It was after that very short walk-less than two hundred yards to where Jordan had parked his new Land Rover (new since Ernie’s death, a kind of consolation prize for Ava, who had been asking for a new car for years, though now she drove the thing only to the cemetery to place flowers on Ernie’s grave)-that Jordan told Zoe the thing that had eluded her but that somehow explained everything.

He leaned against the driver’s side of the car, snow falling on the shoulders of his shearling jacket, snow falling in his dark curls, snow falling on the lenses of his glasses. She was tempted to take his glasses off and clean them on the hem of her shirt, but she was afraid that any sudden movement on her part might break the spell. Something was happening here, but she didn’t know what.

Jordan wiped his glasses himself, then he said, “I was at work.”

“Ah,” Zoe said. She thought he meant earlier that night, but his tone indicated that he was making some sort of confession. “You were at work? And then you decided to come out?” she prompted.

“No,” he said. “The night Ernie died. I wasn’t home.” His eyes locked on Zoe’s face. She saw the culpability; some of that, no doubt, he felt himself, but some of it must have been pressed on him. “I was at work.”

Zoe nodded slowly. He opened his mouth to speak, but she raised her hand. “You don’t have to explain,” she said. “I get it.” Zoe understood everything in that instant. She knew why Ava couldn’t talk to anyone, she knew why Jake was in lockdown, she knew it all, suddenly, with that one sentence: “I was at work.” She knew why the Randolph family was so lost.

Zoe reached out for him. It was the only thing she could think of to do. Jordan gathered her up in his arms and held her against him. They hugged fiercely, she breathed in the smell of him, she absorbed the shuddering of his sobs, she shushed him as she would have done with one of her kids. She was aware of his body, a man’s body up against hers after so much time. She felt the heat and the chemistry. “What about your needs?” Ella Mangini had asked. How easy it would be to get drawn in here, how easy to raise her face and kiss him! But Zoe was not that woman. She wasn’t going to capitalize on Jordan’s sadness. And she didn’t give him the words he so desperately needed to hear-though she did indeed believe them to be true-until ten or twelve minutes later, when she was back on India Street and safely tucked into her Karmann Ghia. It was only then that she texted those words to him:

Jordan, it’s not your fault.

But during that brief interval when she was in his arms she seized the full rush of feeling for just a second, just long enough to admit to herself that the real reason she hadn’t dated anyone in nearly ten years wasn’t the twins but rather the fact that for all that time she had been in love with one person: this man. He was the only thing she wanted in the world. But she wouldn’t get it. She pulled away. Jordan reached for her, he actually yanked at the sleeve of her coat, but Zoe stepped up onto the sidewalk and said, “I’m going home.”

“No,” he said.

She knew him well enough not to engage in an argument with him. To argue with Jordan Randolph was to lose.

Zoe headed down Centre Street toward her car, enjoying the small pleasure of her footprints in the fresh snow.

NANTUCKET

It was Beatrice McKenzie, the librarian at the Atheneum, who told everyone: Hobby Alistair and his mother had come in to the library at three o’clock on a Tuesday afternoon in the third week of July. Hobby was in a wheelchair, and his mother was pushing. The bandages had been removed from Hobby’s head, revealing that half his scalp had been shaved and that he had a five-inch run of spidery black stitches over his left ear. The wound was gruesome to look at, Beatrice said, plus the boy’s arm and leg were in casts, and his arm was in a sling. She couldn’t believe he was anywhere other than in the hospital or at home, though she was relieved to see him alive. Beatrice’s husband, Paul, now retired, was one of those old-timers who had made a point of watching Hobby play ball every chance he got. Beatrice and Paul had attended the candlelight vigil. On that night, Beatrice had closed her eyes and squeezed Paul’s hand and prayed. And now here was the young man, banged up but alive, asking her for a book about colleges.

“And what about Zoe?” we asked. “How did she seem?”

“She was quiet,” Beatrice said.


A few days after that, a piece was finally published in the Nantucket Standard celebrating the life of Penelope Alistair. This article came as a shock to the summer residents who had arrived after the Fourth of July and missed the news about the accident. Most of us felt that the tribute was long overdue (it ran in the paper, we noted, after the departure of Jordan Randolph), and despite the fact that the horror of the accident had started to fade by then, we were glad that the article about Penny had bumped aside yet another account of a summer cocktail party or fund raiser or a report of Mark Wahlberg’s having dinner at the Pearl. It was important to us that the summer residents and the two-week renters and even the day-trippers realized that Nantucket was a community, with families and kids growing up. It wasn’t a magical kingdom; it wasn’t an amusement park for billionaires. It was a real place, home to real people, with all our messes, our disgraces, our steadfast beliefs, our triumphant hearts.

