“So? You two have been done for ages,” Mom said.

“Completely slipped my mind,” Jules said.

I sighed. Reminded myself that I had a nice boyfriend and didn’t care what Noah did. “Where’s Dad?”

“Asleep,” said Mom, taking a hostile bite of her sandwich.

I went to check on him; we’d turned the dining room into his room until he could handle the stairs. I fixed his blanket and sat in the chair. He wasn’t sleeping, just staring ahead.

“Remember my boyfriend, Dad? Noah? He’s a father,” I told him. “He made a baby with Mickey Watkins from our class. It’s a boy. Also, he’s still mad at me.”

Dad said nothing. He could’ve had you, I imagined Dad saying. Inflexible, that one. Not a good quality in a spouse. I should know.

For some reason, I had a lump in my throat. Even if I shouldn’t. The heart wants what the heart wants, and the heart can be a real idiot.

CHAPTER NINE

Sadie

Ever since I could remember, I’d wanted to leave Stoningham, because even though I loved it, I hated it. It was so smug. So content. So adorable. So assured of itself. In a way, it was like my sister, never questioning its value. Welcome to Stoningham. You’re lucky we let you in, the town seemed to say. If you play your cards right, we might let you stay.

The fact that my mother viewed Stoningham as an achievement, rather than a place, definitely colored my views as a teenager, when I felt it was my duty to think the opposite of everything she did. When I was little, it was paradise, of course—a rocky shore with a couple of sand beaches, huge stretches of marsh, land reserves, the gentle Sound always murmuring, that one part of the shore where the Atlantic roared in, unfettered by Long Island. There was Birch Lake, still so pristine and quiet, surrounded by old-growth forest with gentle paths for walking. We had the most beautiful skies, and they were my first paintings. Skyscapes in pastels or watercolors, those endless shades of blue, violently beautiful sunsets in the winter, summer skies smeared with colors.

But it was a small town. A tiny town, and so stuffy it was hard to breathe sometimes, especially if you were Juliet’s not-as-smart-or-athletic sister, or the daughter of Barb Frost, Queen of Committees and Volunteerism, daughter of John Frost the lawyer, and yes, related to that Robert Frost.

Being average was difficult.

I had one talent, though, and I would use it to get away, distance myself from the smugness, the familiar, the “aren’t you Barb’s daughter?” of Stoningham.