As soon as Kayla entered the kitchen, she remembered that Jennifer was sleeping at a friend’s house, which meant Luke and Cassidy B. were here alone. An eight-year-old and an eleven-year-old-she was one hell of a mother. True, Theo had probably only left twenty minutes before, but still. She was lucky the house hadn’t burned down. Before she went upstairs, she checked the answering machine. There was one new message. Kayla imagined hearing Paul Henry’s voice pumped with the adrenaline of victory, We found her! Or better still, Antoinette’s voice. But it was dead air, a hang up: Kayla calling from the Wauwinet.

She checked on Luke and Cassidy B. All four of her children had Raoul’s thick, dark eyelashes, which curled against their cheeks when they slept. God, she loved them. She stumbled into bed herself, too tired to even take off her clothes. The sun was up now, peeking through the rosewood blinds. She put Raoul’s feather pillow over her head and let the waves of sleep wash over her.

Twice Kayla tried to float to the surface of her sleep and break into consciousness-once when Raoul joined her in bed, and once when Luke padded in wearing his blue pin-striped pajamas, like a little business suit-and both times she failed. Her eyelids fluttered, and she was sucked back down.

She finally awoke with Raoul shaking her. “Kayla. Kay-la.”

Kayla focused her eyes. The blinds were up, the room filled with sunlight. It was hot, and she felt sticky and hazy and uncomfortable. She had a pounding headache; the inside of her mouth was powdery and tasted like egg yolk, her hair was stiff with salt. Then it all flooded back: too much champagne, Antoinette gone.

She blinked. “Are the kids okay?”

Raoul touched her cheek. He was showered, dressed, his dark hair damp. “Of course they’re okay. Jennifer came home and left again to sit for the Ogilvys. She ate a banana, but that was all I could interest her in. Cass and Luke are downstairs watching TV. I told them it was okay until you got up. They want to see you. They’re worried about you.”

“What did you tell them?” Kayla asked. “Do they know Antoinette is gone?”

“Gone is a strong word. I said you had a rough night. I said Antoinette got lost and we’re having trouble finding her.”

“Fair enough,” she said. “Can you get me some water? What time is it?”

Raoul went into the bathroom and brought her water in the green plastic cup that held their toothbrushes. Not a cup she wanted to drink from, but she kept quiet. “It’s twenty past eleven,” he said.

Kayla drank the water, handed Raoul the cup, and swung her legs so that they rested on the floor. It felt wildly luxurious to have him at home waiting on her like this, and she wanted to stay and enjoy it, but she couldn’t. With effort, she stood up.

“I have to go,” she said.

“Kayla.”

“I have to go to the airport to meet Lindsey,” she said.

“Lindsey who?”

“Antoinette’s daughter,” Kayla said. “A daughter that she gave up for adoption a long time ago and who is coming to visit today. I can’t explain it all to you right now, but I have to go meet her.”

“Whoa,” he said. He stuffed his hands in the back pockets of his jeans. He was wearing a crisp white polo shirt instead of his usual MONTERO CONSTRUCTION T-shirt. He looked so beautiful: clean, tan, barefoot in his jeans and white shirt. What a handsome, lucky man. Kayla felt sure right then that she would never get enough of him, even if they both lived to be a hundred, and especially not if he continued to work the way he did. “What are you going to tell her?”

“I don’t know,” Kayla said. “But if she wants to stay here tonight, I’m going to let her.”

“She’ll stay where-on the pullout?”

“We’ll put her in Luke’s room,” she said. “Luke can sleep in here with us.” Luke would pretend not to like that-he would say he was too old to sleep with his parents, but secretly he’d enjoy it. Kayla’s mind traveled a predictable path: changing the sheets on Luke’s bed, vacuuming, clearing space in the closet. God, she was such a housewife.

“She might not show up,” Kayla said. This was, of course, her hope-that this girl the color of a wine cork would get cold feet about seeking out her birth mother and find an excuse to miss her plane. Nantucket was tricky to get to, she reasoned, especially on a holiday weekend.

“It’s possible,” Raoul said, but Kayla heard doubt in his voice. He was lucky; she was not.

Kayla showered quickly and put on a pink sundress with thin straps. It looked summery and nonthreatening, and it flowed nicely over her stomach and thighs. She took three Advils, spritzed on a little Coco, which she hoped would mask the smell of hangover, and went downstairs.

If Luke and Cassidy B. were worried about her, she couldn’t tell. They were engrossed in a wildlife program about the Komodo dragon.

