The Love Season Part 6

"No," Renata said. She sounded preternaturally calm, firm, confident. This is what I was looking for. Part of it, anyway. She knelt down in front of the cross. She felt like praying. She had been motherless for so long, it had come to define her. It was like being blind or deaf, or mentally r.e.t.a.r.ded. She was missing something essential, something everyone else in the world had. Growing up there had been no one to braid Renata's hair, no one to bake m.u.f.fins with, no one to shop for the bra or the nylons or the dress for her confirmation, her prom. There had been no one to read her A Little Princess or take her to The Nutcracker, no one to buy the Kotex, no one to tell about her first kiss, no one to tell about Cade. There had been no one to rebel against. The mothers of Renata's friends tried to reach out, to fill in. They picked Renata up from riding lessons when Dan worked late; they offered to take her jodhpurs home and launder them. Once, Renata's tenth-grade art teacher took offense to a skirt Renata was wearing. It's see-through! she said. But the next day, the teacher came into cla.s.s with an apologetic look on her face and a brand-new slip in a Macy's bag. For you, she said as she handed the bag to Renata. I'm sorry, I didn't know. When Renata was little the kids teased her; one girl called her an orphan. Then, once Renata's friends were old enough to understand, they asked nervous questions. How did it happen? What is it like, just you and your dad? As they grew even older, they claimed to envy Renata. My mother is such a pain, such a drain, such a b.i.t.c.h. I don't even talk to her anymore. I wish she were dead. After Renata gave her valedictory speech in front of a hundred graduates and their families, her father alone walked to the podium with a bouquet of roses. He received a deafening round of applause. So smart, so accomplished, and her mother died when she was little.... A beautiful woman, people whispered when they caught sight of Candace in pictures. Such a shame.

The poor girl, Renata imagined Suzanne Driscoll saying. She has no one to help her plan this wedding.

Renata's father had given her few details about Candace. Why was that? Was he consumed with his own grief, or was he worried that talk of Candace would upset Renata? Either way, he said very little; all Renata had felt or known for sure was her mother's absence. Renata had never felt as connected to any object as she did to this white cross. It was for her mother, as unlikely as that might seem, out here in the middle of nowhere. This cross is a part of me, a part of my history.

In the dusty gra.s.s next to her she saw a pair of feet, the silver-ringed toes. Renata looked up; she was crying, she realized.

Queen Bee spoke kindly. "Was this someone you knew?"

"My mother."

"Your mother?"

"She was killed out here. Hit by a truck."

"When?"

"A long time ago."

"Oh, geez. I can't believe it."

"Hey!" Miles called out.

Renata stared at the cross, but no words came. She kissed the cross; it p.r.i.c.ked her dry lips. My mother. They would think she was nuts, but it was true. It was true.

Renata stood up. Queen Bee held out her hand; the mirror in her navel winked in the sun.

"I'm Sallie," she said.

Together they walked back to the car.

12:49 P.M.

The bread dough had risen again. Warm and humid, this was the perfect day for baking bread. Marguerite punched the dough down, then drank a gla.s.s of water, took a vitamin, surveyed her list. Just the silver, and...

As she had feared. She couldn't procrastinate much longer.

She tied the ribbon of her hat under her chin. Keys, she thought. Where are the keys? She searched around the house-on the table by the front door? In the soup tureen that served as a junk drawer? On the hook drilled into the wall expressly to hold these very keys? No. She stumbled across a pile of mail on the floor by the front door. She bent to pick it up, thinking, When was the last time I drove anywhere? To the doctor in May? It seemed more recent than that. She had a memory of herself in late afternoon, the streets slick from a rain shower. She had been out near the airport-but why? She never had houseguests. Upstairs, five bedrooms waited like bridesmaids. They received attention once every two weeks, when Marguerite dusted. Would the keys be upstairs? Not likely.

