“I knew you’d say something like that.” Jack had never understood her fraught relationship with her family. How could he? He saw his first cousins daily. He’d visited his mother at the senior home in Falmouth every Sunday until her death at age ninety-five. His entire family genuinely enjoyed spending time together, and Jack wouldn’t have had it any other way. It was just one of the many things she loved about him.

The Barroses had been on the shores of Provincetown for generations, ever since Jack’s great-great-great (however many greats) grandparents landed there from Lisbon. When Celeste first arrived in town, she was told the Barroses were the best people to rent a room from. At the time, Jack’s aunt and uncle owned a three-story house at the boatyard, right at the edge of Cape Cod Bay. She and her friend Nathan, who’d just graduated from Philadelphia’s University of the Arts, rented two rooms on the third floor of the house—a place now inhabited by Jack’s cousin Manny and his wife, Lidia.

It had been Nathan’s idea to leave Philly for P’town. While she was busy licking her wounds after a bad breakup and feeling alienated from her family, he won a writing fellowship at the Fine Arts Work Center and suggested a change of scenery would be good for both of them. It was only later that she learned Nathan hadn’t moved to Provincetown for the writing fellowship; he’d learned weeks earlier that he was HIV positive and had gone there to spend his final days. Six months into their new life there, he was gone. Celeste had no real reason to stay in town. She was barely making ends meet with a part-time sales job at an antiques shop. And yet, she found herself in no rush to leave.

It wasn’t just the astonishing sunsets, or the majestic wildlife, or the arts scene. It was the people. She was eternally moved by the way virtual strangers had rallied around Nathan. They delivered meals. They organized his drug cocktails. They showed up in the backyard to sing and recite poetry while he sat bundled in blankets on a lawn chair. This, she thought, is family. Not the bunch of petty infighters she’d left behind in the city. No, she decided. Provincetown was meant to be her home.

The following summer, her landlord’s nephew passed through town in between runs as a merchant marine. Jack Barros was striking, with dark hair, a tan, and mischievous dark eyes. Celeste, wary from her last romantic disappointment, didn’t want to give in to her attraction. But her landlord’s sons—Manny and Tito—started teasing her that they hadn’t seen so much of Jack since their grandmother used to serve them fried dough in the afternoons.