“She says you drive a Karmann Ghia,” Al said. “Is that true?”

“Guilty as charged,” Zoe said.

“What year?” Al asked.

“Nineteen sixty-nine.”

“The best,” Al said. “I own the car dealership on Polpis Road. If you ever decide to trade that baby in, I’ll give you an unbeatable price.”

“I can’t believe you’re talking business to the woman,” Jordan said. He stared at Zoe for a second, enough time for her to register: blue sweater, blue eyes. Then he smiled. “I’m off to do puzzles,” he said. “Wanna come?”


What had followed was no less profound than an adoption. Gradually, over the years, Zoe had been taken in by the Randolphs and the Castles. They became family. Lynne Castle was officially Zoe’s closest friend, though the person Zoe spent the most time courting was Ava Randolph. She wanted Ava to like her. Ava reminded her of a smoothly polished stone, with her long, honey-blond hair, her perfect skin, green eyes, and rarely seen dimples. But like a stone, she was cool, and not just with Zoe but with everyone. She disliked Nantucket and fancied herself a sort of captive there; she was always talking about how she was about to go off to, or had just come back from, Australia. Her own sun-drenched country, that place where she’d rather be. It was Ava’s aloofness that captured Zoe’s imagination. She played hard-to-get, and Zoe wanted to win her over. She wanted to win!


For years Zoe tried. For years she beat herself up over it, thinking, Ava doesn’t like me. She thinks I’m loud and obvious and American. She thinks I’m a terrible mother because I work. Ava didn’t have a job outside of her home; she devoted all her time and energy to parenting Jake. She didn’t have to find a babysitter or, like Zoe, occasionally leave the children at home by themselves because she had to cater a dinner party on a Saturday night. She didn’t leave permission slips unsigned or forget sneakers for the kids’ phys. ed. days, or space out on getting cards for the class on Valentine’s Day. These misdemeanors were Zoe’s and Zoe’s alone, and she couldn’t help feeling that Ava Randolph might just be writing them all down on a list somewhere, a list that she secretly showed to Jordan every night before dinner.

Had it always ultimately been about Jordan? Zoe wondered. She’d been trying to woo the wife, but was it really the husband she wanted? Even back when Zoe first knew them, Ava and Jordan had openly bickered and argued. Zoe had always taken Ava’s side, even when she thought Jordan was right. Eventually Zoe became the person Ava complained to about her husband: Jordan’s breath stank in the morning; he had never once emptied the dishwasher; he refused to travel back with her to Australia no matter how she begged and pleaded, so that she and Jake always had to go alone; he was obsessed with the newspaper. Ava had never known a man who was so absorbed in his work; in Australia, she said, even bank presidents stopped to have a coffee in the afternoon. Even the mining magnates and the real estate moguls took Sundays off and pushed their children in their prams and sat down to leisurely lunches. But on Sundays Jordan wouldn’t leave his house until he had devoured every inch of the Sunday New York Times; Ava wasn’t allowed to speak to him if he had a section of the newspaper in his hands. “He doesn’t get it,” Ava said. “He doesn’t get me! We want two different things!” All Jordan wanted was to work; all Ava wanted was another baby. Zoe would listen to her alternately yearning and complaining. She prayed every night for another baby, a brother or a sister for Jake. Ava told Zoe that a baby was the only thing that would make her life bearable if she had to stay in this country. This left Zoe feeling embarrassed about her own matched set of children. She assured Ava, “It’s going to happen for you, I can feel it. You will get your baby.”

There had been nights when Zoe truly believed that all she wanted was for Ava to become pregnant, even when the dinner party was over and the Castles and the Randolphs all walked out the door together, arm in arm and laughing, on their way to their cars, leaving Zoe standing in the doorway all alone.

She had been hiding among them. She was the lonely, swaying sapling amid the tall, rooted redwoods that were those other couples, her friends.


When Jake and the twins were in sixth grade, Ava finally did get pregnant. Zoe had to admit she’d been shocked by the news. Ava had been trying to conceive for so long that Zoe had given up hope on her behalf. She had become, in Zoe’s mind, a tragic figure, a woman who was never going to get the one thing she most wanted.

But then it seemed that she was.

And after all those years of hoping and wishing for her friend, Zoe was even more taken aback to find herself overcome by jealousy. It was as undeniable as a stain across her face and neck. Could anyone else see it?

But with the pregnancy, Zoe and Ava grew even closer. Ava literally let her hair down-took it out of its tight braid, let it flow down her back. She was exhausted and nauseated, but she had moments of playfulness. She made fun of herself-her flatulence, her constant need to pee. She leaned on Zoe, asking if Jake could spend the night at Zoe’s house so that she, Ava, could sleep in. Jake had never been allowed to sleep over before, presumably because Zoe let the twins watch R-rated movies and gave them Laurie Colwin’s slumped brownies within an hour of bedtime. Ava started confiding in Zoe about how much she missed her mother and sisters back home in Australia. She couldn’t believe she was going to give birth to another American, she said.


