Cover

Dedication

For Newburyport, my adopted hometown

Prologue

That was the summer we all drank tequila by the gallon. Not really, of course—if that had been true we all would have ended up dead, instead of only one person. Although there was no alcohol involved. It was your garden-variety car accident, the Acura crushed against the pole on that deserted stretch of Hale Street, the driver dead on impact.

Garden-variety. It happened all the time. Except that it wasn’t, and it didn’t, not in our town.

June

1.

The Squad

Later we would remember that we first set eyes on Sherri Griffin on Sawyer’s Beach, on the first day of the first session of surf camp. From the beginning, we weren’t sure she fit in. In fact, we weren’t even sure how she got in: surf-camp sign-ups happened in April, and she said she and her daughter had only just moved here. Somebody had to have clued her in before she moved. Or a child had dropped out, leaving a space open, and this newcomer had snapped it up. Perhaps she was savvier than she looked.

We remembered that she asked about the best place to get a haircut for her daughter, whose hair was curly.

“Rebecca would know,” Tammy said. “She has a wave in her hair.” She indicated the woman standing at the shoreline.

“Rebecca knows everything about the town,” Esther added slyly, and purposefully. “And she’s a planner.”

“Oh yes,” Monica added. “She’s very organized.” It was true. Rebecca decided when we would take our annual trip to Nantucket, where and when we would eat when we got there, and, most important, who would go. It was Rebecca who coordinated the carefully curated shots of us in our white jeans. It was Rebecca who tastefully filtered the photos and posted them on Instagram and Facebook, tagging each of us so that for any outsiders perusing their feeds there would be no doubt about who was there.

And, of course, who wasn’t.

Well, that was the old Rebecca.

There were twelve of us, an even dozen. Occasionally we made an exception to allow for more. For example, for Brandy’s fortieth, three years ago, we included two of her book club friends on the weekend trip to Chicago, bringing the total number to fourteen.

Fourteen, we all agreed later, was too many. There was the thing with the spiked seltzers, to cite an example. One of the interlopers drank five (!) White Claws without offering to replenish when we Ubered to the liquor store. The other got very drunk during Brandy’s birthday dinner out, at Twain, and was later sick at the Airbnb we had rented in Lincoln Park. We all agreed this made everybody uncomfortable and was not to be repeated.

After, some of us remembered the pertinent facts we’d learned about Sherri that first day at the beach. Divorced. Recently moved from Ohio. An eleven-year-old daughter, who would be entering sixth grade at the middle school.

Upon hearing this news, we tried our best to appear inclusive.

“All of us have sixth graders,” said Dawn. “So you’ll be seeing a lot of us, come fall!”

“It all depends on what team she gets,” offered Monica.

“True,” said Dawn.

“Teams?” said Sherri. “Like, sports teams?” She was sitting on a striped beach towel; we remembered that she seemed woefully unprepared, having brought only a small mesh beach bag. The rest of us had our Tommy Bahama beach chairs slung low in the sand, Hydroflasks in the cup holders. This woman had no water bottle that anyone could see. No Yeti full of cold brew. Certainly no snacks to share.

Though, of course, in her defense, one of us said later, how could she have known to bring snacks to share?

Gina shook her head indulgently. “No, it’s the teams for the middle school. Gold and crimson. She’ll be on one or the other, and that will determine everything for the year.”

“Everything,” confirmed Monica.

We could see that we were making the newcomer nervous (and many of us were okay with that). We were all relieved when one of our favorite surf instructors, Parker, approached the group.

“Who drives a white Acura?” asked Parker, whom we all agreed was very hot, especially when he pulled the top of his wet suit down during the breaks between sessions, showcasing his phenomenal abs.

“I do,” said the new woman. Some of us had forgotten her name already. Terri, was it? Mary? No, Sherri. It was Sherri. With an i. Some of us remembered that she’d told us that right away, as though anticipating an incorrect spelling.

“Rebecca does,” said Monica, a split second later. Rebecca, who was still down at the water’s edge, had been distracted all morning. Nicole had seen her on her cell phone, having what she described as a “very animated” conversation.

