They would have a nice family supper around the pool. One like a hundred they’d had before. Dad was in the kitchen getting things ready for the grill. Judy was settled on her favorite lounge, and Mother was scolding Lish about running on the patio. He listened to her, smiling and nodding his head instead of pouting. Swimming always put Lish in a good mood.

And then, after Lish jumped in, Mother turned towards Judy and said, rather quickly and quietly, “By the way, your Dad and I are going to see Dr. Berenson tomorrow, about the results of some tests he ran. I might call you in the afternoon. Do you have classes then?”

“Not after 1:00,” Judy had said.

“You’ll be at the library?”

And on impulse, Judy said, “No, not the library.” She had a feeling she wouldn’t want to take the call there, wouldn’t want to have to walk back to a library table ringed with her study group.

“I’ll take the key to Dad’s office in Town Hall. It’ll be quiet. Why not call me there?”

Mother nodded. And then, Dad came out carrying the links, and he smiled at Mother as he walked towards the grill.

When Judy saw Mother’s face as she watched him go by, she no longer just suspected.

She knew.

Lish had turned to meet Judy’s eyes where he was treading water in the pool, and she realized he’d seen it too.

It was the way Mother had looked at Father years ago.

Strange. Lish had been a baby when Father died, but he seemed to recognize it. He knew what it meant.

After Judy had a late lunch at Cahill’s Diner she walked down the block to Town Hall.

Dad’s office. Technically, he was retired, but they still had the key, a lot of his things were still there, and the phone was still hooked up to the Town Hall switchboard. Every once in a while he’d been using it for meeting with people and researching the Milk Committee, but lately, now that he kept getting so short of breath and tired, he’d been working out of the house. It would not be a bad place to study in the afternoons when she wanted to be alone.

Dad’s desk was empty except for Mother’s picture, a lamp and a phone. And a book.

Tante had mentioned she’d drop off Uncle Artiste’s book of sermons the next time she was downtown. Dad had said he’d really like to read it, even though it had been published long ago, before the war. Judy would have to remember to bring it home. She settled behind the desk.

Everything felt wrong. Clammy.

Especially when she looked across the room at the desk where Dad’s secretary, Madgie used to sit. Madgie had moved the last of her things out over six months ago, after she married Frank Shafto.

Looking at all that emptiness made a place inside Judy ache, a place where phones should be ringing and voices chattering, where pictures and maps should be hanging and it was all a comforting hum in the background that made it easier, not harder to study when she dropped by after school.

A place where she could look at Dad behind his desk and feel certainty and love, instead of a faint tug of anxiety. A place where she looked forward to what seemed like endless nights sleeping and waking in her own bed and hearing her parents’ voices in the next room.

It was so quiet in the building today. The silence made things evident she’d never noticed before. She’d heard that sometimes in Town Hall, you could still smell charred wood and wet paper from the fire all those years ago, the one that had destroyed all the records. The archive had been just down the hall. Dad always laughed at the idea, said he’d worked there for years and never got so much of a whiff it. That rumor, he’d told her, was as ridiculous as any other ghost story.

But she knew now it was true. She could smell it — it was unmistakeable, sharp enough to be distracting, almost as if a phantom had walked into the room. Judy had always been horrified by the very idea of that fire, of written things, all those records, all that knowledge being destroyed.

She checked the phone, just to make sure. It had not been disconnected. It occurred to her she might not want to step out in case she missed the call, so Judy took Dad’s water glass from the top drawer, walked own the hall and poured herself some water from the cooler. Then she settled down to study.

It was hard to concentrate, and she couldn’t only blame the empty office. She just felt strange these days. Unstuck in time. Dad told her last night it was natural to feel that way, during transition.

Just after he’d finished cooking the links, she had looked past him up at the night sky and pointed out a constellation — Scorpius.

“It’s so strange,” she’d said, “To think of other people in other countries looking up at that same sky, those same stars.”

“Looking at the stars,” Dad had said, smiling. “Means you’re thinking about the future.”

“You’re thinking about the day you’ll be someplace else and looking at the sky at night. I’ve been noticing you getting very philosophical lately. Feels strange, doesn’t it, all the changes ahead for you?”

