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setting those traps?”
    “Every week all summer.” I open the refrigerator, shove the
    bag in, hoping that Houdini the lobster and its cohort will be
    stupefied by the cold before I have to slay them. I pass on Uncle
    Ben’s message, translated entirely from Portuguese.
    Mrs. Ellington sets down her cane again to clasp her hands
    together. “Lobsters and love. Two essentials of life. Do come with me to the porch, Gwen dear—if you wouldn’t mind carrying
    the glasses? There we can discuss the other essentials of life.”
    The porch too—just exactly the same—all old white wicker
    furniture with the worn, teal-colored hammock swaying in
    the breeze. The Ellingtons’ wide lawn fades into sea oats, sand,
    and then the azure ocean. To the far left is Whale Rock, a huge
    boulder that looks exactly like a beached humpback whale. At
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    high tide all you can see is the fin, but the water’s low now and
    almost the entire rock is visible. The view’s so stunning, I catch my breath, with the feeling I always have when I see the pret-tiest parts of the island—that if I could look out my window
    at this all the time, I would be a better person, calmer, happier, less likely to get flustered with school or impatient with Dad.
    But that theory can’t really work, because Old Mrs. Partridge
    up the road has one of the best views on the island—I mean
    of the water, not of Cass Somers—and it doesn’t sweeten her
    disposition at all.
    Mrs. Ellington clinks her glass against mine. “Here’s to
    another sunset,” she says.
    I must seem puzzled, because she explains, “My dear father’s
    favorite toast. I’m quite superstitious. I don’t think I’ve ever
    had a drink on the porch without saying it. You must answer
    ‘Sunrise too.’”
    “Sunrise too,” I say, with a firm nod.
    She pats me approvingly on the leg.
    “I imagine we should negotiate our terms,” Mrs. E. says.
    Damn. I stammer out something about the salary Mom
    mentioned—she must have been wrong, it had to be too good
    to be true—and Mrs. Ellington chuckles. “Oh, not money.
    That’s all been settled by your mother and my Henry, I suspect.
    I meant terms as in how we will rub along together. I haven’t
    had a . . . companion before, so, naturally, I need to know what
    you enjoy doing and you need to know the same about me,
    so we don’t spend the summer torturing each other. I must
    say . . . it will be good to be around a young person again. My
    grandsons . . .” She trails off. “Are off, living their lives.” For 32
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    a second, all eighty-plus years show on her face as her usual
    smile fades.
    I have a flash of memory of some big party she held for one
    of the grandsons. His wedding? Twenty-first birthday? Big tent.
    White with turrets. Almeida’s catered. There were fireworks.
    Nic and Viv and I . . . and Cass . . . lay on the beach and watched them burst and glimmer into the ocean. A private party with a
    public show. Like the ocean, no one owns the sky.
    After a moment, she continues, resolutely. “As they should
    be. Now, do tell me all about yourself!”
    Uh . . . What “all” does she want to know? The kind of “all”
    I tell Viv is different from the “all” I tell Mom, so God knows
    what the “all” is to someone who might want to employ me,
    and . . .
    As if hearing my mental babbling, she again pats me on the
    knee. “For example, how do you feel about the beach, dear
    Gwen? Like it or loathe it?”
    Does anyone on earth hate the beach? I tell Mrs. Ellington I love the ocean and she says, “Good then. My friends—we call ourselves the Ladies League, but I believe there are others on the
    island with less flattering names—the Old Beach Bats comes to
    mind . . . Anyway, we like to swim every day at ten and again at
    four—just as the light is shifting. Sometimes we make a picnic
    and