Introduction

For generations, the natives of Harrisport have watched wealthy summer families descend on their Cape Cod town, inhabiting the massive cottages along the town’s best stretches of beachfront. But when rich Southerner Tucker Moss breaks the heart of local girl Edie Wright in the summer of 1966, an enduring war starts between the two families that lasts for generations....

Edie’s youngest child, Lexi, should know better than to fall in love with a Moss, but at eighteen, she falls hard for Tucker’s son, Hudson?only to find herself jilted when Hudson breaks off their engagement.

Eleven years later, Lexi returns home after two years away studying architectural photography, just in time for yet another summer on the Cape. When Hudson’s younger brother, Cooper, arrives unexpectedly to sell the seaside estate after the death of his father and hires Lexi to photograph it, an unlikely attraction forms, and Lexi finds herself torn once again between passion and family loyalty.

Then renovations at the Moss guest house reveal a forty-six-year-old declaration of love carved into a piece of framing?and a startling truth that will force two women and the men who love them to confront the treacherous waters of their pasts.
 

Editorial Review

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Excerpt

1

Harrisport, Massachusetts

July 2012

It was like opening a summer house after a long, dark winter.

That was how Lexi always thought of the start of peak season in Harrisport. Sure, it was a whole town and not a single dwelling, but in her mind, the rituals were the same. In fact, if you sat at the best booth in Dock’s, the one that had the clearest view of the village, like she was doing now while she waited for Kim to arrive, you could watch the transformation in its entirety. Almost overnight, Main Street would blink awake. The nine interminably plodding months that comprised fall, winter, and spring would practically vanish with the snap of a shade. Shop windows that rarely saw more than a few holiday decorations between Labor Day and July first would be stripped bare and dressed in a matter of hours. Overhangs unfurled like petals; sandwich boards came out and clapped into position on the sidewalk. Ladders went up and shopkeepers climbed them, ready to soap off winter’s grime and scan the horizon like newly appointed captains at the bows of their ships.

But it wasn’t just the store owners who jumped to attention. Preparing for the rush of summer people, or “wash-ashores,” as they were called on Cape Cod, was the responsibility of every local resident of Harrisport. Babysitter or fire chief, mail carrier or bar back, your world became a lot busier and (hopefully) a lot more flush when peak season arrived, because once the summer families returned to their cottages, the punch lists and the parties would follow. There were celebrations to cater, linen and silk to dry-clean. Repairs and renovations, planting and weeding. Roofs that had failed to endure particularly harsh winters, pipes and wiring that were finally showing their age. By July, contractors and landscapers would arrive at Pip’s to get their morning coffee a little earlier, and stroll into Dock’s for their after-work beers a little later. Traffic would increase through town, thicken and slow. Roy’s Bread Basket would sell out of their pecan toffee rolls before nine on a weekday, and if you wanted a table at the Osprey House you’d better have made your reservation a week earlier.

Fourth of July arrived like a car horn, a clear and startling burst of sound signaling that it was time to get out of the way; summer had begun.

Two years away from it, two winters, two summers, and Lexi marveled at how little had changed. When she’d returned from her graduate program in photography at the Royal Academy of Arts in London the week before, she’d expected to find alterations, stitches that had surely come apart in the town’s seams. But sitting here now, sipping her margarita in a plastic cactus-stemmed glass that might have been as old as she was, catching recognizable whiffs of fried clams and sunbaked Naugahyde as she watched familiar faces file through the tavern’s open door, she wasn’t so sure.

But what had she expected? Two years away was a drop in the bucket after thirty-two of them. She could have been gone from Harrisport for fifty years and come back to find her hometown the same: her mother and older brother, Owen, still running their father’s construction business in town; her best friend, Kim, still owner of the natural-food store.

Every bit of it, exactly the same.

“Sorry I’m late.” Kim Donnelly slid into the booth, swinging her beach bag–size purse across her lap and landing it on the bench beside her. “Jay couldn’t find Miles’s uniform. Miles freaks out if he doesn’t have his lucky socks.” She took a moment to shift the straps of her sleeveless shirt before she saw the electric green margarita in front of her. Her face lit up. “Please tell me that’s what I think that is.”

“You really have to ask?” Lexi directed her narrowed gaze at the bar. “I actually had to tell the new bartender how to make it. What happened to Kenny?”

