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