So much for catching the end of the meal with Mr. Bennett. This wasn’t a question. This was an order. “Got it,” said Alexa. “I’ll see you there.”
“Who was that, Amazon?” asked Hannah after Sherri had departed.
Alexa smiled as sweetly as she could manage and said, “Just a mom of one of my sister’s friends. And please stop calling me Amazon. It’s really getting tiresome.”
Alexa got to the Grille at ten minutes to seven and secured a seat at the bar. The bartender was a girl who had graduated a few years ago, Natalie Gallagher. She was really tall and really thin and had freckles and that gingery hair that works on some people and not on others. On Natalie it worked. Alexa had heard Natalie Gallagher had been in a J. Crew modeling shoot the year before. She smiled at Alexa like she knew her, so Alexa didn’t even try to order a drink. She got a seltzer with lime, and she saved the seat next to her—easier said than done; it was crowded. At exactly seven o’clock, Sherri walked in.
Sherri ordered a tequila shot, which she threw back without blinking.
Alexa couldn’t help saying, “Wow.”
“Listen,” said Sherri. “You sent me a text, the night your frienddied. And I haven’t been able to talk to you about it, because, well . . . because obviously you were tied up with all of that awfulness, after the accident, and I wanted to respect you, respect your privacy. Respect your friend. And I’m so sorry about all of that. It’s really terrible.”
“Thank you,” said Alexa, bowing her head, waiting for the “but.”
“But. I need to know what you meant by the text that you sent me that night. I can’t remember the exact words. I deleted it—I can’t have texts like that on my phone.”
“Of course you can’t,” murmured Alexa.
“I know you saidfalse alarmafter, but it’s clear that you know something about me.”
Alexa took a sip of her seltzer. Sherri was watching her, waiting for an explanation. “The thing I said about somebody being after me. That was a misunderstanding. A huge, embarrassing misunderstanding. I’m really sorry. I never should have worried you. I was panicked, and scared, and I was confused about what was going on, and there was somebody knocking on my door. I’m so sorry.”
Sherri looked at Alexa for a long time, and then she said, “The part about knowing who I am. That part is what I’m concerned about here. I did a thorough search of Katie’s room the day after the party, and I read her diary. I’m assuming that you read it too. That’s the only way I can figure out that you’d know anything.”
Alexa nodded. “I saw it in her room one day, and I opened it, I don’t even know why I opened it, and once I started reading I couldn’t stop. I just couldn’t. And then I did some googling, and I put everything together. I’m so, so sorry.”
Around them came the festive, slightly mournful sounds of an evening at the end of summer: the tinkling of ice in glasses, bursts of uproarious laughter, a hint of seize-the-day mania. The bar stools faced the salt marshes, and the windows were open so thatthe smells of Plum Island came wafting in. Far, far in the distance, if you squinted and tilted your head just right, you could almost see the Pink House, which would be turning luminous and mysterious under the last rays of the setting sun.
“That’s what I figured,” said Sherri. “This is a really big problem for me, Alexa.Really big.”
“I know.” Alexa looked around the bar desperately, but nobody could save her from this conversation.
“You can’t ever, ever say anything that you know about us out loud, do you understand me?” Sherri’s voice was cold—Siberian.
“I know,” said Alexa. “I won’t. I never will. I swear. And I’m so sorry. I’m so, so, so sorry.” She opened her hands and then closed them into fists. She didn’t know what else she could say.
“The diary is gone,” Sherri said. “I destroyed it, and then I talked to Katie about never writing anything like that down again. Ever. She simply can’t.”
“No,” agreed Alexa. “She can’t.”
“I trusted you,” said Sherri. “In my home, and with my child. I trusted you, when we were new here, and when we were most vulnerable. And we werereallyvulnerable, Alexa. We still are. We’ll be vulnerable for the rest of our lives.”
“I know,” said Alexa.
“Now here’s what I have to ask you,” said Sherri. “And I need you to answer honestly. Does anyone else know? Did you tell anyone?”
Here Alexa found herself knee-deep in moral muck. She thought of Cam, the most trustworthy, most honest person she’d ever known, who’d wanted to un-know the truth about Katie and Sherri the second he learned it. He wouldn’t have told anyone. She knew that with absolute certainty. If there was anyone who would take a secret like that to the grave, it was Cam.
Alexa shook her head.
“I need to hear you say it out loud. If you told anyone, Katie and I are in too much danger to stay here. We’ll have to move away, we’ll have to start all over again. New names, new hair color, new everything. I don’t want to do that to Katie. She finally feels settled here.” Sherri’s voice tripped. “But I’ll do it if I have to. I’ll do anything to keep Katie safe. So I need to know right now, Alexa, if you told anyone else about what you read in that diary.”
Alexa thought of Dave Matthews and her heart wrenched once again:The wicked lies we tell to keep us safe from the pain.
There were lies that we tell to save ourselves, and then there were lies that we tell to save other people. In the past Alexa had been a master of the former. Now, she supposed, as the New and Improved Alexa, it was probably about time to learn the latter.
“Nobody else knows,” she said. “I swear to you, I haven’t told, nor will I ever tell, a soul.”
