And they did. The way they did it was, in retrospect, brutal and callous, out on the beach behind the Benningtons’ guesthouse, both of them confronting her at once. The sky was gray, a rare rainy day that summer. “I made you both,” Peri spat. Tom thought she’d throw a rock at them, one of the big ones that littered the edge of the shore. But she didn’t. She stayed still, chillingly so, given the wind and the impending rain, stoic and taut, her hair the only lively part of her. “I thought you both loved me.” Her voice a hiss against the waves.

After, she disappeared from their lives, from New York, too. It was understood by Odilie that Peri had conned her, given her a symbiotic friendship that she’d been convinced was love, but was in truth a Machiavellian trick. Odilie now understood her to be an evil, evil person who would be banished from their lives forever, even though she had been the one to bring them together. She didn’t know that Tom had paid Peri to stay away. Turned her into just another girl who’d been used to serve a purpose.

Tom, in his quietest moments, was ashamed. Ashamed of what he had wanted with Peri, angry at Peri for making him feel this shame, for daring to unearth his darkest desires and get him to act on them.

One of the cardinal rules when Tom and Odilie got married, along with leading a private life so that Tom’s transgressions would never be revealed, was that they would never speak of Peri again, that they never talk to her or try to contact her.

And Odilie had broken it.

6

VERA

Present day

Quinn has found Calypso Rogers.

It wasn’t hard. How could it be, with a name like Calypso Rogers? But he’s been blocked. He tried every avenue to get to her and each time, Calypso has found a way to prevent access. One day, though, an email drops into his inbox.

Dear Mr. Sun,

Stop. Stop all of this. I guarantee you that no one will speak to you. No one will know what you’re talking about. I want to live my life. If you continue to harass me like this, I will have no choice but to call the police and report you for stalking.

“Why will no one speak to me if they don’t know what I’m inquiring about?” Quinn muses.

I check out Calypso’s socials. She’s pretty and well-off. She has a Maserati, a McMansion, twin girls, a husband with a mustache. She lives in Colorado. She doesn’t work. Her husband does something in healthcare. Her parents are working class, from Wyneck. Her husband’s parents own what looks like a gas station in South Carolina.

How can she afford the Maserati, the four-car garage? we wonder. But everything is conjecture when she won’t speak to us.