“He moved to Phoenix,” said Kim, pushing back her blond hair and scooping up her drink. “And Johnny’s not new; he’s been here over a year.”

“A year? And he doesn’t know how to make a mint margarita? Shame on him. Shame on you.” The women raised their drinks and clinked them. “To summer,” said Lexi.

“To summer,” Kim repeated. She took a long sip, moaning with pleasure. “God, I’ve missed that taste.” She smiled at Lexi across the booth. “I can’t believe you remembered our drink.”

“Of course I remembered. I was gone two years, not twenty.”

“Trust me; some days it felt more like twenty.”

Lexi reached for her best friend’s hand and gave it a loving squeeze. For years, too many to count, they had been meeting at the dockside restaurant, sinking into the same booths, resting their elbows on the same gnarled tabletops and chipping away at the dents in the thick shellac with their thumbnails, falling into the same routines with the rest of their neighbors, all of them bound to the cycles of the seasons, as linked as the tides to the moon.

“Look at us. . . .” Kim glanced around at the busy tables and sighed. “It’s like we’re all a bunch of kids trying to smoke the rest of our cigarettes before our parents come home.”

Lexi had to agree. For all the anticipation and excitement of summer, there was a palpable melancholy too. As grateful as everyone was for the infusion of outsiders and their money, a part of each resident couldn’t help resenting the loss of their quiet, their privacy. But it was always a trade. Everyone knew that and accepted it.

For Lexi, that trade had never been a begrudging one. Once upon a time, her anticipation of peak season was colored only in shades of euphoria. The first week of July once meant more than just the arrival of crowds and longer lines for gas and everything else. For Lexi, it had meant the return of Hudson Moss, the return of a joy she’d kept tidily closed up all winter, just like the great Moss cottage itself, sealed up safe from the coldest, quietest months, just waiting for summer’s cue to throw open the sashes of her own heart, to be the object of Hudson’s affections once again. Yet no matter how excited he had appeared, no matter how deeply he’d kissed her or how long he’d made love to her, Lexi could never fully shake the feeling that for him, life in Harrisport would never be real—only a holiday life; that his real world had existed in the nine months between September and June—months that for her had been utterly purposeless without him. And just when the vines of her trust had finally grown thick and sturdy around her heart, he’d yank them out again like weeds.

A silver Porsche sped past the window; Lexi followed its path reflexively.

Kim smiled. “You still look, don’t you?”

“Old habits.” Lexi reached for her drink to cover the flush of guilt that climbed her cheeks. Twelve years after the last time Hudson Moss’s prized sports car had cruised the streets of Harrisport, and she was like one of Pavlov’s dogs whenever a similar car cut through her field of vision.

“I do it too,” admitted Kim. “It’s like I still expect them to be here every summer. You heard about the house, right?”

Lexi frowned quizzically.

“They’re finally putting it on the market,” explained Kim. “Thank God. That poor thing was rotting like a piece of fruit.”

The Mosses, sell their prized house? Lexi struggled to accept the news. For years, long before she’d ever fallen in love with Hudson Moss and been allowed entrance into his family’s vaulted rooms, she’d coveted the Mosses’ shingle-style cottage from afar. It had been in the Moss family for generations—Lexi’s mother and father had even helped to build a guest house on the property when they were young (and fallen in love in the process). It was unimaginable that another family would roost there.

Lexi felt Kim studying her. “You look upset,” said Kim.

Lexi shrugged. “I’m not upset. I’m just . . . surprised.”

“Why? You know how Florence hated it here. I’m shocked she waited this long after Tucker died to unload it.”

Lexi did know; of course she did. Throughout her relationship with Hudson, Lexi had witnessed plenty of chilly, sour looks from his mother—most of them during those sticky summer days, the suspicious stares that had made Lexi wipe self-consciously at her neck, sure there must have been some damning love bite there that Hudson had left during their frantic lovemaking in the guest house, maybe a missed button on her blouse, or a telling patch of knotted hair where he’d tangled his fingers.

Lexi shook her head, letting the memories go. “I just can’t believe no one in the family wants it, that’s all.”

“Like who? Hudson hasn’t been back since . . .” Kim paused, regret pooling in her eyes as she met Lexi’s gaze and knew there was no need to clarify. “There is Cooper, I guess.”