Marguerite flipped through the meager envelopes. Did anyone receive less interesting mail than she? Bill for the high-speed Internet, bill for the propane gas, circular from the A&P-and then something thicker, addressed in handwriting: clippings of last month's columns from the Calgary paper. The editor was good about sending them so that Marguerite could appreciate her words in print.

It had kept her alive, that column. When she was released from the psychiatric hospital in Boston after Candace's death, she had to endure something nearly as painful-closing the restaurant. Marguerite had been unable to speak and refused to meet with anyone in person; therefore, her lawyer, Damian Vix, had set up conference calls, on which Marguerite remained mute. The conference calls had made her feel like she was locked with Damian and the gift shop people in a dark closet. The other side had thought-because of her "accident," her "incarceration," her "mental illness"-that they could take advantage of her, but Damian had extorted quite a price. (He negotiated brilliantly, motivated by the memory of a hundred exquisite meals, the bottles of wine Marguerite had saved for him, the sh.e.l.lfish allergy she worked around every time he dined.) At the time, Marguerite had thought money would make her way easier, but she had been wrong. It was, in the end, the newspaper column that had saved her. A call came from out of the blue the very week that Marguerite felt comfortable speaking again. It was the food editor from The Calgary Daily Press: Someone gave me your number, we'd love to have you write a weekly food column, explain techniques, include recipes. Calgary? Marguerite had thought. She consulted an atlas. Alberta, Canada? But in the end, how rewarding she found it-thinking about food again and writing about food for a place where she knew no one and no one knew her. Her editor, Joanie Sparks, former housewife, mother of three grown daughters, was officially Marguerite's biggest fan, and the closest thing she'd had to a friend in the past fourteen years. And yet they communicated primarily by yellow Post-it note. Today's note said: Everyone loved the picnic menu. Hope you are well!

Someone had given Joanie Sparks Marguerite's name long ago-but Marguerite never discovered who. It was Porter maybe: One of the daughters could have been a student. Or it was Dusty: He liked to fish in Canada on vacation. Or it was one of the regulars from the restaurant who wanted to reach out when they heard about Candace's death. Joanie had never said who pa.s.sed on Marguerite's name and Marguerite never asked. Now it would seem strange to do so, though Marguerite had always wondered.

The grandfather clock struck one, forcefully, like a blow to the head. Picnic menu, yes. Lobster club sandwiches, coleslaw with apples, raspberry fizz lemonade. Marguerite had been late sending the column (she debated for too long about whether it was reasonable to put lobster on the menu when her readers were hundreds of miles from the sea)-and that was when she was last in the car. Right? Racing out to Federal Express like the Little Old Lady from Pasadena. It was June, after a thundershower; there had been little rainbows rising up from the wet road. She had made it in the nick of time, and this self-generated drama had left her breathless, fl.u.s.tered. Which meant the keys were probably...

Marguerite's "driveway" consisted of two tasteful brick strips with gra.s.s in between. Her battered 1984 Jeep Wrangler, olive green with a soft beige top, was a cla.s.sic now; every year some family or other called to see if they could drive it in the Daffodil Parade. But the Jeep, like Marguerite, was a homebody. She asked very little of it-less than fifty miles a year-and it kept pa.s.sing inspection. Marguerite opened the car door. The keys were dangling from the ignition.

Marguerite eased out of her driveway and puttered down Quince Street toward the heart of town. The Jeep had no air-conditioning and it was too hot to drive with the windows up; already it felt like she had a plastic bag over her head. She unzipped the windows, thinking that this was the perfect weather not only for baking bread but also for riding with the top down-but no, she wouldn't go that far. Marguerite didn't want anyone to recognize her. She wore her enormous hat and round sungla.s.ses like an incognito movie star. Even so, she worried someone would recognize the Jeep. When she bought the Jeep, Porter had given her a vanity plate: CHIEF. (He had meant for it to read CHEF, but someone at the DMV misunderstood; hence CHIEF, and since it wasn't inappropriate, it stayed.) When everything else went out the window, so did the vanity plate-now the Jeep was identified by numbers and letters that Marguerite had never bothered to memorize-and yet she still felt that the soft-top olive green Jeep itself was a dead giveaway. Marguerite Beale, out on the street!

