When Leland came to Nantucket on that first trip, she had behaved…atrociously. She kissed Fray—Frazier Dooley, her first love—in the back seat of Mallory’s car, but then once they got to the bar, she bumped into an acquaintance from New York—Kip Sudbury, whose father was in commercial real estate and who had a yacht at his disposal—and Leland left Mallory and Fray and Cooper without a word of explanation. She’d ditched them; it made her cringe to remember it now. The only excuse she had was youth.

She returned to Nantucket a few years later with her girlfriend, the novelist Fiella Roget, Fifi, but things hadn’t gone much better. That was early on in Leland and Fifi’s relationship, back when Leland was still threatened by Fifi’s fame and was alternately possessive and bitter. It didn’t help that Fifi shamelessly flirted with Mallory, maybe as a way of reminding her who in the couple had the allure, the power. Leland should have laughed off Fifi’s behavior—Mallory was so hopelessly straight that she would only have seen the sexual overtures as Fifi being “friendly”—but instead, Leland had lashed out by tearing Mallory down. Mallory had overheard Leland insulting her, and the weekend had been ruined.

Leland had once read an interview with Toni Morrison where the author said she regretted a third of her life. Leland’s percentage was running a bit higher than that.

The last time Leland had been on Nantucket was four years earlier, when Mallory was dying. She had skin cancer that she thought she’d successfully treated, but it metastasized to her brain. It wasn’t fair—Mallory was a good person, a mom and a teacher, a reader and a thinker, the most generous friend in what she was willing to accept and forgive. It should have been Leland in the bed. Leland deserved little in the way of mercy from the universe. Her life had been a cakewalk by comparison. She had always been free to be self-absorbed.

She gets a text. It’s Coop: I’m out front in Mal’s Jeep.

Leland’s fellow New Yorkers are all looking very self-consciously “Nantuckety” in their faded red pants and straw hats. Leland has made a concession to the season by wearing Eileen Fisher, the Queen of Black Linen. Unlike these weekend warriors, Leland feels she belongs here because while they all check their Ubers, she has someone waiting for her out front in a seen-better-days Jeep.

The girls who approached Leland at the gate in JFK are right behind her. She can hear them checking the address of their Airbnb and then one of them says, “Oh my God, look—I think that’s Frazier Dooley.”