Friday
Rain taps the bedroom window. It’s a drizzle, not a storm, but it’s enough to wake Grace up. After what happened last night, it’s a miracle she slept at all. She pulls herself upright, slowly so as not to instigate any unpleasant feelings in her stomach, then sits for a few minutes and looks outside. For the first time all week, the sunlight is blocked by blotches of gray clouds. It’s not a beach day, but something else entirely. The memory of that test and those two crossed blue lines weighing down on her—she’s not really sure what it is.
“I’m officially the most terrible friend in all of history,” Jenny announces when Grace pads into the living room. “This has to go down as the worst imaginable time ever for me to have to leave.”
Grace pans her face from left to right. The kitchen is fully cleaned. The throw pillows on the couch are nicely fluffed. Jenny’s weekender bag sits, already packed and zipped up, beside the front door.
“You have to get home to your kids. Eric has his meeting later today. I know,” Grace says. “It’s okay.”
Last night, after Grace finally stumbled out of the bathroom holding the slender plastic test, she and Jenny sat on the couch together for half the night. Initially, Grace was stunned and speechless as she stared at it there on the coffee table among the Madame Mermaid coupon, the crumpled lease agreement, and hersmorgasbord of other unlikely belongings. It wasn’t until the initial shock wore off that she became consumed by panic.
Up until the last few months, she’d spent five years monitoring and rationing out her life. Limiting alcohol and certain seafoods. Turning her nose up at caffeine. Since arriving here, she’d done the opposite. She couldn’t even recall the last time she took a prenatal vitamin. Jenny assured her it was okay. That these things, as Grace certainly understood, don’t always happen according to a finely orchestrated plan.
They did the math. Grace counted backward like she had so many times, all the way to her and Adam’s last intimate moment in mid-June, the day after her lunch in the city with Mollie. Of course it was—always had been—a possibility. Grace knew how bodies worked. But after all the years of losses, hers barely seemed to function right. Cycles happened whenever they felt like it—no rhythm, no reason, no real regularity—her hormones constantly all over the place from the many losses, like they were confused and trying to figure out what they were meant to do.
The signs had been there. Of course they had. But it was only then, last night on the couch with Jenny, that Grace realized she’d chosen to ignore them. The nausea. The fatigue and constant napping. The achy, heavy feeling in her chest. In her mind, she kept gathering them all up and spinning them into a different narrative, telling herself they were the result of loss and grief, when really they were all pointing instead to life.
“I made you a little something for breakfast,” Jenny says now and gestures to the table, where a plate of toast and scrambled eggs sits. “No coffee, though,” she adds. “I didn’t have a reason when I went to the store the other day to pick up any decaf.”
She steps forward, pulls Grace in for a tight hug.
“I can’t believe this is happening,” Grace whispers into Jenny’s neck.
Jenny pulls back. “I can.” She squeezes Grace’s shoulders. “Life can be full of surprises. Not only bad ones. Now and again, the universe throws us good curveballs, too.”
Everything is quiet. Rainy days are always like this here. There are no families pulling overstuffed carts, trying to cross the boulevard to get to the beach. No kids running around barefoot in the street. It’s a reset day to hang inside, finally wash some sandy towels, start to clean out the fridge, spend the afternoon picking on leftovers and playing gin rummy.
Grace drives. She has no real plan. Right now, she just needs to feel like she’s in forward motion, that she’s moving—although slowly—toward something. After she cruises the full length of the island once, she navigates back to the south side, then decides to make all her stops. She doesn’t visit them in any particular pattern or order, but rather whichever place happens to pop up along the way.
Everywhere she looks, she finds absence. Inside the arcade, with its flashing lights and chaotic carpet, Cece’s favorite Skee-Ball machine is left vacant. Up on the boardwalk, both plastic chairs outside Madame Mermaid’s booth remain empty. Inside the Beachcomber’s bathroom, the only people Grace stumbles upon are a few women her age who are freshening up after a rainy morning brunch. Down on the beach, on the stretch between the old motel and the fishing pier, no one is there. In the bookshop, a few unfamiliar shoppers browse the aisles, pulling spines from the shelves and heading on their way, though that’s it. Out at the lighthouse, there’s no figure standing on the jetty, searching for the right ending.
When she climbs back in Birdie’s Jeep, Grace can’t quite say where they’ve all gone. All she knows is that for the first time this whole year, the loss doesn’t feel like a void or an emptiness.
It feels more like a clearing.
Grace doesn’t plan to stop until she sees it.
A white facade with blue trim hugging its edges. Bold red letters—Sea Drift Movie House—on its front and the wordsToday’s Showing:Jawsup on the old-fashioned marquee.
She parks the Jeep, pays for a ticket, then walks inside, through the hallway of faded movie posters, buys a snack, then goes into the practically empty theater to sit.
Even though, over the course of her life, she’s seen it dozens of times, she watches the film all the way through. In the past, she’d always watched the movie for fun, the few times she and Ray came here on rainy days just like this one to watch it, or the countless occasions back home on cold winter nights when it popped up at random on a cable channel. Back then, it was always about the shark, the scary thing that lurked just beneath the surface.
But today, as Grace sits by herself, sipping water and nibbling on unbuttered popcorn, she realizes the shark isn’t entirely the point. In many ways, the film is about pretending. The tourists on Amity Island, all wide smiles and golden tans, acting like everything is all right. That there’s no real threat. No reason to be afraid or believe that everything will crash. That the plans they’ve carefully laid out—to enjoy the sun and bask in all the joy of the Fourth of July holiday—will, despite the warnings and signs posted up and down the beach, go off without a hitch.
“Hooper’s always been my favorite character,” a voice says when Grace steps back outside onto the sidewalk. “He’s the one who’s willing to stick around and face the thing everyone else on Amity is too afraid to name.”
Ray sits on a white concrete bench just beside the cinema’s entryway. Same worn-out hat. Same steady presence. Same him.
“I thought you left,” Grace says as the other moviegoers filter out behind her. “I saw Meg yesterday. She filled me in.”
“I did.”
“Where did you go?” she asks, her tone hesitant.
“Nowhere,” Ray admits. “Once I got over the bridge, I just ... drove. This island’s pretty small sometimes, Grace. I just needed to get away for a minute.”
“But you came back,” she points out.
