Tommy’s dad, Dr. van Stratten, had recently been sued for malpractice after a patient had almost died from a medication he’d prescribed. While Dr. van Stratten had managed to evade a prison sentence—it was touch-and-go there for a while—his medical license had been revoked. And when the wife of this patient had announced that she’d also be seeking damages, and thus potentially bankrupting him, Mrs. van Stratten had filed for divorce. (Though Tommy had told Alice that his parents weren’t really splitting, that the divorce was a loophole thing, a way of protecting the family’s assets, and that Mrs. van Stratten had to be pushed to do it.) Light, however, seemed to be shining at the end of the tunnel for Dr. van Stratten. He’d just been offered a position at a hedge fund in Stamford. Had, in fact, used Tommy—much to Alice’s annoyance and dismay—to woo the daughter of the man who ran it.

“Sorry,” Alice said.

Tommy shrugged. “It wasn’t only about the money. We needed to get rid of one of the cars anyway since I’ll be heading off to college in the fall.”

“Yeah, it’s not like you’re going to be doing much driving in Harvard Square.”

“Nope. What is it you have down there? The T?”

“That’s right. The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, referred to by the natives as the T. I can help you buy a metro card, tell you which stops and stations to avoid, which lines break down the oftenest—all that.”

“My own private tour guide,” Tommy said, with a tender smile.

Suddenly shy, Alice broke off eye contact. “So, shopping for school supplies. Okay, I’m up for it even though it’s barely July. What should we buy first? Dry erase boards? Laundry bags? Ethernet cords? I guess I’m going to be needing that stuff, too, for Wolcott.”

Alice and Charlie would not be graduating from Rindge and Latin, nicknamed Syrindge and Latin because of its druggy rep, the public high school in Cambridge where the sisters had begun their academic careers. Instead, this fall they’d be transferring to Wolcott Academy, a boarding school located on thirty rolling acres just outside of Montpelier, Vermont, and known for its elevated scholastic standards as well as its low student-teacher ratio; Alice as a senior, Charlie as a junior.

“No, no,” Tommy said, “that was just a line to get my mom to hand over the keys to the Volvo. I’ll do that boring stuff with her, not you.”

“All right. But I really don’t mind.”

“How about I show you around Serenity Point?”

“You do realize I’ve been living here for almost a month now.”

“Yeah, but how much of Serenity Point have you really seen? The club? A little bit of the harbor? The downtown area? A private beach or two?”

“I thought that was all there is.”