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whispered to me, “How long’s your mom here for?”
    â€œShe hasn’t said.”
    â€œWhat’s she want?”
    â€œMe,” I whispered. “She wants me. Back in Boston.”
    Josie stopped her work, a lemon square sprinkledwith a dusting of icing sugar in one hand. “Are you considering it?”
    â€œDid Lizzy consider marrying Mr. Collins?” I said, referring to characters in
Pride and Prejudice
.
    â€œOnly briefly. Although her mother wanted her to.”
    â€œExactly.”
    Butch pushed between us and reached for a raspberry tart. Josie hip-checked him. “Back off, buster—wait until I’m finished here.” He snatched up the delicate pastry and quickly retreated.
    â€œYou know you’ll never win,” I said.
    â€œNot when it comes to the Greenblatt brothers.” Josie’s almost-fiancé, Jake, was Butch’s brother.
    Butch grinned and bit into his tart. He looked around the room. “His Honor not honoring us with his presence tonight?”
    â€œHe had a meeting,” I said.
    â€œGee,” Butch replied. “That’s too bad.” He gave Josie an exaggerated wink and went to find a seat.
    Josie moved away from the table, and the rush to the refreshments began. Grace Sullivan, who was Josie’s closest friend and rapidly becoming one of mine, cried, “Let the festivities begin” in her usual flamboyant manner. She greeted Josie and me, whom she’d last seen only the previous night, with a European-style double kiss, one on each cheek. Mrs. Peterson, one of our most enthusiastic patrons, for once not accompanied by some combination of her five daughters, was next to arrive. “Charity is at some silly soccer camp,” she declared to the room. “An entire week wasted chasing around after a foolish ball. As for Primrose, she’s feeling unwell. Nothing to worry about, I’m sure. Just the sort of thing young girls get, you know.”
    Which I interpreted to mean that the teenage girls were grateful for any excuse not to have to spend their summer evening discussing classic works of literature with people their mother’s age. Even I, who’d loved the classics the first time I was exposed to them, could understand that.
    My mom and Aunt Ellen chatted happily while everyone helped themselves to refreshments and found seats. The sisters were not close and could go for a year or more without seeing each other, especially now that my siblings and I were older. Aunt Ellen and her husband, Amos, were true Bankers (as longtime locals were sometimes called) and their idea of a vacation was a weekend in Duck or Hatteras. They had built my uncle’s law office together, and were both very active in the life of the community. My mom had different goals in life, which was why she left the area, planning to never return. She had obtained most of those goals.
    Theodore took the seat on the other side of Ellen and my aunt introduced him to Mom. Ellen said something and Mom threw back her head and laughed. It had been a long time, I realized, since I’d heard my mom laugh with such abandon. She held the Michael Kors purse on her lap and slid her beach bag under her chair. Butch sat beside Mom and joined the conversation.
    Everyone except for Karen had arrived and once they were clutching glasses of tea or lemonade and napkins full of pastries, I called the meeting of the Bodie Island Lighthouse Library Classic Novel Reading Club to order.
    Most of our members had joined the group because they wanted to discover new books and to hear otherpeople’s opinions on what they’d read. Theodore came because he liked to talk about not only the book in question, but every other book of any possible similarity, the social and political issues of the time, the author’s life and influences, and anything else he could think of to impress us with his range of knowledge. It was exhausting trying to get