Tighter (16 page)

Hitting the open road was an old joy. I’d set a bad precedent that first morning, using Miles’s sports car. Isa didn’t like riding her bike—outside of diving class, she was a bit of a house cat, and she definitely saw riding in her dad’s awesome convertible as the height of summertime chic.

Maybe getting her onto a bike, motivating us both into some kind of daily exercise routine, would be my next au pair project. We could use it.

Bush Road was serene, with a hush of wind in the grasses tossed wild along its borders. Hardly any cars passed me on my way. It wasn’t until I wheeled through the wrought-iron gate and leaned the bike against a massive oak that I felt a tug of anxiety. I’d found the address in the Bly directory, but I hadn’t called ahead. At the time, it had seemed too formal a thing to do.

Now I wasn’t sure.

Like so many of the island’s residences, 58 Shoal was imposing—a starchy Victorian with bay windows, protected by a stately gathering of beeches and silver lindens. I wanted to turn back. But I kept on going, hands balled in my shorts pockets, force-marching myself right up to the front door.

It had been nearly a week since I’d found Pete’s Facebook. I’d tried to forget about it. I’d focused on Isa. Yesterday, I’d broken the routine of the beach and pool by taking her out shopping in Little Bly’s tiny, arty center of town. Isa always blossomed under my full attention, which made me happy—especially since it also meant I’d hardly had to interact with Milo at all.

But then last night, I found myself wide awake and restless and, eventually, floating online again. Mulling over that last direct message from Jessie. So many secrets seemed to be encoded inside—like the references to Peter’s not showing up at the beach, her halfhearted defense against Isa’s story, and Pendleton and that maddeningly mysterious
She.
Plus there were other thistly details: Jessie’s using the word
luv
instead of
love
, the offhand assurance that she and Pete were “great together” when he wasn’t “an insecure paranoid” and the casual command that he should roll with her choices.

What choices? What was Jessie really saying here?

Also, the message wasn’t signed with Jessie’s usual
x
’s and
o
’s.

Finally, while she was clearly irritated with Pete for bailing on their plan to meet up at Green Hill, Jessie made no references to plans for the next day. Almost as if she couldn’t care less what he was up to. All in all, not very girlfriendy.

Or maybe I’d overanalyzed it. It wouldn’t be the first time I’d read too much into something.

A uniformed housekeeper answered on my first press of the bell.

“Hi.” I cleared the shyness from my throat. “I’m looking for Emory? I work over at Skylark. For the McRae family?” My own name seemed irrelevant.

“Emory’s here, but she’s napping,” said the housekeeper, with a very Connie-ish lilt of disdain in her voice.

“Oh.” I raised my eyebrows and drew up my lips in a reaction of mild astonishment, an expression Connie herself would have used—
napping? how lazy—
and the housekeeper’s face shifted with agreement.

“She really should be awake by now,” she said. “Why don’t you go on up and tap? Last door on the left.”

“Thanks.” I moved past her, into what seemed a particularly female kind of quiet, probably because of all the pastel fabrics and delicate furniture. Up the stairs and down the hall to her door, where I knocked softly.

“Noooo …” Emory groaned. “Go away, Mom. Thought you were at a flower show.”

“It’s Jamie Atkinson.”

Silence. Rustling. Then the door cracked open. Had she been crying? The skin beneath her tear-bright eyes was pink, but her face was tight with suspicion.

“Jamie. Nobody sent you here, did they?”

“Me? No.”

“Like Sebastian? To cheer me up? Because I don’t want any cheering up right now.”

“I promise, I wasn’t sent. But I can come back another time, if you want.”

Whatever flimsy excuse I’d planned for why I’d dropped in on her, Emory didn’t seem to need a reason. In fact, it struck me, as she opened the door wider for me to step through, that maybe she’d been hoping for company—anyone’s, even mine. “My room’s a pit these days,” she semi-apologized, with a sniffle.

“Don’t worry about it—mine always is.” I stepped in. Her room looked like it had been decorated by a messy mermaid. Lots of shiny purple and white wicker, conch shells and open fans. I picked up a desk photo of her and Jessie, arms slung over each other’s shoulders, both with tangled hair and smiles, caught in a moment of uncomplicated summertime radiance.

“Our last picture,” said Emory. “For months, it was too hard to look at. I only put it up again last week.”

