Three days later, Alice and Charlie were in the Mercedes SUV, tooling along the scenic Connecticut coastline. They were headed to Darien, the town Richard’s mother lived in, a forty-five-minute drive from Serenity Point. Mrs. Flood, who’d been in Europe at the time of Richard and Maggie’s wedding and thus unable to attend, had called several times since Alice and Charlie had arrived in Serenity Point, trying to coax the girls down to her house for lunch. Alice had been wanting to pay her stepgrandmother a visit, grill her a little bit about Camilla, but only without Richard around, as his presence would act as an inhibitor. So she’d waited to accept the invitation, cooling her heels until she heard he and Maggie would be in Boston for the day condo hunting.

Alice knew Charlie would balk when she asked her to come along, but she needed Charlie—it would look weird, wouldn’t it, like suspicious, if she showed up at Mrs. Flood’s all by herself?—so she got bossy about it. Charlie, as anticipated, balked, looked at her like she was out of her mind. Who voluntarily spent time with her own grandmother, never mind someone else’s? Then Alice reminded her that they’d be passing an outlet mall in Westbrook, promised to stop at it if Charlie agreed to keep her company. Charlie had regarded Alice through narrowed eyes, then said, “Okay, but I’m only agreeing because you blackmailed me, not because I want to go shopping.”