“Do you smoke cigs?”

Poppy gazed at Rae. “On rare occasions. I bummed one from a nice young lady up the road. My lungs were giving me hell.”

Rae said, “Do Ryan and Alex know you smoke?”

“No,” Poppy said. “And neither does John. So let’s keep this between you and me, missy.”

Rae smiled, sly like a cat.

“I’m serious,” Poppy said. “John finds out I’m still smoking cigarettes, it’ll be . . .” Poppy stretched her lips wide over her teeth and drew her thumb across her neck.

Rae was still smiling. “Do you guys fight?”

“Me and John?”

Rae nodded.

“Everybody fights with the people they live with. They’re the ones whose shits you gotta smell.”

Rae laughed, finally, and Poppy felt she deserved a prize. But a moment later Rae’s face darkened and slipped into something far away.

Poppy said, “Your mom says you’re big into horses.”

Rae nodded.

“Now tell me the truth,” Poppy said. “Are you more into the horses, or the cute guy who wears the tight pants and gives riding lessons?”

Rae stared at her. “My mom told you about Lucas? Oh my God. That figures.”

“Hah, I gotcha,” Poppy said. “No, she didn’t tell me anything about anybody.”

“Oh.” It took Rae a moment to decide how to respond to this. Lucas was sort of cute, nothing like Ryan, though. Lucas was pale and skinny as spaghetti. And for that matter, Rae was pretty sure Lucas was into the Korean girl who rode the Appaloosa named Strudel. Rae didn’t really give two hoots about who Lucas was into, but it was annoying when someone whose league you were out of didn’t pay you any attention at all, like you were totally useless, a lost cause. Well, anyhow, she didn’t figure Poppy needed to know any of this, so she said, “Lucas is gay.”

Poppy clucked her tongue.

Rae slid off the stool to refill her coffee. Her toenails were painted fire-engine red, so neatly done that Poppy wondered if it was a professional pedicure.

Poppy dampened a dishcloth with cold water and held it to her forehead. “Humidity’ll kill ya out there,” she said. She decided she would have something to eat, wash her hands, and brush her teeth a second time, before John woke, so that he wouldn’t smell cigarette on her. She took a banana from the large wicker bowl that Lisa had filled with fruit, and peeled it. Rae took her coffee back to the island counter and returned to her book.

Poppy sniffed her fingers to make sure the banana overpowered the cigarette.

Rae sipped her black half-decaf coffee and curled her red toenails around the legs of the barstool.

In Ryan’s bedroom, his heart was still slamming against his chest as he set his backpack at the foot of the bed, brushed sand from his legs and feet, and removed his T-shirt. Christ Almighty! This was way too much adrenaline for six o’clock in the morning. His mom had nearly scared him shitless when ten minutes earlier he’d caught a glimpse of Poppy finishing up her run and approaching the house. Ryan was coming in from the beach, so was on the opposite side of the house from Poppy, but he happened to see her out on the sidewalk. He stopped dead in his tracks in the side parking area, completely still so as not to attract her peripheral attention, until she was out of view. Once he was confident that Poppy was inside, Ryan swiftly entered the house using the lower-level entrance in the rec room down by the pool, which he had left unlocked. Inside, he crossed through the rec room, used the back stairway to make his way up to the bedroom level, and waited out of sight until he heard voices in the kitchen—his mother and Rae—before making a fast break for his bedroom.