She was heading out of the exit near the food court when she noticed Sherri. Melanie did a double take, not quite sure if it was Sherri or not. It was. Sherri was sitting at one of the food-court tables, across from a woman Melanie had never seen before. The other woman was small, with brown hair, wearing a blue dress with a collar. Neither woman had any food in front of her, according to Melanie. Not that you’d voluntarily eat at the mall food court, right? Not with the Cheesecake Factory right there, not with Burton’s Grill! But still. It was odd, to be sitting at that table, without any food.
Melanie told us she got a funny feeling in her stomach. Not like anything bad was going on, exactly. We’re not implying anything untoward, or even anything toward. We’re just telling a story. We’re simply saying that it was an interesting place to see Sherri Griffin. She certainly wasn’t hitting Nordstrom, if you know what we mean. The circumstances of her meeting seemed to be somewhat mysterious.
That’s all we’re saying.
Mysterious.
There might be more to her than meets the eye, texted Melanie to all of us later.
(It could be noted here that Rebecca was left off of this group text, Melanie having wisely understood that Rebecca and Sherri had formed a friendship outside the group. Please see previous entries about the trip to Salisbury Beach, and the girls going off to Canobie Lake, la-di-da, as if nobody else would want to be in on anannual tradition. But we digress.)
Melanie followed her “meets the eye” text with a series of emojis: a few different smileys, the little guy with his teeth showing, the LOL and the single tear emoji.
But then, that was Melanie. She never understood how to choose just one emoji to make her point.
52.
Alexa
Alexa dreamed that she was inside the Pink House. She had passed this house on the way to Plum Island a million times, as a passenger, as a driver, on a bike, once on foot, but she had given very little thought to it. All she knew was that it was widely rumored to be a spite house, built in the 1920s by a man for his ex-wife who demanded a replica of their home as part of their divorce settlement. He put it in the middle of a salt marsh—that was the spite part.
Wasn’t it just like a guy, to do something like that for no freaking reason other than that he could?
As far as Alexa was aware, nobody she knew had ever been inside the Pink House, though people had speculated far and wide about what the interior looked like.
The dream was shot like a movie, so that first she saw the outside of the Pink House, with the narrow stone path leading up to it. The camera zoomed in on a close-up of the chipped pink paint, the sign that saidgovernment property—no trespassing!Birds nested in the cupola.
Then the dream Google-earthed her into the center of the house, and up a rickety staircase to a bedroom. The bedroom was decorated with an ornate armoire, a dusty oval full-length mirror and a four-poster bed. There was a woman lying in bed, or a girl. She was dressed in a cobwebby wedding dress. Miss Havisham?
The camera cut again, and nowAlexawas looking down at the wedding dress.Shewas Miss Havisham. Left at the altar? She fingered the heavy silk. She looked at her arms, which were covered by lace. This couldn’t really be happening. Alexa would never, ever choose a long-sleeved wedding dress.
Also, who would leave Alexa Thornhill at the altar?Please.
There came a gentle rapping on the door to the bedroom, and before Alexa could say, “Come in,” the door opened and a face poked around the doorway. It was Cam. He surveyed the room, grinning. He said, “I need to get you out of here, Alexa. This place is lousy with asbestos, you know.”
“How do you know that?” asked Alexa.
“It’s what I wrote my college essay about,” said Cam. “It’s what got me into St. Mike’s.”
“This house?”
“Yes. This house is iconic. This house has inspired the imaginations of so many people.”
In the dream, this all seemed completely plausible. In the dream, this was an acceptable topic for a college essay.
Cam was still talking. “Did you know, for example, that because this house is owned by the Parker River Wildlife Refuge, which is part of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, it can’t be sold for money, only traded for other property? Did you know that snowy owls and hawks nest in the cupola? No? You didn’t? Did you know that it was fully occupied until the early two thousands even though it’s never had running water?” Alexa shook her head. She didn’t know any of this.
“Well, Alexa,” said Cam. “Let’s get you out of here.” He held out his hand to Alexa, and she took it. She swung one foot over the edge of the bed, and then the other. She was barefoot, and her toes were painted a pearly pink. (Despite the long-sleeved wedding dress, her wedding shoes must have been open-toed.) Therewas a mirror above the heavy dark dresser opposite the bed, and she let go of Cam’s hand and approached it with trepidation. She cleaned the dust off the mirror with the sleeve of her wedding dress. (The sleeves had come in handy after all.) She expected to see that she had aged years or maybe decades. She took a deep breath before looking.
There were cobwebs in her hair, but otherwise she looked exactly the same. This was an enormous relief. She turned to Cam and asked, “Why’d you leave me at the altar?”
“Leave you?”
“Yes.” She gestured to her wedding dress.
“I didn’t leave you.”
“You didn’t? Who did?”