She felt better once she was out of town, once she was headed down Orange Street toward the main rotary, and even more at ease once she was safely around the rotary and driving out Polpis Road. Wind filled the car and tugged at the brim of her hat. She felt okay. She felt fine.

How to describe Polpis Road, midafternoon, on a hot summer day? It shimmered. It smelled green and sweet in some places, like a freshly picked ear of corn, and green and salt-marshy in other places, like soft mud and decay. Polpis was, quite literally, a long and winding road, with too many turnoffs and places of interest to explore in one lifetime. On the early left was Shimmo-houses in thick woods that became, down the sandy road, houses that fronted the harbor. Shimmo was old money: At the restaurant, Marguerite had often heard people described as "very Shimmo," or "not Shimmo enough." Just past Shimmo on the right was the dirt road that led to Altar Rock, which was, at 104 feet, the highest point on the island. Marguerite swallowed. She had been to Altar Rock only once, with Candace. Suddenly Marguerite felt angry. Why was it that any memory that mattered led back to Candace or Porter? Why had Marguerite not opened herself to more people? Why had she not made more friends? All of her eggs had gone right into that family's basket; she had put them there herself, and they had broken.

It had been autumn when Marguerite and Candace hiked to Altar Rock, the autumn after they met, perhaps, or the autumn after that. Porter was gone, and Candace came to the restaurant every night by herself. (Had it really been every night, or did it only seem that way?) Candace came late and sat at one of the deuces in front of the window with Marguerite. They ate together; Candace was her guest. That was how their real friendship had started.

"I can't believe my brother leaves you here all winter," Candace said. "And you let him. Why do you let him?"

Marguerite sighed. Sipped her champagne. She had been drinking champagne that night with the aim of getting very drunk because, the previous Sunday, Porter had appeared on the society page of The New York Times with another woman on his arm. The photograph was taken at a gala for Columbia's new performing arts center. The caption underneath the picture read: Professor Porter Harris and friend. Marguerite had stumbled across the picture on her own; she had been alone, in her newly purchased house on Quince Street, drinking her coffee. Porter's face had jumped out at her from the sea of faces. He was smiling in the picture; he looked positively delighted, smug; he was the cat that ate the canary. He would never have admitted it, but he wanted to be on the Times social page and had wanted it his whole life-and if he was captured with an attractive escort, so much the better. The woman on Porter's arm-and how many hours had Marguerite wasted scrutinizing that d.a.m.n picture, cursing the fuzziness of the newsprint, to see precisely how Porter was holding the woman's arm-was a brunette. Her hair was in a chignon; she wore a pale, sparkling dress with a plunging neckline. Her face was pleasant enough, though something was off with her mouth, crowded teeth, maybe, or an overbite. Overbite Woman, Marguerite named her. That Sunday the phone rang and rang, but Marguerite didn't answer. It was someone, many someones, calling to tell Marguerite about the picture, or it was Porter himself with an explanation, an apology. Marguerite ignored the phone. She considered calling Porter to tell him she couldn't do it anymore; she didn't want to be treated like a possession he kept in storage and dusted off at the start of every summer. Marguerite took a small comfort in the fact that the woman had not been identified by name. She was "friend," a newspaper euphemism for someone unimportant, someone n.o.body knew. It could simply have been a woman Porter happened to be standing next to when they were caught by the photographer. But it was humiliating nonetheless; it was a symptom of a larger illness.

