A million sensations came over him at once: shock, surprise, tenderness, shame, love-and those were just the ones he could name.

"Oh my God," he said. "Rose?"

He found her mouth and she tasted of salt and sun.

"Rose. You're the one who's here."

He tightened his hold on her. She was utterly tender and open and all he could think was I have a goddess for a wife and she's here and Jesus Christ I adore her. I forgot that I adore her. He broke away from her long enough to say, "Rosie, darling, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." His heart was pounding against her chest. Her skin was hot. He put his hand at the back of her neck and closed his fingers around her hair.

"I've missed you so much, sweetheart. I need you so much." As he said it he realized how true it was.

She pressed her mouth to his and opened it. Her kiss electrified him.

"Can we go to bed?" she asked. They didn't even stop to pick up his shoes.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN.

Jon, come figure this out with me," Robert called. "We take the tarp off first and put it on the sand. There's going to be a lot of steam, so watch out."

With a heave, Jon and Robert lifted the soaking tarp off the galvanized tub. The steam came at them like a typhoon. "Let it blow off! Let it blow off!" called Jon. "Keep Ethan away!"

"He is away!" Lottie called back.

They spread the hot tarp out on the sand.

"Ready?" asked Robert. Lottie had thought to bring oven mitts, thank God. He really was not much of a Mainer, despite the work boots. Anyone who knew what he was doing would have a pair of work gloves in his pocket. At all times.

"Okay, heave!" said Jon.

They lifted the tub, Robert trying not to show how much heavier it was than he'd thought. "Put it on the sand and then we'll tip it over!" said Jon, who suddenly seemed to know more about the whole process than Robert did. "Okay, now."

He and Jon dumped the fragrant, steaming, confusing contents of the galvanized tub on the canvas. If there was ever an ad for Maine island life, this would be it.

Where was Rose?

He had proposed the lobster bake for Rose, and done all that digging and firewood dragging and tending a hot fire for her. At this point, he was almost prepared to admit that Rose did not care about him as much as he cared about her. Or as much as he wanted to care about her.

"Where's Rose?" asked Lottie. "I know you did all this for her, Robert. We are going to enjoy it, but it was meant to be Rose's special moment. But we can't wait for her. She has other things on her mind, I think." She picked out a lobster from the steaming hot seaweed. "That'll be ours, I think, Ethan, don't you?"

"It's a giant cockroach! I want the red one!"

"They're all red ones!"

"I want the one that has the most red."

"I hope Caroline makes it down," Beverly said. "She's been up with those monstrous children all day."

"The big-kid play!" said Ethan. "That's not red!"

"Yes, it would be very nice if Rose were here," said Robert, not too pitifully, he hoped.

Lottie found another, possibly redder lobster. "Rose is already in love; that's the thing, Robert. You gave her just enough attention so that when she goes home to Fred-or when he comes here-she'll get attention from him, too. Want me to find a lobster for you, Beverly? I know you're color-blind."

"Thank you, Lottie," said Beverly.

"Ethan, see if you can find some corn. But just show me. It's too hot to pick up." She turned to Beverly. "If Caroline doesn't make it down here we can bring her up a plate. She's in intensive rehearsals. The boys mostly want to play with their fake swords and the girls mostly want to put on costumes. Except for a few of the kids, who wanted to do both."

Robert could not have cared less about the island play. The sun was starting to set and the rushing water was like molten gold behind the black trunks of the spruce trees. Where was Rose?

"Can I get you the crackers, Beverly?" asked Jon. "The shells are harder to break than I thought they would be. Hey, Lotts, Ethan found the corn."

"And the potatoes!" said Ethan. "I found the potatoes, too! They're under the seaweed."

"I can't believe Rose is missing this. Jon, can't you go around to Foster's Rock and get her?"

