The Dalys had arrived at the house a few minutes earlier and were bringing their bags inside, settling into bedrooms and snacking on fruit. The house was painted a pretty seafoam green, the front door grand and glass-paneled, the shutters white. On the beachfront, it had a narrow wooden walkway that passed over a small marshy patch on the way down to the water. Inside, the house was big and bright, high-ceilinged, with bland, nautical-themed art on all its walls. Everything was blue and white, clean and smelling of artificial lemon.

Poppy ran to Lisa and hugged her. “Thanks for letting us crash your vacation,” she said. “I’ll try to behave like a dignified person.”

Lisa laughed. “You’re a saint, looking after my mom like you have. This is the least we can do. I’m so glad it worked out.”

Poppy opened and closed her arms like hinges, airing out. “That was one hell of a drive,” she said. “How was yours?”

“Fine,” Lisa said, “when Scott wasn’t driving like a total maniac. That straightaway beyond Yemassee? He was pushing ninety. It’s a miracle we lived.”

“Oh, for God’s sakes,” Scott said, turning to John. His expression made it clear he expected an instant ally in his guest.

“Poppy’s a speed demon too,” John offered.

“Am not,” Poppy said. “How would you know anyway? The Omni maxes out at sixty.”

Alex piped up, “Mom, you were going seventy in a fifty-five this morning, I saw it.”

“I would never,” Poppy said. “You must have dreamed it.”

Kimmy stared at Alex’s shaved head but did not comment on it. Instead, she announced, “We saw a gator on the way in. It was right in the middle of the road. Daddy almost ran it over.”

Alex said, “That happened to us too.”

“The other thing we saw,” Kimmy said, addressing the whole group now, “was we were behind this car back in North Carolina, and the lady in the passenger seat reached over and picked something out of the driver man’s ear and she ate it, just like a chimp!” She demonstrated this, reaching over to Rae’s head and withdrawing something invisible from her ear.

Rae swatted her little sister’s hand away. She said, “You’re making that up.” Sourly, to the others, “She’s making that up.”

Ryan lifted his hand in a shy greeting to the Dalys. He had Poppy’s wild black curls, and they were stuffed under a baseball cap. He was tall and tanned and broad-shouldered like his father but not yet sporting John’s round gut. His eyes were dark and lovely, gentle and long-lashed like a deer’s.

Lisa said to him, “God, you’ve grown. Are you six feet?” As soon as this came out, Lisa saw Scott’s posture go hard in her peripheral vision—he was self-conscious about his own height—and she couldn’t help feeling amused by the success of her unintended jab. She clapped her hands together brightly, eyes still on Ryan. “And congratulations on university. You start in the fall, right? Studying science something or other?”