“Put some clothes on,” said Rebecca. “And shoes. We’re going out for dinner. I’m buying. Bob Lobster.” She poked Alexa’s leg with her toe. “Come on.” She had exactly one item on her agenda. She’d been holding on to her knowledge of Alexa’s YouTube channel for two weeks now, waiting, as Daniel had advised, for the right time to bring it up. And now was the right time.

Alexa groaned and said, “Why do you want to go all the way out there?” Bob Lobster was on the turnpike leading to Plum Island.

“I just do,” said Rebecca. “I like their clam rolls, and I haven’t had one all summer.” She moved toward Alexa like she was going to tickle her, and that got her going. No seventeen-year-old wanted to be tickled by her mother. “Come on. Morgan is at Katie’s. It’s just the two of us.”

Alexa groaned again and pulled on ripped jeans shorts and a tiny, tiny T-shirt. “Tourists love Bob Lobster because it’s ‘quaint’ and ‘no-frills,’” she said. “But when I go on vacation? When I’m a grown-up? I’m going in the opposite direction. I’m going to go to the Royal Villa of Grand Resort Lagonissi in Athens, which costs fifty thousand dollars a night. I’m looking to embrace the thrills, not avoid them.”

Is that because you are a YouTube personality? wondered Rebecca. But what she said was, “That will be nice for you, one day. For now we’re going no frills. I’ll drive.”

The sky over the Merrimack was a delicate pink bordered here and there by orange. There was the sense of summer coming to a close, of days and nights diffusing and re-forming as nostalgia. They rolled down the windows of the Acura and took in the briny, summery smell along the turnpike. They passed the weathered wood-shingled Joppa Flats Education Center, where Alexa had once attended a summer day camp, learning all about the native birds and marine life, and then they passed the Plum Island Airport, where Rebecca had once bought Peter a piloted ride on a WWII fighter plane for his birthday. He’d emerged looking green about the gills, but he claimed to have loved it.

They ordered their food—the clam roll for Rebecca, chicken Caesar wrap for Alexa—and, once they had it, repaired to one of the outside tables, where they tried to ignore the buzzing flies and concentrate instead on the loveliness of the sky. Alexa was facing away from the road and Rebecca toward it; she could see the light playing on the Pink House. She kept her eyes trained across the street so she wouldn’t have to meet Alexa’s when she said, “I watched your YouTube channel.”

Alexa put down her wrap. Her voice shook a little. “You what?”