Occasionally some jolt to the senses-a whiff of coconut oil, the grit of sand in her swimsuit seams-brought to mind the old family beach trips. She was returning her umbrella to the rental stall one afternoon when a child cried, “Ma, make Jenny carry something too!” which swept her back into that packing-up moment toward sunset each day when children beg to stay a little bit longer and grown-ups ask who’s got the rafts, where’s the green bucket, will somebody grab the thermos? She remembered the bickering, and the sting of carelessly kicked-up sand against burned skin, and the weighty, soft-boned weariness. She recalled each less-than-perfect detail, and yet still she would have given anything to find herself in one of those moments.

Whose sneakers are these? Someone’s forgetting their sneakers! Don’t come to me tomorrow whining about your sneakers!

She bought a postcard showing a dolphin, and she wrote on it, Dear Sam and kids, Just taking a little holiday, thinking about you all. Then it occurred to her that they might assume she was referring to this whole past year, not a mere two weeks in Ocean City; and she wasn’t certain how to clarify her meaning. She tore the card in half and threw it away.

On her last night, she was supposed to meet Ellie at The Sailor’s Dream. She regretted having agreed to it. Carrying on a conversation struck her all at once as a lot of work. However, canceling would have been work too, so she showed up at the appointed hour in front of the restaurant. Ellie was already standing under the awning. She wore a white halter dress shot with threads of silver, the kind of thing you’d expect to see on cruise ships, and she carried a little white purse shaped like a scallop shell. Men kept glancing over at her as they passed. “Why, Delia! Look at you!” she called. “Aren’t you all healthy and rosy!” Delia had forgotten how good it felt to have somebody know her by name and act glad to see her coming.

The Sailor’s Dream had the padded-leather atmosphere of an English gentlemen’s club, but with some differences. The carpet, for instance, gave off the same mushroom smell as the one in Delia’s motel room. And all the waiters were deeply tanned.

“So tell me,” Ellie said as soon as they were seated. “Have you been having a good time?”

“A lovely time,” Delia told her.

“Was this your first vacation by yourself?”

“Oh, yes,” Delia said. “Or rather…”

She wasn’t sure whether traveling alone to Bay Borough qualified as a vacation or not. (And if it did, when had her vacation ended and her real life begun?) She met Ellie’s eyes, which were fixed on her expectantly.

“Doesn’t it feel funny going swimming on your own?” Ellie asked.

“Funny? No.”

“And what about eating? Have you been eating in your room all this time?”

“Goodness, no! I ate out.”

“I hate to eat out alone,” Ellie said. “You don’t know how I admire you for that.”

They had to stop talking to give their orders-crab imperial for Delia, large green salad hold the dressing for Ellie-but as soon as the waiter moved away, Ellie said, “Did you practice beforehand? Before you left your, ah, previous place of residence?”

“Practice?”

“Did you use to eat out alone?”

Delia began to see what Ellie was up to here: she was hoping to gather some tips on how to manage single life. For next she said, “I never did, myself. I never even walked down a street alone, hardly! Always had some escort at my elbow. I was awfully popular as a girl. Now I wish I’d been a little less popular. You know how long ago I first thought of leaving Joel? Three months after we were married.”

“Three months!”

“But I kept thinking, What would I do on my own, though? Everyone would stare at me, wonder what was wrong with me.”

She leaned even closer to Delia. Lowered her voice. “ Dee,” she said.

“Yes?”

“Did you have to leave?”

Delia drew back slightly.

“Like, were you in just… an impossible position? Had to get out? Couldn’t have survived another minute?”

“Well, no,” Delia said.

“I don’t want to pry! I’m not asking for secrets. All I want to know is, how desperate does a person need to get before she’s certain she should go?”

“Desperate? Oh, well, I wouldn’t say… well, I’m still not certain, really.”

“You’re not?”

“I mean, it wasn’t an actual decision,” Delia told her.

“Take me, let’s say,” Ellie said. “Do you think I made a mistake? There you are in that house with my husband; do you think I was overreacting to leave him?”

“I’m not married to him, though. There’s a difference.”

“But you must know what he’s like, by now. You know how persnickety he is and how… right all the time and always criticizing.”

“Joel, criticizing?” Delia asked. “Belle Flint says he worships you! He’s trying to keep the house exactly like you left it-hasn’t anyone told you?”

“Oh, yes, after I left it,” Ellie said. “But while I was there it was, ‘Why can’t you do it this way, Ellie?’ and, ‘Why can’t you do it that way, Ellie?’ and these big cold silent glowers if I didn’t.”

“Is that so,” Delia said.

And just then she saw Sam standing in front of the fridge, delivering one of his lectures on the proper approach to uncooked poultry. Sam was so phobic about food poisoning you’d think they lived in some banana republic, while Joel never mentioned it. No, Joel’s concerns were more endearing, she thought-his household maps and his chore charts. They so plainly arose from a need for some sense of stability. All he was really after was sureness.

Or could the same be said for Sam?

Their food arrived, and the waiter flourished a pepper mill as big as a newel post. He asked, “Would either of you like-?”

“No, no, go away,” Ellie said, waving a hand. As soon as they were alone again, she turned back to Delia. “Three months after our wedding,” she said, “Joel went to a conference in Richmond. I said to myself, ‘Free!’ I felt like dancing through the house. I almost flew through the house. I played this kind of game with myself, went through all his drawers and packed his clothes in boxes. Packed what hung in his closet too. Pretended I lived by myself, with no one peering over my shoulder. He wasn’t due home till Wednesday, and I planned to put everything back Tuesday night so he’d never guess what I’d done. Except he came home early. Tuesday noon. ‘Ellie?’ he said. ‘What is this?’ ‘Oh,’ I told him, ‘it’s just I wanted to picture what it would feel like to have more drawer space.’ That’s how women get their reputations for ditsiness. The real reason wasn’t ditsy in the least, but who’s going to tell him the real reason?”

She hadn’t touched her salad. Delia plucked a piece of crab cartilage from her tongue and set it on the side of her plate.

“In a way, the whole marriage was kind of like the stages of mourning,” Ellie said. “Denial, anger… well, it was mourning. I’d go to parties and look around; I’d wonder, did all the other women feel the same as me? If not, how did they avoid it? And if so, then maybe I was just a crybaby. Maybe it was some usual state of affairs that everybody else gracefully put up with.”

Finally she speared a lettuce leaf. She nibbled it off her fork with just her front teeth, rabbitlike, all the while fixing Delia with her hopeful blue gaze.

“That reminds me of Melinda Hawser,” Delia told her. “This woman I met at Belle’s last Thanksgiving. The way she talked, I figured she’d be divorced by Christmas! But I run into her uptown from time to time and she’s still as married as ever. Looks perfectly fine.”

“Exactly,” Ellie said. “So you can’t help thinking, Wouldn’t I have been fine too? Shouldn’t I have stuck it out? And you get to remembering the good things. The way he loved to watch me put on my face for a party so I always felt I was doing something bewitching; or after the baby was born, when we weren’t allowed to have sex for six weeks and so we just kissed, the most wonderful kisses…” Now the blue eyes were swimming with tears. “Oh, Delia,” she said. “I did make a mistake. Didn’t I?”