Alice slept terribly that night, barely at all. And the short time she did manage to nod off for was filled with a strange underwater dream. She was at the bottom of Serenity Point Bay: hazy, refracted light shining down from above, soft sand shifting beneath her feet, and in front of her a mermaid with Charlie’s face, then Cybill’s face, then Charlie’s, then Cybill’s, back and forth, over and over. And then, suddenly, there was Camilla, by a coral reef. She was dressed in tennis whites, the same outfit she was wearing in the photo in the clubhouse, her lips curved in the same beguiling smile. Her hair was loose and swirling: a golden cloud floating above her head. A brightly colored fish was beside her ear, whispering into it. She held up a hand and beckoned to Alice. She had a secret to tell. Alice began swimming toward the coral reef, passing mermaid Charlie, her movements languid and slow-motion, the water parting gently for her, as soft and unresisting as air. Camilla was in profile, angled slightly away from her. As Alice got close, though, Camilla turned, and as she did Alice saw that the fish wasn’t whispering in her ear. It was eating her face, with teeth that were long and sharp and curved. Half of it was already gone, the skin chewed clean through, the tissue and tendons underneath, too, leaving nothing but gleaming white bone. Alice opened her mouth to scream and water rushed in. She couldn’t breathe. Her lungs started to buck and spasm. She awoke clutching her throat, gasping for oxygen.

When she was able, she turned to the clock. If she didn’t hurry, she’d be late for breakfast.

• • •

Richard was kind of nuts on the subject of breakfast. Everyone had to eat it, together, and in the informal dining room. No skipping or sleeping through, no leaving in the middle. “Most important meal of the day,” he liked to say before sitting down, rubbing his palms together vigorously so that they made this annoying, rasping sound.

“It’s like,” Charlie had whispered to Alice last week when Richard got up from the table to see if the newspaper had arrived, “he’s a dad in a fifties sitcom. But a fifties sitcom that’s being remade into an eighties slasher movie.”

Alice had nodded eagerly. “Right,” she said, “so like, he’s bland, but bland like a maniac’s bland.”

“Exactly.”

Maggie frowned, shook her head at her laughing daughters.

When he said the words today, though, and Alice glanced over at Charlie to exchange their usual smirk, Charlie didn’t glance back. She was too busy covering her egg-white skillet scramble in plugs of ketchup. She looked, Alice thought, un-hungover to an annoying degree, clear-eyed and shiny-haired, full of energy and bounce. While Alice, who’d barely taken a sip of her drink last night, felt like, in a word, shit.