Lisa sighed mightily. “OK,” she whispered. “I need to keep it together for the girls. I’ll have to find a time to confront him when it’s not going to blow up in front of everybody.” Lisa sniffed in long and hard and wiped the tears from her face. “I’ll have to find a way to control myself until the time is right.”

Poppy massaged Lisa’s shoulder. All the words of comfort or consolation that rose to her tongue seemed small and insincere. Lisa shuddered from the base of her spine as though an ice cube had been pressed to her neck. She pinched her nostrils and straightened up as Kimmy drew near.

Kimmy wrapped a Tweety Bird towel around her shoulders and shook her hair out wildly. Then she looked to her mother and Poppy for affirmation.

Poppy said, “Nice moves.”

Kimmy did the whole routine again.

Lisa said, “You should re-up on sunscreen, your nose looks pink.”

Looking a bit dazed from her head-banging, Kimmy gazed behind them, toward the house.

“Goodie, Alex is back,” she announced.

Poppy turned to look over her shoulder. John and Alex were making their way to the beach. He was hopping and swiveling awkwardly to avoid prolonged contact with the scorching sand. Alex wore flip-flops and knee-length board shorts over a red one-piece swimsuit.

When they had made it down to the others, Poppy teased her husband, “Hey there, first-timer.”

John set his towel next to hers. He yanked his white T-shirt off over his head. His chest was strong and brown. His belly was big but tight as a drum, abdominals toned from years of physical labor, beneath the years of fast food and Budweisers.

“Huh?” John said, rubbing sunscreen on his face.

“You ever been to the beach before?” Poppy said. “Doncha know to put something on your feet? Sand’s about a thousand degrees on a day like this.” She reached over to rub a smear of sunscreen on the backs of his knees.

Alex stood with her thumbs hooked into the belt loops of her board shorts and said, “We didn’t get a single bite.”

Kimmy said, “Not one single bite? How boring. Were you so bored? We were bored too. The gallery was such a drag.” Poppy could tell from the way Kimmy said this, and from the accompanying gesture—chin in the air, a graceful flop of the hand—that she was repeating her mother’s words verbatim and feeling quite pleased with herself for delivering this sophisticated observation as though it was her own.

Alex picked at a callus on her palm. “I’m hot,” she said.

Kimmy said, “Do you want to go for a swim?”

The two of them bounded toward the water. They passed Rae, who was motionless at the water’s edge, nose in her book, and splashed with high knees, hands in the air, losing their balance and tumbling full force into the waves. They bounced and dunked and kicked, their laughter and high-pitched squeals reaching far up the beach.