（No one in their right mind wants to winter on the island, not if they can help it, with the Arctic wind screaming down and the snow blowing horizontal and ice caking thick as planks over the houses and walkways and spiky dead gardens.）
Anyway, everyone knows everyone else, the locals and the cottagers alike, and everyone has their own familiar routines, from the person nibbling lobster rolls while idling in a hammock, listening to the wind stir song through the birches; to the person who brought the lobster rolls to the person in the hammock; to the person who brought the lobster to the cook; to the lobsterman himself. There really aren’t any strangers in Bar Harbor proper.
That’s why when the newspapermen began to drift in, everyone noticed.
August 1910
Bar Harbor
She wouldn’t quite remember the program of music played by the Boston Symphony that one particular evening at the Building of Arts; Madeleine had meant to keep the card detailing the program, to treasure it, preserve it between the pages of some special book, to be discovered and admired later on, but at some point during the concert she had misplaced it, and hadn’t noticed until it was too late to procure another.
She did remember the air outside as she’d walked beside her mother up the path leading to the grand marble entrance, how mild and tender it felt, not quite cool but not too warm, either, because sunset was only a half hour or so away. She remembered how the light turned the enormous Ionic columns that braced the roof from pale gray to peachy gold; how it reflected off the windows in great blinding squares; how all the other concertgoers greeted each other in friendly tones, everyone gratified with the air and the sun and the turnout.
She remembered their seats, somewhat near the back third of the interior hall but not unreasonably so, her own right at the end of the aisle. Sitting there with Mother, fanning herself with the program card, wishing she could peel off her gloves.
Mother was smiling and scanning the audience, because the purpose of going to a concert at the Building of Arts was not, of course, to actually listen to the music. It was to see and be seen, and on this occasion, she would be seen in her new evening gown of palomino crêpe, which had arrived only that very morning from Redfern in Paris.
Madeleine was there to be seen fixed at her side, her gradually-becoming-notable daughter, a shining ornament in human form, casting her meager glow upon the sophisticated Mrs. Force.
Katherine, sensing the trap, had refused to come. Father had escaped back to New York days ago. Jack was—
Jack was here, standing before them. He stood with his hat in his hand, his tanned fingers distinct against the black beaver brim. He smiled down at her as if he hadn’t been gone for days, as if he hadn’t just materialized from the air as he always did. She glanced to his left and right, but his son wasn’t in view. Only the man himself, bowing his head to her mother, lifting his gaze back to Madeleine, bidding them both a good evening in that quiet, pleasant voice as people pushed by him along the aisle.
“Good evening, colonel!” said Mrs. Force. “We hadn’t heard you were in town again.”
“My final meeting was canceled—the fellow missed the train in Pittsburgh—so I was able to sail a little sooner than I’d planned. I did hope to return in time for the concert. Madeleine mentioned you might be here, so it’s happy luck I’ve found you. How well you look tonight, Madeleine. That shade of green suits you.”
“Thank you,” she said, acutely aware of how quiet the members of the audience in their immediate vicinity had become.
“Where are you seated, Colonel Astor?” inquired Mrs. Force.
“Oh,” he said, gesturing with the hat, “I’ll be standing in the back. All the other tickets had sold. It’s the price I pay for my tardiness.”
“Nonsense!” said Mother. “You must take my seat.”
“Madam, I could never take—”
“I insist! Look there, right over there, is my friend Mrs. Silas Reynolds. Her husband could not attend at the last moment, and so she has an empty seat right next to hers.”
Mother turned and waved to a woman stationed at the far other end of the hall, who lifted her hand and returned the wave so instantly, Madeleine knew they had planned the entire maneuver. Heat climbed up her neck, flooded her cheeks. No one, no one could possibly be fooled, least of all a man as sharp as Jack.
“There, you see? I shall have her empty chair, and you shall have mine, and everyone will be happy.”
Madeleine couldn’t bear to look up at him. She couldn’t look at anyone. She kept her gaze trained on her hands, fingers and knuckles clenched in a white satin ball on her lap.