She didn’t have time to build fear for what actually happened next.
They arrived back at the dock. Everyone piled out and padded back toward the bonfire, where several people drank and partied around the flickering flame. Jennifer collapsed alongside Olivia and Camilla and grabbed several pretzels from a bag.
“Where’s Mila?” Camilla asked.
She rose from the sand and peered out through the darkness. Mila remained near the dock, her hands on either side of her skull. There was something about her stance that told Jennifer: something was wrong. Something was terribly wrong.
Suddenly, Mila let out a wild, horrible scream.
“MICHELLE!”
Immediately, Jennifer, Camilla, Olivia, and Amelia raced toward the edge of the waves to join Mila. In those frantic seconds, Jennifer forgot to breathe. When she arrived beside Mila, she gasped for breath.
“What’s going on?” Jennifer demanded. Her tongue tasted like sandpaper.
All the blood had drained from Mila’s cheeks. She collapsed and wailed, “MICHELLE! Where is she? Did she get off the boat? Was anyone watching Michelle?”
Jennifer whipped around to look at the bonfire. With all her might, she prayed to find Michelle seated next to Max at the bonfire. She prayed to find that beautiful face—her identical face—reflecting the firelight.
But Max stood near the bonfire alone with a beer in-hand. “What’s up?” he called.
“We can’t find Michelle!” Olivia cried.
Max ruffled his blonde curls. “What?” He staggered toward them. “She probably just ran into the bushes to pee.”
Olivia rushed toward the bushes and hollered Michelle’s name. Joel appeared beside Jennifer, his eyes like big saucers.
“We can’t find Michelle,” Jennifer whispered. She could hardly hear her own voice.
“We’ll find her,” Joel affirmed. He whipped back to report to the others at the bonfire that they needed help.
But Jennifer, Mila, Camilla, and Amelia all turned their bodies toward the whipping winds off the Nantucket Sound. They felt the truth of what had happened like an enormous weight upon their chests.
“She didn’t. She couldn’t have,” Camilla breathed.
“She was wasted,” Mila said. Her voice broke.
Jennifer collapsed in the sand after that. All she remembered of the next moments were more screams and yells. Someone—probably Joel—lifted her up and forced her to sit by the fire. Moments later, there were police sirens; then, there was the sound of her father’s voice. As police chief, of course, he’d arrived at the scene first.
“Jen? Jen, what the hell happened?”
His anger was frightening enough to make Joel volatile in return.
“She’s been through enough!” he cried to the older man.
“Just get them all out of here, Joel. Make yourself useful,” Officer Conrad growled. “You idiot kids. You don’t know what the hell you’ve done.
As the hours passed at a snail pace, it became the longest night of Jennifer’s life. She, Joel, Camilla, Mila, Olivia, and Amelia sat in her house with wide, sober eyes. The girls’ mothers arrived soon after they did and did their best to keep everyone together while Ariane remained upstairs. She alternated between screams and cries and then moments of complete, horrible silence. To Jennifer, the silence was much worse than the sound. At least with the sound, she knew her mother remained on this planet. In the silence, she felt she’d lost both of them.
When Jennifer looked back on that night, later on, she realized that she’d never had any degree of hope that everything would come out all right.
Michelle Conrad’s body was discovered off the coast of the Nantucket Sound, just north of Edgartown, the following morning at six-thirty.
When they received the phone call, Carol answered it and immediately fell to her knees. All the blood drained from her cheeks. In turn, all of the girls fell into a state of unadulterated shock. Jennifer was the only one who didn’t cry. Joel held her tightly against him as she trembled and shook.
Her hand was splayed across her stomach as she quaked; a memory of one of her and Michelle’s last conversations permeated through the back of her mind.
Michelle had known there was something up.
She’d seen into Jennifer’s soul.
And now, Michelle was gone.
People always said that change happens in a flash. Even still, the amount of change that flung itself out before Jennifer in the wake of Michelle’s death was enough to make her head spin. Her devastation was so complete that when she finally did take that pregnancy test days later and witnessed that second pink line across the eye of the stick, she hardly felt a thing.
