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“Of course he was. But I think Dad believed James wouldn’t leave the island, and he thought it would hold me back. I mean, his mother was in bad shape.”

A gust of wind shifted the boom, both sisters ducking their heads.

Once the wind was tight against the sail, Betsy relaxed again, the boat gliding along the sea.

Aggie pointed her toes out, then flexed her feet, stretching with a yawn.

“I always felt sorry for James, hanging around our house all the time like he had nowhere else to go.”

Betsy elbowed her. “Maybe he just liked me, Ag. Could that be it?”

“Of course he liked you, but I’m talking about when you were little.”

“When I was little, I thought his mother was so sad, but after a year studying psychology, I can tell you she was clinically depressed and an alcoholic. She needed help,” Betsy said.

The lighthouse was in view now, and Betsy perked up at the sight of the inlet curving through the marsh at low tide, the tall grasses shining in the sunlight, the familiar natural world the anchor she could moor to.

“Ready?” Betsy asked Aggie, who nodded. She tacked, the sails shifting in the opposite direction.

They ducked once more. As the sailboat drew closer to the old Sunday property, Betsy could see that the back of his family’s small cottage had been freshly painted.

There was a screened-in porch with a table positioned inside.

The large oak tree stood at one end of the yard.

“I feel like I haven’t slept in months,” Aggie said. “I swear if Mikey came first, I may not have had another.”

Betsy turned the wheel away from her old friend’s house. “Henry wouldn’t have let you have just one. He wanted a girl too.”

“Well, he got them. He got everything he wanted, didn’t he?”

Betsy studied her sister’s face. “What’s wrong, Aggie?”

Aggie fiddled with the hem of her skirt.

“Oh, it’s complicated. You’ll see when you have a baby someday.

Marriage just creates this uneven playing field.

I couldn’t even think about running another marathon—even with me feeding the baby bottled formula.

I can barely find time or energy. I play tennis, sure, but my body can’t do what it used to.

Mom says I should just start training again, but it’s not like she offers to watch the kids so I can get out. ”

“If Mom could hear you right now, she’d say stop building roadblocks for yourself. Get a sitter. Mom would say, ‘Aggie—’?”

“?‘You’re only stopping yourself.’ I know,” Aggie sighed, knowing that their mother somehow pulled off whatever she wanted, and she always had.

Apparently, Betsy getting a job marked the end of everyone’s “vacation,” because at eight thirty Wednesday morning, she was cooking banana pancakes for everyone on the griddle.

Aggie and the kids waited on their servings, while Louisa worked on her first stack and announced the banana slices “perfectly caramelized.” Diner secret, Betsy said: use two pats of butter, not one.

Virgie was upstairs getting dressed, so Betsy left her a plate of pancakes on the kitchen table while she went on the front porch with her breakfast. A woman in a purple skirt suit gingerly took the bricked steps.

“Hi, dear,” she said, speaking as a nanny would to a young child. “Your mother is expecting me, from Edgartown Realty.” When Betsy still seemed confused, the woman, who had the buoyant hair of someone who still set her hair in hot rollers every night, stuck her hand out as a form of introduction.

“You can call me Sally.” She grinned, handing Betsy a business card. “Oh, look at that. My lilac suit is the color of the wisteria growing right up your gutter.” She scrunched her round nose in a cutesy way. “It must be a sign.”

Betsy smiled politely, her body growing hot with that panicky feeling she had whenever she was worried; involving a Realtor in selling the house was inevitable. “Come with me, we’ll find Mom.”

She led the woman inside, stepping over wooden blocks Tabby had left in the hallway, and they followed voices to the kitchen.

Her mother and sisters were watching Tabby on the floor shaping Play-Doh, her mother’s face obscured by her coffee mug.

She was dressed like she was going to the bank, in slacks and a sleeveless sweater and loafers on her feet.

“Welcome, Sally,” her mother said, offering Betsy a weak smile.

“I was just telling the girls that Sally had a last-minute opening. Sally, I take it you met my youngest daughter?” Virgie turned to the woman, who was holding a leather portfolio and nodding, saying something banal like she’s lovely .

“These are my other two: Louisa, my lawyer, and Aggie, my athlete and mother to these adorable grandchildren.”

Betsy wished her mother had introduced her as something other than “the youngest.”

“I have a grandchild myself,” Sally said, scrunching her nose the same way she had on the porch. “Our house was too quiet before my grandson was born.”

“I know what you mean,” Virgie said, smiling at the wallet photos of the baby boy that the Realtor removed from her billfold. Virgie fawned over him, then padded to the table, setting her coffee down, the mug emblazoned with the symbol for female. “Would you like a cup?”

Sally shook her heart-shaped face, a fake pout in her lips while she clicked her pen. “I do wish I was coming under better circumstances, my dears. I want you to take comfort in the fact that I’ll be on the island if you or your sisters ever want to buy a house of your own.”

“How generous of you,” Betsy said. The Realtor knew full well that the adult children couldn’t afford a house on the island, or they wouldn’t be letting this one go. Aggie shot her a withering look while they waited for Sally to arrange her folders, pulling a few loose pages from her binder.

“Yes, well, you’d be surprised at how often these things happen. A parent sells a summer house and the adult child rings me before Labor Day and says they want a home here. Once the Vineyard is in your blood, finality can be, well, final.”

The woman studied the contract she’d removed, placing it in front of Betsy’s mother.

“I’m going to get ready for work,” Betsy said as the agent began to explain what was in the pages, her mother picking up a pen and half-heartedly nodding along.

Apparently, her mother and Sally knew each other from a decade ago, something about a woman’s club on the island.

Trudging upstairs, Betsy brushed her teeth and rebraided her long hair, then pinched her cheeks to combat the sickly pallor overtaking her face.

She glanced outside, feeling nostalgic already for the view of the harbor.

Minutes from now, it would fill up with small sailors steering their petite sailboats, Betsy teaching them how to jibe and tack.

There was just enough wind to get them moving, but not enough to frighten anyone new to the sport.

She forced herself to smile in the gilded mirror over her dresser, applying a coating of glossy lipstick to bring color to her face.

The Realtor was right. Selling the house felt so final .

Running into James at the yacht club had socked her with a gut punch, reminding her of how pivotal her time in the house was in her younger years.

It’s just a house. She felt a wet blot hit her wrist, then another, and she wiped her nose with her hand. It was embarrassing blubbering on like this. They were going to get a loan. They wouldn’t have to sell.

Because the house wasn’t just a house. It was all she and her sisters had left of their childhood, of all those memories they’d made when they were young.