The Castaways

On the first day of summer on Nantucket Island, Ed Kapenash, the island's police chief known as "the Chief," learns that Greg and Tess MacAvoy have drowned while sailing to Martha's Vineyard for their twelfth wedding anniversary. The Coast Guard theorizes that a wind gust swung the boom and struck Greg, sending both overboard. Neither wore life preservers, both had been drinking, and the sloop was larger than Greg usually sailed. The news reaches the three other couples who, with the MacAvoys, form "the Castaways," a tight-knit group of eight friends who all arrived on Nantucket from elsewhere and built their lives there.

Each surviving member carries a secret. Addison Wheeler, a wealthy real estate agent, has been having a six-month affair with Tess. When his wife, Phoebe, arrives hysterical with the news, Addison initially fears she has discovered the affair. He called Tess five times that morning and received a cryptic text reading "I'm afraid." Jeffrey Drake, a farmer, is at home with his wife, Delilah, watching all four younger children, including the MacAvoy twins Chloe and Finn, when the Chief calls. Andrea Kapenash, the Chief's wife and Tess's first cousin, is at the beach when the Chief finds her. Her grief is immediate: She once saved Tess from drowning as a child and promised God she would become a nun in exchange, a vow she never honored.

The Chief identifies the bodies at the Coast Guard station and orders a confidential toxicology report. Among the recovered effects, he finds Tess's functioning iPhone showing five calls from Addison that morning. That evening, the friends gather at the Drake house, where the Chief tells the twins their parents are dead. Addison secretly pockets Tess's phone. Addison, who handled the MacAvoys' real estate, is named executor of their wills, which predate the twins and designate no guardians.

The novel moves between past and present, revealing complicated histories. The previous October, Greg, a high school music teacher, was accused of sexual misconduct by April Peck, a senior in his a cappella group. Greg claimed April threw herself at him; April claimed Greg kissed and groped her. The Chief intervened with the school administration to protect Greg's position, and Greg was ultimately retained, but the scandal nearly destroyed his marriage. Greg and Tess separated over Thanksgiving before reconciling.

Delilah had been in love with Greg for years, sharing an intense emotional bond fueled by late nights at the Scarlet Begonia, the restaurant where she worked and Greg performed. She believed April's account and felt personally betrayed. Meanwhile, during a group trip to Stowe, Vermont, the previous December, Addison and Tess spent a day alone and confided about their troubled marriages. Addison kissed Tess, and by January they were meeting regularly at a cottage he controlled through his real estate listings. Addison fell deeply in love and urged Tess to leave Greg, but she refused to disrupt her children's lives.

Phoebe's backstory reveals another layer of grief. Her twin brother, Reed, worked as a bond trader at Cantor Fitzgerald on the 101st floor of the World Trade Center and died on September 11, 2001. Phoebe, 11 weeks pregnant at the time, physically felt him fall and miscarried that day. She spent the next eight years dependent on antidepressants, pain medication, and black-market opiates obtained from Reed's college roommate.

The toxicology results arrive before the funeral: Greg's blood alcohol was .09 and Tess's was .06, but Tess also had opiates consistent with heroin in her blood. At the funeral, April Peck whispers to Jeffrey that she was with Greg the night before he died. Afterward, Andrea insists the twins must live with her and the Chief. Delilah argues they should spend the summer at the Drake house, but Andrea flatly refuses, invoking what Tess would have wanted.

Through the summer, grief fractures the group. Andrea's anguish manifests destructively, culminating when she smashes Greg's guitar in front of the twins. She begins visiting Jeffrey's farm office, where they spend hours retracing Tess's life through shared memories, keeping these sessions secret from their spouses. Andrea realizes Tess had been lying to her for months, and Jeffrey gently states the obvious: Tess was seeing someone. Delilah, meanwhile, collapses under guilt. The night before the sail, she followed Greg and saw his car parked at Cisco Beach beside April Peck's Jeep. When Tess dropped off the twins the next morning and said she was "terrified," Delilah almost told her what she had seen but chose silence.

Phoebe, by contrast, thrives, weaning herself off all medications for the first time since Reed's death. She organizes a benefit for Island Conservation, an environmental nonprofit, and donates $225,000 for a nature trail named after Tess and Greg. Addison, as executor, searches the MacAvoy house for evidence that Tess loved him but finds only a poem from The New Yorker with underlined lines: "My life with you has been beyond beyond / And there's nothing beyond it I'm seeking." He cannot tell whether Tess meant the poem for him or for Greg.

The Chief shares the toxicology findings with Addison and Jeffrey at the Begonia. Addison insists Greg drugged Tess, but the Chief and Jeffrey reject this, stressing the children must believe the drowning was accidental. That evening, Delilah impulsively takes all four children and drives west through the night, fleeing toward Michigan. After a difficult night in a New York hotel, she realizes she cannot escape her guilt and returns to Nantucket, where Jeffrey meets her at the ferry dock.

The secrets emerge in stages. Addison confesses his affair to Andrea. Phoebe tells the Chief she gave Tess a powerful black-market opiate pill the night before the sail, explaining the toxicology results. Phoebe had discovered the affair months earlier when Addison's receptionist, Florabel, directed her to the Quaise cottage, and the pill was partly motivated by jealousy. April Peck visits the Chief and reveals what Greg told her the night before he died: He loved his wife, would never leave her, and could no longer be April's friend. He had written Tess a song called "Beyond Beyond," drawn from the underlined poem. Florabel produces a letter from Tess found in the cottage: "I am going back to Greg and my kids. Please know you will always have a piece of my heart." Tess had been trying to communicate this with an unsent text from the sail: "I'm afraid you won't get it."

The Chief convenes a final meeting where all secrets are aired. He frames the truth: Greg was going back to Tess, and Tess was going back to Greg. They were trying to save each other when the boat capsized. It was an accident and nobody's fault. He asks them to forgive themselves and commit to raising Chloe and Finn together. Phoebe announces that she and Addison are expecting a child.

One year later, the group gathers for the ribbon-cutting of the memorial trail. Phoebe carries her newborn son, Reed Gregory Wheeler, named for her brother and for Greg. Delilah closes the novel with a memory of the group's best vacation in Sayulita, Mexico: a perfect evening of margaritas, fish tacos, and guitar, ending with the four couples retiring hand in hand to their rooms, closing the door, and turning off the light.