Ann decided to take advantage of the pause and the silence. “Are you happy with her?” She felt emboldened by the warmth she could still feel from his hand, and their previous closeness.

He didn’t seem to mind the bluntness of her question. If anything, he seemed to appreciate her directness, her willingness to take him on. “What does it mean to be happy with another person?”

“My parents are happy with each other.” She regretted mentioning her parents. She thought this made her sound like a little kid. But they were happy together, she knew it.

He turned the key in the ignition and the Jeep roared to life. “Good for them.” Anthony’s voice changed. “I mean really, good for them. That’s great. Marriage can be a tricky business.”

He drove through downtown Wellfleet. During the day, the town was bustling with tourists buying ice cream, visiting galleries, and shopping in the little stores that lined the main street, buying their Wellfleet sweatshirts at Abiyoyo. This late, it settled back into a limp quiet. The flag sagged from the flagpole in front of the town hall. Next to it sat the cannon, immortalized with a plaque and surrounded by stones. “You know that cannon?” Ann said. “It was dug out of our neighbors’ yard.” She loved their neighbors, a nice couple who kept busy entertaining their grandchildren.

“Is that so?” Anthony’s smile was distracted, insincere. This disappointed Ann. Nervous, she told him the story about a rivalry that once existed between Wellfleet and South Wellfleet, and how they’d had their own cannons that they shot from their respective hills on the Fourth of July. One of the cannons was destroyed when, as a prank, some locals filled it with wet sand. After that, the young men used to steal the remaining cannon and shoot it off wherever it ended up. This went on for years, until the final cannon disappeared. Nobody knew what had happened to it until 1976, when it was unearthed. “There’s supposedly a curse on it,” she’d said.

“Hmmm…” Anthony said, disinterested. He turned onto Route 6 and picked up speed. They passed all the landmarks she knew so well: the Stop & Shop, Brownies Cabins, J.P.’s, the yarn and quilting store on the hill, and the water tower. Before that night she knew this strip of highway the way a kid would, from looking at it from the backseat of a car, watching it go by in a blur. Now, sitting close to Anthony with the warm breeze rushing over her, everything looked different.