Delilah nudges Andrea’s leg again. Is this an act? She’s on her third glass of Sancerre, so she can’t really tell.

Delilah leans forward and says, “So where are you and Bull from?”

Leslee laughs like an audience member on a late-night show and says, “Bull comes from the Land Down Under, which is obvious the second he opens his mouth.” She looks around the table. “I’ve barely asked you ladies anything about yourselves.”

This, Delilah thinks, is true. She wonders what kind of advance billing Phoebe gave them. Did Phoebe define them by their husbands? (Delilah’s husband, Jeffrey, owns Sea View Farm. Andrea’s husband, Ed, is the chief of police.)

Andrea clears her throat. “Delilah serves on the board of the Nantucket food pantry.”

“Nantucket Food, Fuel, and Rental Assistance,” Delilah says, though everyone calls it the food pantry.

Leslee brings her hands together as if in prayer. “You’re a do-gooder!” She makes it sound like she’s opened her front door to find Delilah in a Girl Scout uniform selling Thin Mints. “Phoebe has my email. Just send me the link. I’d be happy to read up on your cause and donate.”

“I used to do a ton of philanthropy before I had Reed,” Phoebe says. “I’ll have more time for it next year once he goes to boarding school.”

“Oh,” Leslee says. “Where is he looking?”

“The usual places,” Phoebe says. “Middlesex, St. George’s, Milton. But the one he has his heart set on is Tiffin Academy.”

“Tiffin!” Leslee shouts. “We know at least half the board at Tiffin.” She waves a hand. “We’ll see to it that he gets in.”

At this, Andrea bumps Delilah’s leg.

Phoebe, who never loses her composure, completely loses her composure. Her composure, Delilah thinks, is rolling around somewhere under the table. “You’d do that?” Phoebe says. “Put in a word when the time comes? Obviously you can’t guarantee admission—”

“I’ll pull every string,” Leslee says. “It’s the least I can do to thank you for writing our nominating letter.” Leslee sighs. “I would love to be a member here.”

Delilah sets her wineglass down on the wrought-iron table harder than she means to. “Nominating letter?” she says. “That was sweet of you, Phoebes.” The legs of her chair scrape against the brick patio as she pushes it back from the table. “Excuse me a moment.”

“Delilah,” Phoebe says.

Delilah slams into the women’s lounge. Phoebe is writing the Richardsons a nominating letter? She’s known them five minutes! Back when Delilah and Jeffrey were applying, Phoebe said she’d rather not write the nominating letter because she didn’t want to be accused of trying to get her friends in. She’d ended up writing a seconding letter, which had apparently done nothing.

The lounge has a seating area with a sofa upholstered in cheerful pink and white stripes and two pink Ultrasuede armchairs. This has never made sense to Delilah—who would want to hang out in what is essentially the ladies’ room?—but now she collapses in one of the armchairs and thinks how nice it is to have a comfortable place to sit while she processes her best friend’s betrayal.

Delilah realizes she’s being petty, even ridiculous. Everyone else in the world has a problem bigger than not getting into a private club. But even so… if the Richardsons get into the Field and Oar, Delilah will never speak to Phoebe again.

Nominating letter!

The women’s lounge, as far as Delilah can tell, is empty, but even if it weren’t, she can’t hold her frustration inside, not after three glasses of wine and two hours in this hideous dress. “Bahhhhhhh!” she cries.

A toilet flushes, and Delilah hears water running in a sink; the bathrooms are around the corner. She closes her eyes, praying that whoever it is will leave the lounge without comment.

No such luck.

“Are you okay?” a voice asks. Then there’s a gasp. “Delilah?”

My life, Delilah thinks, is officially over.

It’s Blond Sharon.

When Blond Sharon finished reading her character-study scene to her creative-writing class over Zoom, there was a lengthy silence.

Pow! Sharon thought. Her piece had rendered them speechless.

Lucky Zambrano cleared his throat. “Nancy, Willow, do either of you have comments for Sharon?”

Both women bowed their heads.

Lucky said, “Well, the physical description of Coco is quite vivid, although a bit of a stereotype, I’m afraid. Wearing black, the flamingo tattoo, the Joan Jett hair, the army duffel.”

“She was a hell of a lot more interesting than the other woman, the one with the shiny hair and the whatever-brand blazer,” Nancy said.

“Veronica Beard blazer,” Sharon clarified.

“Sharon, please wait until the end to respond,” Lucky said.

“I found it predictable,” Willow said. “Like maybe Sharon used ChatGPT with the prompt ‘Write a character study about two women getting off the ferry, one prep and one punk.’”

Sharon pressed her lips together to keep herself from shouting, I did not use ChatGPT!

“ChatGPT will be the end of writing as we know it,” Lucky said. “And while I’m not suggesting that Sharon used this egregious shortcut, I would suggest starting this piece fresh with different characters.”

“Different characters?” Sharon said, aghast.

“Sharon,” Lucky said. “Have you ever heard the phrase kill your darlings?”

“Attributed to William Faulkner,” Nancy said. Nancy was turning out to be kind of a pill. “It means you should delete anything that’s not working in your writing, no matter how fond you might be of it.”

“But my characters?” Sharon said. “Both characters?”

“Kill your darlings,” Lucky said.

Sharon, dramatically, drew an X through her handwritten page.

“Let’s move on,” Lucky said. “Willow, you may read.”

After class ended, Sharon called her sister, Heather. “I thought Walker leaving me for Bailey from PT was a hit to my self-esteem,” she said. “It was nothing compared to the beating I just took in my creative-writing class.”

“Mmgmmghbmm,” Heather said. She was eating while they spoke, which they’d been brought up never to do, but Heather was so busy at work that the only time she could talk was during her desk lunch.

“You read it,” Sharon said. “Did you think it was predictable?”

Heather slurped something through a straw.

“They told me to start over,” Sharon said.

Heather swallowed. “So start over,” she said. “If they thought it was predictable, then look around until you find something… unexpected.”