Once the men had left for the golf course, the high energy of reuniting with one another, exploring the house, and getting superficially settled into the place gave way to a familiar and comfortable connection between Lisa and Poppy.

Their frequent phone calls over the past months kept them up to date on major goings-on with each other, so there was no need to refresh on the basics of Lisa’s mother’s health, the kids, or the husbands.

Poppy gestured toward Lisa’s breasts. “Are they real?”

Lisa laughed. “It’s just this bra. You look great too, Pops. Are you still doing those videotapes?”

Poppy nodded. She was barely five feet tall, eight inches shorter than Lisa and much curvier in the hips, but she was managing to keep her waist tight with Cindy Crawford’s at-home workout tapes. “I’ve been slacking,” she said. “That’s why my butt’s the way it is.” Poppy reached out to tug on Lisa’s long red ponytail. “And is this real?”

Lisa swatted her hand away. “The color? Of course not, you know that.”

“I meant, it’s not one of those ponytail wigs? They’re all the rage in Wheeling. Eighty-five-year-old women sporting ponytails like this. They Scotch-tape them to the back of their bald little heads.”

“Ew.” Lisa stirred up another pitcher of sangria, and she and Poppy took it out to the deck that overlooked the beach. Lisa pulled the door shut behind her.

The hot air that met their faces felt as dense as a velvet curtain. Lisa’s pink lipstick liquefied and seeped beyond the edges of her lips. Poppy’s curls seized up.

“I think the fridge is broken,” Lisa said, settling into a deck chair, wiping her lips on the back of her hand and examining this slick residue in the sunlight. “When we got here it was on the coldest setting and barely had the slightest chill.”

“You want me to look at it? Or John when he gets back? He’s a whiz when it comes to appliances, though I imagine this fridge is way more high-tech than what he’s used to.”

“I called over to the property manager already,” Lisa said. “He’s sending his maintenance guy, said he’d be here in the next hour or two.”

Poppy chewed on a fingernail and spat a little shard from the corner of her mouth. “Probably warms up when the guests checking out are cleaning their stuff out. Might fix itself if you leave it be for a while.”

“Might.”

Poppy gazed out toward the water. Whitecaps rose and fell and tumbled and played along the surface of the giant rolling turquoise sheet of the ocean. A man making his way slowly down the shore was bobbing and churning and extending his arms to expertly fly a bald-eagle kite. It bounced and dipped and soared. No child in sight, just a grown man and his bird on a string. Thin, ribbed clouds drifted overhead.

It was quiet for a bit, then Lisa said, “Sorry I made it awkward just there with Scott. Sometimes I’m convinced I’m a real bitch.”