Cooper. Lexi nodded absently, the mention abruptly steering her thoughts to the last time she’d laid eyes on Hudson’s younger brother. Eleven years ago, the same night Hudson had broken off their engagement in the guest house. Cooper had appeared in the doorway like a beacon, a shining light to lead her to safety when she’d been plunged into darkness and more than willing to step off the edge of the world. He’d kept her company while she’d bawled her eyes out, while she’d drained a whole bottle of champagne. He’d driven her home in his father’s car, driven her up and down the coast for hours because she’d told him she couldn’t bear to go home alone.

And then, when they’d finally run out of road and he’d delivered her to her apartment, Cooper had kissed her, a bold and passionate kiss that she hadn’t expected. And in the years since, when Lexi had remembered that night, she’d felt a sense of confliction. She’d wanted Cooper to kiss her; there was no denying it. Somehow, in the midst of her heartbreak, her wounds still fresh, she’d felt a startling attraction to Hudson’s eighteen-year-old brother. Even now the memory warmed her skin with a strange mix of embarrassment and recalled desire. No wonder she’d been too ashamed to ever admit the kiss to Kim. She’d been turned on by her ex-boyfriend’s teenage brother. It was criminal.

“He’s a writer now.”

Lexi looked up, snapped out of her musings.

“Cooper,” clarified Kim. “Lynn carries his books in the store. Mysteries. He has some series about a detective who lives in a camper on the beach with his dog. She was telling me about the most recent one. Sundown, I think she said it was called. Apparently it was a big seller for her last summer.”

A writer. It made sense, Lexi thought as she reached for her drink. While Hudson had been the gregarious one, quick to entertain and command a room, Cooper had been studious and quiet, content to hang back in the wings and observe, which was why his kiss—and the intensity of it—had shocked her.

“Okay, enough stalling.” Kim leaned forward, arms folded, eyes narrowed firmly. “Spill.”

Lexi smiled into her margarita. “There’s nothing to tell.”

“Oh, come on. What about that professor? Anton?”

“Alden,” corrected Lexi. “It wasn’t serious.”

“You said it was.”

“I thought it was.”

“Has he at least called?”

Lexi licked salt off her lip. “I told him not to.”

“Why would you do that?”

“Because there’s no point,” said Lexi. “He’s there; I’m here.”

“Because you left.”

“Of course I left. It was a two-year program, Kimmie. We both knew it couldn’t go anywhere.”

Kim frowned, unconvinced. “Both of you—or you?” When Lexi refused to answer, Kim tried again. “Then what about that bartender at the pub you always went to, the one in the picture you e-mailed me?”

Lexi shook her head. “I only went there a few times.”

Kim blew out an exasperated breath. “You were in London for two years and you didn’t meet anyone?”

“I met plenty of people.”

“Men,” said Kim.

Lexi’s smart phone hummed on the table between them; she picked it up.

Kim grinned. “It’s the professor, isn’t it?”

Lexi didn’t recognize the number (area code 919—where was that?), but with her drained savings account, she didn’t have the luxury of sending a possible job offer to voice mail.

“I should take this,” she said, already shimmying out of the booth.

“I’ll get us an order of clam strips,” Kim said.

Lexi nodded approvingly, then answered the call as she navigated among the crowded tables. “Hello?”

A male voice said, “Can I speak to Alexandra Wright?”

A job offer, it had to be. Only people who didn’t know her well called her that—and the voice had come on too quickly to be a telemarketer. “This is she.”

“Alexandra, this is Cooper Moss.”

Lexi frowned, not hearing clearly over the roar of customers as she passed the bar. “I’m sorry—who?” she said, pushing through the front door and emerging into the soft evening air.

“Cooper,” the man said again. “Cooper Moss.”

Lexi stopped at the edge of the steps, catching the name finally.

“Hudson’s younger brother,” he added after a moment. “You don’t remember me, do you?”

Her breath caught, the recollection of his kiss still fresh in her mind, filling her with an irrational embarrassment, as if he’d been eavesdropping on her recent conversation with Kim.

“Is this a bad time?” he asked, his Southern accent noticeable now.

Lexi turned and blinked at the tavern, seeing Kim in the window, talking to the waitress.

“No,” she said, finding her bearings at last. “No, it’s fine. Of course I remember you, Cooper. What can I do for you?”

“I don’t know if you heard—I don’t know why you would have—but I’m coming back to Harrisport to see about the house. My mother wants to put it on the market. I’m trying to convince her to wait, but she’s determined.

The reason I’m calling is that I’m finally having the property listed on the historic register. Jim says my dad never did that.”

