Page 15

A couple of kids dressed in Vineyard Yacht Club T-shirts ran by them, offering a natural break in their conversation, and Betsy moved to say goodbye.

“It’s really nice seeing you,” she said, uncomfortable admitting as much.

Why hadn’t she written him a letter to say hello, to apologize?

They had been such good friends. Later, they had been in love.

“Nice seeing you too. I’m going to help Wiley…” Now James was fumbling with his words. He’d started to walk away, then turned back. “Are you here with your sisters?”

“Tortured as always,” Betsy said, feeling guilty when it slipped out. All James had ever wanted was a sibling; he told her one night at South Beach, their bodies pressed together on a lifeguard stand. “Do you have any summer guests?”

How uncomfortable it would be to run into him in Edgartown, a young woman hanging on his arm! But then again, she would be happy for him if he had someone. Maybe she’d feel less guilty about how things had ended for them.

“Just me and my dog, Peanut Butter.” He tipped his head at her, “You’re the lucky one with the big old family.”

“Do you want them?” She smiled, and he smiled back, an image resurfacing in her mind of James wedging himself between her and Aggie on the couch during episodes of My Three Sons , how much he loved when all the kids sat in a heap.

How sometimes after Betsy’s mother sent him home, he’d sneak through the back door and she and James would stay up playing Monopoly while whispering in the living room.

James had defined her summers as much as the island had.

Betsy didn’t tell Louisa, Aggie, or her mother that she ran into James.

Instead, as soon as she stepped in the front door that Monday, she was thrust into the whirlwind drama at the center of their own lives.

The latest contest involved who could make the best grilled cheese for lunch, her mother and Tabby sitting at the kitchen table and acting as judges.

She set down a stack of empty boxes she’d picked up from the grocer.

“I worked at a diner for a year,” Betsy warned them, donning a floral apron from a hook in the kitchen. “I know trade secrets.”

Louisa flipped the first set of sandwiches, burning the edges to black and demanding a second chance, while Aggie, who was up second, was able to master a bread that was a respectable golden brown. But when she cut the sandwich open, the cheese hadn’t melted.

“Watch and learn.” Betsy squeezed Tabby’s small cheek, taking her place at the old-fashioned stove.

As she slathered mayonnaise on the white bread and melted butter in the pan, her sisters scoffed that anyone would eat mayo on a grilled cheese.

“Everyone who has eaten at a diner has eaten mayo on the bread,” Betsy said, turning down the heat in the pan and flipping her grilled cheese.

As she waited for the inside to melt, she decided: She would write James a condolence letter, even if it was a few years late.

She wouldn’t be able to face him if she didn’t.

“Voila!” Betsy slid two perfectly golden grilled cheese sandwiches onto her mother’s and Tabby’s plates, leaning across the table to cut both into quarters.

Their eyes lit up when they bit into them, Aggie holding up Betsy’s arm like a champion and declaring her the winner.

“I make the best banana pancakes and buttery French toast too,” Betsy sang out, which made Louisa pretend to be a bad sport.

This made Tabby giggle. They “performed” for Tabitha all the time, casting aside their problems in the spirit of making a three-year-old smile, and sometimes the sisters got so silly they fell into their own laughter.

While finishing up a few more grilled cheese sandwiches for Aggie and Louisa, Betsy told them about her new job.

“Congratulations, but let’s talk about breakfast,” her mother said, licking her fingers and rising to toss her paper plate. “You’ll be getting up for your sailing gig anyway, and clearly, there’s talent.”

“All in favor?” Louisa said, counting four hands including her own. Betsy laughed.

“Okay!”

“Excellent. My first request is banana pancakes.” Louisa took the first bite of her grilled cheese, ecstatic at its ooey gooey insides.

Betsy smiled. “Aren’t you leaving tomorrow?”

Louisa finished chewing, swallowed. “I begged for some extra time, since I haven’t used any vacation days.”

“It’s great news,” her mother said, smiling at Betsy. “Is anyone interested in the beach? If these are Betsy’s last few days of freedom, let’s go to State.”

“Sure,” Betsy said. But her mind was elsewhere, back in time.

James sitting at the kitchen table eating lunch with them.

James puttering across the harbor in his small boat to get his swimsuit.

