Melissa shook her head, her forehead still due to the Botox she got religiously every four months. Then a loud boom made us all duck. I gripped the sides of my blue porch chair, my heart racing. It sounded like an explosion.

“Stay here with the kids,” I said to Melissa as I leapt off my porch and ran to Liz’s house. I banged on the front door. “Everything okay? What happened? We heard a noise.”

When no one came to the door, I ran around the side of her house and yanked the fence’s gate open. A backhoe was paused in the corner of the yard, where Liz stood with a construction foreman, her arms crossed over her waist.

“What happ—” I stopped as a horrible smell filled my nose, a cross between raw sewage and moldy leftovers. I covered my face with my hand. “What is that?” Bucky, a mix between a German shepherd and a pit bull, began barking viciously inside.

“I—I’m not sure,” Liz said, her voice small. She turned to me, and I saw that her eyes were ringed in red and her cheeks had a grayish tone, with small flecks of skin flaking off. Her greasy hair was pulled back into a knot at the nape of her neck.

“Whoa. Not feeling great today?”

She shook her head slightly but didn’t answer, instead looking at the leathery construction foreman.

He shrugged. “We’ll find out. Maybe a sewage line. We will stay on top of it.” Then he walked over to his crew, who was peering down into the hole that they had dug, apparently halfway to a porta potty.

She turned to me. “I can’t remember the last time I felt this bad. How are you feeling? Do you want me to make some coffee?” Of course, Liz would put her own malaise aside to see if she could help me.

I gave her a sympathetic look. “No, but thanks. Just take care of yourself for a change. Can I get you anything?”

She shook her head and trudged back into her house, her feet shuffling as she mumbled something about dinner in the Crock-Pot. I followed her, walking through her back door. My eyes widened when I saw her kitchen. The island was still covered in the trays of food from last night, and there were half-filled glasses of wine and tequila on the countertops.

“We made such a mess. I’m so sorry—let me help you clean.” Liz had insisted that she could handle the cleanup after we left, nearly pushing us out the door. It was no secret that she actually liked cleaning her house after we were over. Maybe it was because it was one of the few times she was alone, a thought that was almost too sad to ponder.