Rae sprang up from her beach chair, outraged and incredulous. She stared at her mother like Lisa had just shot the Labrador in the head.

Lisa gasped for breath and waved her hands around her face as though deflecting insects. “I’m sorry,” she wheezed.

“What the hell?” Rae hollered. “That was so embarrassing!”

Hoping that Lisa would collect herself and avoid revealing more to Rae, Poppy stepped between mother and daughter to address Rae directly. “What happened?”

Rae spoke quickly, bewildered and irate. “That guy was walking by, and his dog was really cute so I sort of whistled at it, and the dog came over real friendly, and I was just petting it, and my mom”—she pointed violently toward Lisa, as though she were on the stand and had been asked to identify the perpetrator in the courtroom—“Mom came running up, totally crazy, and said to that man, ‘Stay away! You stay away from her!’ Waving her arms like, like the guy’s trying to murder me with an ax. And then”—Rae sputtered, still in disbelief—“he took his dog and left. Well, you saw,” she appealed to Poppy. “You saw. They just left after my mom scared them off. What the hell?”

Rae’s hands were angry little white balls.

Poppy stole a quick glance over her shoulder at Lisa, who looked shell-shocked. Shoulders low, hands cradling her own elbows. Face long and open. Poppy felt a surge of pity for her friend, who had been through the ringer in the past hour.

Poppy turned back to Rae. Her mind worked fast. “Chocolate Labs are notoriously aggressive,” she said.

Rae crumpled her brow, looking skeptical.

“It’s true,” Poppy ventured, eyebrows high and persuasive. “Especially toward kids. They can get aggressive really fast. Violent.”

Delivering this quick lie with such conviction, Poppy half wondered if it was true.

Rae’s expression was still dubious.

Poppy lowered her voice to a softer pitch. “Your mom has had a really hard morning,” she said, looking Rae directly in the eye.

Rae snorted. “Oh, really? A hard morning? Because the art gallery sucked? I didn’t know that was enough to make a person lose their freaking mind and scream at a stranger, chase him off the beach.”

“I yell at strangers every day,” Poppy offered. She reached out a gentle hand to Rae’s shoulder. “Let’s just let it go. It won’t happen again. Right?”

Poppy turned around to confirm this with Lisa.

Lisa was bent and fanning her face, gazing at the horizon. “Of course not.”

Out in the water, John, Alex, and Kimmy were swimming happily in a gentle surf that broke over the sandbar, oblivious to what had taken place at the shore.

Kimmy danced and spun in circles and slapped at the water’s surface. John was floating on his back, only his face and belly visible except when a swell rose beneath him and he paddled mildly with windmill strokes to ride it. Alex was at his side, dog-paddling haplessly. It occurred to Poppy that they should probably put Alex in swimming lessons. They rarely vacationed at the beach; too far away, too expensive, but it would be good if she at least knew some basics.