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“Don’t you think he’s in all of us?” Louisa said, like the thought of it annoyed her. “The good and the bad.”

Betsy reached hard for a china plate. “I talked to him the Sunday before he died. We kept up our eight o’clock calls straight through college.”

“He called me that night too—I didn’t pick up because I had a friend over,” Louisa said, a hint of regret in her tone. “What did you talk about?”

Betsy had written down as much of the conversation as she could remember when she’d learned her father’s plane had crashed.

“The most important bit was him convincing me that I should only go to graduate school if I saw practical use in it, no matter what Mommy said. If I wasn’t certain what to study, I should wait until I was, and then attend.

He also said he’d just had the best key lime pie of his life at the Willard. ”

Aggie liked this, wiggling her toes while smiling. “At least he finally found the elusive best key lime.”

She and her sisters had to have talked about this final conversation once before, at the funeral maybe, but she wasn’t sure now. “He also mentioned that he was looking forward to coming to the Vineyard house and winding down with Mommy.”

Louisa seemed surprised. “That’s a first. I always got the feeling he thought the Vineyard slowed him down.”

“Yes, me too,” Betsy said, nodding. “But maybe he realized how happy Mommy was here—and he liked this carefree version of her best.”

“Well, it took him long enough,” Louisa said, like it was a thought worth analyzing. “So he preferred Mommy when she was at the beach laying like a vegetable in the sun versus Mommy when she was leading a march in Washington? Sounds about right.”

Betsy smirked. “It’s not quite like that. She was writing cover stories here, Lou.”

The baby howled in the upstairs bedroom, and Aggie slammed the newspaper on the table.

“This child, he’s going to kill me.” The baby still woke up once or twice a night, waking the entire house with him. “Let me get him.”

“How about we go out on Senatorial ?” Betsy neatened their finished stacks of plates, deciding she’d go to the supermarket to get boxes after work. “I need to talk to you both about something, and I don’t want Mom to hear.”

“Right now?” Louisa yawned. “I’m ready for bed.”

Betsy switched off the dining room light. “Yes, now.” She pulled three blankets out of the closet to bring on Senatorial in case it got chilly.

The sisters used a flashlight to see in the dark as they made their way down the grass and the wood slats of the dock.

The boat creaked as they stepped on board, and they arranged themselves into an L pattern in the bow on the leather benches, the seams torn in spots from years of use.

Betsy held the flashlight up under her chin, impersonating Jack Nicholson in The Shining , as Aggie tried not to laugh as she adjusted Mikey in her arms.

“If you’re going to drag me out here, you better have something good to say.” The baby always needed to be touching Aggie, either pressed against her chest or cradled in her lap, to settle. Sometimes Betsy imagined him at eight years old, a child demanding his mother spoon him in his bed.

Louisa grabbed the flashlight and stuck it under her own chin. “Bloody Mary. Bloody Mary.” Her prim features morphed goblin-like, and Betsy couldn’t help but crack up.

“I think you should do that when you argue a case before the justices,” Betsy teased.

Louisa turned off the flashlight, the sisters settling into the dark.

“They barely show any emotion when you approach them on the bench. It’s like they were born with a furrow in their brow.

” Betsy asked what they were really like, and Louisa declared Justice Marshall the most intimidating.

“You can see his brain clicking into place as the argument unfolds.” Louisa held herself like a serious intellectual, impersonating his gravelly voice.

“I’m praying that there’s a woman justice in my lifetime. ”

“Mom says it’s going to happen when Justice Stewart retires.

They’re already floating names.” Aggie rarely paid attention to politics, but she loved stories of women who persevered.

Betsy always thought it was because she’d worked so hard to prove she could play basketball, how she’d been determined to prove that her menstruating body was tough enough to withstand athletics to their doubting father.

Sitting cross-legged, Betsy leaned her elbows against her folded knees. “Okay, so I wanted to talk to you both about, you know, stopping Mom from selling the house.”

