“I know it is. And you know, Matthew, that I’m not afraid of work.”

“I know you think—”

“You don’t, actually,” she said, low. “You don’t know what I think. Why do you suppose Caroline’s suggestion bothers me so much?”

WELL OVER A YEAR AGO, Sarah had met Leda at the bottom of the Baja Peninsula, off a bumpy road scattered with horse dung and broken glass. The parking lot had been swarming with flies; giant scorched palms framed a broken gate. Her daughter led her over a muddy path. The ocean roared in the distance.

It’s not how I pictured, Sarah had said.

Is it ever?

Leda walked ahead to where the thicket of palms opened up, and when Sarah stood beside her and saw the beach, Sarah gasped. The ocean was cobalt, the sand was white fading into gray as the ocean pulled itself back and back again, revealing the wet sand below. Two wild horses galloped a safe distance away; the two women headed toward a rock outcropping a quarter mile down the beach.

Leda wasn’t wearing sunglasses or a hat. Sarah suppressed the urge to mention yet again how Leda would ruin the unlined, unfreckled fair skin that she had inherited from Sarah’s side of the family and that would—Sarah promised!—be etched with lines and scattered with liver spots seemingly overnight.

Please, she remembered telling her daughter, amid all this absurd beauty, please, please, come back. The wind was making Sarah’s eyes water. She fought the urge to shout, You are killing us. What she said instead: I’ll find you a job.

Leda had laughed in one hard peal. What if I don’t want one?

Sarah willed herself not to react. She said calmly, I will find you something.

You will?

What does that mean?

Mom. Leda came close and took hold of her mother’s shoulders. They were exactly the same height. When’s the last time you had a job?

“I’M NOT SAYING YOU’RE AFRAID OF WORK,” said her husband now. “What I’m saying—if you actually listen to what I’m saying—”

When? Leda had asked, with her fingers tightly gripping her mother’s shoulders.

When Sarah saw Matthew’s face go from frustration to what looked like fear, she thought he might be having a cramp in his ribs and silently congratulated herself for not assuming he was having a heart attack. But then she registered the gun in her face, and it was so shocking in its clarity, its heightened crisp quality: metallic, gray, gunmetal. They were walking under trees in the park; they would eventually head toward home. The smell of charcoal heating up, potato chips, sunscreen, garbage, urine; the progression toward dinner; even the argument: it was—if not exactly comforting—familiar, pacifying, even boring. She’d turned into the park, asked Matthew a question that was more indictment than question, he had tried to defend himself, and there was the barrel in her line of vision. Gunmetal. Used that shade on her toes for years. The gun was in her face; she found it difficult to swallow; a wave rose up inside her and she was going under.