Holding back tears, Olivia set the painting on the only clear space of counter she could find to dry. Then she headed for the door.
“Where are you going?” Jake called after her.
“Nowhere.” She shoved the screen door open. Out on the porch, she flopped against the cottage wall and slid down to the floorboards. There was nowhere she could go. Because everyone on the other side of the door needed her. She was tethered here.
Olivia closed her eyes and tipped her head back against the cottage siding. The rain was coming down sideways in sheets now. If it fell hard enough that it streaked her cheeks, was it really crying?
Emma
She did not want to go to her grandparents’ for dinner. But her Grammy Jane was insisting they needed a family “gathering.”
“None of us wants to go,” her father admitted. “It’s pointless to try to bring everyone together.”
“Perry.” Her mother didn’t need to remind him to curb his ire for Emma’s sake. Little did her grandparents know what had gone on with her in the last week. She was pretty sure none of the family did, if her father had had his way. While it had been fast-traveling news in their private community and among the teenage residents, Emma was pretty sure no one would have been rude enough to walk up to her grandparents in the local market and ask what they thought of their granddaughter’s trending behavior. Emma cringed at the thought. Honestly, she wasn’t sure which would be worse: their finding out or the fact that her father seemed determined to keep what his daughter was going through a big dark secret. Because, really, what did that say about her?
Something in her father had shifted since the accident, but even more so since the incident at the party. He was angry. Not so much at her. But at everything. And for the first time in her life, she was worried about her dad.
Suddenly her father hated the Club. His precious, prestigiousClub where he spent all of his free time in. Where he golfed, ran fundraisers, hosted balls for the adults and barbecues for the community. Her father was more tied to that Club than he was their own home. And now she, all by her well-behaved, perfect-GPA, boring little self, had gone and ruined it for him.
The clubhouse board had “postponed” her camp counselor position until it could be “reviewed.” Whatever that meant. At first Emma was fine with it—the last thing she wanted to do was face those people. Amanda Hastings, whom she was pretty sure had taken that photo and first shared it—oh, she could imagine Amanda blaming the wildfire spread of the photo and the subsequent gossip on others. “What? I only showed it to like one person.” It didn’t matter. Amanda had lit the match and dropped it. Then stepped away to watch it burn.
Emma didn’t care about Amanda Hastings. But she did care about her boss. She’d worked hard at camp, and she could tell he noticed and appreciated it. Most of all, she couldn’t fathom facing her campers. While she doubted that any of the little kids knew (their helicopter parents surely would have shielded them from the sordid news of their beloved Miss Emma), she knew kids were smart. A favorite counselor doesn’t just go missing. They would know something was up, and they would ask her point-blank. And the thought of looking into their earnest expressions and lying was almost as bad as their knowing. She loved those little campers. And even if they didn’t know why she’d left, she’d left them. Without a goodbye. Or an explanation. She’d let them down.
Her parents had taken her phone away. “This is for your own protection,” they’d told her, sitting at their kitchen island. “Until we get our arms around this.” (“This” was what her parents were calling it now. “We have to deal withthis. Thiscannot ruin oursummer. I’m going to call GW University to discussthis.” Emma wished they’d just call it what it really was—a shit show.) While they may not have meant it as punitive, having her phone taken away felt like it. Emma had no contact with the outside world. Which was fine with her at first. She didn’t want any reminders of the firestorm on her social media accounts. But as the days passed, one blurring into the next in a level of hazy boredom she’d not known existed, she missed her phone. At odd times she’d find herself reaching for it, searching the house. Her fingers twitching with muscle memory at tapping the screen. Eventually she turned back to her first love: books. Books couldn’t betray you. And books let you escape, without consequences.
Before her phone was taken away, she’d gotten one text from Alicia. “I can’t believe what you did.” Emma had it coming. She’d been a little hard on Alicia this summer. Alicia may have been boring and judgmental. She may have frowned at Emma’s hanging out with Sully and the others. But that didn’t make her wrong. Alicia was just being Alicia; her usual play-it-safe self. But she was also loyal. And patient. And, Emma prayed, forgiving. Because Emma had used her the night of the party. And then she’d turned her back on her friend, choosing to stay at the party just so she could have the chance to hang out with Sully. And look where that landed her.
Sully was the one question mark. After the accident he was one of the first people who reached out to her. But now—standing right next to her with his own shirt off in that damn photo she wished she could erase from her memory—he’d taken none of the heat she had. She’d heard her father shouting about it downstairs the night before when he came back from the Club meeting. “That McMahon kid works at the camp, too! Did you know that? But he hasn’t been fired! No one’s said a damn thing about him.”
