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When James stepped out of the Land Cruiser to buy a round-trip car ferry pass for Nantucket, Betsy dug her fingers into the upholstery seam.

“He shouldn’t be here with us, Louisa. We could have found our way around.

You’re so quick to take advantage of people, and we can’t even tell him what we’re doing. ”

“Oh, what does it matter if James knows what we’re doing? Dad left behind a property on Nantucket. So what?” Louisa didn’t seem to be fazed by anything Betsy was saying, which made Betsy even more upset. “He offered to help, and we need the help. Why are you so against him coming along?”

“He didn’t offer. You made him.” Betsy’s voice dove into the deep end. “And I don’t want him here.”

“Why not?” Louisa watched from afar as James stepped up to the ticket window. “All you wanted was to spend time with him as a kid, so you’ll get to spend time with him now.”

“If you don’t remember, we haven’t spoken in several years.” Plus, being with him was bringing up all these memories and nostalgic feelings, which was growing an anxious pit in her stomach. “And where is James going to sleep? Does he even know we’re spending the night?”

Louisa made a “duh” snort. “He can go home today without us. At least we’ll be able to get around.

” Her sister didn’t realize that James never said no to anyone, and it didn’t take a psychologist to see it was because he’d received so much help from Betsy’s family when he was young.

“Anyway, I barely know James anymore. Do you know how much anguish you’re causing me, forcing him into our day? ”

“You get anguished at the sight of clouds,” Louisa shot back.

From here, Betsy could see James opening his wallet. She hit her forehead against the back of the driver’s seat. “Cripe, Louisa. He shouldn’t be paying.”

“Why? He’s not broke.” Louisa spanked the leather dashboard.

“He’s a professor now. Anyway, we’ll pay him back.

Now listen to me. We need a car, and he’s an old family friend, so shut up and let’s be grateful we ran into him.

James driving us around Nantucket is not a real problem.

A real problem is being demoted at work. Okay? ”

“Maybe it’s not a problem for you.” Betsy leaned back against her seat and crossed her arms, still fuming.

Traffic crept through the cobblestone streets of Nantucket, a series of cars winding through the town on roads so narrow it was hard to fit pedestrians and automobiles at once.

Men with well-fed bellies and expensive Italian loafers maneuvered along the streets next to wives whose accessories sparkled around their elegant necks and delicate wrists.

A series of low-slung buildings charmed with cedar shingles and crisp white trim.

Clam bars and lobster shacks, surf shops and boutiques, dotted the main drag.

“These people are fancy,” Betsy declared with curiosity, spying a leggy woman in high-heeled sandals attempting to unstick her heel from the cobblestones.

She and Louisa had played chess on the endless two-hour ferry ride over, and she’d trounced her sister, James taking her on after. The victory had improved her mood.

“Well, people have more money here,” Louisa said, the car slipping past a mother and her two daughters in matching pink-and-green floral dresses. Peanut Butter stuck his head out the window, barking at a small yappy dog on the sidewalk.

There wasn’t an AAA map of the Cape and islands in the glove box, so Betsy and Louisa decided to scrap the plan that included requesting a copy of the deed at the land records office in town.

Instead, they asked James if he would drive them straight to the “luncheon.” Then they could get a sense of their father’s mysterious property.

“I see a tourist office,” Betsy said. A cedar-shingled cottage announced as much with a sign over the door, pink roses growing in a tangle up an arbor shading the front gate. “Let’s stop and get directions.”

Inside, two teenage girls with nearly identical pin-straight auburn hair sat behind a counter, stacks of brochures organized in individual plastic stalls.

Betsy asked if they knew how to get to Chapel Way, and the two of them bantered about whether Betsy should go east away from town to access it or west, neither seeming to know where it was at all.

“Let me ask our father,” one of the girls said. Minutes later, a red-haired man in a bow tie and short sleeves emerged from a back room.

“What’s the number on Chapel Way?” he said. “It’s pretty far out, in Madaket.”

“Twelve.”

He seemed surprised and studied Betsy over his wire-rimmed glasses. “You’re going to see Melody Fleming?”

“The land I’m looking for doesn’t have a house.”

The freckled man eyed her suspiciously. “Twelve Chapel Way is Melody’s house. I deliver milk from the dairy there.”

Maybe there was a house on her father’s land? Betsy didn’t want to get into details. “Ah yes. Melody. So how do I get there?”

A few minutes later, Betsy stepped into the sunshine holding two pages of directions, thinking about a line in her father’s letter that had been niggling at her since she’d found it. For reasons that I am not free to explain, both politically and personally, I have kept this property to myself.

She opened the back door of the Land Cruiser, Louisa sighing, “What took you so long?”

“Apparently, the house is far.”

James revved the engine and Louisa whipped around and said, “Thank goodness we have this ride.”

He peeled out with a boyish smile, a puff of exhaust stinking up the back seat, and Betsy made sure he saw her roll her eyes.

It was easy enough to make their way out of the main part of town, the road tracing lines through grass pastures once used for grazing animals and interspersed with rambling, shingled beach houses.

When they drove by a curvy blue inlet, situated along a marshy stretch of country road, Louisa turned to James.

“We need to come clean about something. There’s no colleague’s house. We’re going to look at some land that my father owns, and we lied to you because we haven’t told our mother about any of it. I hope you’re not upset with us.”

“I suppose I’m only offering you a ride.” James pretended to lock his lips with a key. “Why doesn’t your mother know about the land?”