The tribute spoke of the Alistair family’s arrival on the island, when Penelope and her brother, Hobson, were two years old. The article chronicled Penny’s years at Island Day Care and the Children’s House. It recounted the “discovery” of her singing voice in third grade by Helen Yurick, the elementary school music teacher. Mrs. Yurick was quoted as saying, “Never in my life had I heard such a voice come out of so young a child. I knew at once that she was gifted.” The article went on to mention Penny’s travels to Boston to study with a renowned singing instructor, and then it listed her many accomplishments. She had played Lola in Damn Yankees, Sarah in Guys and Dolls, and Sandy in Grease. She had sung the National Anthem with the Boston Pops in 2010 and, at Keith Lockhart’s special request, again in 2011. In the tenth grade she had been selected to join a national chorus-composed of one singer from every state-that traveled to Orlando, Florida, Los Angeles, California, and finally Washington, D.C., where it performed for the President and First Lady. Penny was the lead soloist in Nantucket Madrigals, and Saint Mary’s had made a tradition of asking her to sing “Ave Maria” at Christmas Eve Mass. The article noted that earlier on the day of her death, Penelope Alistair had sung the National Anthem at Nantucket High School’s graduation.

Penny was acknowledged to be a good student who was also well liked by her peers. Annabel Wright, cheerleading captain, said: “Penny was a warm and kind person. She was always worried about others. I can’t believe she’s gone. I can’t believe school is going to start in September and she’s not going to be in the front row of French class with her hand in the air, answering Madame Cusumano’s questions with perfect pronunciation.”

The high school principal, Dr. Major: “A light has gone out. It is, of course, a tragedy to lose any young person, but losing a young person like Penelope Alistair is particularly difficult. She was one of the students who lifted up our school community. She was a shining example of the pursuit of excellence, and I know I am not exaggerating when I say that she served as an inspiration to the entire student body.”

Winnie Potts, close friend and castmate in Grease: “Penny was a paragon of goodness. I’m not going to lie: I was jealous of Penny. We all were, a little bit. It wasn’t just that she was so talented. She was just so good. She loved her mother and her brother. I used to wonder what Penny would do once she graduated, but I knew that whatever she did, she would make the rest of us really darn proud.”

Penny’s twin brother, Hobson, was described in the article as “recovering from injuries sustained during the accident that claimed Miss Alistair’s life.” He said: “My sister was my hero. When we started kindergarten, I was too shy to order my own lunch in the cafeteria, so she used to do it for me.” Here, the writer noted, Hobby laughed with tears shining in his eyes. “Embarrassing, I know, but true. I needed her, I leaned on her. She was my other half. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do now. Keep going, I guess. Learn how to walk again. And figure out how to take care of my mother, who is hurting so badly.”

We all nodded at this. We thought Zoe Alistair might also be quoted, but she wasn’t. She must have been consulted for the article, however, because there was a double-page spread of photographs of Penny growing up: Penny at three or four years old, her face painted red, white, and blue for the Fourth of July parade; Penny doing a cartwheel on the lawn at Children’s Beach; Penny asleep in the sand with scallop shells placed over her eyes; Penny kneading what looked like bread dough with flour dusting the end of her nose; Penny on stage at the Boston Pops with Keith Lockhart and Carly Simon; Penny dressed as Sandy in the musical Grease, wearing a pink sweater and pink poodle skirt; Penny waving from the window of a Model A Ford in the Daffodil Parade; Penny and Hobby and Zoe posing together at a party. Those in the know identified this final picture as having been taken at Patrick Loom’s house, only hours before the accident.

Only hours before the accident. To some of us it seemed ghoulish for this picture to be included, and yet this was the one we were most interested in; it was the one we studied the longest. There was no denying it was a wonderful shot of the three of them. Hobby was on the left, grinning, his golden hair catching the last of the day’s sunlight. He looked handsome and mature in his white dress shirt and his robin’s-egg-blue tie. He was a head and shoulders taller than his mother and sister; in the photo he was leaning in, his arm long enough to reach around both of them. Zoe was on the right, and what could we say but that she looked just like herself? That wavy, layered hair with the hennaed tips, the green eyeliner and hot-pink lipstick, the gauzy top in stripes of green, blue, and purple that faded into one another like swaths of watercolor paint.