“You’re welcome. Thank you for saying that. You know, I don’t remember so well these days. I’m glad to know that you’ll remember these things about me.”

He handed her a white envelope.

“Here, I wrote it all down for you, everything I just said, so you can read it whenever you want and know what you gave to me even if you can’t remember.”

“Thank you.”

They each held their envelopes, hers white and his red, with deep pride and reverence.

An older, heavier version of Dan and two women, one much older than the other, came over to them. The older, heavier version of Dan carried a tray of bubbly white wine in skinny glasses. The young woman handed a glass to each of them.

“To Dan,” said the older, heavier version of Dan, holding up his glass.

“To Dan,” said everyone, clinking the skinny glasses and taking sips.

“To auspicious beginnings,” added Alice, “and finishing big.”

THEY BEGAN WALKING AWAY FROM the tents and the old, brick buildings and the people in costumes and hats to where it was less populated and noisy. Someone in a black costume yelled and ran over to John. John stopped and let go of Alice’s hand to shake hands with the person who’d yelled. Caught in her own forward momentum, Alice kept walking.

For a stretched-out second, Alice paused and made eye contact with a woman. She was sure she didn’t know the woman, but there was meaning in the exchange. The woman had blond hair, a phone by her ear, and glasses over her big, blue, startled eyes. The woman was driving in a car.

Then, Alice’s hood pulled suddenly tight around her throat, and she was jerked backward. She landed hard and unsuspecting on her back and banged her head on the ground. Her costume and plush hat offered little protection against the pavement.

“I’m sorry, Ali, are you okay?” asked a man in a dark pink robe, kneeling beside her.

“No,” she said, sitting up and rubbing the back of her head. She expected to see blood on her hand but didn’t.

“I’m sorry, you walked right into the street. That car almost hit you.”

“Is she okay?”

It was the woman from the car, her eyes still big and startled.

“I think so,” said the man.

“Oh my god, I could’ve killed her. If you didn’t pull her out of the way, I might’ve killed her.”

“It’s okay, you didn’t kill her, I think she’s okay.”

The man helped Alice stand. He felt and looked at her head.

“I think you’re all right. You’re probably going to be really sore. Can you walk?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Can I give you a ride somewhere?” asked the woman.

“No, no, that’s all right, we’re fine,” said the man.

He put his arm around Alice’s waist and his hand under her elbow, and she walked home with the kind stranger who had saved her life.

SUMMER 2005

Alice sat in a big, comfortable, white chair and puzzled over the clock on the wall. It was the kind with hands and numbers, which was much harder to read than the kind with just numbers. Five maybe?

“What time is it?” she asked the man sitting in the other big, white chair.

He looked at his wrist.

“Almost three thirty.”

“I think it’s time for me to go home.”

“You are home. This is your home on the Cape.”

She looked around the room—the white furniture, the pictures of lighthouses and beaches on the walls, the giant windows, the spindly little trees outside the windows.

“No, this isn’t my house. I don’t live here. I want to go home now.”

“We’re going back to Cambridge in a couple of weeks. We’re here on vacation. You like it here.”

The man in the chair continued reading his book and drinking his drink. The book was thick and the drink was yellowish brown, like the color of her eyes, with ice in it. He was enjoying and absorbed in both, the book and the drink.

The white furniture, the pictures of lighthouses and beaches on the walls, the giant windows, and the spindly little trees outside the windows didn’t look at all familiar to her. The sounds here weren’t familiar to her either. She heard birds, the kinds that live at the ocean, the sound of the ice swirling and clinking in the glass when the man in the chair drank his drink, the sound of the man breathing through his nose as he read his book, and the ticking of the clock.

“I think I’ve been here long enough. I’d like to go home now.”

“You are home. This is your vacation home. This is where we come to relax and unwind.”

This place didn’t look like her home or sound like her home, and she didn’t feel relaxed. The man reading and drinking in the big, white chair didn’t know what he was talking about. Maybe he was drunk.

The man breathed and read and drank, and the clock ticked. Alice sat in the big, white chair and listened to the time go by, wishing someone would take her home.

SHE SAT IN ONE OF the white, wooden chairs on a deck drinking iced tea and listening to the shrill cross talk of unseen frogs and twilight bugs.

“Hey, Alice, I found your butterfly necklace,” said the man who owned the house.

He dangled a jeweled butterfly by a silver chain in front of her.

“That’s not my necklace, that’s my mother’s. And it’s special, so you’d better put it back, we’re not supposed to play with it.”

“I talked to your mom, and she said that you could have it. She’s giving it to you.”

She studied his eyes and mouth and body language, looking for some sign that would give away his motive. But before she could get a proper read on his sincerity, the beauty of the sparkling blue butterfly seduced her, overriding her rule-abiding concerns.

“She said I could have it?”

“Uh-huh.”

He leaned over her from behind and fastened it around her neck. She ran her fingers over the blue gems on the wings, the silver body, and the diamond-studded antennae. She felt a smug thrill rush through her. Anne’s going to be so jealous.

SHE SAT ON THE FLOOR in front of the full-length mirror in the bedroom she slept in and examined her reflection. The girl in the mirror had sunken, darkened circles under her eyes. Her skin looked loose and spotty all over and wrinkled at the corners of her eyes and along her forehead. Her thick, scraggly eyebrows needed to be tweezed. Her curly hair was mostly black, but it was also noticeably gray. The girl in the mirror looked ugly and old.

She ran her fingers over her cheeks and forehead, feeling her face on her fingers and her fingers on her face. That can’t be me. What’s wrong with my face? The girl in the mirror sickened her.

She found the bathroom and flicked on the light. She met the same image in the mirror over the sink. There were her golden brown eyes, her serious nose, her heart-shaped lips, but everything else, the composition around her features, was grotesquely wrong. She ran her fingers over the smooth, cool glass. What’s wrong with these mirrors?