And then the baby was born, and there was a celebration!

Lynne called Zoe at work to tell her that Ava’s water had broken and she was in labor, seven centimeters dilated. There would quite possibly be a baby by lunchtime. Zoe got off work at two o’clock and raced home to pick up the wrapped box containing a tiny pink layette (Ava was convinced the baby was a girl). She then waited for the twins to be disgorged from the door of Cyrus Peirce Middle School. They were as excited as Zoe was; Jake had been plucked out of the middle of social studies by his father.

Zoe’s first instinct was to drive right to the hospital to wait for the baby to be born. But once the twins were ensconced in the Karmann Ghia, she had second thoughts. They had not technically been invited to wait at the hospital. They were close friends of the Randolphs’, but they weren’t family. But then again, Ava had no other family on the island, and Jordan was an only child. Should Zoe drive to the hospital? She was paralyzed by indecision, feeling suddenly insecure about her status in the Randolphs’ life. She decided to just drive home and wait for the call.

At that moment her cell phone rang. It was Jordan.

“It’s a boy!” he said. “Eight pounds four ounces, ten fingers, ten toes. Mother and child are both doing fine.”

“A boy!” Zoe cried out.

“A boy!” Penny and Hobby shouted.

“Ernest Price Randolph,” Jordan said. “Baby Ernie.”

“Oh,” Zoe said. “Congratulations!”

“Come!” Jordan said. “Come see him!”


Zoe had to admit, it was one of the most joyful moments she had ever experienced on Nantucket. Ava lay in bed, looking as if she had been through a war: she was pale, and there were bruised circles under her eyes, and her hair was matted to her head like a wet mop. But she was triumphant, she was almost forty years old and she had fucking done it, delivered a baby whole and healthy. The baby was asleep in Jake’s arms, and Penny and Hobby started arguing about who would hold him next. Zoe kissed Ava’s clammy forehead, and tears filled her eyes. She didn’t have words; the moment was simply too big. She handed Ava her present, and Ava unwrapped the sweet pink outfit and they both burst out laughing, and the tears found their release. Then Jordan walked in carrying a bottle of champagne. A moment later Al, Lynne, and Demeter Castle arrived, and Ava showed them the pink outfit, and there was more laughter. Penny scooted down the hall with a handful of dollar bills to get sodas from the vending machine, and Jordan popped the champagne, and Zoe snapped pictures of Hobby, who at age thirteen was already six foot one, holding tiny baby Ernie. Lynne Castle hugged Ava, and Al handed Jordan a Cuban cigar that he’d gotten on his last business trip to Quebec. Ted Field poked his head in to shake hands with Jordan, then Al, and to make sure Ava was feeling okay. Jordan handed Zoe a paper cup of champagne, and Zoe toasted him and looked into his blue eyes, and she felt a moment of pure happiness for these people who had gotten their heart’s desire.

Then Zoe accepted the sweet package that was Ernest Price Randolph, and she quietly introduced herself to him. “I’m Zoe,” she said. “I’m your friend.” Then she named the other people in the room: “Your mommy, your daddy, your big brother, Jake. Dr. Field, who delivered you. And over there are my babies, Penny and Hobby. And that’s Al Castle and Lynne Castle and Demeter. Look how lucky you are, baby Ernie,” she whispered. She raised him up and kissed his impossibly soft cheek. “Look at all the people who love you already.”


Two months later, at six o’clock in the morning on Monday, March 31, Zoe got a dramatically different call from Lynne Castle. She could barely make sense of what Lynne was trying to tell her: Ava had gone into the nursery to check on the baby, and…

“What?” Zoe whispered. She had heard what Lynne was saying-“stopped breathing,” “SIDS,” “died in his crib”-but her mind wouldn’t allow it. She had seen Ava and Ernie only a few days before, at the post office. Ava had been standing in line, waiting to pick up yet more baby gifts sent from Australia, and Zoe had offered to hold Ernie while she carried the presents out to her car. Ernie was more alert than the last time Zoe had seen him. He could focus his eyes, which were the deep, concentrated color that Zoe could think of only as Jordan blue. She had bounced him a little; the warm, curved weight of his head fit in her hand like a ball. She had kissed him repeatedly, and he had gurgled, then smiled. Zoe was in love with her twins, she positively adored them, but they were hitting the hard, bumpy road of adolescence. Penny had just gotten her first period and was prone to unpredictable mood swings; Hobby’s feet stank up the whole house. Zoe held Ernie and thought, I want another little one just like this.