The top was down on the strawberry Jeep, and the sun shone on the four of them as they drove out of Sconset along the Polpis Road, past Sankaty Lighthouse and the golf course, past the flat blue oval of Sesachacha Pond, to the Wauwinet turnoff. Here, the road grew winding and rural-there were farmhouses surrounded by open land, and then there was a thicket of green, leafy trees before they reached the gatehouse at the Wauwinet inn. Dan stopped the Jeep and hopped out to let the air out of the tires. Toby said, “Can I help?”

“I’d love it,” Dan said. He tossed Toby the tire gauge and worked with the car key.

Connie was up front, Meredith directly behind her. Connie turned around and smiled at Meredith.

“You okay?” she said.

“Great,” Meredith said. She had her big, dark sunglasses on, so Connie couldn’t tell if this was a real “great” or a sarcastic “great.”

Connie listened to the hiss of air escaping the tires. It was like a double date, she thought. Having Toby here balanced things out. She remembered her last double date with Meredith-and Wolf and Freddy-in the south of France. Freddy had arranged for a car trip to the picturesque village of Annecy. They had traveled in a 1956 Renault; they had a driver in a military-blue chauffeur cap who spoke only French. Meredith had been the one who communicated with him. Connie remembered being envious of Meredith’s French and feeling angry at herself for taking four years of useless Latin. The four of them had gone to an elegant lunch at a Michelin-starred restaurant overlooking a lake. It was a place Meredith and Freddy went often; they knew the owner, a distinguished, olive-skinned gentleman in an immaculate suit. The man had reminded Connie of Oscar de la Renta; he had kissed Connie’s hand and brought both her and Meredith glasses of rose champagne. Krug. The lunch must have cost five hundred euros, though no bill ever came to the table. It had been like that with Freddy and Meredith-you had these amazing experiences that just seemed to magically happen-though, of course, Freddy had paid for lunch somehow. The lunch had probably cost more like a thousand euros because there had been at least two bottles of the Krug. There had been lobster and mango salad, and microgreens with marinated artichokes that were grown at a local farm. There had been a whole poached fish with sauce on the side and these special potatoes braised in olive oil, and a cheese platter with figs and tiny champagne grapes. And then, at the end of the meal, chocolate truffles and espresso. It had been the lunch of a lifetime. Freddy, Connie remembered, had drunk only mineral water. He had sat at the head of the table, the undisputed king, ordering up this dish and that, while Connie and Wolf and Meredith grew giddy on the Krug. Freddy’s tee-totaling, Connie saw now, had been a way of controlling them all. And hadn’t this car trip to Annecy and this lunch occurred the day after Freddy had kissed Connie on the terrace? Yes, she remembered feeling Freddy’s eyes on her during that lunch; she had felt his admiration and his desire. She had, if she could be perfectly honest, basked in it.

He had kissed her, touched her.

Connie nearly turned around to ask Meredith the name of that restaurant-it was the kind of thing one was meant to remember-but Connie decided she wouldn’t bring it up. For all she knew, the owner of the restaurant had been an investor; for all she knew, the restaurant was now gone, one more casualty of Delinn Enterprises.

You are an incredibly beautiful woman, Constance.


The attendant from the gatehouse came out to check their beach sticker. He was an older gentleman with a gray buzz cut and a stern demeanor. Ex-military for sure. A retired lieutenant. That was who was needed for this job: someone who could keep the unregistered riffraff off the hallowed conservation acres of Great Point.

The attendant brightened when he saw Dan. “Hello there, young Flynn,” he said. “How goes it this fine day?”

The two men shook hands.

“It goes,” Dan said. He looked at Toby, then back at the Jeep. “These are some friends of mine…”

Be careful! Connie thought.

“From Maryland.”

Toby, never one to shy from an introduction, offered his hand. “Toby O’Brien.”

“Bud Attatash,” the attendant said. He looked past Toby at the Jeep.

