Augusta’s father moved out west for a while, and so for her childhood she saw him only occasionally, maybe once a year, talking to him on birthdays and Christmas. She and Eben barely knew him, barely knew their grandparents on his side despite the large checks they sent, and their mother didn’t waste a single minute talking about him. He was no more present in their lives than a tax attorney or a dentist, someone they saw at annual intervals with a sense of mild obligation. But then, when Augusta was twenty-three, George moved back to Massachusetts. He had retired, had time on his hands, and was looking to get to know his adult children. Eben wasn’t buying it, but Augusta felt more sanguine about the whole thing. No, George wasn’t going to suddenly become her best friend or confidant after a lifetime of benign neglect, but she wouldn’t mind spending the occasional Sunday afternoon studying the man who held half her genetic material.
When she and Colin got engaged, George offered to pay for the wedding and honeymoon. Annie had the money, hell, Augusta could have paid for it all herself from her trust, but George so badly wanted the chance to make up for all he’d missed. Sure, it meant that Augusta had to let him walk her down the aisle, and yes, this meant he and his latest baby-faced girlfriend sat in the front row at the ceremony, but Augusta felt that after two decades of missing out on a father figure it was nice. Eben disagreed and found the whole thing disrespectful to their mother. He was furious that Augusta just allowed George to buyhis way into the family. Annie shrugged it off, but Eben couldn’t. Augusta had broken a rule in a book only Eben could see.
Augusta mostly understood. Her father was self-absorbed and rigid, and he and Eben had nothing in common. Eben had been older when George left, so the rejection stung more. Maybe even more complicated, Eben was gay, a fact he only revealed in his twenties when he brought Max home from France, and George was old-fashioned and conservative. But whatever the reason, after Augusta’s wedding, Eben had pulled away from her, and Augusta knew she had basically traded her brother for four hours of open bar and two hundred pieces of steak.
When Augusta walked in the front door, the babysitter was sitting on the couch playing on her phone, and she quickly jumped up to relate the events of the evening: The baby hadn’t wanted much milk, Charlie had pooped, Jane watchedDiary of a Wimpy Kid, and everyone had been asleep since eight. Zoey skipped out the door to her car and Augusta set about organizing her breast pump, sitting gingerly on the couch and arranging the plastic cones and tubes. The first moments were slightly painful, her breasts full and hard, milk dripping down her stomach, but then she relaxed into it, watching some documentary about the royal family as the machine sucked away. After ten minutes the pump was done and Augusta unhooked the bra and pulled the tubes out of the bottles, accidentally dropping a plastic attachment between the cushions.
“Damn,” she muttered, putting the bottles on the coffee table and shoving her fingers down in the crack. She didn’t feel the plastic piece,but she did feel something else, and she pinched the fabric between her fingers and tugged it free. It was a pair of blue lace underwear, and they did not belong to her.
Long Dark Night Of The Soul
It was probably a New England thing, borne of Puritan ancestors, but Augusta was eminently cool in a crisis. When a texting teenager had once rear-ended her on the corner of County and Green Streets, she had first checked to make sure he was all right before telling him he was an idiot. When Jane got a wad of gum stuck in her hair the morning of school picture day, she fashioned her hair into a high bun and cut it out that evening. And so, of course, when Augusta found a stranger’s panties in her sofa, she carried them immediately to the trash can in the garage, pinched between two fingers. The underwear had a little tag on the inside, and as she flicked on the overhead lights, Augusta turned her hand to read it, Cosabella, size medium. It was mystifying. Augusta never wore that brand. Zoey, the babysitter, was probably ninety pounds, definitely not a size medium. Augusta couldn’t think of who else had been in their house recently. Her mother? The two sisters who came to clean on Wednesdays? Augusta wrinkled her nose at the smell of the trash. She untied a plastic garbage bag and tucked the underwear inside, amid the stinking mess of discarded food and wadded paper towels. She clamped the plastic lid back on the can and went inside to wash her hands.
In the bedroom Colin was asleep, splayed out on top of the sheets, face covered by the crook of his elbow. Augusta clicked off the lamp. She shuffled down the hall to check on the kids. Jane and Charlie were both asleep in Charlie’s room. Jane had her own, but Charlie begged tohave her nearby, he was afraid of the dark, and he insisted on keeping the gummy bear nightlight on the brightest setting. Jane, meanwhile, had a bedtime routine to rival a middle-aged soap star. She slept on a travel-size silk pillow, she used a matching sleep mask, and she had recently started asking Augusta to give her a face massage as she fell asleep. Augusta quietly lowered the window shades and adjusted their blankets before sneaking into Beatrix’s room. Beatrix still slept in a sleep sack, and she looked like a tiny glowworm nestled in her crib, asleep with her bum sticking up in the air.
She crept back down to the kitchen and poured herself a glass of sparkling water, sitting at the kitchen island and scrolling anxiously on her phone. She thought about texting Bailey or Fran about the underwear. But she knew they would think she was being insane. They would wonder why she didn’t simply ask Colin. She couldn’t explain why, but Augusta didn’t want to. She put down the phone. Who the hell forgot their underwear? Augusta could say with great authority that she had never once forgotten to wear underwear. Sure, she’d gone without when necessary—a poorly packed suitcase, an unexpected period—but she’d never just pulled on her jeans and rolled out the door. Someone must have left the underwear on purpose. Someone wanted her to find them. But why?
