western length. A Victorian Wedding Cake House called the Mohegan, converted in recent 
years to a twenty room hotel, sits perched on the main bluff overlooking the most public 
part of the Serpentine. On either side are the summer homes — the large and the ordinary, 
and the woods all mixed in and winding through them. More than half the roads on 
Outerbridge were still dirt; there was no McDonald’s, no 7-11, and only two stoplights 
between the three townships.
  Spring shat out of winter in New England — and along the uneven row of islands called 
the Avalons that skirted Connecticut, Rhode Island, and a bare tip of Massachusetts, it 
was a heavy crap of rain and then sun and then rain and finally sun — the merciless 
summer sun which never left until two weeks after Labor Day. Outerbridge had it the 
worse, for the two other large Avalons — and the smaller rocky ledges called islets that 
formed part of the coastal barrier against the Atlantic — got the good weather first, or 
else no one much lived there to care.
  Outerbridge, the furthest up the coastline was more narrow than wide — six miles long, 
two-and-a-half miles wide — with bluffs to the south and north, the Great Salt Pond at 
its center, the Wequetaket swamps in the lower points to the east; there are two hundred 
and fifty three summer residents; there are seventy-five in the winter, most of them over 
sixty. At the height of winter’s cruelty, helicopters come in with supplies. That sounds 
outrageous, but it’s true, for Outerbridge is further from the mainland than even 
the Vineyard and Nantucket to the north — it is beyond beyond beyond, and there is no 
crossing easily. The historic landmarks are South Light and North Light, the two 
lighthouses that still work, sentries at either end of the island; Old Town, or Old Town 
Harbor as the old-timers call it, is at the southern tip; Quonnoquet Haven, with its 
bluffs and spectacular view of what they call the Big Nothing, where even the mainland is 
unseen in the distance, lays to the north of the island This particular day was the 
glinting kind. Sun glinted off the Sound, and even the virgin leaves on the wet trees — 
and the bark, too — all of it spattered light refracted through the hangover of the night 
of rain so recently over. He hated it — he hated the end of winter, because it was 
usually the end of control within his parents house. His mother had been in bed for most 
of it, nursing imagined traumas, while his father had spent his hours away from home, 
either working as a handyman and gardener at the Big House, or in town or down to Old 
Town Harbor for drinks with his friends.
  Owen Crites looked to summer for one thing, and one thing only. It would be the arrival 
of Jenna Montgomery, and that would mean that his misery, his feeling of loneliness would 
vanish.
  It was a singular obsession of his.
  She was purity.
  2
  “Hi,” he said to her when he was six.
  “Hi,” she replied. But she hadn’t needed to. She was six and all ringlets and ribbons 
and party dress.
  “Owen,” he said.
  “I know. Hank’s your daddy.”
  The fact that she called his father by his first name shocked Owen. No other child 
called a parent by the first name. It was taboo. And to call his father “Hank” and not 
“Henry” seemed far too familiar.
  “I know where you live,” she added, an afterthought.
  “Here,” he said, meaning her property.
  “In my yard,” she said. “You have the big goldfish pond.”
  “Koi,” he corrected her.
  “And all the roses my mommy loves,” she said, and then took him by the hand and brought 
him into her world — the birthday party, the children from New York, the pony rides on 
the bluffs, the smoked turkey sandwiches, the games of pin-the-tail, and the dance. He 
had been woefully under- dressed in a torn pair of jeans and a t-shirt. The other boys 
all wore white shirts and little ties; their hair glistened with gel. The girls were in 
puffy dresses and glittery shoes. He had no gift for her then. It had panicked him midway 
through the party.
  He went and found a gift she had not yet unwrapped, and he threw away the other child’s 
card. On the wrapping paper, he scrawled — Hapy Birthday from Owen. As it turned out, the 
gift was a small hand puppet, and Owen took it from Jenna and began doing something that 
he didn’t even know he could do.
  He threw his voice, so it sounded as if the puppet were speaking without Owen’s lips 
moving.
  When it was found out what he had done, he was punished, but even Mrs. M commented to 
Owen’s mother about her son’s delightful talent.
  But forget that for now, forget it. Years passed; punishment was the result of 
knowledge. Smart people punished themselves, his older self knew. All people with brains 
received punishment.
  He knew better than to reveal secrets.
  He waited for her, watching the Sound for the ferry on the Thursday before Memorial Day 
weekend.
  3
  His eyes turned to slits against the western sun; it was the last ferry of the day, and 
he couldn’t find her or her parents among those on the deck.
  Perhaps she wouldn’t be coming until after the holiday — it had happened before, but 
several years back. He didn’t want to believe it because he never liked to consider the 
options that people had. His own life felt without option.
  He had created within himself the person who could most handle his life. He had worked 
his body, developed the grace of an athlete, he had tried to keep his face pleasant — and 
when the anxieties of his family or of studies became unbearable, he would go to the 
mirror and practice relaxing his facial features until he was sure he looked pleasant 
again. He did not want to seem anxious, even if he was. He wanted to give nothing away to 
those around him.
  He ran down to the docks to see if she might be somewhere else on the ferry — perhaps 
she was sick and wanted to stay below. Perhaps she was taking a nap in the back seat of 
her family’s Range Rover. Perhaps perhaps, he repeated to himself as he sloughed off 
inertia, and jogged down to the paved road near the marina.
  The summer people were like ticks — they attached themselves to every aspect of the 
Haven, they drank all the beer, they ate the best the local cooks had to offer, they had 
all the accidents — more people would die from boating or swimming mishaps in three 
months than would die in six years in the other seasons of the island.
  They were careless, they were bloodsucking, they were here to forget the venal world 
from which they came.
  They, he thought.
  They.
  They poured from the ferry, bicyclists, clownish men and women in golfing outfits, or 
overly gilded women with poodles and wolfhounds and Shih Tzus, followed by weary 
overworked doctor-husbands; the college crowd, too, had begun filling up the local bars 
and the beach, and all these he hated with a passion. He had spent his life watching them 
come and be carefree in the summer. He had watched them spend more money some nights than