“Suits me,” Ellis said.

“Ugh, jigsaw puzzles,” Julia said, making a face. “Why don’t we just put on our Supp-Hose and eat some stewed prunes while we’re at it? Come on, you guys, we’ve got to figure out something livelier than that. We’re not dead yet, are we?”

“I brought some DVDs,” Ellis started. “Or we could play a board game. What’s over there, Dorie?”

“Mmm, let’s see. Uno, Monopoly, Trivial Pursuit. Oh, I know, cards. Let’s play five hundred, like we used to do at the beach at home.”

“Yeah,” Ellis said, getting up from the table. “Five hundred. Shuffle the cards, Julia. And I’ll make some popcorn.”

“Open another bottle of wine, while you’re at it,” Julia ordered. “And not that cheap crap, either. I put a nice bottle of pinot grigio in the fridge before dinner.”

*   *   *

Ty read the latest e-mail from Ellis Sullivan and laughed despite himself. Maybe she wasn’t wrapped quite as tightly as he’d thought.

To: Mr.Culpepper@Ebbtide.com

From: EllisSullivan@hotmail.com

Subject: Cable’s out

Dear Mr. Culpepper, Hate to pout, but our cable is out.—Ellis

Of course her cable was out. His cable was out too. He had a pile of past-due notices on his desk, and the disconnect warning was on the very top. He toyed with the idea of trying to bypass the cable box. A buddy had shown him how to do this back in his college days. But with his luck, he’d get caught and get his ass slammed in jail.

To: EllisSullivan@hotmail.com

From: Mr.Culpepper@Ebbtide.com

Subject: Cable

Dear Ellis: Please don’t have a hissy. I’ve called Comcast, but the line is busy.

Pleased with himself for this small accomplishment, he pushed the send button. And then he forwarded her latest missive to the file where he had kept all the rest of her e-mails. It was getting to be quite a collection.

Without television and the Nationals game he’d planned to watch, the evening stretched out before him seemed as empty and depressing as the silent television screen perched on the plastic milk crate in the corner of his living room.

He went to the fridge, got a beer, and walked out onto the deck. He slumped down onto a chair and stared out at the water. Must have been a good sunset, he mused, looking at the orange-and-purple-streaked sky. He’d missed it, of course, because he’d been online, searching for a way out of his predicament. That’s how he spent most of his time these days, looking for a way out of the hole he’d dug himself into. It was a hell of a note. He’d risked everything buying this place, desperately wanting to live on the ocean again. Now he had it—Ebbtide, perched right on the edge of the Outer Banks, and he might as well have been living in a cave for all the good it did him. He hadn’t surfed, hadn’t gone for a morning swim, hadn’t even caught a decent sunset—not in weeks.

There had to be a way out. But how?

He took a long pull on the beer bottle. He heard laughter and music coming from the direction of Ebbtide. If he stood at the far end of the deck, he could see into the dining room, bathed in the golden yellow light of the chandelier.

The three women were sitting around the table, playing cards. There was a wine bottle on the table, and half-filled glasses. The tall one, Julia, was talking rapid-fire, waving her hands for emphasis. The cute little strawberry blonde was giggling helplessly, running her fingers through her hair. Ellis, he noticed, seemed to be the scorekeeper. She was arguing, and smiling, and writing something on a pad of paper. Suddenly she looked up. Ty ducked instinctively. Had she seen him watching him? Nah. One of the women said something, and Ellis pelted her with a piece of popcorn, and now they were having a full-on popcorn fight, and their shrieks of laughter floated over the dune and out to sea.

The cards and the golden light and the silvery peals of laughter reminded him of summers past. The whole family was staying at Ebbtide, and his mother and grandmother were having a meeting of what they called “the swill sisters.” He’d been, what? Six? His father had to explain that these ladies were not really his mom’s sisters, but just a few old friends his mom had known since she was a girl, nearly his age.

His grandmother had spent the day of the swill sisters meeting feverishly baking little cookies and making egg-salad, pimento-cheese, and chicken-salad sandwiches, all cut into tiny, crustless triangles. His mother had fluffed and fussed and swept and scrubbed the old pine floors to a fine, dull gleam. A flowery tablecloth had been spread across the battered dining room table, and from the big cedar chest that sat in the hall under the stairs, a set of gold-rimmed, rose-strewn dishes and delicate pink wineglasses he’d never seen before were produced.

At six o’clock, his grandmother had banished them. “No boys allowed,” she’d said, laughingly pushing them out the door. So he and his dad had walked down the road to the pizza parlor, where they’d slowly eaten a large pie and watched the Braves game on the television mounted on the wall over the bar. His dad had beer, and he’d given Ty a sip, warning him not to tell “the womenfolk.”

When they’d walked back home, the sandy driveway was still filled with cars, so he’d waited by the kitchen door, and his father had tiptoed into the house, emerging a moment later with a paper napkin filled with the little cookies and cakes, and a can of root beer for Ty.

“Contraband,” his dad had called it in a conspiratorial whisper. They took their stolen treats and went to the garage apartment. Back then, they still called the apartment Tillie’s house, because it was where his grandmother’s maid, Tillie, and her three children lived every summer when they came down to the beach from his grandmother’s big house in Edenton.

Ty had only a vague memory of Tillie, a slight, stoop-shouldered black lady who colored her hair bright red, chewed gum nonstop, and wore what looked to him like a white nurse’s uniform. He did remember how Tillie put ice in her coffee in the morning, and how she liked to boss his mother around. But Tillie had quit coming to the beach in the ’80s, because, as his father reported, she wanted to be paid a living wage, “and your grandmother, bless her heart, is tight as a tick.”

So Tillie’s house had become a place to store unused furniture and an overflow of houseguests. The night of the swill sisters meeting, his father dragged two rickety wooden chairs out to the deck, and they’d sat there and gorged on desserts. They could see his grandmother and his mother and a gaggle of women, arrayed around the gussied-up dining room table. Music was playing, and some of the ladies were playing a card game, and everybody was laughing and having a real party.

Ty had been mesmerized by the glimpse of his mother and his usually dignified grandmother, acting like the girls in his class at school. “What are they talking about?” he’d asked his father, who was leaning with his back against the deck railing. “What’s so funny?”

“Who, them?” Ty’s father glanced in the direction of the big house and shrugged. “Son, there ain’t no telling what’s on a woman’s mind. You get a bunch of hens together like that, and all bets are off. They might be talking about shoes or clothes. Or they might be talking about whoever’s not there tonight. Probably they’re talking about how sorry somebody’s husband is. Doesn’t really matter. ’Cause even if you and me were right in there with ’em, we probably wouldn’t understand what’s so funny. Not in a million years.”

*   *   *

“Rummy!” Ellis shouted jubilantly, slapping the cards faceup on the table.

“Oh no, not again,” Dorie said. She fanned her own cards for the others to see. “You caught me holding a handful of aces and kings. Again.” She ticked her fingertips across the cards. “That gives me, like, minus sixty.”