Don’t introduce us! Connie thought.

“You ladies ready to go have some fun?” Bud asked.

Connie waved. She couldn’t see what Meredith was doing.

“How is it up there today?” Dan asked. Connie thought, Get in the car. Please, let’s go. But then she remembered that Dan’s real job was to know everyone on this island and everything that went on. Clearly, he felt he had to take two minutes to chew the fat with Bud Attatash.

Bud said, “Well, it’s August and the seals are finally off the point. They’ve made their way up the coast.”

“It’ll smell a lot better,” Dan said.

“Got that right,” Bud said. He scratched the back of his neck. His collar was as stiff as cardboard. “Hey, did you hear about a dead seal on the south shore? Murdered, they say. Dropped off special delivery for that Delinn woman.”

Toby made a noise. Bud looked over.

Dan said, “Yes, I did hear about that. Awful stuff.”

Connie’s palms itched. Her shoulders were burning in the sun. She was afraid to turn around to check on Meredith. Toby, she saw, looked stricken. If he’d had three drinks in him, he would have socked Bud Attatash in the jaw.

“Awful is right,” Bud said. “Killing an animal like that.”

“Senseless violence,” Dan said.

Get in the car! Connie thought. She cleared her throat. Toby read her mind and hopped into the backseat next to Meredith. Dan took a step back with one foot but wasn’t able to make the full commitment to leaving.

Bud said, “They’ll never catch the guys who did it. That woman has too many enemies.”

“It’s a little more complicated than that, Bud,” Dan said. “And if you don’t believe me, you should talk to the chief about it.” Even Dan seemed flustered now, and Connie felt a flash of irritation. How had he not been able to keep the conversation off this one topic? Jesus! “Well, we should be shoving off now.”

“A poor, innocent sea creature,” Bud said.


They pulled out onto the sand, leaving Bud Attatash in his khaki uniform staring after them at the gatehouse.

Dan said, “Sorry about that.”

Nobody spoke. Connie checked on Meredith in the side-view mirror. Her expression, under the brim of the hat and behind the dark, saucer-size lenses of her sunglasses, was inscrutable.

“Bud is harmless,” Dan said. “I’ve known him my whole life.”

Again, no one spoke. Connie turned on the radio. It was a commercial, loud and grating. She pushed in the CD, thinking it would be the Beatles, but the music that came blaring out was even worse than the radio. Dan popped the CD back out with a proprietary air that made Connie feel like she shouldn’t have presumed to touch the radio in the first place.

He said, “Sorry. I let Donovan borrow the car. That’s his music.”

Connie feared all the good karma she’d attached to this day was in danger of draining through the floorboards.

But the Jeep bounced over some bumps in the sand, and Toby whooped, and Connie was forced to grab hold of the roll bar. They drove past the last of the summer homes and headed out onto the pure sands of Great Point.

Suddenly, their silence seemed not due to the awkwardness with Bud Attatash back at the gatehouse but, rather, in deference to the stark beauty of the landscape around them. The sand up here was creamy white. The vegetation consisted of low-lying bushes-bayberry and sweet-scented Rosa rugosa. The ocean was a deep blue; the waves were gentler than the waves in Tom Nevers. In the distance, Connie saw Great Point Lighthouse. What was breathtaking was the purity of the surroundings. A few men were surf casting along the shore. Crabs scuttled past the seagulls and the oystercatchers.

Why had Connie never come out here before? The real answer, she supposed, was that the Flutes didn’t come to Great Point; it wasn’t in their repertoire of Nantucket excursions. Mrs. Flute, Wolf’s mother, claimed she couldn’t abide the thought of automobiles on the beach, but Wolf told Connie that what this really meant was that his parents-being stingy Yankee folk-didn’t want to fork over the money for a beach sticker. (It had been seventy-five dollars back in the day; now, it was nearly twice that.)

Well, Connie thought, they had missed out. The place was a natural treasure.

