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Betsy dove into the cold sea. She had five minutes before her morning meeting with campers, and she hoped that swimming would still her nerves.

Even as she treaded water, though, her thoughts looped back to the worst-case scenario: What if the test is positive?

After drying herself off and pulling on a pair of nylon shorts, Betsy got the kids out on the boats in the harbor and tried to lose herself in their endless curiosity.

She was grateful when Wiley asked her to work with their most challenging students: three eleven-year-old girls who didn’t feel comfortable on a sailboat.

It was the perfect distraction. The girls were wary from the moment they boarded, and when Betsy asked for a volunteer to man the till, the children kept their hands in their laps.

“C’mon, girls. The worst thing that happens is that we capsize and go for a swim.”

“I don’t want to get wet,” complained a girl with dark circles under her eyes, her shoulders freckly.

“We won’t really fall over, right?” The towhead child had legs like string beans. She tugged on the buckles of her orange life vest.

Betsy angled her face to the wind, like she remembered her father doing when they would sail.

“You need to be tougher, ladies. You think the boys are out there complaining about getting wet?” She pointed to a pair of campers in yellow life vests taking the wind at full speed, determination on the boys’ faces as they bounded through the chop.

“I want you to be so fearless that you believe you can sail this boat no matter how strong the wind is.”

Betsy wanted to be so fearless that she could deal with whatever came next for her, too, and for a moment, the water gave her a sense of invincibility. Out here, she was always okay.

An hour later, the group rounded the curve of land by Edgartown light, and by the time Betsy returned the girls to the dock, she’d felt the children loosen up.

While the string-bean girl was biting her lip, the other two had taken turns steering, one hollering “galley ho” when the boat had glided through gentle waves.

Back on land, Betsy unzipped her windbreaker and grabbed her purse from the small wooden locker in the yacht club’s shed.

The clouds had parted, and she walked out into the sunshine of Edgartown at three thirty in the afternoon.

She planned to take a taxi to Oak Bluffs, where she’d be less likely to run into anyone she knew.

How incredible that she could buy a pregnancy test in a store and take it in the privacy of her own bathroom!

She walked up the main drag of Edgartown, deciding to check the grocery’s small pharmacy section first. Her eyes traveled over the Pepto-Bismol and Excedrin bottles in the medicine aisle next to the yeast cream and maxi pads.

Nothing. Instead, she bought a snack, hurrying outside to the crowded sidewalk only to find James on the curb, along with his dog.

He wore the same Nike sneakers, a baseball cap with E DGARTOWN emblazoned across the top.

James offered a tentative smile. “I saw you at the register.”

“Oh, hi,” Betsy said. She bent down and fussed over the dog. “What a sweet girl.” She smiled. Neither of them said anything else. Betsy cleared her throat. She wasn’t sure if he’d gotten her letter. “Okay, well, I’ll see you around.”

James pushed off the shingled grocery, falling in step with her. “I’ll walk with you. Your house is on the way to the hardware store, kind of.”

She watched Peanut Butter sniff at the lowest branches of an overgrown rhododendron. “I would like that.”

They strolled along the manicured lawns of Summer Street, Betsy hyperaware of his presence.

She waited for him to say something; he had chosen to walk with her, but he seemed comfortable with the silence.

He’d been that way as a kid too. It was Betsy that chattered on. She tried to think of something to say.

“Do you remember Ellie?”

James eyed her curiously. “Our old sailing instructor, with the short red hair? Didn’t we put a dead fish in her boat?”

She laughed, and Peanut Butter’s enormous tail wagged, brushing against Betsy’s legs. “Why were we so mean to her?”

“Ellie was a total blue blood, don’t you remember? Her mother’s name was Muffy.”

The memory annoyed Betsy. “Yes. She always parked her parents’ black Mercedes convertible with one wheel up on the curb. I wonder what happened to her.”

He pointed at the manicured lawn of a captain’s house with a bricked walkway and imposing front door. “She’s probably ‘figuring herself out’ in one of those.”

She and James had always thumbed their noses at the summer kids from Boston and New York, their families parking enormous yachts in the harbor and inviting locals to their lavish homes for parties because they thought it made them interesting.

They went to a few of those gatherings, but they never felt at home with all those girls and their very big feelings snorting lines on a coffee table, the boys tossing footballs in the backyard while holding beers, everyone running to the beach for a midnight swim.

