Leo and his family, Joy knew from previous posts, lived somewhere vague and midwestern. They definitely had access to a lake. Sometimes Leo caught their dinner, deboned it right there on the boat, etc. Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, perhaps? She couldn’t be sure—Leo could be restrictive with the personal details, if not the recipes.

Me 2, Maggie texted back. DBD 4ever! This was an uncharacteristically warm response, so Joy left it at that. She leaned on the horn again, and the Le Baron began to move.

As Joy waited to slide into her parking spot she gave the driver the finger, because people had to learn, especially summer people. He was still on the phone, not looking in Joy’s direction. “Hey!” she said, leaning on her horn again, until finally he turned. When he did, she lost her nerve; she tucked her middle finger away and pointed angrily at the sign with her forefinger. PRIVATE PARKING: VIOLATORS WILL BE TOWED.

He waved his free hand at her. She couldn’t tell if he was waving in greeting or apology or just general assholeness. “Asshole,” she said again. He definitely seemed like a New Yorker, but his car had Rhode Island plates, and it didn’t seem like a car a New Yorker would drive. It was a very old Le Baron. If she had to get more specific within the decade, she’d guess ’95. Joy’s father had owned—still owned—an auto repair shop that Joy had worked at intermittently through high school and college, so she felt comfortable making a guess.

She watched as the Le Baron pulled into a spot on Dodge Street. Fine, that was allowed, that was public parking. She got out of her Jeep and opened the back door to access the flour. But she couldn’t help watching as the man inside the Le Baron put his arms down on his steering wheel and then rested his forehead on top of the backs of his hands. Was he laughing? Sleeping? Crying?

She left the flour in the back of the Jeep and moved closer to the car. The guy’s shoulders were shaking. He was definitely crying. Oh, boy. She started to back away.

Then she paused. He looked like such a sad sack, sobbing into his steering wheel, and Joy never had been able to resist a sad sack. In fourth grade, she’d been the only kid to be nice to Oliver Wheeler, who had buckteeth and pigeon toes and glasses that got knocked off every time he played four square. In high school, she had volunteered once a week at the Forever Paws Animal Shelter on Lynnwood Street in Fall River because a boxer mix she found behind an abandoned warehouse with the tip of one ear missing had stolen her heart. Her mother wouldn’t let Joy keep the dog—five children in that apartment was enough!—so Joy had brought the dog into the shelter and walked out with a volunteer position. Even now she drove her former neighbor, Mrs. Simmons, to the cemetery once a year to visit the grave of her dearly departed husband on the anniversary of his death.