“Shut up!”

“I did and now I feel so guilty.” Lina had pulled the car to the side of the road and called Adele as soon as she left the marina.

“Lina, stop! You have nothing to feel guilty about. Phil —”

“Don’t mention him. I don’t want to think about him.” She rubbed her eyes. “I knew this would happen.”

“Stop it! Stop thinking. You like him and you kissed him. You are separated. It’s not like you’re going home to Phil.”

“I know.” Lina drew in a breath. “You’re right. Why am I feeling like this? Why do I feel like I’m cheating on him?”

“I don’t know, but you’re not, so get it out of your head. Now tell me about the kiss.”

Lina leaned her head back against the headrest and then, as briefly as possible, told Adele about the day, going out on the sailboat, meeting his friends. “They were so well-read and smart. I need to—”

“Okay, get to the good part,” Adele interrupted. “Well-read, smart people sound boring.”

“They weren’t boring. They were interesting and—”

“Can you move forward to the kiss? I don’t care about the other people on the boat. If they hadn’t been there, we would be talking about more than a kiss right now.”

“Fine.” Lina told her about their interaction in the cabin, his undivided attention throughout the day and, finally, the kiss.

“You should have gone back to his boat with him. Just one look at him and you can tell he’d be great in bed.”

“You can’t say that,” Lina said, even though she suspected the same thing.

“I think I can,” Adele said. “I have a lot more data than you.”

“I’m not discussing this with you.”

“Why not? You’re single again. This is the kind of thing single women discuss.”

“Not this one.”

A dark Honda sat in the driveway when Lina arrived home, and she assumed someone was visiting until she saw the temporary license plate on the back of the car. “Is that Katie’s new car?” she asked Logan, who was stretched out on the couch with Knight, watching a college football game, a passion he and Phil shared each fall.

“Yes.”

“It’s used.”

“It’s what she wanted. It has top safety ratings. She printed a bunch of stuff out to show Dad. She found it online.”

“Good.” Lina was impressed by both Katie’s tenacity and Phil’s willingness to not force a car on her that she didn’t want. “Did you see your dad?”

“He was here when I got home,” Logan said, continuing to stare at the television.

“Did you talk to him?”

He shrugged. “He watched the first half of the game with me.”