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Nantucket

Maybe they’d sail to Nantucket this century. The car ferry in Woods Hole was full, so Virgie sat in the standby line watching walk-on passengers lugging suitcases onto the boat. There were three cars ahead of Virgie’s, and a new ferry was docking.

Betsy and James were in the back seat reading a Spider-Man comic.

One of the sailing instructors had given them a stack of comic books the day before and they’d been huddled over the Superman and Spider-Man stories since.

It was risky bringing Betsy, but Virgie couldn’t leave her home all day.

Aggie and Louisa would go to a friend’s house in the afternoon, but she didn’t trust Pamela to watch the children, especially when she was prisoner to the ferry schedule.

The tender waved them on the boat, and Virgie parked.

They shuffled up to the sundeck for the two-hour trip, the departure horn sounding.

Virgie pressed her lips into a tight line.

She checked the tiny gold face of her wristwatch; it was after twelve.

She didn’t have much of an appetite, but she’d need to feed the kids.

“Would anyone like a cup of clam chowder?” she asked the children.

They followed her to the canteen, still reading the comic.

It’s probably something innocent , she told herself, handing the children each a packet of oyster crackers and creamy soup. She crossed her legs and watched them eat. A huge misunderstanding.

Virgie stopped at a small gift shop just after driving off the ferry to ask for directions, but they sent her to the tourist office down the road where a nice young man used a red marker to hand draw a map showing her the way to Chapel Way in an area called Madaket.

When she got back in the car, she tucked a few strays into her French twist, the children in a tickle fight, whooping it up in the back seat.

“Quiet down, children. I need to focus.” She smacked the passenger seat harder than she needed to, and they fell silent, returning to their comic.

“What a lovely bookshop.” Virgie pointed to a brick shop housing rows of novels in the windows.

“If the day goes well, maybe we can stop there on the way home.” They were driving rural roads out of the town soon after, making their way through acres of open land and grassy moors, and while it took some turning around and backtracking, after twenty minutes or so, Virgie steered the car into a small grid of houses.

She located an unpaved single lane road labeled C HAPEL W AY .

How strange that the address led to a house.

A small, shingled saltbox-style house. Virgie had imagined something sinister, like a big empty warehouse with the windows drawn black with shades.

She pulled in beside the Ford truck and parked in the drive, shushing the children in the back seat.

There were two bikes on the side porch next to a charming swing.

A little girl was in the backyard on a playset, and behind it, a calm inlet with a boat rocking lazily in the blue.

“Can we go play?” Betsy asked. The child waved to them, and Virgie had the eerie sense that she’d seen the girl before; she was lanky and knobby-kneed, wearing an adorable bathing suit with a strawberry printed on the front.

“First, let’s see who else is home,” Virgie said, feeling a bit hopeful that maybe she wouldn’t discover anything damning.

On the door was a shiny brass knocker in the shape of a sailboat.

She knocked it twice. She could hear a television inside, studio applause and phony laughter coming through an open window.

Footsteps. Virgie adjusted her skirt suit, retucking her blouse and sucking on her teeth to remove any errant lipstick, poised to smile as the front door opened.

A tall, elegant woman answered the door holding a small Igloo cooler. She was Virgie’s age and wearing a red one-piece bathing suit with a fashionable matching headscarf. She took a small step back, dropping the plastic cooler by her foot, then rushing forward to pick it up and returning to stand.

“I can’t believe it,” the woman said. She pulled off the headscarf, crumpling it in hand, almost like a person couldn’t know her wearing it.

The ground under Virgie felt a little less steady.

It was Melody. Her old best friend from Washington.

Melody, with that pretty dark reddish hair that fell blunt to her shoulders.

Melody, who had abruptly moved to Boston.

How terrible Melody had been about answering Virgie’s letters, sending one back for every four Virgie had written.

At some point, Virgie had stopped writing.

But it had bothered her; for a time, Melody was her closest friend.

Virgie snuck a glance into the hall behind her. Was there someone else inside? A husband that would turn off the television and come to the door?

Melody’s smile looked pasted-on. “Virgie, oh my goodness, Virgie Whiting. What are you doing here?”

