Cooper Blessing is hosting a bachelor weekend on Nantucket over Labor Day.

“Please tell me he’s not getting married again,” Ursula says. “What will that make it? Seven? Eight?”

“Six,” Jake says. “And no, he’s not getting married. It’s the opposite. He proposed to this girl named Stacey who was at Goucher when we were at Hopkins. She said no and now, as part of the work he’s doing with his new therapist, he wants to recreate the bachelor weekend—only make it all about the guys. Coop is single, Frazier Dooley is single…”

Yes, Ursula read about Frazier and Anna Dooley’s divorce in People. Anna walked with 280 million dollars—and Ursula had thought fleetingly, the way one does, about dating Frazier Dooley.

“And you’re single,” Ursula says.

“I shouldn’t say it’s ‘all about the guys,’ because Leland Gladstone is coming too,” Jake says. “She was with us the first year.”

“Wow,” Ursula says. “That’s going to be a veritable Who’s Who.” Leland Gladstone is the founder of the huge women’s lifestyle blog Leland’s Letter and was recently chosen as one of Time magazine’s Most Influential People of the Year.

Leland had been plenty influential in Ursula’s life. She wrote an article in Leland’s Letter entitled Same Time Next Year: Can It Save Modern Marriage?, which had been Ursula’s first hint about Jake and Mallory.

“Won’t it be difficult for you?” Ursula asks. “Going back to…”

“Mal’s cottage?” Jake says. He sighs. “I don’t know, Ursula. Probably. I’d rather not get into a big fight about it. I just got off the phone with Coop and I thought I’d let you know that I’ll be on Nantucket next weekend.”

“You’re letting me know now…but not the twenty-eight years that you went to see Mallory.”

“Ursula. We aren’t doing this.”

“Right,” Ursula says. “Well. Please give everyone my best…”

“Oh, I will.”

“And report back.”

“Of course, Sully.”

She smiles at the nickname. “Come see me sometime. I miss you.”

“That’s sweet of you to say. Talk next week.”

They hang up and Ursula presses her phone to her heart and stares out at the city beneath her; it’s dark enough now that lights are starting to come on.

Back to Nantucket for Labor Day. It sounds like fun, actually, and Ursula half-wishes she’d been invited. She pours herself a glass of wine, orders up her lobster and burrata from Marea, and downloads the Firepink app on her phone. She will create an online dating profile.

Ursula de Gournsey

Age: 56

This is going to hurt, Ursula thinks. But that’s okay. Pain means she’s growing.

Link

“So it’s okay with you if we invade the cottage?” Uncle Cooper asks.