“Your dad seems good,” Ev said.

“Good?” Margot said. “Yep, he’s good.” As long as he doesn’t end up as a permanent denizen on my pull-out couch. More than anything, Margot hoped he didn’t default and go back to Pauline just because he couldn’t face life as a singleton.

“And your brothers?” Kay asked.

“Kevin is Kevin,” Margot said. “Out slaying dragons, making the world a safer place for humanity.” She and Ev and Kay all pivoted in their seats to observe Kevin and Beanie, arm in arm at the bar-where, Margot knew, Kevin would order a light beer and Beanie would get a V8 with nothing in it.

“And Nick,” Margot said. What the hell could she say about Nick that wouldn’t make Ev and Kay’s hair stand on end? At that moment, he was dancing with Finn to “Am I Blue?” The two of them looked like they had been welded together; Nick’s chin was on Finn’s head, her face smushed into his chest, her eyes closed. Their feet were barely shuffling. Margot watched them for a moment with awe and horror. They had spent the night together in Jenna’s room-Autumn had once again repaired to the groomsmen’s house with H.W., and Jenna and Stuart had spent their wedding night in the cottage at the Cliffside Beach Club. No one had said a word about Nick and Finn cohabiting in the family home-not her father, not Kevin, and not Margot herself. She wasn’t the moral police, they were both consenting adults, infidelity wasn’t against the law. But come on!

Jenna and Finn still weren’t speaking. They might never speak again, even if Nick and Finn ended up getting married someday.

Married! Margot barked out an unhappy laugh. Ev and Kay smiled at her as if to ask what was funny, and Margot rummaged for a neutral statement to make about Nick.

But at that moment, something happened. Margot saw a man enter the tent. Handsome guy, broad shoulders, bowlegged walk. Margot’s mouth dropped open.

No way, she thought. Oh, my God, no way.

“Excuse me a second,” she said to Ev and Kay.

She bumbled with her chair and her drink, which she had wisely decided to bring with her. She needed to get a better look.

Oh, my God, yes.

The man who had entered the tent was Scott Walker.

Inwardly, Margot squealed. She watched Scott Walker approach Nick and Finn on the dance floor. The band continued to play, but Nick and Finn stopped dead and separated, although Nick still had a hold of one of Finn’s sunburned arms.

Margot thought, Jesus, Nick, let go!

She thought, Scott is going to punch him.

Finn’s face was the face of someone who saw dead people. She looked petrified.

There were words, spoken by Scott, but Margot couldn’t hear them over the strains of “Everybody Loves My Baby.” Then Nick said something, and Margot hoped he was pulling out the charms that had, heretofore in his life, kept him alive and out of prison. Finn said nothing; she barely blinked.

Scott took Finn by the other arm. For a second, both Nick and Scott had a hold of Finn like they were engaged in a tug-of-war, and Margot thought, Everybody loves my baby, indeed! She wanted to know why Finn had men fighting over her wimpy, lying, cheating ass. It was neither fair nor just. Then Nick let go, and Scott led Finn out of the tent and down by the dock, where they stood and talked. They were fifty yards away, but still in full view of everyone.

Jenna appeared at Margot’s side.

Margot said, “I cannot believe this is happening. Can you believe this is happening?”

Jenna said, “I called him.”

The foghorn sounded. The ferry pushed forward off the dock. Margot and Doug sat in the front seat of the Land Rover, and the three kids with their iDevices were in the back. Ellie was wearing her flower girl dress; she had spilled Hawaiian Punch down the front, and the back was covered with grass stains, but that hardly mattered now.

The wedding was over.

“Forget the Marriott in Stamford,” Doug said. “I’m going to pack up my things, deal with some issues at the office, and come back up here next weekend. In fact, I’m going to stay all summer.”

“All summer?” Margot said. “You’re kidding me.”

“Not kidding,” he said. “I’ll go to the beach. I’ll golf at Sankaty. Why not? Edge can take care of things at the office.”

Margot nodded once sharply, in a way that she hoped conveyed that she did not want to talk about Edge. She was, however, insanely jealous at the thought of her father spending the entire summer on Nantucket. Because despite how weird and difficult the weekend had been, she didn’t want to leave the island. It physically pained her. As the ferry lumbered toward Hyannis, her heart broke a third time.

Which reminded her.

