Poppy rose from her seat. “Let me go check on the ice cream, and I’ll look into some tinfoil while I’m in there.”

Inside, Lisa was dishing up ice cream and Scott was nowhere in sight.

Poppy said, “Did you send him to bed without dessert?”

“He didn’t put up much of a fight,” Lisa said wearily. “Pop, I’m sorry about him going after Ryan like that. I don’t know what crawled up his butt. He looks sunburned, I imagine he’s dehydrated, the whiskey went straight to his head. He’s annoying as hell when he’s been drinking, but he’s usually not a mean drunk.”

Poppy waved her hand dismissively. “It’s nothing. Ryan’s fine, takes a lot to ruffle his feathers. They’re already on to something new out there. Tinfoil hats, matter of fact. Do we have some?”

“There’s a roll in the drawer next to the sink.”

Back outside, Ryan helped Kimmy and Alex fashion tinfoil hats while they all ate ice cream.

The sun had set, and the sky was a deep but electric blue with stars winking through, appearing to pulse at different rhythms.

Rae asked her mother, “Did you make Dad go to bed because he was being obnoxious?”

Lisa started to meander through a diplomatic answer about how tired he was, but Rae interrupted her: “Oh, save it.” She ate a bite of ice cream and left her spoon dangling from her lips.

Kimmy tightened the point on the tip of her hat. “Daddy is one rude dude,” she said.

Lisa took some pictures of Alex and Kimmy in their foil hats. Kimmy took hers off and tried to force it onto Rae’s head, but Rae batted it away and smoothed her hair.

Eventually, Kimmy and Alex tired of the hats and crumpled them into little foil balls, which they flicked across the table into L-shaped finger goalposts.

Lisa and Poppy cleaned up the dinner dishes together, and Ryan announced that he was going to go for a night swim in the pool. He went to change into his swim trunks, and Kimmy turned to Alex. “We should have him teach us how to snorkel in the pool, since we kept getting ocean water down the pipes this afternoon,” she said. “It’ll be easier to learn without waves.”

Alex agreed. The girls went to Ryan’s bedroom and were surprised to find his door locked, so they bonked on the door and hollered in their request for snorkel gear.

Rae changed into her string bikini, which was made of spandex but designed to look like acid-washed denim. She met the others down at the pool and settled herself at the corner of it, on the second step of the entry point with the balance bar, so that she was submerged in water up to her chest but her hair remained dry. She sat cross-legged on the narrow stair.

The warm pool water was brightly illuminated from below, and chlorine steam lifted off the surface into the sultry night. The gentle churning of the ocean was faint, and a breeze glided through dry reeds. The air felt like a dangerous magic.