Edith Allemand’s house-Main Street. “Thank you,” Grace said. She hurried back down the stairs, but then she turned around.

“Donovan?” she said. “Do you know anything about Benton going to Detroit?”

Donovan said, “I knew he was considering it, but last I checked, he hadn’t made a decision.”

Grace climbed back into her Range Rover and drove toward Main Street. Sure enough, at number 808, Benton’s truck was in the driveway. And right there in the front yard were Benton and the legendary Mrs. Allemand. Benton was holding both of Mrs. Allemand’s hands, and Mrs. Allemand was talking. If Mrs. Allemand had been any younger than eighty-five years old, Grace would have felt jealous.

Grace pulled up in front of the house, chagrined at her own audacity (the voice of her grandmother Sabine begged her not to make a scene)-but there was nothing else she could do. She had to talk to him.

He noticed the car, and a concerned expression came over his face. He said something to Mrs. Allemand, then loped toward Grace’s car. Grace loved the way he walked. She loved everything about him. She was a total goner.

He poked his head through the open passenger-side window. “Grace,” he whispered. “What are you doing here?”

“I need to talk to you,” she said.

“Do you understand how inappropriate this is?” he asked. “Do you know how this looks?”

“I don’t care how it looks,” Grace said. “And you used to not care. When you kissed me on Lucretia Mott Lane!”

“I have a business to run,” Benton said. “And you have a family. Go be with your family, Grace. Take care of your daughters. Work things out with Eddie. Please, please don’t make this any harder than it has to be. Please don’t stalk me like this again, okay? It’s making me a little nervous.”

Stalking? Grace thought indignantly. She wasn’t stalking.

But here she was, in front of Mrs. Allemand’s house, and Donovan was sure to tell Benton that Grace had stormed the office.

Stalking.

“You still owe Hope that list of a hundred books,” Grace said. “You can break my heart-that’s fine-but don’t disappoint a sixteen-year-old girl.”

From the yard, Mrs. Allemand warbled out, “Is everything okay, Benton?”

Benton waved at Mrs. Allemand, then gave Grace one last look. “Please, Grace. Clean break, okay? You’ll be fine. Now… good-bye.”

Good-bye.

Grace drove off.

She wanted Madeline. Madeline was the only person who would understand.


The first thing Grace did when she got home was to resign as a member of the Nantucket Garden Club. In an e-mail to Jean Burton, she cited “personal reasons.” She didn’t care what those personal reasons were interpreted to be. She didn’t care about anything.

She opened her medicine cabinet. She took a Fioricet and tried to focus. Benton was gone-but what about Eddie? Could she still save her marriage? Did she want to save her marriage?

She would go out and get those steaks, she decided. She would light candles and pick a bouquet of fresh flowers, and she would try to set things right. In the meantime, maybe Benton would come to his senses.

Clean break, okay? Meaning what? Should she pretend as if the postcards from Morocco and the mint tea and the pistachio macarons and the ploughman’s lunches and the slow dancing on the deck and the photo shoot with the Boston Globe and all their fiery lovemaking in the garden shed had never happened?

Detroit?

But Eddie didn’t come home for dinner. He had to tend to the rental on Low Beach Road, he informed her in a terse text. Grace ate dinner in silence with the girls, who chattered with each other about the books they were reading. The food was delicious, but Grace couldn’t force down a single bite. She had ruined everything. Her lover was gone, he had proved to be a coward-Considering Detroit for a while now?-and she had trashed her marriage. Just as Madeline had predicted. How do you see this ending?

Grace had four glasses of wine at dinner, then a fifth, because the girls were going to the movies together in town. Grace wandered upstairs in a bit of a stupor. She found her cell phone, read the text from Benton again. She needed Madeline. Could she call Madeline?

Allegra is a cheater, and you, Grace, are a cheater.

No, she could not call Madeline.

As Grace fell asleep, she tried to find a place of gratitude. Her girls were healthy and getting along. And she still had the most glorious property on Nantucket Island. Not to mention her Araucana chickens and a flourishing organic-egg business.

Exotic chickens and pale-blue eggs were all good and fine, but they were no substitute for love.


