“Good. But just be straight with me, at least about your life. Or at least about the past.”

Sarah nodded. “Okay.” Why couldn’t she come up with anything more honest? You were my best friend, too! It went through her head like music from a passing car.

She remembered exactly the last time that Kiki had left a message on her voice mail. Kiki was so sympathetic and unpetty by nature, didn’t keep track of who did what in friendships. But her voice on the recording started to have an undertone of hurt and maybe anger, and Leda was seventeen and had just gotten caught with a substantial stash of pot and a small stash of heroin, and she might have been dealing pot, and Sarah couldn’t imagine talking to anyone about anything, and, no, Matthew, no, not even Kiki. Even while being annoyed with Kiki’s tone on the voice messages, Sarah knew it was unfair of her to be annoyed. It would, she reasoned, be impossible for anyone to hear how Leda’s senior year in high school was unfolding and to not at least partially blame the parents or certainly the mother. Even as Sarah felt completely blindsided and not to blame, she had to be. Who wouldn’t think that? How could she fault people? She was the mother. She was to blame.

Kiki also left messages for Leda, who (as far as Sarah knew) never called Kiki back either. Lying to Leda, Sarah maintained that she and Kiki spoke all the time. How Sarah wished now that had been the case. She nagged Leda to return Kiki’s calls; it was just one more thing they fought about.

Kiki called a month later. I’m just wondering—her voice was pitched high while speaking out into what had to now seem like the ether—if everything is okay? I’m just parked in the Erewhon lot. I’m realizing I bought too much yogurt again, and, I don’t know, I thought I’d try you.

Then the years went by.

Sarah wondered about the man and woman on the lakeside. She imagined that same fleshy woman drying off, pulling on a shirt. She’d light a cigarette with a plastic lighter. She’d take her sweet-ass time. Who had decided it was time to go home? Was she a wife, a girlfriend? Did those two belong to each other or were they barely acquainted? Hey, baby, let me teach you how to swim.

The man with the tent seemed imaginary. He couldn’t have—for instance—stuck two fingers under the waistband of her bikini bottom.

“We’re broke,” Kiki said.

“Broke?”

Kiki nodded.

“When you say broke—”