“Let’s do it,” she told Katie. She followed the car ahead of her into the Beach Plum’s parking lot. “Lobster rolls for lunch. What do you say?”

“Okay,” said Katie affably. Sometimes Sherri thought that she could suggest dissecting a garden snake and serving it with crackers and Katie would nod and say, “Okay,” to that too.

“When in Rome, right?” added Sherri.

“Right,” agreed Katie.

Now that they lived in New England, now that they were officially, legally, definitely Sherri and Katie Griffin from Columbus, Ohio, relocated after a nasty divorce, and no thank you they didn’t want to talk about it, it was all still quite raw, they should do whatever they could to fit in.

How far, wondered Sherri, as a cloud passed over the sun, momentarily darkening the June day, would she actually go to do that?

3.

Alexa

Alexa Thornhill cast an appraising eye on her next four sets of customers. Two families, one middle-aged couple, and someone else she couldn’t yet see because he or she was being blocked by the second family.

“I can help the next customer!” she said brightly from her position behind the counter, which looked out on the parking lot and the line of sandy, hungry people standing in the sun. It was just past one. Graduation was not far in the rearview mirror and already Alexa was bored out of her mind. After work—she got out at four—she would pop into the clothing store attached to the ice cream shop and see if they had the high-necked O’Neill halter dress in stock in her size (extra small). Her ex-best-friend Destiny had a friend who worked there and promised she’d let Alexa use her discount. Not that Alexa needed it (things had been going very well lately online), but she enjoyed taking advantage of a personal connection when she could. And Destiny owed her something, after what happened in March.

Two parents with identical twin boys, four or five, stepped up to the counter. The parents looked worried, and Alexa could already foresee the disaster that would soon unfold. The parents (Midwestern, maybe, but anyway, not local) would get a look at the prices and try to get the boys to share. The boys would agree on principle but would disagree on a flavor, and one of the parents would ask Alexa if the boys could split the smallest size into two different flavors.

Yes, she could split the smallest size into two different flavors, but no, she didn’t enjoy doing it, and, yes, there would be a fight over which boy got the most ice cream because it was impossible to get two half-scoops exactly even. The whole family would leave more distraught than it arrived.

This was exactly what transpired.

People were so predictable.

Alexa’s job at the Cottage Creamery, the walk-up ice cream joint on Plum Island, was more of a cover than anything else, part of her endeavor to appear like a normal almost-eighteen-year-old girl. Most of her money she made elsewhere. Also, getting out of the house was critical, and it was nice to be near the beach, during this, her last summer ever living in her hometown. Not that anyone knew that. And not that Plum Island had the best beach scene around. It would be much more fun to work up near Jenness Beach, at Summer Sessions, doling out acai bowls to the surf-camp kids and their moms, watching the hot surf instructors stroll by with their wet suits pulled down halfway. But everyone knew the Summer Sessions jobs went to the surfers and their significant others and Alexa had never bothered to learn to surf. It seemed time-consuming and unproductive. Cold too, especially in New England waters. Maybe when she moved to L.A., maybe then she’d learn.

The middle-aged couple stepped up to the plate, and she could almost see the woman shrink back when she got a load of Alexa’s megawatt smile. They each ordered the Ringer, which was a milkshake topped by a doughnut. If she weren’t forced to serve it, Alexa wouldn’t touch the Ringer with a pole of any length; doughnuts didn’t do it for her. Her boyfriend, Tyler, could take down four maple bacons from Angry Donuts in a single sitting. Watching him do this always made Alexa feel a little queasy.

The man put a hand to his retreating hairline and smiled back at Alexa. He was wearing a brick-red Newburyport T-shirt he probably picked up at Richdale, near the postcards and the penny candy. Alexa would bet her toe ring that in high school he was a solid B student with a not-quite-pretty girlfriend everyone referred to as “sweet.”

“This place,” she said to her coworker, Hannah, once the couple disappeared with their trillion-calorie bombs. What she didn’t have time to say, because she was busy scooping, was, is so freaking homogenous that sometimes I want to throw up. She couldn’t wait to shake the dust of this town from her Granada oiled leather Birkenstocks.

“We’re low on napkins, Amazon,” said Hannah severely.

Alexa rolled her eyes. She had acquired her name seventeen years ago, almost eighteen, could she help it if the world’s biggest online retailer had only recently understood its allure? She dispatched the next family and now she could see that the person after that was her mother. Alexa sighed. Attached to her mother, as usual, was her little sister, Morgan.

“Hey,” said Morgan.

“Hey, Morgan. Mom. How was surf camp?”

“Good,” said Morgan morosely.

“Annoying,” said Alexa’s mother. “Somebody backed into my car in the lot. So that’s a whole thing I’m going to have to deal with.”