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“We’ll be fine.” Betsy blew at the bangs sticking to her forehead. “Nantucket is half the size of the Vineyard. Besides, the records office will likely be right in town. We can walk.”

They found seats topside at a picnic table, Betsy shuffling off to the café. She returned holding a chocolate milk, a buttered roll, and a bag of Lay’s chips. “The salt is just perfect,” she moaned, gobbling down the chips.

“That’s disgusting.” Louisa stroked her throat, her fingers finding her gold locket and gently tugging.

“You’re just jealous because you don’t let yourself eat anything .”

The ferry pushed off from the dock, the water a clear aquamarine with seagulls gliding overhead. Betsy guzzled the carton of chocolate milk. In the distance, she did a double take at a familiar face, a man wearing Nikes, a faded red T-shirt, and a baseball hat. A dog trotted beside him.

James spotted her from the start, waving.

She felt butterflies, squeezing her abdomen to force away the fluttering.

“Hi, James.” She’d tried to “run” into him the day before, swinging past the hardware store in case he was inside.

“Hey, how are you?” He sat at the picnic table beside them. “I’m running errands off island.”

“Ah.”

“Hi, Louisa.”

“Nice to see you,” she said.

James sat at the next table, unwrapping the plastic from his Danish, using a small plastic knife to cut it into quarters. He’d never said anything about the letter Betsy wrote. “You look great,” he told Louisa.

“Thank you,” she said. Peanut Butter nudged Louisa’s hand. Seeing as much, James said, “I can move. I don’t want Peanut Butter to bother you.”

Betsy was about to say, That’s probably a good idea . How would she talk to him for forty-five minutes now that she barely knew this adult version of James?

But then Louisa spoke up first and told James to stay. “We love dogs, don’t we, Betsy?”

“Sure.” Betsy faked a smile.

Another colony of seagulls flew overhead. There was always a stray bird that followed the boat to the mainland. James offered Betsy a piece of the Danish he’d sliced on a napkin, and she popped it in her mouth. “It’s from this bakery in Vineyard Haven.”

“You always did love your sweets,” she said. “Thank you.”

Betsy folded her hands on the tabletop and pretended to be engrossed with the scenery. Her mind drifted to Wiley’s words. The past follows us wherever we go . The past seemed to follow her all over the island.

A leashed Labrador meandered past, Peanut Butter going in for a friendly sniff. “Where are you two off to?” The conversation skimmed the surface so expertly they could have been strangers on a Manhattan bus.

They were going to visit Louisa’s colleagues at a luncheon on Nantucket, she said.

As if on cue, Louisa placed her book down on the table.

“Except our mother is a true model of kindness and wouldn’t let us use her car, so we have to take a taxi to Hyannis.

” Louisa stood, adjusting her shorts where they had ridden up, and she announced she was going to the restroom.

Betsy nearly reached for her hand and yanked her sister back down.

The ferry was busy even on a Monday, families ending their vacations staring mournfully out at the passing cliffs.

Betsy distracted herself by watching a young girl sitting on her father’s lap, giggling as he bounced her on his knee; a memory of her father doing something similar making her smile.

Then she remembered she was sitting beside James, all awkward and trying to act normal, when it was her father that had driven them apart.

Her lips parted with a nervous smile. “How is the…”

James started as well, “I wrote you back…,” and they both paused, neither one wanting to say anything then. Lifting her gaze from the floor, she said, “Sorry, you go first.”

The ferry sounded two powerful horn blasts, and they craned their heads to see why. A powerboat had crossed in front of the larger boat’s path, a dire warning to move out of its way.

She turned her hands over in her lap as James called Peanut Butter back, gently petting the dog’s head. “I was just saying that I wrote you back.”

She felt the color drain from her face, thinking about what he might have written, since his expression was hazy. “I really am sorry we didn’t call or write after your mother died.”

A group of children ran by, chanting another child’s name. “Your mother came to her funeral. Do you know that?”

She felt his eyes on her, a pang of surprise reverberating down to her fingertips.

Her mother had sworn off James and his family the same year that her father had encouraged Betsy to distance herself from him.

When had her mother been able to sneak off to attend services for James’s mother?

“At some point, I think she thought of you as one of her own children.”

James had a deeper voice now, more serious. “Maybe because she couldn’t ever get me to go home.”

A schooner sailed by with three masts, and the conversation lightened when he asked about Senatorial . They got up from their seats and walked to one side of the ferry, both resting their forearms on the railing and staring off across the water. This was progress , she thought.

He told her a story then.

“When I was in college at Berkeley, your mother was speaking on campus at Zellerbach Hall. I saw it in the campus paper, so I went.” Afterward he waited in line to talk to her.

When Virgie saw him, she’d beamed and given him an enormous bear hug.

Then she’d said she was so proud that he’d gotten off the island.

James stared straight ahead, a corner smile lifting, then slipping away. She turned her body to one side, facing him. Her mother had seen him at Berkeley?

“Your mom was impressed that I wanted more than the hand that I was dealt, she’d said.” James tapped the railing with his fingers.

“Sounds like something she’d say, and it’s pretty rude too.” Her mother could be so direct. Too direct sometimes.

“Nah,” he said.

She looked away, her eyes landing on Louisa, who was pushing open the ferry door and striding along the deck with her hair freshly brushed, big sunglasses on her face, and lip gloss applied.

