Katie hadn’t even finished the last of her lobster when she said, “After dinner can we get ice cream? There’s a place right across the street, Dunlap’s? It’s supposed to be good. Morgan told me it’s good.”
Sherri hesitated. Now that fall was here, she’d have to cut back on her spending, cook healthy food for her and Katie, maybe find some way to exercise regularly. (Definitely not barre class.) “I don’t know—”
“Please? It’s the second to last day of summer! It’s the lastnightof summer, because tomorrow is technically a school night.”
“Okay,” said Sherri. “Of course we can, sure.”
The day after tomorrow Katie would walk up Olive Street to High Street, where she would meet up with Morgan and a few other girls from the group to walk to the middle school, and Sherri would clean up from breakfast and take a shower and get in her car and drive to her job, where she would do all of her usual job things, which were boring but not mind-numbingly so, and she would try not to think about the fact that Katie was out of her sight and out of her control, and that, sure, the school had some sort of intercom system or whatever, but was it really safe, was it really secure?
Would anything ever be secure enough to satisfy Sherri?
Sherri hoped Katie never knew how close she’d come to real danger in those early days before they’d become safely ensconced in the program. She hoped that in time she’d forget all about the time in the motel and the bad food and the bad television and Louise the counselor with the velvety brown eyes, and also about the life they’d had before that. But not all of it, maybe, because that life was part of Katie’s history, the only one she had.
The sky was becoming paler as the sun began to drop. It wasn’t sunset yet, it was more like sunset’s appetizer. Sunset’s calamari. Sherri’s favorite part of the day. She breathed in the briny smell of the water.
She would never not be scared for herself or for Katie. But maybe the fear would become a low thrum in the background of their lives instead of the crashing cymbals in the center of the stage, in the same way that Rebecca had explained to Sherri that her grief for Peter never left, would never leave, even as she fell in love with Daniel.
They cleared their plates and placed them in the appropriate bins; they walked across the street to Dunlap’s. They were an ordinary mother and daughter on the penultimate night of summer. The line for ice cream was long, so they had a good amount of time to peruse the menu.
“What are you going to choose?” Katie asked.
I choose life,thought Sherri.I choose happiness. I choose the light.
She looked down at Katie, her forthright, strong, vulnerable, invincible, vincible child. She thought about a girl named Madison Miller who had probably gone out for ice cream with her parents dozens of times, never knowing that one day she wouldn’t.
After Brooke’s party one of the dads to whom Sherri had been talking had asked around for her number. (At the time she hadn’t known he was divorced.) His divorce was new and shiny, just outof its packaging, and he wasn’t quite sure what to do with it. He’d registered on Tinder, but it scared him, so he never used it. He had been impressed, he told Sherri, by her “bravado” at Brooke’s party. Sherri thought what he really meant was that he’d been impressed by her breasts. Or maybe both. She was still deciding whether she was ready to date—whether she’d ever be ready to date. Right now her priority was getting Katie settled in school and doing a bang-up job at Derma-You so she could get more hours. Apparently, with the rapid expansion they’d be seeking a manager for some of their new locations. Jan said she’d told management that Sherri had a solid work ethic and a natural discreetness about her, which was a necessity in their business.
“Mom?” said Katie. The line was moving up; there was a family of four in front of them, and after that it would be their turn. “What are you getting?”
“I think I’ll have my usual,” Sherri told Katie. “Chocolate with chocolate sprinkles.”
Katie rolled her eyes. “They have like four hundred flavors here and you’re getting the same thing you always get? You’re so predictable, Mom.”
“I know,” Sherri said. “I’m completely predictable.” Sherri tried to look rueful but she couldn’t do it genuinely, because predictable implied safe and safe implied boring and to Sherri Griffin on that evening, on the far edge of summer, on the outer reaches of Katie’s childhood,boringseemed like the most beautiful word in the world.
She just had one final item on her to-do list.
89.
Alexa
On the very last day of summer, Alexa served, among other things, one Ringer, three sugar cones of Moose Tracks, one cone of chocolate, and one dish of Green Monster. She was in the back, checking on the supplies of paper napkins and spoons, when the “ring for service” bell went off.
“Amazon!” called Hannah, and Alexa rolled her eyes, because wasn’t it Hannah’s turn to help the next customer? “Someone’s looking for you!” Hannah called again, super chipper.
Alexa growled, “Coming,” and tugged her apron back into place. She was arranging her face into her best customer service smile when she saw Sherri Griffin. Alexa hadn’t seen Sherri since the night Cam died, since Sherri had taken Morgan and Katie away while Alexa and her mom talked to the police. She’d been waiting for this conversation, though: the text she’d sent that night, then the “false alarm” text after; obviously those wouldn’t go without a follow-up.
“Hi, Sherri,” said Alexa. She pretended cheer but she knew her uncertainty was showing through.
“Hello, Alexa,” said Sherri, all business. Her hair, which was pulled into a ponytail, was back to brown; she looked much less arresting than she had the night of the party. No. Not arresting. Bad choice of words. Much less . . . eye-catching. But still, with theright styling, Alexa believed the brown could look pretty. Alexa could show Sherri a few tricks with a super-wide curling iron, if she ever wanted to see.
“Is Katie with you?” Alexa asked.
“Katie’s at home,” Sherri said. “Packing her backpack for tomorrow. I came to talk to you.”
“Here?”
“Not here. No. Definitely not. Plum Island Grille. I’ll be there at seven.”