Candace had said nothing about the photograph. She had seen it, no doubt, the whole world had seen it, but Candace fell into the category of people who wished to protect Marguerite from it. Now, as they ate dinner five days later, Candace was rallying against Porter in a general way. Why do you let him go every autumn? Why don't you go to New York? Why don't you leave him? Marguerite was stumped by these questions; she had never had a friend who cared enough to ask. She was grateful for someone to pa.r.s.e the relationship with, to help her a.n.a.lyze it. But things were complicated by the fact that Candace was Porter's sister. Candace loved to talk about how Porter had refused to indulge her as a child, even though he was fifteen years older. He was, Candace said, stricter and less fun than her parents. Always so self-important with his art, his books, his articles for the journals that only a handful of people ever read.

"He takes advantage of you," Candace said.

"Or I take advantage of him," Marguerite said. "I like things this way."

"Do you?"

"No," Marguerite said.

"No, I didn't think so," Candace said, swirling her champagne and studying the gla.s.s for legs. (She was charmingly naive about wine.) "b.a.s.t.a.r.d. He's a b.a.s.t.a.r.d; he really is."

"Oh, Candace."

"To not realize what he has in you. Look at this restaurant. The ambience, the food. All Daisy. This place is yours. It's you."

"Some days I wish I had something more," Marguerite said. "Or something different."

"You need to get out of the restaurant for a while," Candace said. "It would take your mind off things. How long has it been since you've been to the beach? Or taken a walk through the moors?"

"Long."

"Tomorrow we'll go together," Candace said. "To see the moors."

And go they did. It was a mercy trip; Marguerite understood that. A feeble attempt to get Marguerite's mind off the photograph she couldn't bring herself to throw away. (It was sandwiched in her copy of Julia Child on her kitchen counter.) But Marguerite knew she had to do something different, no matter how small, and so she laced up a pair of hiking boots that she hadn't worn since her years at Le Ferme. She followed Candace along the winding sand paths that climbed through conservation land to Altar Rock.

"This feels a lot higher than a hundred feet," Marguerite said. "This feels like the Alps." She was breathing heavily, cursing b.u.t.ter and cream, but she plodded along behind Candace to the top. From Altar Rock they gazed out over the moors, which were crimson with poison ivy. Tiny green ponds dotted the moors, and beyond lay the ocean. Marguerite could hear the eerie, distant cries of seagulls.

Candace flung her arm around Marguerite's shoulders. She was not even a little winded; this was nothing but a walk through the park for her. She let out a great yell, a yodel, a howl. "Come on," she said to Marguerite. "It's good for you. Let it all out." When Marguerite regained her breath, she shouted; she bayed. He's a b.a.s.t.a.r.d. He really is. The words seemed easy and true with Candace at her side. Blood was thicker than water or wine, and yet Candace always sided with Marguerite. As she yelled, Marguerite imagined her anger, her embarra.s.sment, and her longing, floating over the land like mist or smoke and being carried away by the sea. She and Candace howled together until they were hoa.r.s.e.

A few miles up Polpis Road, Marguerite pa.s.sed the rose-covered cottage-featured on every third Nantucket postcard-in its second full bloom of the summer. Then Almanack Pond Road, the horse barn, the turnoff for the Wauwinet Inn and Great Point. Marguerite slowed down. She lived so resolutely in town that she had forgotten all this was out here, all this country. Sesachacha Pond spread out silvery blue to her left, and directly across the street was the white sh.e.l.l driveway that led to the cottage that Porter had rented for so many years. She would love to turn down that driveway and take a peek. Why not? This day had taken on the quality of the moments before death: her whole life pa.s.sing before her eyes. She wanted to see if the hammock still hung from the front porch, if the roses still dangled over the outdoor shower, if the daylilies she and Porter planted had survived. But there was no time to waste, plus she didn't know who owned the property anymore. Mr. Dreyfus, who had rented it to Porter, had long been dead; one of his children owned it now, or someone new. The last thing Marguerite needed was to be caught trespa.s.sing. She drove on, but not too far. One mailbox, the stone wall, and then she turned right. A dirt path led deep into what guidebooks called the enchanted forest. Not so enchanted, however, because the skinny scrub pines were strangled with underbrush, p.r.i.c.ker bushes, and poison ivy and the b.u.mpy path leading through the woods held water, which meant mosquitoes. One could live on Nantucket one's whole life without going to the Herb Farm or even knowing it was there, which had suited Marguerite just fine for the long time that she had avoided it.

