“No,” Lisa said, “I wonder what it would’ve been like if I’d stayed in Wheeling.”

“Oh,” Poppy said. “Sounds like a dangerous game.”

Lisa sipped her sangria. “Do you ever play it? Wonder what your life would be, in another life?”

“Nah,” Poppy said. “I don’t have the time or the imagination.”

“So things are good with John?”

Poppy nodded with such easy assurance that Lisa felt a twinge. She looked away and stared out at the water. She didn’t want to feel spiteful. Of course things were good, things were always good with John, Lisa thought, even when things were bad with John, things were fine with John.

Envy could zoom up through Lisa as quick as a puff of air, and then it might disappear just as quickly, or it might twist around like a snake in her stomach for days. Lisa had never been attracted to John—he was a kind man, a handsome enough man, a manly man who knew how to use tools and fix problems—but still, there was nothing even resembling attraction there. So it wasn’t that Lisa wanted to be Poppy, or to have Poppy’s husband. But seeing what Poppy and John had, what they shared, and the simple awareness that her best friend had another best friend in her spouse, was not painless or uncomplicated.

The smell of charred burger fat wafted over from a barbecue next door.

Down at the beach, they could see that Ryan was in the water, Rae was in her chair, and Alex was using a plastic shovel to bury Kimmy in sand, up to her chin.

Abruptly breaking the silence, the doorbell’s pleasant electronic melody sang through the house and reached Lisa and Poppy on the deck.

Lisa said, “That’ll be the maintenance guy, for the fridge,” and she got up to let him in.

Poppy followed a minute later, carrying the half-full pitcher of sangria inside to replenish the ice, and she found that Lisa was not in the kitchen but still at the front door, where the maintenance man stood before her. Poppy gazed down from the top of the stairway. The maintenance guy looked to be in his mid-twenties, clean-shaven, dirty blond hair, bright cheeks, lean, muscular build, wearing khaki shorts and a Dickies work shirt. Really cute guy. In swirling white cursive embroidery, his breast pocket read Keats. He held out a clipboard to Lisa, awaiting her signed approval for the work he intended to do.

Poppy hesitated before approaching the entrance and caught only the tail end of what Lisa was telling the man.

“. . . just fine,” Lisa was saying, her voice at a bizarre, nervous pitch that Poppy did not recognize. She did not take the clipboard from him but instead took a step backward.

“Sorry for the trouble,” Lisa said. “We won’t be needing your help after all.”

A strange look passed briefly over Keats’s face, and his natural flush spread. He lowered the clipboard and tapped it against his thigh, eyes low, then turned and left the house.