Lexi thought of all the times her mother had chastised the Moss family for their negligence, their home being the sole holdout of all the massive summer cottages along the shoreline to seek nomination—an oversight the Moss family had chalked up to forgetfulness, but Lexi’s father, Hank, had always insisted it was just another way for Tucker Moss and his clan to assert their influence, and their entitlement, over the residents of Harrisport.

“I have someone here in Raleigh handling the research for the application,” Cooper continued, “but I need someone to photograph the property. The woman at the town office said you do architectural photography.”

“I do, yes.”

“I’m in Boston right now,” said Cooper, “but I’m planning to be on the cape later tonight. Do you think you could come by the house tomorrow morning and we could talk specifics? Is eight too early?”

Lexi stared at the sidewalk, stunned into silence by the offer, her mind racing at the implications of it, the layers of impossibility. Going back to the Moss house. Seeing Cooper again, and what if Hudson was there too? But it was a job, a good job; how could she say no?

Cooper cleared his throat gently. “If you have plans, I understand. I know it’s short notice, and you’re probably already booked for the season. . . .”

Lexi heard a knock and glanced up to see Kim at the window, looking exasperated and waving her back inside.

Lexi turned away. “No,” she said. “Eight’s fine.”

“Great. I’ll look forward to it.”

She hung up, chastising herself for her indecision as she slipped her phone into the back pocket of her jeans and headed for the steps. What was she so nervous about? It was eleven years ago, for God’s sake. A lifetime, surely a blip on the radar of Cooper’s memory. If he remembered their kiss at all, he was probably hoping she wouldn’t bring it up, which she wouldn’t. Absolutely not. The subjects of that night and Hudson would be off-limits.

It was a job, right? No different from any other.

She reached the tavern door and tugged it open, her heart finally slowing its frantic beat, the familiar smell of freshly fried clam strips still sizzling in their paper baskets filling her lungs.

Edie Wright stepped up as close as she could to the fish market’s counter and squinted down into the blurry spread of price tags that pierced the carpet of crushed ice.

Sixty-four and she still refused to get reading glasses. It wasn’t vanity. God, no. A vain woman didn’t wear men’s jeans and swing a hammer at eighteen while her classmates preened in culottes and sling-backs. It was simple stubbornness; that was all. A refusal to acknowledge the onset of age and the annoying accessories that came with it. The aches and pains, the bolts of stiffness in hands that once could cut down a pile of two-by-sixes in thirty minutes—those clues were proof enough of time’s relentless march. Losing Hank to a heart attack three years earlier had been the cruelest clue of all. A wife always knew she could lose her husband, but Edie had never really believed the two of them wouldn’t leave this earth together.

“You could just ask, you know.” Faye Webb appeared behind the counter, chuckling as she secured the matching bobby pins that flanked her round face.

Edie righted herself, lips pursed. “And you could make the damn numbers bigger, you know.” The women shared a tired laugh; then Edie waved her hand at the case, exasperated. “Oh, the hell with it,” she said. “Just give me two pounds of shrimp. Lexi’s got some fancy dish planned for dinner.”

“Bet they worked her hard over there.”

“Oh, you know how she is. No one has to tell her to work hard. It’s telling her to let up that she needs to hear.”

“Seems everybody’s coming home to roost lately,” Faye mused as she scooped up a fistful of shrimp. “You heard the news about the Moss place, I’m sure.”

Edie looked up at the name. She blinked a moment at Faye, long enough that the woman offered an explanation as she dropped the shrimp on the scale. “Apparently Her Majesty wants to be done with the place for good now that Tucker’s gone. She’s sending one of the boys up here to check it out before they put it on the market.”

God, please don’t let it be Hudson. The plea came reflexively. Edie lowered her eyes, as if her friend might detect her unfounded dread.

“When did you hear about this?” Edie asked, smoothing down the short graying red hairs at the base of her neck and forcing a casual tone to her voice that she most certainly didn’t feel.

“Yesterday, at the post office—it’s a little over two; that okay?”

Edie nodded dully, not even looking at the scale. Faye was an old friend, one of the few left of the old guard in Harrisport who remembered the days when the Moss family had swooped in and out of their town like a flock of exotic birds every summer. But for most of the residents, this news would be good for little more than a few minutes of gossip at Pip’s counter. After all, it had been years since the Moss family had held court at their seaside kingdom on Birch Drive. That was practically a lifetime, the way summer families turned over along the shore nowadays—a footnote.

