"That's because it's a full moon," said Jon.

"A blue moon," said Rose.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE.

The whole day was devoted to the lobster bake. Lottie and Jon ended up digging the pit just after noon, when the tide started to go out. Robert brought the wood down to the beach. Rose was about to shuck the corn when he sweetly told her it was better to leave the husks on.

It was nice to have Robert as an admirer, even if she felt more like his big sister than like a potential lover. He needed someone to adore, that was clear.

They did everything Jim Sprague told them to do; he was almost like another participant in the preparations. Beverly cut the onions. Rose scrubbed Chris's potatoes (even though they weren't really Chris's potatoes). Jon carried the charred galvanized tub down to the beach, along with the tarp, all under the cottage as Robert had said they would be. Ethan collected seaweed. Lottie even managed to find the two bricks Jim said they had to have to support the tub.

If Fred comes up tonight for this, it will be almost too perfect, Rose thought. She didn't want to get her hopes up too high.

Caroline was absent most of the day at her play rehearsal with the kids. She wouldn't let anyone know what they were up to, but from the costumes she'd collected around the cottage, Rose surmised it was something Peter Panish.

"Were those in your room?" Rose asked. "Our dressers were completely empty. We checked."

"I just found them in the cottage," Caroline said vaguely. "I'm sorry I can't help more. I'm heading out to the Little Lost Opera House."

"Is there an opera house, too? I thought you were doing this at the assembly room."

"We are. But we're calling it the opera house tonight," Caroline said. "I'll be back down for my lobster. I can't believe they have the fire going already." From the porch, the smell of the woodsmoke was strong. "I adore a wood fire."

"Robert at work," said Rose.

"Lottie says he's mad about you. He's doing this whole production for you."

"Unfortunately, I'm married. And he's not my type. Too tweedy."

"I like tweedy," said Caroline.

"He thought I was the one who feng-shui'd the living room. I told him that was you," Rose said. "He's not a gawper, by the way. He didn't even know who you were. I said you were an actor and he asked if you were out of work. I told him I thought you just had this island play on your plate for the moment. He was very sympathetic. He's a musician, so I'm sure he knows about being out of work. He liked that the dining room was brighter too."

"I'll meet him at the lobster bake and take a bow," said Caroline.

Robert looked for the old key for the door to the third floor. He wanted to go up there without using the trapdoor in the out-of-work actress's room. Caroline. He found the iron key where it always was, under the admittedly ugly hooked rug made from scraps by one of his more frugal relatives. He didn't have the heart to get rid of any of the ugly stuff in the cottage, and there was quite a bit of it. Even after ten seasons of ownership, he still felt more like a cottage caretaker than like a cottage owner. Robert was devoted to Hopewell, it was true, but it did feel pretty cavernous when he was there on his own. By the end of the first long September he'd spent in the house, he had quit the first two floors altogether and established himself on the top floor. He put his bed against the biggest window. He had a chair for reading and he stashed his collection of lesser-loved guitars and lutes on the walls. He was not much of a handyman but even he could hammer a couple of nails into the soft wood of the walls to hang up his collection. He unstrung most of them when the season was over, but the humidity here was good for them-even in the winter there was always moisture in the air.

He had yet to go through the many trunks and boxes and photos and papers that he'd inherited with the house. There would be time enough for that.

He could be happy here with Rose, her Helga face across from his every morning, her two kids, the boy kind and gentle, the girl rambunctious and naughty, playing on the porch. Rose herself would have time to do whatever she liked. (Robert wasn't sure what that was yet-gardening? Crossword puzzles?) And here they would grow old, looking at each other in the firelight, making plans for the future.

Even to him that fantasy sounded anemic.

He thought he had a pair of work boots up on the third floor; they were much more suited to the heavy work on the beach than his Converses, bought on a nostalgic whim some years ago, without the knowledge that they were hip. Then.

He took the stairs to the second floor two at a time. They had gathered all the spruce and oak and birch they could. This would either be another unmitigated disaster or a giant success.

The door on the north wall of the boys' dorm was still blocked by a low trunk, bright blue, from the seventies. The last time Robert looked through it he'd made a mental note to clean it out. It was filled with cottage ephemera that had clung on for years. Tin trucks and loud neon plastic sand buckets were most prominent. So many things in this cottage needed cleaning out. You could spend a lifetime doing it all. Like painting the Golden Gate Bridge.

