Pulling himself from his reverie, Theo found the bottle of wine he’d been looking for, then uncorked it, thinking about Juliet and her apparently “secret” life in the big city. After he delivered the wine and more sodas for the younger people, he returned to the kitchen and did what he’d always told himself not to do. He googled Juliet Harper.
The first image of her that came up was taken in her early twenties, when her modeling career was in full bloom and she was discussed in the same circles as megacelebrities and top models. Just as he’d been as a younger kid, Theo was floored by her beauty. But the darkness in the gaze of these model shots was proof that Juliet’s path to stardom had not been easy.
Not long into Theo’s quest, he found photographs of Juliet’s wedding to “Alvin the lawyer.” In them, she looked so happy and beautiful, smiling at her husband and raising glasses of champagne in celebration. Nobody could have guessed that just the night before, she’d called Theo and told him that his food was the best she’d ever tasted.
Theo wondered if Juliet still thought that about his food. Probably not, he guessed.
But as he continued to study the story of Juliet through the years, he discovered a press release from La Cöte Fashion House. It was from last year and concerned Juliet’s performance at a fashion show in Paris. According to the press release, the fashion house put all the blame squarely on Juliet’s shoulders. Within the next few months, the fashion house dismissed Juliet as an employee—after more than a decade of working together.
Theo marveled at the rise and fall of Juliet, his ex-best friend and the woman who still mystified him. “Oh, Juliet,” he muttered to himself, there in the kitchen of his failing restaurant. “What happened to you?”
8
The decision to go back to Bluebell Cove came to Juliet in the middle of the night. It was three days after Danica’s last day of eighth grade, and the city had at once bolted to the mid-eighties, drenching her in sweat. The air-conditioning unit in the Greenwich apartment stopped working abruptly, and Juliet tried and failed to sleep on the pull-out couch in the living room, listening to people on the street scream. In the bedroom that was now Danica’s full-time, Juliet could hear her daughter crying.
Already, Alvin had left for Singapore, and he hadn’t bothered to say goodbye. Juliet wasn’t sure how Danica would ever forgive him. Then again, with Juliet the only parent around, Juliet knew that she would take the brunt of the blame for everything falling apart.
Danica couldn’t hate someone who wasn’t around, her iconic and wealthy and worldly father. By comparison, Juliet looked pathetic and unemployed and raggedy.
In the days since Danica had run out of the restaurant and collapsed in Central Park, Juliet had traced through her memory of the phone call with Ivy numerous times. Ivy had begged for information. She’d told Juliet to breathe and calm down. But after Juliet had hung up on her, Ivy had only tried to call her back once. Each time Juliet considered this, she came to the same conclusion. Her sisters didn’t have the will to try to understand her, not when Juliet wasn’t so keen on telling them anything real about her life.
When a horn blared in front of her apartment, Juliet got up and made herself a cup of tea, which she sipped at the kitchen table, watching traffic purr past. She remembered her most recent trip to Bluebell Cove, months ago now. She remembered sitting on the bed she slept in at Ivy’s place when she visited. It was the same bed, incidentally, that she’d slept in as a child and later a teenager. From the bedspread, she could see all of the cove, glinting in the moonlight. Everything had been quiet, save for the wind through the spindly tree branches outside.
Juliet suddenly ached to inhale that gorgeous air. She ached to leap into the cove and stretch her limbs and feel the waves lap against her body. She ached to show her daughter the nooks and crannies of the woods that surrounded the town. She wanted lobster and clam chowder and biscuits. She wanted to stop watching rats dart in front of her feet when she walked down the road.
It didn’t take long to find someone to sublet the apartment in Greenwich Village. Within two days, Juliet had fifteen online requests to see the place, and by the end of the week, she’d decided on a twentysomething couple who proved they came from money and could handle the rent. “And there’s no way we can extend the contract?” the woman, an artist, asked.
“We’re going out of town for the summer,” Juliet said, glancing at Danica in the corner, who glowered at them all from behind her layers of eyeliner. “Danica starts school in September.”
The couple looked disappointed.
“We have something for now,” the guy told his girlfriend, taking her hand.
It didn’t take long for Juliet and Danica to pack up their things and get out of there. With the money she was already saving by not paying Manhattan rental prices, Juliet bought a clunker car. Everything they didn’t want to take with them was driven to a cheap storage facility far outside of the city. The facility was creepy, with hundreds upon hundreds of garages filled with other people’s forgotten things. What remained in the back were three suitcases.
“Doesn’t it feel good to have so little?” Juliet asked her daughter, slipping into the driver’s seat and smiling.
Danica crossed her arms tightly and stared straight ahead. “How long is the drive again?”
Juliet tried to laugh. “Six hours! But we’re going to have fun. We’ll stop wherever you want to stop. And we can listen to whatever you want.”
Danica snapped her head around to glare at Juliet. Juliet started the engine, feeling her smile melt away. The highway was wide open and practically empty at this time of the morning, long after rush hour. And within the first few hours of their journey, Juliet found herself dropping into her own nostalgia.
“You know, I left Bluebell Cove when I was eighteen,” Juliet tried again, praying that she and Danica could relate to one another. “I took a bus all the way to the city with only a backpack.”
Danica remained quiet, although Juliet could tell she was listening intently.
“I had more dreams than I knew what to do with,” Juliet continued. “I’m sure I was no fun to listen to. I remember my best friends looking at me suspiciously, like I was constantly living with one foot out the door.”
Juliet remembered Callie looking at her with pain in her eyes. Callie had been so afraid that Juliet would get up and leave her behind at any moment. They’d taken thousands of photographs with disposable cameras, Callie trying to latch onto the memories of every moment. Juliet wondered where those photographs were.
Yanking Juliet back to the present, Danica made a noise in the back of her throat.
“But maybe that’s like you with your writing?” Juliet suggested, praying for a link between herself and her daughter. “You seem so driven to be an artist. Not like other kids?”
Danica shrugged. “Being a writer just means being watchful, I think. You don’t have to abandon everyone you’ve ever known to make it work.”
“But what about what you said before? About traveling? Experiencing other cultures?”