“Did you park in the metered lot?” Parker wanted to know. We all heard Sherri say that she wasn’t in the metered lot, she was in the overflow. She hadn’t known to get here early. Rebecca, of course, had known. First spot closest to the bathroom.

“I’m sure Rebecca got a meter,” Monica told Parker.

“I think she got backed into,” said Parker. “Chloe said she saw someone leaving a note.”

“I’ll tell her,” said Dawn, smiling openly at Parker.

The kids started to come out of the water for their snack break, pulling their surfboards behind them. Rebecca’s daughter, Morgan, tripped over her board’s leash and landed in the sand, not quite facedown, but close enough. Rebecca wasn’t looking—she was on the phone, still or again—and the rest of us pretended not to see. Although, really, wasn’t Morgan Coleman’s awkward stage lasting quite a long time? Of course we didn’t blame her! After what had happened.

When camp was over, many of us stayed at the beach for the afternoon. We’d packed lunch and planned to remain for the day. But not Rebecca, and not the new woman, Sherri, who folded her towel into her mesh bag while her daughter peeled off her wet suit. We supposed we weren’t surprised to see Rebecca leave. She hadn’t been the same since Peter. Last summer we hardly saw her at all.

We assessed the new girl. Her hair was dark and thick, pretty, even in its wet braid. We could see how it was probably curly when loose. Her skin was promising: clear, with the golden glow that spoke of an easy tan. Bathing suit: Target, last year’s model. The shorts she was pulling on over the suit were Old Navy, ill-fitting. And yet we all noticed that she had sort of an ease about her. A way of fitting into her environment.

“Well,” said the new woman, “it was so nice to meet all of you.”

“Likewise,” said Tammy. She cast a meaningful look at Gina. We didn’t have to say it out loud. We knew this woman wouldn’t try to get into the group. After the Chicago debacle our group had been restored to its natural order, an even dozen, and the borders had snapped themselves closed, like the lobes of a Venus flytrap.

2.

Sherri

“How’d you like the girls? Were they nice to you?”

“Sure.”

Sherri and her daughter, Katie, were on their way home from Katie’s first day at surf camp. Katie had never been on or near a surfboard in all of her eleven years, but she’d taken to it surprisingly well, at least as much as Sherri could tell from her vantage point on the beach.

“Was anybody not nice to you?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so. If they weren’t, I didn’t notice.” Sherri looked in the rearview mirror, perplexed. During the daytime Katie seemed to be fantastically unaffected by everything that had happened before the two of them moved to Newburyport. Was her nonchalance simply a coping mechanism, masking the deep, dark reaction that came only in sleep? Or had Sherri actually done a passable job of protecting her?

The road that led south from the surf beach, Ocean Boulevard, was lined with mansions on the right. On the left were majestic views of the Atlantic Ocean, bordered in places by a rock wall. Along the rock wall ran a sidewalk and on the sidewalk people were running, riding bikes, walking dogs: happy happy summer people in a happy happy summer place. Sherri took a deep breath and released it, just as the counselor had told her to do.

The road had gentle twists and turns like a road in a storybook, and every now and then the ocean would open up wide before them. It was enough to take your breath away. Here is where the fairy princess lives, Sherri thought, passing a giant white house that looked like a Southern mansion. One house had peeling paint and a weedy, untended lawn. Here is where the monster lives, thought Sherri. She shivered. The counselor had told her to try not to think too much about their other lives. It was not an overstatement to say that their survival depended on it.

“What are you doing, Katie?” Sherri asked. Katie had her head down now, intent on something in her lap. Her phone, which Sherri had bought her against her better judgment, with some of the money they’d been given to start over. She’d been swayed by the ability to track Katie’s whereabouts.

“Just texting with some of the girls.”

“The girls you just met?”