"Forester's Point," said Robert. He was so disappointed that she hadn't been watching as they tipped the tub onto the tarp-the great moment of triumph!-that he was consoling himself with eating. He slurped a salty clam drenched in butter and then another. Jon sent Ethan over with a beer. Now he knew why people went to all this trouble. Everything tasted like the sea.

"There she is," said Lottie. "Who's with her?"

Robert looked up. Rose-his Rose?-was coming down to the beach with her body pressed tight against a man he didn't recognize.

Their bodies were in sync. Their heads leaned toward each other. They had the freshly showered look of the postcoital.

Rose beamed at all of them. "This is my husband, Fred Arbuthnot," she said. "He'll be here for a while." She kissed him.

Robert's heart shattered. "Have a lobster," he said.

He didn't know, precisely, how he got through the rest of the meal. The next clams he ate were sandy, the potatoes underdone, and the corn starchy. Lottie and Jon and Ethan were a tight little unit; Rose and Fred were practically intertwined; and Beverly was cranky because Caroline the actress had failed to appear. He was tempted to say he'd never felt more alone, but unfortunately, he often felt more alone.

He was tired of sitting there eating rubbery food, so he got started cleaning up. No one was helping. He raked the burning embers and dragged the tarp up the beach to the path leading to the cottage. The shells could stay where they were; the tide was coming in and would take them all away. He started picking up the corn husks and gathering the plates they'd brought down when Fred noticed him at last.

"Want a hand?"

I want a hand to connect with your nose and flatten it. "Sure," said Robert. "Maybe you could take the galvanized tub down to the water and rinse it out. Or we can hose it off at the cottage if that's too much trouble."

"No trouble at all," said Fred. Robert hated that this Fred of Rose's was such a good guy.

"I'll help," said Rose. She didn't look like Helga anymore. She looked like what she was: a real woman, with kids and a life; a woman with a husband whom she apparently loved.

I hope you deserve her, Fred, he thought. Bastard.

Together Fred and Rose took the charred tub down to the water's edge. He could hear them laughing at some private joke as they got closer to the water. They filled the tub with salt water and dumped it out a couple of times. Then they kissed.

"Gross!" said Ethan.

All four of them watched as Fred and Rose's kiss went longer and longer. The low sun cast their long shadows on the beach in front of them. They held each other's hands and came back up to the beach.

"I think we got it all cleaned out," said Fred.

"Nicely done," said Robert. Could he poison Fred's coffee tomorrow without harming Rose?

"Sorry we missed you taking this off the flame," Rose said. "I had to show Fred the cottage right away." They grinned at each other. "I don't think we'll make it to the play." She was leading Fred up to the cottage. His cottage. "We have to watch the moon rise."

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT.

Over at the assembly room, the scene was chaotic. Four of the kids sent notes with their cousins that they'd gone for a nighttime boat ride to look at the huge blue moon and wouldn't be back in time to perform. And Captain Hook was out with food poisoning. He had experimented with eating a dead crab he'd found on the beach and it had not gone down well. Hook's dad, who'd promised he would play piano for them, bowed out too.

The lack of music was too bad, but there could be no show without the lead pirate, so Caroline took Wills by the shoulder. She knelt down and looked him in the eye. "We need you, Wills. You've got to be Captain Hook," she said. Wills was shaking his head, no no no. "You'd be great out there. They'll love you."

"I don't want to be Captain Hook! He's too mean!" Wills was clearly on the point of a meltdown.

Caroline gave a hard look at the girls. "Come on, ladies. We have three Elsas and two Annas. We could do the show with one less princess. And you know it."

"No way," said Lucia. She was their lead Anna.

"You should be Captain Hook, Caroline!" said Sarah. "You're tall! And you can be mean!"

"I am not appearing onstage," said Caroline. "Anywhere. Sorry."

"Caroline!" Lottie had found her way backstage. "We saved you a lobster. Are you all set?"

"We don't have any music and we're missing Captain Hook. Otherwise we're good."

"Yikes."

Reece, frantic, ran over in a panic. "What should I tell everyone?" he asked. "They think the play should start!"

