6Amelia Blue
If I’d gotten off at the wrong station because I hadn’t been paying attention, that would’ve been bad enough. But this is so much worse because Iwaspaying attention. Someone else might have rented a car at the airport, driven themselves to Shelter Island, but not me—I don’t drive. I was the only teenager in LA who didn’t cherish her learner’s permit, beg for her own car the instant she passed the driving test.
I stopped reading my book at Westhampton, knowing that after that came Hampton Bays, then Southampton, then Bridgehampton (where I was supposed to get off). I stood up, bag in hand, as the train slowed. But somehow I still missed the announcement that I was supposed to be in one of the first four cars to exit. (I was in the fifth car.) So now I’m shivering in the cold, waiting for someone to pick me up from the wrong station.
Toddlerscan count to four, but not me. Add it to the list of things I can’t do, the list of ways my body doesn’t work like it’s supposed to. I imagine dividing myself into pieces and packing them into boxes like I’m nothing but doll parts. I would send everything back to where it came from, the way you do with a dress that doesn’t fit or jeans that won’t button.
I stand firmly beneath the station’s lone streetlamp. Everywhere else is pitch-dark: no other streetlamps, no oncoming headlights from down the street. I shudder as the light flickers, the fluorescent bulb buzzing as though it’s filled not with chemicals but a swarm of bees.
The center promised that someone will be here as soon as possible.
I press my headphones to my ears, listening to the sort of music my mother would hate: Taylor Swift, the National, Bon Iver, music whose lyrics will make you cry if you listen too closely. Georgia used to say music stopped being worthwhile in the nineties, an era she never stopped trying to recapture: She kept wearing baby-doll dresses with Doc Martens andshooting up heroin well into the 2000s. As the former lead singer of the grunge band Shocking Pink (though mostly famous for being famous long before the Kardashians perfected that particular art), Georgia disdained squeaky-clean pop stars, stylists and makeup artists, sobriety coaches and promise rings and bare midriffs over low-rise designer jeans.
My phone buzzes with a fresh text, and I force my eyes open.
If I don’t hear from you, I’m going to reach out to your grandmother. Just to make sure you’re okay.
If Jonah contacted Naomi, I’d have to make up some version of events to explain why a stranger (to her, he would be a stranger) is asking after her granddaughter’s well-being.
How would he even reach Naomi? I never gave him her number.
Then again, he always found a way to do everything he said he was going to do, like every word out of his mouth was a promise that couldn’t be broken.
I blow on my hands until they’re warm enough to write back:I’m okay. I just need some space.
I exhale when a black Range Rover pulls up in front of me, its windows tinted so that all I can see when I try to peer inside is my own reflection, my pale skin and frizzy hair, my chin jutting sharply. When the driver holds open the door for me, I practically dive into the light of the back seat.
It feels like I’ve been waiting a very long time—so much longer than a few minutes here at the station, a few hours on the plane, a few weeks while Naomi made the arrangements—to make it to Rush’s Recovery.
I wonder whether Georgia felt that way when she arrived there.
7Lord Edward
When we get to the train station in East Hampton, the sidewalk is empty except for a single person shivering in the cold. Even though it’s winter, and we’re in the bloody Northeastern United States, she’s not wearing a coat, only a bulky gray sweater over a pair of black leggings. Sneakers instead of boots. I’d guess she was coming from someplace warm—Australia, maybe, Florida—but she’s so pale it’s hard to imagine her basking in the sunlight. It’s dark enough that if it weren’t for the streetlights, we might not have seen her at all.
The girl is tiny, and as far as I can tell, she’s not wearing a stitch of makeup. The driver gets out and takes her bag—an oversize duffel slung over her shoulder—and puts it in the trunk. She doesn’t so much walk as shuffle toward the car, her gait tight and compact. The driver opens the door, and she climbs into the SUV beside me. Close up, I can see faint lines peeking out from the corners of her eyes, one arch like a parenthesis on the left side of her mouth. Her skin is slightly loose over the bones of her face. I guess that she’s older than I am, but still young, not yet thirty.
“Thanks,” she says, her teeth chattering slightly, though she tries to control them. I’m not sure if she’s talking to the driver or to me.
She takes earbuds from her ears and tucks them into her pocket, fastens her seat belt, then holds out a hand for me to shake. “Amelia Blue Harris,” she offers, giving up any anonymity she might have retained in seven syllables. Her accent is American, with a slight West Coast drawl. I recognize her name; she’s the late musician Scott Harris’s daughter.
Amelia Blue Harris has hazel eyes and dark brown hair pulled into a messy bun on top of her head. When she smiles I see a crooked gap between her front teeth. I shake her hand but don’t offer her my name. Normally, I don’t have to. Her fingers are so cold that I find myself wantingto blow on them to warm her skin; the urge is so surprising that I drop her hand abruptly.
“Thanks again.” She slouches in her seat, curled over herself like a teenager. “I’m sure you think I’m an idiot for getting off at the wrong station.” Her teeth no longer chattering, she bites her lower lip. For a second, I think she’s about to cry. Again, I’m struck by the instinct to reach out, rub her arm, to comfort her somehow.
“Not at all,” I lie.
“They said it would take at least a half hour for another car to get here, and I was freezing. Did you come from someplace warm? Probably not, judging by your outfit. Or maybe you’re just smarter than I am. Anyway, I’m probably not supposed to ask, right? I used to live on the East Coast, you’d think I’d know how to dress.”
Dear god, she’s bloodychatty. Mentally I calculate how long this drive together will be. I wedge the ankle of my left leg beneath the driver’s seat just in front of me.
“Where are you from?” she continues. “I mean, your accent kind of gave you away, you must be British—”
She stops abruptly, and I know she’s recognized me.
Anne pretends she cares about discretion, but what she really longs for is control. She’ll leak the story—her wayward little brother in rehab—the next time she needs the press to turn a blind eye to one of Dad’s unseemly acts.
Lord Eddie in a World of Hurt,the tabloids will shout. In the corner of the page will be some version of the headline they’ve been writing for years now—Lady Mary Living the High Life—alongside a picture of my mother at a cocktail party in Los Angeles or Majorca or Madrid. They never stopped calling herLady Mary, even after Grandfather died and they ought to have called her the Duchess of Exeter. Of course, now she shouldn’t be addressed with any honorific at all, having lost it in the divorce. I was only two when they split, far too young to understand what my mother was willing to give up to be free from the family.