She, Olivia, Amelia, Mila, and Camilla stood latched together near the coffin at the funeral. Their hearts seemed to beat as one, even as one of their own lay lifeless before them. What had happened had changed each of them for good, and the mechanisms of the accident had also shattered any illusion of safety and comfort and love within the tight-knit Edgartown community. Everyone looked shadowed and sad and strained.
For several months, Jennifer’s mother closed up the Frosted Delights Bakery. Her father took a leave of absence from the police department. When she finally confessed her pregnancy to them, her father was drunk and her mother had only a slight smile. “Straight from high school to motherhood,” her mother had clucked as she’d scraped a dinner plate clean. “I don’t know if I would have done it that way, but I guess you can’t always plan these things. Good thing Joel is a good man.”
Maybe it would have bothered Jennifer to be labeled as “that pregnant girl” in her high school in other years. In the wake of Michelle’s death, she found she didn’t care at all. People didn’t whisper about it; she wasn’t labeled any kind of “slut.” She was just the sad remnants of her twin, Michelle Conrad. People wished her and Joel well.
One month before graduation, and approximately five weeks before Jennifer’s son was born, the five remaining Sisters of Edgartown booked a suite at the Sunrise Cove Inn in Oak Bluffs as a final celebration of their youth.
It had been eight months since the accident.
They hadn’t recovered at all from the event. Mila still woke up screaming some nights, as she blamed herself the most. “I was the one who knew just how drunk she was,” she whispered so often. “I should have had my arms wrapped around her. I don’t know what I was thinking.” The other girls had fallen into after-school activities or fallen into relationships, anything to get their minds off Michelle.
“I can still feel her with us,” Jennifer whispered that night at the Sunrise Cove Inn. She had her legs splayed out in front of her to allow for her big pregnant belly to roar up from her legs.
The other girls exchanged glances. Jennifer could almost sense what they wanted to say: We still feel her here too, because you look just like her.
Camilla confessed that she felt the five of them had drifted apart that year. “When I wake up in the morning, sometimes I worry that we won’t find a way back to one another. I worry that losing Michelle made us lose each other for good.”
It was agreed that they couldn’t let this happen. Olivia joked about a blood pact—which Mila loved, saying, “Let’s do it. Why the hell not? You four are the greatest people I’ve ever known in this life. By doing this, we’ll seal our sisterhood in blood this time. Nothing can come between us.”
Tenderly, they sliced the tips of their thumbs. Bright red blood oozed in light droplets down their palms and onto their wrists, just as they pressed their thumbs together and then smeared their prints on a piece of official-looking paper from the Sunrise Cove Inn.
On the paper, Jennifer was the one to write:
The Sisters of Edgartown pledge to honor, care and love one another all the days of our lives. There is no greater nor more powerful oath than this. Together, we will build a kind of forever we can all stand on. This, we promise.
Each wrapped their thumbs with band-aids that Ca
milla had in her purse from the hospital. They then signed their names at the bottom of the page and blinked down at what they’d created. Slowly, they drew their arms over one another. They were linked, all five of them, with heavy hearts for the sixth one that had now traveled to heaven.
In the next month, they would graduate; Jennifer would have her baby, and they would begin the rest of their lives.
Only with one another by their side could they truly make it through.
Chapter One
November chill crept through the windows of the second-floor corner office. Jennifer Conrad tugged her silver sweater around her neck and gazed out across Edgartown’s Main Street, with its delightful old-world buildings, its flickering American flags, and its little, quaint shops. Christmas shoppers bustled down the street, dusting themselves with the snowfall, and the sun cast everything in soft, grey and orange light.
“She just sent over the photos, Jen.” This was Jennifer’s intern, twenty-year-old Samantha, who she’d just hired on to handle some of the heftier projects at her social media firm. “Do you want to go through them?”