Suddenly I was tremendously envious of that picture. Its beachy innocence needled at me. When was the last time I’d felt so carefree? When had Mags and I last enjoyed a laugh? I’d been sulking and depressed all spring, without the nerve to tell her—I’d made up a hundred different reasons (the twins graduating, my back injury, my C in European history) to disguise the secret, shameful one—and we’d been apart most of this summer. Would things go back to normal with us come fall? I hated to think that they wouldn’t.

I stuck the picture back on the desk, maybe too hard.

“Hey.” She swept it up against her chest and stared at me, her eyes narrowed. “What’s wrong with you?”

“Nothing. Sorry. Really.”

“Why’re you rubbing your back?”

“Oh. It’s this old injury. I didn’t think biking would make it worse. I was wrong, I guess.”

Emory placed the photo faceup deep in the corner of her windowsill, as if to guard me from attacking it. But then, studying me, she seemed to relent. “I’ve got OxyContin.”

“Yeah? I could use some.”

She disappeared into her bathroom and returned with the pill and a glass of water.

“Why do you have OxyContin?” I asked. “What’s wrong with
you
?”

“Left over from my wisdom teeth. But I just took one twenty minutes ago. Wisdom teeth are a joke, compared with this.”

“With what?”

“Aidan broke up with me. I thought everyone knew. I
know
Sebastian knows.” Emory shook back her hair, her cool-girl confidence hanging by a thread as she dropped back into her bed and buried most of herself in the duvet. “Sunrise Dry Cleaners is like the gossip nucleus of Bly.”

“He came by for a swim yesterday, and he didn’t tell me anything,” I answered honestly. “But he was only around for a little while to cool off.” Sebastian’s after-work visits, though they ended all too soon, were the highlight of my day. And he never gossiped. He’d spent most of yesterday’s visit helping Isa perfect her half gainer. “What happened?”

“You’ll have to ask Aidan. He says it’s for every reason in the world except Lizbeth Paley. But then why would he do it on the phone? Before the weekend? I’ll tell you why—because he wants to be single this weekend,” she answered her own question with a short, unhappy laugh. “Because guess who just broke up with her high school boyfriend?”

She did seem to want an answer. “Lizbeth Paley,” I ventured.

“Exactamundo.” She nodded toward the pill in my hand. “You better go for it. It’s gonna melt.” As I downed it, Emory watched, leaning back over her purple satin mermaid pillows, while I stayed perched upright like a sea horse at the end of her bed.

“I never liked Aidan,” I said, braving it. “He was always coming on to me, if you want to know the truth. And only because I look like Jessie. He was way too fascinated by the similarity; he made it uncomfortable for me every time.”

Emory flicked her fingers. “Those aren’t Pentagon secrets. Everyone knew about Aidan’s being hot for Jessie.”

“Oh.” I faltered. “But you and Aidan stayed together anyway.”

“Sort of. He goes to boarding school up in New Hampshire, I’m in Boston—maybe the distance made us closer. Especially when you just want someone to talk to late at night. By the time we saw each other this summer, it was like we just fell back in the habit of dating.” Emory had the apologetic-defiance thing down cold. I felt like she was ready to jump me with an answer no matter what question I asked.

“And you were still able to be friends with Jessie?”

Except that one. Emory seemed to droop a little. “With Jessie, it was more complicated. She was such a free spirit. It’s like getting mad at the wind for blowing down your sand castle. And she loved Pete most of all—he was her soul mate. She liked to have fun, but Aidan was just a diversion. He wasn’t anything to her.”

“So, since it wasn’t serious, that made it easier?”

“What can I say? Love makes you stupid.”

“True.” And while I couldn’t tell if Emory was referring to Aidan or Jessie, it didn’t seem too important to get her to clarify.
Love makes you stupid.
Yeah, I got that.

Emory’s wooziness level had seemed to up a notch as she now regarded me. “Not that you need to worry. Sebastian Brooks is hot and smart, with the added benefit that he’s actually a decent guy,” she said. “You could do way worse. He was off the market all last year. Fact is, none of the Little Bly couples from last year have stayed together. Well, except for Peter and Jess. I’m not sure that they count, though.”

“I’d heard Peter and Jessie had problems, those last days.” I went slow, feeling my way through this new opportunity window. This was, after all, why I’d come out here. To find out more. To learn the truth, or as close to the truth as Jessie’s best friend might know. “That they’d been fighting.”

