Charlie had said it was like being marooned on a desert island. They’d both complained, but it had been sort of fun, too. They’d spent hours exploring the house, the portraits of generation after generation of stern and stately Floods—male Floods in Civil War uniforms, female Floods in hoop skirts, Flood children in banana curls and lace-up boots—that hung from the walls, spying on their every move. It was a place steeped in the past. But not, Alice and Charlie soon realized, the recent past. They couldn’t find a single photo, a single memento, a single strand of hair belonging to Martha or Camilla, and they’d really looked. Well, half-assed looked. Charlie got bored easily, and they had neither the opportunity nor the nerve to venture inside Richard’s office or his and Maggie’s bedroom. Nevertheless, the lack of Martha and Camilla’s presence in the house was so total as to make it glaring. It was like they weren’t just absent, they were conspicuously absent, so absent that, weirdly, their absence became a kind of presence.

Charlie snorted. “Of course Richard eats brioche. What an asshole.”

“Labor Day,” Alice said, in a warning voice.

“Labor Day,” Charlie repeated, with a sigh.

Labor Day was the code they’d come up with, the words they’d agreed to use to remind each other and themselves that this situation, no matter how bad it seemed, no matter how unbearable it got, had a definite end date: Labor Day weekend, after which they’d pack up for Wolcott Academy. And after Wolcott Academy, it would be college, their own lives, freedom. If they could make it to Labor Day without screwing things up for their mom, they’d done their daughterly duty.

Alice fixed the collar of Charlie’s shirt, then slipped her fingers through Charlie’s. And together they walked toward the clubhouse, their mom and stepdad waiting for them at the lip of the door.

Chapter Three

Chapter

• THREE •

As they crossed the threshold, Charlie let go of Alice’s hand so she could tug at the hem of her skirt. If a silence could be loud, this one was. Deafening almost. As soon as they stepped inside the clubhouse, all conversation stopped. All activity, too. Everyone seemed to freeze in place. My skirt’s not that mini, Charlie thought. And then she realized that the hush was on account of her stepfather and mom, all eyes in the room turned to the new couple. Was it really so shocking that he’d gotten married again? Charlie wondered. Was he not supposed to? Was his mourning period not long enough or something? Jesus, she said to herself, his wife had died more than a year back—forever ago.