She wondered what her daughter would think to learn the news. Would Lexi care? Probably not.

What was she so worried about, anyway? It wasn’t as if the Mosses were moving back to Harrisport. Faye had claimed they were returning for a quick visit to sell the house, to be done with it.

Lexi might never even know they’d come and gone.

The frozen custard stand was already busy with the early evening crowd when Owen Wright swung his truck into the gravel lot at seven ten and waved to his sixteen-year-old daughter where she waited for him on one of the stand’s weathered benches. Meg was hard to miss in her blinding electric-pink T-shirt and matching visor, the unfortunate uniform implemented by the stand’s owners—an outfit that would surely have resulted in life-ending humiliation for the fashion-obsessed girls his daughter went to school with in New York City.

“Busy day?” he asked when she’d climbed into the passenger seat and buckled up, her loose red ponytail swinging around.

“Crazy.” She fell back against the seat. “A Little League team showed up at four, and of course every kid wanted a Pirate Ship Split, and every kid wanted substitutions. And then Andy started freaking out because Sydney was putting the hats on upside down—like the kids even cared. I mean, seriously!”

Owen grinned as he steered them out of the parking lot. He loved his daughter’s work reports, loved every mundane second. The summer weeks she spent with him were a treasure, each day a piece of gold, and he pocketed every minute. He knew that scooping ice cream six days a week couldn’t compare to the excitement of her life with Heather in Manhattan, but he wouldn’t apologize for that. After all, Meg had spent the first fourteen years of her life in Harrisport; coming back for the summer may not have been exotic, but it was familiar, and Meg seemed to genuinely enjoy reconnecting with the places—and people—from her childhood. If her enthusiasm was false, Owen was ashamed to say he was grateful to her for it.

“Daaad . . .” Meg’s stern voice drew him out of his reverie. He glanced to where her narrow eyes pointed and saw the offending Tupperware on the end of the dash. “You didn’t eat your salad.”

“I know, I know,” he admitted. “I was just so busy.”

“Too busy to eat an already made salad? That’s so lame.”

“I’ll have it tomorrow.”

“After it’s been sitting all day in the sun? Gross. You will not.” She wrinkled her mouth. She always reminded him of Lexi when she did that; Owen’s grin widened. “It isn’t funny, Dad.”

He nodded, forcing his amusement down. “I know.”

“You’ll never live to see my wedding at the rate you’re going.”

“Oh, so you are getting married now?” Just the other day, she’d assured him she’d be a proud old maid, a declaration that had left him at turns relieved and guilty.

“I never said I wasn’t getting married,” Meg clarified. “I just said I wasn’t sure.”

“Hey, before I forget . . .” Owen glanced at her. “Your mom left me a message this afternoon. She said she tried your cell twice and you didn’t answer.”

Meg pulled at a hangnail on her pinkie. “I’ll call her back later. My phone’s almost dead.”

“Why don’t you call her now,” he said, gesturing to his cell in the cup holder.

“I’d better not. We might lose the signal.”

“I never lose a signal around here.”

“No, really, I can wait till we get to Grandma’s. I’m sure it’s nothing.”

She was making excuses, Owen thought, and he wondered why. Before his divorce, he’d never been a suspicious person. Now it seemed he saw secrets everywhere. He turned his attention back to the road and let the worry go. Most likely Meg just didn’t feel up to a call with her mother. As much as Heather and she got along, Meg would often claim exhaustion after one of her mother’s phone check-ins. Some days Heather’s text messaging was interminable; Owen could hear the alerts chiming out insistently.

Of course, his real worry was that Heather had found some reason to require Meg to return home early, some urgent commitment she couldn’t be excused from, no matter what court orders said. The previous summer had seen a similar battle, when Heather had informed him that Meg needed to get back to the city a week earlier than planned to start field hockey practice. Never mind that Meg wasn’t even fond of the sport, or that it had meant leaving the Custard stand shorthanded at the last minute.

“So what’s this about George’s opening in LA?” he asked.

Meg spun to face him. “Mom told you about that?”

“She left it in the message.”

“What did she say?”

Owen glanced at Meg, thinking she looked stricken. “Just that it was over Thanksgiving and she wanted you to go. Is something wrong?”

“No, nothing’s wrong.” Meg turned back to face the road, reaching out to turn on the radio. “I don’t have to go, you know.”