“Really? Where’d you hear that, from Mother Hubbard? ’Cause that’s news to me.” Emory frowned skeptically. “According to Isa, they were planning to get married that weekend.”

It was like a brick drop straight to the foot. “Come on. That sounds like a joke.”

“Who knows? Jessie’d never clued me in, and she was pretty impulsive. Anyway, it’s the story Isa liked to tell, and she was so wrecked those first weeks after, we all figured she needed to believe in something nice—a happy ending in heaven.” Emory yawned. She was turning boneless. She stretched her hands languorously over her head and slipped deeper under the covers. “It’s not that incredible, if you knew Jess. She didn’t want to go to college, she hated academic stuff. Last summer, she told me she never wanted to leave Bly. Didn’t want to deal with senior year, period.” Emory’s bleary eyes suddenly met mine. “Oh my God. I’d never thought of it like this before, but Jess got her wish, right? In an ironic, tragic sort of way.”

“Married …” I unfolded the word, which felt opaque, like a heavy, itchy lace. I couldn’t believe it.

“That’s why they were taking the Cessna to North Carolina. They’d planned to fly into Raleigh and drive to Georgia. You can get a marriage license in Georgia without your parents’ permission. Or that’s what Isa said Peter had told her. Eloping is always like one of those dare-ya’s that kids talk about.”

Married. No, that didn’t make sense. Not according to Jessie’s last note, or anything that Isa had ever said to me. “Did Peter ever really want to? I mean, for the … right reasons?” I asked.

“You mean, did he just want to marry her money?” Emory yawned. “Maybe. Pete always acted like money meant nothing to him, but what a joke, we all knew better. And he sure didn’t say no when Jess picked up his tabs at Green Hill. He used to dress in Mr. McRae’s clothes. Watches, belts, blazers, all of it. And he sped around in McRae’s Porsche so much it seemed like his.”

“Was it obnoxious?”

“It could be grating. Pete loved to lord it over people. I’ll never forget his face when he told me about Aidan and Jess. The triumph in it.”

I cringed. “That sounds pretty low.”

“Oh, that kid could be the king of low. The quickest path to making himself feel superior was to make other people feel bad.” But Emory’s speech had slowed to a crawl, and her eyes had given up trying to stay open. Ha, those were the days, when one OxyContin could do that to me.

“Jessie didn’t care what other people thought. And Peter cared too much,” I said.

Emory nodded. “Yrmm … ’Swut brought them together, I guess.”

More than that, I thought. It was what had destroyed them.

TWENTY

The ringing wouldn’t stop.

It had begun on the bike ride home. Droning yet quiet, a fly hovering outside swatting range. Not quite enough to be a full-on menace, but bothersome just the same. I went right downstairs, joining Isa for some TV to filter out the sound, then fell asleep watching a ballroom-dance marathon. Rousing only after Connie stomped down and shook me awake.

Later that night after dinner, as Isa and I played one of her favorite games she’d taught me, called M.A.S.H. (Mansion-Apartment-Shack-House), the sound had accelerated from fly to worse. And while I knew that nobody else could hear it, that it was all mine, somehow it sounded as if the noise were filtering in from elsewhere; through the water pipes, the radiator vents, the chimney flue. While it was subtle as a squirrel chewing through paneled wood for a way out
she shall have music wherever she goes
, its persistence was killing me.

I screwed my pinkies deep into my ears. Isa was talking to me.

“Come on, Jamie!” With a snap in my face. “You’re not listening. Write it down: Veterinarian! Actress! Photographer! Doctor!”

“Okay, okay.” I recorded her wish list of professions on the lined notebook paper.

“And what’s wrong with your ears?”

“They’re just buzzy. Maybe from swimming. What about your husband’s profession?”

Isa got most of her top choices—in her M.A.S.H. life, she’d go on to enjoy a future as a Lamborghini-driving doctor with two kids and an acrobat husband, but she’d be living in a shack. “Oh, no! The shack ruins the whole life!” Her eyes blinked with outrage. “No matter how good everything else turns out, if I’m in that stinky shack, then everyone is laughing at me.”

“Maybe you and your husband are living off the grid. You know, making an anti-consumer statement.”

“Whatever. Name a single normal person who lives in a shack.”