"Wait!" said Lottie. "I'll come with you." She gathered up her bag and sunglasses. "I hope in a way they don't remember who you are, Jonnie. We could all move up here and become glassblowers in town and sell Christmas ornaments to summer tourists."

"Dream on," said Jon. He took Ethan's hands and swung him down the porch stairs. The screen door banged as they left.

Lottie, Jon, and Ethan were a happy, goofy unit: the three of them with their dark hair and big eyes and loud voices. Now that Caroline had recommitted to Hopewell Cottage, she took more of an interest in them as a family. She would never have been friends with them in real life, but here, she was.

She watched them go. She'd heard enough of the conversations from her upstairs porch to know that Jon did not much like his job. She'd love to just give him and Lottie a year's salary, but he wouldn't take it. (Lottie might.) "They're not a bad bunch," Beverly called up to her. He was below her, knee-deep among the ferns.

"Beverly," she said. "You have emerged from your lair."

"It's such a beautiful day. I wanted to take a walk but then I saw this."

Caroline couldn't see what he was referring to. He was standing in a patch of weeds.

"This garden needs seeing to. Come help."

If anyone was going to summon Caroline, it would have to be Beverly. She took her own large-brimmed hat from a peg on the wall and descended the stairs to the garden. Or what Beverly called the garden.

"This is not what I would call a garden," she said.

"Have you ever had a garden?"

"No. We never stayed in one place long enough."

"It's what I call a garden. See? Here's a peony trying to hang on. And on that other patch, you can see a trellis." She could just make out a wire frame among the overgrown ferns. "That was a vegetable garden. There must have been tomatoes once upon a time." She liked that he said tomahtoes so unself-consciously. "We should turn that bed for next year. And pull out the weeds in this one. Trim back the Rosa rugosa, too. Those roots will be a bear to pull up; they spread everywhere. I hope you are strong."

Caroline was not at all sure what he was talking about. The only thing she recognized was the black-eyed Susans, which Wills had written into their Frozen Peter Pan, which reminded her that she needed to do something about costumes for their play next Wednesday. She was actually glad she'd caught a ride back to Hopewell from the library that night.

"If anyone took the time to come in the spring they could plant some nice flowers here. Look, these lupines have reseeded. Catnip would grow like a weed here. Of course it practically is a weed."

"Beverly, how do you know so much about everything?"

"I know very little about anything," he said. "I did not enjoy the privilege of a university education."

"You cook, though, so beautifully, and you know about flower gardening."

"And vegetable gardening. And herbs, actually. We could set up a modest kitchen garden while we're still here. Since none of you is particularly good at remembering to bring me herbs from the dock."

"Did your father teach you all this?"

Beverly rubbed the bridge of his nose and bent down to pull up some weeds. "If you don't mind too much, perhaps you could help me. An herb garden is simple enough that we might achieve it in the time we have left here."

"Which ones are the weeds?"

He sighed and pointed. "Start here," he said, "in the flower bed. In the vegetable patch we should dig everything up. Then you could call that young lunk, Max, to work the soil. There must be compost on this island somewhere. Then we can plant herbs for right now and bed the rest down for the winter. I imagine there's more nitrate in the kelp on the beach than in horse manure."

"Come on, Beverly. Were you a landscape gardener? Did you run a large household in England?"

He kept pulling up plants. Weeds. "If it's not too much trouble-"

Caroline resumed pulling. If I pull he'll talk.

"Get them by the roots, Caroline, if you please."

She let the only sound be the ripping up of plants for a while. She was careful to take only what Beverly pointed at, and to get them by the roots. It was satisfying work.

"If you must know," he said, "I went to the garden when I was a boy to get out of the way of my father. He did not like that I was a 'different' little boy. He didn't mind, either, that my brothers pushed me around. They were younger than I was, but he considered them manlier."

Caroline kept silent.

"We had a staff. It was more common back then. Bridey was the cook and Joe Meade was our gardener. They were married. Irish. Her face was a map of Clare, she used to say."

"Vivid," said Caroline.

Beverly sat on a stone wall that Caroline had not noticed before.

"Theirs was a mixed marriage. I didn't understand it till later, but he was from the North, and Protestant, and she was deeply Catholic. Both sets of parents were against it. So they understood something about being not quite up to expectations."

Caroline nodded and kept weeding.

"My mother had to back my father so Bridey took care of me. She cooked and I chopped. Joe gardened and I weeded. After a while I picked up quite a few things."

"You certainly come in handy around this house, Beverly. This cottage."

