Ross said very quietly, “No, and we didn’t plan for my parents to get divorced. We didn’t plan for my father to get involved with Nova. We didn’t plan for my mother to be on the island, alone.”

  “Your mother is hardly alone,” Kailee argued. “She’s made friends here. And she’s helping my mother—how did that even happen?”

  “Well, Kailee, I think they like each other. I think my mother is smart and capable, and it’s true she’s made friends here, and one of them is your mother. But I don’t think we should talk about our mothers,” Ross said. “I think we should talk about you and me and what we’re going to do.”

  Kailee looked up. “I know. You’re right. Oh, Ross, I never meant for this to happen. What should we do?”

  “I don’t know. Let’s give ourselves some time to think. It’s not like a nuclear bomb. Plus, it’s your body. How do you feel about your body changing, growing a human being that will change our lives?” Ross reached over and took her hands. “Kailee, our parents are our past. This baby could be our future. I’m with you every step of the way.”

  “Are you, though?” Kailee asked quietly, searchingly. “If we…have a baby, I’ll be the one doing all the changing diapers and getting up at night. I won’t be able to work. You’ll keep working, and you’ll be more important to the business than I will.”

  “It wouldn’t have to be that way,” Ross said.

  Kailee scoffed. “Right, you’re going to nurse the baby.”

  Ross grinned. “True, I don’t have that equipment, but I could give our baby a bottle. Every week I could take a couple of days off work, and you could go into the office, and I could take care of our baby.”

  “You say that now…”

  “I mean it, Kailee. Trust me.”

  “You keep saying our baby.”

  “True, but our baby is, at the moment, probably like a little kernel of corn inside you. I mean, I’m not educated in the whole pregnancy thing, but I don’t have to be attached to it if you don’t want to do all this now. It’s your decision, Kailee.”

  Kailee looked at Ross’s face, his handsome, loving face.

  “I’m so tired,” she said. “Let’s talk about this tomorrow. I need to sleep.”

  They went into the bedroom, peeled off their clothes, turned back the covers, and slid into bed together. They spooned, Kailee turned toward the window, Ross close to her, his chest against her back, his arm around her waist. They slept.

  * * *

  —

  Saturday morning, Heather had to park five blocks away and walk to the church fair. It didn’t officially open until nine, but a crowd was already lined up at the table where tickets were sold. The street had been shut off with cones, and a policeman stood at each end, waving cars to other streets while men and women set up children’s booths and rides.

  Heather had been given an official-looking label that she stuck on her sundress. She smiled and went up the driveway to the used-book sale. Long folding tables had been set up and more men were carrying the boxes of books out while Miribelle and others distributed the books to their section.

  Miribelle called, “Oh, good, you’re here! Unload the mystery section on that table over there, and tape this label to the front of the table. Remember, hardbacks two dollars, paperbacks fifty cents. Your batch will sell like hotcakes.”

  Heather went behind her table and began to unload the books and stack them, spine up, grouped by author. She moved quickly. The excitement in the air was contagious. The crowd buying tickets was eager to come in and find treasures, and when Heather caught sight of the costume jewelry table, she almost abandoned her books to rush to the table, glittering with fake diamonds and pearls.

  “Good morning,” a man said.

  Heather looked up. “Miles!” She was pleased to see him, but tried not to appear as attracted as she was to him, not now, while dozens of people were around.

  “Cort and I are setting up a sun shelter over this section,” Miles said.

  “Thank heavens,” Miribelle chimed in. “Right now, we’ve got the fresh air of morning, but in an hour, we’ll feel like we’re lost in the Sahara.”

  Heather continued lifting and organizing the books, terribly aware of Miles, who wore khaki shorts and a blue striped shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. When he came near, a slight enticing scent of soap and shaving cream drifted her away. She almost sniffed at it like a dog sensing a bone.

  Stop it, she told herself. Behave. You’re on church property!

  She hadn’t completely unloaded the books when the fair was declared open and the crowd rushed in. Miribelle handed her an apron with pockets stocked with quarters, half dollars, and one-dollar bills. People swarmed around the book tables, some of them almost salivating with excitement.

  These are my people, Heather thought, hoping the complete set of mysteries by Deborah Crombie wouldn’t sell. But of course, it did.

  The morning passed quickly. The temperature rose. Children wandered through the fair holding ice cream cones that dripped down their chins and their shirts. The table of homemade pies and cakes sold out before noon. Across the lot, the verger and other men set up a hot dog and hamburger stand, the delicious aroma tantalizing people to flock toward it.

  Heather was hungry, but she couldn’t leave her post. Many books had been sold, but many were left. One of the workers brought Miribelle and Heather folding chairs, and Heather realized she’d been standing for three hours. It felt heavenly to sit down.

  Miles appeared, holding a large paper cup filled with iced tea. “I thought you might like this.”

  Heather stood up and leaned across the books to take the cup. “Thank you, Miles. This is the answer to a maiden’s prayers.”

  “Actually,” Miles said in a low voice, “I think I’m the answer to a maiden’s prayers.”

