“That’s what I tell her,” Edith said. “All the time. Don’t grow up. It’s not worth it.”

The man stood, both he and her mother now laughing in that obviously fake way that older people did. He said good-bye and wandered off, still holding his body stiffly as though it might collapse if he fully let a breath out.

Edith stubbed her cigarette—the man’s brand, not her own—out in the sand, and said, “What did you think of Jake?”

She said it expectantly, her voice pitched a little too high, and Alice suddenly realized that this meeting had been at least partly arranged, that the man and her mother had not simply bumped into each other at the beach, or if they had, they’d seen each other before. And not just at the bank.

“He seemed nice,” Alice said.

“He’s very successful,” Edith replied, digging out one of her own cigarettes from the purse she’d brought.

Alice lay back down. She was worried she hadn’t put enough sunblock on her face that morning, and so she draped the towel over her head. It felt nice on her face, damp and cool. She thought about the man her mother had met. He was old and a little cheesy, but not that bad. When her mother was a mill worker at a paper factory and a single mother, she had to date a building manager who wore sleeveless T-shirts and had thick moles all over his shoulders and neck. Now that she didn’t have to work, and lived in a nice town like Kennewick, Edith could date men who worked in banks and cared about how they looked. It was the way the world worked. She knew that much from the books she read. Rich girls married rich boys, and their lives were better. It was simple.

She couldn’t see it, but a cloud must have crossed the sun because she could feel a sudden coolness on her skin. She sat up too fast, becoming a little dizzy. She realized she must have fallen asleep. There were fewer people on the beach now, and her mom was packing up.

“Ready to go, Al?” she asked.

Chapter 3

Now

Harry couldn’t sleep that afternoon. He kept thinking back to the time after his mother had finally succumbed to cancer, and the immense anger that he, then a moody and truculent teen, had felt.

“We have each other now,” Bill had said, after the funeral, “it’s important to remember what we have, and not what we’ve lost.”