“I’m going up,” Margot said. “Who’s coming with me? Ellie?”

Ellie shook her head.

“Come on, you said you would.”

“I changed my mind.”

“Boys?” Margot said.

“No!” In chorus.

She sighed and felt impending tears. Her mother had never had a problem getting Margot and her siblings to do her bidding when they were this age. Margot and Kevin and Nick hadn’t been allowed to rebel until they were teenagers.

But maybe that was revisionist history. Maybe Margot just liked to believe that she had been an obedient daughter now because her mother was dead and Margot couldn’t bear to imagine that she’d given her mother a moment of trouble. Any which way, she wasn’t going to fight with her children; she wasn’t going to force them upstairs.

She said, “Fine, then, I’ll go alone.”

Doug leaned back in his seat. “I’d go with you, honey, but I’m beat.”

Margot got out of the car and climbed to the upper deck. She felt better with the air and the horizon, although Nantucket Sound was as flat as a mirror and the ferry wasn’t rocking at all. Margot stood out in the sun, without SPF 90, without a hat. What did it matter if she weighed five hundred pounds, what did it matter if she detonated into five million freckles?

She pulled two pennies out of her wallet, and as the ferry passed Brant Point Lighthouse, she tossed them into the sea. Her throw was lame; the pennies barely cleared the bottom deck. If either of her brothers had been present, they would have told her she threw like a girl. Margot checked to make sure no one had seen her. She heard footsteps. Someone was coming up behind her.

Margot thought it was her father, who would forgive her a bad throw and a whole lot more.

He sidled up next to her and rested his arms on the railing. Margot turned.

White visor.

Not her father.

Griff said, “Do you happen to have two pennies I could borrow?”

Margot felt like her heart was dropping off the side of the boat. She fished two more pennies out of her wallet and handed them to Griffin Wheatley, Homecoming King.

Griff grinned. He said, “I figure you owe me at least that.” He took the pennies and threw them so far they nearly landed on shore.

Margot said, “Very impressive.”

Griff said, “So they gave the job to Nanette Kim. I met her, you know, at the Starbucks on the first floor of Tricom’s building. She approached me, actually. She went to college with the woman that Jasper ditched when he married my wife. Anyway, Nanette Kim was extremely cool and smart as hell. She deserved that job.”

As badly as Margot wanted to be let off the hook, she couldn’t let him do it. “You deserved that job,” she said. “They liked you.”

“Nanette Kim left after six weeks because it was a hostile environment for women and minorities,” Griff said.

“I’ll point out,” Margot said, “that you’re neither a woman nor a minority.”

“But do you really think I would want to work at a place that is hostile toward women and minorities?” Griff said. He ran his hand over what was now his very, very appealing four-day scruff. “I wasn’t voted homecoming king for no reason. I’m a good guy, Margot. And I think you did me a favor by signing me off.”

Margot shook her head. “I wasn’t a good guy, though, Griff. I mean, I am a good person, in my heart. But what I did was… despicable.”

“I’m happy at Blankstar,” Griff said. “Really happy. It’s the right place for me.”

“Good,” Margot said. “I kept checking on you, you know. I Googled you first thing every morning until I found out you’d gotten a job.”

“Did you?” he said.

“I did.”

“You didn’t have to tell me the truth,” Griff said. “I never would have known. Never.”

“Yes,” Margot said. “I realize that.”

“So why did you?” Griff asked.

Why did she? Well, because she was her mother’s daughter and her father’s daughter, and because she was the mother of three young and growing souls. She could feed them takeout every night, she could leave them for hours with Kitty, the afternoon babysitter, but ultimately the person who was responsible for installing their moral compass was her. It was okay to mess up-to set a scorching-hot pan directly on a soft pine table and mar it forever, to file for divorce when she was no longer in love and had exhausted every hope, to become utterly infatuated with the wrong person and then commit what was essentially a crime of passion-but she had to own it.

How to explain this to Griff? She couldn’t possibly.

“I don’t know why I told you,” she said.

Griff took her chin and turned her face toward him. “But I do know,” he said.

Margot thought he was going to kiss her. He was going to kiss her, and this painful, difficult wedding weekend was going to get the kind of movie star ending that Margot could never have dreamed of. But instead Griff let his hand drop to the railing, and he stared out at the water.

“I don’t believe in love,” he said.

“Me either,” Margot said.