That Old Cape Magic

now—admit it—capable of stirring lust. How perfectly, ludicrously insane not to be able to take this same woman in his arms and at least try to comfort her, comfort them both. Why shouldn’t he? What possible reason could there be? Well, he could think of a couple. For one, another woman was waiting patiently for him back at the B and B. Maybe he wasn’t in love with her, but he did feel—okay, admit this too—great fondness, which meant he should not be drawing his Johnnie-clad wife into his not entirely innocent embrace. And there was knot-headed Ringo, who would appreciate neither the comfort he meant to provide Joy with nor its accompanying erection.
    “You might as well tell me what you think of him,” Joy said, as though she’d read his thought. Something in her tone suggested she had her own misgivings about the man, reservations his fainting had confirmed.
    Griffin shrugged. “He seems amiable enough,” he said. “Bit of a booster, maybe.”
    “That’s his job,” Joy said, and he knew immediately he’d said the exact wrong thing. “He sells the college. It helps to have an upbeat personality.”
    “Nice change of pace, too,” he added, sounding more bitter than he meant to, more the “congenitally unhappy” man she’d accused him of being last summer.
    “It has been, actually.”
    Feeling the wind go out of his sails and his earlier wooziness return, Griffin slumped into a folding chair. “I know it’s crazy,” hesaid, “but I can’t shake the feeling that all this is my fault.” Meaning, he supposed, not just his behavior on the Cape last summer and their subsequent separation but also tonight’s fiasco, most of which—the rotten railing; Harve’s injuries, whatever they turned out to be; Joy’s broken finger; the grade-A jumbo egg on Ringo’s noggin; his daughter’s swollen Popeye forearms—no reasonable person could have held him responsible for. Nor did it stop there. Whatever happened from this point forward would be his fault as well. When a big string of dominoes falls, you don’t blame the ones in the middle.
    From somewhere down the hall Harve, who’d apparently gotten his voice back, bellowed “No!” and a moment later, “No, goddammit!” as if he’d somehow been privy to his son-in-law’s confession and felt compelled, like a Greek chorus, to register strenuous objection. Griffin found himself smiling weakly, grateful for even the appearance of someone being on his side.
    “In fact, it’s not that crazy,” Joy said.
    “You think?” he said, genuinely surprised. He’d been willing, as an exercise in self-pity, to take full responsibility for the evening’s events, but he certainly hadn’t expected his wife to agree with him.
    “Where’s Dot?” Harve shouted. “Where is she?”
    “Our
fault, I meant,” his wife clarified. “It wasn’t just you.”
    “Well,” he said, “I guess it doesn’t do much good to say I’m sorry, but I am. And …” He paused, not sure he could say the next part, though simple justice demanded it be said.
    “And?”
    “And if this Brian Fynch makes you happy—”
    “No!” Harve bellowed again, refusing to countenance any such suggestion. “I want Dot, damn it!”
    Dot damn it?
    Griffin looked over at Joy and saw that she, too, was on the verge of cracking up, and his heart leapt in recognition of the old mischievousness he’d so loved about her back when they were firstmarried, all but extinguished now so many long years later. Could he himself be the one who’d put it out?
    “Either of you seen Dot?” said a voice, startling both of them. Jared’s shaved head was framed in the doorway.
    They told him they hadn’t.
    “He wants Dot, damn it!” he said, his mimicry spot-on, as always. “So what’s this about, then?” Meaning, presumably, their being so intimately sequestered.
    “Nothing,” they said in unison.
    He nodded, registering their denial, but continued to study them curiously, his mouth open one notch on its hinge. It occurred to Griffin that as a military cop he had to ask people all sorts of questions—
How much have you had to drink tonight? You the one that gave this young lady the shiner?
—and this was the look he gave people he suspected weren’t being entirely candid in their responses. “Jason,” he called over his shoulder, and then there were two heads framed in the doorway, or rather the same head twice, the second stubbled. “They say there’s nothin’ going on in