“I am going to tell the property manager, though,” Lisa said. “I just need to decide how. And when.”

Poppy glanced back out toward the children and was just noticing that there were only three instead of four out there when she heard a sudden noise from the staircase at the far end of the room.

Alex’s head emerged, and she came up the stairs and into the kitchen. Towel draped over her shoulders, pink-cheeked and wet-lashed, a patch of sand on her collarbone. She wore a banana-yellow one-piece swimsuit and blue flip-flops.

Lisa said, “Hey, hon, you need something?” She smiled with teeth that were purpled by sangria.

“My tummy hurts,” Alex said. “And I’m thirsty.”

Poppy studied her daughter’s face for a moment. “How long were you there on the stairway?” she said. “Did you hear what we were just talking about?”

Alex shook her head, but she wore such a strange expression that Poppy was almost certain she was lying. She hadn’t a clue how much of the conversation Alex would even understand, terms like “offender” and “registry.”

Poppy said, “If you did hear anything we were talking about, it’s nothing to worry about.”

Lisa said, “How about a Capri Sun?”

Alex rubbed her palm over her scalp, forehead to neck, which sent a small mist of salt water into the air. “Sure.”

Poppy pulled her daughter close and tickled her bare neck.

Lisa popped the yellow straw into the foil packet and handed Alex her drink.

“What’s Daddy doing?” Alex said.

“They’re golfing,” Poppy said. “How’s the beach?”

“We saw a live crab,” Alex said. “And Kimmy made a drip castle. Ryan’s looking at fish. I didn’t know Daddy knows how to golf.”

Poppy said, “He doesn’t.”

“When’s he coming back?” Alex said.

It wasn’t unlike Alex to ask after her father—she always wanted to be in on whatever John was doing—but Poppy felt quite certain now that Alex had overheard their conversation, and she understood just enough to feel unsafe without her father in the house.

“In a few hours,” Poppy said. “Did you say your stomach hurt? Are you gonna yak?”

Alex shook her head and rubbed low on her belly. “I don’t think so.”

Poppy said, “It’s probably a swim cramp. Gotta make sure you don’t go out for a long swim right after eating. You wanna lay down?”

“No.”

“Here,” Poppy said, “let’s fill up a cooler with more juice and some snacks and we’ll all head down to the beach together. If you get to feeling worse, we’ll come back. Capeesh?”

4

JOHN AND SCOTT sailed over a low hill in the golf cart, and Scott held his Scotch high in the air so it wouldn’t spill as they thumped through a patch of swampy terrain. John’s lower back suddenly shrieked with pain, and he stifled a gasp as he shifted his position and slowed the cart.

The pain was still there, and it was still bad. Unless John was asleep, one position was rarely comfortable for more than a few minutes before a dull ache would start to thrum at the base of his spine with rhythms as deep and dark as a bass drum. Often the ache became sharp and acute, a blade, metal on metal, until he shifted position. Sometimes that made it even worse, and his balls would seize up, his lungs would seize up, and when that happened John simply had to wait. Bear down, hold on, and fight the urge to blow his brains out just to end the thing.