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believe it. But he’s as much trouble dead as he was alive, and not just because of how he died. He shafted my mother—even now Benjamin Blaine is pulling our strings. We didn’t bury him at all.”
    Jack stared at his feet. “I wish we could,” he said. “Death should put an end to hatred.”
    Adam shook his head. “Not for me. Not with what he’s done.”
    After a moment, Jack met his eyes. “I know,” he said in a tone of resignation. “How do you suppose I feel, Adam? Long before you were born, Ben was my brother.”
    For Adam, Jack’s statement had its own complex resonance. His uncle’s nature was inherently kind; despising Ben must carry its own pain. Through the prism of hindsight, Adam could see that Jack treated those who suffered as he had—Ben’s wife and sons—with deep compassion, understanding all too well how they must feel. Where Ben was indifferent to Teddy’s talent, Jack—who knew what it was to make things with his hands, using his eye for form and shape—encouraged him. And when Teddy wrestled with being gay, it was only Jack who listened.
    This led Adam to the question of why Jack had never married. Perhaps, like Teddy, Jack was gay—for an islander of Jack’s years, secrecy might have felt safer. Or perhaps sexual intimacy was not important to him. But whatever Jack’s nature, Adam, too, had benefited from his uncle’s care.
    When Ben was away—as was frequent—Jack took him fishing or sailing or hiking, teaching him to observe the small wonders of nature. With Jack, Adam never felt that clutch in the stomach, the need to please his harshly judgmental father. In Ben’s absence, Jack came to Adam’s games, cheering as he played quarterback, or point guard, or center field. It was from Jack, not Ben, that Adam learned the value of positive encouragement—to cherish his achievements, to learn from his mistakes. It was Jack who taught Adam compassion for himself, and then for others. Without Jack, Adam might have become his father.
    Perhaps that had been his uncle’s plan. For as long as Adam could remember, the two brothers had a quietly corrosive relationship. Ben spoke of Jack with dismissive scorn; Jack did not mention him at all. It was as if Ben’s family was their only bridge. When, as a teenager, Adam had wondered aloud why they seemed estranged, Jack had answered wryly, “We have temperamental differences.” But gradually, through his mother and a populace that, in winter, shrunk to fourteen thousand souls, Adam had come to understand far more.
    Their family of origin had been impoverished in every way. Nathaniel Blaine had been frustrated by the harshness of his way of life, all that he knew, and a deep sense of his own limitations. He was a man of volcanic anger, subjecting his wife, Amy, to a stunted and fearful existence. Both drank to excess; neither had much love to give Jack, and less after Ben was born. But Jack was gentle from birth, while Ben burned with the desire to transcend his family. The first test for Ben was Jack—quite explicitly, Ben set out not just to outstrip Jack as a student, athlete, and sailor, but to sear Jack’s soul with the knowledge of his own inferiority. It was Ben who left for Yale; Ben who became the Vineyard’s most famous son. Jack was known as his older, lesser brother.
    Parsing these reflections, Adam glanced sideways at his uncle, Jack’s gentle mien illuminated by the sun in its descent. Jack should not have been on this island—then or now. In his twenties Jack, like Teddy, had struggled for survival in New York City. Then the widowed Nathaniel Blaine, stumbling while drunk, had struck his head on the kitchen counter and bled to death on the floor. No one had found him for days; no one cared much. But he had left the home he died in, a small house near Menemsha Harbor. In a seemingly benign gesture, Ben had waived his rights of inheritance, giving Jack a home he could not replace anywhere else by selling it. And so Jack