"It's quite pleasant here," he said. "Even now with Lottie's Jon here. And the boy."

"Ethan."

"He's afraid of me, I think, which is just as well."

"They're not doing awfully well, Lottie and Jon," said Caroline.

"I think they're doing quite well," said Beverly, "from the tousled way she emerges in the morning. Quite well indeed."

"They seem to be happy, but Jon seems awfully weighed down by his job." She wanted to sell it, but not too hard.

"He's a lawyer, is he?"

"I think he is, yes."

"If he doesn't like his job, he should be happy that he doesn't have to attend to the kinds of things Gorsch expected me to attend to. Papers, letters, e-mails."

"That is right up his alley," said Caroline.

"If it's up his alley, he should do something about it."

"Sounds like a fine idea," said Caroline.

Saturday morning, Beverly opened the suitcase he had been dreading looking at the entire time he was there. Two and a half weeks already. He had barely settled in, but it must be dealt with. The conversation with Caroline had stirred him up.

Gorsch had left an ironclad will that gave Beverly very little to do. The instructions were clear: Frank E. Campbell and then a benefit at Weill Recital Hall. Done. The old lawyer took care of everything, and his last official act was to move all the accounts to Beverly's name. So many death certificates. The one thing Gorsch had asked him to do-one thing, in all the years-was to act as musical executor when he was gone. And Beverly had agreed. Anything to stop Gorsch talking about death. Yes, I will be your musical executor even though I have barely a musical note in my body, said Beverly, stroking Possum, and so now he had a job. He'd never really had a job in his life.

This suitcase was his job. Letters from ASCAP. Letters from high schools and community theater companies. And God knows how many e-mails. Those he could not even look at. He despised the computer.

This Maine cottage was to be his refuge, if not his strength. He would apply himself to all these needy people and decide who could sing what, and how they could sing it. The new lawyer had told him more than once that he'd do anything he could to help him. "Just give me some avails and we'll set something up." But what were avails?

He wanted to be kind to all these people who were so needy, and who loved Gorsch's music so much. Goddammit, he missed Possum.

A cup of coffee would help him get started, but dammit if Lottie had not taken the coffeemaker out of his room, where it by rights should have stayed. She was enforcing community and he wanted none of it. Beverly was paying his fair share for this place and if he wanted a coffeemaker for himself, he should have it. Now he would have to go downstairs and talk to people before he'd had his own cup of coffee in his own room. He was quite sure it was deliberate on the girl's part. She was forcing them to be a group of people who actually spoke to one another before breakfast. Well, he'd show her.

Beverly pulled on his bathrobe, a gift from Gorsch ("It's raspberry, not brown"), and slipped on a pair of striped espadrilles that he'd bought for next to nothing when they traveled to Sanary-sur-Mer to taste the bouillabaisse. (Gorsch had been a good millionaire: he'd had no trouble spending his money once he got used to having it.) They were shot to hell but he could never replace them. He trundled downstairs. The knees, the knees.

Someone had already been in the kitchen, as the pot of coffee was minus a generous cup. He opened the cupboard door to locate his favorite mug, HARVARD 1955, the year he might have graduated from the august institution had he had a different father, and not been a pervert.

How many of those Harvard crimson lads were having fumbling, sweaty encounters with each other in the boathouse on the Charles? Beverly thought. A lot. If I had only known.

"Good morning, Beverly!" chirped Lottie as she came in through the pantry to the kitchen. He still had not got the lay of the land on this floor. Every day seemed to uncover a new room.

If he were not such a slow mover he would have had time to stop Jon and her from pouring coffee into their own mugs as they bounded into the kitchen, clearly delighted with themselves for having had some sort of sexual encounter before breakfast. Their little one must be a sound sleeper. Jon was pouring himself all but the dregs of the pot when he saw Beverly's empty mug.

"Coffee?" he asked.

"There's none left."

"I'll make you a new pot." He went over to the tap to rinse out the carafe and started to fill it.

"Not with that water. I'll need springwater for my own coffee. The tap water is barely potable."

Lottie came over and gave him a kiss on the cheek. He only flinched a little bit.

"Isn't it a beautiful day, Beverly? Potable's a good word. Where did you come up with that?"

"It's in common usage," he said. He knew it wasn't these days, but Gorsch and he had had many discussions about potability when Gorsch traveled, especially in Mexico. "I wouldn't touch my lips to that water."

"Lottie's been getting the water from the spring, haven't you, Lottie?" said Jon with a prideful grin. "Let me get it now, though. It's awfully heavy to carry."

