Chapters (47)
- Title Page
- Copyright Notice
- Dedication
- Epigraphs
- Prologue
- Part One
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE
- TEN
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- Part Two
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE
- TWENTY-TWO
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- TWENTY-FIVE
- TWENTY-SIX
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- THIRTY
- THIRTY-ONE
- THIRTY-TWO
- THIRTY-THREE
- THIRTY-FOUR
- THIRTY-FIVE
- THIRTY-SIX
- THIRTY-SEVEN
- Acknowledgments
- About the Author
- Newsletter Sign-up
She jumped down from the Jeep and fell by the road. She saw him throw the bills out of the window and speed away on Route 6. She thought about picking up the money, but no: that money was dirty.
She ran toward the house. Through the window she could see the unfinished jigsaw puzzle her parents had been working on all summer. She couldn’t go in there, not with a wad of underwear in her pocket and her face blotchy from tears. She walked past the barn, past the hammock that hung between the two big spruce pines, and went down the path to the cove, lit by the blue light of the moon. She wished she could walk out into the quicksand and disappear. It was low tide. She could.
Instead, she turned around and looked back at the old house. There was light coming from Michael’s room in the attic. He was probably reading in order to impress her mother, who took him to the Wellfleet library twice a week and forced all the books on him that she thought would complete his childhood, the same books Poppy and Ann had read years ago—old Edward Eager books like Half Magic and Magic by the Lake; the Chronicles of Narnia, A Wrinkle in Time, The Prophet.
She walked inside. The living room was quiet and still. She could hear the whirring of old metal fans in the bedrooms, fans that were so loud they allowed her to arrive home without waking up her parents. She stood there for a minute, staring at the grooves her parents’ bodies had worn into the couch, the age spots on the mirror on the wall by the porch, the ancient needlepoint pillow on the rocking chair. It was a space she knew so well, but now the house seemed small to her, different, the same way her body felt different.
The door to the bedroom she shared with Poppy was open. Poppy wasn’t home, and it was late. Where was she? Ann desperately wanted Poppy to be there. She missed the way they used to play go fish and war, missed fighting with her about things that didn’t matter, missed looking through magazines together and talking with her about their futures—the jobs they’d have, the perfect men they’d marry, the children they’d name Austen, Reed, Rowan, Emily, Nicole. She wanted to confide in Poppy, but even if she’d been home, Ann wasn’t sure she would have been able to tell her about what had happened with Anthony. For the first time in her life, she had a secret that was too big to share.