“How could you not?” Poppy said, then reconsidered. “Well, I guess it’s possible you wouldn’t know.”

Lisa said, “I think it’s more likely she doesn’t know than she does, don’t you think? Because what kind of a woman would stay with a man if they had any sort of —”

Lisa cut herself off abruptly when Alex rose from her nap on the other side of Poppy and pulled the baseball cap from her face. She rubbed her eyes, gathered her knees to her chest, brushed sand from herself, and gazed at the tide line, where Keats and his dog were now passing directly in front of them.

Poppy watched as Alex lifted handfuls of sand and released the grains slowly through her fingers, eyes on Keats and his dog.

A weighty thrust of sunshine made Poppy feel trapped.

Lisa coughed loudly and said, “Well, anyhow. How’s the water, kids?” She looked down the row of them: Alex, Kimmy, Rae.

Kimmy said, “I’m ready to go back in.” She turned to Alex. “You want to come? Out at the sandbar it’s really calm, and we can do handstands and grade each other.”

Lisa saw that Keats and the dog had passed and were now a ways down the beach.

Alex said, “I have to plug my nose underwater, so I don’t know if I can do that one-handed.”

Kimmy said, “I can hold up your legs to train you.”

The two young girls headed back toward the ocean.

Lisa said, “Rae? You been in the water?”

Rae shook her head.

Lisa rose from her chair and said, “I’m going to get my feet wet. Care to join?”

Rae shook her head again.

Lisa sighed with a sweetness, her pale chest rose and fell, and she wore the slightest pout. Rae had seen her mother put on this look before, and noted that it almost always produced good results. It seemed to Rae that it wasn’t very hard for Lisa to get what she wanted from people, just by being beautiful. And when that wasn’t enough, it was with one of these subtle gestures—a shy smile and dip of the chin, a feminine sigh. Rae had tried some of these moves on boys in her class at school, but they seemed to go unnoticed, except for the time Erik Moyer demanded, “Why are you being weird with your eyes?” Generally speaking, the boys at Rae’s school were not quite right in the head. They went crazy for video games like Mortal Kombat and movies about robots and zombies. As far as Rae could tell, some of them didn’t even brush their teeth in the morning.

Lisa had certain looks she used to get what she wanted, and so did Rae. In fact, Rae had cultivated a perfect look of jaded disgust to get out of doing things with members of the family, and she wore it now.

Lisa grimaced, taken aback even though she had seen this look many times before. “Alright, then,” she said. “I’ll leave you to it.”