“My mom did, married a fortune. Whether he’s good or not, I couldn’t tell you. Though”—pointing out the window to Maggie and Richard, full-on making out by the golf carts—“she sure seems to think so.”

Stan laughed. As he did, she admired his white teeth and green eyes.

“Anyway,” she said, “if you want me to move, I’d be happy to.”

“Nah, that’s okay. You stay right where you are. Nobody around here eats much, anyway. That was an iced tea you wanted, right . . .” He paused, as if waiting for her to fill in the blank.

“Charlie,” she finished.

“How about I make you an Arnold Palmer, Charlie? I’ve got the lemonade–iced tea ratio down just right.”

“Okay. Sounds good.”

He nodded, walked away from her with that light, quick step of his. Then a woman at a nearby table called for the check, and he turned around unexpectedly, caught Charlie in mid-stare. They both laughed. Not wanting to get herself in any more trouble, Charlie reopened her book, took her third crack at that first paragraph.

• • •

Alice’s beat-up three-year-old low-top Converse sneakers, as it turns out, didn’t offer much in the way of arch or ankle support, and thus weren’t ideal for hard-surface training. She quickly veered off the road and onto the sand, removing her sneakers to run along the beach. She couldn’t get used to how private these private beaches actually were. So empty they looked post-apocalyptic to her eye. Carson Beach in Southie got so packed in the summer it was tough to find a patch of sand big enough to spread a towel on. Lots of hood-y looking guys with tattoos up and down their arms, girls who smoked and chewed gum at the same time. Sometimes fights would break out and the cops would come. Once someone even found a human bone.

When Alice had started out, she’d had some vague, wishy-washy idea of reaching the Serenity Point lighthouse, which she knew was two and a half miles from Richard’s because Charlie ran it every day, and she’d been with Charlie when Charlie made Maggie measure the distance with the odometer in the Mercedes. After a few minutes of huffing and puffing, a stitch pulling painfully at her side, calf muscles burning, she revised her end point: last night’s bonfire pit, unambitious but doable, at least.