"I better go," said Lottie. "Break a leg. Maybe Robert plays piano. I'll ask him."

"Or we could just cancel the whole thing," Caroline said as Lottie disappeared into the audience.

"There's always an island play," said Paige, her lower lip quivering. "My grampy will kill me if we don't do it."

"You have to be Captain Hook! We need you!" The girls were laying it on thick.

There would be photos and videos and hashtags swirling around the interwebs if she did it. OSCAR LOSER SINKS PIRATE PLAY, or a lawsuit from Disney if she so much as uttered a word from Frozen. But her publicist would applaud; anything heartwarming that involved kids was a win. CRYBABY CAROLINE MAKES COMEBACK WITH KIDS. DESTER FINDS HERSELF ON LOST ISLAND.

Oh, what the hell, she thought. "All right. I'll do it."

Her troupe of players cheered, and then got to work drawing a mustache on her upper lip, finding something from the costume box that would be vaguely suitable to wear, and testing her on her lines.

"Okay, everybody, get into position! Time to start!" said Jessie.

Reece flashed the lights. "Please take your seats!" he said. "And be quiet! It's time for . . . Frozen Peter Pan!"

Jessie pulled open the curtain. A piano fanfare started from nowhere. The play began.

With everyone else at the play, Fred and Rose had the cottage to themselves and made good use of it. The blue moon was rising outside their little bedroom, and Fred regarded Rose, asleep next to him. Her pale skin was almost aglow in this shallow light. Her eyes beneath the delicate lids were utterly still, her eyebrows almost invisible from so much sun, bleached completely away. Her shoulders were a little sunburned, as were her breasts-she must be sunbathing topless, he thought. That's nice. Her nipples were so pale they were almost translucent. He remembered how painful nursing had been for her, with tiny Bea and Ben latched on almost constantly for months. Ben hadn't wanted to feed at all, and Bea's first tooth had given her mastitis.

He kissed one breast very softly, then the other.

The scar from the C-section was a lot fainter now, but he knew she was still self-conscious about it. Hence that old red Speedo that she clung to. Women should bear these scars like warriors do. They should show them off and boast.

He loved that she had the body of a mother. It was a much more interesting body now than she'd had when they were young. Not that he hadn't been interested in her body then; on the contrary. But now she bore their history. That worry line between her eyebrows-that appeared while Ben had his endless colic. The wrinkles beginning to show at the creases of her eyes were from good times: Swings on the playground. Her first published poem. The weekend they spent in New Orleans.

On her left arm were the freckles that always appeared in that exact spot: a cluster right above her wrist, then a pause, then a scattering up to her elbow.

I love my wife, he thought.

Rose opened her eyes. "Penny for your thoughts," she said.

"I love my wife."

"Liar."

"Okay, I was thinking of how much more I love your body now than I did when I first met you."

"Now I know you're lying," said Rose, though she was smiling.

"You think so?" he said, and rolled on top of her.

She grinned. "Guess not."

The piano was not Robert's favorite instrument-the thing was so mechanical-but Lottie told him that the whole show would fall apart if there was no music, so he reluctantly sat down at the bench. There was some sheet music provided for a couple of the songs, but that was it. He started the play with a cheesy fanfare and imagined he could get away with a few well-placed chords to go with the action, but from the first moment Captain Hook stepped onstage, the game was suddenly elevated. When she spoke, her voice sent a thrill through his body from the back of his neck to the soles of his feet.

He was not much of a keyboardist but he played to impress her and took his cues from whatever she did onstage. He was the silent movie pianist to her swashbuckling adventurer. When she didn't have the audience in stitches she had them fearing for their lives. She made the kids seem like professionals. She made him feel like he would do anything for her.

At the end of the show the audience demanded an encore of the dreaded song about following your dreams or letting things go or whatever it was about, and in the final chorus Robert took it up a half step so the girls could really milk it. Then the curtain rang down and the play was over.