Alvie pulled out a metal folding chair tucked behind a pile of boxes and sat across from her. She was a pretty young woman, with an oval face defined by a cleft chin and long eyelashes. She’d bleached the ends of her dark curls blond and wore her hair in two low bunches. Her sunny demeanor added to her attractiveness, but today the look on her face was serious.

“Is everything okay?” Celeste said.

“I have to give notice.”

“Wait—you’re quitting?” It was the first week of June. This was their busiest time of year, and the three months that made their entire balance sheet work had just begun. Even if she was able to find someone else to hire—an impossible task since the stores and restaurants had already soaked up all the job-seekers like a sponge—they wouldn’t be Alvie. She’d spent so much time with Celeste and Jack, even living in one of their guest rooms for most of last summer, that she knew and loved the shop in a deep way that was irreplaceable.

“Maud needs me at the restaurant.”

Celeste sighed. She should have seen this day coming. Alvie and Maud met at Jack’s cousin’s Fourth of July party last summer. Alvie was instantly smitten with the much older woman and agonized for days after that Maud didn’t take her seriously.

“Don’t get involved,” Jack warned. But Celeste, after checking that Maud’s and Alvie’s charts were aligned, couldn’t resist talking Alvie up to Maud and nudging them together, even saying to Maud, “You know, there was an even bigger age gap between you and Sylvie.”

Maud moved to P’town in the late 1970s along with her girlfriend, Sylvia Shuttle of Sandwich, Massachusetts. They both started as dishwashers at the Flagship, a restaurant made famous by their former co-worker Anthony Bourdain’s bestseller Kitchen Confidential, where the restaurant was dubbed “the Dreadnaught.” In fact, it was Maud’s short-lived breakup with Sylvia—and Sylvia’s subsequent quitting of her job—that brought Anthony Bourdain in as a replacement and launched one of the most storied culinary careers in recent memory.

Celeste wouldn’t be so bold as to claim credit for Maud and Alvie’s romance (by Labor Day weekend, they were inseparable), but facts were facts. Making this current situation all the more irksome. Maud could have at least given her some warning.

“I really wish you’d given me more notice,” Celeste said.

Alvie nodded in remorse. “I wasn’t planning on this. But Maud asked me to move in with her—she wants us to really share our lives together. And that includes the restaurant and the work. I mean, you and Jack are a huge inspiration for me in that way. I promise I’ll stay until you find a replacement.”