Summary

The Posts are packed and ready to leave for the airport. Sylvia paces, waiting for Joan and his promised good-bye visit, but he is late. He arrives, treating Sylvia with cool casualness. Sylvia is shocked that Joan actually takes her mother’s check, suddenly seeing their time on the beach as a meaningless transaction. She asks Franny to take their photo, because obviously, Joan is gorgeous and she would need to remember and also prove it to her friends. Bobby takes the phone, and Sylvia kisses Joan on the lips for a split second. Everyone is shocked. He offers to hug her before she gets in the car, and she turns her back on him with a breezy “good bye.” It was not love, she muses as the car pulls away. It was a moment on a beach, and she had really gotten...