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his cargo shorts. She can see his skin changing color in the dark, from pale pink to red, like a brutal, sudden sunburn.
    “What?” Zan says. She takes a step back. “What are you talking about? What did he tell you? Look at me!”
    Nick finally lifts his eyes, and this time, Zan knows she will win. She will keep his eyes on hers as long as she possibly can, until they’ve told her everything. “Nothing,” he says, pleading. “I swear, he told me nothing. But he made me promise I’d go along with his story. He made it up. I didn’t need anything for the boat that day. He needed an excuse, said he needed to take care of something. That’s all I know, I promise.”
    Zan feels her heart pounding in every square inch of her body. She takes another shaky step back and is quickly on the ground, the cool grass tickling the outsides of her knees.
    “Zan.” Nick crouches beside her. “I’m sure it’s nothing. I’m sure he was just on one of his adventures. He was probably trying to surprise you. That’s why I never said anything. He made me promise, and it’s not like I had any idea what he was up to. You know the way he was.”
    Zan feels Nick’s arm around her back. She tries to focus on the in and out of her breathing. The wet of the grass. The white of the painted lines on the court.
    “I have to find her,” she says quietly.
    “Find who?”
    “Vanessa.”
    Nick laughs, but Zan can hear he doesn’t mean it. “The girl on the receipt?” he asks. “Zan…”
    “What?” she hisses. “I’m the one still here. If there was something going on, you don’t think I deserve to know about it?”
    Nick peels his arm away from her shoulder and rests it on his lap. “No. I mean, I don’t know,” he stutters. “I don’t know what I think. I just don’t … I don’t see how it will help.”
    “Help what?” Zan cries. She’s practically yelling now; she can feel the force of her words as they hurtle through her and out into the night. “He’s already dead, Nick. Don’t you think I should at least know the truth about what happened?”
    Nick picks at the grass between them. “I know he’s dead,” he whispers. “I meant that I don’t know how it will help you.”
    Inside, a song ends and the crowd erupts into boisterous applause. She feels Nick turn to look at the side of her face, feels him watching the single tear that’s sinking toward her chin.
    “Zan, you have to let him go.”
    A quick, shifting breeze flips a lock of her dark curls across her nose. She tucks it back, wiping the wet marks on her cheek and pushing up to her feet. She brushes her hands on her shorts, feeling the grass marks indented into the skin of her palms.
    “No,” she says firmly. “I don’t. Not yet.”

 
    SIENNA
     
    “Don’t play with your food,” Ryan commands, with all of the authority of a sixty-five-year-old governess. Sienna pushes a snakelike pile of cold sesame noodles around on her plate. The two of them are settled at the empty end of a long table, tucked in the back of the Martha’s Vineyard Community Center. Many of the hundred or so people crowding the old converted barn are already up and dancing, or at least that’s what Sienna guesses they think they’re doing. Dad and Denise included.
    “Fine.” Sienna shrugs. “I’ll play with yours.” She reaches across to Ryan’s plate, piercing a piece of pasta salad with her recycled bamboo fork.
    “Cut it out!” Ryan whines, boxing her out with his elbow. She rolls her eyes and turns back to the stage. A group of older men with long gray beards are playing old-timey bluegrass music on instruments that appear to predate the Civil War.
    If it hadn’t been for Ryan nosily spotting the flyer on the floor of her room, they would never have come to the Community Center concert. But he was drawn to the cartoon lettering, and soon the four of them were piling in the car, stopping at the only bakery still open to purchase a last-minute pie, and swinging