“Wolf adored Ashlyn,” Connie said. “She was his pride and joy. And, in her eyes, he could do no wrong.”

Dan said, “Sounds familiar, in a way. Our kids bonded more closely with our spouses than they did with us. But that doesn’t mean we failed, Connie.”

But Connie had failed. She had always given a hundred percent, but there were times when she had resented it. Ashlyn was an amazing, brilliant child, but emotionally, she was made of granite. She was still, today.

Connie decided she would stop there; she didn’t want to say anything more. But Dan was curious. “So why the rift?” he said. “What happened?”

“Mmm,” Connie said.

She didn’t want to tell him what happened.

But this was her chance to speak. Connie started by telling Dan the easy things: high school, college, medical school. Ashlyn excelled on all fronts. They were a happy family. Even when Wolf was diagnosed with prostate cancer, they were united. But then came Ashlyn’s trip home with Bridget. The discovery of Ashlyn’s sexual orientation converged with the discovery of Wolf’s brain tumors. Wolf refused treatment because of his commissions; Ashlyn thought it was a rejection of her. She should have been angry at Wolf, but she’d directed her fury at Connie, of course, because Connie was the one who remained.

“And then at the funeral…” Connie said. She closed her eyes. Was she going to tell Dan what happened at the funeral? She took a breath of soupy, marshy air. “I was as supportive as I could be about Ashlyn’s relationship with Bridget. I mean, I wasn’t exactly happy about it, but I was happy that Ashlyn was happy. I was happy that Ashlyn had someone, that she wasn’t alone.”

Still, Connie thought, she should have done a better job acting happy about it. Ashlyn and Bridget had sat together in the front pew of Saint Barnabas Episcopal Church, holding hands. And this had bothered Connie. Wolf was dead, Connie was in the worst emotional shape of her life, she had a church filled with everyone she had ever known, as well as many, many people she didn’t know, and her daughter was holding hands with another woman in the front pew. Connie had glowered at Ashlyn the same way that her own father had glowered at her when she walked through the King of Prussia Mall with her hand in the back pocket of Drew Van Dyke’s Levis. Connie had wanted to lean over and whisper: Cool it with the PDA. Reverend Joel is watching. Your great-aunt Bette is watching. But unlike her own father, who might have made a scene, Connie held her tongue. She was, at that point, proud of herself.

During the reception at Jake and Iris’s house in Silver Spring, Ashlyn and Bridget slipped away. Connie noticed them leave the room, still ostentatiously holding hands, but Connie was tied up with a bridge partner of Iris’s who had just lost her husband to emphysema. Connie discovered Ashlyn and Bridget later, on her way to the bathroom. Connie had headed upstairs in an attempt to escape awkward conversation with the mourners who were standing in line for the first-floor powder room. She found Ashlyn and Bridget standing in the doorway of one of the guest rooms. Bridget had her hands on either side of Ashlyn’s face, and they were kissing.

Connie had relived this moment many times in her imagination, wanting the outcome to be different from what it had been. She had seen Ashlyn and Bridget kissing-lips, tongues, hands, shifting bodies-and she had cried out, “Jesus Christ, Ashlyn! Stop it! Stop it right now!”

Ashlyn had turned to her mother, her expression one of humiliation and anger and defiance, and she had raced down the stairs and out of the house. And Bridget had followed her.

Later, Connie tried to apologize. She had called Ashlyn’s apartment but got voice mail. She considered contacting Ashlyn at the hospital, but it took her several days to build up the courage to do this. She told herself that the more time she put between her outburst and her inevitable conversation with Ashlyn about it, the better. However, when Connie finally made it to the hospital, she was informed that Dr. Flute had tendered her resignation.

It was only at the lawyer’s office when they settled the particulars of Wolf’s will that Connie learned that Bridget had been offered a prestigious fellowship at a large university hospital, and that Ashlyn was going with her. Ashlyn refused to say where the hospital was. Ashlyn didn’t speak directly to Connie at all, except to laugh spitefully when Connie offered her apology.

“I didn’t mean anything by it,” Connie said. She had convinced herself that her reaction was no more or less severe than Bill O’Brien’s would have been had he found Connie and a boyfriend kissing at the top of the stairs during a funeral reception. (What would he have said? She tried to channel him, channel any parent. What are you doing up here? This is neither the time nor the place!) But the slippery, stinky truth of the matter was that the time and the place had little to do with what made Connie react as she did. It had discomfited her to witness her daughter kissing another woman. It had made her… squeamish. Did that make Connie a bad person? Wasn’t it, on some level, understandable?

