I flip through a magazine while Leslie works. I’m not sure why the interaction with Deanna unnerved me so much. It’s not as if I imagine Jack and Deanna cozy in bed reading through passages of her book together. That’s hardly Jack’s style. The idea of him tying anyone to the bedpost or getting spanked is absurd. Jack likes sex slow and steady. A few standard positions, his hands and mouth always confident, always sure of what to do. Nothing fancy, and that’s what I like about sex with Jack. I know every inch of his body and while some would find that boring, I’ve always found it reassuring.
It’s not that I think Jack and Deanna are sleeping together. In fact, seeing her today made me realize there’s nothing going on between them, except possibly a little crush on her part. What bothered me about Deanna today, I recognize now, is that it reminded me of sex with Jack, and for the first time since he left I realize how much I miss it.
Leslie has finished, and I glance up from the tabloid I’ve been staring at. “What do you think?” she asks.
The hair curves along the edge of my jaw in a sleek crop, elongating my neck. I look different. Younger, lighter, as if the hair has been weighing me down all this time. I run a hand through it. It feels soft and clean. Healthy.
“I love it,” I tell her. Only for a moment do I wonder if Jack will too.
When I leave the salon, I glance up at Connor’s apartment; the windows are still dark. Nearly everything in town is closing soon, the street nearly deserted. I feel an unexpected shiver of unease run through me, the realization that someone on this island has committed murder and may still be here, hidden in the shadows. I hope when they do find out who did it, it’s someone from off-island. It won’t make any difference to the poor girl who’s dead, but none of us likes to imagine that a murderer could be living here. Great Rock may be desolate and depressing at times, it may be suffocating in its smallness before it bursts into a chaotic carnival when summer comes, but the one thing we’ve always counted on is its safety.
At home I make myself a grilled cheese sandwich and settle on the couch. I scan Facebook on my phone while I eat this spare dinner. Jack hates social media, but the Great Rock Police Department has a page, so an alert comes up in my feed. The police are asking that anyone who talked with Layla Dresser the night of the festival come forward to speak with them. There’s a photo of Layla, the first one I’ve seen of her. She has shiny light brown hair and a big smile, but it looks like she’s hamming for the camera, like she might stick out her tongue or give the finger any moment. She looks like one of the summer girls whose parents come to Great Rock for July and August, or the college kids who come to make money. The summer girls are fresh-faced and fit, with long hair and slender legs, tanned from days at the beach. They get jobs waitressing or working at the yacht club and sometimes, like me, these girls stay on Great Rock, settle down and make a year-round life here. She looks like the type of girl I imagine Connor would meet one day. The post goes on to list the places she’d gone that night, first to Pete’s Porter House, then the Blue Crab, and finally to Moby Dick’s. She left alone, but never returned to her hotel.
I wonder if Layla was as aimless as Connor, idling away at a dead-end job, never thinking further ahead than the following weekend, or if she was in college or at the start of a career. Either way, it’s clear from the picture that she was still bright with possibility, her life snuffed out before she traveled either road very far. I think back to Connor, my unreturned calls, the one-line responses he’s sent to my text messages. He has nothing to do with her, other than both of them being in the same place at the same time, but it unnerves me to know she spent the last minutes of her life in such close proximity to my son. As if her tragedy might rub off on him somehow.
5
Evvy
There is comfort in chopping onions. I empty the bag of them onto the stainless-steel table and get out a cutting board. This is always the least favorite job of my staff, a menial and painful task that must be done. Today I’m making an onion soup for a small private dinner in Heron. The winter staff is just me and Daisy, and a small handful of other workers who help with events. It’s February, and the weddings, anniversary parties, and family reunions—my moneymaking events of summer—are far away. I must make do with these bits and pieces to carry us through.
With the first slice comes the pungent juice that begins to prickle my eyes. They’re yellow onions, far more potent than the milder reds I use in salads and sides. These have bite, and after half an onion, I already have tears streaming down both cheeks.
It’s a relief. The tears have been at bay for days now, but it was only a matter of time before they were released. Better this way than any other.
Ian hasn’t said much in the past few days. Well, this isn’t true. Ian is never quiet. He’s always talking. But he hasn’t said much about his visit to the police station the other night.
He returned home a few hours later, rumpled and tired-looking. He didn’t come into the living room where I was still on the couch watching TV, so I went into the kitchen.
“Are you okay? What happened?” I asked.
“No big deal, love. Nothing to worry about. I stopped for a drink on my way home. Settle my nerves.” He gave me his easy grin.
“But what happened? Why did they want you to come in?”
He poured himself a glass of water and stood by the sink, drinking it down in one long swallow. “I saw her that night. Chatted with her for a few minutes at the bar.” I raised my eyebrows at him. I don’t know why I was surprised. They wouldn’t have hauled him into the police station just because they happened to be at the same bar. “It was no big deal,” he went on. “She was sitting alone and I just talked to her for a few minutes. Asked her where she was from, what she thought of the island.” He came around and planted a kiss on my neck. “You know me. I could make friends with a mailbox.” He smiled, because this is our joke, and it’s true.