Sherri glanced again in the rearview mirror and saw Katie nod. Sherri’s mother would have said, “I didn’t hear your head rattle,” and demanded a verbal answer, but truth be told, Sherri’s mother and Sherri had had a very different relationship than Sherri and Katie had. Katie tended to treat Sherri less like a parent and more like an overwrought friend whose occasional discombobulation caused Katie some mild bemusement.

When she was packing up to leave the beach, Sherri had heard the women discussing cocktails by so-and-so’s pool in two days’ time, kids included. Sherri had lingered over her cheap beach bag for a moment, half wondering if they’d invite her, half horrified by the thought that they might. If they did, she would go for Katie’s sake. It would be lovely for Katie to make some friends over the summer so that she’d enter school in September with familiar faces to seek out by the lockers or at lunchtime. Sherri felt a pang at the thought of Katie with a cafeteria tray, desperately seeking a place to sit.

“Taylor wants me to come swimming at her house this week!” Katie announced.

“Really?” Sherri felt a flush of nervous excitement. Calm down, she told herself. It’s just a swimming invitation. “That sounds like fun! Which one was Taylor?”

“Blond hair,” said Katie.

“Didn’t they all have blond hair?” All the kids, all the moms. Sherri glanced in the rearview mirror, hating her own brown hair even more than usual.

Ahead of the Acura a line of cars had stopped, waiting for somebody to turn out of the parking lot of an outdoor ice cream shop. Sherri could see three separate lines of people, at least ten deep, at the shop. the beach plum, said the sign. best lobster roll in new england. Sherri had never tasted a lobster roll. Their very existence puzzled her: lobster and bread. It seemed an unnecessary combination.

Across the street was yet another parking lot for yet another beach, with more happy summer people milling about. Sherri had had no idea that the beach scene in their new lives would be so robust. She felt a surge of something wash over her, maybe the memory of a long-ago childhood summer at the Jersey Shore, and she experienced a sudden uplift in mood.

“Let’s do it,” she told Katie. She followed the car ahead of her into the Beach Plum’s parking lot. “Lobster rolls for lunch. What do you say?”

“Okay,” said Katie affably. Sometimes Sherri thought that she could suggest dissecting a garden snake and serving it with crackers and Katie would nod and say, “Okay,” to that too.

“When in Rome, right?” added Sherri.

“Right,” agreed Katie.

Now that they lived in New England, now that they were officially, legally, definitely Sherri and Katie Griffin from Columbus, Ohio, relocated after a nasty divorce, and no thank you they didn’t want to talk about it, it was all still quite raw, they should do whatever they could to fit in.

How far, wondered Sherri, as a cloud passed over the sun, momentarily darkening the June day, would she actually go to do that?

3.

Alexa

Alexa Thornhill cast an appraising eye on her next four sets of customers. Two families, one middle-aged couple, and someone else she couldn’t yet see because he or she was being blocked by the second family.

“I can help the next customer!” she said brightly from her position behind the counter, which looked out on the parking lot and the line of sandy, hungry people standing in the sun. It was just past one. Graduation was not far in the rearview mirror and already Alexa was bored out of her mind. After work—she got out at four—she would pop into the clothing store attached to the ice cream shop and see if they had the high-necked O’Neill halter dress in stock in her size (extra small). Her ex-best-friend Destiny had a friend who worked there and promised she’d let Alexa use her discount. Not that Alexa needed it (things had been going very well lately online), but she enjoyed taking advantage of a personal connection when she could. And Destiny owed her something, after what happened in March.

Two parents with identical twin boys, four or five, stepped up to the counter. The parents looked worried, and Alexa could already foresee the disaster that would soon unfold. The parents (Midwestern, maybe, but anyway, not local) would get a look at the prices and try to get the boys to share. The boys would agree on principle but would disagree on a flavor, and one of the parents would ask Alexa if the boys could split the smallest size into two different flavors.

Yes, she could split the smallest size into two different flavors, but no, she didn’t enjoy doing it, and, yes, there would be a fight over which boy got the most ice cream because it was impossible to get two half-scoops exactly even. The whole family would leave more distraught than it arrived.

This was exactly what transpired.

People were so predictable.

