Half an hour later they were in the car, having checked out of the B and B. They’d lolled in bed too long to take advantage of the second B. Even the giant coffee urn had been cruelly removed from the dining room by the time they’d both showered and dressed. The apologetic owner said they could leave one car there, drive the other to Truro, then pick it up on the way back. Joy disliked Griffin ’s roadster, which felt unsafe compared with her SUV, and her hair would be a lost cause by the time they arrived, but she gave in grudgingly when he observed there wasn’t much point in having a convertible if you weren’t going to put the top down on a bright summer day on the Cape.

“That was Route 6,” she remarked when he drove beneath it. The divided highway was the most direct route to the Outer Cape.

“Are we in some kind of hurry?” His plan had been to take two-lane 6A, a much more scenic drive that hugged the shoreline. If they happened on a likely spot, they’d stop and scatter his father’s ashes.

“No,” Joy said, “we’re certainly not.”

The day was warm, but the emotional temperature had plummeted.

“Can I use your phone? I forgot to put mine on the charger last night. It’s running on juice.”

Running on fumes? Because she forgot to juice the phone? Griffin opened his mouth, then closed it again, handing her his phone without comment. After last night’s festivities, it was far too early to call Laura, but he held his tongue about that, too.

“Hi, sweetie,” Joy said, after several rings, “did I wake you? Oh, I’m sorry. I just wanted to tell you again how thrilled we are.”

With the top down, Griffin could hear his daughter’s voice but not what she was saying. Probably going over again what Andy had said last night, how he’d asked, the whole play-by-play. It was the kind of conversation she and her mother delighted in, and Joy, glum a moment before, was smiling now, the world made right again. Griffin told himself not to be bitter.

“We’re on our way to Truro,” she was saying. “No, just for tonight. I need to get back, and now it’s looking like your dad may be going to L.A., so…” A beat, then: “No, he’s fine.” Another pause. “Please be careful driving home.” She hung up and returned his phone to the cup holder.

“If you really need to get back, we don’t have to go to Truro,” Griffin ventured. “It was your idea.”

“I know whose idea it was.”

Griffin couldn’t understand how they’d gotten there so quickly but they were clearly on the cusp of a serious falling-out, like the one that had sent him off to Boston and the Cape by himself. The thing to do, obviously, was to avoid hostilities. The day was drop-dead gorgeous, and with a little patience and forbearance there was no reason they couldn’t reclaim the better emotional place they’d found the night before. In a couple hours they’d be at the inn where they’d honeymooned, and all would be well. That was what he wanted, wasn’t it?

“It’s just that your story has some continuity problems,” he said, deciding that he’d push this far and no further. Because if Joy really wanted to have this out, better to do it now.

“It’s not a story. Or a screenplay. It’s my job. My life.”

“Our lives.”

When she didn’t say anything to this, he continued. Impossible, really, to stop, once you’d started. Still, best to be conciliatory. “All I meant was, if you’re too busy at work to go to L.A., fine. But if you’re really that busy, why are we going to Truro? That’s what I’d like to understand.” Okay, the emphasis maybe wasn’t entirely conciliatory.

“No, that’s what you don’t want to understand.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning what you’re determined not to understand couldn’t be simpler. It makes no sense to go all the way to L.A. unless we stay a week. I can’t afford that much time away right now. Your semester’s over. I’m happy for you. But I’m still flat out. I have two new staff to hire and a new boss to train. The day will come when he can spare me for a week, but not now. Truro is one day. I wouldn’t be working on the weekend anyway. So tomorrow I’ll miss half of one day. Not a whole week. You can pretend that doesn’t make sense, but it does.”

Which it did, as far as it went. “Fine,” he said. “Now I understand.”

“And I really hate it when you do that.”

“When I ask you to explain something? I’m not entitled to understand your thinking?”

“No, I hate it when you talk to me in script metaphors. My ‘story isn’t tracking.’ It has ‘continuity problems.’ Like I’m making things up. Like we’re still in L.A. Like you wish we’d never left. Like you regret the life we have.”

Of course he knew better than to say what came next, though it wasn’t the words themselves. If he’d delivered the line with a good-natured, self-deprecating grin, all would have been well. That’s probably what he was trying for, but he could feel the tight grimace on his features when he said, “Aren’t you going a little ‘over the top’?”

Before Joy could respond, his cell vibrated in the cup holder, and irritation morphed instantly into full-blown rage. “What, Mom?” he said through tightly clenched teeth. “What? What? What?”

It took a while, but they finally found where they’d honeymooned. It was smaller than Griffin remembered but otherwise unchanged, except that it was no longer an inn. An elderly woman in a straw hat was weeding the mulch around some new plantings on the front lawn. She looked up when she heard the car door shut and struggled to her feet as he approached. “It’s hell getting old,” she said, shading her eyes with one hand, scout fashion. “I’d like to ride in a car like that once more before I die.”

“You just might be the woman of my dreams,” Griffin said.

“Who’s that, then?” she wondered, indicating Joy.

“My wife. She hates it.”

“Her hair, right?”

He nodded.

“Attractive woman. What can an old lady do for you?”

“This used to be an inn,” he told her, aware that this might not be news to her. “My wife and I stayed here on our honeymoon. Thirty-four years ago.”

“I’ve owned it almost that long,” she said, turning to regard it. “Bought it with my husband. Then the rat-bastard up and died.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You’re sorry?”

She turned back to look him over. She had the palest, most piercing blue eyes he’d ever seen, full of kindness but even more full of intelligence. He’d hate to have to lie to her for a living. She looked in Joy’s direction. “So what’s wrong?”

“We’ve been arguing.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You’re sorry?” he said. “Can you recommend an inn here in Truro?”

She shook her head. “Between here and Provincetown there isn’t much but motels. Borderline sleazy, most of them. You want something nice, you’d best head back toward Wellfleet. Couple of good inns there.”

“Thanks. We’ll take your advice.”

“Do that.”

“If you don’t mind my saying, I don’t think I’ve ever heard a woman of your generation use the term rat-bastard before.”

“I used to be a writer. Still love words, the sound of them. Fart-hammer is my new favorite, though I can’t seem to find a sentence to put it in.”

“What did you write?”

“Biography, mostly. A poem or two, when the fit was on me. ‘Strange fits of passion I have known…’”

“‘And I will dare to tell, / But in the Lover’s ear alone, / What once to me befell,’” he continued. But if his ability to finish the stanza impressed the old woman, she gave no sign. “My parents were both English professors,” he explained, stifling the urge to tell her that one of them happened to be in the trunk of the car. “I’m another, actually. And a writer, too.”

“Hah!” she said. “No wonder your wife’s in tears.”

It was true. Joy was crying. She hadn’t been when he got out of the car, but now she was. Silently, but not trying to hide the fact, either.