Hugh had married Raven (I wasn’t sure if that was really her name or a name he had given her, like he gave me Cara, but everyone in the family used it, except when Kay called her Molly Bloom, an allusion I wouldn’t get until twelfth-grade English) in the garden the previous summer. Before he arrived no one had mentioned this, but now it came up all the time. After a while I noticed it was Mrs. Pike more than anyone else who brought it up. I got the sense that it was an expensive wedding and there were still some outstanding bills in town (there were stores to be avoided, particularly the liquor store, and trips had to be made to vendors farther away because of it). Money was tight for Mrs. Pike, though I heard Thomas say once that that was all in her mind and she made terrible trouble for herself because of it. But Mrs. Pike didn’t seem to resent Hugh for the wedding. She just needed to confirm, several times a day, that it had been worth it. For her, remembering it and talking about it increased its value, or at least helped her get more and more of her money’s worth, as if they were still using it, like an expensive appliance whose frequent use justifies the cost.

Within a few days, I knew so much about that one weekend I could nearly block it like a film: Hugh’s friend Kip’s long and inappropriate toast at the bridal dinner about Hugh’s old girlfriend Thea; Raven’s black dress (that did not match her hair—despite her name she was blond) that made “the aunties” (not sure whose) gasp; Stevie carrying the rings on Night Night, his special—and filthy—little sleeping pillow; the weepy minister; the family friend who at the end of the reception drove right off the seawall and was very, very lucky the tide was out.

Until Hugh arrived, Mrs. Pike had never come out to the pool with us. Now she came out after her “lie down” every afternoon. On the second day of his visit, Hugh and I were playing seals with Stevie and Elsie. The children floated in their plastic rings and water wings and we dunked underwater in tandem to tickle their feet and listen to them shriek.

“You bited me!” Elsie said after several rounds of this.

Hugh snapped his teeth together and she squealed.

Margaret came out the patio doors, down the four flights of stone slabs, and across the sunken garden to the pool gate where she said, “Your wife is on the phone for you, Hugh.”

“Hugh, me sir?”

Margaret’s face split into a grin. “Hugh, you sir.” He rose up out of the pool in one sinewy motion. The water sluiced off his head and down his back. His green bathing suit clung to his bum and I could see its exact shape, two bony teardrops. He gave it a little wiggle then, as if he knew someone was watching. He jogged across the grass and by the time he reached the steps his ringlets had sprung back up.