“I used to race boats with my grandfather when I was a boy,” Max explained to Henry up at the bow as they clipped the jib to the front stay. Up close Henry noticed his delicate fingers—he was no boxer—and his face, with its bright blue eyes, could almost be called pretty, except for the long scar on his chin. “Catamarans mostly, nothing like this old clunker. But I know my way around any boat. You ever sail?”

“My friend Hoke’s got a bass boat,” Henry said, and Max laughed.

They finished with the sail, and after some effort Clara got the engine going. A cloud of pungent smoke rose from the stern. Max jumped out to untie the ropes and give them a push, and soon they were motoring slowly across the cove, bobbing over the wavelets, toward a point of land beyond which lay the open sea. In her blue robe Clara stood at the wheel, their captain. At the mouth of the cove she cut the engine, and together Henry and Max hoisted the sails, which flapped violently in the wind until Clara turned the wheel and they caught and went silent and ballooned out, and the boat suddenly pitched to the side. Effie shrieked and held on to a stay. Something tumbled and banged below, but Clara said not to worry, she’d secured the gin.

They cleared the point and angled toward the open horizon, cutting through the water. All around them the sea shimmered. A couple hundred yards to their right—to starboard, as Clara had taught them—lay the promenade. Henry picked out the pink motel that stood at the end of Madison Avenue, and the stretch of beach where he and Effie had walked only three days ago, when she had told him she wanted to go home. They would have been on a train by now, making their way back to their familiar lives.

Clara offered him the wheel. He declined adamantly. She insisted, and so he made his way over to her and she gave him a quick lesson—pointed out the wind vane at the top of the mast, assured him they wouldn’t capsize, warned him about the boom, said she and Max would take care of the jib (“Right, Maxie? If you do know what you’re doing”)—and with that, left him to it.