“I’m at forty,” Julia reported, laying down her own cards. “Where’s that put us, Ellis?”

“Hmmm. I’m at 485. Julia, you’re at 410. And Dorie, honey, you’re at 220.”

“I’m hopeless,” Dorie said, yawning. “And tired. It’s what, nearly midnight? I think I’m gonna take myself off to bed.”

“Not yet,” Ellis protested. “It’s still early. And you could still have a comeback. Come on, Dorie, don’t go to bed yet. Not when we’re having so much fun. Hey, what about some ice cream? I’ve got Fudgsicles in the freezer.”

“Chocolate?” Dorie raised an eyebrow. “Well, why didn’t you say so? I may suck at cards, but I’m grrreeatttt at chocolate.”

“You didn’t always suck at cards,” Julia observed. “You used to whip us all single-handed. I never saw anybody who could memorize cards like you, Dorie.”

Dorie pushed her hair back from her face. “My mind’s not in it,” she said lightly. “I’m having a blonde spell. A strawberry-blonde spell.”

“What is on your mind?” Julia asked. Ellis shot her a warning look, but Julia never took her own eyes from Dorie.

“Oh, you know,” Dorie said. “Money. Work. The usual stuff. Never mind me. I’ll be better once Ellis hands out those Fudgsicles she’s bribing me with.”

“Dorie?” Julia slid her chair over so that it was beside her friend’s. “Come on, girlfriend. We know something is upsetting you.”

“Julia!” Ellis said. “You promised.”

Julia shrugged. “I lied. Now, come on, Dorie. Out with it.”

Dorie’s face paled. She swept all the cards on the table into a pile, and busied herself rebuilding the deck. “I’m that obvious?” she asked, looking from Julia to Ellis.

“No poker face at all,” Ellis said, taking a seat on Dorie’s other side. “But you don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”

“It’s Stephen, isn’t it?” Julia broke in, ignoring Ellis’s glare.

“Oh God,” Dorie whispered. “Yes. Stephen…” A single tear slid down her face. She bit her lip. “Stephen and I … God. I can’t believe this is happening. I can’t even make myself say it.”

Julia filled a glass with the last of the pinot grigio and slid it in front of Dorie. “Here. Drink up.”

“No,” Dorie gently pushed the glass away. “I can do this. I can. I have to. Starting tonight.” She took a deep breath, and suddenly the words came pouring out.

“I lied to you all. I did. And I’m sorry. The truth is, Stephen finished his thesis weeks ago. He didn’t come to the beach with me … because … we’re getting a divorce. And he moved out two weeks ago. And now I’ve got to sell the house. I couldn’t tell you. I haven’t told anybody. Especially Willa. Oh God, what will Willa say? And my mom? This will absolutely kill her. How am I going to tell her? And the school? I know one of us has to quit Our Lady of Angels. We can’t both work there. Not now. But I don’t know what to do. I can’t think. Not even about the simplest stuff. I can’t even decide what kind of cereal to eat for breakfast, or what to wear in the morning. It’s like my brain is frozen. And I shouldn’t have come to the beach. I should have stayed home and figured everything out, but I wanted to come. I wanted to get in my car and run away. Just keep driving. All I could think about was, ‘I am going to the beach. And I am not going to deal with this. When I’m at the beach, none of this will matter.’ So, I came.”

The torrent of words stopped as suddenly as it had started. Dorie’s shoulders slumped. She wiped ineffectively at the tears that were now streaming down her face. “Oh, God. What a mess.”

“Oh, Dorie,” Ellis said, throwing her arms around her friend. “I am so sorry.” She was crying too. “Oh, sweetie, I don’t know what to say.” She felt utterly helpless in the face of Dorie’s pain.

“I know, right?” Dorie said, her voice shaky. “Mr. and Mrs. Perfect are getting a divorce. How screwed up is this?”

Julia took a long sip of Dorie’s untouched glass of wine. “I knew it. As soon as I laid eyes on you at the airport, I knew it was something like this. I kept hoping it wasn’t, you know, this. But I just knew in my heart that it was.”

“You’re a witch,” Dorie said, dabbing at her eyes with a paper napkin. “You always were.”

“Not really,” Julia said. “You’re just so incredibly easy to read. You haven’t called him, he hasn’t called you. You’ve been weepy and mopey. And you can’t play cards for shit.”

“I’m sorry,” Dorie said, sniffing. “I hate being Debbie Downer.”

“Do you want to talk about it?” Ellis asked.

“No. I mean, yeah, I can talk about it. If you guys don’t mind the popcorn getting all soggy. I don’t even know where to start.”

“Let me guess,” Julia said. “I bet Mr. Perfect has himself a girlfriend. Am I right?”

“Julia,” Ellis said, through gritted teeth. “Before this night is out, I am going to strangle you. I really am.”

Dorie’s laugh was shaky. “Let her alone, Ellis. Maybe she’s not as witchy as I thought. You’re only half right, Julia. Stephen does have somebody else. But it’s not a girl. It’s a guy.”

“What?” Ellis cried.

“No way!” Julia said. “You’re telling us Stephen is gay?”

Dorie was crying again, and the words were streaming as fast as the tears. “I’m such an idiot. How could I not have known? I mean, I knew something was wrong, but I never dreamed it was this. Easter break, we were supposed to go to Destin with another couple from school, and a day before we were supposed to leave, Stephen announced that he wasn’t going. He said he didn’t care if I went, in fact, he wanted me to go, but he said he’d had a rough semester, and he just wanted to go off hiking, by himself, up in the mountains. I told myself it was because he doesn’t really like my girlfriend’s husband, Brad. I mean, Brad can be hard to take sometimes. He’s a marathoner, and he never shuts up about running and his times and all that. So I let Stephen go off hiking. And when he got back, I thought he’d be in a better mood. But he wasn’t. He got moodier. And that’s not Stephen. Not normally. Normally, he is Mr. Happy-Go-Lucky. Which is why I fell for him. And we had fights. Not a lot, and not about anything important, but you know, the whole two years we dated, we never, ever fought.”

Julia guffawed. “Well, that should have been a warning signal right there. Booker and I fight every day of our lives.”

“But we didn’t,” Dorie said. “My mom and my dad, you know, before they got divorced, they fought like cats and dogs. Willa and Nash and I, we were so glad when they finally split up. You never saw kids so happy about a divorce. And I told myself when I got married, I would never fight like they did. Because if two people are right for each other, and they love each other, they don’t have to fight, you know?”

“My parents used to fight now and then,” Julia said thoughtfully. “Not like Booker and me, but yeah, they’d get into it every once in a while. But then Daddy would buy Mama flowers and a piece of jewelry, or she’d make his favorite cannoli, and they’d make up like nothing happened. And they were married for like, forty years.”

Ellis thought about her own parents. Lawrence Sullivan had been a patient, quiet man who doted on Ellis’s mother. She couldn’t remember him ever disagreeing with her mother, at least not in front of her and Baylor. Fighting would not have been his style.

“Your daddy and mama were pretty special,” Ellis told Julia. “Like Ward and June Cleaver.”

“Or Doris Day and Rock Hudson,” Dorie said sadly. “Only Rock Hudson turned out to be gay. Just like Stephen.”

Dorie looked up and saw Julia watching her. She sighed. “Now you’re gonna ask me how the sex was, right?”

Julia grinned. “I was scheming a way to get you away from Ellis, ’cuz I knew Ellis would never let me ask.”

“Who says?” Ellis retorted. “I’m not that big a prude. Am I? I mean, I know it’s totally none of our business, but still. We are your best friends.…”