When her behavior began to change, it was slow, almost unnoticeable, and all the other junior high girls were changing, as well—wearing too much makeup, sassing their parents, rolling up the waistbands of their skirts, riding in cars with boys. By high school, Christabel was skipping class, missing her curfew at home and her deadlines at school, and smoking. And drinking. And seeing older guys.

  One of the older guys was James, which wasn’t surprising, given his talent for mischief. He was a year ahead of Christabel in school, only one year older, but in high school that year was significant. James had been blessed with the same careless glamour that shimmered around Christabel. With his mass of auburn hair, his long heavy-lidded sea-green eyes, and his lanky height, James was the handsomest boy in the school.

  One Saturday, a sophomore girl saw James and Christabel walking on the beach together. Not holding hands, but touching shoulders, talking intensely, obviously together. The girl called a friend who called a friend. Within minutes everyone who counted—everyone in high school—knew about this alliance.

  And then it was as if a great collective sigh of satisfaction rose up from the high school students. They had known this would happen. Exquisite Christabel Eliot and dreamy James Vickerey together? This was perfection. This was the stuff of which legends were made. Their imaginations soared.

  Robin was sixteen that year. She had a crush on a baseball player named Drew. He was dating someone but often stopped in the hallway to talk to Robin, facing Robin so that her back was against her locker while he stretched one tanned muscular arm above her shoulder, creating an intimate space between the two of them. She knew he liked her. Lots of guys liked her. She was good-looking. She had long, wavy, strawberry-blond hair, green eyes, dark lashes. But that had never mattered much to her.

  Being with her family mattered to her, and being on the island. Her family was different from other families, she thought, although she never expressed her opinion aloud. Her father was an important surgeon in Boston. Her oldest brother, Henry, was nineteen and a sophomore at Harvard. Henry was on his way to med school with plans for becoming a surgeon like their father. Robin, James, and Iris were just as intelligent, just as capable, their parents reminded them. Robin knew she didn’t have the same virtuoso scientific mind her brother possessed, but she did have—something. She was quick to learn, always easily making A’s in school. She knew she could have all the friends she needed, boyfriends, too. But she didn’t really need them, or even want them very much. She loved being alone—she treasured being alone.

  Her mother never let Robin be as solitary as she wanted. They lived in a community, Susanna reminded her children. She made them attend church with her every Sunday. She encouraged them to take part in the Christmas pageant, in the school plays, in the Green Team that went around the island picking up trash. They should take part in community events—Daffodil Weekend, the Halloween parade, the Christmas Stroll. They should learn about town government and what it meant to be well-informed, year-round citizens.

  “Yawn,” Robin complained to James one day. “Gigantic snot-sucking yawn.” She would never speak that way in front of her mother.

  “Oh, I’m not sure I agree with you, Robber,” James said with a mischievous gleam in his eyes.

  “Tell me!” Robin sat up from where she’d been lying on the floor. “What are you going to do?”

  All James would say was: Wait and see.

  Nantucket Island had a winter population of around ten thousand involved, and argumentative, citizens. The annual town meeting took place in April. The high school auditorium was filled, the board of selectmen sat alert at a table in the front, and the moderator had a time clock to help keep order. Citizens, sane and otherwise, who had been shut in their homes all during the long windy winter, flocked to the gathering to voice their concerns with all the righteous indignation they’d been squirreling away like nuts over the winter.

  That year, landscaping regulations were the hot topic. Landscapers used pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers that sent toxins into the harbor and ocean, injuring the health and abundance of the fish and shellfish that gave fishermen and scallopers their livings. The town had to vote whether or not to ban the use of certain chemical products.

  On the day of the town meeting, Robin was puzzled when, just as school was letting out, she heard her brother’s name mentioned in excited whispers.

  Before she could find out what was going on, her mother arrived to pick her up. Iris was already in the car. James was nowhere to be seen.

  “Hurry up,” Susanna told Robin. “Get in.” She peeled away from the line of family cars, her mouth tense.

  “What’s going on, Mom?” Robin asked.