Like so much else on this island, the Herb Farm had been Porter's discovery. Every other restaurant provisioned at Bartlett's Farm, a far larger and more sophisticated enterprise, closer to town, and with a farm truck that was a steady presence on Main Street each summer morning. Marguerite held nothing against Bartlett's Farm except that she had never made it her own. She had, from the beginning, woken up in Porter's cottage and walked with an honest-to-goodness wicker basket down the dirt path. The Herb Farm reminded Marguerite of the farms in France; it was like a farm in a child's picture book. There was a white wooden fence that penned in sheep and goats, a chicken coop where a dozen warm eggs cost a dollar, a red barn for the two bay horses, and a greenhouse. Half of the greenhouse did what greenhouses do, while the other half had been fashioned into very primitive retail s.p.a.ce. The vegetables were sold from wooden crates, all of them grown organically, before such a process even had a name-corn, tomatoes, lettuces, seventeen kinds of herbs, squash, zucchini, carrots with the bushy tops left on, spring onions, radishes, cuc.u.mbers, peppers, strawberries for two short weeks in June, pumpkins after the fifteenth of September. There was chevre made on the premises from the milk of the goats; there was fresh b.u.t.ter. And when Marguerite showed up for the first time in the summer of 1975 there was a ten-year-old boy who had been given the undignified job of cutting zinnias, snapdragons, and bachelor b.u.t.tons and gathering them into attractive-looking bunches. Ethan Arcain, with his grown-out Beatle hairdo and saucersized brown eyes. Marguerite adored the child from the moment she saw him because that was the way she was with people-everything right away, or nothing.

Ethan Arcain worked at the Herb Farm every summer that Les Parapluies was open, and so for a hundred days a year Ethan's face was one of the first Marguerite saw each day. Their relationship wasn't complicated like Marguerite's relationship with Dusty. Ethan was a boy, Marguerite a woman. She thought of him as a little brother, although she was old enough to be his mother. The son I never had, she sometimes joked. Ethan's family life was a shambles. Dolores Kimball, who owned the farm in those days, once described Ethan's parents' divorce to Marguerite as a grenade explosion: Destroyed everyone in the vicinity. Years later, Ethan's mother remarried and Ethan fell in love with his stepsister and when they were old enough they got married, which people on the island whispered about, because people on the island whispered about everything. Ethan's father, Walter Arcain, worked for the electric company and was a well-known abuser of alcohol. The one time he had tried to come into the bar at Les Parapluies, Marguerite had asked Lance to see him out to the street.

It was Walter Arcain who had been driving the truck that killed Candace. Ten o'clock in the morning and he was three sheets to the wind, out joyriding the snowy roads of Madequecham for no good reason; there weren't any power lines down that road.

At Candace's funeral, Ethan had sat in one of the back pews-by that time a strong young man in his twenties-and cried bitter tears of guilt, atoning for the actions of his derelict father.

I feel responsible, Ethan had said to Marguerite as he left the church. Dirty and responsible.

Marguerite couldn't take anyone's guilt seriously but her own, and therefore she didn't grant him the absolution he was looking for. Now, from a greater distance and a clearer perspective, she felt sorry about that. Ethan eventually bought the Herb Farm from Dolores Kimball; once in a great while, Marguerite saw him in town, and he was always a gentleman, holding open doors for her, touching her arm or her shoulder. But the words unsaid polluted the air between them; she felt it and a.s.sumed he did, too.

