“Well, Gaelic,” my father said. “Then I’m afraid we’re going to have to escort you and your little white rental car back to your hotel room.”

“Just to make it clear,” Galen said, “I’m only driving that car because the rental agency was out of sports cars.”

Polly, John and I sat around the kitchen table, big plates of casserole in front of us. The animals had all been fed. The house was quiet. The kitchen floor was dry. The beach towels had finished their wash cycle and were bouncing around in the dryer.

“Just to make it clear,” I said in my best Galen imitation, “the only reason I’m driving that little white car is that the rental agency was out of sports cars.”

“He always has a story,” Polly said. “Sorry about that,” she added for like the eighth time.

“That bun in your unmarried oven is going to be one ridiculously cute baby though,” I said.

“Thanks,” Polly said. “I think. I’m banking on the fact that being a psychopath is more nurture than nature, and the baby will turn out fine.”

“Those shoes of his with the red soles were pretty great,” John said.

“What size are you?” Polly said. “Maybe I can sneak in and grab them while he’s in the shower.”

John and I laughed. I took a bite of casserole. The casseroles were all starting to blur, as if yesterday’s casserole had stayed on my taste buds, along with the casserole from the day before that and the one before that. I could almost even imagine never eating another casserole again once things got back to normal.

“Well,” I said. “He was everything I thought he’d be, and less.”

“Exactly,” Polly said. “He’s an empty shell. What can I say? I got got. The struggle is real, y’all.”

I reached for my seltzer. “He was certainly one cool customer, as my dad would say.”

Polly took a bite of her casserole, a sip of her milk. “My parents left me a small trust fund. I’m just so grateful that they structured it in such a way that, as hard as he tried, he couldn’t manage to get his hands on it. It killed him.”

“Smart parents,” John said.

“His first wife,” Polly said, “told me he once rented out an apartment he didn’t even own. It belonged to a neighbor who was away for a few months, and he knew where the key was. She said she found out and left him over that, but eventually he talked her into coming back.”