“Yeah, that’s what I said when I first got here. Now my husband and I work together on the oyster farm.”

“Amazing,” Gemma said.

“It’s a lot of hard work. But it’s his passion, so now it’s mine, too. You can’t separate the Barros men from the water.”

Everyone at the table was talking about summer work, going on about how “the season” was the time when everyone had to hunker down and wring as much revenue as possible out of everything. Gemma, meanwhile, just kept eating like it was her last meal. In addition to the Italian food from Liz’s Café, Lidia had brought over codfish cakes, baked oysters, and grilled shrimp with garlic and cilantro.

“Is it too early to put in menu requests for Fourth of July?” said Jack’s cousin Tito. “I think we were light on the dessert last year.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” said Lidia.

“We won’t miss it this year,” Celeste said. “Promise!”

Watching the banter, Gemma felt an unfamiliar sensation, something like belonging or contentment. It was the feeling that there was nowhere else to be, no one better to be with. It felt like family.

After dinner, Celeste stood to clear the dishes. Marco stood to help but she insisted she had it covered.

“Oh, let him help,” Olivia said. “Maybe he’ll enjoy it so much he’ll try it out at home.”

“Very funny,” Marco said.

Tito launched into a story about tourists he took out for a seal-watching tour who wanted their money back when the seals didn’t swim close enough to the boat.

“It’s going to be a long summer,” Tito said.

“I thought you’d be excited for summer, Uncle Tito,” said Marco. “You could take Iris McGinty out for a sail, a little dinner on the beach . . .”

“We broke up,” Tito said.

“What? Since when?” everyone at the table seemed to ask at once. Gemma basked in the warm glow of all the affection volleying back and forth. She felt herself smiling.

“Months ago. She said her children don’t approve. She’s so recently widowed.”

“Sean died eight years ago,” said Jack.

Gemma’s phone beeped with a text. It was Sanjay.

Okay I’ll do it.

She breathed a sigh of relief. She knew she owed him one, for this, and for so much else.

Your the best, she typed back, purposefully writing “your” instead of “you’re” because he told her once he broke up with someone because she didn’t know the difference and they’d laughed about it so hard it became a private joke between them. She waited for his response, watched three dots form, and then disappear.