“Well, that’s all screwed up,” Madison said, slamming the bike back onto the pavement.

“I really am sorry,” Julia said, taken aback by Madison’s burst of anger. “Look, I’ll go get Dorie’s van. We can load it in there and take it to the bicycle repair shop. There’s one just up the road, I noticed it on my run.”

“Whatever,” Madison said, stony-faced.

Julia touched the other woman’s elbow gingerly and looked away quickly. “You’re bleeding. Come on, we’re just a block from home. Ellis has a first aid kit. We’ll get you cleaned up and then come back for the bike. Nobody’s going to steal it while it looks like that.”

Madison looked back at the bike and sighed. “All right.”

Julia was soaked in sweat, her orange nylon running shorts and white tank top clung to her tanned body, and her hair was held back with a white visor. She looked over at Madison, dressed in cheap black capris, a pale blue T-shirt, and no-name sneakers, limping along beside her.

“Did you do something to your ankle?” she asked sympathetically.

“I think maybe I twisted it,” Madison grimaced.

“I really am sorry,” Julia repeated. “I’ll pay to have the bike fixed.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Madison snapped. “It’s a piece of junk. Not a big deal.” Despite her injured ankle, she sped up.

Julia sped up too, until she was alongside the other woman again. “Have I done something else to offend you?” she asked. “Have the rest of us—Dorie and Ellis—done something to piss you off?”

“No,” Madison said. “What makes you think that?”

Julia shrugged. “Every time we see you, every time we ask you to come down and eat with us, or join us on the beach, you act like we want to poison you or something. Dorie says you’re just shy, but I think there’s something else. Maybe you just plain don’t like us?”

Madison kept walking. “I don’t have anything against any of you. You all seem like perfectly nice girls. It’s just … I’m not one of you. Okay? And that’s fine with me. I don’t want to pledge your little sorority or be your BFF. I just want to pay for my room, and eat my meals, and ride my bike in peace.”

“O-kaaaay,” Julia said, stung by the outburst. “Fair enough. I’ll let the others know. We’ll keep our distance, if that’s what you want.”

They walked on in silence. When they reached Ebbtide, Ellis was on the porch, sweeping off the night’s sand deposit.

“What happened?” Ellis asked when she saw Madison, limp and bleeding.

“I fell,” Madison said.

“Come on inside, and I’ll get the first aid kit,” Ellis said.

Dorie was sitting at the table finishing her breakfast when the two women walked in. “Good Lord,” she said.

“I fell off my bike,” Madison repeated. “It’s no big thing.”

Ellis got Madison to sit at the table while she gently washed the sand off her scraped elbow, dabbed the abrasion with antiseptic cream, and bandaged it. “What about your ankle?” she asked, lightly touching Madison’s ankle, which was already swollen and discolored. “Do you think maybe it’s sprained?”

Madison flinched. “It’s just a twist,” she said, determined to avoid further contact. “It’ll be fine.”

Dorie jumped up, went to the freezer, and scooped up a handful of ice cubes. “I’ll put these in a ziploc bag and we’ll fix you up an ice pack to get the swelling down.” She looked over at Ellis. “Do you have some aspirin or ibuprofen in that kit?”

Ellis shook a couple of tablets from a bottle and handed them to Madison, who rolled her eyes but swallowed them without water.

Julia came into the kitchen then. “I’m going to take the van and go get your bike and take it to the repair shop,” she announced, brushing aside Madison’s protests. “You probably don’t need to be walking on that ankle.”

“She doesn’t,” Ellis agreed.

“I’m fine,” Madison repeated. “I’m just going to go up to my room and wash off all this sand.”

“You shouldn’t be going up stairs on that ankle,” Ellis said, but Madison grabbed the ice pack, pretended not to hear, and kept walking out of the room and up the stairs.

“Geez,” Ellis said, watching her go. “What the hell did you do to her, Julia?”

“Nothing! I was jogging back towards the house, and she was in front of me on her bike, so I ran along beside her and said ‘Hi!’ and she just freaked out and fell off,” Julia insisted. “I apologized, I offered to pay for the bike, I totally groveled, but she acts like I did it on purpose.”

“She’s so prickly,” Ellis said, shaking her head. “I totally don’t get her.”

“I even asked her if we’d done something to offend her.”

“What did she say?” Dorie asked.

“She basically told me she doesn’t want to play in our sandbox,” Julia said, laughing uneasily. “I’m telling you, Ellis, there’s something going on with that woman. And I intend to find out what it is.”

“Julia,” Ellis said, a note of warning in her voice, “leave her alone. You are not Nancy Drew.”

“That’s what you think,” Julia said. “Dorie, I’m gonna take the van and pick up her precious bike and take it to get it fixed. Be back in a few.”

*   *   *

Julia pulled the minivan onto the shoulder of the road, directly beside Madison’s mangled bike. It was nearly noon and the sun blazed white hot overhead. Her running shoes sank into the soft sand as she stood over the bike, and a bead of perspiration trickled down her cheek. Impatiently, she yanked her top over her head and tossed it inside the car. Dressed in her bright orange running shorts and hot pink sports bra, she bent over and grasped the bike’s handlebars with one hand and the rear wheel with the other. As she was transferring the bike into the back of the van she heard a soft clunk. A cell phone had fallen from a purple-and-black foam cup holder bolted to the bike’s handlebars.

She knew at a glance whose cell phone it was. The few times Madison had deigned to join the other girls, she had that cell phone clutched tightly in her hand, and Julia had never seen her without it.

She picked it up, and just as she did so, a car’s horn blared, and there was a chorus of loud wolf whistles. A battered black Land Cruiser full of shirtless, sunburnt college boys pulled up alongside her. “Hey baby,” the driver called. “You need a hand?”

She flashed them what Booker always called her “money smile,” the one she’d perfected in her early days of modeling, after studying Farrah Fawcett’s iconic red-bathing suit poster. Julia raised her chin, tilted her head slightly to the side, and shook her long hair back over her shoulders. “Fuck off,” she said sweetly. She shoved the phone into the pocket of her running shorts, slammed down the van’s hatch, and got back in the driver’s seat.

The Land Cruiser’s driver treated her to another blast of his horn, and then peeled away, leaving a trail of oily black exhaust. “Assholes,” Julia muttered. But she was secretly pleased that at thirty-five she still had the looks—and the power—to stop a carload of randy college boys and drive them just a little bit nuts.

Bikes on the Beach occupied the end slot in a small strip mall on Croatan Highway. Every slot in the parking lot was full, so she double-parked and ran into the shop. A middle-aged woman with waist-length dyed black hair sat on a stool at a counter, leafing through a catalog of bicycle parts. “Help you?” the woman asked, looking up.

“I’ve got a bike in my van with a bent wheel,” Julia said. “Is that something you can fix?”

“Sure thing,” the woman said. She eased herself off the stool and followed Julia out to the van. The woman easily hefted the bike out of the van. Inside the shop, she gave Julia an index card to fill out, with her name, address, and cell phone number. “My husband does the estimating and repairs, and he just left to deliver some beach chairs down the road. I’ll have him call you as soon as he gets a chance to look at it,” the woman said.