"Look at that thing!" said Lottie.

Ethan, the smarty, had spotted an incongruous yet somehow perfect addition to the salty channel.

"Daddy, it's a bouncer! It's a bouncer on the water!"

For some reason, the enormous floating trampoline anchored in the channel seemed to make everything more real. "I'm going bouncing!" cried Ethan. There were three kids jumping on the thing and then off the thing, into the water.

"We'll have to ask them first," said Lottie.

Ethan was already screaming his heart out. "Can I bounce too? Can I bounce?"

The kids must have realized the Whaler was heading straight toward them because the bouncing stopped and there was a pointed lull.

"They're big kids," said Lottie, once they got closer and realized that these were twelve-, thirteen-, maybe fourteen-year-olds.

"They might not want to play with a little kid like me," said Ethan, understanding at once.

"Well, they might worry that you'd get hurt," said Rose.

"I won't get hurt!"

"Let's ask them." Jon was damned if these little twerps wouldn't let Ethan have one bounce on their trampoline. "I'm sure they could be persuaded." Why had he only brought credit cards, no cash? He put the motor into neutral as they came up alongside the tramp. The teenagers took in the three pale New Yorkers and a kid who was jumping out of his skin with excitement. They might turn them down just for fun.

"Oh my gosh! We wanted a kid!"

"Can we bounce him? We wanted a kid to bounce!"

The teenagers were nice.

There was a new kind of happy on Ethan's face-an elation mixed with just the smallest bit of fear-that Jon had never seen before. He looked at Lottie to see if she was catching it and she was. She beamed at him. "I love you," she mouthed.

"Be careful," said Rose.

"We're good with kids," said the chief girl. She looked competent, like a babysitter. "I'm Mackenzie. I babysit all the time."

"I can tell," said Lottie. "How did you get out here?"

"We swam," said the kids in unison.

"We swim from the dock to the float," said the chief boy. He was wearing a baseball hat featuring an unusually cute puffin. "And then we get up on the tramp."

"And then we bounce."

"And sometimes we bounce into the water."

"That's gotta be cold," Jon said.

"It's freezing!"

"You ready, dude? What's your name?"

"I'm ready! Let's go!"

"He's Ethan," said Jon.

"I'm Jamie. Come on, Ethan!"

Ethan was ready to burst. He climbed on the trampoline.

"This is how we do it with little kids."

There would not have been a chance in hell of Jon letting strange kids take his child even onto a swing in any playground at home. They basically didn't hire a teenage babysitter without Googling her parents and checking their apartment value on Zillow. He wasn't naive enough to think that everybody in Maine was a saint (though maybe they were) but right here, right now, Mackenzie and Jamie and the other kid were Ethan's heroes, and his, and Lottie's, and maybe even Rose's. He was helpless in the presence of Ethan's terrified, brilliant, uncontainable laugh.

"More more more!" Ethan said and the kids complied until their teeth were chattering and they'd all started feeling the cool afternoon air. "I think we better stop now, buddy," said the other girl, Hannah. She was the most athletic of the lot. "Give Jamie his hat back."

"Mine!" said Ethan.

"Ethan, sweetie, not yours," Lottie said gently.

"You want to keep that hat?" asked Jamie.

"Yes!" said Ethan. "I want to!"

"Ethan," Jon said, but without too much conviction, "that's Jamie's hat."

"He said I could keep it."

"I said he could keep it," said Jamie. "It looks good on you, dude. It's my dad's, anyway."

These kids were as sure-footed on water as they were on land. Maybe even more. They handed Ethan into the boat without the slightest hesitation. "Come back again, you guys," said Hannah. "We like bouncing you."

"If you need a babysitter, you can call me," said Mackenzie. "We're on Big Lost in the cottage book. The Hills."

"Maybe the grown-ups will get wet next time," said Jamie. "Bring your suits."

Lottie looked at them earnestly. "You are champs," she said. "Thank you so much."

"You betcha!" They all said it at once.

Then they sprinted across the tramp, flipped into the frigid water, and splashed noisily away.

Jon watched them swim with the big, extravagant movements of teenagers. He pulled the cord and started up the engine. "Everybody ready?"

"Ready!" called Ethan.

"Let me put some more sunscreen on you so we don't get called in by Maine Children's Services."

"I think Maine Children's Services have more to do than monitor sunscreen protection," said Rose.

"Well I wish they didn't," said Lottie. "Everyone should live like this forever. Hold still for one second, Ethan."

He twisted away and as Lottie grabbed for him Jon sharply rounded a channel marker.

"My hat! Mommy! My hat!"

Ethan's cap was in the water and had already raced twenty feet away in the wake of the boat. Jon jerked the boat around to circle it.

"Daddy, not so fast!" Ethan cried, suddenly tired and worn out and oversunned from their day on the water. He wailed, "Home, Daddy! Home!" even as he tried to climb over Lottie to get in the water.

Jon wasn't sure what the message was from Ethan, but Lottie's eyes seemed to be saying home was more important than hat, which had already bobbed out of sight.

"We're going home, Ethie," said Jon. "I'll get you home right now."

"No, Daddy! No! No!" He was practically climbing out of the boat now.

"Get hold of him!" cried Jon.

"My hat will drown!"

"Ethie, we'll find another one."

