“This feels familiar,” Liam said, running his hands along the metal rivets on the gunwale. “The smell of the varnish. The sound my feet make on the wood. I remember being on a boat like this with the wind in my face and feeling very happy.”

Gwen’s face ached with poignancy. “Our father used to take you out on this very yacht,” she said. “He loved sailing and often took you. I wonder if that’s what you remember.”

The only experience Patrick had with sailing was the cramped third-class cabin he’d shared with nine other immigrants from Ireland. Sunset parties on a yacht were alien to him, and it was hard to know what to do. How was he supposed to make conversation with people who had never worked a day in their lives? A grown man named Wally played cards in the winter and “summered” in Newport. Who used summered as a verb?

Patrick snagged a flute of champagne from a passing waiter simply to have something to do with his hands, and Liam did the same. Gwen must have sensed their discomfort.

“Let’s go talk to my cousin Edwin,” she prompted. “He’s the one who travels all over the world to buy and sell antiques. You’ll like him.”

She performed the introductions, and Edwin proved to be congenial and polite. He even tried to make conversation with Liam, but it was hard, since Edwin didn’t even know what welding meant.

“It’s something like making steel, correct?”

“Not really,” Liam said. “I help assemble parts of a ship by welding the steel pieces together.”

“Like a carpenter?” Edwin asked.

“Close enough,” Liam replied.

The conversation stumbled to an awkward lull, but Edwin soon jumped in to fill the void.

“Say, do either of you like to shoot? There’s not much worth hunting on the island, but Frederick has a decent launcher for shooting clay pigeons. We could have a match.”

Patrick had never handled a gun in his life, and neither had Liam. Shooting clay pigeons was a pricey sport of rich people, and Patrick had to decline the offer.

Edwin turned his attention to Gwen. “Still at the college?”

“Of course,” she said. “I intend to live the rest of my life there, unless Oscar gets fussy with the budget and closes us down.”

Edwin looked skeptical. “He wouldn’t do that. Poppy loves swanning around campus. So does Oscar.”

“He likes earning money more,” Gwen replied. “The college costs a lot to operate, and it isn’t turning a profit yet.”

“That seems a crying shame,” Edwin said, although he didn’t appear to be at all broken up about it. He glanced around the deck, then waved at another cousin who had just filled his plate at the banquet table. He was one of the third-generation cousins, the art student from Yale. “Joshua, have you heard anything about Oscar yanking funding for the college?”