“I think we should go back and talk to Mr. Carter,” Drew suggested tentatively, unsure if he was permitted to take part in the decision making. “Maybe he could find a boardinghouse for us in town. And maybe he knows what’s wrong and could tell us. Because there’s something wrong, and if it’s with Mother, I think we should know about it, whether Father wants to keep it from us or not. I’ll bet that’s why he told us we couldn’t see her.”

Nathaniel regarded his youngest brother. Hair hued like terra cotta, pale complexion that turned rutilant in the sun, small nose between cloudy gray eyes—of the three. Drew bore the closest resemblance to their father. Not as close a resemblance as did the older half brother, whom they saw only once a year at most, the mystery man born of a mystery woman who had surrendered her life giving him his, she whose name was never spoken, as if she had never lived at all. Lockwood (so Cyrus had christened him in homage to his dead shipmate) looked so much like the old man that when the two stood side by side, it was as if Cyrus were accompanied by his reincarnated youth, Lockwood by his not-yet-incarnate middle age.

“We’re not spending the summer in some boardinghouse in Blue Hill, or anywhere,” Nathaniel declared with finality. “And about Mother—I asked him about her earlier and he said she’s fine. He wouldn’t lie to us about a thing like that. Anyway, think back to when she left. She didn’t look sick the least little bit.”

Looked glowing and even glamorous that morning, Nathaniel remembered. Tall and straight in a burgundy traveling dress, her black hair upswept beneath a velvet hat as feathered as an Indian’s war bonnet.

“Some kind of female problem,” was all Cyrus had told them about her illness the night before. Women had to be allowed their privacy about such matters. He reminded his sons that their mother would turn forty later in the year, and when women got to be middle-aged … Well, now, he would not get into that.…