Mark Wycott took a baseball bat to Steve Dunn’s car. All I have to do is kick a kid out of my house. Confronting him would be a waste, given how this thing’s being stopped before it starts. The most I could expect is an apology for dirty thoughts. Of course, the worst I could expect is a confession, which is out of the question, as the only thing more revolting than imagining this affair would be hearing Nick confirm its existence. That leaves me two choices: black mold or double-booking. The toxicity of mold is poetic, but I’d hate for fungus to be his parting association with our home.

Double-booking, then. An old friend, maybe a cousin, someone who reserved the guesthouse so long ago, it slipped my mind. Someone important—no, better yet, someone boring.

I knock, ready to tell Nick he’s being replaced by a dullard, but he looks haggard as hell, so I have to ask, “Late night?”

“Yeah, right. Was up most of it with a fever, I think.”

“What’s the matter with you?”

He scratches his head. “Don’t know. Achy all over. Took some Tylenol, so—”

I reach toward him without permission and place my hand just below his jaw, lightly gripping his neck, and pause here to imagine crushing his trachea with my forty-five-year-old hand, my hand that’s punched walls and signed huge checks and touched Elizabeth in places he’ll never reach. “Your glands feel fine,” I say. “Why don’t you let me drop you at the beach again. Fresh air will do you good.”

He shakes his head. “I should rest. Don’t want to get you sick.”

My hands itch to grab him by the throat again, to assist in incapacitating him on this beautiful Friday, the very day Elizabeth happens to work from home, and so, not trusting myself to kick him out without kicking him in the face, I walk away dazed. His claims of sickness threw me, but by lunchtime I’m spinning, because either Nick was contagious and gave me his bug, or I’ve made myself ill imagining what might be happening at my house at this moment. Simone brings me Alka-Seltzer while I stretch out on the sofa in our lounge, and I tell her she’s an angel, and “What would I do without you?” She smiles. Really, though. Everyone needs a Simone.

•  •  •

When I pull up to the house at five on the dot, my driveway is blocked by a black Expedition. Familiar, but not enough for me to place it. Familiar, maybe, because half my zip code drives a version of the same beast. I park behind it and trudge through the yard, opening the door to a mess of voices talking over bossa nova playing through my stereo system. “Hello?”

Elizabeth shouts from the den, “We’re in here.”