“I’m not sure it feels good,” she’d told him.

“I go out to familiar places, with familiar people and I feel like I don’t quite belong any more. Or that I’m giving up that sense of belonging.”

“Nothing’s going to be quite the same, and it hurts.”

He nodded, not smiling any more, as if he understood completely. “That’s the nature of time and growth, Judy,” he said.

“Sometimes in life,” he’d said, “when you’re a certain age, you’re like a snake shedding its skin and having to say goodbye to it. You’re looking back at a part of yourself you have to leave behind on the grass as you move on.”

At the time, Judy had thought he was just talking about her.

Now she wondered if he might also have been talking about himself.

***

Judy had gotten through three pages and made some notes when she heard a knock on the office door.

For an instant she entertained the wild thought that it was Mother and Dad, coming straight from Dr. Berenson with good news that would have them all laughing with relief. Ridiculous, of course. They would simply have come in. Maybe it was some old friend of Dad’s.

It wasn’t.

The face was familiar, but she knew instantly this man was not from the Island.

He smiled. “Good afternoon,” he said. “I was hoping I could speak to William Quiller.” He looked past her and frowned, puzzled. “Are you his secretary?”

“I’m his daughter. Judith.”

I’m sorry, but my father isn’t here today.”

He offered her a rather wan smile. “Hello, Judith.”

“Listen, I really hate to impose, but I’ve been doing a lot of walking and this heat…” he shook his head. “I’m just not used to it.”

Then he told her his name.

So that’s why he was familiar. She had heard his name on the radio, seen it in the newspaper. It was a name that had an unpleasant thud to it, made her think of what Jerry Pascoe had said.

But that was silly and paranoid, and the man didn’t look good. Sunstroke was a common problem with visitors to the Island.

“You need to come in and sit down, immediately,” she’d said. “You’re not nauseated, are you? Dizzy?”

“No, no, nothing like that,” he said as she led him to the sofa. “Just tired and really thirsty.”

She gave him her untouched glass of water and watched as she drank it down.

“God,” he sighed when he was done. “Thank you.”

“That really makes a difference,” he said as he set the empty glass down on the floor. “You must be the young lady I’ve heard about who’s going to Harvard,” he said.

“It looks like it,” she said. “It all depends, of course. I don’t like to count my chickens.”

“Oh, that’s never wise,” he said. “You do know, right, it’s just a bit cooler there?”

He seemed much nicer than she’d have expected. His picture in the paper always made him look so grim. “That’s what everyone tells me. They also tell me it’s beautiful.”

“Oh, it is. Autumn in New England can be spectacular.”

“Dad teases me about it.”

“He says I’ll get soft within weeks, that I’ll come back and start turning on fans before the mercury hits 80.”

“I guess I’m soft, then. Just walking a couple of blocks in this heat wiped me out. Thank God this building has air conditioning. Say… I’m still kind of thirsty. Is there a water cooler on this floor you could point me to?”

Judy rose. He still looked a little pale to her. “Just hand me the glass,” she said. “I’ll get you some.”

“Thank you. Thank you so much.”

What else could she do?

When someone is thirsty — especially a stranger, especially someone from off island who’s not used to the heat — you get them a drink of something cool.

That is what you do.

The water cooler down the hall from Dad’s office was the best on the Island. Icey cold.

She could never resist it, and she poured herself a quick drink before pouring some for her guest.

It occurred to her as she filled the glass with cold water that she had a sort of constellation in her mind of the fountains and coolers on the Island.

The one on the playground at Island Grammar was actually lukewarm on hot days.

The one on the third floor of the hospital was cold, but the pipes there were old and it sometimes tasted a little rusty to her, but the one in radiology in the new annexe was nice and chilly and tasted fresh.

She did not yet know she would remember that walk down the hall, and what she’d been thinking, for the rest of her life.

When she opened the door to the office, he was no longer on the couch. He was standing in the middle of the room waiting for her.

He was no longer smiling.

He took the glass.

He drank the water.

He handed her the empty glass.

“Thank you for the drink,” he said.

He walked to the door, pausing to look at her before he stepped into the hall.

Never before in her life had an adult looked at her with such naked dislike and contempt.

Behind her, the phone began to ring.