“Well, you can’t say he’s not still utterly smitten,” Mrs. Pike said.

“No, you cannot,” Kay said.

Without Hugh there, they seemed barely acquaintances now. Kay was stiff in her chaise longue, her hands resting on a facedown hardcover in her lap, which I knew she wanted to get back to. But Mrs. Pike, in one of the smaller upright chairs under the umbrella, had no reading or distractions. And while she didn’t make continual conversation, she made just enough to keep someone from picking up their novel. I was glad I was an employee in the pool, now a gentle blue-ringed octopus who gave rides to gentle children. Stevie wore earplugs because he was prone to ear infections. (Hugh teased Stevie by mouthing words just so Stevie would shout: I can’t hear you I have my pugs in!) Elsie pinched one out of his ear and Stevie let out a screech.

“Isn’t it naptime?” Mrs. Pike asked. Usually when she asked this it was not, but this time it was.

I gathered up the towels and swim toys, the diaper bag and snack boxes and plastic cups.

Kay said, “I can take them up.”

Mrs. Pike said, “Let Cara do it.” She knew my name but she decided she liked Cara better. There had been a girl in her Sunday school class when she was little named Carol whom she hadn’t liked. “It’s what she’s here for.”

I’d dried us all off as best I could but we dripped a bit coming through the French doors and through the library, little drops that sank darkly into the blue-and-gold carpet. I sounded like I was hurrying them. I sounded like I was concerned for the rug and trying to find the most direct route to the stairs, but I was taking detours, guiding them through sitting rooms and studies and short hallways, listening hard for someone on the phone. I wanted to hear how he spoke to Raven. I knew how he spoke to his sister (blunt, sarcastic) and his mother (softer, upbeat, the edge slightly dulled, nearly but not quite solicitous), but how would he speak to his wife?

He wasn’t in any of the rooms. I spotted a little closet with a door ajar and dark dribbles on the beige rug. It was empty except for a shelf and an old black dial phone, the only phone I ever saw in that whole house. But the receiver was on its cradle and Hugh was not in the room.

He was on the bottom step of the front staircase, his elbows on his knees, head bent forward and hanging limp below his sharp shoulder blades. He didn’t look up until Stevie poked him in the ear. He didn’t straighten up. He just turned his head toward us.

“Hey, you,” Stevie said in an awkward imitation of his uncle.

“Hugh, me sir?” he said. He looked ill, greenish gray, though everything looked a bit that way in that dim house in the middle of the day.