  “I’m not sure,” Susanna said. “Carla Townsend phoned me—she lives on upper Main—but I can’t believe what she said is right. I really can’t believe it.”

  For sunny Susanna to be sputtering like this was both frightening and amusing for the Vickerey daughters, who sat in the backseat sharing wide eyes and suppressed giggles. Susanna drove just over the speed limit through the narrow streets into town, parking on Main Street in front of Nantucket Pharmacy. It was, in fact, the only space she could find, which was unusual for an April day when the tourists hadn’t yet arrived. Dozens of vehicles, especially contractors’ vans and carpenters’ trucks, slanted toward the curb where crowds gathered. Robin, Iris, and Susanna stepped outside to join them.

  Susanna nodded toward the cobblestone road next to the stately brick Pacific National Bank. “No,” she whispered.

  Proudly walking down the street came James, wearing a placard that said, NO PESTICIDES. He’d ripped a pair of jeans and cut and frayed the cuffs. He wore a sort of linen tunic that was also torn. He was barefoot.

  In his hands he held the reins of a placid roan gelding. Seated in the saddle was Christabel, her long blond hair woven with daisies, her lithe fourteen-year-old body completely naked except for daffodils placed at strategic points—over her nipples, her loins, and two on her bum.

  “Dear Lord,” Susanna murmured.

  The crowd cheered.

  Christabel did not respond. She didn’t look left or right, but straight ahead, her poise regal, her nakedness stunning in its purity and beauty. She was fourteen. The sun seemed to shine out of her pale skin. She resembled a queen on a royal pilgrimage rather than Lady Godiva.

  “They’re beautiful!” Iris exclaimed, bringing her hands up as if in prayer.

  They were beautiful, Robin realized. For a few moments the two did not resemble a pair of foolish teenagers, but a myth come to life. How old was the original Lady Godiva? Robin wondered. Back in the thirteenth century, or whenever it was, people died earlier, married earlier, were adults earlier. James walked steadily, eyes straight ahead, his chin held high as he led the horse, and Christabel also held herself proudly. Maybe those two really did care about the state of the oceans. Maybe this wasn’t only a prank, something to wake up the townsfolk after a long cold winter.

  Cameras began to flash.

  “Hey, that’s my horse!” a man yelled. “They stole my horse!”

  Sirens sounded, shrill, coming louder, and the spell was broken. The horse jerked his head up and down nervously. James had to pause to steady the animal. Two uniformed officers approached James and Christabel, stopping their progress.

  “You stay right here and don’t move,” Susanna instructed her daughters. She fought her way through the crowd and down the street, but before she could reach James, the policemen had gently taken the teenagers into their car. The horse’s owner climbed into the saddle, steered the horse into a U-turn, and headed back out of town. This occasioned several “Boos” and a few more camera flashes.

  The crowd quickly dispersed. Robin’s mother returned.

  “Get in the car. We’re going to the police station.”

  Christabel and James were arrested for stealing a horse, indecent exposure, and inciting a riot. They were allowed to return home in the custody of their parents.

  Their father was still in Boston, at the hospital. Susanna was white with anger as she drove James and his sisters back to their house. She told Robin to get a snack for herself and Iris and take it to the TV room, then shut herself and James into the living room. A few minutes later, Quinn Eliot’s Jeep turned into their driveway. Lady Godiva, now wearing jeans and a sweatshirt, and her father, Quinn, knocked on the door and entered the house.

  From the upstairs front hall window, Robin peered down at the father and daughter coming up the walk. She meant to scrutinize Christabel for signs of anxiety, but found herself mesmerized by Mr. Eliot instead. She’d seen him around school. She would take one of his history courses next year. She’d heard other girls talk about how gorgeous he was, but hadn’t paid attention. Now she paid attention.

  Mr. Eliot was tall, slender, and blue-eyed, with a mass of thick sandy blond hair neatly combed into place and spilling over his forehead in spite of his grooming. He wore jeans and sneakers, a blazer and tie. He looked angry and sad. Next to him, Christabel strolled as if on her way to lunch.

