“I know it was an accident. But it might have been avoidable if you’d been sober. Remember, I wanted to drive.”

“Why didn’t you say so?”

She stared at him, a passing car lighting her face, her expression of defiance.

“Don’t tell me you don’t remember—please, not another lie,” she said. “The cop came and asked for details.”

“I knew his father. Ray-Ban. Goofy-foot.”

“You didn’t tell him you’d been drinking. He asked you if you’d been buckled up. You lied about that. He asked you how fast you’d been going. Another lie. How many lies so far?”

“People say those things all the time.”

“Yes. But a man died,” Olive said. “You killed him. And there’s some sinister shadow over you—over us. And you think it doesn’t matter? You don’t eat, you can’t sleep, you hardly surf these days.” She paused and took his hand. “Your life has somehow gone into reverse.” She tugged his hand for emphasis. “We have to make it right.”

He turned away from her and clutched his face again. “I said I was sorry,” he whispered into his hand.

“A lie. You never said that.”

“I want to go home,” Sharkey said. “My wrist hurts. I feel terrible. I’m tired.”

They stood in darkness, hearing the sea, the low breaking waves at Waimea, seconds apart, like a vast tureen of thick soup somewhere beyond the palm trees, the plopping sound of it being slowly emptied. And when a car approached and the road was lit, they saw the ugly broken pavement and the loose stones, the litter of soda cans and plastic bags snagged on low bushes, and their own car, parked at an angle on the sand, tilted on the shoulder, the pothole like a brimming sewer, the nearby tree trunks slashed with initials.

“It was right there,” Olive said. “That hole filled with rainwater. I hadn’t realized how deep it was.”

Sharkey squinted past the palms to the bay, scowling at the dribble of moonlight on the blobs of froth. No wind, only the slop and plop of the soupy sea on sand and rocks.

“Kneel down with me,” Olive said.

“All the drama,” Sharkey said, and made a sibilant scoffing, seeming to spit.

“A man died here,” Olive said. “On this spot.”

Sharkey glanced to the left and right, and seeing no cars, he walked near the pothole, kicking his flip-flops. Then he lifted his swollen wrist with his good hand to favor it and knelt next to Olive.

Bowing her head, Olive said, “Three beers at the bar and a hit of pakalolo. ‘We’ll get your car tomorrow,’ you said. No seat belt. Driving in the rain, you began that long story about Moe Kahiko. Then ‘Oh God.’ You hit the man and kept sitting. You didn’t get out of the car. I did, and saw that he was dead.”