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Dunns had been using as a nanny all these years, but it was best not to get involved. Or even to acknowledge that there could be anything wrong. Curiosity was allowed only up to a certain point, so people didn’t ask. Or comment. Instead they simply watched as Pauline and Ned walked away. Then they returned to their magazines and books.
    Devon had been watching them go, too; she didn’t notice Austin climbing out of the water. When she turned back to the pool, she was surprised to see him standing on the edge at the far corner. He seemed to be looking at her.
    Again.
    Now he was walking. Slowly. She was transfixed by his feet, which with every step seemed in danger of slipping off the edge and back into the pool. Was he about to jump in again? Why didn’t he lose his balance? He was like a construction worker on a high beam. The effect was so mesmerizing that he was halfway across the enclosure before Devon realized he was walking straight toward them.
    “Let’s go down to the ocean,” she said quickly.
    “Nice,” Florin said. “It’s way better down there. And my ice cream is melting.”
    Nina, who somehow hadn’t noticed Austin’s change in location or direction, sat up slowly and nodded. She flapped her hand at Barnes, who was still in the pool, as if to show how urgently she needed to get away from him.
    Devon stood up from her chair. She realized she had been sitting for too long, and she took a moment to stretch. Several people around the enclosure, mostly men, may have paused briefly in whatever they were saying. Or thinking about.
    There was a small commotion near the halfway point of the pool, and the lifeguard looked briefly interested. Then Austin appeared at the surface and hoisted himself back onto the side. He kept his head down and let the water drip off of him. He looked embarrassed.
    Nina was suddenly confused. “What just happened?” she whispered.
    “I think he might have fallen in,” Devon said.
    “Fallen in ?” Nina looked around as if someone were trying to trick her.
    Devon shrugged and walked toward the staircase leading up to the mezzanine. Reliably, Nina and Florin followed. She told herself that she was trying to avoid an awkward situation. That the new boy wouldn’t have wanted to try explaining himself, or that Nina would have been flustered to have him come upon them so suddenly. She tried to ignore the idea that she might have been trying to avoid letting Austin and Nina finally have their first talk.
    That would have been petty.
    “I still don’t understand,” Nina was saying as they walked up the wide staircase. “When did he get out?”
    “When Pauly-Girl swooped in, I think,” Florin said.
    Nina shook her head and said nothing. Over the years, she and Devon and Florin – and sometimes even Barnes – had discussed the disturbing aura of the Dunn babysitter in such overwrought detail that they no longer wanted to broach the subject. The woman had been an employee of the Dunn family for seven years – since she was sixteen, and the three of them were nine – and she had radiated danger almost before the girls had even been able to vocalize the idea. Pauline seemed to combine anger and beauty and aggression and sexuality into one fierce, frighteningly unstable package.
    She was to be avoided.
    The girls came to the top of the stairs, silently agreeing to say no more on the subject. Which had been their unofficial policy for the last two years, after all.
    Here on the mezzanine level, they had the Atlantic stretched out before them. And despite years of coming upon exactly this view, in exactly this place, all three paused. It was impossible not to appreciate the sight. The south shore of Long Island stretched out to either side, creating a beach so broad and long that the idea of overcrowding was laughable. Sometimes Devon’s parents would have summer guests to the house, and often these guests would eagerly talk about wanting to get to the beach early. “To beat