Jennifer turned and delivered a sterling smile to the girl, who was almost exactly half her age. “Ursula managed to send photos over in time? I can hardly believe it.”
Samantha giggled. “She sent a message along with them that she already drank three drinks out of coconuts just today. Must be nice to be relaxing on a tropical island!”
“She really knows how to rub it into the rest of us, doesn’t she?” Jennifer said. She returned to her office chair, sat, and clicked open the new message from Ursula, a very famous A-list actress, a woman who’d only just gotten married on Martha’s Vineyard about a week before. The wedding had been called “Martha’s Vineyard wedding of the century.” The wedding planner, Charlotte Hamner, was an acquaintance of Jennifer’s, and when Ursula had demanded better social media coverage, Charlotte had sent Ursula her way.
“I was thinking we could post two photos a day, along with ten Instagram stories,” Samantha said primly. “She and her husband have plenty of activities planned over the next few weeks. They even sent over the itinerary.”
“I see,” Jennifer said as she clicked through the email. “Wow. They’ve rented a sailboat?”
“For the entire week,” Samantha affirmed. “As long as they take good shots, I think we’ll have a lot to work with.”
Jennifer grinned as she assessed the photos Ursula had sent thus far of her adventures. The trim and gorgeous, model-like twenty-something sat with her NBA-famous husband on the beach, each with fruity pink drinks. In another photo, they kissed with the backdrop of the sunset.
Samantha sighed languidly. “I don’t know how they got so lucky.”
“Tons and tons of money, Sammy,” Jennifer said with a laugh. “Let’s set up the next week’s worth of social media posts based on what they’ve already given us. Does that sound good to you?”
“Sure thing,” Samantha nodded. She flipped her blonde hair back behind her shoulders. “You have Friday night dinner with your parents, don’t you?”
“Good memory,” Jennifer said. She grabbed her iPhone to check the time. “I’ll have to leave in about thirty.”
At that moment, she received a text from her son, Nick.
Nick: Hey, Mom. Stacy has a bad cold, and I’m going to stay home with her to make sure she’s okay. I don’t want to pass on whatever these germs are to Grandma and Grandpa.
Jennifer heaved a sigh. “Shoot.”
“What’s up?” Samantha asked.
“Nick can’t make it to dinner. Apparently, his fiancé is sick,” Jennifer explained.
“Aw. You said he’s been so busy lately.”
“Yeah. We haven’t had much mother-son time. Not for a while,” Jennifer said. Her voice was somber and low. “I guess that’s what happens when your son is twenty-two years old and engaged. He’s built up a whole life of his own. I’m sure your parents feel the same about you.”
Samantha blushed. “I’m not engaged yet, but I think it’s coming soon. Mike and I talked about rings just last week.”
“Wow,” Jennifer breathed. She glanced down at her own left hand. When she’d yanked off the wedding ring a little more than a year ago, her ring finger had felt naked and strange. Now, it just felt like a finger.
Jennifer ensured that Samantha was prepared to handle the remainder of Ursula’s social media posts. She then grabbed her coat, buttoned it to her neck, and wrapped herself tightly in a scarf. She took the steps two at a time and burst out onto the bustling Main Street. Even at nearly forty-one years old, there was something about getting out of work on a Friday that reminded her of long-lost teenage days. Always, she and the other Sisters of Edgartown had been on the hunt for freedom.
Jennifer decided to walk over to her parents’ house. She pushed her hands deep into her pockets and eased through the streets, which were lined with glittering Christmas lights. All around, she heard laughter and bubbling conversation. Families looked at one another with bright eyes. Love seemed much heavier, much grander at Christmas.
And, naturally, at Christmastime, Jennifer found herself thinking all the more about Michelle.
Michelle had been gone over twenty-three years, which was even longer than the time she’d spent on earth. Over that time, Jennifer had had to grapple with the idea of being a “twin” without a twin. She’d had to wake up every day with the aches and trauma and horror of knowing that she’d been there when it had happened. Maybe she could have done something.
