“Of course,” said Sherri. “And in fact I do need to get back to work!” They were fairly strict about the lunch hours at Derma-You. What she wanted to say instead to Louise was, “Don’t go! Please please don’t go!” It felt to Sherri like when Louise left she’d be taking the very last vestige of Sherri’s old life with her, leaving only this shell, this brown-haired stranger.

Louise must have seen something in Sherri’s face because she did reach across the table and touch her fingers briefly to the top of Sherri’s hand.

“It will get easier, in time,” Louise said. “Believe me. It will get easier.”

51.

The Squad

July had just melted into August when Melanie went to the North Shore mall. She had to return a bathing suit for Molly.

She was heading out of the exit near the food court when she noticed Sherri. Melanie did a double take, not quite sure if it was Sherri or not. It was. Sherri was sitting at one of the food-court tables, across from a woman Melanie had never seen before. The other woman was small, with brown hair, wearing a blue dress with a collar. Neither woman had any food in front of her, according to Melanie. Not that you’d voluntarily eat at the mall food court, right? Not with the Cheesecake Factory right there, not with Burton’s Grill! But still. It was odd, to be sitting at that table, without any food.

Melanie told us she got a funny feeling in her stomach. Not like anything bad was going on, exactly. We’re not implying anything untoward, or even anything toward. We’re just telling a story. We’re simply saying that it was an interesting place to see Sherri Griffin. She certainly wasn’t hitting Nordstrom, if you know what we mean. The circumstances of her meeting seemed to be somewhat mysterious.

That’s all we’re saying.

Mysterious.

There might be more to her than meets the eye, texted Melanie to all of us later.

(It could be noted here that Rebecca was left off of this group text, Melanie having wisely understood that Rebecca and Sherri had formed a friendship outside the group. Please see previous entries about the trip to Salisbury Beach, and the girls going off to Canobie Lake, la-di-da, as if nobody else would want to be in on an annual tradition. But we digress.)

Melanie followed her “meets the eye” text with a series of emojis: a few different smileys, the little guy with his teeth showing, the LOL and the single tear emoji.

But then, that was Melanie. She never understood how to choose just one emoji to make her point.

52.

Alexa