“Irritating,” Dan agreed.

“And then once I’d pretty much embraced the fact that they were probably going to get married and have five kids, Toby broke up with her.”

“Did something happen?”

“He was nineteen years old, going off to college, and he wanted his freedom. Meredith was a wreck. I was surprised by that. She was always so tough, you know, so cool, and… impervious, like nothing could affect her. But when Toby broke up with her, she crumbled. She cried all the time, she leaned on her parents a lot, she was very close with her father… I remember right after it happened, I tried to take her mind off him, and it backfired.”

Dan leaned forward. “Really? What happened?”

“I had been invited to this party at Villanova, and I convinced Meredith to go with me. I had to beg her, but she agreed, and once we got there, she started drinking this red punch. Kool-Aid and grain alcohol.”

“Oh, God,” Dan said.

“And the next thing I knew, everyone else in the room was jumping up and down to the Ramones, and Meredith was slumped over on the couch. Passed out. Dead weight.” What Connie didn’t say was that there was a minute or two when Connie had feared Meredith was actually dead. Connie had screamed until someone shut off the music. And then another partygoer, who claimed he was pre-med, determined that Meredith was breathing and had a pulse. Then the music was cranked back up, and it became Connie’s responsibility to get Meredith out of there. “The problem was that we had walked to the party,” Connie said. For the preceding two years, Toby had been their ride everywhere. Connie had failed her driver’s test three times, and Meredith was still learning how to drive from her father, but Meredith spent more time crying than driving. “So my options were to call my parents for a ride, call Meredith’s parents for a ride, or try to get Meredith home on my own.”

“So…?” Dan said.

So, Connie’s parents were always drunk themselves and could offer no assistance. And Connie hadn’t wanted to call the Martins because they truly believed that Meredith hung the moon, and Connie couldn’t stand the thought of being the one to inform them that their daughter was a human being, an eighteen-year-old girl with a broken heart and some pretty typical self-destructive impulses. And she couldn’t call Toby.

“I carried her home,” Connie said. “On my back.”

Dan hooted. “You’re kidding me.”

Yes, it sounded funny-anyone who heard the story always laughed-but it hadn’t been funny at the time. It had been sad-a sad, difficult, poignant night in Connie and Meredith’s shared experience of growing up. Connie had managed to rouse Meredith enough to get her to cleave onto Connie’s back. Connie held Meredith’s legs, and Meredith wrapped her arms around Connie’s neck, and rested the hot weight of her head on Connie’s shoulder. How many times had they stopped so that Meredith could throw up? How long and loudly had Meredith cried because of Toby? And Connie thought, Why do you need Toby when I’m right here? But she held her tongue. She rubbed Meredith’s back.

I know, I know it hurts, I know.

Connie knew where the Martins kept their extra key, and she knew the alarm code for the house. She got Meredith upstairs into her own bed without waking up Chick or Deidre. Connie filled the bathroom cup with water and put three Excedrin on Meredith’s nightstand, where, Connie saw, Meredith still kept a picture of herself and Toby from Toby’s prom at Radnor. Connie turned the picture facedown and whispered to Meredith’s sleeping form that everything was going to be fine.

The epilogue to that story, which Connie didn’t like to think about now, was that the following January, Meredith sent Connie a letter from Princeton. The letter said, Guess what? You were right. I am going to be fine! I’ve met an amazing guy. His name is Fred.


Meredith returned from her walk with a handful of shells that she set in a row along the edge of her towel like a prepubescent girl.

She gave Dan a teensy smile. “It’s lovely here. Thank you for bringing us.”

Dan said, “Meredith, you’re welcome.”

Connie thought, Things are improving.

Toby returned a little while later with an armload of driftwood, which he dropped in a noisy pile a few inches from where Meredith lay.

“For a fire,” he said. “Later.”

“Great!” Connie said.

Toby nudged Meredith’s shoulder with his big toe. “You missed a great walk,” he said.

“No, I didn’t,” Meredith said. “I took a great walk. I went that way.”

Toby eyeballed her a second, then shook his head.

Connie closed her eyes and thought, Things are not improving. She thought, Okay, the two of you don’t have to fall back in love, no one expects that, but can’t you be friends? And if you can’t manage to be friends, could you at least be civil?

Meredith stood up. “I’m going for a swim.”

“Me, too,” Toby said.

Meredith whipped around. “Stop it, Toby,” she said.

Toby laughed. “The ocean is big enough for both of us.”

