To guard against this possibility (and because she didn’t like cats) she took Maggie one day when Maggie was eight to the animal shelter in Warwick to pick out a puppy. They ended up with Pickles, a whitish beagley mix with a black eyebrow-shaped patch over one eye.

“I love her,” said Maggie. “She looks like someone interrupted her when she was putting on her makeup.”

And just like that, they were a family of three.

“But you’re all alone!” continued Mrs. Simmons now. “You should get married again. You should at least have a beau.” Joy giggled inwardly at the word beau. It was a wonderful word, really. It deserved to come back into circulation.

And it would be nice to have a beau, Joy agreed. It would be even nicer, perhaps, to have sex again. With the exception of three summer flings and that awkward business a couple of years ago with Bob Herbert, who ran the auto repair shop, Joy lived like a cloistered nun. If cloistered nuns had daughters to raise and small businesses to run.

“I’m not all alone,” she told Mrs. Simmons. “I have Maggie. I have Pickles. Tonight, Maggie and I are making a dish from our favorite food blog: it’s a new twist on spaghetti with clam sauce. Maggie’s going to dig the clams herself, today! You should come for dinner!”

“Shellfish allergy,” said Mrs. Simmons primly. “And you won’t have Maggie and Pickles forever.”

“I know,” said Joy regretfully. “It’s a real shame that dogs’ life spans are so much shorter than ours.”

“You lose the daughters, is what I meant. That’s how it goes. My two daughters I never see. My son: All the time. I can’t get rid of him.” Mrs. Simmons always wore lipstick for the cemetery visit, and never mind if she colored outside the lines. At least she was trying. Joy thought that was very brave.

“Well. I have my business too, you know, Mrs. Simmons.”

“You need a beau,” she repeated staunchly. After a beat she said, “What’s this I heard about a food truck coming to the island? Who wants to eat food that comes off a truck? That sounds very dirty, if you ask me.”

“It’s not a pickup truck, Mrs. Simmons, it’s a— Think of it as a mobile kitchen. Like an ice-cream truck, but with different kinds of food. Anyway, they’ll never get the permitting, not in time for summer. How’d you hear about it?”

“Same way I hear about everything. My Thursday night card game.”

“Bridge?”

“A little bridge, a little canasta. Speaking of. You know where you should take me sometime? That Mohegan Sun. Barbara Galveston’s daughter took her there two weeks ago and she won eighty-five dollars at the craps table.”

“Okay,” said Joy. “Okay, why not? Let’s do that someday.” She could probably get Holly to go along on an adventure like that.

At the cemetery, Joy pulled up the paved road to where it started to become a dirt path. “Here we are,” she said. “You remember where you’re going?”