Why hadn’t they made sure she was all right?
We were such careless idiots. Always thinking we were untouchable. We couldn’t have known that any second, everything we’d ever known would fade away.
Jennifer’s phone buzzed. She lifted it to answer a call from Nick.
“Hey bud,” Jennifer said. “I’m sorry to hear about Stacy.”
“Ugh, yeah.” Nick’s voice sounded remarkably like his father, Joel’s, had twenty years before. The sound of it sent shivers of recognition down Jennifer’s spine. “I just wanted to call and say I was sorry again. I know we haven’t seen each other for a while. It’s my fault.”
Jennifer stopped to allow a family to pass in front of her. A woman in her thirties held onto the hand of a young boy, who spoke excitedly about his dinosaur collection. Her husband adjusted his baseball hat and flung an arm over his wife’s shoulder. They looked so comfortable, so at ease with one another.
They really could have been Jennifer, Joel, and Nick, years and years ago.
My, how everything changed.
“Don’t worry about it,” Jennifer told her son. “I know it’s been hard to be around Grandma and Grandpa lately.”
“It’s not like I blame them for that,” Nick said. “I know the holidays are hard on them. They’re hard on all of you.”
Jennifer was grateful that her son understood the density of their loss. Throughout his life, he’d heard endless stories of his Aunt Michelle. He could even tell some stories of her better than Jennifer could, now. His Aunt Michelle was something like a goddess figure for him. Jennifer had called her his “guardian angel” back when he’d been a child.
“You promise you’ll try to get over there next week for dinner?” Jennifer asked.
“Of course, Mom,” Nick replied.
“Great. I love you, kiddo. Tell that Stacy of yours to get well soon. We need her in tip-top shape for the wedding next year,” Jennifer said.
“I’ll let her know you’re counting on her,” Nick said with a laugh.
Jennifer appeared at the walk-way that led to her parents’ house. The previous week, she’d had Joel put up the Christmas lights: across the porch, over the top of the roof. They glittered a beautiful crystal color. Before she headed up, she took a photo of the house and sent it over to Joel, who was no longer required to attend Friday night dinners.
JENNIFER: Thanks again for putting these up. They look beautiful.
Joel wrote back only a split-second later.
JOEL: Anything for the Conrad family. You know that.
JENNIFER: You don’t want to come help me through another Friday night dinner, do you?
JOEL: Ha. Unfortunately, I have plans tonight. But tell Mom and Pop I miss them and I’ll see them soon.
Jennifer swallowed the lump in her throat as she snuck the phone back into her pocket. Since the divorce had finalized, she and Joel hadn’t spoken tremendously about their private lives. She’d briefly dated a guy over the summer, a sailor who’d been in town for a race, and Olivia had said she’d seen Joel out with a woman near the Joseph Sylvia State Beach.
Was it possible that Joel had found someone?
Jennifer forced the thought away. She appeared at the door, slipped her key through the lock, and then eased herself into the familiar world of her long-lost youth. The living room was off to the right of the foyer. The television blared an old game show, but nobody sat in front of it. The kitchen light in the back was on, and her mother’s voice rang out angrily.
“I don’t know where you think you get off doing that, John. You can hardly stand up straight!”
Jennifer’s heart sank. Slowly, she inched down the hallway toward the kitchen. As she went, there was a loud crash, the sound of a pot or a pan flung across the kitchen floor.
“JOHN!” Her mother’s screech frightened Jennifer so much that she jumped toward the kitchen doorway to discover the scene of the crime.
There, her father sat on the floor with his long legs stretched out in front of him. Her mother remained standing. She had her hands on her hips as the tears flowed down her cheeks. She looked at John as though he were a stranger.
It was obvious that John Conrad had had too much to drink—again. His face was strange and sallow; his eyes were watery. He blinked around him, confusedly, as though he wasn’t fully sure where he was.
“Mom?” Jennifer hardly recognized her own voice.
2142 Green Hollow RD (Sisters of Edgartown) Page 2
