“Anthony?” said Shelly now.

“Here,” he said. “I’m here.”

“Let’s just keep it on the table for now,” said Shelly.

Anthony pictured the table: farmhouse, distressed dark wood, seating for twelve. The kind of table Cassie had been seeking for their dining room. Maybe she’d found it by now—maybe Glen Manning had bought it for her. “Fine,” he said resignedly. “We’ll keep it on the table.”

“I’m so glad we caught up, Anthony!” Shelly Salazar actually did sound glad, which heartened Anthony a bit. “Now, you go start writing that apology.”

Anthony imagined himself sitting at the dining room table in Fitzy’s uncle’s fusty living room. The disgraced novelist sat for a long, long time, staring at the golden liquid in the crystal decanter. The temptation was great, and yet he resisted, aware, always, of the importance of the task at hand. Pen to paper, he began to write.

No, that wasn’t a realistic scenario. He had nothing to write: nothing to say. His writing days were over. That scene belonged in the fantasy genre. Anthony Puckett didn’t read fantasy, and he certainly didn’t write it.

He took one last wistful look at the beautiful water, the beautiful teenagers who presumably had the worst of their mistakes ahead of them. Then he walked back up the little sandy path and pushed back through the underbrush and made his way to the cottage, where he found a woman standing outside his front door wearing a pair of ripped denim shorts and flip-flops and holding an empty measuring cup. She smiled at him.

“Sorry!” she said, with such familiarity he wondered if he knew her. “I know, it seems so old-fashioned, coming to a neighbor for this. But I thought I’d give it a try. I’m making an essence-of-summer cobbler and I don’t have enough sugar. So, I said to myself, I’ll ask my closest neighbor.”

“Sugar,” said Anthony. He peered at the woman. A little younger than he was, probably. Across her nose was what, if it had not been a giant cliché, he would have called a smattering of freckles. She had a small gap between her front teeth, all very girl-next-door. Which she was, literally.

“It seems like something neighbors in Mad Men would do—you know, the depressed housewives living in the suburbs.” She thrust out the measuring cup. “But anyway. Do you have any? Just half a cup?”

“I’m not sure if I do,” he said.

She switched the measuring cup into her left hand and stuck out her right. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I should have introduced myself first. I’m Lu.” Her face was open, easy, nonjudgmental—the opposite of most of the faces surrounding Anthony these days. There was something about her that reminded him of Amanda Loring, who had been his best friend in fourth grade. Fourth grade was paradise; fourth grade was before puberty, before middle school and girls in lip gloss and everything that came after, before his dad got famous, before he learned that women like Cassie could guile you with their beauty and charm and then leave you to roast in the juices of your own mistakes.