Embarrassed, she started to apologize. The words passed directly from her mouth into his, never hitting the air, because he was kissing her now. It was a careful kiss, not greedy, almost questioning. She could feel his lips trembling under hers.

• • •

It was dawn when Alice began creeping up the steps to the deck at the back of Richard’s beach house, shoes in hand. Her fingers were wrapped around the knob of the door that led to the kitchen when she heard something: the sound of tires on gravel, then a car door opening and slamming shut, then her mom and Richard’s voices chorusing out a good night. Alice froze. They must’ve decided not to make a night of it in Boston after all, to come directly home at the end of the Pollards’ dinner party. Even though she was bone-tired, Alice forced herself to duck out of sight. She waited fifteen minutes to tick by on her cell phone clock, listening to the gentle tinkle of the sand-dollar wind chimes above her head, watching the pink-orange sun climb slowly up out of the ocean, before letting herself in, quietly ascending the servant’s staircase at the back of the house.

She went on highest tippy-toe, treading extra lightly as she passed her mom and Richard’s bedroom. Though the door was closed, she could hear them talking inside, their voices perfectly understandable if a little muffled. She wasn’t trying to listen, but it was like looking at letters: your brain automatically put them together into words even if reading wasn’t your intention. What she accidentally heard made her stop dead in her tracks.

It was her mom speaking, her voice sleepy but happy, so that Alice knew the night had been a success. “Don’t you remember?” Maggie was saying. “We ran into him at that poky little inn in Nantucket over that Christmas Stroll Weekend. What’s it called? The Jared Something House?”

“The Jared Coffin House,” Richard replied, a clattering noise as one of his shoes, then the other, fell to the floor. Alice didn’t need to see the scene to picture it: him sitting on the edge of the bed in his tux, jacket off, tie hanging loose around his neck, her mom unscrewing the backs of her earrings at the dressing table.

“That’s right,” Maggie said, “the Jared Coffin House.”

“We ran into him? I don’t remember.”

“Lucky for us he didn’t either, because you introduced me to him as your sister.”

“No,” Richard said, sounding amused yet not quite believing, as if the antics of his former self both delighted and appalled him. “I did? Really?”

“Yeah, I guess you thought the only woman you could have your arm around other than Martha was your sister.”

“But I don’t have a sister.”