Though Sophie LaTour, proprietress of the Manatee Inn, was practically Marianne’s next-door neighbor, they’d met in the birdwatching section of a used-book store in Sarasota, ten miles away. There were no bookstores or coffee shops near the Ranch, or anywhere else you might meet someone new. The beach was always full of people, but they were usually paired off or obviously busy with something solitary—speed walking, shell collecting, metal detecting. But in the birdwatching section—labeled, on a yellowing index card, ornithology—she thought she recognized one of the early-morning shell collectors. A fifty-something shell collector who sat in the narrow aisle of a used-book store, her lap stacked with bird books—that was her best option, and she’d seized it.

After a brief discussion of their island and the hazards of innkeeping, Sophie invited her over for drinks. “Just casual,” she’d said from under her pile of books, though Marianne bought the wine she would bring at a shop in Sarasota rather than in the Publix spirits section, with its cheap and vulgar-sounding bottles. Marianne dressed up, too, though she had to take off her strappy sandals for the beach walk. In Brooklyn, she’d avoided her neighbors’ parties, with their talk of international travel and community gardens, but it had been months since she’d been invited anywhere.

“Hello!” Sophie called from the elevated deck that stretched from the inn to the beach, as if Marianne could have missed the weathered, manatee-shaped sign. Sophie wore the same paint-spattered overalls and white T-shirt she’d had on when they met, but her short blond hair was pulled back from her face with a twisted silk scarf and mascara stiffened her lashes. With her light hair and her delicate features, she looked a bit like Sissy Spacek, if Sissy Spacek had spent a good deal of time in the sun. She held a glass of wine and was leaning against the railing, facing the inn. “I’m trying to decide if I should repaint the whole thing. Do you think I should?”

Marianne climbed the steep steps and scuffed on her sandals. The Manatee Inn was closer to the beach than the Ranch, but the steel-gray color made it appear to recede behind the palms. “A different color? Maybe. Gray is sort of—”

“Blah,” said Sophie. “I know. But it’s the color of manatees. Poor things. Propeller bait. I bought this place for the name, if you can believe it. I was just divorced and sort of identifying with the manatees, their sweet, dumb helplessness. Now I know that was a trick—neither one of us is as sweet or dumb as we look.”

Marianne was never sure what to say when people announced their divorces: I’m sorry? What if the divorce was something they really wanted, or the correction—as with Eric—of a mistake?