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Boatfields’ tostadas, arroz con pollo from the Smythes, empanadas from the Mikulskis.
    The adults who hadn’t been listening to the presentation on trail digging were milling about Marla’s kitchen, stirring gazpacho, grating cheddar, queso, and Monterey Jack cheeses, spooning soft dollops of sour cream and guacamole into crystal bowls. A few of them wandered into the backyard to help Tom with the net.
    With her usual fanfare, Holly arrived. She dinged unnecessarily and repeatedly on Marla’s doorbell. Summoning her audience, I thought, with a smile. It was twenty-five minutes after the party was supposed to have started. I’d never known Holly to be on time for anything.
    When I opened the door, instead of seeing her smiling face and hearing her humor-filled voice, I saw only Drew, who had high cheekbones, was six inches taller than his mother, and sported the same shaved head as his teammates.
    â€œWhere’s your mom?” I asked.
    Drew pointed, and I looked around. Holly, huddled beside Marla’s door, wore a sparkly silver designer pantsuit with complicated folds and creases. The shimmery fabric had been skillfully cut away to show off her tanned, buff shoulders, which she’d draped loosely with more glittery fabric. She’d swept her blond hair back. Holly didn’t look like a parent; she looked like a model who’d been given the wrong outfit for a backyard barbecue. Stringed bags hung from each of her hands. She glanced fearfully down the driveway, where, I now realized, a tall, well-built, balding man was standing. I was willing to bet his male-pattern baldness was owing to age, not choice.
    A fringe of sandy hair around the man’s collar made me look twice. Was this the guy I’d almost hit that morning? If so, he was no longer wearing jeans and a sweatshirt. Oh, how I wished I’d gotten a good look at him . . . before I hit the boulder.
    â€œLet me in quickly,” Holly said to me.
    â€œMom,” said Drew, “who is that guy?”
    â€œNobody,” she said. It was clearly a lie. “Goldy, don’t look. Don’t give him the satisfaction.”
    I couldn’t help myself; I craned forward to get a better view of the stranger. But in the gathering gloom, I could only make out an unmoving male. Apart from the bit of sandy hair, all I could tell was that he was perhaps in his early fifties. He had a pale, moon-shaped face. He may have been tall and brawny, but his ill-fitting, long-sleeved shirt and rumpled pants did him no favors. His expression was gloomy, as if someone in his family had just died.
    â€œHolly,” I began, “what the—”
    Holly slipped through the door. Drew quickly followed. I continued to stare at the odd-looking man until I heard Holly’s bags hit the floor. One of her powerful hands pulled me back inside. She firmly shut the door.
    â€œHe’s a son of a bitch,” she hissed, her blue eyes ferocious.
    â€œIs he a dangerous son of a bitch?”
    Holly looked unsure, and I recalled the moon-faced man’s unhappy expression, his body slouched in apparent defeat. Was this the guy who’d wanted to know where the party was, who’d wanted to know if Holly would be here? Had he been lurking on Arnold Palmer Avenue that morning? And could he really have been one of Holly’s former boyfriends? He hadn’t been particularly good-looking. Like Ophelia, he lacked fashion sense. Even George Ingleby was handsome, in a broad-faced, bearded, Russian-army-officer sort of way, and always dressed in khaki slacks and a tailored shirt. The guy in Marla’s driveway looked like an advertisement for Goodwill.
    Yet there was something about Goodwill Man that had appeared familiar, apart from the fact that I thought I might have almost mowed him down that morning. What was it? I grasped for the memory, but it was just out of reach. Had I catered an event where he’d been a guest? If