Charlie nodded. “Yeah, and upstairs there are a bunch of plaques and trophies with her name on them. She must’ve been some tennis player. She was winning the women’s singles events here back when she was, like, eleven. So her highs were really high, but maybe her lows were really low.”

“Does Cybill ever talk about her?”

“No.”

“No as in not often or no as in never?”

“The second one. I mean, apart from that first night. And you were there for that.”

“Well,” Alice said, turning to Charlie, “don’t you think her silence says something?”

“Yeah, that she doesn’t want to talk about it.” Charlie’s eyes widened, a thought suddenly occurring to her: “Hey, how did you get Richard to cough up the keys to the Mercedes? He’s weirdly possessive of that car of his. I mean, for a guy who could buy a fleet of them without making a dent in his wallet.”

“I don’t think his possessiveness has anything to do with money.”

“No, I know,” Charlie said, with a sigh. “He’s nervous about teenage girls getting behind the wheel.”

They were both quiet for a few beats. Then Alice said, “Mom did it for me. I figured she’d have better luck. Probably had to swear that we’d use the car to go to a movie, nothing else, no detours or stop-offs.” Glancing down at the clock on her cell phone, she added, “Speaking of which, it starts in fifteen minutes. We should get going.”

Charlie took a step, winced.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. I cut my toe on something last night. It’s a little sore today. Plus, I didn’t sleep so great.”

“God, you’re a mess.”

“I know,” Charlie said, letting her forehead drop, resting it on Alice’s shoulder. “I hope Ryan Gosling takes off his shirt a lot. Like, a lot a lot.”

Alice ran her fingers back and forth across the nape of Charlie’s neck a few times before fishing the Mercedes keys out of her pocket. “Yeah, you and me both,” she said, an arm around her sister’s shoulders, guiding her out of the club.

• • •

It was still light out when Alice and Charlie left the movie house. They’d shared a tub of popcorn, so they weren’t hungry. Not meal hungry, at least. They got ice cream cones instead and strolled along the pretty town streets, looking in shop windows, bumping shoulders. As they were cutting through the small park at the center of Serenity Point Square, they passed a tiny old woman on a bench, sitting with a heavyset woman in a nurse’s uniform reading a magazine.

The old woman was looking at her, so Alice turned to smile.

“Camilla!” the old woman shouted suddenly. “Camilla, it’s you!”