James piling in the car with them and going to the beach.

Now that Betsy was an adult, she wondered if James’s mother ever disliked the amount of time he spent with the Whiting family.

If he’d ever fought with her about letting him eat another meal here.

A part of Betsy wished she could call James right now and invite him along, toss him in the back seat with her and Aggie and pass around a beach ball.

That night, Betsy took a piece of stationery into bed with her, staring out across the water to where she’d always been able to see James Sunday’s house, the crabgrass lawn visible even from here.

When they were kids, she’d stare at the dot of movement on the lawn, knowing it was him playing with his pogo stick. She picked up her pen.

Dear James,

My professors always said that when someone dies, patients always want to talk, even years later.

I know you’re not my patient but my friend, and maybe not even a friend anymore with all the years that have gone by.

But I want to say that when I lost my father, I realized how hard it must have been for you to lose your mother.

I’m incredibly sorry for your loss, but I’m sorrier that I didn’t write.

Your summer friend,

Betsy

With a hint of pink in the sky, Betsy untied the ropes and hopped on board Senatorial to start the motor and find the wind.

Right as she turned the wheel to pull the sailboat away from the dock, Betsy heard her name.

She rose from the leather-style captain’s seat.

She’d been home nearly a week and a half, and this was the first time she was taking the boat out.

They’d watch the fireworks from the lawn later.

“What is it?” Betsy yelled back, spotting Aggie coming down the dock slats in her sweat shorts. The sailboat rocked in another boat’s wake while Aggie breathlessly rearranged her elastic headband from her position at the dock. “Mom offered to stay with the kids. Can I come with?”

Betsy glanced back at the house, noticing for the first time that the awning over the patio had discolored so much in the sun that the stripes were barely visible. “Yes, come.” Betsy shielded her eyes. “I’m only going to round the point, but it will be beautiful.”

The boat puttered away from the dock, and Aggie fell into the seat beside her, within her a bouncing energy that reminded Betsy of a golden retriever.

Letting out the jib, waiting for the sail to pull taut and catch the wind, Betsy killed the motor.

The lap of the water, the world turning in on itself.

That’s how sailing could feel, like truth and beauty all at once.

“I always loved watching the house get smaller, didn’t you?” Aggie said, the boat gliding deeper into the harbor. “Like we could do anything once we got out of range.”

The houses were bigger now than when she was a child.

New money from Boston and Washington had trickled in, everyone coming to claim their piece of the reedy green shores, the summer people morphing into something unrecognizable, something fancier and well-oiled.

Families with deep tans and color-coordinated outfits.

Young fathers who parked big, shiny sailboats at the dock like a Kennedy-esque accessory, sometimes never even moving them.

Even the grass at the golf course seemed lusher.

Over the last few years, restaurants had opened one by one, each with a sixteen-dollar steamed lobster on the menu.

Some of the locals, who had always bemoaned the price of housing, couldn’t even afford to buy a house here at all.

Aggie must have spotted James’s house at the far end of the harbor, her mind also turning back in time, because she stared at it, saying, “How is James?”

Betsy steered the boat toward his house. “Fine. He’s teaching at Berkeley.”

“I never really understood why Dad disliked him so much.” Aggie’s face glowed in the pink of the setting sun. “He was just a kid.”

There was a light on in James’s living room, and Betsy wondered if he was reading.

As a kid, he could spend an entire day buried in a book.

One summer when they were about fifteen, he’d begged her to read his favorite novel, David Copperfield by Dickens.

When she finished, the two of them snuggled up in a lounge chair under a blanket to discuss their favorite lines.

Why did she still remember his: I hope that real love and truth are stronger in the end than any evil or misfortune in the world .

It had struck her even then how much he’d wanted to be loved.

How much she wanted to be the one to love him.

“I asked Dad about James when we were out on the boat. I didn’t get why he wouldn’t let me go to a movie with him for his sixteenth birthday.

He didn’t answer at first, it was one of those windy days where you had to really pay attention to what the boat was doing, but finally, he said, ‘There are some people, Betsy, whose problems are bigger than you’ll ever need to understand. The Sundays are one of them.’?”

“That’s ridiculous. James was so different from his mother,” Aggie said.