He paused. She saw him entertain, then reject, some caustic word or rebuff. It struck her with some horror that he was actually attempting to be less awful than he naturally was. Because of Rochelle? Because—and this was nearly incomprehensible—he had some wish to appear to his best advantage, for her? Rochelle? That Rochelle Steiner could seem to have such a power over not one but two of them （not two but all three of them, if she was truly, for once, being honest with herself） was a notion in utter conflict with anything rational. But what did it matter, the effort to be rational? It wasn’t rational to have told her roommate she had one brother, not two, or that one of those two might have been living in the next dorm over, all through the past year. It wasn’t rational to have lured Rochelle here for some ill-thought-out act of aggression, against whom she still wasn’t sure. Also, it wasn’t exactly rational to be dropping out of college in spite of the fact that your grades were fine and you weren’t even leaving the town where your college was located. （And this—it now, somewhat belatedly, occurred to her—was precisely what she was about to do. Or had she already done it? And without any clear idea why.）
Harrison went upstairs. Sally reached for Rochelle’s wine, took a corkscrew from the drawer, and opened it. She poured two generous glasses.
“Technically that was for your parents,” Rochelle reminded her.
“I’ll make sure you get the credit.” Sally took a gulp. It seemed to taste very good. For a bottle they’d chosen for its label, that was lucky. “Come on,” she said. “No telling how long those two will take.”
They stepped outside. The night was windy and more fragrant than before, and the ocean made its ambient whoosh, whoosh, the soundtrack of her childhood summers. She felt for the familiar log steps and heard, from below, the laughter of strangers: the caterers, probably, happy in their work. She was grateful for the dark.
“Oops,” said Rochelle behind her.
“You okay?”
“I spilled some wine in the sand. I forgot what it’s like to walk on sand.”
Her mother and the baby were together on an unfamiliar blanket near the long aluminum pan, which was heaped with ears of corn and foil-wrapped bags of mussels and clams, on top of which were the lobsters and mounds of seaweed. She made herself not look around for Lewyn, but went straight to Johanna and said, “Mom, this is my friend, Rochelle. She brought you a bottle of wine.”
Rochelle stared at Phoebe. She was trying, Sally knew, to place her. “Mrs. Oppenheimer, so nice to meet you. And who is this?”
The baby was fussing a bit. She had a fistful of our mother’s shoulder-length hair in one hand, and a partial ear of corn in the other. Her cheeks were covered in butter.
“This is Phoebe,” said Johanna. “Sally’s sister, of course.”
Oddly, Rochelle nodded, as if the “of course” settled everything.
“It’s so kind of you to let me come,” said Rochelle. “I’m sorry we’re only meeting now.”
“I am, too!” said our mother, with an eagerness that stung. “I wish we’d been able to come up and visit, but…”
“There’s not much to do in Ithaca,” Sally pointed out. She was, only now, looking around for Lewyn. And there he was on the other side of the firepit, his back turned, talking to two of the cooks. The waves were louder here. He hadn’t heard them. He didn’t know yet.
“Well, I don’t care about that. I care about seeing my children.”
“And how old is Phoebe?” Rochelle asked brightly.
“Fourteen months. Walking up a storm.” The baby was set down in the sand, whereupon she released both hair and corn and made for the fire. “No you don’t,” said Johanna, going after her.
Rochelle turned back to Sally. “I didn’t know you had a sister.”