When Grace woke up at midnight, Eddie was still out. Still at the rental on Low Beach Road? Or possibly tying one on at a bar in town? Grace didn’t even feel she could text and ask him. She crept down the hallway to her study and looked again at the article in the Sunday Boston Globe. There were her hydrangeas, her roses, her Adirondack chairs-all looking perfectly, professionally styled. There was the footbridge and the brook and Polpis Harbor beyond. There was the gardening shed and the copper farmer’s sink, which she now wanted to tear out and deliver to the take-it-or-leave-it pile at the dump. And there were Grace and Benton, seated at the teak table in their accustomed places, raising their champagne glasses and smiling out at all the beauty they had created.

She texted Benton: I miss you.

Silence.

Eleven minutes later (she had meant to wait fifteen but couldn’t), she texted: I know you miss me.

Silence.

There was nothing in the world, she decided, that wounded like silence.


Ever since the night of the séance, Grace had harbored mixed feelings about her sister-in-law, Barbie. Two of the women at this table will betray the person on their left. Eddie had been to Grace’s left, Grace had been to Madeline’s left, and Trevor had been to Barbie’s left. Barbie would never be in a position to betray Trevor, and it was pretty clear Barbie wasn’t referring to herself, anyway.

Grace would betray Eddie.

Madeline would betray Grace.

Barbie had been right: Grace had started her affair with Benton Coe six months later. Did Barbie have psychic powers? Or had Barbie’s saying the words influenced Grace’s behavior? Grace went back and forth on the question, but she had never viewed Barbie the same way since. And after the séance, Barbie had stopped joining Grace, Eddie, and the twins at the holidays. She claimed this was because she preferred traveling with one of her mystery men, but Grace always felt like Barbie had discovered something rotten about Grace and wanted to distance herself.

Besides, Barbie Pancik was, by nature, a very private person and hard to get close to. Her loyalties lay staunchly with Eddie and the business and, beyond that, with herself.


Imagine, then, Grace’s surprise to find Barbie Pancik standing over her bed in the middle of the night, shaking Grace awake.

Grace cried out. It was a bad dream, Barbie looming over her, the black pearl swinging like a pendulum, her perfume suffusing the atmosphere of the bedroom.

“Grace, you have to wake up,” Barbie said.

Bad dream. But no, not a dream. For some unfathomable reason, Barbie Pancik was in her bedroom. Bad something, something bad. Grace looked to her right-no Eddie. Eddie was dead. There was no other reason why Barbie Pancik would be here. Eddie had found out about Grace and Benton and had killed himself.

Grace clamped her hand over her mouth and shook her head.

Barbie lowered herself onto the mattress next to Grace and said, “You have to listen to me.”

“No,” Grace whispered. “Nonononono.”

“Eddie is in trouble. There was a misunderstanding at the house on Low Beach Road, and the FBI have him in custody.”

Grace went back to thinking, Bad dream. Because what Barbie was saying, even if she was real-which she did indeed seem to be-made no sense. FBI? What kind of misunderstanding could bring the FBI?

Barbie handed Grace a glass of water from the nightstand. “I want you to drink this, and then I’m going to tell you some things that you are never, ever to repeat. Do you understand me?”

Grace accepted the water and nodded. Barbie would have made a good mother, Grace decided.

Barbie said, “The FBI have Eddie because they suspect him of running a prostitution ring on Low Beach Road.”

Grace blinked, then carefully set the water back down.

Barbie said, “Possibly, he’s admitted to it. He didn’t exactly tell me.”

“Admitted to it,” Grace said.

“Ben Winford is with him now, but I think he may have opened his mouth before Ben arrived. Apparently, Eddie hasn’t watched as much Law and Order as I have.”

“Law and Order?” Grace asked.

Barbie said, “I need you to get dressed. You’re going down to the police station to bail him out.”

“Me?” Grace said. “What about you? Are you coming?”

“No,” Barbie said. “I need to distance myself from this. For business reasons.”

“Is it true?” Grace asked.

“It doesn’t matter,” Barbie said. “Unless they can prove it.”


For some reason, Nadia, one of Eddie’s housecleaners, was at the police station. Grace blinked, thinking again, Bad dream, nightmare, the kind where people from different parts of her life showed up in places where they didn’t belong. Why would Nadia be here? It was a mistake. But when Grace was ushered into the back of the station to post Eddie’s bail, she saw Nadia, or a girl who looked exactly like Nadia, sitting in one of the interrogation rooms. Grace was so stunned that she took a step backward and peered in the room to make sure. Definitely Nadia. Grace heard her say, “I just clean the houses…” And then whoever else was in the room wisely closed the door.