“God, it’s sloppy joes tonight, but they’re homemade, at least,” Mrs. Bergeron said.

“My favorite,” Gina said, stretching out the vowels.

That night Jake came back from the bank with a large bottle of white zinfandel but no flowers and no movie. He seemed tired, and when Alice told him she was thinking of going over to the Bergerons’ for dinner he made a face but didn’t say anything negative. Right before she left, however, he said to her: “You won’t tell them anything, will you? About us?”

“I won’t, but don’t you think . . . I mean, it’s been two years, and I’m a grown woman now.”

“Trust me, Alice, they won’t understand. They’ll think that I’m taking advantage of you. We live in America. We were founded by Puritans. In other countries, they would totally understand what was going on between us, but not here.”

“I won’t tell them anything. I wouldn’t have, anyway. It’s none of their business.”

Alice drove Jake’s car across town, listening to the tape he’d left in the deck. It was Genesis, Phil Collins singing the word Mama over and over again. She got tired of it, and sped ahead to “That’s All.” After she pulled into the Bergerons’ driveway, she listened to the rest of the song, the sky a deep, dusky blue over the Bergerons’ house, its first floor brick and its second story painted yellow, the windows with black shutters. The front yard was brown from the summer drought, and with a scattering of orange pine needles. As the song finished, Alice wondered if tonight was the beginning of the story of Gina’s fall from grace. What had Gina’s mother said, that she was “exhausted”? Alice shut the car off.

Gina didn’t seem exhausted during dinner. If anything, she seemed a little hyper, constantly interrupting anything anyone else was saying to get her own word in, pushing her food around the plate, cutting her sloppy joe into bite-sized pieces with her fork and knife, something the rest of the family made fun of her for.

“You want chopsticks for that, G?” her father asked. “She eats sushi now,” he said to Alice.

“Everyone eats sushi, Dad,” Gina said.

“Not in Maine. We cook our fish up here.”

“High five,” Gina’s youngest sister said and slapped Mr. Bergeron’s palm.