“Thanks!” He snatched them from my hand and scampered off into the water to join the countless other children splashing around in the zero-entry pool. We had decided to spend the morning at the community pool, a decision I had immediately regretted when I saw the massive crowd waiting to gain entrance. In addition to the goggle requests, there would be pleas for ice cream; many, many applications of sunscreen (the spray kind, for which I would always get a few dirty looks as I applied it, because other children only wore sunscreen that was nontoxic, made from fairy dust and recycled water bottles); and lost swim towels.

My kids and the others in the neighborhood had recovered from the trauma of seeing the bunnies. Assisted, no doubt, by the ice-cream truck Heather flagged down after it happened. It seemed that Creamsicles and Choco Tacos could be a balm for any wound, physical or emotional. I, on the other hand, hadn’t recovered. The combination of Liz’s behavior and the possible foresight I’d had of the bunnies’ being slaughtered had kept me up last night.

I leaned back in my lounger, eyes carefully trained on the group of kids at the water’s edge.

“Havin’ a fuckin’ blast yet?” Jess mumbled as she dropped her bag down on the chaise next to me. I’d texted her, desperate to have someone for company who wouldn’t ask for a Popsicle in the shape of a rocket ship.

Before I could answer, she plopped down next to me as her seven-year-old stepdaughter, Summer, scampered off to play. Jess didn’t wear a cover-up—ever—and her red bikini barely covered her sensitive parts.

She scanned the pool, squinting across the crowd. “Yo, she’s not here, right?”

“No. I would have warned you if I saw her.”

Jess was referring to Del’s ex-wife, Sharon. She lived a couple of miles from us, in a McMansion she’d bought after the divorce in a planned community that looked like a developer had bulldozed a cornfield and built as many cookie-cutter homes as the town would allow in one space. To say she wasn’t the biggest fan of her ex’s girlfriend would have been the world’s largest understatement. Whenever their paths crossed at a school event or holiday, Sharon took a few cheap shots at Jess. And of course she was friends with Heather.

Jess and Del had met four years ago, a year after his divorce, at the Country Thunder music festival in Twin Lakes, Wisconsin. She moved to Winchester to live with him a couple of years after that, forever scandalizing our town.

“Great. So, let’s not shoot the shit and get right to it. What’s going on with Liz? We need to discuss,” she said as she leaned forward and put her forearms on her thighs, hands clasped in front of her.