The lock opened easily. He wanted to see how his old guitars were holding up but he didn't want to delay too much. Jon would be the type to start the fire without him. He opened the door and went up the staircase. There were the boots, on the landing. Excellent. Socks were right inside-how convenient, if unsanitary. He pulled on the boots, decided the guitars could wait till tomorrow, and closed and locked the door. Then he went back downstairs, out the screen door, and down to the beach.

Rose was right: Whoever had the idea for the "egg timer" did not consider that in order to test the eggs you had to roll them off a steaming hot canvas on a bed of white-hot firewood, peel them, and then decide whether the yolk was fully cooked or not. Surely easier just to say, "Cook for an hour and a half or so." But that was not the Little Lost way.

"I'm burning my skin off!" Lottie cried. "Whose idea was this?"

"My great uncle's," Robert said. "I figured out who he was. He was the tinkerer. The egg idea is brilliant!"

"A timer would have been a lot easier," said Lottie. "Look, this is still runny."

"Then it's not done!" said Robert. "Rose, tell her to stop peeling her egg and be patient."

"Stop peeling the eggs and be patient," said Rose. "And get away from this inferno. Come, take a dip with me." Under her clamdiggers and T-shirt she was wearing the swimsuit that Fred liked-the old Speedo that was so worn and thin that it barely constituted fabric anymore. The fire was hot enough that it made the air ripple. The water might feel good.

"I am not going near that water," said Lottie.

"Have you been out on Forester's Point, Rose?" asked Robert. "You'll feel like the Queen of the Western World from out there. Plus you'll have a fantastic view of the cottage. You should be able to walk the whole way on dry rock-the tides are so low. Come back soon, though. These will be done at some point."

Forester's Point was over the rocks and around the bend from Sea Glass Beach, and it was a tricky climb to get there. But even there the smell of the steaming lobsters was almost too good to believe: salty, briny, sweet, sharp, pungent, hot. The sun was getting lower in the sky and her shadow here at the edge of the water was almost impossibly long. She raised her hands to make it longer still. Little Lost is making me a bigger person, she thought.

No one could see her here now, but Rose imagined how she would look from the cottage, silhouetted against the sky. I'm sure Robert wants me to see the cottage from another vantage point so I'll be smitten, she thought. I'm already smitten with Hopewell, just not with him.

She climbed to the end of the point, doing her best not to lose her footing. She imagined them calling from the beach, "Come back soon, Rose!" But she didn't want to come back. She got to the end of the point, dry and smooth and hot from the setting sun. She stretched out in the late sunlight. She was the Queen of the Western World.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX.

Fred was not finding it easy to get over to Little Lost Island, and the natives did not seem particularly friendly. Or maybe that was because Fred himself was not being particularly friendly. In fact, he was fucking furious. It had taken him three hours to go seventy miles on the MaineNew Hampshire border, so he had to push it hard to get up to Dorset. Now he only had twelve minutes to make the damn ferry and the GPS didn't work here and the directions seemed completely bogus. He made three desperate three-point turns before he even found the road to Big Lost and now that he was almost there he was behind a classic little old lady driver who would not go more than 27 in a 30-mph zone.

"Fuck you, Maine lady!" he said and hit the steering wheel. If he missed this ferry he would be furious at himself. He had driven more than ten hours in a hot car stupidly without even knowing if Caroline Dester would give a shit if he was there or not. She might not even be on the fucking island when he got there. What if he didn't find the lobster bake? What if she had gone back to New York? Can I honk at this lady? Go, woman-go, for fuck's sake.

Five fifty-four.

He had six minutes left to make a ferry he had driven ten hours to catch. Was it even possible to be this stupid?

The old lady car put on her blinker.

Turn, damn you.

She slowed way down, looked both ways before she turned, right, and finally got off the road. All the signs read, SLOW DOWN, 25 MPH ZONE MEANS YOU, but Fred didn't give a shit. I don't even know if I'm on the right road anymore, he said to himself as he gunned the engine to 40. If the ferry landing is not at the end of this road I will just swim across.

The ferry landing was at the end of the road.

He swung into a space, grabbed his bag from the passenger seat, and ran wildly in the direction of the water. His watch said six o'clock. "Shit!"

Then he heard a boat motor and the toot of a horn. "Get on if you're gettin' on." At the end of the dock was an excruciatingly adorable ferry, motor running, ready to untie.

"Little Lost Island?" asked Fred. What if he was at the wrong place?