There was a freckled boy working the register in the greenhouse, a boy about the same age Ethan had been when Marguerite met him. His son? Anything was possible. Marguerite just felt relieved that she didn't have to deal with Ethan head-on; she needed time to get her bearings.

Things in the greenhouse had stayed more or less the same, though the prices had tripled, as had the choices. Marguerite had read in the newspaper that the Herb Farm was supplying not only many Nantucket restaurants now but also several high-end places in Boston and New York. Marguerite was glad for this, she wanted Ethan to succeed, but she was pleased, too, that the trough filled with cool water and bunches of fragrant herbs was right where it had always been. Marguerite picked out bunches of basil and dill, mint and cilantro, and inhaled their scents. This was how Ethan found her, sniffing herbs as if they were her first dozen roses.

"Margo?" he said. The reaction she was getting was universal. Ethan's brown eyes widened as Dusty's had, like he couldn't...quite...believe it. Ethan's face was sunburned and his hair, longer than ever, was tied back in a ponytail.

"Hi," she said, though her voice was so quiet, it was inaudible to her own ears. She took a few steps toward him and opened her arms. He hugged her, she kissed his warm, stubbly cheek, and they parted awkwardly. This was what she had dreaded; the angst of this very second was what had nearly kept her from coming. What to say? There was too much and nothing at all.

"I thought I recognized the Jeep in the parking lot," he said. "But I wouldn't let myself believe it. What are you doing here? I thought-"

"I know," Marguerite said. She self-consciously drew her list out of her skirt pocket, checked it, and bent over to select a bunch of chives, which were crisp and topped with spiky purple flowers. Asparagus, she thought. Chevre, b.u.t.ter, eggs, red peppers, and flowers. If only she could get out of here without explaining. Although deep down she wanted to tell someone, didn't she? She wanted to tell someone about the dinner who would understand. This man. And yet how painful it would be to acknowledge their tragic bond. It would be far more couth, more polite, to ignore it and move on.

"You're cooking," he said. It sounded like an accusation.

"Yes," she said. "A chevre tart with roasted red peppers and an herb crust. You do still have the chevre?"

"Yes. G.o.d, of course." He glanced around the greenhouse, eager to change roles, to be her provisioner. He would recognize some kind of special occasion, but unlike Dusty, he wouldn't ask. He wouldn't want to know.

Ethan rushed to a refrigerated case, right where the chevre and the b.u.t.ter had always been kept; she could have found it herself with ease. He was stopped at the cheese case by another customer, and Marguerite was grateful. She wandered among the wooden crates, picking up tomatoes, peeling back the husks on ears of corn, adding two red peppers to her shopping basket and a bunch of very thin asparagus, a bouquet of zinnias for the table, and seven imperial-looking white and purple gladiolas to put in the stone pitcher that she kept by the front door. She was loaded down with fresh things, beautiful, glorious provisions. Could she stop time and stay here, with her basket full, surrounded by organic produce? Could she just die here and call it a happy end?

Ethan appeared at her side with the chevre, just the right amount for her tart. He held the cheese out; his hands, if she weren't mistaken, were trembling. Marguerite cast her eyes around. The woman he had been talking to at the cheese case was now at the counter. The freckled boy scanned her purchases, weighed her produce, and put everything in a used brown paper bag from the A&P. There was no one else in the greenhouse. Marguerite wondered if Ethan was still married to the stepsister. She wondered how marrying someone you were not at all related to could be considered by so many people as incest.

"Thank you," Marguerite said. She, too, could proceed to the checkout and walk across the sunny parking lot to her Jeep, drive home without another word, but for some reason she felt that would be cheating.

And yet she didn't want to knock him over with the force of an out-and-out testimonial. Conversation, she thought. She used to be, if not a master, then at least a journeyman. Able to hold her own with stranger or friend. And Ethan was a friend. What did friends say to one another?

"How are you?" she said. "Really, how are you?"