Alexa’s job at the Cottage Creamery, the walk-up ice cream joint on Plum Island, was more of a cover than anything else, part of her endeavor to appear like a normal almost-eighteen-year-old girl. Most of her money she made elsewhere. Also, getting out of the house was critical, and it was nice to be near the beach, during this, her last summer ever living in her hometown. Not that anyone knew that. And not that Plum Island had the best beach scene around. It would be much more fun to work up near Jenness Beach, at Summer Sessions, doling out acai bowls to the surf-camp kids and their moms, watching the hot surf instructors stroll by with their wet suits pulled down halfway. But everyone knew the Summer Sessions jobs went to the surfers and their significant others and Alexa had never bothered to learn to surf. It seemed time-consuming and unproductive. Cold too, especially in New England waters. Maybe when she moved to L.A., maybe then she’d learn.

The middle-aged couple stepped up to the plate, and she could almost see the woman shrink back when she got a load of Alexa’s megawatt smile. They each ordered the Ringer, which was a milkshake topped by a doughnut. If she weren’t forced to serve it, Alexa wouldn’t touch the Ringer with a pole of any length; doughnuts didn’t do it for her. Her boyfriend, Tyler, could take down four maple bacons from Angry Donuts in a single sitting. Watching him do this always made Alexa feel a little queasy.

The man put a hand to his retreating hairline and smiled back at Alexa. He was wearing a brick-red Newburyport T-shirt he probably picked up at Richdale, near the postcards and the penny candy. Alexa would bet her toe ring that in high school he was a solid B student with a not-quite-pretty girlfriend everyone referred to as “sweet.”

“This place,” she said to her coworker, Hannah, once the couple disappeared with their trillion-calorie bombs. What she didn’t have time to say, because she was busy scooping, was, is so freaking homogenous that sometimes I want to throw up. She couldn’t wait to shake the dust of this town from her Granada oiled leather Birkenstocks.

“We’re low on napkins, Amazon,” said Hannah severely.

Alexa rolled her eyes. She had acquired her name seventeen years ago, almost eighteen, could she help it if the world’s biggest online retailer had only recently understood its allure? She dispatched the next family and now she could see that the person after that was her mother. Alexa sighed. Attached to her mother, as usual, was her little sister, Morgan.

“Hey,” said Morgan.

“Hey, Morgan. Mom. How was surf camp?”

“Good,” said Morgan morosely.

“Annoying,” said Alexa’s mother. “Somebody backed into my car in the lot. So that’s a whole thing I’m going to have to deal with.”

Alexa’s mother would not order the Ringer, and a touch of imaginary lactose intolerance would also steer her away from Alexa’s favorite flavor, Moose Tracks, in which Alexa occasionally indulged. Rebecca would go for a raspberry sorbet, small, in a cup, no toppings, or she would have nothing at all. Morgan, who was eleven and built like a collection of paper straws stitched together with dental floss, would get chocolate with rainbow sprinkles, and she wouldn’t finish it, but she would insist on taking it home. Alexa’s mother would cover the leftover portion with aluminum foil and stick it in the freezer, and eventually Alexa would throw it away. Morgan would never notice or inquire after it. Predictable.

Alexa’s mother slipped an extra five into the tip jar, which Alexa found unnecessary, and as predictable as the ice cream order, but sweet nonetheless. She smiled.

It was on their way back to the car that the unpredictable thing happened: Morgan stubbed her toe on the parking dividers made out of driftwood and shrieked. Alexa’s mother left her phone on the counter to hurry to Morgan, because God forbid Morgan should be uncomfortable for an eighth of a second. The phone beeped and out of habit Alexa glanced at it: most beeping phones in Alexa’s orbit were beeping for her.

But no. On her mother’s phone was a text from an unknown local number, which was a surprise, because her mother’s in-town social network reached far and wide, like the tentacles of an octopus, and anyone Rebecca deemed worth communicating with she had surely put in as a contact. Before she could stop herself, Alexa was reading the text.

Thanks for the talk today. When can I see you again?

Alexa took several seconds to process this.

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.

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