“Of course,” said Laura, shooting for jaunty yet nonchalant, but missing and hitting slightly manic instead. So she turned and headed out to the patio.

Bob sighed and looked down at the dogs. Then he took a piece of bacon from around a date and broke it in half.

Holding the pieces above Herbert and Daisy, he said, “She’s very pretty, and she makes me nervous. Don’t tell anyone.” He dropped the bacon fragments.

They never reached the ground, and his secret was safe.

•   •   •

The round table had been given a green cloth, and five women were sitting around its edge. Laura saw Liz from the bookstore, and Maggie she knew, of course. The other three women were Nina, Polly, and Anna.

As Laura stepped out onto the patio, the game paused and all the women swiveled in their seats.

“Hey, Laura,” said Maggie, looking back down at her hand. “Don’t mind us, we’re wasting our youth gambling and drinking.”

“Go right ahead,” Laura said, stepping closer. “What are you playing, ladies?”

“Hold’em, of course,” said Liz. “Do you happen to play?”

“A little,” said Laura.

The heads swiveled again, but this time it was for Bob.

“Good evening, lovely ladies of Larchmont,” he said, surprised by how suavely the phrase came out.

Anna and Polly giggled, and Liz made a low hooting noise.

“Ignore her, Bob,” said Maggie. “Menopause does terrible things to a woman’s libido.”

Bob laughed. “Does anybody need anything from the kitchen?”

“I’ll take another beer,” said Nina, who hadn’t raised her eyes from her cards.

Laura pulled a chair closer and sat down to observe. She’d learned poker (and bridge and canasta and gin rummy and crazy eights) from her grandmother, who’d learned cards from her late husband, a mathematician and card counter banned from Atlantic City. Laura still loved the feel of playing cards in her hand, the easy privacy of strategy and observation. She felt a wave of gratitude. Her parents might have taught her to rattle off kingdom and phylum, but her grandmother had given her practical, quotidian abilities. Card games. Knitting. Cooking. Sports. Nine times out of ten those were the skills she turned to when things got hard. The secret to happiness isn’t always in your head. Sometimes it’s entirely in your hands.

The ladies were finishing a game, which Maggie won, and Laura asked if they could deal her in.

She said, “What are we playing for?” and hoped the stakes weren’t prohibitive.

“Bragging rights,” said Polly. “And candy. Each mini York Peppermint Pattie is worth ten bucks, and the Starbursts are a dollar each.”

Laura scanned the table. There were piles of candy at every place, with a suspicious pile of wrappers under most chairs. The players were literally eating into their profits.