“Here it is almost noon on a beautiful day and you’re inside,” Kayla said. “Are you being punished?”

Cassidy B. jumped up from her position on the floor-probably half out of excitement to see her and half out of fear that Kayla would scold her. Sitting too close to the TV was a no-no. Kayla couldn’t even remember why anymore.

“Mommy, you’re home!” she said. She hugged Kayla in an exaggerated little-girl way. “Daddy said Auntie A. got lost.”

Kayla pressed her close and glanced over her head at Luke, who was wearing his green Nantucket Day Camp shirt even though today was Saturday, even though camp was now over.

“Good morning, Luke,” she said.

“Good morning,” he said seriously. “Did Auntie A. drown?”

“No. Who said that?”

He shrugged. “Nobody.”

Raoul must have let more slip than he intended, although it was impossible to keep the truth from an eight-year-old. Eight-year-olds were perceptive and suspicious by nature.

“I have some exciting news,” Kayla said. “We may have a sleepover guest tonight.”

“Who?” Cassidy B. said. “Is Sabrina coming?”

Sabrina, Raoul’s mother, who never visited without her head scarves and séance candles, was another one of the kids’ favorites.

“Not Sabrina,” Kayla said. “It’s someone you’ve never met before. It’s a woman named Lindsey…” Lindsey what? Not Riley. “She’s Auntie A.’s daughter.”

“Auntie A. doesn’t have any children,” Luke pronounced. He glared at her as if to say: Can you please get the facts straight?

“Yes, she does. Antoinette hasn’t seen her in a long time, and that’s why you’ve never met her. But I’m going to pick her up right now, and she may stay the night. We’re going to let her sleep in Luke’s room and Luke can sleep with Daddy and me.”

Before Luke could protest, Cassidy B. said, “Lucky.” That did the trick; Luke smiled smugly.

Kayla snapped off the TV and checked the clock. She had to go. “You two play outside. See if you can get Daddy to throw the Frisbee. I’ll be back in a little while.”

Before she left, Kayla put the pregnancy test in a plastic sandwich bag and dropped the bag into her purse. Then she checked three photo albums for a picture of Antoinette. She thought there was one picture from long ago of Antoinette at their house for dinner, holding one of the children in her arms. Kayla flipped back and forth through the laminated pages, past baby shots and birthday parties, Jennifer riding a horse, Theo in his baseball uniform, but she couldn’t find a single photo of Antoinette. The picture Kayla remembered was missing.

Kayla reached the airport with five minutes to spare, and so she called the police station to see if they had any news. Paul Henry wasn’t in; Detective Simpson wasn’t in. The woman who answered the phone said there had been no news about the missing woman; they hadn’t found her at the Steamship or the airport. If Kayla wanted a report on the recovery mission, she should call the fire department.

Kayla called the fire department, keeping her eyes on the Cape Air gate. Jack Montalbano came to the phone.

“We haven’t found her yet, Kayla,” he said. “But, hey, the good news is that she might not even be in the water. I heard you found some mischief up at her house.”

“Mischief is toilet paper in the trees,” Kayla said. “This was a lot more than just mischief.” She wondered if Jack had been up all night; with his wife gone, he probably avoided his empty house as much as he could. “Are you still… out looking for Bob?”

He cleared his throat. “The diver is out there now, yes.”

Kayla felt nauseated. She hadn’t eaten anything since the night before-the lobsters, the cheese. “Keep me posted,” she said, and she hung up.

The Cape Air gate still looked quiet, so Kayla made a dash to Hutch’s to get a sandwich from the take-out. And a cold Diet Coke. The girl behind the counter was about seventeen, from Eastern Europe somewhere, and she had hair the color of Bing cherries. She made Kayla think of Theo. Kayla was afraid to find Theo to say hello; she was afraid he would bully her in public, or worse yet, look at her with absolute blankness as though he’d never seen her before. Kayla wolfed down half a dry turkey sandwich and took two long swills from the Diet Coke and immediately felt better. Food. Out the window, she watched the Cape Air plane land and she thought, Okay, I can do this. The plane taxied to its spot. Kayla still had time. She threw the rest of the sandwich away and strolled over to the Island Air counter. Just in case Theo was hanging around.

“Kayla!” Theo’s boss, Marty Robbins, saw her right away and came up to the desk. “Where’s your son?”

Kayla smiled as benignly as she could, but her voice was weary. “I’m not sure what you mean, Marty.”

“Theo never showed,” Marty said. “True, Monday is his last day, but I need him now. It’s a holiday weekend.”