the most of everything that comes along their way.
  Happiness lies for those who cry, those who hurt, those who have searched, and those 
who have tried, for only they can appreciate the importance of people who have touched 
their lives.
  Love begins with a smile, grows with a kiss and ends with a tear.
  The brightest future will always be based on a forgotten past, you can't go on well in 
life until you let go of your past failures and heartaches.
  Okay, before you think I’m just some rich bitch who gets sentimental and gooey over 
romance novels, the reason I think about those things is because when you are beautiful 
and you have money, it’s those simple things you have to remember.
  And I was pretty happy for the most part, right up until summer.
  This probably began because Daddy didn’t want me to open Montgomery Hill on Memorial 
Day like we always did. Mom was already up there, a week or two early, and I’d only just 
come home from finals.
  I have always gone to Outerbridge Island since I was about four, and I never miss a 
summer there. It’s what I look forward to after a tough year in school, and since I would 
turn eighteen over the summer and I had just finished school — but I’d be entering Sarah 
Lawrence in September — I really wanted to enjoy what time I had left to just be a kid.
  Daddy was in one of his moods, though, and I suspect that woman he knows was part of 
it. Mom told me all about that woman when she gave me the speech about sex and life and 
marriage when I was fourteen. “Men have problems with their bodies,” she said, looking 
only a little embarrassed. “They all cheat. It’s just something we put up with if we can. 
It’s nothing about love.
  Don’t even think that. It’s just their biology. They have their good sides and their 
bad sides. And there are plenty of bad women, too,” she added. “Like that woman.”
  That woman lived in Brooklyn, in a brownstone that my father had bought for her in the 
1970s. I took the subway out to it once, and stood on the steps in front, looking through 
the windows. That woman had a nice chandelier and some paintings on the walls but it was 
a fairly plain house in Park Slope. I sort of think I saw a little of her, too, walking 
up the street. She wasn’t even pretty, which was sort of what amazed me. She wasn’t like 
my mother. She was tall, with big feet, and red hair that needed some kind of style.
  Her face was nothing like my mothers, nothing like the women I knew; she looked sort of 
round and plain.
  I don’t really know if it was that woman I saw, but I suspect it was.
  So, just after high school graduation, I was all ready to go to the island, but Daddy 
was just moody and told me that I needed to stay because of Jimmy, who was supposed to 
have been in town.
  All right, Jimmy McTeague. He’s a tennis player who goes to Wimbledon every year, he’s 
practically a National champion, and his father owns McTeague Sports, the chain, although 
I never understand why they don't have stores in Manhattan. I met Jimmy when he was at 
Exeter, at some dance, and I was just thinking he was cute. Marnie called him the Leech 
for some reason which I didn’t quite understand, but I knew there was 
something interesting about him. He lived a different life than me, and I never really 
saw myself with that kind of Midwestern jock-type. He was always sweating, too, which I 
guess goes with the whole athletic thing, but not something that's pleasant to be around 
an hour after a match.
  Still, by the time I was seventeen, I really liked Jimmy. And no, I had no thoughts of 
marriage or anything like that. We hadn’t actually even been intimate or anything, just 
held hands a lot and went to dances and out to dinner. When I debuted, Jimmy shared the 
drudgery of that awful debutante season by being my escort; when I was really pissed off 
over not getting into Columbia, Jimmy actually flew in from the West Coast — where he had 
some important tennis match — and took me out to dinner.
  Then, the night after I would normally go to the island, Jimmy told me we could sail 
there in this little boat he kept in Greenwich at the club. And that first night on the 
boat, I became a woman. We drank too many glasses of Chardonnay, and one thing led to 
another. Jimmy was never very aggressive in bed. He was kind of shy that way. So I pretty 
much had to seduce him, but once we both closed our eyes and let our bodies take over, we 
knew how to make love.
  And it really was love. It really was. I felt it. We spent that first night on the 
boat. We got into the harbor at about twelve or one in the morning, and just slept 
together in the little bed. He snored sweetly. Not a hacking or sawing snore, but like a 
puppy dreaming. He did say something funny to me in the morning, something that struck me 
as odd, something about how maybe now we could think more about the future now that we’d 
mated, and I laughed at him and he looked a little angry when I laughed.
  All right, I knew that maybe there would be trouble with Owen when I saw him on the 
jetty when we got off the boat the next day. He looked like he’d been waiting there all 
night.
  Like he’d been watching us.
  The little turd. He really was. I care a lot for him, of course. We've known each other 
since we were both kids. He’s the son of the gardener. His mother sometimes helps out 
with parties and laundry and other things. He's cute, which helps, too, because although 
I have nothing against boys that aren't very good looking, there’s something about a good 
looking one that just makes you want him around all the time.
  So I’m barely dressed, some tacky beach towel around me basically, and there’s Owen at 
the shore seeing both of us coming up from the boat and the first thing he says to me is, 
“What happened?”
  I felt all nervous and even giggly like I needed a cigarette. I told him I didn’t want 
to see my mother for a day or two. And then Jimmy just took over, like he always does. He 
has this way with guys — he always gets them on his side. Jimmy gave him a nickname and 
acted like Owen was Jimmy’s kid brother and they just seemed to get along fine. It was 
like they’d known each other all their lives, in about five minutes. Owen seemed to like 
all the ribbing and you know that sort of adolescent boy-talk they do. You know that. 
That way boys have of getting together and sort of sparring, and talking, and noticing 
each other’s hair, or how one of them is sad, and they either peck it to death or get all 
brotherly. I saw it with Jimmy and his best friends at Exeter, too. The way they played 
like puppies. That’s just what it was like — like watching two golden retrievers wrestle 
over a bone.
  I didn’t see Owen much during June. I guess he got the job down in town. Sometimes I 
saw him when we went to the Salty Dog, but he never waited on our table. Jimmy was 
virtually attached at the hip with me, which can get annoying no matter how much you care 
for a guy. I used to try and lose him in the mornings, after he’d go off to play his 
beloved tennis with one of the local pros or with my mother. My mother is excellent at 
sports, which are pretty much not my thing. I like golf a little, and sometimes I like to 
swim, but the whole girl-jock thing is beyond me.
  So Jimmy would slip out of bed, and I’d get dressed and go down to visit Marci and 
Elaine, and Elaine’s brother, Cooper, down island. Sometimes we'd take whole afternoons 
just having brunch, or wandering the Cove by the Great Salt Pond. Jimmy would get all 
pissed off at me. He was a little jealous. Well, a little more than jealous. He thought 
that since he was the first guy I’d slept with that he somehow should’ve had more 
ownership of me. Or maybe I should’ve been more attached to him. I mean, I was attached.