“Hang on,” said Alexa. “Let me put you on speaker phone so I can check.” She paused as if she were checking her weather app and said, “Yeah, right around three. Trust me, that beach is going to clear out.”

There was a faint murmuring, which Alexa took to indicate that Hannah was passing this information on to her fellow beachgoers.

“Crazy,” said Hannah. “I didn’t see anything about that on my app.”

“Are you using the app that came with your phone?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t do that, Hannah. That app is terrible. You’ve got to download Dark Sky. It’s so much better.”

“Really? Dark Sky?”

“Trust me. It keeps up much faster. These summer storms can come from out of nowhere, you know.”

“I do have something I was hoping to do tomorrow,” Hannah considered. “So if you took my shift—”

“Perfect!” said Alexa. “I owe you.”

Hannah was fair-skinned and freckled so probably should limit her sun exposure. If you looked at it correctly, Alexa was doing her a favor.

Back downstairs, she could tell that somebody had come home because the paper bag from Market Basket had been dug out of the garbage and lovingly folded into the recycling bin. She sensed the hand of Morgan the Environmentalist in this, but she didn’t stop to look around because she wanted to get on the road.

She turned off the locator app on her iPhone. Her mother didn’t know how often Alexa did this; she just thought the app was given to “malfunctioning” and wondered when “they” were going to come up with a tracking app that actually tracked reliably.

A quick Google search led her to Cam’s Winnipesaukee address, which she plugged straight into Waze.

The drive to Wolfeboro took her to Alton and then northeast along Winnipesaukee, but she wasn’t paying attention when it was time to make the turn from Route 11 to Route 28, and before she knew it she was heading the wrong way around the lake, adding at least thirty miles (maybe more) to her drive. But that was okay. It was a kick-ass summer day, sunny and cloudless. Along the arm of Alton Bay, the pontoons and the other pleasure craft were out in full force. The lines for ice cream at the myriad outdoor stands were long, and traffic was slow. She didn’t mind. She was enjoying being somewhere different, away from the fishbowl of Newburyport.