Joy was on the floor behind the counter, boxing up the for-here coffee mugs, whose shelf was precarious in the balmiest of weather circumstances, when she heard the door rattle. “Sorry!” she called. “We’re closed!” (Had she forgotten to turn the sign?) The door continued to rattle; in fact, if anything, the rattling increased in intensity. Joy popped her head above the counter to see if it was anyone she knew—a friendly fellow shop owner, perhaps, comparing notes on storm preparation. No, it was a woman with a small boy, nobody from Block Island. “Tourists,” Joy muttered. They probably wanted to come in for a hot cocoa and a front-and-center seat for the storm. She glanced at her phone. Maggie hadn’t answered.

Answer me now, Joy texted. She hated to resort to these tactics, but clearly they were called for. If u don’t answer me I don’t pay the cell phone bill. No reply. Wonderful. Ghosted by her own daughter.

The door-knocker hadn’t gone away. “Fine,” growled Joy. She made her way to the door, opened it a little bit, and said, “Sorry, we’re closed.” She glanced down at her phone, whose screen showed the three little dots that meant the person you had just texted was texting you back.

“Oh, I don’t want to buy anything,” said the woman. “I’m looking for Anthony Puckett. I thought you might know where he is.”

The dots disappeared.

Joy looked up then and gave the woman her full attention, and as she did so her heart did a funny little jump and she realized she was staring right at Cassie, Anthony’s ex-but-not-really-ex-wife. She looked much the same as she did on her Facebook page: the full lips, the perfect blond hair, the silk dress. Joy looked down at the pint-sized version of Anthony standing next to the woman. This would be Max. He was (of course) as adorable as his mother was gorgeous, with a red T-shirt on which was printed a dinosaur and the word Max-o-Saurus. He had a Norman Rockwellian cowlick and the sturdiest little legs you could imagine. She couldn’t help smiling at such a delectable specimen of little boyhood, and Max smiled back. “You thought I would know where someone named Anthony Puckett is?” she said to Cassie. “Do I know you?” Better to pretend innocence than admit to a Facebook stalking habit.

“No,” said Cassie (sort of haughtily, Joy thought). “But my husband knows you.”

Joy pretended confusion. In high school, during her brief flirtation with the theater department, she’d played Abigail Williams in The Crucible. It had involved a lot of hysterical screaming, and she’d nailed it.

“My husband definitely knows you.”

“Hmm . . .” Joy tried to look as if she were searching among the many, many names and faces in her memory, and was coming up short.

“I’m hungry,” said Max. He pulled gently on his mother’s hand.

“They’re closed, sweetie. We’re just here for a minute.”

“We are closed,” conceded Joy. “But I might be able to find him a little something.” No reason to punish the little boy for the sins of the mother and the father. “Does he have any allergies?”