On the trip to Michigan the summer before, the Wards and the Schusters had spent a weekend at a cottage on the beach. Polly and Edmund hadn’t felt compelled to talk to each other, but they slid into it, and they shoveled sand to redirect the creek while the adults sprawled, eating crackers and cheese and drinking from fancy-looking straw-wrapped bottles of wine. They didn’t bother with the children, and the children didn’t bother with them, and the night fell apart only when the six-month-old pointer Lemon jumped into the water and started swimming toward a freighter, Edmund and Polly running up and down the beach after their tipsy, weeping mothers while their fathers laughed.

The coast guard brought Lemon back. Merle slept in the tub that night and Tommy Ward fell asleep halfway up the stairs to the bedroom. When Polly woke up, she found Edmund in a chair with Lemon. Jane had Polly bring Merle water and ask how he was.

“I’m fine. Just fucking fine,” said Merle, pulling himself out of the dry bathtub.

It was Polly’s first crystalline recognition of bullshit. Merle and Tommy were giddy that day, in patches. They went out on a charter boat and both fathers vomited repeatedly over the side, which was funny at the time; Jane’s serene expression would remain one of Polly’s fondest memories. Then the beach again, people drinking again. Polly and Edmund, Jane slathering them with Coppertone, dug one more route for the creek, dozed with the waves tugging their feet, dangled from couches in the house, purple-lipped from sucking grape Popsicles.

The day, remembered as a whole (though Polly never was good at remembering the whole), was idyllic until they ended up at another beach in the town, near a break wall, to eat a picnic dinner of things from Edmund’s fancy grandparents (Merle’s description). Someone started screaming—the body of a girl had been found in the water near the break wall. Rita began to wail, and Jane and Merle and Tommy dealt with her while Edmund and Polly listened to the ambulance pass and watched the police and harbor men work with grappling hooks in the waves.