"Stop it, stop it!" He was exhausted, spent, overexcited, hysterical. And he could slip out of Lottie's grasp if she didn't hold on tight. "Don't let it drown!"

"There it is!" cried Rose.

And she dove into the water.

Jon cut the engine. "Where is she? Can she swim?"

"She's there!" cried Lottie. "It's too cold in that water for a regular human being to swim. Oh, Ethan! She got it! She has your hat!"

Ethan's screaming stopped immediately. He looked over the side of the boat. "You got it, Rosie!" he called. "You got my hat!"

Rose had to be too far to hear their cheers, but they kept them up till she pulled herself alongside the Whaler. It was a lot harder to get her in the boat than it had been for her to jump out, and the fact that she was fully dressed didn't help. But Jon hauled her up. Lottie swathed her in the one dry towel they had left.

"Rose," she said, "you were magnificent!"

Rose emerged from under the beach towel.

"You betcha," she said.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.

Of the twelve hat boxes in the third-floor attic, only nine contained hats, and only four of those hats were actually wearable. And only two of them were flattering. Caroline tried them each on more than once. If they were truly going to the island hat party that afternoon, she definitely needed a great hat. The lighting in the attic was not ideal. She knew she looked dazzling in full sunlight, a great advantage of being young. Or youngish, at least in movie years. She propped up a couple of mirrors and angled them so she could see herself front and back.

The navy straw broadbrim set off her pale skin, as she had known it would, even without her stylist here. She piled her hair at the nape of her neck to make an even bigger deal of her cheekbones. She looked like Faye Dunaway in some period drama-had she ever been in a period drama? (Oh, yes, she was campily resplendent in The Three Musketeers.) But angularity and good bone structure wasn't what she was going for. All the women here were angular with good bones. Most of them could pass for lesbians in the city-no makeup, except a slash of frosted pink across the lips; hair cut short (so easy); clothes that might kindly be described as comfortable. Their idea of a hat was a tennis visor, she was sure.

This navy straw floating creation, worthy of Cecil Beaton-when would Isadora, the lady of the house, have worn it? Before she adopted that new monogram in marriage, or afterward? Caroline considered herself again. The hat was coquettish, and it felt a la mode, even now, a century or more after it was first made. In the mirror the flirty angle of the brim and the lift of the long ostrich feather gave her mystery and presence. The perfect hat for attracting a suitor. And Caroline was sure that Isadora had had no shortage of suitors.

Caroline considered another of the Little Lost group photos she had found. This one was from much earlier than the one downstairs. It sat on a small painted-wood side table all on its own. There were two young bucks in flannels and shirtsleeves who looked as if they might covet an Isadora. They'd snatch her up and take her to Boston and squelch her, and then they'd run off and have affairs with the newest sylphlike blond girl on the tennis courts as Isadora thickened with childbearing and age. Caroline shuddered. That's not going to happen to me.

In the back row of the photo, squinting into the sun, was someone more Isadora's type. He was bookish, nearsighted, and unfashionably bearded-his beard was longer and more straggly than the others'. Unlike the other young men, he had not removed his jacket, which even Beverly would be able to identify, as it was white. They were all pretty much in white.

Caroline looked at his blurred features for a long time. What kind of hat would pique this young man's interest? Oh, he'd love the look of her in the ascot-worthy straw, but if she wore it he'd leave her to the young bucks. He wouldn't have the nerve to compete.

She took the Cecil Beaton hat off.

The hat in the last box was a straw cloche, the very definition of the word humble. Most women would look dumpy in this. Lottie would certainly look dumpy in this. This was the roast chicken of hats: Worn badly, it was ordinary, tasteless, and tough to swallow. Worn properly, it was perfection. Caroline gingerly lifted it from the brittle tissue and put it on.

She could really roast a chicken.

By the time she got down to the sunporch, the others had gone. "We couldn't find you so we went ahead. Meet you at the Whyte cottage." Lottie had left a note in her fat, girlish hand.

"They're gone at last," said Beverly as he padded silently into the room. Though hatless, he was dressed for the event, and he wasn't wearing the brown tie. "Of course no one asked me if I wanted to attend."

"I thought they asked you last night," said Caroline, "and you said, 'By no means,' if memory serves." She loved using "if memory serves" with Beverly.

"Did I?" he asked. "I don't recall."

"You did." She smiled her most genuine smile for him. "But the sign said all are welcome, so that means you too. There's a straw boater up there that I think would go with your blazer. Shall I bring it down?"

Beverly sighed heavily. "I suppose so. Of course I won't know whether it matches this shirt-ecru, is it?"

"Pink."

He blanched. "I'll change," he said suddenly. "I'm color-blind, as I may have said."

"You have. And don't change. You look terrific."

"Then if there is such a thing as a boater that can be worn with a pink shirt, please bring it down."

"And we can go together?"

"Of course."

Caroline turned to head up the stairs to her aerie.

"That cloche becomes you, by the way."

As they walked down the sylvan path-the first and possibly only time Caroline's mind had ever sprung that word on her-Caroline was pleased that Beverly did not press her about what she was doing on the third floor. Instead, they looked together at the Little Lost map, which had been drawn in 1922 and evidently had not changed to this day, and found the way to the Whyte cottage. Beverly had trouble when the boardwalk to the cottage changed to a dirt path. But once he had his footing he became unusually chatty.