The place was jam-packed with familiar faces. Everyone was chatting and drinking and picking up fried jalapeños and mini Reuben sandwiches from passing trays. Agnes snagged a sandwich for herself (carbs, how she craved them!), then a jalapeño, then another sandwich-all the while scanning the room for her mother. There was Tammy Block, the Realtor whom Dabney had set up with Flynn Sheehan, creating earth shock waves of scandal a few years back; there was the travel agent, the owner of a popular gift shop, there was Barley Ivan, who made beautiful Lightship-basket furniture, there was the flamboyant gallery owner, and there was Ed Law, legendary owner of Nantucket Cotton, the T-shirt shop where Dabney and then, a generation later, Agnes had worked as teenagers.

Agnes couldn’t find Dabney, yet she knew her mother must be around somewhere. Dabney had invented Business After Hours years and years ago-monthly cocktail parties where Chamber members gathered to “discuss issues in the business community,” which was a grand euphemism for drinking and gossiping.

There was the guy who owned the body shop and towing business. There was Hal Allen of Allen Heating and Cooling; Agnes had dated his son, Duke, in high school.

Old boyfriends banging down the door?

Where was her mother?

There was a guitar player tucked in the back corner, playing a Jack Johnson song. Agnes exhaled and concentrated on the music for a second. Jack Johnson songs always made her think of hibiscus leis and coconut drinks. She was dying to go to Hawaii on her honeymoon, but CJ had been to Hawaii “too many times to count” with Annabelle. CJ wanted to take a cruise to Alaska. Agnes had heard that Alaska was beautiful, but it sounded cold, and who wanted a cold honeymoon? And spending her honeymoon in the cramped quarters of a cruise ship held even less appeal. But CJ had insisted she would love it.

The song ended, there was a smattering of applause, and the guitar player said into the microphone, “This next one is for Agnes, who is back on Nantucket for the summer.”

There was a collective murmur. Agnes? Is that Agnes? Her cover was blown, although she hadn’t ever had a hope of remaining incognito. Agnes craned her neck to get a look at the guitar player. He smiled-those teeth, the Hawaiian-print board shorts. It was Riley, from the office.

He launched into “Puff the Magic Dragon,” a childhood favorite of Agnes’s, learned at circle time in Montessori, although Riley would have had no way of knowing that. Unless Dabney had told him.

Agnes chatted away, sounding exactly like her mother-Oh, it’s so good to see you, yes, it’s been a while, home for the summer, working at Island Adventure, so great to be back, there is no place like Nantucket!-until finally Riley took a break and appeared at her elbow with a fresh glass of mediocre Chardonnay.

“Hey,” she said. “Thanks for outing me. I did love the song, though.”

“I can’t believe you came,” he said.

“You didn’t tell me you were performing,” she said.

“I didn’t want to oversell myself.”

“You were great,” Agnes said. How thrilled Dabney must have been when she discovered that Riley played the guitar! “I hope my mother is paying you extra.”

“I’m playing for tips,” he said. He showed her a plastic cup with a single five-dollar bill in it.

“Riley,” Agnes said. “Is my mother here?”

“I haven’t seen her.”

“She’s not here,” Agnes said. She drank the remaining Chardonnay from the plastic cup. She knew her mother wasn’t here because if Dabney were here she would have been the epicenter of the party.

Agnes studied Riley. His eyes were brown, like his hair, and he had one dark freckle on his cheek. She could tell just from looking at him that his parents were still married, that he had grown up with siblings, probably sisters, and that his life had unfolded smoothly, making it easy for him to be a surfer, and a guitar player, and an aspiring dentist.

Agnes figured he was a good egg. Her mother hired only good eggs.

“Did my mother come back to the office this afternoon?” Agnes asked.

“No,” Riley said. “Nina said she was running errands.”

“This is so strange. My mother is the most transparent person who ever lived. She does not disappear like this.”

“I know nothing,” Riley said. “I’ve worked at the Chamber for two and a half weeks. Your mom and Nina have all this shorthand, and secret code, and nicknames for people, and Celerie and I can’t figure out what they’re talking about. I’m pretty sure that’s by design. I think we’re only meant to see the tip of the iceberg.”

“Well, you’re not supposed to wear board shorts to work,” Agnes said. “Did my mother give you a hard time?”

“No,” Riley said. “She told me they were fabulous.”

“She did?” Agnes was starting to feel like the planet was spinning the wrong way on its axis.

“She did,” Riley said. “If you want to know where your mom is, maybe you should ask Nina.”

“I tried, this afternoon,” Agnes said. “Nina isn’t giving her up.”

“Well, I’m finished playing,” Riley said. “Do you want to get out of here? Go somewhere else, maybe?”

“God, yes,” Agnes said.

