She was sorry that the Nova didn’t have four-wheel drive only because that meant she couldn’t take him up the beach to her favorite spot, Great Point.

“That’s okay,” Box had said. He didn’t tell her that the tour had already run so far over his time limit that he’d missed the ferry he had booked back to the mainland.

She said, “I’ll take you to my second-favorite spot. And we can eat. I made lunch.”

Her second-favorite spot was Polpis Harbor, where she parked overlooking the sparkling water and the scattering of sails. Dabney pulled a wicker basket out of the Nova’s trunk. She had made fried chicken, macaroni salad, and strawberry pie. She handed Box an icy cold root beer, which was the most delicious thing he could remember tasting in his forty years.

Up until that point, Box had been a confirmed bachelor. He had dated dozens of women-most of them very smart, some of them very pretty, and one or two who were both. But Box had always imagined love as a musical note, and so far nobody had struck the right one. But the note resonated loud and clear that afternoon at Polpis Harbor with Dabney. It was a sweet, thrumming sound that nearly knocked him off his feet. He, who had never really given a thought to anyone’s feelings but his own, wanted to know her. She seemed ripe for the picking; he loved her pert, freckled nose. But he also knew he should proceed cautiously.

“Tell me about your daughter,” he said.

By Tuesday afternoon, Box had a phone call from Ted Field.

He said, “The tick panel was clean. It’s not Lyme, not babesiosis, not tularemia, thank God. Her symptoms are pretty wide-ranging and not inconsistent with a tick-borne disease, so I put her on a course of antibiotics anyway, just to be safe.”

“Okay,” Box said. “Thank you.”

“Her white blood cell count was high,” the doctor said. “She might want to go to Boston to get that checked out.”

“You know my wife,” Box said. “What are the chances she’ll go to Boston?”

“Slim to none. I know because I suggested it to her. I just don’t want to miss anything more serious.”

“Do you think it’s something more serious?” Box asked.

“Possibly?” Ted Field said. “Or it may be as simple as a wheat allergy. Gluten is the new bogeyman.”

Box hung up the phone and stared at it for a moment. Something more serious? Dabney never got sick. In his heart, Box believed that Dabney was suffering from stress. Anyone watching her work would have thought she was in charge of running a ten-billion-dollar multinational company: she took her job that seriously. And then there was the specter of the man on the bicycle. Clendenin Hughes-or maybe not. Maybe Box had been mistaken.

He picked up the phone to call Dabney at the Chamber. It had been so long since he’d called her at work that he had forgotten the number. Oh-3543, of course. There had been years and years when he had phoned Dabney at work every single day-to check in, to ask about the weather, to find out the score of Agnes’s field hockey game, to tell her he loved her. But possibly just as many years had passed since he’d grown too busy to call every day. He had classes, students, office hours, graduate assistants and department meetings to manage, his textbook to write and revise, articles to critique and publish, associate professors to advise, the crumbling markets in Europe to analyze and comment on (he appeared as a guest on CNBC two or three times a year). He’d also been receiving phone calls from the Department of the Treasury, which, although flattering, required intricate, time-consuming problem solving. He routinely complained that he needed four extra hours in each day. He started secretly to resent having to travel to Nantucket every weekend, and so he’d recently asked Dabney how she would feel if he spent one weekend a month immersed in work in Cambridge.

She had said, “Oh. That would be fine. I guess.”

She had said this with equanimity, but Box-although not gifted when it came to reading minds-figured out that it would not be fine. Or maybe it would be fine? Dabney was as self-sufficient and independent a woman as Box had ever known, and over the years, their union had settled into a comfortable arrangement. They were like a Venn diagram. She lived her life and he didn’t interfere-and vice versa. The space where they overlapped had grown more and more slender over the years. He assumed that this was normal, as was his waning sex drive. His nonexistent sex drive. He had considered going to a doctor and getting a pill, but that struck him as embarrassing, and beneath him. Dabney wasn’t complaining, anyway. Box figured that he and his wife had simply settled into the well-feathered nest of middle age.

Nina Mobley answered on the first ring. “Nantucket Chamber of Commerce.”

“Hello, Nina, it’s Box,” he said. “Is my wife there?”

“I’m sorry,” Nina said. “Who is this?”

“Box,” he said, feeling mildly annoyed. Though it had been aeons since he’d called. “John Boxmiller Beech. Dabney’s husband.”

“Box?” she said. “Is everything all right?”