  Later, Robin would learn the consequences of her brother’s antics. James and Christabel were sent before a magistrate who ordered them to perform one hundred hours of community service. Susanna and Quinn agreed privately not to ban the two teenagers from seeing each other—that would only lead to more mischief. Susanna began to invite Quinn and his daughter for dinner several nights a week, and to join the family on excursions out to Great Point to see the seals, or on their boat to sail to Coatue. Possibly Susanna was attempting to provide some feminine guidance for Christabel, because the young girl slowly became part of their family. Maybe, Robin thought in her most private, wicked, imaginative heart, her mother was in love with Mr. Eliot. Who wouldn’t be, especially if she were married to a grumbling curmudgeon like her father?

  After the Lady Godiva affair, Susanna loosened her own reins on her children’s activities. She welcomed her children’s friends into the house and let them run around freely. Undoubtedly she was hoping to be able to keep an eye on their activities, but it did feel as if the true Susanna was emerging.

  Then—the catastrophe. In the fall of that year when Robin was sixteen and James was fifteen, Henry, the first son and the family’s most sharp-witted child, a shining star at Harvard, had his first real struggle with depression.

  —

  Robin shook her head, as if shaking off the memories, and the fear, and the sorrow. She was nuts, stomping around here on the beach talking to herself!

  She forced her mind back to the present. Tomorrow, more guests. Saturday, the birthday party. She’d left a list for herself in the kitchen, but she wanted to go over tomorrow’s schedule with her mother. She walked back to the zigzag steps, climbed them, and crossed the lawn to her house.

  The lights were on in her parents’ bedroom on the first floor. A few years before, when Susanna slipped on a pile of magazines when she was getting out of bed and broke her ankle, they decided to move from the master bedroom on the second floor and turn what had been a conservatory into a first-floor bedroom. Now Robin was often the lone occupant of the second floor with its many bed- and bathrooms. When Henry got his MD two years ago, he moved back to the island but to the apartment above the garage. James took over the second-floor master bedroom for his own bedroom and workspace when he wasn’t in the Boston quarters of his medical translation firm. Iris had kept her bedroom as her definite very own when she was in school at Smith, where Robin and Courtney had gone. Iris had graduated last month and taken up residence on the island until she could figure out her next step. That left two extra bedrooms for guests. Courtney had had “her” own bedroom for eleven years, and Iris’s friends or their parents’ buddies had used the other guest bedroom. The attic was turned over to the boys and their friends long ago and still used for sleeping guests when necessary. It was probably ridiculous to own such a large house, but sometimes it didn’t seem large enough.

  She knocked on her parents’ bedroom door.

  “Come,” her father ordered.

  As always, her mother and father were sitting side by side, tucked up in bed, reading. They were very organized and cozy, sheltered by the fat U-shaped reading pillows Robin had given them one Christmas. The pillows supported their backs and had pockets for their books, reading glasses, and in Mom’s case, tissues; in Dad’s, a small notebook and pen. Susanna had a pillow beneath her legs to help her back and her feet stuck out from the light summer quilt. She hated hot feet. Her father’s feet were covered. He hated cold feet. Separate reading lights mounted on the bed behind them illuminated their books and their heads, and Robin couldn’t help but notice how her father’s snowy white hair was thinning, her mother’s strawberry-blond hair darkening and streaked with silver. Her father wore his neatly ironed blue checked summer pajamas with ink stains on the pocket. Susanna wore a pair of Henry’s old running shorts and a T-shirt saying, SAVE THE WHALES.

  “Can I get you anything before I go to bed?” Robin asked.

  Susanna patted the side of the bed for Robin to sit. “We’re fine, darling. How’s Henry?”

  “Sleeping. I told Lisa to go home. She’s kind of a lightweight, don’t you think?”

  “Let’s not judge her too quickly,” Susanna advised. “Henry takes some getting used to.”

  “True. Anyway, tomorrow’s another day, as you always say. We’ll see how he’s doing then. I could use his help. We’ve got a long list of to-do’s before the party Saturday, and some guests are arriving.”

