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the entire group to see the dining room at the same time. She’s imagining a grand entrance.
    Beth is growing antsy, too. Petra’s planning on outing her tonight, and Beth is feeling less and less certain about this decision each time Jill sighs. It’s not that she doesn’t want her girlfriends to know that Jimmy’s having an affair and has moved out. She doesn’t want the whole island to know. And they will—Len, the school principal; Patty, the checkout woman at Stop & Shop; Lisa, Beth’s hairdresser; Jessica’s basketball coach.
    But Petra’s right. Beth needs to stand tall in her truth, draw strength from the collective love of her friends, and something else. Another platitude from Petra’s pep talk earlier today sounded good at the time. Beth can’t remember it now. Petrareads a lot of inspirational books. She also reads tarot cards and sees a shaman once a month instead of a regular therapist. A lot of people on the island think Petra’s a little cuckoo. While Beth agrees that Petra can lean a bit eccentric, she also believes Petra possesses an inner wisdom that most people never know, a spiritual center that Beth admires and is drawn to and is certain that she herself lacks.
    Plus, honesty, friendship, and New Age mumbo jumbo aside, it’s nothing short of a miracle that Jimmy’s affair isn’t public knowledge already anyway. Beth knows. Petra knows. Jimmy and Angela know that Beth knows, so they’re probably less careful now. Someone from the restaurant must know. And that someone will sooner or later tell someone who will tell Jill or Courtney or Jessica’s basketball coach.
    And the girls now know that he’s moved out. Sophie was the first to notice that Dad wasn’t inhabiting any of his usual spots—the bed, the couch, his cigar chair. Where’s Dad? turned out to be a harder question to answer than What’s sex? or Have you ever smoked pot? Beth teetered her way through her answer, purposefully keeping the explanation short and vague (and honest—she doesn’t know exactly where he is either), a vain attempt to protect them from having the kind of father who would cheat on their mother. So the girls know that he’s not living at home, but they don’t know the ugly reason. Yet. Sadly, their father is, in fact, cheating on their mother, and it’s only a matter of time before everyone on Nantucket, including his three beautiful daughters, knows it.
    Beth picks up the copy of Nantucket Life from Jill’s coffee table and thumbs through it, hoping for distraction while Jill frets about how late it’s getting. Beth agrees. It’s taking too long to get started. She feels like she’s in the waiting room at her dentist’s office, knowing that she needs to get her teeth cleaned and that they’ll look and feel great when she’s done, but the waiting around gives her anxiety and her memory toomuch time to play together. She’ll begin to fixate on the anticipated sound of the metal instruments scraping against her teeth, the throbbing soreness in her gums, the shame she feels when the hygienist scolds her for not flossing enough, the taste of latex and blood in her mouth. If she has to wait more than ten minutes for the hygienist to call out her name, it takes every ounce of self-control she possesses not to leave for another six months.
    Her hygienist and dentist are going to know that Jimmy is cheating on her.
    Beth tries to forget about Jimmy and her dentist and what she and Petra talked about earlier and focus on Jill. She’s telling them a story about Mickey’s latest transplant project. Jill’s husband, Mickey, runs his own construction company. The most incredible jobs he contracts aren’t new construction or elaborate additions, but the moving of existing homes a few critical feet. The historic cottages and mansions positioned on the cliffs in ’Sconset are all in imminent danger of tumbling over with the eroding edge, as if each home were sitting on a piece of pie, and every year