“Ah,” Ava said. She had heard from Jordan that Jake had lost the credit card, and that after giving him a lecture about fiscal responsibility, Jordan had called to cancel it. “I see.”

“So then I came back here,” Jake said.

“And that’s when I saw you sneaking in the side door with your bag,” Ava said.

“You didn’t tell Dad?”

“No.”

“I knew you didn’t tell Dad,” Jake said. “He would have wanted to have a heart-to-heart about it right away.”

“No doubt.”

“In a way I’m kind of glad it didn’t work out,” Jake said. He took a deep breath. “Because I couldn’t stand to think about you being worried, not knowing where I was, not knowing where I was sleeping or what I was eating or who I was with.”

“Thank you,” Ava said.

“I know you love me, Mom.”

Ava felt tears burning her eyes. “You know I love you, but you’ll never understand how much.”

“You seem really happy here.”

“I never thought I would feel like myself again,” Ava said. “But now I do.”

“Dad’s not happy,” Jake said.

“No,” Ava said. “He’s not. I know he’s not.”

Jake said, “I wish there was a way that we could all be happy at the same time, in the same place.”


Ava had been stunned when Jordan came to her and said he thought they should move to Australia.

“We’ll go to Perth, we’ll rent a house, we’ll try it for a year,” he said. “I can take a leave of absence; Marnie can run the paper, she’s more than capable.”

Ava said, “Jake? School?”

“He can go to school in Australia.”

“His senior year?” she said.

“Ava, we need to get him out of here.”

She had flared up with anger. She had been asking Jordan to move to Perth for how many years, and they were leaving now because Jake had to get off the island?

She said, “So this is all for Jake, then?”

“And you,” Jordan said. “Mostly for you. If I just wanted to get Jake off the island, if that was my only motivation, I could think of places we could go that are a hell of a lot closer than Perth, Australia.”

Yes, Ava thought. Anywhere was closer.

“But you want to move home, and I am taking you home,” he said.

Yes, Ava did want to move home. She was an idiot for playing devil’s advocate, but something wasn’t computing.

“And you’re going to leave the paper? And Marnie’s going to run it?” she asked.

“For a year, yes.”

It was inconceivable. Ava was missing something. She saw conviction in Jordan’s eyes. He meant it. He was going to leave the paper, leave the island; she saw that he wanted to. But why now, when before he had regarded even a two-week trip to Australia as a fate worse than death? Her mind raced. She thought back to the Fourth of July. Jordan had said he was driving on Hummock Pond Road when the car ran out of gas. That had seemed odd to her. Jordan wasn’t the type of man who ever let his car run out of gas. Ava had asked him, “What were you doing on Hummock Pond Road?”

“Driving around,” he said.

Ava had mulled it over for hours, willing her brain to make sense of it. They were moving to Australia for an entire year. Jordan wanted to go-for Jake, but also for her, he said. But no-she would offer her apologies here-she didn’t think Jordan Randolph was that selfless. Why would he want to go? Why would he want to get away?

And then she understood that it had to do with Zoe.

Zoe had turned him away.

Zoe didn’t want him anymore.


Since they had moved to Fremantle, Ava had been happier than she could have imagined. In the early-morning hours she drank her tea and worked her crossword puzzles. Then she made breakfast-eggs and rashers, grilled tomatoes, beans. She went to Woolies during the week for groceries, and on the weekends she shopped at the Fremantle Markets. She came home with mangoes and fresh Turkish bread and baby cos for Caesar salad. She spent time with her brothers and sisters and her mother; she saw friends from secondary school and girls she’d once waitressed with at Cicarella’s. She had been out with her old boyfriend, Roger Polly, on two occasions, and both times she had laughed as she hadn’t done in years. Was this how Jordan had felt when he was with Zoe-energized and young again, like a new person?

“I wish there was a way that we could all be happy at the same time, in the same place,” Jake had just said.

Ava tried to imagine what would have happened if Jake had journeyed across the country in some stranger’s van. What if she and Jordan had woken up that morning, and Jake’s bed had been empty, his things missing? Jordan, with his reporter’s instincts, would probably have headed into town first, and then maybe to South Beach, to grill everyone he saw about his son’s whereabouts. He might have found someone who remembered Jake-Jake would have stuck out, as an American kid, clean, in expensive clothes, reading Hemingway. But what if they hadn’t found him in time? What if those people had kicked him out of the van on the scorching hot, deserted stretch of the Nullarbor, without any food or water?

