A terrible, painful sadness clutched at Ellen. More than ever before, she felt that her life—the best part of it, at least, the part that was fresh and fun—was behind her. Recognizing the sensation made her feel guilty, for she read it as proof that she was an unsatisfactory mother, an unsatisfied wife. She hated her life, and hated herself for hating it. She thought of a line from a song Billy played on the stereo: “I’d trade all my tomorrows for a single yesterday.” Would she make a deal like that? She wondered. But what good was there in wondering? Yesterdays were gone, spinning ever farther away down a shaft that had no bottom. None of the richness, none of the delight, could ever be retrieved.

A vision of Hooper’s smiling face flashed across her mind. Forget it, she told herself. That’s stupid. Worse. It’s self-defeating.

She walked across the street and climbed into her car. As she pulled out into the traffic, she saw Larry Vaughan standing on the corner. God, she thought, he looks as sad as I feel.

7

The weekend was as quiet as the weekends in the late fall. With the beaches closed, and with the police patrolling them during the daylight hours, Amity was practically deserted. Hooper cruised up and down the shore in Ben Gardner’s boat, but the only signs of life he saw in the water were a few schools of baitfish and one small school of blue-fish. By Sunday night, after spending the day off East Hampton—the beaches there were crowded, and he thought there might be a chance the shark would appear where people were swimming—he told Brody he was ready to conclude that the fish had gone back to the deep.

“What makes you think so?” Brody had asked.

“There’s not a sign of him,” said Hooper. “And there are other fish around. If there was a big white in the neighborhood, everything else would vanish. That’s one of the things divers say about whites. When they’re around, there’s an awful stillness in the water.”

“I’m not convinced,” said Brody. “At least not enough to open the beaches. Not yet.” He knew that after an uneventful weekend there would be pressure—from Vaughan, from other real estate agents, from merchants—to open the beaches. He almost wished Hooper had seen the fish. That would have been a certainty. Now there was nothing but negative evidence, and to his policeman’s mind that was not enough.

On Monday afternoon, Brody was sitting in his office when Bixby announced a phone call from Ellen.

“I’m sorry to bother you,” she said, “but I wanted to check something with you. What would you think about giving a dinner party?”

“What for?”

“Just to have a dinner party. We haven’t had one in years. I can’t even remember when our last one was.”

“No,” said Brody. “Neither can I.” But it was a lie. He remembered all too well their last dinner party: three years ago, when Ellen was in the midst of her crusade to re-establish her ties with the summer community. She had asked three summer couples. They were nice enough people, Brody recalled, but the conversations had been stiff, forced, and uncomfortable. Brody and his guests had searched each other for any common interest or experience, and they had failed. So after a while, the guests had fallen back on talking among themselves, self-consciously polite about including Ellen whenever she said something like, “Oh, I remember him!” She had been nervous and flighty, and after the guests had left, after she had done the dishes and said twice to Brody, “Wasn’t that a nice evening!” she had shut herself in the bathroom and wept.