Corey flitted across the patio then, chased by the Roberts kids and Nancy Eggers. Before they’d left Boston, Nancy had sent him a note in a scented pink envelope to tell him she liked him and was really looking forward to seeing him in Mexico, which was cute enough in its way, she supposed, but a kind of warning flag too. Nancy was developed, fully developed, an adult in teenager’s clothing, and Corey was a child still—he hadn’t had his growth spurt (if he ever was going to have it, and that was a worry of hers, though Fitz dismissed it), nor had his voice changed either. It was just a moment, the kids gone as quickly as they’d appeared, replaced now by Brenda, Tim’s girlfriend, who was making her way up from the pool, but it imparted something to her she really didn’t want to think about. She watched Brenda cross the patio in her black spandex suit and wet flip-flops, rotating her hips as if she were wearing heels, until she came up behind Tim and wrapped her arms around him in a way that made all the men look up, Fitz included.

“Yes,” she said. “Now. We waited all the way across the country—”

“Tomorrow,” he said. “You heard Tim—everybody’s on a schedule here.”

“I heard him,” she said, and why did she feel so disappointed? She could wait. It wasn’t as if she needed the drug, not really, but the moment was perfect and it would enhance the experience, that was all she was saying. “I also heard him say this wasn’t the Catalina Hotel anymore.”

Fitz was slow on the uptake, even more saturated with tequila than she was. “What do you mean?”

“I mean,” she said, shifting her legs so she could get up from the chair, find her way to the room and dig one of the smooth white pills out of the bottle in the pocket of her suitcase, “this is Freedom House, or didn’t you hear?”