Sharon Styles knew what Kevin Jenkins thought of her. Never mind the words of love he’d whispered, no matter that, once, he’d called her a goddess and said she was the sexiest woman in the world. At the end of the day, as her mom liked to say, Sharon was just a townie, just a summer fling.

This was a fact she should have realized on Labor Day Weekend. It had been a perfect summer afternoon, all gold sand and clear blue skies. She’d brought a picnic to the beach. He’d slipped away from his family for an hour. She’d poured him a chilled glass of rosé and then had lain back on the blanket, the sand warm against her back while he’d kissed her. That was when she’d told him that he’d slipped one past the goalie and popped a bun in her oven. As soon as she’d said the words, Kevin’s handsome face had gone cold. His beautiful lips compressed into a line the size of a paper cut, and the first words to emerge through that ungenerous slit were “Are you sure it’s mine?”

Sharon felt like she’d been punched, hard, right in the stomach—like the breath had left her body—and she’d started to cry. “I love you,” she’d said. “I haven’t been with anyone else since you and I got together. I swear.”

He’d been a gentleman about the whole thing. He’d given her cash for the procedure, and instead of just telling her to get on the ferry and go to the Planned Parenthood in Boston, like two previous guys had, he’d made her an appointment with a different doctor, a fancy one who didn’t even take insurance. He’d gotten her tickets for the ferry and paid for a night in a hotel. “If you want me to come with you, I will,” he’d said.

“What will you tell her?” Sharon had asked him, and Kevin had shrugged.

“She’ll be busy in her garden. She probably won’t even notice if I’m gone.” His voice became bitter as he repeated the complaint that Sharon had heard a hundred times that summer. “She loves those goddamn roses more than me.”

So be with me, she’d wanted to say. I love you. I’ll love you more than any garden, more than any big house. We could be happy; you and me and our baby.