Hallsy has a brother named Rand, who is two years younger than Luke and five years younger than Garret, and her parents call him the Boy and say things like “It’s a miracle the Boy graduated from college at all,” even though it’s the furthest thing from a miracle because there is a new dormitory at Gettysburg bearing the Harrison name. Rand was currently following a big-wave tour with his surfer friends in Tahiti. Nell hooked up with him once but couldn’t go any further than making out because she said he kissed like a drunk five-year-old. “He has the fattest tongue,” she said, flattening hers and wiggling it around to show just how disgusting it is. I silently savor this piece of knowledge any time Hallsy lodges a crocodile complaint regarding the twenty-one-year-old model/actress Rand is dating whenever he lands in New York for a few months. She couldn’t be prouder to have a perfectly weathered playboy brother. It raises her stock.

I was sitting at the table on the back porch when Hallsy walked in. Hallsy picked my hair up off the back of the chair and threaded her fingers through it, saying, “It’s the beautiful bride!” I tilted my head up, and she kissed me on the cheek with her lips pumped full of poison. I never let Mom kiss me, and it would have bothered her to see how affectionate I am with Hallsy, even Nell. Fortunately, Luke and I had driven her to the airport not long after he came back from the run I so callously aborted. Mom would have loved to stay—she’d met Hallsy once and the next time I saw her she was wearing a fake diamond horseshoe necklace, a mall stand replica of Hallsy’s—but Luke and I had been the ones to buy her ticket and it cost three hundred dollars more for her to fly back on Sunday. Controlling the purse strings is an empowering feeling right up until I remember it wouldn’t be possible without Luke.

Mr. Harrison came outside with a bottle of Basil Hayden’s and put it on the table next to the bourbon glasses and the brownies. The first time Hallsy brought over the help’s brownies no one told me they were fudgy with pot, and I ate three and had to be put to bed with the spins, one of the loops finally landing me into a sticky spell of sleep that I fought and fought until I woke up at 2:00 A.M. shrieking about a spider dangling right over my head (there was no spider). The whole dream frightened me so much it triggered a charley horse that tore apart my calf. I was howling and gripping my leg, and Luke just stared at me like he’d never seen such a scene in his life. In the morning Mr. Harrison grumbled into his coffee, “What was all that commotion about last night?” It’s the only time he’s ever been annoyed with me, and I haven’t touched a Hallsy brownie since.

So tonight, I caught the corner of Luke’s eye when I stuck my hand in the Tupperware container. “I’m just having one,” I said under my breath.

Luke sighed in a way that made his nostrils look like sideways triangles. “Do whatever.”

Luke hates drugs. He tried pot once in college and said it made him feel dumb. He did go on this weird ecstasy bender with an ex-girlfriend his junior year, where they popped a pill every night for four nights in a row, but that’s where Luke Harrison’s fast life ended. Garret had arrived at the house that afternoon, and he was already on his second brownie. (I did coke with him in the bathroom at the Harrison Christmas party the year before. We both swore ourselves to secrecy from Luke.) Mr. Harrison and Hallsy were nibbling, but Mrs. Harrison kept right with her vodka. I get the feeling Mrs. Harrison has the same attitude about drugs as Luke does—she’s fine with others doing them in moderation, they’re just not for her.

“Did you finally get the honeymoon itinerary all squared away?” Hallsy asked.

“Finally,” Luke groaned, giving me a jokey, reproachful look. Is it really so much to fucking ask that he plan one thing for the wedding?

“Thank you for putting me in touch with your friend,” I said to Hallsy.

“Oh, so you are going to go through Paris now?” Hallsy swallowed the last bite of brownie and burped loudly. Hallsy loves to joke about having no manners, thinks it makes her seem reckless and carefree, like one of the guys. A lot of good that strategy has done for her.

“On the way back,” Luke said, “we fly into Abu Dhabi, spend one night, fly to the Maldives for seven days, then back to Abu Dhabi and then Paris for three more days. It’s not really ‘on the way,’ but Ani really wants to go to Paris.”

“Of course she wants to go to Paris!” Hallsy rolled her eyes at Luke. “It’s her honeymoon.”

“Dubai just seems like Las Vegas to me,” I said, trying not to sound defensive. “I need some culture.”

“Paris will be the perfect foil to the beach vacation.” Hallsy sank back in her chair and rested her head in her hand. “I’m just so glad you didn’t decide on London.” She timed the roll of her eyes to the word “London.” “Especially since you might end up living there, which”—she snorted crudely—“good luck with that.”

I started to say how no decision had been made yet, but Luke cocked his head at his cousin, confused. “Hallsy, you lived in London after college.”

“And it was the worst!” she wailed. “Sand niggers fucking everywhere. I thought I was going to be kidnapped and sold into white slavery.” She jabbed a finger at her hair, the color of six-hundred-dollar highlights.

A laugh gurgled low in Garret’s throat, and Mrs. Harrison pushed her chair away from the table. “Oh dear. I’m getting another vodka.”

“You know I’m right, Aunt Betsy!” Hallsy shouted after her. The brownies were making my brain feel like warm wet soil, ripe for a seed to plant. It clung to that sentence “You know I’m right, Aunt Betsy!” and regenerated it over and over.

“Your mom agrees with me, she’ll just never say it,” Hallsy said haughtily to Luke, who chuckled at her. “Speaking of things she’ll never say.” She swiveled in her chair so she was facing me. There was one lone brownie crumb stuck to her lip, trembling like a hairy mole. “Ani, you have to promise me something.”

I pretended my mouth was full of brownie so I didn’t have to answer her. This refusal was some pathetic attempt to show that her language offended me. Hallsy didn’t pick up on it.

“Don’t seat me with the Yateses at your wedding. For the love of God.”

“What did you do this time?” Mr. Harrison quipped. The Yateses were family friends of the Harrisons, though much closer with Hallsy’s parents as they had a son around her age. A son I’d heard she’d harassed, drunkenly and sloppily, on many occasions.

Hallsy held her hand over her heart and pouted in a way she thinks makes her look cute. “Why would you assume it was something I did?”

Mr. Harrison gave her a look, and Hallsy laughed. “Okay. I sort of did something.” Luke and Garret groaned, and Hallsy rushed to say, “But my heart was in the right place!”

“What was it?” I said, much more rudely than I’d meant to.

Hallsy turned to me, something like a challenge smoldering in her eyes. “You know their son, James?”

I nodded. I’d met him once. Some drinks thing. I asked him what he did, and the prick told me it was a rude question. I didn’t even care what he did, I just wanted him to be polite and return the question so I could brag about what I did.

Hallsy tucked her chin into her neck and muddled her voice. “I mean, I’d always sort of suspected”—she limped her wrist and looked around the table, making sure everyone caught her drift—“and someone recently told me it was true. He’d come out.” She shrugged. “So I sent Mrs. Yates flowers and my condolences.” She continued out of the corner of her mouth. “Course, then it turned out that he wasn’t actually gay.”

Luke barked a laugh, dragging his hands over his face. He separated his fingers so that all you could see were his eyes. “Who else would this happen to?” he moaned, inciting laughter from everyone but me. The brownie had distracted me, made me alert to the wondrous and spooky, and I was mesmerized by what they call the Gray Lady, the thick blanket of dusty fog that rolls in when the sun sets on Nantucket. At that moment, the Gray Lady was everywhere.