Aggie glanced over at Louisa to gauge her reaction, but Louisa was in listening mode, her gaze fixed on the ticking stripes of the blanket. “It’s a lost cause, Betts,” Aggie said. “I don’t think there is another option.”

Louisa chewed her cuticle. “Do you have some brilliant plan to pay off the debts or something?”

Betsy didn’t have a plan; she had a pipe dream. “I don’t have an idea specifically, no, but surely there’s something we could do? Mom must have some money coming in.”

“Do we even know how much is in her bank account?” Aggie asked.

Louisa shrugged. “It can’t be much. She’s not a staff writer.”

Betsy tried again. “Louisa, I know you make a lot of money, and I have some savings from the diner and I’m going to get a job this week. Aggie, maybe you and Henry can help too.”

Louisa crossed her legs. “I don’t make as much as you might think. I take home half of what my male colleagues are paid.”

“That’s disgusting.” Aggie scooched down on the white canvas cushion, stretching her legs across the wooden flooring of the sailboat. Mikey laid his head flat on her chest.

“Sometimes it’s even less than half. I saw a study during my research.” Betsy cringed, thinking that Andy probably would have paid her less than her male counterparts if she’d worked as his research assistant.

The sailboat rocked gently with the breeze, the American flag flapping off the back.

“Well, it’s unconfirmed, of course.” Louisa lowered her hand to her lap. “But my salary couldn’t buy the houses my male colleagues are purchasing. Anyway, Betsy, you have a point. Maybe we shouldn’t just roll over and play dead here.”

Betsy felt the corners of her mouth turn up. For once, she had a point.

“Oh, goodness. It’s only a house,” Aggie said.

Mikey began to fuss, and her sister asked Betsy if she could hold him a minute.

As she rubbed noses with the baby, Betsy had the strangest sensation: a heaviness in her breasts, a glowing in her chest that felt something like heartbreak. No, longing. She wanted a baby someday.

Betsy felt emotion bubbling up from way down deep. “You wouldn’t be upset to let the house go?”

Aggie took the baby back, then kissed the side of Mikey’s small cheek.

“No, I’m just making the point that maybe it would be good for Mom to sell.

Maybe coming to the house is too hard with Dad gone, and in addition to paying off whatever debt Dad incurred, it would give Mom a chance to start fresh. ”

Betsy watched the baby resettle, sprawling out on his mother’s belly, lowering his head gently on her chest. She felt weepy watching him, longing for the child’s warmth and the assuring way he looked at her. “Easy for you to say, Ag, you have your own family. You have your own house.”

“Oh, honey.” Aggie softly patted the baby’s back. “You’re going to have your own house someday too. This place won’t even matter anymore.”

“Maybe not, but Jesus, Aggie.” Louisa tapped her foot, an impatient woman in line. “Why aren’t you more attached to this place?”

“I dunno, I just find it so hard to be here. If we sold the house, then we wouldn’t be forced to come here every summer without Dad.”

Betsy felt a swelling in her heart. “Dad wouldn’t have wanted us to give up this easily, Aggie. He would have told us to fight, and if Mom wasn’t grieving right now, she would tell us to fight too.”

Louisa smirked. “So you do have some fight in you, Betsy!”

Betsy wasn’t sure if it was a compliment or an insult. Before she could decide, Aggie said, “I just don’t want us to get our hopes up. If it’s going to hurt, I want it to hurt all at once.”

The sentiment weighed on them a minute until Betsy could see what the conversation was really about: Aggie’s belief that discarding the house would somehow alleviate the pain of missing her father.

But it wouldn’t. The loss of Charlie Whiting would follow them forever.

Betsy moved closer to her wiry and muscular sister so their sides were touching, and she looked into Aggie’s sad eyes, noting that she could no longer find Aggie’s competitive spirit from her years playing basketball.

“Okay, I’m sorry, but what if talk of saving the house upsets Mom? ” Aggie said.

