With one finger, Cole touched the top of my hand. “Stop,” he said. His fingertip was hot, burned a little spot on the skin of my hand. I felt strangely close to him, as if we’d been through something big together—me, and Cole, and Lucas, too—an adventure, a trial. “I’ve already told Lucas I’m coming for dinner,” Cole said. “I’ll see you, too.”

“Well, thank you,” I said. “I mean, this will mean a lot to Lucas.”

After the four o’clock ferry left for the cape, I walked home along the beach. This was the time of year when afternoon lasted all evening. The sun was still warm, and I cast a long shadow on the sand. Those moments on the beach as I walked home always seemed to me bright and angular, moments of intense order and symmetry. In front of our house, I stopped with my feet in the warm sand, picturing what I might find inside—Cole, Lucas, conversation, laughter, the opposite of loneliness. Who was this man, who swept in like an intimate storm, changing the atmosphere of our home? How could a stranger bring about this kind of sea change?

They were in the living room watching football. This was remarkable since Lucas had never watched football in his life. When Dad had thrown us a football, we’d studied it as if it were a bird with its wings pulled in tight against its wobbling body. “Catch it!” Dad had yelled. “Why are you just looking at it?”

Now Cole said, “He’s big but fast. That’s what people don’t realize. They’re worried because he’s a rookie, but he has the arm that’s going to win us the Super Bowl. I have a premonition about this.”

“Hi, Lyd,” Lucas said. “We’re watching the game.”

Cole said what sounded like “giant eagles” and looked up at me as if I’d know what that meant.

“This is our team now,” Lucas said.

“Preseason,” Cole said. “Watch this. Oh man, he threw that ball away.”

“You mean it’s Cole’s team?”

“Well, we didn’t have a team,” Lucas said.

“I didn’t know we needed a team.”

“Everyone needs a team,” Cole said. “Believe me, you won’t be sorry. These boys are good. And this is their year. They can’t lose.”

They leaned forward in one synchronized motion. I was struck by the ease between them. Lucas was smiling, his shoulders relaxed. Carefree, happy.

I imagined for one minute that my mother was here, and my father, too, that this stranger really was Colin. That he’d come home from his life somewhere else—New York City, London, Tokyo—for a family vacation. I imagined us all standing together in one room, everyone drinking beer from cans, toasting each other. I yearned for that family that didn’t exist anymore, that had never existed.