That did the trick; Luke smiled smugly.

Kayla snapped off the TV and checked the clock. She had to go. “You two play outside. See if you can get Daddy to throw the Frisbee. I’ll be back in a little while.”

Before she left, Kayla put the pregnancy test in a plastic sandwich bag and dropped the bag into her purse. Then she checked three photo albums for a picture of Antoinette. She thought there was one picture from long ago of Antoinette at their house for dinner, holding one of the children in her arms. Kayla flipped back and forth through the laminated pages, past baby shots and birthday parties, Jennifer riding a horse, Theo in his baseball uniform, but she couldn’t find a single photo of Antoinette. The picture Kayla remembered was missing.