“It’s a twenty-two-foot Chaparral,” Kevin said. “Twin engines. She’ll do sixty knots on a calm day.”
This was unavoidable. The neighborhood was full of people who had bought their houses in 2015 for $400,000 and were now sitting on $1.2 million of borrowed equity. They spoke about interest rates the way sailors spoke about tides—with superstitious dread and the quiet certainty that the water would eventually rise to kill them all.
The filter pump hummed.
Instead, he said, “In a minute.”
John Person’s pool was a perfect rectangle of turquoise denial. It sat in his backyard like a statement of fact: I have arrived . The water was heated to exactly eighty-four degrees, the chlorine balanced to kill everything except the memory of what he used to be.
There was Mark, his old college roommate, who now sold medical devices and had the hollow, cheerful eyes of a man who had watched his own soul get repossessed. There was Priya, John’s former business partner, the one who had quietly pulled her investment out six months before the crash, who now wore a one-piece swimsuit the color of a bruise and smiled at John like she knew where all the bodies were buried—because she did.
At five o’clock, John found himself standing by the grill with Kevin, flipping burgers that the caterers had already prepared. Kevin was talking about his boat.