Virgie wasn’t sure she was happy to see her, waiting a moment for her brain to catch up with her eyes. “I’m not sure.”

The little girl ran into the front yard, alighting at the sight of the other kids, and the three children ran off to squeeze into the porch swing. The rusted chain link creaked as they rocked.

It had to be the child Virgie nearly hit with the car at South Beach earlier this summer. She wouldn’t forget that little girl’s face. Fear had burned it into memory. And she’d thought her familiar then, too; she’d looked like her old friend Melody Fleming.

Virgie peeled her gaze away from the girl. Melody still had that pasted-on smile.

“Gosh, I’m being rude,” Melody said. “Come inside.” The woman looked to the car to see if someone else was inside, swallowing before turning to go in.

Virgie felt for the back of her French twist, like she wasn’t sure her hair was still in place. “I don’t mean to impose like this. I have a personal policy to call before I show up at someone’s house, but I didn’t know. I didn’t know it was going to be you.”

Her friend seemed to relax then. “Of course, no, please. Come in.”

Virgie became hyperaware of her every step in the narrow hall as she followed Melody to the kitchen. Her eyes swept around the adjoining sunny living room, and then the dining room with its mahogany turn-foot table and dated chandelier.

“I’m so sorry; we are meeting some friends at the beach.

Jetties in town, you might have seen it as you arrived on the ferry.

It’s calmer. The water out here will sweep you away.

A few little girls from Vera’s camp, since camp was canceled, and I just had no idea you were going to come.

I wish I did because I would have had tea on or a platter of sandwiches ready.

” Melody pivoted at the sink; she’d been talking so fast she needed to catch her breath.

She reached for two glasses. “It would have been nice to have lunch and a proper visit. Well, we have some time now.”

“I won’t be here long,” Virgie reassured her. “I’m just trying to understand… do you live here?”

Melody squeezed her lips with her fist, then released them. “I’m so sorry. I’m so very sorry. I really am. I tried to.” She turned her face away from Virgie, and Virgie thought it sweet that she still had her freckles, even as a grown woman. “I didn’t know how to tell you.”

“Tell me what?” Virgie said, or maybe she’d only thought she said it.

Now she followed her friend, carrying two glasses and a bottle of soda, into her living room, where she shut off the blaring television.

There was an upright piano, a scatter of picture frames on top, wide-open views of the reedy inlet.

Virgie wondered if she was dreaming—she had the strange sensation of floating—and she guessed she might wake up in her bed in the Vineyard, remarking to the girls at breakfast that she had the strangest vision.

She ran her hand along the nubby fabric of the couch as she sat, pinching her outer thigh; both felt real.

This house with the weathered cedar shingles. The refrigerator covered in a child’s artwork. This living room with the big windows overlooking a gnarled oak tree with a tire swing. It was all somehow connected to Charlie.

“I’m really sorry I didn’t tell you,” Melody said, her voice shaky and speeding. “I just thought it would be best to leave DC, and the mystery was less hurtful than the truth.”

There were others, there were always others , Virgie thought in her head. A painful sensation socked her in the chest, and she worried she might be having a heart attack or a stroke, and she worked hard to slow her breath. You are fine. You will survive. You need to understand.

Illegal dealings, maybe a criminal enterprise. That is what Wiley led her to believe she might find. But Melody?

The woman crossed her long, freckled legs, her toenails painted a coral color Virgie never would select for herself. “I’ve barely seen Charlie. Honest to God, but he has dropped by once or twice. I guess I’ve wanted him to see Vera, even if Vera has no idea who he is.”

Melody trembled as she poured Virgie a glass of ginger ale.

It had always been Melody’s favorite drink.

Outside, Virgie watched James, Betsy, and another child taking turns climbing the rubber tire.

The girl sprinted inside, her face balled up with anguish.

“They’re hogging the swing,” she said, and Melody leaned into her ear, whispering something.

It was then that Virgie gripped the edge of the sofa. She’d been uncomfortably seated on the sunken couch in this sunny living room with its wide-planked solid wood floors. She leaned closer to the girl so she might see her with more clarity. And there they were: Charlie’s eyes.

There was screaming in Virgie’s ear, her own voice.