Alessandra is awarded employee of the week a second time following a rave review left for her by Mr. Yamaguchi. Lizbet worries about Edie’s ego and the fact that she has applied for an additional summer job owing to financial worries.

Lizbet gets a glamorous makeover to go on her date with Mario at the Deck. Christina is flustered by Mario turning up with Lizbet and does not know how to react. Lizbet also spots Lyric Layton in tears next to her husband, Ari. Lizbet finds herself crying on her own accord, and Mario steers her back to his place, a 1950s-style cottage.

Mario asks her to tell him how she arrived on Nantucket. As a Midwesterner studying at The University of Minnesota she was fascinated by a classmate’s stories of spending the summer on Nantucket. Lizbet immediately went there after graduating. She then explains how she spent her prime years with JJ, between the ages of 23 and 38. In their last year together, they experienced an unplanned pregnancy that ended in a miscarriage and the grief that followed. Lizbet feels as though “JJ had bulldozed the fortress” of her life and made her think that it “had existed only in her mind” (181).