"Yup," said the ferry driver. Not much more than a kid. Could he get them across? "Get on."

Fred took the couple of steps onto the boat and simultaneously it pulled away from the dock. There were only a few other people on it, all of whom seemed to know each other. They said nothing to Fred.

Had he rolled up the windows? Had he locked the car? He didn't know, and at this point he didn't care. He was on the ferry to the island, where a person he barely knew would or would not be. Jesus, what an idiot. He should have been writing. He should have been bonding with the kids. My wife goes away for four weeks and I act like I'm fifteen. Could I just get a hotel room in Bangor or whatever the hell town is nearby and go home in the morning?

But the die was cast and the Rubicon was crossed. Only it wasn't the Rubicon; it was this incredibly sweet spit of water that the ferry was now cutting through. He was on the Eleventh Hour; he was headed to Hopewell.

He approached the ferry driver. Ferry pilot. "Hey."

The boy nodded. Here was a Mainer.

Fred spoke up over the whine of the engine. "I'm headed to the west shore. Do you know it?"

"Yep."

"Can I walk there from where the ferry lands?"

"You're going to have to. No cars on the island."

Fred hadn't even asked Caroline how to get to the beach. Or to meet him at the dock. More imbecility. It was hard, though, to feel too foolish on this boat, with the salt air coming at him and the late sun slanting on the windows of the boat. "Could you give me directions?" Before the ferryman could say, "I could," in that Maine way, Fred added, "I'd like directions, please."

"I'll show you once we're out. Almost there."

It was amazing the difference it made to take a boat to a place. Little Lost Island was not more than ten minutes in the boat from Big Lost Island, but since the former was that much smaller and that much farther out at sea than the latter, it felt considerably more lost than its larger neighbor. Traveling over water was so easy, really. No lights or lanes, just buoys and channel markers to keep you from running aground. There were a few sailboats out, catching the evening breeze as it came up out of the west. He had resisted the temptation to check his messages since he'd left Brooklyn that morning. If Caroline had told him to call off the trip, it was too late. And if Rose had sent him something loving, it would undo all his resolve.

He checked his phone. It was dead.

"Ha!" Fred said. "Perfect."

Rose's e-mails had been brief-apparently she couldn't get much service-but it sounded like she was enjoying herself. She said she was making new friends, which was good. She didn't mention her writing. Her life had gotten so narrow when the twins were born. She'd had to put all her energy into Ben right from the start. As soon as they got the first part of the book advance, he'd wanted to hire a nanny or an au pair so Rose could write too, but she'd felt like she had to do it all. "When he's ready, Fred, we can hire somebody." But Ben was never ready. Actually, Rose was never ready. Fred felt that she wanted to get Ben to some mythical point of goodness and control before she handed him off to anyone else. But Ben was Ben and he wasn't going to change. Fred was not surprised that Patience was semibooting him from preschool. They'd figure something else out. Maybe this was the shock they needed to make some changes. Rose needed to finish her dissertation or just write something. She needed to be away from the kids. He actually could not believe she had managed to stay away from them for so long already. He'd thought she'd be back within a week, even though he'd told her she should stay away for at least two. Here it was, more than three weeks, and she was still up in Maine. He deliberately had not stopped for a lobster roll in Kennebunkport or Freeport just in case he ran into her. That would take some explaining.

What if this whole Caroline Dester thing was fake-some minion of a film studio leading him on? Then he'd get up here and find, what? The press? A mocking intern? It honestly didn't seem likely. Those texts he'd gotten from her even sounded like her voice. He closed his eyes and heard that voice again. He hoped she would speak French to him.

The ferry motor slowed, then reversed, as they approached the dock. One of the passengers jumped out and tied the boat up. The ferry driver cut the engine, the boat emptied out, and Fred stood waiting for the promised directions to the west shore. He didn't want to have to ask again.

"Go up the dock here, take the path right in front of you. It's the steepest but the quickest. Follow along to the big red cottage on your right, take the path alongside that one, and before you get to Grundys' there's a path to the west shore. Can't miss it."

Fred was pretty sure he could miss it.

"They're all down the beach. Lobster bake. Maybe they saved a lobster for you." He turned and left. Fred started up the dock and found the path. It was pretty steep, but it felt good to walk after ten hours in the car. Even with air-conditioning, it had been a hot, sticky ride. Fred wondered if he could persuade Caroline to take a sunset dive into the water. It was probably freezing, but it would feel so good after that drive. She looked more than hot in a bikini-there were plenty of pictures online. He liked to imagine her in one of those old, worn-out bathing suits that starlets never wear.