"Have you been down there yet, Beverly?" asked Lottie. "To the springhouse?"

"No, and I don't intend to go."

"Why don't you and Jon go together?" she said, as if she did not understand English. "I'll stay here for when Ethan wakes up. He sleeps like a baby here."

"Better than a baby." Jon flashed her a lascivious grin. It did not go unnoticed by anyone. "Come on, Beverly. You take my coffee, and I'll have the next pot, but we'll both go down to the spring together. Then I have to go into town again. Even fake pneumonia only lasts so long."

Jon handed him his own mug, MBNA AMERICA BANK, and Beverly took it.

"I hope they believe you," said Lottie, "about the pneumonia."

"I made it sound like I was about to croak." He coughed, for effect. "I'm well enough to get springwater, though. Come give it a try, Beverly."

There was something rather charming about Jon, and he did have those very tight buttocks, so Beverly found himself saying yes before he could think better of it.

Lottie gave her husband a lot of fairly lengthy instructions about how to pump the water and the least cumbersome way to carry the cooler and not to forget to fill up the primer jug, and Jon took them all with admirable patience. He fetched the cooler that stood in the pantry and motioned for Beverly to follow him out the back door.

"I'm not going in a bathrobe," said Beverly.

"I'll wait," said Jon.

Beverly took his time changing, but Jon was true to his word.

Beverly was not so steady on his feet anymore, but the path to the spring was easy, the way well worn. "Tell me about Possum," said Jon. The walk went quickly after that. Beverly heard himself talking about all the years they had been together. Which led to all the years he and Gorsch had been together. Which led to the suitcase full of letters. Jon was an admirable listener.

The ground near the springhouse was a lot spongier than the rest of the path, and as they approached the low roof that covered the pipes, things got muddy. Beverly was not fond of mud. "I've walked enough," he said. "You go from here. I'll watch. Mind you, don't soak yourself, or you'll have to strip off again." He heard Gorsch's snappy voice in his head-"You should be so lucky"-and he smiled.

Jon was manly, but he was clearly confounded by something as old-fashioned as a water pump. Beverly knew just how to work one-there had been such a mechanism on his own grandmother's farm in deepest New Jersey, a place that at the time was as undeveloped as this. Jon had clearly not listened to his wife because he started pumping vigorously and no water was manifest. The hand pump was noisy and clattering, rusted in places, surely built in the gay nineties. It was older, even, than Beverly. And it would function if Jon knew how to do it.

Jon turned to him and smiled warily. "I'll get this going in a second," he said and redoubled his efforts. Beverly might have reminded him that he needed to prime the pump first, as Lottie had actually told him, but he enjoyed the working of Jon's muscles in his remarkably thin T-shirt, and so withheld comment until Jon stopped again.

"There's got to be something wrong with it," he said. "I'll find someone to fix it. Robert should be told." Jon was clearly not used to being unable to achieve what he wanted. Beverly thought again of Lottie and how cheerful she looked this morning.

"Have you heard the expression 'prime the pump,' Jon?" he said. "It's used crudely in some circles, but it does have a specific meaning."

Jon looked at him blankly.

"Do as your wife said, man. Pour some water from that jug on the left-"

"The blue one?"

"I wouldn't know, as I'm color-blind," Beverly said, patiently, he thought. "Either one. I'm sure they're both left there for the same reason."

Jon inspected two jugs, both of which looked a dull gray to Beverly. "That's right," he called as Jon gestured to him with a full jug of water. "Then pour water from that jug into the pump"-Jon started pouring-"while pumping. I'm sure a strapping man like you can do it."

And indeed he could. A few more pumps of the handle and the water gurgled loudly, bubbled up from the fecund earth, and splashed with shocking abandon onto Jon, who was standing in the way. He moved out of range quickly.

"No nudity-this is a kids' island, now!" he said to Beverly with a grin.

As the beautifully clear water cascaded into Jon's coolers, Beverly smiled to himself. The water made Jon a little boy. The striving lawyer was washed away, not to put too fine a point on it.

"Could you take a look at the business with the music while we're here?" asked Beverly before he could think better of it. "Gorsch's music?" His voice caught in his throat but Jon could not have been aware.

"Sure. I'd be happy to." He ran his hand through his hair. He was wavering. What could he be thinking about?

"Oh, money," said Beverly. "Are you thinking about money?"

Jon grinned. "Not your money. I had been thinking about how to bottle this water and sell it in Brooklyn. But now that doesn't seem like such a cool idea. Want to taste this, Beverly? You won't believe how cold it is."