“Poor Castagna,” she said, and she was thinking of the Calabrian one, too.

Later that evening, before sleeping, Tina wrote a letter:

Dear Weezy,

I just had to write to you because of this incredible day. I have become engaged to Jason. I am so lucky—I have always loved him.

We’re going to get married here at the Cape at Thanksgiving. I happen to know that it was one hundred years ago that our great-grandmother Umbertina got married. That really makes me think some design she started is being completed.

We’ve got different purposes, you and I, but I think we should be close. I am writing this news about Jason and me to you first of all. I’ll write to papà and the grandparents, too, but I wanted to tell you first. I think it is important for us as women to cultivate our strengths, to grow, and to move on with purpose whatever our goals.

Remember me as your true sister,

Tina

It would not be worthwhile for her father and Weezy to come over for the wedding. It would be better if they all met there in the summer. It was like a forecast of her life with Jason: each to his own job and place, and then they would meet in the summer to be together at the Cape. And yet she was not dismayed, but hopeful; it would all work out because they wanted it to, and there would be no regrets of work left undone or chances not taken when they finally did achieve their place together to start their own family.

The weather changed toward the end of their stay, bringing rain and wind. When it cleared enough one late afternoon, Tina and Jason bicycled over to the site that marked the place where the Marconi Wireless Station had stood. The sky was gray, a cool wind blew over the low scrub and beach grass, and the ocean waves were a steady roar on the long and empty beach.

They stopped to read the plaques at a weathered lookout that commemorated the ships lost just off that beach. “Here’s the one for the Castagna,” Tina called to him, then read aloud: “‘Castagna, last square-rigger to leave her bones on Cape Cod, went aground near South Wellfleet on February 17, 1914.’ ”