Maggie couldn’t come today because her mother needed her in the shop. But, stroke of luck, Lu had spotted a sign for a one-day, four-hour camp at the club on Corn Neck Road. (Nancy and Henry were members.) She’d dropped Chase and Sebastian off at nine. They were going to learn to clam!

She spent some time reading other food bloggers’ pickling posts. You could pickle with or without sugar; you could pickle with high-end vinegar or good old inexpensive white vinegar, the kind Lu bought in giant jugs in case she had to build a last-minute volcano with baking soda. Lu wanted to be able to report to her readers if it really did make a difference. Would they have high-end vinegar on Block Island? She wasn’t sure. But if she found it, she could set up an experiment, try a few of the veggies with the cheap stuff, a few with the expensive stuff.

When Jeremy came home next, he could do a taste test! Blindfolded, because all of the best taste tests were, and Leo could write about Jacqui doing the taste test after work one night. He’d feed the different options to her, forkful by forkful, which wasn’t quite as sexy as feeding a woman strawberries by hand, washed down with champagne, but it might be enough to get the more romantically deprived of her readers a little bit excited.

Shower, and then shop for vinegar, or the other way around? She was standing in the middle of the kitchen, weighing the pros and cons of each, when she heard a car drive up. She hightailed it to the bedroom, which offered a clandestine view of the driveway.

Shit shit shit shit shit. Nancy was descending from her beautifully maintained silver Cadillac coupe (the Cadillac of Cadillacs). She was wearing, on this summer morning, which was already hot and humid, a tan pencil skirt, a smooth light yellow blouse, and a pair of dark green pumps. Pumps! Dark green! On an island! In summer!

Could Lu pretend not to be home? No, her own car was in the driveway; there was no escaping. If only they had a dog, she could pretend to have been walking it. Was it too late to procure a dog? Could she walk Sebastian’s hamster, which had traveled all the way from Connecticut with them?

The doorbell rang once, then twice. When it rang a third time—this time Nancy was depressing the button for several seconds, obviously making a point—Lu descended the stairs and opened the door.

Her mother-in-law looked surprised to find Lu there, although who else would she have been expecting? “Hi, Nancy,” Lu said, stepping aside and ushering Nancy in. She kept her voice noncommittal, easygoing, at an appropriate level of polite daughter-in-law-ness. She was the picture of a woman not a bit bothered by being disturbed on a summer morning.

“I hope I’m not interrupting anything.” Even though, of course, she wasn’t wearing gloves, Nancy somehow gave the impression of whisking them off. “Is Jeremy at the hospital through the weekend?”