They climbed into Riley’s Jeep, a forest-green Wrangler with a six-foot soft-top surfboard strapped to the roll bars. It was the quintessential Nantucket vehicle. He told her he’d owned it since he was eighteen and had driven it only on the island, back and forth between his parents’ house in Pocomo and the south-shore surfing beaches.

“I’m sorry it’s covered in dog hair,” he said. “I have a chocolate Lab named Sadie, and she is the queen of this particular castle.”

“Oh my God,” Agnes said. “We had a chocolate Lab for thirteen years named Henry. My mother loves chocolate Labs. I think I just figured out why my mother hired you.”

Riley laughed. “Believe me, I’m used to people loving me for my dog. Now, where should I take you?”

Agnes plucked at the yellow silk of her dress and arranged it around her legs. She wasn’t used to anyone asking her what she wanted. In her life at home in New York, CJ made all the decisions. He picked the restaurants and the Broadway shows and the parties they would attend, he told her when to meet him at the gym, he picked the color of her nail polish when she got a pedicure.

What did she want?

“I want to find my mother,” she said. “And I’m starving.”

Riley held up the plastic cup with the five-dollar bill. “How about somewhere cheap?” He started the car, then looked over his shoulder as he shifted into reverse. “Food first,” he said. “Then find.”

They stopped at the Strip on Steamship Wharf, where Agnes got a cheeseburger with waffle fries (carbs and more carbs!), and Riley got three slices of pizza and two Cokes. They drove to Children’s Beach and ate in the car overlooking the harbor.

“I used to come here as a kid,” Riley said.

“Yeah, me too,” Agnes said. She didn’t mean to trump Riley’s childhood nostalgia, but the grassy expanse of Children’s Beach had been etched in her brain from her earliest memories. Her great-grandmother had pushed her on the swings and taught her how to pump her legs; Box used to sit on the green slatted benches reading The Economist while Agnes mastered the monkey bars. Her mother had planted her funny old red-and-white-striped umbrella, which exactly matched her red-and-white-striped bathing suit, in the sand at the shoreline while Agnes filled buckets with a slurry of sand and water.

“So what brings you home this summer?” Riley asked.

“I work at a Boys and Girls Club in Upper Manhattan, and we lost our summer funding,” Agnes said.

“Lucky break?” Riley said.

“Some people might see it that way,” Agnes said. “I worry about my members. This literally leaves six hundred kids without anywhere to hang out this summer.”

“Whoa,” Riley said.

“I’m trying not to dwell on it,” Agnes said. “I tell myself they’ll all go to the public library where it’s air-conditioned, and they’ll read.”

“That’s a good vision,” Riley said. He folded his pizza in half; a rivulet of orange grease ran down his chin. Agnes handed him a napkin. “I love kids. That’s one reason why I’m becoming a dentist. I mean, I’m interested in the medicine of it, but my dream is to build a strong family practice. I want to watch kids grow up, hear about their lacrosse games and their baton-twirling competitions, and their first dates.”

“I sometimes worry that I get too attached to the kids at the club,” Agnes said. She thought of Quincy and Dahlia, baking on hot squares of sidewalk. She had once told CJ that she wanted to adopt them and give them a safe home. But, as CJ had pointed out, Quincy and Dahlia already had a mother. And CJ didn’t want kids at all-not biological, not adopted. “Some of them have really tough lives. It’s difficult not to become overly invested in their well-being.”

Riley smiled at her. “You have a good heart,” he said. “Like mother, like daughter.”

Suddenly, Agnes felt anxious. “Is it okay if we go? Is it okay if we go find her?”

Riley tossed his pizza crust out the window, where it was pounced on by hungry seagulls. “Of course,” he said.

Nantucket was only thirteen miles long and four miles wide, but it was by no means a small or simple place. There were countless dirt roads and mysterious acres. Agnes didn’t know where to start looking. But wherever Dabney was, she was driving the Impala, and thus she would be hard to miss.

“Should we go east or west?” Agnes asked.

“East?” Riley said. “Maybe she went to Sconset?”

“Sconset?” Agnes said. Dabney had always had lukewarm feelings about Sconset, in much the same way Union soldiers had lukewarm feelings about General Lee. There had been a period of time, years before Agnes was born, when Sconseters had wanted to secede. They had wanted their own town building and their own board of selectmen-and this had rubbed Dabney the wrong way. Now, as director of the Chamber, Dabney had to embrace and promote Sconset-the entire Daffodil Weekend was celebrated there-but Sconset fell prey to Dabney’s rules: she would go once a year to the Chanticleer, once a year to the Summer House (but only for drinks and the piano player; she didn’t trust the food), and once a year to the Sconset Casino for a movie. Every single day of the summer, she suggested that visitors bike out to Sconset, where she advised them to have lunch at Claudette’s or ice cream from the Sconset Market-but she would never do these things herself. Agnes did not see her mother going to Sconset-for secret errands or otherwise. “Not Sconset. Let’s head west.”