Joe pointed out to Sherri that they were moving toward Amesbury, away from the mouth of the river that led to the open ocean, and that the pontoon was for inland use; Gina and Steve had another boat for the open ocean. “There’s Brooke and David’s dock,” he said, pointing. “And straight ahead is the Rocks Village Bridge, which connects West Newbury to Merrimac and Haverhill.”
“Got it,” Sherri said. She looked around and was able to appreciate the beauty of the summer evening. The threads of color still tangled in the sky. The riverfront houses with docks and boats tied up at the docks. A lone kayaker. The smell of silt and salt and summer. The Brie bites were going like hotcakes—the plate wasalmost empty. “I feel like I’m in a floating living room,” she said. Joe chuckled appreciatively: another small victory.
The pontoon glided; somebody refilled Sherri’s red cup; people were laughing and talking and it was all very festive. A motor boat passed them going the other way and passengers on both boats waved at one another. Sherri waved too: why not? It was the Fourth of July. The lavender evening was gorgeous. Joe had laughed at her joke. She was doing fine.
Then, almost as suddenly as a curtain dropping over a stage, darkness descended. The little bit of light left in the sky was gone.
And,bang,came a sound,bangbangbang. Each time, Sherri’s heart jumped a little bit more.
She turned away from Rebecca. “I thought you said there weren’t fireworks?” she said. If there were no fireworks, it must be gunshots. She fumbled in her bag for her cell phone. She had to check on Katie.She had to check on Katie.But there were no bars on her phone: no signal.
“Not in Newburyport,” said Rebecca. “Those are the Amesbury ones that we can hear. Are you okay, Sherri?”
“I need to get off the boat,” Sherri said, softly at first, and then, because she couldn’t help it, more urgently. There were no walls surrounding her, but somehow it felt as though they were closing in on her anyway. Her stomach lurched; her brain and heart lurched. She didn’t care who heard her, or what they thought of her. She cared only about Katie. “I don’t have a phone signal. I need to get off the boat,” she said, to Rebecca, but also to anyone who was listening. “I need to make sure Katie’s okay, I need to get off the boat.I need to get off the boat!”
30.
The Squad
Nobody had a good cell signal out there. Nobody. It’s a river! Cell service is unreliable. Eventually, Rebecca calmed Sherri down, and we finished the pontoon ride and went back to the dock. But seriously. Talk about a mood killer.
Somebody, we can’t remember who now, said they thought they’d seen Sherri flirting with Joe. And that maybe he was flirting back. After the year that Esther had, and that thing with the office assistant, believe us, that was the last thing that Esther needed to worry about. They were still in therapy!
On another note, that was the night all of the girls were at Brooke’s house. They were going to swim and watch a movie. Brooke’s sister was there to watch over them. And where was Morgan? At her own house, with Katie and Alexa. Who had, what, nothing better to do on the Fourth?
It was almost like they weretryingto exclude themselves.
31.
Alexa
Alexa hadn’t heard from Cam since the not-Dave Matthews concert.Fine,she thought, when she allowed herself to think about him at all. He was probably busy finding homes for orphaned puppies. Which was fine. She had a lot of work to do on Silk Stockings, and also to get ready for her move: she could afford no distractions.
On her way to Olive Street to babysit for Katie Griffin for the first time, she checked her phone anyway. Nothing from Cam. (She didn’t care.) Nothing from Tyler either. Not that she was surprised by that; she did blow him off the night before he left for Silver Lake. She had checked his Instagram a couple of times to see if he’d posted anything from Michigan, but he hadn’t. Caitlin hadn’t tried to make any more overtures since lunch at Popovers, and Alexa hadn’t reached out to Destiny.
Congratulations, Alexa, she told herself. You have successfully alienated just about everyone.
Sherri and Katie lived in one half of a two-family on Olive Street, not far from the high school, where the houses were crowded together and the sidewalks a little crumbly. Could Alexa have walked to Olive Street from her home on High Street? Yes. But did she? Nope. Alexa had never been one to walk when she could drive.
Alexa expected that Sherri would be like most of her mom’s friends, with good hair and well-groomed eyebrows and a decent sense of fashion, at least for an older person. But Sherri was wearing khaki pants and a polo shirt with a logo on it, and her drab hair was in a low ponytail.
Sherri told Alexa that when they first moved to Newburyport she left Katie alone when she went out to dinner, but that Katie got a little freaked out because of all of the creaks and groans the old house made.
“I told her it’s just the house settling,” Sherri said. “But you know kids.” She lowered her voice to a whisper and added, “She thinks the house is haunted. Which obviously it’s not. But we’ve had a lot of changes lately. It’s been”—she raised her eyes to the ceiling, as though selecting the perfect word, but produced only—“hard.”
“I get it,” said Alexa. Alexa knew Katie’s parents were recently divorced. She reminded herself to be extra kind. Alexa refrained from saying that the house probablywashaunted, because it was her belief that most of the older homes in Newburyport were. She knew that her own house was, but she thought that the spirits that haunted it were most likely friendly, especially in her bedroom. More than once she had woken in the night to sense a warm, comforting presence surrounding her, almost like somebody had laid a light blanket over her sleeping body. When she turned on the light she saw nothing, and the feeling disappeared. She tried to tell Tyler about this once. He said, “I’ll show you a warm comforting presence in your bed, bae,” and after that she didn’t talk to him about it, or to anyone.
Sherri departed, and Alexa turned her attention to her charge. She was hoping Katie went to bed on the earlier side; Alexa had some research on L.A. apartments to do. There were so many different neighborhoods! Four hundred and seventy-two, she’dlearned online. She knew the Valley would be too hot, and downtown L.A. too crowded, but that was as far as she’d gotten in terms of ruling out areas. There was Echo Park and Pacific Palisades and Koreatown; there was San Pedro and Fairfax and Santa Monica and Topanga Canyon. Each of these names tasted exotic on her tongue when she said them aloud in the privacy of her own bedroom. Playa Vista. Sunset Junction. Los Feliz.
Katie was as efficient and self-contained as a Roomba, a nice change from Morgan’s overparented other friends. When Alexa asked her what she’d like for dinner Katie told her she’d made herself some pasta with a little bit of butter and cheese before her mom left, and that she sliced some red peppers to make sure she got her vitamins. Alexa was not sure that Morgan was familiar with how to boil water, never mind slice a pepper. She was impressed.
Katie settled down to watchCupcake Warsin the living room and invited Alexa to join her. The living room was so small that Alexa had the impression that if she sat down her knees would knock up against the television set—and she had topped off in ninth grade at five feet, five inches.
“I’ll join you a little bit later,” she told Katie. “I just have a couple of things I need to take care of.”
She left Katie immersed in the wars to go on a little snoop. Back when she used to babysit, the snooping was the best part of the job. In the past she’d found vibrators and porn magazines (old school!) and stashes of cash and photos of old girlfriends and boyfriends. In one case, she found the photo of an old boyfriend of a dad who was happily married to a mom. She’d found antianxiety meds and baggies of weed and hidden credit cards. Most people, it turned out, were hiding something from the people they love. She’d never done anything with any of her discoveries; she’d held them in a secret place in her mind, coiled like a coral snake, ready to strike.
Alexa headed up the narrow set of stairs that led to the second floor. The painted banister was peeling. It could totally be lead paint, in a house this old, so just in case Alexa didn’t touch it. Her own house had been professionally de-leaded.
