The Summer Wives

In August 1951, Miranda delivers a note from her stepsister Isobel to Joseph Vargas. He invites her to join him and his father, Pascoal Vargas, for a day of work on their boat. Joseph tells Miranda that Pascoal was a rumrunner during Prohibition before marrying his wife and becoming the lighthouse keeper. Joseph also recounts that Pascoal had to deliver Joseph himself during a powerful storm. Later, while swimming in the sound, Joseph kisses Miranda and confesses he has had feelings for her all summer; she reciprocates. Miranda is confused, as she believed Joseph and Isobel were secretly romantically involved. Joseph is shocked and adamantly denies this, insisting they are only friends. While Joseph cleans the boat after returning to shore, Miranda buys an ice cream from the general store, where his mother’s aunt, Mrs. Medeiro, warns her to be careful around the Vargas family.

On the cliffs near Greyfriars, Miranda and Joseph confess their mutual love. When they return to the house, they are surprised to find Miranda’s mother and new stepfather, Hugh Fisher, have returned early from their honeymoon. At dinner, her mother and Hugh announce that she is pregnant. Later that night, Joseph rows Miranda to the Fleet Rock lighthouse. There, he reveals that Hugh Fisher is his biological father, making him and Isobel half-siblings. A sudden squall forces them inside the lighthouse. When Miranda tells Joseph about her mother’s pregnancy, Joseph’s mother, Bianca, overhears from the kitchen and drops a tea tray in shock. Exhausted, Miranda and Joseph fall asleep together on the sofa. Sometime later, Bianca wakes Miranda, urgently telling her there has been a “terrible accident” and that she must go fetch Dr. Huxley.

In August 1969, Miranda Thomas is at Greyfriars when her estranged husband, Carroll Goring, arrives. He apologizes about the previous incidents of abuse and the car accident, admitting that he realized she had never been unfaithful to him. When she confronts him over his hypocrisy, he becomes violent, and Hugh Jr. intervenes and forces him to leave. After, Hugh Jr. tells her he knows that his father had a bad reputation and that she’s still in love with Joseph. He saw a man carry her back from the beach the night of the moon landing and wants to know more about her life. Mrs. Medeiro then arrives to deliver lobsters containing a cryptic note from a “friend.” Mrs. Medeiro remarks that Miranda never followed her advice to stay out of trouble and asserts that she should now let sleeping dogs lie. Miranda doesn’t explain to Hugh Jr. what the note or the encounter was about.

At a large end-of-summer beach party, U.S. Marshals Frank Santorini and Johnny confront Miranda, seeking information on the fugitive Joseph. When Johnny insults Miranda, she smacks him, and he nearly hits her before Frank pulls him away and apologizes. Miranda flees to the party. As requested, Miranda has arranged for a theater troupe to perform the first act from The Tempest. Isobel shines in her role, and the performance receives massive applause. 

After, Miranda slips away to meet Joseph, who has been hiding on the island. He tells her he escaped from prison to care for his dying mother, Bianca, and takes Miranda to a hidden cave beneath the lighthouse. He explains that he kept all her letters, though he didn’t answer them, and he stopped thinking about their future when he heard she married. She implies that Carroll was abusive and that they’ve parted. He asks Miranda to care for Bianca if he’s captured before her passing, and Miranda tells him to escape on the boat she bought for Hugh Jr. if he eludes the police that long. Finally, they reconcile and have sex. He then explains how he endured prison and escaped, and she expresses that she’d run away with him.

Suddenly, Joseph realizes Bianca is distressed downstairs. She wants a priest, and despite the danger, Joseph sails to the island to find one while Miranda waits behind. In her delirious state, Bianca mistakes Miranda for a priest and confesses that she, not Joseph, murdered Hugh Fisher 18 years ago. She was driven to it after learning he was having a baby with Miranda’s mother. Isobel soon arrives with a real priest. While he takes Bianca’s confession, Isobel takes Miranda upstairs to say that Carroll saw Joseph and turned him over to the marshals, who called the Coast Guard.

Isobel then confesses that she told her father Hugh that Miranda and Joseph were together at the lighthouse, triggering the fatal confrontation. To slow the Coast Guard’s navigation to the beach, Isobel turns off the lighthouse light. The two begin arguing over who was most responsible for the events of Hugh’s death and Joseph’s arrest, but they stop when Isobel sees a fire on the island and claims Tom Donnelly is burning down the clubhouse where the party took place. This prompts the two to haphazardly return to the island and urge the drunken citizens to go put out the blaze.

Miranda runs after the marshals and Joseph, who are on the shore waiting for a Coast Guard boat. Officials threaten to shoot Miranda if she doesn’t stay away, but she keeps running toward them. Joseph begs her to stop. The marshals don’t care that he didn’t commit the crime. They put him in a boat and are going to leave when Clay Monk fires a shot that causes Johnny to fall into the water, giving Joseph a chance to escape. Joseph first pulls the fallen marshal from the water and then swims away. Clay drives Miranda back to Greyfriars. 

She returns to find the marshals searching Greyfriars. During this, her mother receives a call telling her that Bianca Vargas has died. They convince the marshals to let Hugh Jr. row over to pick the priest up from the lighthouse. Miranda and Isobel go to the boathouse to get a dinghy out for him, where they discover Joseph concealed in a hidden hatch above the boats. They help him hide under the dock, and in the morning, he escapes the island on the sailboat Miranda had bought from the Huxleys.

In March 1931, Hugh Fisher visits a visibly pregnant Bianca at the Fleet Rock lighthouse. He confronts her, asserting that the child is his, and she doesn’t deny it. He is tormented by their separation and her marriage to Pascoal, and he professes his undying love for her. Hugh swears that if he ever loves another woman more than Bianca, she has his permission to kill him with her bare hands. Accepting his vow, Bianca invites him inside, and they resume their affair.

A year later, in 1970, Miranda is living at Greyfriars and running a theater company. She is pregnant with Joseph’s child. With Clay’s help, she secured a presidential pardon for Joseph, who is presumed drowned but celebrated as a hero for saving the marshal’s life. Isobel spends most of her time at Clay’s house, presumably resuming their teenage romance.

Throughout the winter, Joseph sent Miranda anonymous postcards from various ports, confirming he was alive, but they have recently stopped. One evening, as Miranda stands on the dock reciting Shakespeare, she sees a lone sailboat bearing Joseph approaching through the channel.