He kept hiking up the path. This place was well hidden-a good getaway from the paparazzi, although they seemed to have cooled off since poor Caroline did not get her Oscar. That must have hurt. He would write her an Oscar-winning part in this new book. Ha. Not possible. There are no Oscar-winning action heroes, and especially no Oscar-winning roles for the decorative foils to action heroes. Maybe he'd go back to one of his short stories, to give her something meaty. MACARTHUR WINNER INSPIRED BY DICK TO WRITE ROLE FOR INGENUE. That would be an unusual headline in Poets & Writers. Although dick is the inspiration for a lot of great fiction.

An old barn of a cottage loomed up in front of him. This was where the ferry kid had said to do something-follow along it. There was only one way to do that. He was in less good shape than he thought he was. And he was getting sweatier by the minute. This cottage had better have running water. He'd be damned if he was going to show up to meet Caroline Dester looking like this.

"Holy shit."

The cottage that emerged in front of him on the path was enormous. Really huge. This was a summer place to reckon with. He liked it right away. It looked simple, even if it was gigantic. Shingle-style.

Fred took the steps two at a time and peered in the screen door to the cool interior. "Hello?"

The place felt empty, though there might have been a family of four living upstairs and he wouldn't have found them for days. He didn't want to go inside-what if this wasn't even the place? Somebody else could be living here, for all he knew. And the kid had said they were all down at the beach. Wasn't the whole island basically a beach?

He could smell briny woodsmoke in the air. The lobster bake. He'd been to clambakes, but never a lobster bake. Could he just waltz up and join in? Why not? He walked around the porch to see if he could tell what direction it was coming from. If he strained, he could see a few figures on the water's edge. That had to be them.

He dropped his backpack, which had made huge sweat stains all over his shirt. Well, too bad. He was going to join this party, welcome or not.

He started down a worn grassy path that seemed to lead straight to the beach. It did not. Fred was disoriented and a little lost. The path meandered for a while, then stopped altogether. There was nothing for it but to bushwhack through the ferns. He knew he must look ridiculous in his sweat-stained shirt and skinny jeans-not great for this terrain. He had to be close by now.

In fact, he was. Two more steps took him to the edge of the beach. In front of him, silhouetted on the sand, were figures he did not recognize. A bunch of people and none of them was Caroline. Fred watched them for a while from the cover of his ferns. There was a couple with a kid about Bea and Ben's age. The kid was all over the place but keeping a cautious distance from the fire pit, which was letting off an amazing amount of steam. The smell was almost overwhelming-like salt water on fire. Fred breathed it in, deep.

He noticed something on the periphery of his vision. Oh God, right in front of him was Caroline Dester. At sea. On a rock, above the water, leaning back on her elbows, one leg extended. What a goddess! She wasn't as scrawny as some of those movie shots made her look, either. Here, in real life, she looked less like a movie star, more like a human being.

Had she posed out on the point just because she knew he was coming?

"Caroline!"

She didn't answer.

"Caroline!"

He ran down the path and started to climb over the boulders to where she was. They were a combination of enormous rounded stones and jagged volcanic ones. He didn't even stop to take off his stupid shoes till he got to a patch covered with seaweed and slipped onto his knees. "God damn it," he said.

When he scrambled up again, there was a hole in his jeans and his shoes were sodden. "Fuck." He had deliberately chosen his one pair of Prada loafers to impress Caroline Dester. They'd bog him down if he didn't take the time to get them off, so he kicked them off where he was, seaweed or no. He took another look at the goddess of the rock: The Birth of Venus in Maine. What if she disappeared before he could get at her? "Caroline!" he called. The sea devoured his voice.

He went out farther, with his leg probably bleeding and his shoes being eaten by sand crabs. The waves were pounding here-no wonder she hadn't heard him. But she had to see him soon. She turned and stood up.

He looked at her looking at him. He was facing straight into the sun, so he couldn't see her features. But after two months of watching videos of Caroline Dester he was almost positive this wasn't Caroline Dester. This woman was in a Speedo, not a bikini. She was taller, and she was not in her twenties. She didn't have a movie star body. She had a lush, curvy body that was actually much sexier than a twentysomething body. She started to climb over the rocks toward him. "I can't believe you came," she said.

All at once she was pressed into him and he felt her breath come quickly.