Five houses down.
The Field House is five houses down. What, an eighth, a sixteenth of a mile? I could walk there. But I can’t. Because my first instinct was to tell Cass he screwed this up for me.
We finally had that conversation about what we were doing together. And doing this right. Is that gone now? Now that he kept something from me, and I left him without a word, or with all the wrong words, choosing my cousin’s side without a second thought?
I let the screen door slam closed as I finally head inside.
“Anything?” Viv texts the next morning at five.
“Nicky Nic Nic!?” Em asks, throwing back the covers of Nic’s bed as though he’s sure to find him there.
Grandpa Ben frowns over his raisin bran grapefruit. Instead of leafing through the newspaper while he eats, highlighting the yard sales, he focuses on the food, only occasionally flicking a glance to the screen door.
I try Nic’s cell again and again. It goes straight to voicemail every time. He never remembers to charge that thing, I repeat to myself, again and again. It’s in his pocket, dead. It’s not somewhere under water, somewhere where Nic jumped deep, somewhere he didn’t swim back up.
Mom doesn’t even ask. She gives me one swift look when she comes out of the bedroom, then, shoulders slumped, piles her supplies into her cleaning bucket, bumps it down the stairs to the Bronco.
Then she turns back.
“Shouldn’t you be dressed to get to the Ellingtons’?”
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“Mom. I can’t go today.”
Her gentle face turns as stern as it ever gets. “I didn’t raise you to let people down. Abandoning an old lady who counts on you is out of the question. Get to work, Gwen. That’s what we do when we don’t know what to do.”
So I go.
All morning I’m preoccupied, peeking out the front win-dow, looking across at the Tucker house, waiting to see Hoop’s truck, Nic hitching out of it, paint-covered, complaining, resentful, or sad or angry . . . just—alive.
Or the flash of a pink shirt or the gleam of a blond head.
But Cass, who was everywhere at the beginning of the summer, and especially in my days and nights lately, is nowhere to be seen. Half a dozen times my fingers hover over the buttons of my phone to call him. Finally, Mrs. E. reaches out her hand, exactly like one of the teachers at school, and confiscates it, saying briskly, “You will get this back at the end of the day. We agreed from the start that you would not be one of those texting teenagers, and I am holding you to our agreement. Now, I’m in the mood for some hot tea, so please make me a pot. You look as though you could use some as well.”
I go through the motions, the lemon thingie, the scalloped silver spoon . . . but the little silver creamer and the silver sugar bowl are nowhere to be found. Great. Somehow, from the moment I saw Henry and Gavin Gage doing . . . whatever they’re doing, I knew that the person who’d be there when one of those itemized things turned up missing was me.
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put them back in the cabinet afterward because she was so cross about having to do so. Really, that woman is unpleasant. I believe I should tell Henry to find another nurse.”
I open my mouth to speak, shut it, open it again.
“You look like a codfish, Guinevere, and are most distracted today. Your young man was also supposed to be pruning the boxwoods and I haven’t seen hide nor hair of him. Is there anything you need to speak with me about? I was young a thou-sand years ago or more, but I do remember. Sometimes better than I remember what happened yesterday, truth be told.” She reaches over and pulls out the cornflower-blue painted kitchen chair, gesturing to me to sit down, then takes one of my hands in her soft, wrinkled one.
“Does everyone just keep secrets and lie all the time?” I ask at last, my voice loud in the quiet kitchen. “Is that just how it goes?”
She blinks, her gray eyelashes fluttering in surprise.
“Because remember how you told me there were no secrets on Seashell? There are nothing but secrets on Seashell. Everywhere. It seems like this big open place . . . I mean, no one has fences and there are hardly any trees, people leave their win-dows open, some of them don’t lock their doors. But . . . but it doesn’t matter. There are all these walls and . . . No one knows everything that anyone is doing or they know and aren’t telling or they’re telling the wrong people. I just . . . I just want to get away from this place to somewhere else. Somewhere nothing like that.”
“My dear girl, I fear you will be hard-pressed to find such a 382
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place outside of the pages of a book. Even there, what are stories made of but secrets? Look at Lady Sylvia. If she had simply told Sir Reginald that she was the mysterious chambermaid with whom he’d spent that passionate night, the book would have been twenty pages long.”
I don’t want to think about Lady Sylvia and her sensuous secrets. I want what’s true.
Mrs. E. examines my face. “I never thought I’d see you pout, Guinevere. You don’t seem the type.” She reaches for the china cup, takes a sip of uncreamy, sugarless tea, makes a face. “I expect my job at this point is to come up with some of the wisdom one supposedly gains with age.” She taps her chin with her finger again. “This is difficult, as I seem to know less, and be far less sure of anything, in my late eighties than I was in my youth. Tea is dreadful without sugar, Gwen. Just add it from the canister, will you, never mind the silver service?”
“It’s okay, Mrs. Ellington. You don’t need to advise me.”
