I want you to take care of Blaine and Porter. I want you to take my little boys and raise them into men. Ted will be there, too, of course. He will do the ball games and the skiing and the fishing, he will talk to them about girls and drugs and alcohol, he will handle the guy stuff. But boys need a mother, a mommy, and I want that person to be you. You know me, I’m a list person, I always have been, even when I was pretending not to be. So here is the list. Remember everything, forget nothing: Kiss the kids when they fall down, read them stories, praise them when they share, teach them to be kind, to knock on a door before they enter a room, to put their toys away, to put the toilet seat down when they finish.

Play Chutes and Ladders, take them to museums and zoos and funny movies. Listen when they tell you something. Encourage them to sing, to build, to paint, to glue and tape, to call their grandmother. Teach them to cook one thing, make them eat grapes and carrots, and broccoli if you can, get them into swimming lessons, let them have sleepovers with friends where they watch Scooby-Doo and eat pizza and popcorn. Give them one gold dollar from the tooth fairy for each lost tooth. Make certain they don’t choke, drown, or ride their bike without a helmet. Volunteer in the classroom, always be on time picking them up and dropping them off, go to extra lengths with the Halloween costumes, the Christmas stockings, the valentines. Take them sledding and then make hot chocolate with marshmallows. Let them have an extra turn on the slide, notice when their pants get too short or their shoes too tight, hang up their artwork, let them have ice cream with jimmies when they’re good. Magic words, always, for everything. Do not buy a PlayStation. Spend your money, instead, on a trip to Egypt. They should see the Pyramids, the Sphinx. But most important, Brenda, tell them every single day how much I love them, even though I’m not there. I will be watching them, every soccer goal, every sand castle they build, every time they raise their hand in class with an answer right or wrong, I will be watching them. I will put my arms around them when they are sick, hurt, or sad. Make sure they can feel my arms around them! Someone once told me that having a child was like having your heart walk around outside of your body. They are my heart, Brenda, the heart I am leaving behind. Take care of my heart, Bren.

It’s a lot to ask, I know. It is the biggest, most important thing, and I am asking you because you are my sister. We are different, you and me, but if I can say one thing about you it’s that you know me, inside and out, better than Mom and Dad, better, even, than Ted. You are my sister, and I know you love my children and will take care of them like they’re your own. I wouldn’t ask anyone else to do this. To do this, there is only you.

Brenda was gazing down at her. Had she heard? Vicki released Brenda’s hand.

“Okay?” Vicki whispered.

“Okay,” Brenda said.

Brenda prayed, fast and furiously. Please, please, please, please, please. Ted was pacing the waiting room like a raving lunatic; they took Vicki upstairs for tests, but neither Ted nor Brenda had been al owed to accompany her. Melanie, in a moment of clarity that was previously unthinkable, volunteered to drive the kids back to ’Sconset, get them an ice cream at the market, pop in a Scooby-Doo video, and let them fal asleep in Ted and Vicki’s bed.

“Thank you,” Brenda said.

Brenda had cal ed her parents in the frantic moments before the ambulance arrived, with Vicki unconscious in Ted’s arms. What Brenda said to her mother was, “Vicki’s unconscious.”

El en Lyndon said, “We’re on our way.”

And Brenda, realizing that (a) it would be fruitless to dissuade her mother and (b) her mother and father were exactly what she needed right now, some backup, some help, some support, said, “Yes, okay.”

They wouldn’t be able to get to the island until the morning, though, and Brenda needed comfort now. There was a worm of guilt chewing a tunnel through Brenda’s brain. Brenda had brought up money; she had meant to initiate a conversation about the hundred and twenty-five thousand dol ars, and it was at that moment that Vicki lost consciousness. And it was now, ironical y, that Brenda realized money didn’t matter. Money was the last thing that mattered. (Why did human beings believe otherwise?) What mattered was family. What mattered was love.

Love.

Brenda pul ed out her cel phone and walked to the end of the hospital corridor. She dialed the number from memory. Al summer she had tried to forget that number, and yet, it came automatical y.

One ring, two rings.

And then, Walsh. “Hel o?”

His voice. It threw Brenda off balance. She took a stutter step backward. Rumor has it you committed the only sin that can’t be forgiven other than out-and-out plagiarism.

“Hi,” she said. “It’s Brenda.”

“Brindah.” There was a pause. “Brindah, Brindah.”

Oh, God. She was going to cry. But no.

“I’m on Nantucket stil ,” she said. “At the hospital. Vicki is upstairs having tests. Because one minute she was fine, and the next minute she was unconscious. It could be nothing, or it could be something awful. I’ve done a good job al summer. Taking care of Vicki, I mean. Not a perfect job, but a good job. I’ve been praying, Walsh, but I kind of get the feeling no one is listening.”