“Did you have dinner?” he asked. I hadn’t even cleaned up the lasagna that he was halfway through making. The noodles were sticky in the pot and the counter was still littered with scraps of cheese and dots of tomato sauce.
“No. Sorry.” I gestured to the mess. “Caroline came over. I was worried.”
“No need to worry, love.” He began to tidy the kitchen, dumping out the remnants of the meal and wiping down the counters. All that food wasted. “Are you hungry?”
Though it was nearly nine, I hadn’t had anything other than the glass of wine with Caroline and the second one I drank alone. “I guess.”
“I’ll make us some omelets.” And though I wanted to know more, though there were still so many questions to ask, I was quiet. Because as much as Ian likes to talk, often he’s not saying much at all.
I turn on the radio as I chop. The music on the local folk station is a peaceful hum in the background, giving some coziness to the industrial kitchen I rent. Despite its stainless-steel sterility, there are few places more comforting to me than the headquarters of Petunia’s Pantry, the catering company I started four years ago. I only wish I’d known enough to create this tiny oasis earlier.
After high school I stayed on the island because Cyrus was here, and because I knew he would propose if I did. Then Daisy came along and Serena a few years later, and my days became full of the endless routine of diapers and naps, sticky fingers always reaching for me, needing more and more and more. Cyrus didn’t see it. He couldn’t understand that it felt like my world was closing in, all doors and windows sealed up tight, just me and the girls trapped inside a tiny airless room.
I was hard on them. I yelled. I cried. Sometimes when I walked into a room, I could feel the air shift, the three of them holding their breath, waiting to see what kind of mood I was in, who I would be today. I hated myself then, but I hated them more for making me feel that way, their love and my love for them leaching me dry of everything else.
And then Serena died, and the whole world fell apart.
I started ta
king catering jobs when Daisy went to high school. Though I sometimes worked as waitstaff for an event, I was always more comfortable in the kitchen. It never occurred to me I could have my own business, that I was smart enough to even get it off the ground, much less make it successful.
Ian was the one who had the idea, doing research here and there about catering on the island, sending me contacts, pushing me. He was the one who believed in me when no one else did, when Cyrus made jokes about my cooking early on in our marriage, when even Caroline wondered if I knew what I was getting myself into. Ian was the one to give me the money to get started, the one who still throws a little extra at the company every few months, despite his own modest income. Ian saw something inside me that no one else did. I owe him for giving me a second chance—at love, but also at life.
I feel terrible for that girl on the beach, just a little older than Daisy, but I already hate her a little bit too. Her death is like a rain cloud blotting out the sun, dense and gray. I know this is not over for us. We’re all connected here on Great Rock, and there’s no way this won’t touch every one of us somehow, showering us all with its silent and toxic drops.
6
Daisy
On Tuesdays and Thursdays I ride the boat to the mainland for classes. I pay the sixty dollars to get a round-trip ticket for my car, but even this monthly cost is cheaper than what I would pay for full-time tuition and board. It’s my second semester and I’m taking two classes this term. I can’t think too much about how long it will take me to finish my degree this way. It’s like drops of water in a paper cup when you’re trying to fill a bucket.
On the boat home Tuesday night, I treat myself to a coffee and a chocolate chip cookie and find a booth in the corner to study, hoping I won’t bump into anyone I know, understanding that this is impossible.
I’ve just opened a textbook when my phone buzzes on the table. It’s Connor. Finally. I haven’t heard from him since his text on Sunday. You look so studious, the text says. You’re working too hard. I look around the half-empty boat and catch him sitting in a single chair on the other side of the snack bar, phone in his hands, eyes on me. He stands and walks over grinning, a black backpack slung over his shoulder. He sits down across from me.
“Okay if I disturb your study session?”
“Where the hell have you been?”
He reaches across and breaks off a piece of my cookie, pops it in his mouth. “I told you, I’ve been off-island.”
“I know, but where? Why?”
“Chill, Daze.” He looks terrible, pale and too thin. He has several days’ worth of soft blond stubble on his chin. “I went to Boston. Stayed with Pete and Nate. I just needed to get out of here for a few days.” Pete and Nate are friends from high school who go to Northeastern. I didn’t think he talked to them often.
“You could have told me that,” I say.
“Who are you, my mother?” Even though I’m riding him, there’s affection in his voice.
“No, but you should call her too.” I swat his hand as he breaks off another piece of cookie.
“Yeah, yeah, I will.” He digs in his back pocket and pulls out his wallet, opens it and then shoves it back in his jeans. “You have any cash? I’m starving.”
I roll my eyes and pull out my purse, fish out a ten, which I pass to him. “Where’s your money?”
“Blew it all on booze and babes,” he jokes, then gets up and goes to the snack bar. When he comes back, he has a bowl of clam chowder and three bags of oyster crackers. The soup steams between us.
“Did you check out UMass Boston while you were there?” For months I’ve been begging him to apply. It won’t be long before I have my Associate’s from Cape Cod Community College, and I plan on transferring to a four-year college to finish my degree. I imagine us leaving the island together, moving to the city and sharing an apartment. This fantasy leaves out so much—Connor’s apathy, the money it will cost, not to mention that we’re not actually a couple. Yet some days, this dream is the only thing that gets me through.
