“Hey, Morgan and I are planning on going to the beach today. Are you free? You and your daughter should come.”

Rebecca offered to pick up Sherri and Katie, explaining that she already had a parking pass to get onto the reservation and it would be silly for Sherri to pay the parking fee. Sherri didn’t know what “the reservation” was until they arrived; apparently it was a state-owned beach with a campground and miles of parking for which you could use the special pass. Nothing to do with Indians, as Sherri had initially thought. Oh, she had so much to learn.

Sherri found out a few things about Rebecca right off the bat, after they settled themselves into their beach chairs (Rebecca had brought one for Sherri) and watched the girls run off with boogie boards. Rebecca worked in a nearby town as a second-grade teacher. Her older daughter, Alexa, was almost eighteen, headed to Colby in the fall.

In Sherri’s old life her best friends had been the wives of the guys Bobby worked with; they’d been tossed together by circumstance more than temperament or choice. Jennifer with the stables. Lauren with the acrylic nails. Amber with the indoor swimming pool. She’d sometimes wondered what it would have been like to choose her own friends, women she’d met at work (difficult, since Sherri didn’t have a job) or in a book club (impossible; Sherri had never been in a book club). She hadn’t made a friend from scratch in a very long time—since high school, really, and she’d lost touch with most of those friends when she’d started up with Bobby. None of her friends had liked Bobby.

Rebecca reached into her cooler (it had the word yeti printed across the center, just like all of those coolers lined up at the surf-camp beach) and pulled out two cans of something. “Black cherry or ruby grapefruit?” she asked. Seltzer! Just the thing on a hot day. Sherri had brought only water to drink.

“Either,” said Sherri. “Thank you. Unless you’re saving one for Morgan.”

Rebecca let out a friendly sounding snort and handed Rebecca a can. “Uh, I don’t think so,” she said. “Morgan’s not exactly drinking age.”

Sherri took a closer look at the can. White Claw Hard Seltzer. Five percent alcohol. One hundred calories. Sherri thought of Brooke and her rosé by the pool. Did these women drink all day, every day? Well, all right. Sherri could hold her own. She opened her can and took a long sip of the seltzer. She didn’t taste rum, or tequila. Maybe it was vodka? She took another sip, then another. The sun was so lovely. She could almost feel the vitamin D seeping into her bones. She was filled with a sensation of peace and tranquility such as she hadn’t felt since . . . well, in a very long time.

And then her eyes flew open. From out of nowhere she had that panicky feeling again. Where were the girls? Oh, there they were, not on their boogie boards anymore. They were playing around with their phones, taking beach selfies. No self-consciousness about bathing suits when you were eleven years old, all knees and elbows and vertebrae. Not like now, when there were so many different body parts to worry about, things hanging and wobbling. Maybe Sherri should have gotten the breast implants when Bobby offered all those years ago. Lots of the women did. (Implants, and then some. New lips. Bigger eyes. Bigger cheekbones.) But Sherri had always liked her breasts. They were big enough to be serviceable, even attention-seeking, without getting in the way. Now she kept them covered, like she kept so much else covered.

A klatch of teenage girls caught her eye. They were lying on their stomachs in a semicircle, laughing at something on a phone one of them was holding. The seltzer must have gone to her head, because all of the girls looked like Madison Miller, even though Madison Miller had ginger hair and none of these girls did. But they were about Madison Miller’s age, fifteen, sixteen, with bodies that were sleek and brown and hair that sat in tight buns on the tops of their heads. Be careful! Sherri wanted to call to them. Be careful, because you never, ever know.

“Are you okay?” Rebecca had pushed her sunglasses to the top of her head and was peering at Sherri. “You look like you just saw a ghost.”

I did, thought Sherri. There’s a ghost over here, and a ghost over there. This beach is full of ghosts. What she said was, “I think the seltzer might have gone to my head, that’s all.”

“It’s hot,” conceded Rebecca. “And that seltzer is strong.” She reached back into the Yeti and produced two wraps. She took one herself and handed Sherri the other. “Eat,” she commanded.

Sherri did as she was told. Hummus and vegetable. She was ravenous. “Did you make this? This is delicious. This might be the best wrap I’ve ever eaten.” Since she and Katie had become a family of two their meals had been scattershot, made quickly out of boxes and cans. She hadn’t felt settled enough to cook properly, the way she had back in their old house, and often she skipped meals altogether.

“No, I got them at the Natural Grocer,” said Rebecca. “I didn’t know if you or Katie were, you know, vegetarian or vegan or anything so I kept it simple just in case.”

Sherri briefly relived the shame of the surf and turf at Plum Island Grille. “No,” she said. “We’re none of those things. We eat everything. Thank you. This is so—” She felt her voice catch, and she told herself to pull it together. “This is so nice of you.” She tucked her T-shirt closer around her bathing suit. Rebecca had disrobed immediately upon arrival at the beach, showing a body that was nicely toned. She’d bet Rebecca could get through the “glutes” at barre class without feeling like somebody was cutting up her muscles with a Swiss Army knife.