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Mother Nature carves out another bite with her fork. Mickey’s crew can miraculously move an entire house back, one hundred feet, four hundred feet, but eventually the owner will run out of frontage. The front door will be at the road. There’ll be nothing left but crust, and Mother Nature will still be hungry.
    Mickey’s now transplanting a seven-bedroom monstrosity on Baxter Road, but this one’s different. The owners recently bought the house directly across the street. Mickey’s crew razed it, and now they’re moving the cliff house to the other side of Baxter, to an entirely new piece of pie. Only on Nantucket.
    “Crazy, huh? Mickey says if he lives long enough, he’ll move that house again,” says Jill.
    “This is why I live mid-island,” says Petra, who lives mid-islandbecause that’s where she grew up and because she can’t afford to live closer to the ocean.
    It’s a good story, but Beth is now busy testing out the believability of different exit strategies in her head and can barely keep her butt on the couch. I forgot my book. Gracie’s not feeling well. I’m not feeling well.
    Petra, who is sitting next to Beth and somehow senses her approaching flight, reaches over and discreetly slides Beth’s hand between their laps. She squeezes it, firmly but not too hard, offering both comfort and an anchor. I love you, and you’re not going anywhere.
    They hear a perfunctory knock at the door, and then Courtney and Georgia enter at the same time, a study in contrasts. Courtney’s round, makeup-less face is flushed pink, her hair is loosely gathered into a ponytail high on her head, her hairline is wet with sweat. She’s wearing a lavender tank top under an unzipped thrift-shop winter coat, black cotton yoga pants, and flip-flops. She has her book in hand. Bright and smiling, she takes a seat on the couch on the other side of Beth, her energy floating into the room along with her, landing softly, like an airy, white dandelion puff blown in on a gentle breeze. She smells of patchouli.
    Georgia, on the other hand, is hurried and harried, wearing smoky evening eye shadow, lipstick, and bold, dangling gold earrings, clomping in on her black business heels, struggling against the weight of the stuffed leather laptop bag on her shoulder, cursing the latest bridezilla who kept her on the phone for forty-five minutes agonizing over aisle runner choices, peeling off hat and gloves and scarf and coat as she apologizes for being late. If Courtney is a wispy seed sailing in on a warm breeze, Georgia is a tree limb snapped by a hurricane wind, crashing to the earth. It’s hard to imagine from the sight of them that Courtney and Georgia are best friends, but they are.
    Relieved and now called to action, Jill excuses herself and runs into her kitchen. Before Georgia can sit down, Jill returns, claps her hands twice like a schoolteacher demanding her class’s attention, and ushers the group into her dining room. Georgia is the first to gasp, then they all do. Jill beams, delighting in all the oohs and aahs, gratified to have elicited the exact reaction she’d imagined.
    The book this month takes place in post–World War II Japan, and clearly Jill was inspired by this setting. An origami animal sits on the center of each plate—a purple crane, a white swan, an orange tiger, a green turtle, a gray elephant. A gob of green wasabi and a neat pile of fleshy, pink ginger are placed to the right of each paper animal, and each plate is flanked by a pair of chopsticks and a tiny bowl filled with soy sauce. White tea lights are scattered around the room, and two bottles of sake are on the table. California, salmon, and tuna rolls are displayed on an oval platter at the center of it all.
    “Wow, Jill. Tell me you didn’t roll these yourself,” says Courtney.
    “Of course she did,” says Georgia.
    “I did,” admits Jill.
    “And did you make these, too?” asks Courtney, holding up a purple paper crane.
    “It wasn’t