The oldies radio station grew staticky. “We’re not sure yet. We found a letter from Dad telling Betsy about the property.”

“You might be fixing up your house, James, but we’re losing our house.” Betsy stretched her hand out the window, wondering if she’d ever again feel as carefree as she had as a child. “It looks like my sisters and I are leaving the Vineyard for good.”

He glanced back into the rearview mirror.

The pastoral scenery reminded Betsy of driving up-island on the Vineyard to Chilmark, with its fields of milky Queen Anne’s lace, wild-growing daisies, shimmery blue coves and crystalline ponds, and houses built on hills overlooking the wide expanses.

As they drove, the sisters told James everything they knew, trying to piece together the puzzle out loud.

“Families are so wild,” James said, clicking on his blinker and turning onto a road with a row of antique houses.

Louisa said he needed to go straight, and he turned around.

“When my mother died, I found myself on a similar paper trail. She had an estranged aunt that she’d hidden away from me.

She was dead by the time I found out about her—the aunt, that is.

I wondered why my mother didn’t want me to know her. ”

The truck bounced over a pothole. Betsy grabbed for the handhold. “There are secrets in every family. You just hope they’re not ones that will hurt anyone when they surface.”

Last night in bed, Louisa had written in her legal pad until two in the morning, angling the notebook so that Betsy couldn’t see it from her vantage point.

Betsy had seen it this morning though, when her sister was in the shower: it was a numbered list of the ways she planned to fight the law firm; how she could sue under the Equal Rights Act if it was ratified again next month.

The ocean was always near in Nantucket, but now it was so close that you could hear the roar of the waves.

A series of smaller roads drew a grid fingering out from the main road to the beach.

James turned the car, following the quiet road to Madaket Beach, a small parking lot half-full of cars, with a roaring ocean crashing along the shoreline.

“We must have missed the turn,” he said. “Let me turn around.”

They backtracked for a few minutes until they found F Street, and then Chapel Way.

Betsy ruffled Peanut Butter’s ears, trying to relax.

She’d woken up convinced that confirming the ownership of this land would transform her family’s fortunes, but the gentleman at the tourist info office had said there was a woman in the house.

Melody Fleming. The woman in her mother’s wedding album.

She’d always loved that photo of Melody and her mother, young and glamorous and genuinely happy.

For reasons personal and political…

“Maybe we should turn back.” Betsy didn’t want a confrontation with a person named Melody. What would they do if there was in fact a woman on the land? “Dad may have meant to discard that letter. Maybe we’re not even supposed to be here.”

Louisa turned around in the front seat. “You’re not even making sense. You said it yourself: this land is the best news we’ve had since he died.”

A murder of crows was perched along a telephone wire. A bad omen. Betsy looked away from the birds and swallowed hard.

James slowed down the Land Cruiser at number twelve, and even though it wasn’t marked, he pulled the truck into the driveway.

Pebbles and dirt stretched in a straight line through neatly trimmed grass, ending at a small saltbox-style house with a tiny side porch and swing.

A Ford truck with a dented metal bumper was parked in the driveway.

Behind the house sat a serene harbor with several boats moored to sphere-shaped buoys.

“This can’t be right.” Louisa motioned for James to turn the car around. “Someone lives here.”

The number on the door said twelve. “It’s definitely the right house,” James said.

Louisa craned her neck to look at the property, her eye landing on a large window with potted plants hanging in it. “Is someone renting it?”

Betsy cataloged the rusted pink bike leaning up against the shed, the well-tended vegetable garden with mesh strung up. “Maybe we’re about to meet our long-lost aunt.”

All three of them remained glued to their seats in the idling truck, while Peanut Butter panted out the window. Betsy debated getting out at all. Having a person here, even if it was her father’s property, was complicated.

“Let’s go to the records office.” Louisa’s voice had an edge to it. “There must be some mistake. Maybe Dad wrote twelve, but it’s eight or ten.”

James turned off the radio, then the ignition. He didn’t say anything, turning in his seat to see what Betsy would say, the springs under his seat squeaking.

Betsy was usually the one who gave in the easiest, the one who chickened out on a dare, but this time, with James watching her and with her eldest sister ready to flee, she decided to be brave. “Well, we came all this way.”

“I’d rather return with the deed in hand. Then we have a case.” Louisa always relied on logic when she was most uncertain. Betsy agreed, but the car was in the driveway. They needed to see if anyone was home.

“You made poor James drive us here, and I’m not turning back until we see if this is Dad’s house.

” Betsy caressed Peanut Butter’s snout for courage, told James she’d be right back, then pushed open her car door and marched up the brick path.

She raised her fist to rap on the door and paused, sensing that Louisa hadn’t followed.

Closing her eyes, Betsy willed her sister to come. One, two. She was truly afraid.

Betsy tipped her head to the shingled colonial, a momentary sense of satisfaction crossing over her. Something about the house, the handsome molding over the front door, the brass knocker in the shape of a sailboat, felt familiar. She heard footsteps approaching.

Please, please, please , Betsy thought. Please let this house be ours.

A memory of her mother in high heels standing at this front door. A pale blue suit. Her hair pinned in a French twist. She and James poking at each other on the grass; Betsy doing a handstand. Her mother shushing them.

She turned back to glance at James in the car. He was gazing up at the house, squinting. There was a knowingness when he and Betsy locked eyes.

“Louisa, I think I’ve been here with…”

But Betsy didn’t have time to say more.