“How about this, dear girl? It’s about the best I have to offer.
Yes, it’s incredibly difficult for two people to be straightfor-ward with each other. We get afraid, embarrassed . . . we all want others to think highly of us. I was married to the captain for five years before he confessed to me that he had never captained a boat at all. That, indeed, boats made him seasick. I’d thought he’d had a bad experience in the war and that was why he didn’t want to go out on the water. But he was never in the Navy at all . . . but I digress. Perhaps, dear Gwen, you could think, instead of what a betrayal it is to be lied to, how rare and wonderful it is when two human beings can tell each other 383
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the truth.” She pats my hand, gives me her most joyous smile and then says, “Don’t pout, though. The wind may change and your face could be stuck like that.”
“Mrs. E., your son is taking your things and selling them.
That friend of his . . . he’s looked through your silver and your paintings and your chairs and I overheard them . . .”
I trail off.
I wait for her face to darken with rage—at Henry, or more likely me, the eavesdropping bearer of bad tidings. The person who tells things no one wants to know.
But instead, she laughs, deep from the belly, patting my hand again, and leaving me completely confused. “Yes, dear,”
she says finally, practically wiping tears from her eyes.
“You know?”
“Yes, Henry and I had a conversation yesterday. But even before that . . . I’m not a fool, dear girl. Gavin Gage is an old friend of Henry’s, but it was hardly likely he’d be popping by for a social call. Everyone on Seashell, if not all of Connecticut, knows Gavin is the man to go to when you wish to discreetly part with a useless family heirloom for a few useful dollars.”
“But . . . But . . . he was always sneaking around and mak-ing sure you were napping and worrying about whether you’d notice something was missing.”
“I’m so grateful I’m not a man,” Mrs. Ellington says. “We women are proud, but honestly, men! Yes, Henry and I had a long discussion yesterday when I asked him to show me the balance books to see if I could give you a little something for being such a help so far this summer. I’ve never seen such 384
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hemming and hawing, and finally he had to confess that he’d made some unwise investments and that we are now, like half the families on Seashell, asset rich and cash poor. As if I’d rather he work himself into a heart attack than sell that hideous ring that belonged to my mother-in-law.”
She tosses back the last of her tea, then says cheerfully, “It’s chilly today. Too cold to go to the beach. The ladies will no doubt be wanting to hear more of Lady Sylvia’s sins. Can you make some of Ben’s sauce for them? He sent Marco to me last night with a perfectly cooked lobster.”
Nic has been gone for a whole day of work now, edging into evening. Tony and Marco haven’t even called to check on him.
Manny must have said something. Mom goes to clean that office building in town. Because it’s Thursday, and that’s what she does on Thursday. Grandpa heads out to bingo night. Viv has a wedding rehearsal to cater for Almeida’s. Emory had speech and occupational therapy and he’s tired and wants to watch Pooh’s Big Adventure. So I’m sitting here with my little brother, staring blankly at the screen, remembering Nic and me always trying to figure out why on earth Pooh had a shirt but no pants. I want Nic. I want Cass. I want the things I thought were sure things. The thing I was thinking, finally believing, would be a real thing. Rewind. Redo.
“Hideout loves you,” Emory whispers, burrowing into my side, nudging his hermit crab into my armpit.
I’m crying over a stuffed crustacean.
I think this is what they call rock bottom.
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“What in God’s name is Emory doing awake at this hour?” Dad asks. I jolt awake. Myrtle groans. Dad is dragging in his laundry bag and tossing it in the usual spot.
I have no sense of time at all. It’s dark. Emory’s sitting beside me, eyes like saucers, still watching Pooh. Have I been asleep for minutes? Hours?
The digital clock reads 11:20. Nic’s been gone now for more than twenty-four hours. We can report him missing, now, right? Or does it have to be forty-eight? The fact that I am even wondering about this makes my stomach hurt.
Mom and Grandpa are at the table, flicking out cards. Gin rummy? Really? We all start talking at once, including Em, who gets up, walks over, and puts his arms around Dad’s waist, wailing, “Niiiiicky!”
Dad ruffles his hair absentmindedly, looking at Mom. “Luce, don’t get yourself into one of your swivets. Gwen, I’d think you’d be smarter. Ben, he’s fine. Calm down, all of you. I’ve got him. He’s at my house. He’ll be back tomorrow.” Tomarra.
Hard on the accent. Dad’s not as casual as he sounds.
Our voices are still overlapping, asking if Nic’s okay, telling Dad how worried we were, all about swim captain and “Why didn’t you call and tell us, Mike?” This last from my mother, in such a loud voice that Emory murmurs, “Be nice to Daddy.”
“It’s fine, Emmie,” Dad says. “I know all about the captain thing and the girl. He came over yesterday to Castle’s wicked messed up, but I had a busload of tourists getting ice cream, so I told him to head to my house, get ahold of himself and take this the way a man does.”
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