“Nina,” Box said. “Is my wife there, please?”

Dabney came on the phone. “Is everything okay?”

“Yes, yes,” Box said. “ I just had a call from Ted Field, who told me you passed the tick test but that he put you on antibiotics anyway.”

“He did. But I’m not taking them. I feel much better.”

“If he prescribed them,” Box said, “then you’d better take them.”

“I feel much better,” Dabney repeated. “Why did he call you anyway? I’m the patient. You’re not my father. He shouldn’t have called you.”

Box was tempted to agree with her, patient confidentiality and whatnot. But he and Ted Field had rowed together at Harvard a million years earlier; they were friends. Box wondered if Ted had called because there really might be something more serious going on.

“He said your white blood count was high, and that you should probably go to Boston to get it checked out.”

“Not going to happen,” Dabney said.

“Or it might be a wheat allergy. Perhaps you should stop eating bread?”

“Box,” Dabney said. “I feel much better.”

He had been married to the woman for twenty-four years; he realized that no one told her what to do-but he did not like being dismissed.

“You’ll never guess who I saw at the Daffodil Parade when I was headed to find you. Can you guess?”

“Who?” Dabney said.

“I saw Clendenin Hughes!” The mock joy in his voice was grating even to his ears. “He was riding a bicycle!”

Dabney laughed without sounding at all amused. Maybe she thought he was kidding around, or maybe she thought he was being cruel.

“I have to go, darling,” she said. “I have work to do.”

Box had spent a year courting Dabney before they slept together. She had been keen about giving him the tour of the island and making the picnic-but as soon as he’d kissed her, after taking his first bite of her strawberry pie, she’d inched backward.

He’d said, “I’m sorry, is this not what you want?”

She had welled up with tears and that had made her even more fetching-her big brown eyes shining. “I want to want it,” she said.

At the time, he had not understood what that meant. He was an economist: he dealt in absolutes. But her inscrutable answer doubled his ardor. He decided he would do whatever it took to capture Dabney Kimball’s heart.

What he eventually learned was that Dabney Kimball’s heart was missing. It had been pillaged by Clendenin Hughes, a boy she had loved since she was a teenager. Hughes was Agnes’s father, although by the time Hughes found out that a child existed, he had already embarked on a new life overseas. Hughes had wanted Dabney to move to Thailand, but she couldn’t, because of the confines of her psyche. Instead, she decided to raise Agnes without one word or dollar from Hughes. Dabney convinced herself that she would be better off if she never heard from Clendenin Hughes again. And she hadn’t. But the fact of the matter was that Hughes had taken the tender, beating center of Dabney with him.

For most of that year, Box spent his weekends on Nantucket at the Brass Lantern Inn. He paid a month at a time for a room with a queen canopied bed and a chintz armchair, where he graded student papers. He grew accustomed to the smells of cinnamon-scented candles and the cheddar scones served at breakfast. The proprietor of the inn, Mrs. Annapale, discovered that Box was on the island in pursuit of Dabney Kimball. Mrs. Annapale had known Dabney since she was born and believed her to be a lost cause-not because of Clendenin Hughes but because the girl’s mother had abandoned her in a fancy hotel room when she was only eight years old.

“And you know,” Mrs. Annapale said, “people are never quite right after something like that happens.”

Box had triumphed solely because of his persistence. He showed up in the bitter cold of January and in the windy gray of March. He brought peonies and potted orchids for Dabney and stuffed animals and storybooks for Agnes. He read to Agnes, despite having no experience with children. He brought bottles of single-malt scotch for Officer Kimball and cannoli from the North End of Boston for Dabney’s grandmother, who soon allowed him to call her Grammie instead of “Mrs. Kimball.” He had won over the daughter, the father, and the grandmother, but Dabney remained just out of reach.

Then, in June, Box left to teach for the first time at the London School of Economics, and he missed three consecutive weekends on Nantucket. When he finally returned to the Brass Lantern, he found Dabney waiting for him in his room, sitting on his queen canopied bed.

She said, “I was afraid you’d never come back.”

They made love for the first time that night. Box knew it had been a long while since Dabney had been with a man, and he knew the only man she had ever been with was Clendenin Hughes. Clendenin Hughes was sex to Dabney, and as much as Box wanted to set out to change her mind in a swift, masterful conquering, he proceeded slowly and gently. And she didn’t shy away. She cried out in pleasure, and then she asked him to do it all again the next morning.