  Heather blushed. The tone of his voice made her shiver, and his words sent her body’s thermometer straight up to two hundred degrees. What he was implying gave her a delicious feeling of conspiracy and guilt. “Is it proper to talk about, um, sex, during a church fair?” she asked, whispering the word sex.

  “Heather, could you speak louder, please? I didn’t hear what you said.” Miles’s eyes were full of mischief.

  A young girl with glasses approached Heather. “Where are the science fiction books?”

  Heather was glad to be pulled out of her lusty bubble. Could a bubble be lusty? she wondered. Surely the lust would heat the bubble up and make it pop.

  She was losing her mind.

  And she liked it.

  “They’re right over here,” Heather said, setting her paper cup on the table near her chair. She wanted to pour it right down her shirt, but held on to her dignity. “Thank you for the drink, Miles,” she said, as primly as a woman from a book by Barbara Pym.

  “You’re welcome.” Miles smiled and vanished into the crowd.

  Heather let the sci-fi fan take her time inspecting the books. She sat down and took a long, refreshing drink of her tea. The young woman bought a complete set of Neil Gaiman’s books, and an older gentleman bought an outdated book about history, a tome so heavy Miribelle and Heather had thought it would never sell.

  By early afternoon, the crowds had thinned out. Children screamed with glee from the kiddie booths in the street, but few people approached the book table, which was looking very much picked over.

  “Miribelle,” Heather said, “could I slip out for a moment?” She didn’t need to say why.

  “Of course,” Miribelle said.

  Heather went down the stairs into the large open room where coffee hour was held, used the bathroom and washed her hands, splashing water on her neck to cool it down. She wandered back up the stairs, feeling tired and ready to go home. As she passed by the costume jewelry table, she stopped to browse.

  “You’ve done well,” Heather told Annie Martin.

  “Yes, the early birds nabbed the best things,” Annie said.

  “What is—” Heather’s gaze was arrested by the sight of a beautiful ring, a ruby surrounded by diamonds. “This ring,” she asked Annie, “where did it come from?”

  “I don’t really know,” Annie replied. “You know how people have been coming by the church office to drop off things for the fair.”

  Heather picked up the ring. She turned it this way and that. She studied the inscription on the inside.

  She burst into tears.

  “What’s wrong?” Annie asked.

  “This is my grandmother’s ring. See, the inscription here on the band?” She leaned over to show Annie, but she couldn’t let go of it for Annie to touch, to take back.

  “My goodness,” Annie said. “That’s miraculous. When did your grandmother visit Nantucket?”

  Heather laughed while she was still crying. “My grandmother didn’t…” She was too elated, surprised, amazed, to put another sentence together. “I want to buy it.”

  “Nonsense, honey, you take it. You shouldn’t have to pay a penny for it,” Annie said.

  Heather broke out in goosebumps as she slid the ring onto her finger.

  “This isn’t costume jewelry,” Heather said. “It was lost in the sand, and it found its way here. This is, this is, this is a miracle. I want to join this church. I want to live on this island. I want to be a grandmother. I want to help take care of nature.”

  “Well, that’s lovely,” Annie said. “Why don’t I walk you over to your chair in the shade and you can drink something cool and refreshing.” Annie made a get over here motion with her hand to Miribelle.

  “Everything is connected,” Heather said through her tears. “Everything lost somehow is found.”

  Miribelle came to Heather’s side. “Heather, come sit down.”

  Miribelle took Heather’s arm and gently pulled her away from the table toward their shaded book tables.

  “I think you might be a bit overheated,” Miribelle said.

  Heather looked down at the ring on her finger. “Miribelle, this was my grandmother’s ring.”

  “Of course it was,” Miribelle said kindly.

  * * *

  —

  For the next hour, Heather sat in the shade with a cup of ice water in her hand. She dipped a tissue into the water and dabbed it on the back of her neck. Her tears dried up and she got her breathing back to a steady rhythm.

  But how had this happened? How had the ring made its way here, from being lost in the sand? Heather sat imagining a family tossing their blanket onto the beach, setting up their home base for the day, and a child fussing because something was sticking into his leg, and the exasperated mother pulling the blanket back and finding the ring. The mother must have seen the inscription, and known that it meant something to someone, and pushed it in her change purse so it wouldn’t get lost again. Later, when the mother was dropping off books for the book sale, she would have passed the costume jewelry table and remembered the ring in her change purse. It wasn’t hers. She had three children and no time for fancy jewelry, so she dropped the ring into the box of donated trinkets and went on her way.

  That was one way it could have happened, Heather thought. She hoped that was the way it had happened. She would never know. She stopped crying and calmed herself, but her heart was full.

  She joined Miribelle at the book table. The heat of the day beat down harshly on the fair, and the crowd was thinning out. Miribelle and Heather gathered together all the books that were left. They would be donated to the library for their book sale.

  “Now you should go home and lie down,” Miribelle told Heather. “The fair lasts only another hour.”

  “Thank you, I will,” Heather said. “This was so much fun, Miribelle. I hope I can do it again. Also, someday I want you to join me for lunch so I can explain why I was so overwhelmed to find my grandmother’s ring.”

  “I’d love to have lunch with you for any reason at all,” Miribelle said.

