Her special bequests to schools she hasn’t been to for seventy years, to people like Beth McHenry, who cleaned the house— cleaned the house, scrubbed the toilets, and changed the sheets, while I was spending all my time working in a job to support this summer home”—he says “summer home” as though it’s an expletive—“a place I barely get the chance to visit, a life-style that’s run its course. Yard boys and night nurses and summer help, cooks and cleaners, you, and that damned expensive end-of-the-summer party she always has. Her finances, all of our finances, have taken a hit in the market. But try telling my mother that! She’s never even had to balance a checkbook!”

He crosses over to the bar, splashes some amber liquid into a glass, goes to the freezer for ice. Instead of taking the time to smash the pieces with his little hammer thing, he just drops them into the sink, hard, then picks up the shattered bits and dumps them into the glass, tips it back, swallows.

“All this . . . drama . . . would upset her,” he mutters.

Don’t upset your mother. Dad’s refrain from that summer with Vovó.

“I can’t tell her,” he repeats.

Can’t. Won’t. Are afraid to?

I know all about all three.

“Have . . . have you tried?” The words seem to catch in my throat, it’s so hard to say them. Just a job. Not my place. But . . .

He doesn’t answer. Takes another sip.

There’s a very long silence.

He watches me over the rim of his glass. And I stare back down at the check. Set my finger down on it, deliberately, slip-ping it across the table as though I’m passing him a napkin, just doing my job.

“Am I fired, Mr. Ellington? Because if I’m not, I’d better get back to the beach.”

Mrs. E. has survived my neglect. She and the ladies are quite happily ensconced in their beach chairs, watching with a frightening level of appreciation as Cass rakes the sand.

They’re in a circle, towels swooped around their shoulders, bobbed gray hair, permed white hair, long braids meant to be coiled up into buns, styles that went away generations ago.

“If I were thirty years younger . . .” Avis King says, nodding approvingly as Cass flicks seaweed into the tall grass.

Big Mrs. McCloud shoots her a look.

“Fine. Forty,” she concedes. “Is this your boy, Gwen? He’s adorable.”

Adorable seems like a fluffy-kitten word, defanged, declawed—not Cass and all these feelings at all. He glances over at me, catches me looking, grins knowingly, then keeps raking.

“Ad-or-able.” Mrs. Cole sighs. “Good lordy lord lord.”

“Beach bonfire tonight, I’m hearing,” Avis King says.

“Isn’t it nice that those still go on? Remember ours? Oh, that Ben Cruz. With his lovely shoulders. Always so tanned.

Those cut-offs.”

Okay, disturbing. I think she just referenced my grandfather as the hot yard guy.

“He’d get the lobsters. Who was it who brought the bread from that Portuguese bakery in town? Sweet bread and regular? Ten loaves each. We’d toast them on sticks, dip them in butter.”

“Glaucia,” Beth McHenry says. “She got her license first of all of us. Remember? She used to whip around town in that old gray truck, bring potatoes and linguica and malassadas from Pedrinho’s out to the island.”

Mrs. Cole nods. “I was always partial to the meringues.”

“Remember when the captain brought the volleyball net down from the court and we decorated it with those tiny white Christmas lights?”

“Labor Day . . .” Mrs. E. says. “The final summer party. We all decided to dress in white because in those days you weren’t supposed to wear it after Labor Day. It was our last hurrah. Our big rebellion.”

“The boys wore their white jackets. If they had them,” Big Mrs. McCloud reflects. “Arthur had too many, he loaned them out to Ben and Matthias and whoever needed one. He’d lend his tan bucks too. But then a lot of them went barefoot. That seemed so rebellious.”

“We played volleyball in our long skirts,” Avis King says. “I beat the pants off Malcolm. He proposed later that night.”

“Was it easier then?” Mrs. Ellington asks. “I do believe so.

Our revolts were so much smaller. Our questions so much easier to answer. There were rules to it all. May I call on you after your European tour? That was how I knew the captain cared for me. I don’t believe that translates into texting.”

They debate back and forth about it. Whether it should be one of those island rituals that sticks, the Labor Day party. Or whether its time has come and gone.

“We could do it again,” Mrs. Cole says. “We’re the entertain-ment committee on the board now. No rules to say we can’t.

Well, none like the rules we used to have, anyway.”

From a distance, from the movies, I know these rules too— white bucks and blazers, don’t wear white after Labor Day, wear this with that, go with that good girl, not this one. Strictly controlled social calendars, when all of that seemed as though it mattered . . .

We still have those, though. Not so much what we wear, but how we act and what we do.

Other customs, rituals, rules. New important things unspo-ken.

Will Henry say anything to his mother? More importantly . . . will I?

Chapter Thirty-five

Beach bonfire tonight.

As Cass drives us down the hill, I can see sparks crackling upward, flicking and fading into the darkening summer sky.

Dom D’Ofrio is always overenthusiastic with the lighter fluid.

The tower of flames shoots nearly ten feet high.

“That looks like something you’d use to sacrifice to the Dru-ids, not toast marshmallows,” Cass says as we near the beach, the sun sliding purple-orange against the deep green sea.

To my surprise, when Cass picked me up, Spence was slumped in the backseat of the old BMW, scowling.

“He had a bad day. Thought this might cheer him up. You mind?” Cass whispered.

“Yo Castle,” Spence says now, a listless version of his usual cocky self. “Sundance stormed you yet?”

“Don’t be a dick,” Cass returns evenly.

“S’what I do best,” Spence returns, then sticks his head out the window, taking in the scene.

This bonfire is a lot more crowded than the first of the summer. The summer people’s kids have discovered it and are mill-ing around, mostly in clumps, but sometimes venturing over to other clots of people, sitting down, feeling out the possibil-ities. Pam and Shaunee have parked themselves next to Sophie Tucker, old Mrs. P.’s great-granddaughter. Manny’s flicking his lighter for Audrey Partridge, a pretty blond cousin from the house the Robinsons rented. Somebody’s dragged out a grill, and now Dom is enthusiastically pouring lighter fluid onto those charcoal briquettes too.