“I do compost,” I say with a self-conscious laugh. I can barely stand to look at her face. Jealousy tastes like the smell of stagnant water. “Anyway, the grass is always greener over the septic tank, right? So’s a garden, I guess.”

“Erma Bombeck was not crunchy,” Lisa says in an aside as she opens the first bottle.

Beth groans. We all know everything there is to know about Erma Bombeck, since she was raised and lived in Dayton, in a house not too far from mine, actually. “How can someone who wears Louboutins be crunchy?”

I stretch out my legs to point my toes, clad in Frye boots, not Louboutins. “I don’t garden in them.”

“Gawd,” Beth says. “If I had a pair of Louboutins, I’d do everything in them.”

“You wouldn’t. You’d be too afraid of messing them up. That’s what shoes like that do. Make you afraid to wear them,” I say.

It’s early to be drinking. Just past eleven. Somehow, I think Beth and Lisa have made this a habit. I accept the glass of white wine Lisa pours into a delicate Waterford crystal glass. Estate sale. The entire set had been under fifty bucks—champagne flutes, white and red wine goblets. This is the first time I’ve ever taken more than one out of the china cabinet.

“Burn the candle,” Lisa says. “My grandma used to tell me that all the time. Why have pretty things, if you don’t use them?”

She takes a pull off the vape pen she got out of her purse. She uses a sanitizing wipe to clean the tip and hands it to Beth, who offers the pen to me, but I decline. Beth shrugs. Takes a draw. Holds it. The smoke that puffs out of her open mouth is pale, translucent. I catch a hint of weed smell, but only that.

“No, thanks. I haven’t done anything like that in years,” I say.

Lisa settles back into her chair, letting her chin tip up toward the sky. She sighs happily and slants a glance my way. “You used to be a real stoner back in the day.”

“Weren’t we all?” I give an involuntary look across to the carriage house, where I used to get high with friends.

With Christian.

“I wasn’t. I wasted my youth on being ‘good.’ I mean, I’m not judging you, Jewelann,” Beth says, although she totally is. “But you also had a little … thing … didn’t you? With pills?”

They both look at me. I set my jaw and sit up straight. I’m not ashamed, I remind myself. I have nothing to be embarrassed about. Beth does, though. She just doesn’t know that I know.

“It’s not like I had to go to rehab or anything like that. I just let it get out of hand.”

Lisa nods sympathetically. “It could happen to anyone. After Gary died, I swear there were some days the only difference between me and the guy who stands in front of the Liquor Mart with the cardboard sign was that I had all my teeth.”