She sat on the deck with her coffee and watched the first streaks of light begin to swoop across the sky. Pickles sat on her feet. As she sipped, she felt the truth float toward her like an island breeze.

She loved Anthony.

She did.

She’d been a fool to respond so cagily when he’d told her he was falling in love with her. (Out of olive oil?) She’d been scared, that was all. But despite all of her proud status as an independent woman, despite all the years-old disappointment with her marriage and the bitter taste it had left her with, it was time to stop hiding from the truth. She was a woman in love. You could be independent and be in love, couldn’t you? Could you?

Maybe she’d tell him. Yes, that was exactly what she should do: Life was short and summer was even shorter. Why wait for him to say it again?

Olivia was opening the shop, so before Joy went in to work she took Pickles out for a walk through Rodman’s Hollow. Maggie, who was awake uncharacteristically early, came along—a rare treat. At the end of the walk they took Mohegan Trail to Spring Street to get back into town, and Joy’s organs constricted only a little when she saw that the Roving Patisserie was parked near the post office, a little too close to Joy Bombs for Joy’s taste. There was already a line. Joy looked the other way. Soon it would be the end of July—summer was flying.

Now it was just after one and Joy was dragging with a capital D. She made herself an espresso and knocked it back. Olivia was in the back of the shop overseeing the filling of six trays of pies. The door opened; the bell tinkled. In walked a woman, definitely not a local, not your typical Block Island tourist either. She walked up to the counter and shook her head so that the colored tips of her hair, which were blonder by half than the rest of her hair, swung back and forth. Joy watched the hair for a moment, fascinated, almost hypnotized. Swing, swing.

“Hey,” said this creature, “I’m looking for Anthony. I heard I might be able to find him here.”

The woman was wearing a positively ridiculous outfit, a fitted summer dress and heels that, if Joy had known anything about shoes, she was sure she would have been able to identify as a four-hundred-dollar-plus set. Jimmy Choo or maybe that Italian guy, Ferra-whatever. Her eyeliner was perfect (tattooed? didn’t people do that?) and her arms were uniformly smooth and bronzed. She wore perfume that Joy, who knew even less about perfume than she did about good shoes, would only have described as expensive. She looked like she could be Bridezilla’s slightly older sister.

This, of course, must be the estranged Cassie. Who else would show up here, looking rich and well attired, acting presumptuous, asking for Anthony? Having such ridiculously long eyelashes? Wearing lipstick? People didn’t wear lipstick in the daytime on Block Island—they wore Banana Boat lip balm, or nothing at all. They wore flip-flops, they wore beach cover-ups or shorts and tank tops, and they wore a light coating of sand.