Maura nodded. “I have two messages from Amelia. She said it was important. She’s at home.” Concern flickered across her face. Amelia never called Maura unless Perry was so deep into a project that he’d neglected to check his phone.
Perry retrieved his phone from his pocket and glanced at the screen. Three new messages. “I’ll call her back.”
“Can I order you something to eat before I go?” It was already an hour after her usual workday. Perry knew Maura had a forty-five-minute train ride home to Mount Kisco. He was famished, but he didn’t want to delay her further.
“I’m fine, thanks.”
“Thai or Chinese?” Maura wasn’t about to budge.
Perry smiled. “Surprise me.”
He opened his laptop as his phone buzzed again. Another message from Amelia. Perry sighed and opened the text. A grainy image filled the screen.
The first thing he saw was skin. A teenage girl in what appeared to be a bra and panties standing in someone’s kitchen. She thrust a bottle of beer toward the camera at a precarious angle. To her left, a boy in a baseball cap was reaching for it. To her right, another had his arm slung around her bare waist. The girl stared back at him, her lips parted as if she was trying to say something. Dark makeup rimmed her eyes. Perry squinted. Emma’s face stared back at him.
“No.”
His phone buzzed in his hand. Amelia. Wordlessly, he accepted the call.
“Perry. You have to come home. It’s bad.”
Phoebe
It was just after midnight when she tiptoed into the dark kitchen and was startled by a figure outside the window. Who would be out at this hour? But as she peered outside, she recognized the soft, moonlit shape of her mother in her nightgown. Jane stood outside on the patio, her back to the kitchen window. There was a small orange flicker against the night sky, and a smoky cloud rose up around her.
Phoebe tugged open the back door. “Mom?”
Jane spun around, hand to her chest. “Christ, Phoebe.”
“Me? What are youdoing?” Phoebe flicked on the lights.
Jane tilted her head as if contemplating how to reply, then blew a spiral of smoke from her lips. “Damn it.” She tossed the cigarette on the flagstone, then ground it out with the pristine white toe of her Sperry Top-Sider. The look of her in the billowy nightgown and boat shoes only enhanced the ridiculousness of the whole scene.
“Since when do you smoke?” Then, “What if the boys saw you?”
Jane sighed. “The boys are asleep. Why aren’t you?”
“Because I can’t. At least I’m not skulking around out here with a pack of cigarettes like a teenager.” Was no one in the family who they seemed?
“I’m sorry,” Jane snapped. She bent, peeled the cigarette butt from the patio, and strode past Phoebe into the kitchen, where she dipped it in the sink then wrapped it neatly in a napkin like a little gift and tossed it in the trash. Clearly a well-rehearsed routine. “I’m just trying to unwind.”
Phoebe plopped down on a kitchen stool and regarded her mother. “I feel like I’m meeting everyone in this family for the first time. Does Dad know you’ve taken up smoking?”
Jane scowled. “I haven’ttaken it up. And of course he doesn’t know.”
“Of course he doesn’t. A bunch of liars, all of us.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Her mother went to the sink and rinsed her mouth out.
“Mom. Look at us.” She put her head in her hands. It was the middle of the night. Across town her empty dream house sat in total disrepair. Another town over, Jake was hobbling around the confines of a tiny cottage on crutches while his brand-new fiancée’s daughter was going through some kind of post-traumatic response to an accident he’d caused. And Perry—the rock of them all—could not bring himself to face his brother since.
Jane joined her daughter at the island. “We aren’t exactly at our finest this summer, are we?”
There was a shuffling noise from the living room, and both women turned to see Grandma Elsie totter into the kitchen. “Well, hello, dears. Phoebe, what are you doing at your mother’s house at this hour?”
Phoebe and Jane exchanged looks. Elsie’s memory had been growing more inconsistent. “Flickering like a light bulb” was how Jake had described it, and there was no telling when she would be lucid and conversational, or forgetful and confused. “Hi, Nana. I’m staying here for a couple weeks, remember?” Phoebe reminded her.
“That’s right. Your little visit.”
