“When are you going to talk to them about the money?”

Bobby had been putting off a real conversation with his parents for months—every time his mother called, he got off the phone as quickly as possible, or else turned the chat around and asked Franny about whatever she was doing, which would get her going for at least twenty minutes, a respectable period of time. He hated to ask for money, and even more than that, he hated the reason he needed it. At first he’d just needed a little sideline business, something to tide his bank account over until the real estate market picked back up. He hadn’t planned to stay at the gym for longer than a few months. When the best membership salesman at Total Body Power approached Bobby about selling the supplement powders, it sounded like a no-lose scenario. Those were his exact words: “no lose.” So far, Bobby had lost every penny he’d ever saved, plus about a million pennies he’d never had in the first place.

“Soon. I just need to find the right moment. You don’t know them,” Bobby said. “It has to be at the right time.” He leaned back against the wall.

“Fine. Just remember that you said you were going to do it, and so you actually have to open your mouth, okay?” She got out of bed and stretched. “I think we should go to the beach, don’t you? Or do you need to think about that, too?”

“I’m coming, I’m coming, yes,” Bobby said, even though the idea of staying in bed, alone, sounded suddenly blissful. He swung his legs over to his side and touched his toes to the cool stone floor. Charles and Lawrence were in the kitchen now—he could hear their voices, and then his mother’s laugh. There would be plenty of time spent sitting around, listening to them all tell the same stories over and over again, Sylvia somehow laughing inside it all. Bobby knew that the conventional thought was that she had been the accidental child, that she was the one born too late, but he couldn’t help feeling that it was the other way around, that he’d been born too early, before his parents got their act together. He’d had to figure out so many things on his own, not that they’d ever acknowledge that. The Posts were masters of self-delusion, all of them. “Yeah, let’s go.”

Gemma had promised Wi-Fi (password: MALLORCA!), but she hadn’t mentioned details: the network was slower than dial-up and worked only when the laptop or telephone in question was held over the kitchen sink. Lawrence hadn’t technically taken a vacation, but since he worked from home, what was the difference? Spain was the same as New York, which was the same as Provincetown, not counting time zones. Charles liked to make fun of Lawrence by saying that he had the least glamorous job in the most glamorous field—he did accounting for the movies, keeping track of the budget and the salaries and the deductions. The trailer rentals, the lights, the gluten-free wraps with hummus and bean sprouts. He was working on a movie that was filming in Toronto, a Christmas-themed werewolf comedy called Santa Claws. A lot of the money went to fake fur and soap flakes to be used as snow.

“Oops, sorry, Lawrence,” Franny said, bumping her bottom into his hip as she bent down to reach into the oven to check on a quiche. “Close quarters!”

“No, no, I’m sorry, I’m just completely in the way,” he said, and then flapped his free hand in frustration. “I just need to send this one spreadsheet, and then I’m really done.” Lawrence held the computer up toward the ceiling and waved it a bit from side to side until he heard the telltale whoosh that meant the e-mail had been sent. There was a noise that some more e-mails had come in, but he didn’t even scan through them before bringing the laptop back down to his chest and closing it. “All yours.”

It was just the three of them—Sylvia was still in bed, Bobby and his girlfriend had gone off to the beach, both of them entirely clothed in high-tech fabrics as if they were about to run a triathlon, and Jim was swimming laps in the pool, visible through the kitchen windows. Charles sat at the head of the table, a cup of coffee held daintily in his hands, as if he were expecting the queen of Spain to walk through the door. Lawrence loved so many things about his husband: the way his white and gray stubble looked on his face and head, all more or less the same length and prickliness; the expression on his face when he was looking at something he wanted to keep, something he wanted to paint. But Lawrence did not love that he felt invisible whenever Franny Post was in the room.

“Darling, do you remember that woman who used to be married to George, what was her name, Mary someone?” Franny asked, poking a finger into the eggy surface of her quiche, which would sit out on the counter all day, everyone nicking a slim piece when they felt like it. Franny was good at producing massive quantities of the sort of food no one notices—the dense, dark muffins that were equally good at four p.m. as they were for breakfast; the cut-up fruit in a large bowl on the center rack of the refrigerator. She liked a house full of grazers, thinking that satisfied stomachs led to satisfied guests.

“Rich Mary? The one with the limp?” Charles didn’t take his eyes off Franny as Lawrence scooted around to the far side of the table, to the seat next to him. Lawrence opened his computer again to look at the e-mails, hoping that the stupid werewolves would leave him alone for a few hours. There were a bunch of junky e-mails—sample sales in Chelsea at the place where he liked to buy their sheets; J.Crew; a forwarded series of political cartoons sent by his mother; the New York Public Library; MoveOn.org. Lawrence deleted them all quickly. Then, left at the very top, was an e-mail from their social worker at the adoption agency. Lawrence felt suddenly out of breath. Charles and Franny kept talking, but he could no longer hear them. He read the e-mail once, and then again. The words jumbled together on his screen. I know you’re on vacation, but there is a baby boy. Please call me as soon as you can. He tried to tune back in to the conversation so he could extricate his husband as quickly as possible. He didn’t care how much it cost to call New York, or what time it was. They were getting on the phone.

“Rich Mary! You should see her now! Her face is like the surface of a balloon. It used to have angles and now it’s all”—here Franny made a sucking noise—“smooth. And they’re not even married anymore. I think she used all of her divorce money to get someone to put a vacuum cleaner on her face.” Franny turned off the oven, satisfied.

“Some people,” Charles said, shaking his head and laughing, though Lawrence knew that both Franny and Charles had had needles injected into their foreheads in order to make wrinkles disappear. They’d gone to the same dermatologist. Vanity was a problem only when it was someone else’s. Lawrence wondered what the cutoff was: knives, maybe, or general anesthesia.

“Honey,” Lawrence said, standing up, “can I talk to you for a second?”

Before Charles could respond, Jim hurried in through the back door, his hair plastered to the side of his head like a Ken doll’s. He hunched over, his towel wrapped around his wet shoulders.

“How’s the water?” Charles asked. Franny crossed her arms and leaned back against the fridge.

“Fine,” Jim said. He shook his head to one side, clearing out a clogged ear.

“How’s life at Gallant?” Lawrence asked out of habit, wanting to be polite but really just trying to get out of the room as quickly as possible, but as soon as the syllables were out of his mouth, he remembered. Lawrence felt Charles grab his knee and give it a hard squeeze, too tight to be flirty. “I mean, how is it being at home?” Lawrence felt his face begin to flush. All he knew was that Jim had been “let go”; Charles hadn’t wanted to say more.