“We can’t tell Mom, at least not yet.” Betsy glanced at Louisa to see what she thought.

“I agree,” Louisa said. “Not until we have a concrete plan. Okay, Betsy, you start. What is your big idea?”

Betsy pulled her knees to her chest on the boat cushion, the light in the kitchen casting a pretty glow on the house.

“What if we asked her friend Wiley to buy this place? That man has more money than a Rockefeller, and we can rent it back from him.” She didn’t even know if people did that, but she planned to go ask Wiley for her old summer job back at the yacht club tomorrow.

Aggie and Louisa shot down the idea, the baby rousing at the spike of volume in their voices. “Mom would never ask Wiley for help. He would have something over her, control of her things, and she would hate that.”

“Okay.” Betsy realized her mistake. “He’s just such a generous person.”

“But he would own the house, Betsy. We wouldn’t.”

Aggie ran her lips on the top of the baby’s fuzzy head. “What if Henry and I purchased the house as a summer place? I honestly don’t have any idea if we can afford it, but I could ask him. He’d only come on weekends, and then you and Mom could come visit. It would pretty much be ours.”

“Only it wouldn’t be.” Louisa pinched her lips together.

“Hmm,” Betsy said, cooing at the baby in her sister’s arms. “But you know Mom would feel like she was imposing and never come, which defeats the point.”

“Here’s what I’m thinking.” Louisa took out her headband and repositioned it. The wind was getting to her. “We’ll go to the bank and take out a loan.”

“They’ll give us a loan?” Betsy didn’t even have a credit card.

“Of course they’ll give us a loan,” Louisa said. “We’re three responsible residents of the island.” She pondered her own words a moment. “I’m going to cancel my ferry tomorrow and try calling my boss. Mom needs me here another week.”

Betsy appreciated her sister’s commitment, but it was also shocking that Louisa was willing to put her mother before her job. “They’ll give you that much time off?”

Louisa nibbled her nail. “Not happily, but I’ll say it’s an emergency. Anyway, it’s a holiday week with July fourth on Tuesday.”

They returned to their scheming. “Okay. If you can get Mom out of the house, I can look through whatever financial records there are,” Betsy said. “Maybe I can find a ledger and see what kind of savings they have, maybe some stocks.”

Aggie sat up, cradling the baby’s head. “Okay, that leaves me to talk to Mom about the house. Maybe she’s looking for a clean break. She tells me stuff she doesn’t tell you both.”

Louisa blanched. “You can’t be serious.”

“It’s like having kids put me in a club,” Aggie said with tenderness. “You know what she told me? That she could have done more with us if she’d only had two kids, rather than three. I was like: ‘Why do you want to erase one of us?’ She huffed away, like I was missing her point.”

Betsy didn’t want to think too hard about the comment. Instead, she motioned around the boat, gulping in a breath. “I’ll go down to the harbor and see what Senatorial might fetch too.”

They shared a moment of silence. Charlie Whiting had loved this boat with its shiny wood and patched-up sail.

So did Betsy. The idea of selling it brought forth a complicated wave of emotions.

When she looked at its thirty-foot mast, its glossy teak trim, she saw a series of scenes with her father—her dad tying the rigging, Betsy handing him the sail lines, the white billow of a beautiful shiny sail, their faces turning upward with a grin.

It was on this boat that a unique and close friendship had developed between her and her father.

Louisa restated the obvious. “Yes, we will need to sell Senatorial .”

“We could auction off some of Dad’s belongings too,” Aggie said hopefully. “We could call Sotheby’s.”

Betsy eyed her warily. “Anything anyone would want to buy of Dad’s, we would want to keep.”

“Well, we can’t hold on to everything, Betsy!” Aggie whispered her exasperation.

Betsy held her hands up in defense. “Okay. But I still think it’s a terrible idea.”

“We’ll revisit the auction, if we need to,” Louisa said, her statement the tiebreaker in the stalemate.