Meanwhile, the ill-advised heart tattoo on my hip that I got in college after a night of keg stands had stretched and contracted twice with my pregnancies and was now a sad shadow of its former design. “Only a deal with the devil would fix my body at this point.”

Jess sat up quickly and jabbed her pointer finger in the air. “That’s it! The devil.” She lowered her finger as I narrowed my eyes. “She made a deal with the devil to escape the suburbs.”

I nodded. “Oh yes. That is the only possible explanation.” I rolled my eyes as I hitched up my bathing suit. “The eighties called and want their Satanic Panic back.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said. “I wasn’t even born in the eighties.”

“Satanic Panic was when people in the eighties thought there were satanic cults everywhere, possessing people and abducting children for demonic rituals. Neighbors accused other neighbors of being devil worshippers and casting demonic curses.”

She closed her eyes and smirked. “Cocaine. Everyone in the eighties was coked out.”

I scanned the water until I located Emily and Jack and then sat back, closing my eyes for a minute. But I couldn’t stop thinking about Liz, and a darkness settled onto my shoulders for a moment. I knew whatever was going on with her was something more serious than anything we were ready to admit.

CHAPTER
7

The cursor on my laptop blinked like an impatient child tapping his foot. Do something. Something. Anything. A grocery list. My fingers were poised over the keyboard, halted in midair, words stuck somewhere inside of me.

This was my allotted time to apply for jobs: the hour after lunchtime, when the kids were safely ensconced in the family room with a movie and a blanket. They had tired quickly at the pool, and I barely had time to have a full conversation with Jess before they started asking to leave. It took another ten minutes to gather all of our things, because of course Emily had left her goggles in the sand area and another kid had taken them. It took hostage-negotiator levels of conversation to get them back.

We arrived home, and I made them peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (incorrectly, apparently, due to the jelly/peanut butter ratio), flipped on a Disney movie, and then raced to my desk to work. Once I was there, though, nothing. It was like hitting a brick wall at top speed.

As much as I tried to focus on looking for social work jobs, my mind still lingered on Liz. I chewed my lip and looked outside, trying to crane my neck around the corner to her house, but all that was visible was the top of her chimney. I saw a thin plume of smoke wafting out from it and frowned. Strange to build a fire in the middle of the summer.