He smiled; his red face creased. He was sun-wrinkled like a farmer, but the hair and the soft eyes and the knowledge of his sensitive soul had always made Marguerite think poet, philosopher. "I'm good, Margo. Happy. I'm happy."

"The place looks wonderful."

"It keeps me busy. We're doing all kinds of new things...." He sounded ready to launch into an explanation of heirloom varieties, hydroponics, cold pasteurization, which Marguerite, as a former chef, would appreciate, but he stopped himself. Backed up. "I'm happily married."

"To....?"

"Emily, yes. And the boys are growing up too fast."

"That's one of them over there?" Marguerite asked.

"Yes."

They both looked at the boy, who, now that the greenhouse was empty of customers save for the one his father was talking to, had started reading a book. Marguerite felt proud of him on his father's behalf. Any other kid, it would have been one of those horrible handheld video games.

Ethan cleared his throat. "So you found everything you need? Everything for the tart?"

"Everything for the tart and then some," Marguerite said. She closed her eyes for a second and listened. Was she about to make a colossal mistake? She heard the goats maahing and the refrigerator case humming. She met Ethan's eyes and lowered her voice. "Renata is coming for dinner tonight."

His expression remained unchanged and Marguerite faltered. Did he not remember Renata? She had been just a little girl, of course. "Renata is Candace's-"

"Yes," he whispered. "I know who she is."

"She's nineteen."

He whistled softly and shook his head.

"I'm sorry," Marguerite said. "I shouldn't have-"

He grabbed her protesting hand. "Don't be sorry," he said. "I figured as much. If you were cooking again, I figured it was the girl. Or Dan. Or Porter."

"The girl," Marguerite repeated. "Renata Knox."

"If I could, I would prostrate myself at her feet," Ethan said. "I would beg her forgiveness."

"You don't have to beg her forgiveness," Marguerite said. "You did nothing wrong."

"Yes, but Walter-"

"Walter, exactly." Marguerite's voice was so firm she startled herself. She glanced at the boy, Ethan's son, but his gaze was glued to the page. "Walter isn't you and you aren't Walter. You never had to carry his load."

"But I did. I do."

"But you do," Marguerite said.

"When I had kids, I promised myself..." Here he paused and Marguerite saw him swallow. "...that I wouldn't do anything that would ever make them feel anything but proud of me."

"Right," Marguerite said. "And they are proud of you, I'm sure. This place is holy, your work is n.o.ble, you are a good, good person, and you always have been. Since you were that age." She nodded to the son. "I didn't tell you about Renata to awaken your old, useless guilt. I told you because I knew you would understand about tonight's dinner. How important it is to me. How you will be a part of it."

"I want to be a part of it," he said. "Thank you for coming all the way out here. In my wildest dreams, I never expected to see you today." Ethan took Marguerite by the arm and led her to the counter. "Margo, I'd like you to meet my son Brandon. Brandon, this is Marguerite Beale, an old friend of mine."

Marguerite offered Brandon her hand. "Your father feels no shame in calling me old."

"My apologies," Ethan said. "I meant 'longtime friend.' We've been friends a long time."

Brandon took Marguerite's hand, uneasily glancing between her and his father. Marguerite nearly laughed. She felt unaccountably happy. Relieved. This was almost over; the hard part was through. It would end well. Brandon began to unload Marguerite's purchases, but before he could weigh or scan anything, Ethan said, "It's on the house. All of it."

"Ethan," Marguerite said. "No. I can't let you do that."

"Oh yes, you can," Ethan said. "This is for the best chef on Nantucket and her esteemed guest."

Brandon bagged everything with extreme care as Ethan and Marguerite watched him in silence. Marguerite was grinning; the boy looked so much like his father. When she picked up her bag, Ethan touched her head and Marguerite remembered a priest, long ago, bestowing a blessing. "Now go," he said. "Cook. And enjoy your dinner."

1:14 P.M.