Lisa closed the magazine before her and looked at Poppy. “I know,” she said. “That’s how he was acting from the moment he stepped in the door.”

Poppy gazed at her. “What do you mean?”

“I was all charged up to confront him,” Lisa said, “but then he walked in like that, all mopey-dopey, like some mean kid stole his lunch money. I was so taken aback. I didn’t know what to make of it.”

Poppy said, “What could . . .”

“That’s what I keep trying to figure out. I’m like . . . Did things go south with the other woman? Did she leave him? Did he find out that she’s cheating on him? Did he find out that I knew? Was he suddenly struck with some crisis of conscience?”

Poppy chewed her bottom lip.

Lisa scooted the bottle of white wine across the counter and retrieved a clean glass from the dishwasher. She poured Poppy two inches of wine and sat back down on her barstool.

Poppy said, “You’re right, that’s definitely not the way you’d expect a guy to be acting if he was running around with some other woman, everything hunky-dory.”

“Exactly.”

Poppy sipped her wine. “So you didn’t confront him?”

Lisa shook her head. “I just asked him how golf was. He said, ‘Fine.’ I had already picked up on the mood, and I was like, ‘Doesn’t sound like it was fine,’ and he started undressing and mumbled something like he hadn’t played a very good game.”

“He undressed in front of you?” Poppy said.

Lisa nodded. “I thought that was funny too. Like, if he had spent the past four hours in bed with another woman, he might be nervous about stripping down in front of me, worried what I might see or smell, but he didn’t seem to have a second thought about it.”

Poppy frowned. “That is odd. He was either totally sure that he had covered all his tracks, or he wasn’t actually . . .”

Lisa was nodding. “I followed him around the bedroom while he was undressing, and I pointed to his glove in the corner of the room. I was still fired up and hoping to catch him in a lie. I was like, ‘You forget something?’ ”

“Yeah, and?”

“And he was like, ‘Forgot my damn glove, got a blister,’ and he held out his thumb to show me.” Lisa demonstrated. “I didn’t examine it up close, but it looked legit, and he was so casual about the whole thing, not a moment’s hesitation or nerves. I got no sense whatsoever that I was catching him in a lie.”

“Strange.”

“After he went down to the beach just now,” Lisa said, “I stuck around and did a little snooping. Pockets of his golf shorts. Wallet.”

“What’d you find?”

“Nothing.”

Poppy drank more wine. “Are you thinking . . .” She hesitated. “What are you thinking?”

Lisa sighed. “His behavior was so . . . so dark, right? I’m thinking maybe I was wrong about another woman. Is that crazy? Maybe he really did just forget the glove, and the pass. Maybe one of the other guys lent him their pass.”