inviting friends.
Evelyn had mistaken his need for closeness. She had mistaken her giving for motherhood.
Downstairs, the applause came again.
She put Daniel’s sweater in the box, then immediately took it out.
No.
Not tonight.
She folded it back into the cedar chest, closed the lid, and went to the hallway mirror. Her gray hair was pinned loosely at the back of her head. She wore a blue cardigan over a plain cotton dress and no shoes. She considered changing, then decided against it.
This was her house.
She did not need a costume to enter it.
The staircase creaked under her feet as she descended. Halfway down, she noticed the smell first: lemon polish and expensive food. Not her food. Not chowder, coffee, toast, or blueberry pie cooling on the counter. Catered food. Butter, oysters, herbs she could not name.
In the front room, someone had moved the umbrella stand that had belonged to her grandmother.
In the kitchen, trays covered the table Daniel had built from reclaimed pine. A caterer in black gloves was arranging tiny spoons on a slate board.
The woman glanced up. ‘Oh, I’m sorry. Staff entrance is through the side.’
Evelyn looked at her.
The caterer’s face changed as she realized the mistake.
‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered.
Evelyn said nothing. She walked past her, through the dining room, and stopped at the mantel.
Her wedding photograph was gone.
For a moment, she could not breathe.
She found it on the sideboard behind a vase of white roses, facedown.
Daniel and Evelyn had taken that photograph outside the courthouse because they could not afford a reception. She wore a blue dress borrowed from her cousin. Daniel wore a tie too short for his tall frame. Both of them were laughing because it had started to rain and the photographer kept apologizing.
Evelyn lifted the frame and turned it over. The glass had not broken.
Behind her, through the open windows, Claire’s voice rang out over the lawn.
‘When Noah brought me here,’ Claire said, ‘I knew this place was meant to be part of our future.’
Guests clapped.
Evelyn held the photograph against her chest.
Noah brought me here.
As if Bayberry Farm had been his to present.
She placed the photograph back on the mantel, right in the center, pushing the roses aside. A few petals fell onto the hearth.
Then she went to the mudroom.
Her boots stood by the door, but she did not put them on. She stepped barefoot onto the back porch and into the wet grass.
Fog thickened the air. The chandeliers under the tent cast a gold haze around the guests. Women in silk dresses balanced glasses in manicured hands. Men laughed too loudly near the bar. The quartet sat on a raised platform set over the patch of lawn where Daniel had once taught Noah to bait a hook.
No one noticed Evelyn at first.
She passed the herb garden. Passed the apple trees. Passed the boathouse door, which someone had propped open with Daniel’s old lobster buoy.
That stopped her.
The buoy was painted red and white, chipped from years of use. Daniel had kept it after his last season on the water. It sat normally on a shelf inside the boathouse, beside his rusted