Emma wasn’t stupid. Of course, her being photographed in her bra and panties was more lurid than a boy with his shirt off. But still—there was a double standard. The one her parents had taught her about and talked to her about her whole life. Women didn’t get paid the same as men for performing the same job. But when something scandalous happened, women sure took the brunt of the blame. How many headlines of that nature had she heard in the last year, especially in the wake of the #MeToo movement? No matter what happened to a woman, there were questions aimed to disable her credibility: What had she been wearing? How much did she drink? Why was she even there in the first place? The implication being that somehow it always came down to her fault. This summer Emma had found herself in her own headline. And beyond the shame and guilt, it was having repercussions all over the board.
The picture had not hurt anyone, except herself. It might prevent her from working at the camp, a job she desperately missed. And it might keep her from attending the GW University summer program, which she’d worked hard for a long time to get into. As if those weren’t bad enough, it had cost her what she thought might be her first real relationship. What a fool she’d been. She was the laughingstock of Lenox. Sully McMahon wouldn’t want anything to do with her now.
Emma was wrong. The summer had not turned out to be promising; it had been one of ruin. Of keeping secrets to protect someone you loved. And of taking stupid chances for someone you thought you might. Look where it all had left her.
The realization kept her awake at night, tossing and turning in her bed until she had to sneak downstairs to her parents’ liquor cabinet, where a few swallows would finally ease the sharp edges in her mind. So she could sleep just a little bit. And get through another day. Even if it meant numbing herself in order to do so.
Phoebe
She’d not spoken to Rob once since the day before in his office. And certainly not when he came home to her parents’ house that night after work and sat down at the table as if nothing was wrong. They’d crossed paths, giving each other a wide berth all night. Business needed tending to. But she’d be damned if she was going to look at the man.
Jane had raised her eyebrows in the kitchen, as they washed dishes. “Is everything okay? How did Rob’s presentation go?”
Phoebe scrubbed the pot in the sink, not looking up. “Rob has some news about that, in fact.” She could include him without directly addressing him.
“Oh? Good news, I hope?” Jane asked, turning to face her son-in-law, who paused as he corralled Patrick and lifted Jed onto his hip before bath time.
He blinked like a deer in headlights, waiting for Phoebe to rescue him. Well, he could wait. “We got the deal. We signed the papers today,” he said, finally.
“That’s wonderful!” Edward stood and clapped Rob on the back while Phoebe banged the pot around in the sink. It almost hurt seeing her father’s enthusiasm. He loved them all so much, and he’d be crushed if he knew the rift that had grown between them. But Rob had drawn a line in the sand.
That night she lingered on the couch downstairs, flicking aimlessly through television channels. She let Rob do the lion’s share of putting the boys to bed. He didn’t complain. Only once did he come out and looked over the upstairs railing. “Are you going to kiss the boys good night?”
Without comment, Phoebe had tromped upstairs, kissed their freshly shampooed heads (which almost made her cry), and tromped right back down to her spot on the couch, which was still warm. When she got bored, she fished her “House Ideas” folder from her bag and flipped through it. Pictures of tiles. Measurements for floor spaces. Crown molding. Appliance cost sheets. Page after page of things she’d lovingly collected that would now never come to fruition. When she grew too depressed to look at another image, and she was sure Rob would be asleep, she slipped wordlessly up into her dark room and under the sheets. She pressed herself to the edge of the mattress, which was hard to do when sharing a full-size, and kept her back to Rob. She almost jumped when he whispered, “How long is this going to go on?”
When she didn’t reply—she just couldn’t—Rob got up and took his pillow with him. He didn’t come back. She’d lain awake, frozen with anger, most of the night. Her house was slipping away. They were completely out of money. How had they ended up here?
Now, as she helped her mother prepare for the big family dinner she’d arranged, Phoebe poured herself a glass of white wine and tried to focus, despite the fact that she was exhausted and had no idea where Rob and the boys were. When she’d awakened that morning after falling into a fitful sleep sometime around dawn, his car was gone, and she had no idea if he’d slept in the house or somewhere else. After breakfast he’d shown up and wordlesslycollected the boys. “Where are you going?” she’d asked, starting to panic. Rob was never like this. “We’re going to the field to kick the ball around.” That was four hours ago, and she’d not heard a peep since. But her mother, who smelled strife and had the good sense to keep her beak out of it for now, was keeping her busy, if not entirely distracted.