He blows on the soup. “I wasn’t exactly on a college tour.” He takes a spoonful. “That’s hot,” he says, then goes ahead and takes another bite.
“What are you waiting for?”
“The engraved invitation, I guess. The full scholarship that would cover all my expenses. Once that arrives, I promise, I’m out of here,” he says bitterly.
“You’re so full of it.” My tone is more forceful than I intended, surprising us both, but I mean it. It didn’t occur to me till midway through my junior year that I might want to go to college, and by then my transcript was a sad record of low Bs and Cs. It wouldn’t have mattered anyway, because my father had been stretching his paycheck to cover the house that my mother and I still lived in, as well as his portion of Gina’s mortgage. Petunia’s was just in its first years and there was nothing left over in the bank. College wasn’t an option. But Connor had good grades for most of high school and that was without even trying. He could get into college if he wanted to, and his parents would pay for it. If he’d only make an effort.
“Drop it, Daze. I’m not in the mood.” Connor looks down at his soup. He knows I’m disappointed in him. More than that, I’m afraid for him. He doesn’t tell me, but I hear things. I know who he’s been hanging around with. Keith and the rest of his crew. Guys he wouldn’t have dreamt of hanging out with in high school because they had nothing in common. It scares me to think they have something in common now.
“You hear about that girl who got killed?” I ask. I feel like Keith, using this tragedy as a conversation piece. Something flickers across his face, but it’s gone before I can get ahold of it.
“Yeah. It’s awful.” His knee bounces rhythmically under the table. The incessant tapping combined with the rocking motion of the boat makes me dizzy. Connor’s eyes dart around as if he’s worried someone might overhear our conversation.
“Were you there?” When he doesn’t answer, I add, “At the festival?”
“Yeah, everyone was.”
“They called Ian into the police station. For questioning.”
He squints his eyes in confusion. “Why?”
“I don’t know. He must have been talking with her that night. Keith told me.”
“Since when do you talk to Keith?” He balls up his napkin and plastic cracker wrappers and stuffs them in the empty paper bowl.
“Since you don’t return my calls,” I snap.
He ignores this. “Did your mom say anything about it?”
I shake my head. “No, but I didn’t ask.” Ian and I have a cautious relationship. I don’t like him, but I know my mom needs him. She’s never been the most stable person, but with Ian around, she’s changed. I don’t know what would happen to her if he weren’t around anymore.
“I wouldn’t worry,” Connor says. “They probably brought in anyone who saw her that night.” His phone beeps, and he removes it from his pocket to read the text.
“Yeah, maybe. Did you see her?”
“Not that I know of.” He doesn’t look at me, his eyes on his phone.
“Who’s that?” I tip my head to the screen.
“Just my mom.” He shoves it back in his pocket.
“You should call her.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know.”
Over the loudspeaker is the announcement that the boat is pulling into Osprey harbor. Connor rises and throws away his trash, and I gather my books together. I didn’t even start the chapter I was supposed to read. I’ll have to study later tonight.
“Can I grab a ride home?” Connor asks.
“Sure.” We head for the stairwell and make our way through the lower level of the boat, weaving between the tightly packed cars. It’s cold down here, the icy air skimming off the water mingling with the diesel smell of the boat. I unlock the car, and we sit in the quiet darkness and wait for the boat to port.
Connor puts his hand on the back of my neck. “Sorry I was MIA. I just needed a littl
e time.”
“Are you okay?” He’s not okay, though I’m not sure he even realizes it.
“Yeah, I’m fine.” He gives me a half-smile. There’s more I want to ask, but I know “fine” is all I’ll get. Before I can press any harder, he leans in and kisses me, and I forgive him for everything. The car behind gives a toot and I pull away from Connor, realizing that it’s our turn to exit the boat.
“Want to hang out later?” I ask. His hand has moved from my neck to my knee, and I wish I didn’t like it there so much.
“I can’t. I’ve got some stuff I need to do.”
“Like what?” I should be studying, but I’d rather be with him.
He squeezes my knee, sending a little ripple of pleasure up my thigh. “Just stuff. Maybe tomorrow, okay?”
“Sure.” I love Connor, but I love the idea of getting out of Great Rock at least as much as him. Despite my fantasy of us leaving together, I worry that being with Connor might root me here forever. I drive out of the boat’s hold and back onto Great Rock, home again for another night.
7
Caroline
When I get home from Tuesday night’s Board of Directors meeting at the library, Connor’s car is in the driveway.
“Con?” I call as I go inside, surprised that the laundry isn’t chugging away with his clothes.
“Yeah,” he calls from upstairs.
His bedroom door is closed, and I knock once before going inside. Connor’s sitting on his bed, zipping up his old guitar case. He gives me a weak smile when I come in.
“Hi, honey.”
“Hey, Mom.” He looks tired, and he hasn’t shaved in days.
“What are you doing here?” I ask, pleased to see him.
“Nothing, just thought I’d stop by.”
Everybody Lies Page 4