“You sound resentful.” Betsy glanced at her watch. It was nearly four, and she needed to get to the pharmacy.

“You’re different,” he said. He leaned against a lamppost, watching her.

She adjusted the strap of her bathing suit. “Well, you’re exactly the same.”

“Yeah, well.” He pushed his hands into the pockets of his baggy shorts.

A part of her worried she might have insulted him. “I mean, it’s not a bad thing that you’re the same. I always did like you.” She smiled at him, and she was about to ask if he wanted to walk some more when her sisters turned the corner.

Louisa was coming down the sidewalk in bright red lipstick and heels. When she laid eyes on Betsy, her heart-shaped mouth pulled tight, and she glanced at Aggie, the two of them sharing a look. Betsy knew what that meant. She’d done something wrong.

“Did you forget about our appointment?” Aggie called down the sidewalk, her steps swift.

The sisters said a quick hello to James, inquiring how he was, while making clear they weren’t all that interested in the answer. Betsy lifted her face out of her hands.

“I’m so sorry.” Her mind had been so preoccupied with the pharmacy that she had forgotten their meeting at the Dukes County Savings Bank. “I’ll just go like this.”

Louisa looked at Betsy like she was holding in laughter. “You can’t go to the bank in jogging shorts and a damp bathing suit.”

“Of course I can. Don’t be such a snob.” Betsy turned to James. “Good luck with the house.”

He smiled at her. “Good luck with your sisters.”

“I’m going to need it.”

Betsy trailed behind Louisa and Aggie as they walked off toward Main Street, Betsy wondering how on earth she was going to get to Oak Bluffs in time to buy the test. She also wondered if she and James would ever really be friends again, if he’d ever forget how cruel she’d been, dropping him from her life without an explanation.

The Dukes County Savings Bank was housed in a classic white clapboard house just off Main Street.

Louisa opened the door, her heels announcing her serious intentions, and Betsy registered the confused look on the young teller’s face.

Most customers on the island likely came in wearing sandals and shorts, whereas Louisa stormed in like she’d bought the bank.

“Good afternoon. We’re here to see Mr. Erwin,” Louisa said.

The baby began to fuss, and Aggie picked him up out of the stroller as the teller disappeared into a nearby office.

The man that emerged was shorter than Aggie by a head and wore freshly shined black loafers with tassels.

Louisa held out her hand. “I’m Louisa Whiting.

Thank you for seeing us today, Mr. Erwin. ”

“Please, call me Pat.” He said hello to Betsy like he knew her. “Don’t you teach my daughter Lilian at the yacht club?”

Betsy remembered his slick, oiled hair and thick black glasses from drop-off. “Yes! Hello! I have good news to report. I had Lilian steering the boat today. What a special girl you have.”

He nodded, telling them that he had two Sunfish he kept on his dock, how he wanted his daughter to be comfortable on the water.

They followed Mr. Erwin into his fluorescent-lit office, except for Aggie, who lagged behind and asked the teller, dressed in a pressed skirt suit, if Tabby could color at her feet.

Minutes later, Aggie joined them in his office, holding the baby against her flowy chambray dress.

The sisters sat opposite Mr. Erwin’s metal desk in wooden chairs that looked like they were bought at a local chowder house. Louisa got right to the point. “We would like to apply for a personal loan. Our mother is in financial trouble, and we need to help.”

Betsy’s thoughts flashed to a meeting she’d gone to with her mother on Capitol Hill several years ago, when Virgie had been advising college women about lobbying to end sex discrimination when renting a house or apartment.

How they’d listened to her with rapt attention as she’d told them: “Don’t demand.

Don’t be angry. Be nice and smile but be persuasive.

Make it personal, make your cause about the mothers and sisters and girlfriends in these staffers’ lives. ”

Mr. Erwin’s elbows were on the desk, and he folded his stubby hands together. “Well, your father was a longtime member of our institution. If there’s a way I can help, I will.” His eyes trained on Betsy, which seemed to unnerve Louisa, but she played along.

“Why don’t you explain everything to Mr. Erwin, Betts?”

The lights on his tan office phone blinked red, indicating a call coming through.

Betsy tried not to race through their story in fear that he’d cut her off and pick it up.

How her mother believed she needed to sell the house, but they wanted to take out a loan, the three of them applying together, to try to pay off the debts.