She turned, saw Stan on the dark end of the porch. He slipped something into his back pocket—a paperback, it looked like—strolled over to her. “Yeah, it is,” she said. “Not that I was looking.”

“What are you doing out here then?”

“Cooling off. I got into a fight with my mom.”

“How come?”

“Because, well, because she’s an asshole, basically.”

Stan let out a low chuckle. It drifted off into the night. They listened to it go.

“She’s not really an asshole,” Charlie amended, after a bit. “She’s just acting like one. Bossing me around.”

“Yeah, moms’ll do that. You shouldn’t let it get to you so much.”

Normally this kind of advice would have annoyed Charlie no end. Like, gee, why didn’t I think of that? Not this time, for some reason. “Speaking of acting like an asshole,” she said, “I’m sorry for earlier today.”

“It wasn’t you. It was the people you were with.”

“I was an asshole for letting them.”

He didn’t disagree with this statement. The silence between them lengthened and filled with night sounds, sounds Charlie normally didn’t notice but now were suddenly all she could hear: the creak of insects, the distant pounding of the surf, the low whistle of wind moving through trees. Over the flat expanse of golf course, she could see the ocean glowing brightly under the moon.

“So what were you reading?” Charlie said after a while.

Stan pulled the book out of his pocket, handed it to her.

“Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita, ” Charlie said, reading off the cover. “Is that German?”

“Nope, Russian. Like me.”

“You’re Russian?”

“My name is Stanislav. What else would I be?”

“I thought Stan was short for Stanley. Were you born in Russia?”

“I was, in Moscow. But my family came to America when I was three, so I don’t remember it.”

A second silence, even longer than the first. “Is the book any good?” Charlie finally said.

“Yeah. I’ll lend it to you when you’re finished with Tess. It’ll wash the taste of Thomas Hardy out of your mouth, if nothing else.”

“Got to get the taste in my mouth before I can wash it out.”

He slid the book back in his pocket. “So, you ready to put on your nice face, go back inside?”

She nodded. “Thanks to you I can probably make it through the rest of dessert without bitch-slapping my mom.”

He laughed. “Glad I could help.”

They walked through the door together, then headed in opposite directions: he toward the kitchen, she toward the dining room.

Chapter Ten

Chapter

• TEN •