Lisa, Rae, and Kimmy returned to the house and went to their rooms to change into their swimsuits. As Lisa tied the straps of her halter-top bikini, her eyes fell on Scott’s white leather golf glove. It was on the floor, on the far side of the dresser, half hidden by a bath towel that had been carelessly tossed in the same vicinity.

In all the years Lisa had known him, Scott had never once forgotten a single element of his golf getup. He took an inordinate amount of pride in his gear—more so than in his actual play. Must’ve been in a rush, she thought, and as she recalled now, it did seem that Scott had been itching to get out the door this morning after he took that phone call. The others must have scheduled an early tee time.

Lisa carefully situated her white wraparound cover-up at her shoulders, and arranged it to display one classy inch of cleavage. She tightened the tie at the waist. She pulled her hair into a low ponytail and put on her wide-brimmed straw hat, then went to the kitchen to pack a small cooler and wait for the girls.

Down at the beach, Ryan appeared to be sleeping flat on his back, a T-shirt shielding his face from the sun, and Poppy was paging through an old Good Housekeeping magazine that she had found in the rec room. Poppy waved as Lisa and her girls approached. Poppy’s skin was deep red-brown and gleaming with sunscreen and sweat. Lisa set up her umbrella next to Poppy and silently applied sunscreen to her arms and legs.

Kimmy immediately went for a swim.

Rae dragged her beach chair and book to the edge of the water, where she sat with her bottom half-submerged. She wore a swimsuit that Lisa would have forbidden if Rae had had even an ounce more in the way of womanly curves to fill it out. It was a tiny string bikini, bright green, with gold glitter and stripes that matched her gold hoop earrings. As it was, on Rae’s late-blooming, scrawny fourteen-year-old frame, the strings that tied over her hip bones and hung across her rib cage were about as suggestive as ribbon around plywood.

Lisa finally settled in next to Poppy.

“How was the art gallery?” Poppy said brightly. She was sipping from a Bud Light in a Texaco koozie.

“It sucked,” Lisa said distractedly. She fiddled with the tie on her cover-up for a moment, then said in a low voice, “Pop, I swear to God, I’m about to blow my lid. I’m trying to keep it together for the kids, but . . .”

Poppy took off her sunglasses and stared at Lisa. “What’s up?” she said.

Lisa swallowed. “These new golfing buddies of Scott’s?” she said. “The phone call? He said he was going to go play a round with them this morning?”

“Yeah?”

“Just now when I was up at the house I found his golf glove in our room.”