“Someone I used to know. You run into everyone here sooner or later.”

She hard-shifts into the election, what it’s going to bring. They guess around a little.

“Big cuts in funding for the arts,” Maureen says. “But let’s be happy while we can. About your good fortune. This play is going to be a big break for you. Molly Cracciolo and Lauren Mott. You’re moving into the stratosphere.” Maureen is so happy for her it makes Cate a little high all over again. She goes on. “Off-Broadway, for one thing. Bloomsbury, for another. The 1920s. The 1920s in England. Those will be sets you can really sink your teeth into. Those rickety wicker lawn chairs. Interiors—those mullioned windows and velvet drapes. That really heavy upholstery.”

“But they want ideas in three weeks. Three weeks minus the four days since they told me. They FedExed the script.”

“You can do it. You don’t have anything left to do on the army thing, right?”

“Previews start Thursday. I’ll be so glad to have this behind me. I’m not even putting it on my résumé.”

“Look how fast he is,” Maureen says, meaning Sailor, who has left them to take a final loop around the beach, leading a fresh pack of small, yapping dogs around a curve. Cate has to keep an eye on him. He enjoys rolling puppies and certain small dogs, which is fun for him, but sometimes not as much fun for them. When she looks across the beach, Dana is no longer there.

“He learns a lot here,” Cate says, turning back. “Like, he’s learned to take the inside and lean low going around the bend. He learned how to swim when I started bringing him here in September. Another dog taught him. Sailor just followed him in. They learn from each other. It’s cool to watch.”

Maureen grabs Cate’s hand and pulls it around to the small of her own back. “I haven’t been this crazy about anyone in a long time. I thought maybe that wasn’t going to happen for me, that I’d become too alone, too critical, too particular. But now this. I didn’t tell you about me and Frances to freak you out. I wanted to walk across the bridge between us. How can two people be close if they cling to their unknowability?”

Although a lot of Maureen’s relationship analysis sounds like it came out of the same factory as the inspirational rocks Cate imagined for Frances’s living room, she can hear the sincerity within what she is saying. She can also hear the shell of the duck egg cracking in her pocket. She tries to cover by speaking a little louder. She hopes it’s not leaking through.