Her mother left Morgan sitting at a picnic table and retrieved her cell phone, glancing sharply at Alexa after she looked at the screen, obviously to see if she’d been caught. Alexa made sure her face was a smooth mask. But: was that a tiny smile playing at the edges of her mother’s mouth when she read the message? Oh, ugh. Alexa’s mother was forty-four years old. Certainly past her prime. Double, triple ugh.

Rebecca slipped the phone into her handbag and indicated with her head that Morgan should move toward the car, stubbed toe or not.

“Bye, Alexa,” whispered Morgan.

“Bye, Morgan,” said Alexa. She spoke louder than she needed to, making up for Morgan’s fragile voice. Morgan had always looked like she was scared of her shadow’s shadow, but that had gotten worse since Peter. How in the world was this child supposed to survive middle school in the fall? Alexa should take Morgan on as a project, but she wasn’t sure she had the bandwidth. Even so, she made a mental note to talk to Rebecca about Morgan’s social media activity. Morgan was at a vulnerable age. Too much of a presence could be damaging, but too little could be damaging as well, and Morgan had a remarkably undeveloped sense of self-preservation.

“Bye, honey!” chirped Rebecca. She was holding her sorbet in one hand and struggling to get the keys to the (dented, Alexa now saw) Acura out of her bag with the other. Alexa tried not to look at the Colby College sticker sitting proudly in the rear window; it made her stomach churn.

“Bye, Mom.” Alexa’s voice mirrored her mother’s in tone but inside she was slowly dying of horror. Her mother possibly had a paramour. Reason number 472 Alexa couldn’t wait to get the hell out of this town, and not to the far reaches of Maine, either, where Uggs and Patagonia passed for fashion and keg parties for entertainment. No, Alexa had her sights set west and south from there, all the way from Newburyport to the City of Angels itself.

4.

Sherri

There were five words that later Sherri believed altered for her the course of the rest of the summer. It happened when she was picking up Katie from a playdate at Taylor Kearney’s house. The Kearney family lived down a road off Merrimac Street that led to the river; until Sherri punched the address into Waze she didn’t even know there were streets and houses down there. She had a lot to learn about her new town.