They’d asked Graham to come an hour before the guests to set up the oyster station and the bar. Polly had a fancy new Kevlar glove, just in case Graham wasn’t truly a dab hand. He came late, landing in the midst of Polly making this first round of drinks—an early run on vodka and gin—but he set up quickly, almost impressively. She peered at his new bruises and showed him the glove and some rags and the bowl with several dozen scrubbed oysters; she gave him his choice of knives and said she’d help him get started with the first platter. And then she watched in horror as he began to hack in all the wrong places.

“Watch me,” said Polly, wriggling a tip in. Normally she’d have loved nothing more than having the problem of two hundred oysters, to sit in the yard with a knife and a bottle of Sancerre or Muscadet and a bowl of ice and a trash can until she tipped over or vomited. Graham chipped away at a hinge. “Did they have some different method where you worked?”

“I was a busboy.”

He managed to open one. Polly ripped it out of his hand and flicked bits of shell off the mangled flesh. “Your resume said you ran the oyster bar.”

“No,” said Graham. “It didn’t. It’s okay, though. I know your memory isn’t so hot.”

Huh, thought Polly. “Okay, watch me again,” she said, and then stepped back and let him go. “You’re chewing them up,” she said, “and you’re losing all the liquor. And look at all that shell. That’s why you check each one before you tray.”

He threw the oyster into the trash can.

“Never,” said Polly. “You’ll get it. Watch me again.”

“No.”

No? Old Polly, who would have said get your fucking ass out of my restaurant, stirred. “Try it again, Graham.”

He tried again, slowly, resentfully.

“All right,” said Polly. “Go get backup ice, then. Use my car. The other fifty people are going to be here in ten minutes, wanting to eat.”

“People will see me at the store. People from the memorial.”

“Yes, and they’re going to stare at you as long as you’re in this town,” said Polly. “Why not go back to Seattle? Don’t your friends miss you?”

She said this deliberately, cruelly. She believed no one missed him, and that he missed no one. “Learn to shuck a fucking oyster. It’s a simple skill. I’ll go get the ice.”

“Should you be driving?” Graham asked.