Ava checked the clock. It was still only quarter after six. Outside the kookaburras were hooting. It had been quite a morning already.

“What is it you want?” she asked Jake. “More than anything else, what do you want?”

“I want to go home,” he said.


A pink glow of possibility had been growing inside of Ava for weeks, an idea, a life change, but she had been afraid to tell anyone about it. She finally confided in her sister May over dinner at the Subiaco Hotel. They ordered glasses of the Leeuwin chardonnay and a bowl of chili mussels to share, and Ava nearly had to pinch herself. She was in Subiaco, having dinner with her favorite sister, exactly as she had fantasized about doing on so many bitter Nantucket nights. Ava’s prevailing thought was that now that she had this life again, she couldn’t let anyone take it away.

She said to May, “I’ve made a decision.”

May said, “Boob job?”

“No,” Ava said. “I’m going to adopt a baby.”

May clapped her hand over her mouth to keep from screaming. Her eyes bulged. Ava laughed.

“People are staring,” Ava said.

“Oh my God,” May said. “So much better than a boob job. I think that’s a bloody brilliant idea. I don’t know why you didn’t decide this sooner.”

“Well…,” Ava said. She wasn’t sure how much her family knew about her emotional state of the past four years. Probably they would have said she was “going through a bit of a rough patch,” or perhaps acting “not quite herself.” That would have been an example of typical Australian understatement, or else a consequence of the fact that she lived ten thousand miles away. “I wasn’t ready before. But I’ve made up my mind, and I’m ready now. I’m thinking I want a little girl. From China.”

“Oh, Ava!” May said. She came around the table to give her sister a hug. Of all the Price children, May was the most like their mother, Dearie. She had the pillowy bosom and the pragmatic attitude. She had learned to knit and could make dinner for ten even if there was nothing in the fridge. She had gray hair already, but she didn’t care. With six kids of her own, an average week for her entailed four cricket matches, three trips to the dentist, and ten bloody noses. Who wouldn’t have gray hair? “Oh, I am so happy for you! This is a wonderful thing.” She sat back down, sipped her wine, leaned forward across the table. “And Jordan, is he excited?”

“Jordan doesn’t know,” Ava said. “This is my decision. It’s a decision I’m making for me.”

“So does that mean you’re leaving him?” May asked. Ava had expected her sister to be scandalized. There hadn’t been a divorce in the Price family in three generations. But May merely seemed matter-of-fact about it.


Ava had debated exactly when and where to talk to Jordan. One afternoon as she was walking home from the Fremantle Markets, she spied him drinking alone at the bar at the Norfolk Hotel, and she nearly walked in and tapped him on the shoulder, but she didn’t want the conversation to be an ambush. She needed a block of time and a safe, wide-open space-and so she arranged for May to take Jake overnight, and she booked the two of them a day trip to Rottnest Island.

She said to Jordan, “You and I are going to Rottnest Island tomorrow morning. The ferry’s at a quarter to nine.”

Jordan’s head whipped around so quickly that his glasses slid to the end of his nose. “No,” he said.

“No?”

“I don’t feel like an excursion,” he said. “I’m not up for it. And certainly Jake doesn’t want to go?”

“Jake’s not invited,” Ava said. “Jake is going over to May and Doug’s. This is for you and me.”

Jordan looked even more alarmed. “We’re not spending the night?”

“No,” Ava said. “Just a day trip. We’ll rent bikes. See the island. See the quokkas.”

“Oh,” Jordan said. His lips twisted in that disapproving way of his. “I don’t know. I had some things I wanted to do tomorrow.”

Ava studied her husband. She could have said, “What things are those? Drinking at the Norfolk? Watching the cricket on TV? Wallowing in your misery?” But instead she smiled. “Cancel them,” she said. “Because we’re going to Rottnest.”


She was jangling with nerves. The drive from their house to the ferry was perhaps the tensest eight minutes she had ever spent with her husband. He sulked like a recalcitrant child. He didn’t want to go on a day trip alone with Ava. The only saving grace was that she understood. If their roles had been reversed and it had been Jordan dragging her out-say, for a day trip to Tuckernuck Island-she would have been just as miserable. As she drove, Jordan pressed his forehead against the car window, like a dog being driven to the pound.