Dan drove them through the sand tracks to the tip of the island. “There,” he said. “You can see the riptide.”

Toby stood up in his seat. “Man,” he said. “Amazing.”

Connie could see a demarcation in the water, a roiling, where the riptide was. This was the end of the island, or the beginning of it. The lighthouse was just behind them.

“Can we climb the lighthouse?” Meredith asked. She sounded a little closer to her normal self. Hopefully, she had chalked the encounter with Bud Attatash up to bad luck. More than anything, Connie wanted to keep Meredith happy.

“Yes, can we?” she asked Dan.

“We can,” Dan said. He pulled the car around to the harbor side of the point and parked. There were sailboats scattered across the horizon.

They trudged through the hot sand toward the lighthouse. There was an antechamber with two wooden benches, but the door that led into the lighthouse was shut tight.

“You never used to know if the door would be locked,” Dan said. He turned the knob.

“It’s locked,” Connie said. She was disappointed. She tried the knob herself.

“It’s locked,” Dan said. “But I have a key.”

“You do?” Meredith said.

Dan pulled a key out of his pants pocket. It was the color of an old penny. “I’ve had this key since I was eighteen years old. Back then, the ranger out here was a man named Elton Vicar. And I dated his granddaughter, Dove Vicar.”

“Dove?” Connie said.

“Dove stole this key from Elton and gave it to me, and I was smart enough to hold on to it. Because I knew it would come in handy someday.”

“Are you sure it still works?” Connie said. How could a key that Dan had had for thirty years still work?

Dan slid the key into the knob. He had to wiggle it, but he fit it in and turned the knob and the door opened. “They’ll never change the lock. Too much trouble. Plus, they have no reason to.”

“So are we doing something illegal, then?” Meredith asked. She sounded nervous.

“Relax,” Dan said. “The crime was committed long ago, by Dove Vicar, who is now Dove Somebody Else, living somewhere in New Mexico.”

“But aren’t we breaking and entering?” Meredith said.

“We have a key!” Dan said, and he stepped inside.

Connie had never been inside a lighthouse before, but this one was about what she expected. It was dark and dingy with a sandy concrete floor; it smelled like somebody’s root cellar. In the middle of the room was a wrought-iron spiral staircase and Dan began marching up. Connie followed, thinking, I am dating the only man on Nantucket with a key to the Great Point Lighthouse. Meredith was behind Connie, and Toby brought up the rear. Connie watched her step; the only light was filtering down in dusty rays from above.

At the top of the stairs, there was a room of sorts-a floor and windows and a case that held the reflecting light, which was powered by solar panels.

Toby was impressed. “How long ago was this built?”

“Originally in seventeen eighty-five,” Dan said. “Reconstructed in nineteen eighty-six.”

There was a narrow balcony that encircled the top. Connie and Meredith stepped out and walked around the outside. Connie could see all the way across Nantucket Sound to Cape Cod. To the south, the island was spread out before them like a blanket-the houses and trees and ponds, sand dunes and dirt roads. Connie had been coming to Nantucket for twenty years, but today might have been the first day she truly saw it.


Dan parked the Jeep on the harbor side, and they unfolded chairs and laid out towels.

“This,” Connie said, “is a breathtaking spot. Isn’t it breathtaking, Meredith?”

Meredith hummed. “Mmmhmmm.”

Dan opened a beer. “Does anybody want a drink?”

Connie said, “Toby, I brought iced tea.”

Toby held up a hand. “I’m fine right now, thanks.”

Dan said, “Meredith, how about you?”

“I’m all set.”

“Connie?” Dan said. “Can I pour you a glass of wine?”

“I brought iced tea,” she said.

“Really?” he said. “No wine?”

“Really,” Connie said. She put on a wide-brimmed straw hat that she’d bought to keep the sun off her face but that she never bothered to wear. Time to start taking care of herself. Wear a hat, leave the chardonnay at home. “I’ll have an iced tea.”