“I am. Puttering in the garden,” Abigail lied. In truth, she was drinking coffee and staring out the window at the sailboats bobbing on their moorings, using the first weekend of the summer season as an excuse to skip church. It was a blue-sky Connecticut day in Fair Harbor. She might rally and do a little weeding later, but for now, she was content to do nothing. “Your father’s golfing.”

“Penny and I thought we might come out for the afternoon. To stop by. There’s something I want to tell you.”

Immediately, Abigail had two thoughts. The first: I wish I had spent the money on that gazpacho at Nutmeg, the specialty market. The second: He’s finally getting out of politics and going to law school. “We’d love to see you. For lunch?” she asked cautiously.

“No, we’ll arrive around two. Penny and I will take the train out and then walk to the house.”

Abigail was relieved about the lunch. She really didn’t keep company food in the house anymore. “Wonderful. Your father should be home from the club around then and do his usual, fall asleep on the couch while watching more golf. Sarah might even be home. She’s teaching some sort of clinic or something this morning.” That was it, the totality of the Blakeman family: Abigail Ellsworth Blakeman, sixty-five, mother of two, former private school development person, now working the front desk for minimum wage at the senior center; George Blakeman, late sixties, former stockbroker forced out under suspicious circumstances and for overall underperformance, now a competitive bridge player; and Sarah Ellsworth Blakeman, twenty-seven, living at home, the health teacher and head coach of the junior varsity field hockey team at Fair Harbor High School, unattached and uninterested in men or women. All co-residing in the circa-1834 center-hall Colonial on the water in a small, picturesque village on the Gold Coast. Travel sites called it the Nantucket of Connecticut.

Only Chase had escaped to Manhattan, forty miles down I-95 and a world away. “We’ll see you then, Mom. Thanks.”

“Love you.” She did.

“You too, Mama,” Chase said in return, like he always did.

*  *  *

Four hours later, after Abigail had done a quick cleanup, made fresh iced tea, and defrosted some brownies from the Mother’s Day gift basket her son had sent after missing brunch, changed into a linen shift dress, applied sunscreen, and arranged some of the early blooms of her showstopping blue hydrangeas in a pewter pitcher, Chase burst through the back door with Penny in tow. He added energy everywhere he went, and this bolt lit up Chez Blakeman. “Hey, we’re here.”

“Wake up,” Abigail hissed at George as she made her way through the house from the patio. He was sound asleep and still in his golf clothes.

“I’m awake,” he insisted, as if a second ago he hadn’t been snoring.