The kind of lovemaking Juliana had experienced, somewhat rough, tentative but rough, inexpert, thrusting, a kind of pummeling, had left her insides chafed and raw; imagining the bloodied state of the uterine canal, the vagina, after childbirth, left her faint-headed. Just—no.

Hardly the nanny’s fault, her employers’ melting-away marriage, yet Juliana felt obscurely to blame. She wasn’t the showgirl blonde with the glittering eyelids in The Sand Bar, but—almost—she could imagine that she was that girl, a version of that girl. And maybe Irving Hermann—“Irv”—had been one of those married men who brought drinks for Juliana without Juliana’s realizing; sometimes in the febrile night she felt the man’s fingers at the nape of her neck, stroking and kneading. Started off gentle, teasing, then turned hard, hurtful. She heard his low, teasing, bemused voice. Sweetie! She heard the guttural moans, grunts. She felt a rippling sensation pass through her body in the region of her groin, a sharp sensation in her breasts, a sort of misery, an anguish that left her weak, faint.

She’d secreted away the (six) fifty-dollar bills. She would tell no one, for who was there to tell? No one.

Frequently, by day, Juliana encountered men—to her, “older” men—who resembled Irving Hermann: not tall, compactly built, dark-tanned, in white polo shirts, white cord trousers, shorts, prescription sunglasses, so that their eyes were hidden. Once, on a gusty stretch of ocean beach where she was walking alone while the children were (in theory at least) taking their late-afternoon naps and Mrs. Hermann was drinking in her bedroom and watching daytime TV, Juliana stammered—H-Hello? Mr. Hermann?—but the man in T-shirt and shorts passed by, arrogant and indifferent to her, not hearing.

After a long day of telephone calls, Mrs. Hermann drew Juliana aside from the children to ask bluntly—Did my husband ever touch you, Juliana? Did he ever come into your room? Did he say—things—certain things—to you? You can tell me now, but Juliana shook her head no, certainly no. A guilty flush came into her face, but Mrs. Hermann did not seem to notice.

These days, the household so unsettled, it would have been natural to ask Mrs. Hermann where her husband was. Yet Juliana could not ask.

At The Sand Bar she saw such men, these were older, married men, possibly they were divorced men, in their forties, fifties, even older—men older than Juliana’s father, older than Irving Hermann. Perhaps she was attracted to them, but only “attracted”—she knew to avoid them, she would not accept drinks from them, shaking her head, laughing Nooo. Don’t think so.

Like sharks they waited. Out in the waves, dark fins obscured by the froth.

Rumors you’d hear …

But no: not in Harbor Island, an affluent, upscale town on the Jersey Shore.

Elsewhere, farther south in Atlantic City, that was where the murdered women began to be found that summer, dumped bodies naked and partly decomposed, banner headlines in local newspapers—prostitutes.