“Yeah, I know that feeling.”

“Do you?”

“Wel , I did,” he said. “Until now.”

“I’m sorry I haven’t cal ed,” she said.

“Ahhh,” he said. “Yeah.”

“I just felt like . . . al that stuff back in New York, with the university . . . it was al wrong. ”

“They made you feel like it was wrong.”

“There were things about it that were wrong,” Brenda said. “The time and place. We should have waited.”

“I couldn’t have waited,” Walsh said.

Could I have waited? Brenda thought. To save my career? To salvage my reputation? Could I not just have waited? Down the hal , Brenda watched Ted sink into a chair and drop his head in his hands. His ship was going down.

“I should go,” Brenda said. “My sister . . .”

“Is there anything I can do?” Walsh said.

“No,” Brenda said. “There’s nothing anyone can do.”

“Ahhh,” he said again. “Yeah.”

Love is all that matters, Brenda thought. Tell him! But she couldn’t. She was too rattled by the sound of his voice, she was too mired in the nonlanguage of ex-lovers. There was too much to say, so she would say nothing at al .

“Wel , okay,” Brenda said. “Good-bye.”

“Good-bye,” Walsh said.

They were keeping Vicki overnight for tests, they said. One of which would be an MRI, in the morning, when Dr. Alcott could be present.

“Your sister has lung cancer,” the doctor, a trim, handsome Indian man visiting from Mass General, said. “We’re looking for metastases to the brain. Tumors in her brain.”

“Right,” Brenda said. “I understand that.”

“You can see her before you leave,” he said. “You can say good night.”

“Okay,” Brenda said. “I wil .”

Brenda and Ted took the elevator upstairs in silence to Vicki’s room. It was a private room, quiet and white. Vicki had an IV and wore an oxygen mask. Brenda kissed her cheek, and Vicki opened one eye.

“I was real y hoping I’d never come back here,” Vicki said into her mask.

“I know,” Brenda said. “I know.”

Ted sat down on the bed and wrapped Vicki up in his arms. “I love you, baby,” he said. “You have to hang in there. You have to get better.” Ted was crying and Vicki was crying, and watching the two of them together made Brenda choke up. One of her secret goals was to someday have a man love her the way that Ted loved Vicki. He always referred to her as “my bride” or “the beautiful mother of my beautiful boys.” If Vicki was in the room, she was Ted’s sole focus. He did act like an alpha male a lot of the time—with his hedge-fund-manager big-shot spiel—but real y, he was a man on his knees in front of his wife.

Brenda thought of Walsh. I couldn’t have waited.

No, she thought. Me either.

Josh was at the Chicken Box drinking Bud drafts, shooting pool with Zach, trying not to think about the beach picnic that was taking place out at Smith’s Point without him, although certain images flashed through his mind, unbidden: fishing poles sticking out of the sand, Blaine’s face in firelight, Melanie dripping and shivering from her nighttime swim. In the name of getting the night off to a good start, Josh and Zach had done a couple of tequila shots at Zach’s house before they went out, but what this had led to, in the car on the way to the bar, was Zach’s unwieldy confession that he had had sex with Didi twice over the summer and had paid her a hundred dol ars each time.

“And I don’t think I was the only one, man,” Zach said. “I think she’s a prostitute or something.”

Now they were stuck in an uncomfortable silence, which was only partial y ameliorated by the pool chat ( nine ball, side pocket) and by the Bruce Springsteen cover band wailing their hearts out on the far side of the bar. If this was what Josh had been missing al summer, then he was glad he’d missed it.

Josh was relieved when his phone rang. He checked the display: It was Number Eleven Shel Street cal ing. It was nearly ten-thirty. They were probably just back from the beach, carrying the sandy, sleepy boys off to bed. And they were cal ing him because . . . ? It was probably Vicki, cutting his hours, or it might be Melanie. She had missed him at the picnic, she had been remembering the first picnic, when they . . . and wouldn’t he meet her now, tonight, one last time? How could it hurt? Wel , it would hurt, it was like any addiction—you couldn’t keep going back for quick fixes, you had to cut it out al at once, cold turkey. Didn’t she see that? Didn’t she get it? She was the one who was married! Josh watched Zach, formerly his best friend, bent in half over the table, shutting one eye in concentration and jimmying his stick back and forth in front of the cue bal . Josh could total y blow Zach’s mind with the story of Melanie. As far as shock value was concerned, it would be an even trade for the news of Didi (a prostitute? ), but Zach wasn’t worthy of the information. Josh let the cal go to his voice mail.