“I had gone about as far away as I could get from this island, thanks to Wiley’s help.

Your mother, she’d write me letters sometimes, encouraging me.

” Now he turned to face Betsy, her rosebud skirt blowing behind her legs with the wind.

“Betsy, you may have moved on from my life, but you shouldn’t feel bad about it.

Your mother remained with me all along.”

Betsy folded her arms tight around her chest despite the warm sun. “My mother wrote you letters? Why are you telling me this? You realize that you’re making me hate her more than I already do.”

“You don’t hate your mother,” he said. He began to tap his foot. “And I don’t know why I’m telling you. Maybe because your letter was so apologetic that it was almost insulting, like you thought I was still sulking about things between us. I needed you to know that I’m not.”

“I don’t think that.” She dropped the fabric pleat of her skirt, gripping the railing in front of her. “You’ve made clear you’ve moved on, and as you said, I have too. I have a boyfriend; he’s a professor at Dartmouth.”

A muscle in his cheek twitched. “I’m happy for you,” he said.

“I’m happy for you too.” She pushed the subject of her mother away, wrinkling her nose at him. Why did she love that he was wearing the wrong kind of socks? “Don’t you know that everyone is pulling their socks up these days?”

He stared down at his feet, the beginning of a grin. “What have I done without you correcting my fashion missteps all these years?”

“It’s a very good question,” she said.

Louisa joined them moments later, announcing they could see the Cape in close range. “Where on earth is the taxi line when you arrive at the terminal? I’ve never even paid attention.”

The thoughts swirled: her mother writing James letters, his visit with her mother at Berkeley, how her mother had attended his mother’s funeral.

Betsy snapped at her sister: “It’s not going to be that hard to get a taxi, Louisa!

” She marched back to the table to gather her belongings. Her gosh-darn stomach was growling.

Louisa had come to gather her bags, too, while James brought his wrappers to the nearby trash can.

When he returned to the table, Louisa projected her voice beyond Betsy when she said, “It would be great if we knew someone going that way and could get a ride.” Louisa made a show of getting up on tiptoe and looking around the ferry goers.

Betsy’s voice couldn’t be any sterner. They would not take up his time. “We are fine with a taxi.”

There was some finagling of Peanut Butter’s leash around the table leg, James holding the navy cord. “I can drive the two of you to Hyannis if you need me to. There must be a hardware store there.”

“It’s okay. We’re fine.” Betsy made a face at her sister, who smiled primly. She’d always disliked when her sisters took advantage of James’s kindness. When they were younger, Louisa had convinced James to paint all their toes, and he’d done it, even though Betsy told him he should charge them.

“We wouldn’t want to put you out, James,” said Louisa, fully intending to put him out. “I know it’s been years, but it would be really great if we could hitch a ride.”

Early in summer when they were sixteen, Betsy had snuck out of her house to meet James at the lifeguard stand at South Beach.

They climbed the ladder and sat side by side on the simple white wooden bench, and as the moon rose over the ocean, they got lost in each other, kissing and kissing some more.

They continued to see each other in secret that summer.

She’d borrow one of the small sailboats from the yacht club and use the wind to silently weave her way through the darkened harbor to pick him up on his lawn.

They would lie together rocking in the boat, staring up at the stars and talking.

On some mornings, she would take the passenger ferry with her bike to Chappy, and they’d meet each other at the end of a woodsy path that opened to a private stretch of sand.

They would bring cameras and shoot fiddler crabs on the beach, Betsy complaining how the girls at school thought her dull for caring too much about books, how debutante balls were insanely boring, whatever fight she had with her mother.

She and James had existed in an alternate plane: Meeting for old movies in a dark theater and finding one another in a quiet row.

Talking in between teaching classes as instructors at the yacht club.

Watching television on Friday nights at his house, while she told her parents she was with her girlfriends in Oak Bluffs.

“It’s not a big deal if you want me to take you to Hyannis.” James was talking to Betsy, not Louisa. “My car is at the front of the ferry lot, so we’ll be the first ones off the boat anyway.”

They followed him to a burgundy-and-white Toyota Land Cruiser. James popped the trunk, holding his arms out to lift their duffels inside.

“What a neat truck,” Louisa said as she handed him her overnight bag and sat in the passenger seat.

Betsy put her bag in the car herself. She begrudgingly climbed inside. “I’m sorry about this,” she said.

His good nature showed in his face. “Hey, it’s an excuse to catch up, right?” He pointed at his socks, which he’d pulled up as she’d suggested. She pretended to be relieved.

“Well, at least now I can be seen in public with you.”

The ferry docked in Cape Cod, the cars filing off. As they pulled the Land Cruiser into the terminal, James switched on the radio, tuning the dial through the static until a mainland station grew clear, playing “Summer Nights” from Grease .

“You know, if the only thing you’re doing today is buying a lawnmower”—Louisa rolled down the passenger window—“maybe you’d be willing to come with us to Nantucket?”

The wind blew her sister’s blond hair off her face, and Betsy willed Louisa to look at her in the back seat so she could pretend to slice her neck with an invisible blade.

Instead, Louisa said without flinching, “We could really use a car over there, and I know my mother would be so happy that we weren’t getting a ride from a stranger. ”