  Her father grunted eloquently.

  “I’ll make my cake,” Susanna mused, tapping her lips with the stem of her glasses. “Plan a time when you won’t need the kitchen.”

  “Morning. The tent people will be here at ten to start setting it up.”

  Her father moaned.

  Robin continued, unfazed. “I’ve got an appointment with the caterers and I need to go grocery shopping. If you’re making the cake, you won’t want to cook, so Courtney and I are going to make dinner tomorrow night. There will be a crowd.”

  “Thank you, darling. What would I do without you?” Susanna murmured, stroking Robin’s cheek.

  Robin kissed her mother’s forehead, went around the bed, and smacked a loud wet kiss on her father’s cheek. He muttered something that sounded like “Good night,” in reply.

  Friday morning, Robin opened her eyes and saw Courtney snoring away in the other twin bed. She allowed herself a moment to be pissed off at Courtney for criticizing Robin’s lifestyle and another moment of being pissed off at herself for not sharing her secrets with her best friend.

  But a moment was all. She had errands to run. She threw back the covers, tossed herself out of bed, and raced down the hall to the bathroom for a quick shower. The June day, like many early summer days, was starting off cool, but Robin knew she’d be spinning around like a rat in a maze marathon and it would heat up quickly, so she pulled on shorts, a T-shirt, and flip-flops, then stuck her long hair to the back of her head with a clip.

  She was glad to be the first into the kitchen. She made a huge pot of coffee for the household, poured a cup for herself, and sat at the table going over her list as she ate a cup of yogurt from the refrigerator.

  She cherished moments like these, when she was alone in a full house. She scanned the kitchen, enjoying the sight of the clean slate counters, efficient appliances, and the sun slanting in the window beneath checked gingham curtains, illuminating a stripe across the antique pine table. She was grateful to her mother for all this. It was Susanna who transformed the family’s white elephant into a smartly electrified and heated year-round home with plenty of beds and hot water and attics to play in on a rainy day. Their apartment in Boston was pleasant enough, but Susanna had always summered on Nantucket. She wanted her children to live near the sea, to ride their bikes safely for miles in any direction, to climb trees, to invite guests—Susanna had wanted to give them all a storybook life, and she had.

  But some things even Susanna couldn’t change. Ever since Henry had his first breakdown, there was a cloud over the storybook life, a troll lurking beneath the bridge.

  James wandered into the kitchen, breaking into Robin’s thoughts, pulling her back into the here and now. He poured himself a cup of coffee and sat down at the table. “Hey, sis.”

  “Hey, James. Thank heaven you’re up! The tent company will be here at ten. If you could hang around and kind of supervise, answer questions, that sort of thing, that would be great. Also, before then, do you think you could go up and see how Henry’s doing? If he won’t organize the drinks for tonight, you have to.”

  James nodded, but Robin sensed his reluctance. James, like everyone else in the family, adored Henry, but also was afraid for him when he was hit hard by depression, and also guiltily frustrated by him.

  Robin charged ahead. “Mom’s going to make her birthday cake this morning. She’ll put it in the refrigerator in the back hall. I’m going into town for groceries—I’ve checked the weather forecast on my phone and the day promises to be fair, so I think we’ll have a cookout tonight. You’ll help with that, right? Hamburgers, hot dogs, sausages, shrimp? I’ll have Courtney help me make a ton of potato salad, coleslaw, mac and cheese, and a big green salad.” Robin stared at the ceiling a moment, tapping the pencil against her lower lip. “I still haven’t decided what to make for dessert tonight. I was waiting to see how many people would actually be here.”

  “Don’t drive yourself crazy, Robin. Just buy some ice cream and cookies and let people serve themselves.” James reached into the fruit bowl in the center of the kitchen table and took a banana. “What about picking up people from the ferries or the airport?”

  Robin consulted her lists. “Callum and Pearl are flying in at around the same time this afternoon. You and Iris can take Mom’s minivan and meet them at the airport.”