After lunch, the adults continued to drink margaritas, and when these ran out, they switched to piña coladas. Everyone was in good spirits.

Kimmy and Rae had been getting along well. In fact, Kimmy had finally been able to interest her sister in playing a game by first getting Ryan to commit. The four kids set up Monopoly on the coffee table.

Poppy observed Lisa as she floated around the kitchen, serving up tiki cocktails and looking like an angel in her white linen shift dress, lips freshly stained red, hair sleek, laughter pretty and song-like. Poppy felt free and easy goodwill toward her best friend. Lisa would divorce Scott. That was clear now. Lisa would land a hefty settlement, probably remain in the house with the girls, mourn the end of her marriage for a few obligatory months, then start going on blind dates with friends of friends. Maybe the recently divorced real-estate agent she kept running into at PTA functions. Maybe her podiatrist. Maybe a retired plastic surgeon whose wife had died of cancer or a yogi from her breadmaking class. Maybe a twenty-five-year-old bartender with a ponytail and a degree in photography. Or maybe a fancy equestrian who trained at the stable where Rae kept her horse and went for lessons. Poppy could totally see it. Lisa would fall in love with some fine blueblood with a family estate, move herself and the girls out of D.C. and onto forty acres of farmland, tend a rose garden, bake pies . . . The possibilities were endless. Poppy allowed herself to feel only mildly guilty for imagining Lisa’s bright future without Scott, while seated on a barstool right next to him.

She glanced sideways at him, trying to assess the level of sadness she would feel when he was no longer in her life. It was not considerable. He looked as self-satisfied as ever, Ray-Bans perched on top of that expensive haircut. Eh, good riddance, Poppy thought. Scott was definitely having an affair, anyway. He had returned from the “car show in Beaufort” in a strangely ecstatic mood, and when Poppy asked him what sort of cool cars he’d seen, he balked and ho-hummed before offering up the most generic answer. Whether or not Lisa would ever have the satisfaction of catching him in the act, it was obvious that’s what was going on, and so Poppy would not mourn the end of their marriage.

It was still raining heavily when the Monopoly game petered out, so the group put on a movie. They went back and forth between a few before settling on Independence Day. Rae didn’t contribute to the movie debate, but once the decision had been made, she grabbed the VHS box to check it out—she couldn’t remember if she’d seen the film before and wondered if the cover would spark recognition. As soon as she glimpsed the stills on the back of the box, her groin became so hot she had to look down to make sure it wasn’t glowing from within. Andrew Keegan, the long-haired guy in that movie, with the shoulders and the lips and the eyes all swollen like he’d just done sex things . . .