“Do you want to go?”

She shrugged, pressing at the radio buttons too fast to actually hear her selections. Try as Owen did to pretend otherwise, the mention of his ex-wife’s boyfriend still squeezed the air out of his lungs.

“You know, it’s okay if you do,” he said gently.

Meg smiled but didn’t answer, and Owen didn’t press, just let the sound of an old Dire Straits song fill the car. They drove on in silence, and even though Owen knew there might be lots of reasons why Meg had fallen so quiet, most of which had nothing to do with him, it was still hard not to calculate the time they spent in each other’s company not talking. Before the divorce, he’d never worried too much if they had gone whole days without a real conversation. Now the shared minutes were precious, as quantifiable as any limited thing. As of today, he had exactly twenty-eight days left with his daughter before she’d pack up and return to New York City.

Twenty-eight days.

In a few weeks, he’d get that figure down to hours. Then minutes.

And all he could think, for the thousandth time, was that none of this had been his idea. view abbreviated excerpt only...

Discussion Questions

1. For both families, the Mosses and the Wrights, the cottage holds many memories and great personal significance. In your life, has there been a place—be it one you visited only occasionally or maybe one you lived in year-round—that you remain deeply connected to? Does it still exist? If so, do you revisit it? Do you get the same sort of feelings there that you did years ago?

2. Even though she is reeling from Hudson’s breakup, Lexi finds herself drawn to Cooper in the hours after she and Hudson part, and the memory of their time together that night lingers in her mind, even though she remains conflicted about her feelings for Cooper. It is only when she and Cooper meet again twelve years later that Lexi has the opportunity to better understand her feelings of attraction, even if she is hesitant to act on them. Have you ever felt yourself drawn to someone at a time of emotional strain and struggled to understand whether your feelings were real or just the result of a vulnerable moment?

3. When Lexi finds Cooper’s manuscript, she accuses him of using her and insists his actions are reason enough for why they can’t further their romantic relationship. As a result, Cooper tells Lexi that she is only using the manuscript as an excuse to stop their romance because she still has unresolved anger toward Hudson and is afraid of being hurt again. Do you think Lexi is right to make such a big deal about Cooper’s writing, or do you think Cooper has a point in his assessment of Lexi’s behavior? Have you known people who put up barriers to love?

4. The summer of 1966, when the guest house is being built, is a pivotal one for many of the characters in the novel. For Edie, she is developing feelings for Tucker while trying to understand her changing feelings for Hank. For Tucker, falling in love with Edie is the chance he has always wanted to break away from family responsibility and expectation. For Hank, the introduction of Tucker into Edie’s life has him feeling threatened and forces him to reevaluate the leanings of his own heart. Did you identify with any particular character’s evolution and personal conflicts during that time? If so, which one, and why?

5. Owen is struggling to come to terms with his divorce and can’t fathom that his daughter, Meg, might not be the same little girl who grew up in the house he now inhabits alone. Do you think Meg shares his struggle, or do you think she has a clear understanding of her own changes? By the novel’s end, do you believe that Owen will finally move forward and accept the changes in his world?

6. There’s no question Lexi could have found a strong photography program closer to the cape, but she chose to leave the country for two years. Do you think those closest to her—her mom, her brother, her best friend, Kim—think she picked the Royal Academy because she was running away? What do you think she hoped to gain by leaving for a fixed period of time? Even though many years had passed since her breakup with Hudson, do you think she was still looking to hide from her heartache by going away?

7. At eighteen, Edie has two men vying for her affections, but by the end of the summer it becomes clear in her mind and heart which man she belongs with. Did you agree with her decision, or did you wish to see her with the other man?

8. The novel features many parent/child relationships. Which of the relationships did you most identify with? If you are a parent, did you see yourself in one of the parents? As a child, do you see yourself in one of the daughters or sons? Why?

9. The title of the novel suggests the smaller building that initially brings the Wrights into the Moss world—but one could argue that the main house is also a guest house in that it hosts visitors too as the summer residence of the wash-ashore Moss family. Which structure do you think the title refers to? Who do you think are the “guests” in the novel, and why?

10. One of the novel’s main themes is letting go of the past. By the story’s end, do you believe the characters will manage to do that in order to move on? Which characters do you think will be most successful and embrace their chances at new love and starting over? Which ones do you fear will struggle to succeed, and why?

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