“No,” Meredith said. “I don’t think it is.” She waded in, and when the water was at her hips, she dove under. She was as natural to the water as a porpoise. Toby dove in after her, and Connie thought, God, Toby, leave the woman alone. But he swam right up to her and snapped the strap of her black tank suit, and Meredith splashed him in the face and said, “Get some new tricks.”

And he said, “What’s wrong with my old tricks?”

Meredith said, “What’s wrong with your old tricks? Do I really need to answer that?” But if Connie wasn’t mistaken, her voice was a little more elastic, and that was all Toby would need to wiggle into her good graces. Meredith swam down the shoreline, and Toby took off after her, undeterred.

“That looks like fun,” Dan said. He stood up to join them, and Connie followed, although she hated being pressured into the water. But the water here was warm and shallow. Connie floated on her back and felt the sun on her face. Dan encouraged her out a little deeper where he cradled her in his arms and sang a James Taylor song in her ear. “Something in the Way She Moves.” He had a wonderful voice-he was good enough to be a real singer-and Connie loved the buzz in her ear. When he finished, she said, “You are the man with the key.”

“The key to what?” he said.

The lighthouse, silly! she nearly said. But instead, she said, “The key to my heart.”

He seemed pleased by this. “Am I now?” he said.

She nodded. Then she felt guilty. Wolf! Wolf was the man with the key to her heart. It was foolish to believe she could love anybody else like that.

She swam back to shore.


After lunch, Meredith curled up on her blanket and fell asleep. Toby leaned forward in his chair and watched the sailboats in the distance. Connie wondered if he was thinking about Bird’s Nest. Of course he was. She had been more than a boat; she had been, for Toby, a home. As Connie was studying him-she wanted to say something, though she wasn’t sure what-she saw him cast his eyes at Meredith. He gazed at her for a long couple of seconds, and Connie thought, Oh, boy.

Dan pushed himself up out of his chair. “I’m going to fish for a little while. Connie?”

“I’ll pass.”

Toby hopped to his feet. “I’d love to join you.”

Connie watched her lover and her brother amble down the beach with their fishing poles. Meredith’s breathing was audible; she was fast asleep. Connie wondered what she was dreaming about. Did she dream about her sons or Freddy or Connie or her attorney or the angry woman at the salon? Did she dream about Toby, and if so, was it Toby at eighteen, or Toby now, at fifty-one? Connie’s eyes drifted closed. She heard Dan singing a song without words, she felt the breeze lift the brim of her straw hat, she wondered if seals went to heaven and decided they probably did.

When she woke, it was because Toby was shouting about a fish. Dan yelled up the beach, “It’s a keeper!” Connie squinted at them. Meredith was still asleep. Connie decided to walk over and be impressed. She recognized the dark markings on the scales-a striped bass. Big one.

Dan said, “Now that’s a beauty.”

Toby said, “The sea has always provided for me.”

Connie looked at Dan. “Are we going to eat it?”

“I brought my filet knife,” he said. “And a bottle of olive oil and my Lawry’s seasoned salt. I knew we’d catch something. We’ll cook it over the fire.”

Connie smiled and kissed her brother on the cheek. “Hunter-gatherer,” she said. “Meredith will be so impressed.”


They played horseshoes, and Dan won handily. They played Wiffle ball, and Connie hit the ball over everyone’s heads into the eelgrass and they couldn’t find it again. Although this ended their game prematurely, Dan was impressed by the hit, and Connie beamed.

Toby said, “You should have seen her play field hockey. She was a killer.”

Connie and Dan went for a walk and stopped to kiss, which got so heated at one point, Connie thought they might… there was no one around, so… but Dan pulled away. He said, “If Bud comes driving around and sees us, he won’t like it.”

“Does Bud come driving around?” Connie asked.

“Oh, sure,” Dan said, and he nibbled on Connie’s ear.

The sun was setting. When Connie and Dan got back to the camp, Toby had dug a pit with a shovel he’d found in the back of Dan’s Jeep. He piled in the wood and used the paper from their sandwich wrappings to start a fire. He was a man with survival skills. Two failed marriages, a lifelong battle with alcohol, a little boy he didn’t see enough of. Connie had buried a husband and lost a daughter; Dan had buried a wife and lost a son. Meredith-well, Meredith had experienced difficulty the likes of which Connie couldn’t begin to imagine. And yet, despite all of this collective suffering, the four of them gathered around the growing heat and light of the bonfire, and let it warm them.