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hurtled into a laneless rotary, Nahant peninsula spiraling out into the sea on their right as they trundled northward, the car swaying slightly under the weight of Connie’s plants and belongings. In the backseat, wedged between two jars overflowing with rosemary and mint, Arlo sat, swaying with the motion of the car. A thick rope of drool swung from his mouth.
    “So I suppose it’s Grace’s fault that you said yes,” said Liz, voice pointed. “Really, Connie, this is your doing as well.”
    “How exactly is this my doing?” Connie demanded, brushing a loose floss of hair off her brow with the back of one wrist. “I was perfectly happy! I was just doing my work . Look at Arlo. I think he’s going to be sick.”
    “Then why did you let her talk you into it?” Liz pointed out.
    Connie sighed. Liz was right, of course. In fact she had been right for the past six weeks, which made it all the more difficult for Connie to maintain her self-righteous anger.
    “Just because you’re right doesn’t mean I have to be happy about it,” Connie grumbled.
    “Well, if I were you, I’d take a more pragmatic approach,” Liz said. “You’ve agreed to do it, so the only thing you can do at this point is adjust your attitude. Watch out for this guy—I don’t think he’s yielding.” A pickup truck peeled out of a side street, screeching onto the seawall drive just in front of them. The car rocked as Connie stamped on the brake.
    They drove on for a moment in silence. The white-gray sea rolled away to the horizon, dotted in the distance by six or eight tiny sails. Liz cranked her window down a crack and turned her face into the breeze. The briny smell of seawater crept into the car, freshening and cooling the air. They passed a boatyard crowded with masts and boat hulls propped up by rusted scaffolds. Next to the boatyard, at the base of a rotting wooden dock, stood a heap of wire mesh lobster traps clotted with seaweed. As she watched, a fatseagull flapped leisurely down to perch atop the stacked traps, folding his wings along his back and gazing out across the shimmering water.
    “You could be looking at this a whole other way,” Liz ventured, turning the map over in her lap.
    “Oh?” asked Connie. “And what way is that?”
    Liz leaned her head back against the headrest and smiled.
    “It’s pretty here,” she said.
     
    A FTER A HALF HOUR OF GOOD-NATURED SQUABBLING ABOUT THE PROPER orientation of the map and the incomprehensible layouts of New England towns, which follow no sort of logic, they drove the Volvo around a curve and down a narrow lane shaded with weeping willows. The lane was lined with small, boxy houses, their windows punched at uneven intervals, their wooden cladding bleached pale gray by decades of sun and salt water. Connie squinted to see the numbers nailed to each slowly passing door.
    “What number are we looking for again?” she asked.
    “Milk Street. Number three,” said Liz, peering through the passenger window. Next to one of the houses leaned a shed festooned with stained lobster trap buoys hung up to dry. Another was almost completely obscured by a sailboat parked on wooden pilings in a driveway choked with weeds. Liz could just make out the lettering on the stern of the forgotten sailboat: Won derment, Marblehead, Mass.
    “Wonderment,” whispered Liz.
    “These houses are ancient,” remarked Connie. “Pre-Revolution, maybe.”
    Liz spread the map across the Volvo dashboard and inspected it. “The map does say this is ‘Old Town.’”
    “I believe it,” said Connie dryly. “There’s seventeen. So it must be on this side of the street.”
    Connie slowed the car down, gradually rolling to a halt near the dead end of the street. The lane petered out a few yards away, disappearing into a graveled trail that wound into a sparse wood.
    “It should be right here,” she said, looking out the window at a thicket abutting the stand of trees, obscured by a dense wall of