It was late, but Augusta was wired, miles from sleep. She cleaned the kitchen and when that was done, still buzzing, she attacked the drawers of children’s cups, matching rubber lids to plastic bottoms, discarding those with broken straws, leaky tops, and spout tops frayed with toothmarks. She then moved on to the front hall closet, a place of perpetual irritation for her. There were dozens and dozens of shoes, half of them disgusting with use, half of them nearly pristine but rejected by her children for reasons sundry and various: laces Jane refused to tie even though she knew how, soles that felt hard, bucklesthat were too fiddly, and one loathsome pair that shed glitter upon every wearing. Augusta collected the unworn shoes in a shopping bag and set it aside for donation, she put the slightly worn pairs that Jane had outgrown into a box to save for Beatrix, and she arranged what was left neatly onto the shelves. It was two in the morning, and Augusta sorted through ski jackets and mittens, fleece vests and stroller buntings, bits of Velcro and nylon that seemed expensive, but whose provenance was elusive.
She and Colin had bought this house right after they got engaged. They had barely started looking when it came on the market, and the moment they walked in Augusta felt like it was home. Neither she nor Colin were impulsive by nature. Colin was the kind of guy who paid to buy the fully refundable airline tickets, who made pro and con lists before he took a new job, but he saw how much Augusta loved the house and they made the offer. He let her pick all the paint colors, let her choose the new kitchen countertops and cabinets; the only thing he asked for was a corner of the basement where he could play guitar. There was something both sweet and sort of tragic about his little setup. He kept his books down there on a shelf, rock ’n’ roll memoirs by Keith Richards, Bruce Springsteen, and Flea. He had a couple of framed posters and concert stubs on the wall. He kept his guitar on a stand made of steel and teak, and he would go down after the kids were asleep and drink a Scotch and play for an hour or two before bed most nights. Augusta had always loved that about him. He’d taken a job in finance after college, he’d earned his MBA, and now he worked at a fund in Boston, but he had a creative side too. She knew he wasn’t passionate about his job—what kid dreamed of one day attending investor meetings—but he still had this little place where he could be himself. She’d always thought that was lovely. But what if it was more complicated than that? What if the very thing she had admired for solong—her husband’s ability to play his role 90 percent of the time and his passion the other 10—was a sign that he wasn’t actually happy? What if his corner of the basement was the beginning of a bigger escape? Augusta thought of her own father, his late nights at the office, his ignominious exit from their family.
At four inthe morningAugusta finished with the closet and sat on the floor in the hallway, her back against the wall. This was it. This was her long, dark night of the soul. And she was spending it organizing snow pants and sun hats. No. She felt it so powerfully she almost said it aloud. She would not quietly swallow it. She would not turn a blind eye. Augusta stood and went out to the garage and pulled the underwear from the trash. She shook them out and then brought them back to the living room where she shoved them between the cushions, exactly where she had found them.
Four
Caroline
A Blood Meal
The first time Caroline Lash was bitten by a greenhead fly she screamed as though she had been stabbed. “That FUCKER!” She bent down and saw that her ankle was bleeding. “It’s like being assaulted by a potato peeler!”
“It’s pretty interesting, actually,” explained Van. They were down on the pebbly beach in front of Caroline’s cottage. “They have scissorlike jaws, and they basically masticate the skin to lap up the blood.”
“That’s notinteresting, it’s horror! It’s like Demi Moore inThe Substance!”
“Does a bug bite her in that?”
“Worse. She internalizes society’s pressure for women to conform to beauty standards!” Caroline’s ankle began to grow hot and red. “Am I going to lose a limb?”
“Not if we act fast.” Van laughed, lifting her up and carrying her toward the water.
“I feel like I’m bleeding out!” Caroline cried dramatically over his shoulder.
Van snorted and set her down gently in the shallows. “A greenhead bite means you’re now officially a local.”
If getting huge bloody welts made her a local, Caroline would just as soon stay a New Yorker. “I’m going to buy a huge can of bug spray with DEET and cover myself until I grow a third eye in the middle of my forehead. Bring on the neurotoxins.”
“Oh no.” Van gently splashed salt water over her wound. “Bug spray won’t do anything. Greenheads are BEASTS. The females need a blood meal and they hunt in broad daylight.”
“Jesus.”
“You can run, but you can’t hide.” Van swatted one on his arm.
It was true.Greenhead season was the reason they could all afford to live in this otherwise idyllic seaside village. The flies appeared for the last two weeks of July and made the beaches and marshes a war zone. The Trustees put up big signs at Crane Beach that read “Greenhead Season: No Refunds,” and all the locals left town. Tourists who didn’t know better would try the beach, assuming a few bugs couldn’t be that bad, and would depart an hour later, bloody and horrified, never to return.
Van and his friends retreated to Maine for a long weekend every greenhead season, to a cabin in Boothbay where his family owned a big plot of land. They had been going for a decade, piling into bunk beds, escaping the bloodsuckers, and drinking their faces off. When Van invited Caroline along, she was on the fence. Would it feel like she was crashing their party? Would they spend the whole time reminiscing about some random dude who went to their middle school, forcing Caroline to pretend she cared about some kid named “Townie” who locked their math teacher in the supply closet? “Everyone wants you to come,” Van promised. “My friends want to know you better.” Theydidn’t—five months into her relationship with Van they still barely seemed to register her presence—but Caroline appreciated the lie. She watched the greenheads bash their heavy bodies against the screens of her cottage, she looked down at the wound on her leg, still angry and swollen, and despite her better judgment, she agreed to go.
Is Bailey going to be there?asked Nina.
