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gazing out at their long backyard rolling down to the Charles River.
    Today she and Worth were flying down to the island for the weekend, to celebrate Nona’s birthday. Nona was going to be ninety!
    It would be a grand celebration. All spring Worth had plotted with his sister Grace. They rented the yacht club for a party, made out a guest list, sent out handsome invitations. Helen had phoned hersister-in-law twice to assure her she would like to help. We’ll let you know when we need you , Grace had replied. Helen felt more relieved than rejected. Grace and her husband, Kellogg, were methodical and organized. And bossy Grace loved to nitpick and criticize.
    Helen’s headache began its bass note hum. She set her glass in the sink and went into the den. Pulling out her office chair, she settled at her desk and opened her engagement calendar. This small act centered her, smoothed down the ruffled fur of the flustered little beast of her mind.
    She’d known when she married Worth that she was taking on the entire Wheelwright family, but she had been too ferociously in love to worry about it. As an only child, she’d welcomed belonging to a large family, especially a family like the Wheelwrights, so well known and respected. Worth’s parents, Anne and Herb, had a kind of glamour, and they were very much in love with each other. That seemed like a good omen for Helen’s own marriage.
    And who could complain about spending two months every summer in the wonderful old Wheelwright house? Grace and Kellogg played doubles tennis with Helen and Worth, and the four of them joined Anne and Herb for dinner dances at the yacht club. They played badminton and croquet on the neatly mowed lawn, and when the wind was calm they sailed on a rippling silver path in the moonlight.
    It was when their three children—Charlotte, Oliver, and Teddy—were born that Helen truly fell in love with the summer house. There, the long summer days were glorious. Grace’s three daughters—Mandy, Mellie, and Mee—were close in age to Helen’s brood, and the children all tumbled around like puppies in the spacious sunlit rooms in the big old house on the harbor. If it rained, they’d do jigsaw puzzles or play wild games of hide-and-seek and board games. When the sun was out, the hours of the day were like honey.
    Years ago, when Worth and Bobby and Grace were young, their father had had sand delivered to make a small beach where the harbor waters lapped at the grassy shore. Over time, as the wind whipped low dunes along the lawn’s end, beach grass and wild roses found homes there, creating a natural wild seaside garden, which in thesummer, when the roses bloomed, filled the air with a sweet perfume. Anne and Herb’s children played on the beach and then, as the years passed, Anne became Nona, and Herb became Grandpa and their grandchildren played there.
    Grace married Kellogg and had three children. Worth married Helen and had three children. Like their parents, the children built elaborate fantastical sand castles or spread their towels on the hot sand and lay soaking in the sun and warming up after a dip in the shimmering blue shallows of the harbor. Later, they learned to sail from the Wheelwrights’ wooden dock and played beach volleyball in the shallows, coming in for dinner drenched and salty, their smiles flashing white against their tanned skin.
    Over the years, Grace’s husband, Kellogg, and Worth stayed in Boston at the bank all week, so Helen and Grace were thrown together without their husbands. This was usually okay, although Grace could be a bit intimidating and officious. Grace had such high standards. Helen didn’t really mind if the children had mac and cheese two nights in a row, but Grace wrote out menus for the week and stuck to them, rain or shine. With her own children, Grace was a bit of a dictator, but while she often made “suggestions” to Helen about how she should raise her children, she was never pushy. She just sort