“Me? Hell, no. I dated that woman about a hundred years ago before I met Claire, but, believe me, Marilyn never let me forget it. At least she didn’t wink at me this time. She usually does that when Claire’s around, to see if she can get my goat. Or Claire’s. Behind closed doors Claire and I laugh about it, but the truth is, Marilyn Sunderland gives me the creeps.”

“Dad? Are you kidding? You dated my sixth-grade teacher?”

“She was not your teacher at the time, as you hadn’t yet been born. I think we were still in high school. Yeah. We must have been. All I really know is that it wasn’t pretty when, oh, I guess you could say, I dumped her for your lovely mother, who, unlike Marilyn, did not scare the hell out of me.” He chuckled.

“Well,” Annie said. “We didn’t give her what she wanted. Do you think she’ll somehow use it against us?”

“Dunno,” Earl replied. “I never did understand what made her so crotchety.”

“In that case, I guess we’d better take care of this right now. Lucy, is your laptop downstairs?”

She shook her head. “It’s in my room.”

“Why don’t you girls go upstairs and work on that,” John said. “I’ll go back to Chappy with Gramps. I’m awake now anyway, so I might as well take care of a few things over there.”

* * *

Lucy’s room was papered in posters of her favorite musicians, none of whom Annie recognized. She was familiar, however, with the theme of the décor; when she’d been a teen, her bedroom walls had been plastered with images of Springsteen, David Bowie, Queen. And Madonna, though her mother had not approved.

Grabbing the laptop from her desk, Lucy sank onto her bed. Annie went to a small wooden chair that was painted pink. Before sitting down, she noticed that LUCY was spelled out in pink, glittery crystals on the back.

“My dad made that,” Lucy said. “He made one for Abigail, too. I was seven, and she was ten. I thought mine was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. Abigail scrunched up her face and asked him why he thought she was still a little girl.”

Annie’s heart melted like a snowman on South Beach in August. Sometimes she forgot that Lucy had a sister—John’s older daughter—who lived with their mother on the mainland and decried all things “Martha’s Vineyard.” Lucy hadn’t seen Abigail since Christmas. Annie pulled the chair closer to the bed and sat. “Do you miss your sister?”

“No.” Her head was bent; her long hair was unbraided, spilling down her cheeks. Her eyes were focused on the screen while her fingers—all of them—hopped over the keyboard like stones skipping across the water.