  * * *

  —

  Sunday, Heather slept late. Miles called and asked her to join him for a sail. “Bring Sugar,” he said. “And wear a bikini.”

  Heather laughed. “Like I possess a bikini.”

  She’d bought new bathing suits for her summer on the island. They were both two-piece, and not bikinis, but pretty revealing, anyway. She was surprised at how pale her abdomen was. But she liked her reflection in the mirror. She didn’t look like a model, but she most definitely looked feminine. She packed sunblock, bottles of water, a tin of cookies she’d made, and a bag of treats for Sugar, wondering if dogs got motion-sick. She slapped on a scalloper’s cap with a long bill, slipped a light linen shirt over her suit, slid her feet into flip-flops, and put her small bag with her keys in her beach bag.

  She left her cell at home, plugged into the charger. She wanted a day free of drama.

  Miles was waiting for her at the yacht club dock. When Sugar saw him, she yipped and pulled at the leash. Miles wore Nantucket red board shorts, a white T-shirt, a scalloper’s cap, and sunglasses.

  He kissed her cheek lightly and helped her into the boat. Sugar eagerly jumped in without hesitation.

  “It’s a great day for a sail,” Miles told her as he steered the boat out of the inner harbor. “I thought we’d go over to Great Point.”

  “Sounds lovely.” Heather slipped off her shirt and settled on the cushions, resting her head against the boat’s stern, letting the sun beat down on her face and shoulders. She didn’t speak, and Miles didn’t, either. He seemed perfectly content, adjusting the sails, positioning the rudder.

  The water made gentle splashing sounds as they went along, and the curved walls of the boat held her as if she were rocking in a cradle. The warmth of the sun was strong and steady. Heather’s body seemed to melt and all her worries disappeared. Sugar investigated every inch of the boat and barked at other boats when they passed, but after a while she found a patch of shade, curled up, and slept.

  Heather slept.

  When she woke, she discovered Miles had anchored in view of the tall, white, stony Great Point lighthouse. They were at the farthest end of the island, all sand and rosa rugosa bushes and seals. Lots of seals. Maybe hundreds of seals. Miles had furled the sails and dropped the anchor.

  “Nice nap?” Miles asked.

  “I haven’t been so relaxed in ages,” Heather said. “I hope I didn’t snore.”

  Miles laughed. “Want to take a dip?”

  “Sure,” she said, stretching, wondering what her body would look like when she climbed out of the water with her suit plastered to every lump of cellulite in her body. But a cooling dip sounded wonderful.

  She stepped up on the edge of the boat, wondering if her bathing suit covered her butt completely, raised her arms above her head, bent forward, and dove.

  The water parted for her, changing from turquoise to deep blue to black as she knifed her way down. She’d never been so deep before—she was used to swimming pools. For a moment, she was exhilarated, transformed into another creature of the sea. But quickly her lungs burned and she turned and swam to the surface, gulping in the air.

  Miles was treading water near her. “You’re a swimmer,” he remarked.

  Heather laughed. “Not at all. In fact, I’ll show you my favorite position, the one I taught Ross when he was first learning. We called it the jelly roll.” She took a deep breath, curled herself into a ball with her arms around her knees and her face in the water and bobbed. “I would compete with Ross to see who could hold their breath the longest. It’s a very relaxing move.”

  “I prefer floating,” Miles said, stretching out full length on his back, letting the ocean support him.

  Together they swam around the boat, and dove down into the water, which grew colder the farther down they went, and treaded water while they caught their breath. Finally, they swam to the small ladder on the side of the boat and climbed out, water pouring from their suits. The sun dazzled. Heather found her sunglasses and put them on. Miles wrapped a large towel around her shoulders.

  “I like swimming with you,” he said.

  Heather knew her hair stuck out like porcupine spines all over her head, and her eyelashes were pearled with water so she had to blink several times to see properly. Here she was at her rawest self. No makeup. No flattering dress. Water drizzling down from her nose. Her teeth were chattering from the water’s chill.

  “I like swimming with you,” she replied.

  Miles kissed her on the end of her nose. “Let’s eat,” he said.

  She was grateful he didn’t try to kiss more than her nose. She was still slightly shaky from her deep-water swim.

  They sat on the edge of the boat, drinking sparkling water and munching on the sandwiches Miles had picked up from Something Natural and the lemon cookies Heather had made. Sugar woke up, stared at their food until Miles gave her part of a sandwich, which she carried to a shady spot to enjoy.

  “Why does food taste so amazing after a swim?” Heather asked.

  “Everything feels better after a swim,” Miles said, grinning.

  After they ate, they slowly sailed back to the harbor. She was amazed to find that it was almost six o’clock in the evening. Other sailors were docking, too, tying up to buoys and getting a ride to shore on the launch.

  Back onshore, Miles walked Heather and Sugar to her car.

  “Want to go out to dinner?” he asked.

  “Thank you, but what I really want is to go home, take a hot shower, put on my robe, and curl up with a book.” She hadn’t combed her hair or put on lipstick and she knew her nose was bright red in spite of the sunblock. It was wonderful to know she could look like this and still feel strongly how Miles was attracted to her.

  “Another time,” he said.