“—and we scattered the ashes,” Vic says to Ben.

“Already?” Padgett says. They’ve caught up. Everyone stops talking. With the sunset starting up, the vast space is daunting to everyone but the children, who are screaming wildly at the far end.

“Already what?” Vic asks.

“I thought you said, scattered the ashes.”

The two men share a look of completely transparent fake confusion.

“No,” Ben says. “Nuh-uh.”

“What were you talking about then?” Rachel asks, almost coyly.

“Tech,” Vic admits. “You?”

“Children,” Padgett admits, pointing out to them. She hasn’t told the story, of course, about Martin and their kidnap scheme, not to anyone. Nor has Ben said anything about faking the scandal at school. Rachel never talks about the horse, and Vic hasn’t, despite its bubbling underneath every article he reads, said a word to anyone about Ariel Park, soon to be found not guilty if he’s arranged it right. And he’s seemed to. Ariel will disappear in silence, like any failure in a successful town. There are countless secrets around them, and if it seems nothing could be, should be, built on such deceptions, you can think that they leave them here, the place where by decree nothing can be built. They do it now, scatter it away, and they do it quickly, without much ritual, Rachel and Ben standing somewhat solemnly just a few steps from Padgett and her husband. Vic doesn’t even know what to say—it seems disloyal to say he misses his wife, what with his wife here beside him—but nevertheless he thinks of Maureen’s laughing face, how flushed it would get, over very stupid jokes—and so says simply, “Rest in peace,” which who knows if it’s true. It rises to the air, falls to the dark and is gone, like a half-finished question.

If this is a story about two marriages—

They troop back out, Kit and Charlie lagging behind now, their arms hanging down, complaining about the uphill climb back. The trees are silhouettes now, dead flat like cut paper. It can be a lonely time of day. Everyone who has to be someplace, home or out, is probably there already. If you have nowhere to go, there’s nowhere to be.

Martin Icke, barman, is on the avenue seeing the two couples walk out of the woods. He is not eager to be seen, and anyway he’s talking to someone else. “Dude,” he says into the phone, and reaches down to ruffle his large, eager dog. “That was you?”

“I did not,” Stanford is saying on the other end, “throw a chair. I drummed my hands on the back of the chair, as I stood up, impatiently. I swear to you, cap’n, it was not scary.”