“You two took me by surprise,” Connie said. “I didn’t expect to find you there. And I was very emotional that day. Ashlyn, I’m sorry.”

Ashlyn had treated Connie to derisive laughter, and then once in the Aston Martin, a car Wolf had adored, Ashlyn drove away.

“And that’s the last I heard from her,” Connie told Dan. “I found out that she’s practicing medicine in Tallahassee. She’s working at some community health clinic, I guess. Her career is secondary to Bridget’s. So maybe that’s why she won’t talk to me, maybe she’s ashamed of what she’s settled for. Of course, she was angry before the funeral. She holds me responsible for Wolf’s death.”

Dan put his arm around Connie and squeezed her, but the predictable tears didn’t come. It was just like Dan had said: In talking about it, finally, with someone who was essentially a complete stranger to the situation, she was able to gain some distance. She was able to look at herself as someone who had lived through that story. Had it sounded awful to Dan? Jesus Christ, Ashlyn! It was nothing Connie hadn’t said to her daughter a dozen times over the years in extreme anger or frustration-in response to nail polish spilled on the Persian rug, or a badly broken curfew, or the atrocious state of her bedroom. Had it sounded like the rejection of Ashlyn’s sexuality? Had it sounded like a shout-out against tolerance? Did Dan think she was a bigot? Connie had never quite known how to grapple with her outburst-because there had been something in her tone of voice, some emotion that she couldn’t name. Anger? Embarrassment? Disgust? Certainly not. But maybe, yes, just a little bit. And now Connie was being punished. She was being punished for not celebrating the fact that her daughter was in love with another woman.

She had learned her lesson. Connie would give anything-her house, her money, her right arm-just to hear Ashlyn’s voice.

Dan cleared his throat. “That’s difficult stuff,” he said.

“It’s the most difficult stuff I’ve got,” Connie said. She laughed a little. “Remember, you asked for it.”

“I’m not sure I know what to say, except I know how you feel. Sort of. I have an inkling.”

They sat in silence a few seconds. Connie’s mind was racing, she could feel this time coming to an end. She wasn’t sure she could just get in her car and drive away after having given this man her most intimate confidence. The sun was high, it was hot, Connie needed water, shade, a swim. But she would sit here and freckle and burn as long as she could be beside Dan.

“You’re missing work,” she said.

“That I am,” Dan said happily. He pulled her up by the hand. “Come on, I’m taking you to lunch.”

It was only nine thirty, a little early for lunch they both agreed, though Connie had been up since five, so to her it felt like midday. She left her car in the parking lot there in Monomoy and climbed into Dan’s Jeep. She was trembling, either from heat stroke or relief. She had told him the worst of it, and he still wanted to be with her.

“I’d better get these groceries home,” he said. “We’ll swing by my house, if that’s okay with you?”

“Okay with me,” Connie said.

They drove back to Milestone Road and Dan turned on to Sheep Commons Lane. He pulled into a circular driveway. The house had gray shingles and white trim, just like Connie’s house, and a crisp brick chimney and a front porch with a nice-looking swing, and a ten-speed bike leaning against the railing. Connie gazed into a lush, landscaped side yard with a stone bench among the hostas.

“I’m just going to run in,” Dan said, hoisting groceries out of the back.

“Yes,” Connie said. In her head, she was singing, He wants to be with me! If only she’d known earlier this morning how her trip to the store would pan out, she wouldn’t have panicked. If only she’d known the past weeks, when she was moping around the house. Connie couldn’t wait to tell Meredith! Then she realized that Meredith had been in the house alone for hours, and that she had no idea where Connie was. Should Connie call? She rummaged through her bag. She didn’t have her cell phone; it was in the kitchen, charging.

Meredith would be fine, Connie decided. Meredith wasn’t a child.


Dan reappeared. He said, “Good thing you didn’t come in. My son Donovan was sitting on the sofa in his underwear eating cereal and watching Pimp My Ride. It wasn’t something I would have wanted you to see.”

Dan drove out the Polpis Road to Sconset, taking meandering detours to travel across the acres of land that belonged to his family. They owned large plots in Squam and Quidnet; there were fourteen homes in the family trust, and Dan was in charge of the rentals and the upkeep. Dan told Connie about the Wampanoag Indian tribes who had populated Nantucket long before the Coffins and Starbucks came aground in the seventeenth century.