Текст книги "Summer Rental"

Автор книги: Mary Kay Andrews

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Текущая страница: 15 (всего у книги 27 страниц)

27

The girl who answered the door at Ebbtide looked only vaguely like the Ellis Sullivan Ty had seen on the beach and on Sunday night at Cadillac Jack’s.

Ty was no fashion expert, but it looked to him as though Ellis had been transformed. She was wearing some kind of lacy, low-cut black lingerie-looking top with a cobwebby jacket sort of thing over it. The hem of her skirt barely brushed the tops of her knees, and she was wearing some ridiculously high heels. Her hair was in some kind of sophisticated updo, with earrings that nearly brushed the tops of her nearly bare shoulders.

She opened the screen door and stepped onto the porch, giving him a shy smile. “Hey,” she said.

He knew he was staring, but he couldn’t help himself. “You’re beautiful,” he blurted. Mental headslap. Of course she was beautiful. Ellis Sullivan was beautiful in those goofy cupcake boxers, with her hair in a lopsided ponytail. But tonight, she was different. He’d have said she looked spectacular, if he were the kind of guy who ever used the word “spectacular.”

Ellis blushed. “Julia and Dorie double-teamed me,” she said. “I feel sorta like Cinderella. This is all borrowed finery. The only thing I’m wearing that’s my own is my panties.” She gasped and blushed even harder. “Sorry. TMI again. You seem to have that effect on me.”

“Whatever you’re wearing, it’s working,” Ty said. He gestured down at the khaki slacks he’d so laboriously pressed and the starched white button-down shirt, which he’d found still in the dry-cleaner’s bag at the back of his closet, along with his navy blazer, which he hadn’t worn since the time when, in one last desperate attempt to rein him into the family fold, Kendra had dragged him to a cocktail party at her father’s country club. He’d even polished his best loafers until they shone like they hadn’t since the day he bought them. No socks, though. He had to draw the line somewhere.

“Sorry, but this is all my own stuff,” he joked. “Good thing Julia and Dorie aren’t here to see me.”

He took her hand and led her down the porch steps to the Bronco, which he’d washed and vacuumed earlier in the day. He’d even thrown away all the beer bottles and fast-food wrappers.

“Oh, they can see you, all right,” Ellis said, nodding her chin just slightly north. “They’re watching us from the window in Julia’s room.”

Ty glanced up, but all he saw was the slightest twitch of a curtain. “Let’s give ’em something worth watching,” he said, taking Ellis’s hand and kissing the back of it before he opened the car door and helped her in. Then he turned and waved, and the curtain twitched again. As he pulled the Bronco out of the driveway, he saw Ellis, glancing nervously in the rearview mirror.

*   *   *

He’d chosen a seafood restaurant in Duck, twenty minutes north of Nags Head. It was a tiny place at the end of a gravel road, at a marina overlooking the sound. It had weathered cedar-plank walls, a rusted tin roof, and a buzzing neon sign out front that said FISH FOOD.

“Don’t let the decor scare you,” Ty said, parking the car. “This is the best food on the Outer Banks.”

“This looks very nice,” Ellis said with a look of surprise after they’d been shown to their table at a window overlooking a long row of docks. “You know, before we came down, I sent away for the chamber of commerce information packet, and I even bought the Mobil Outer Banks travel guide, and not one of them mentioned this place.”

“You sent away for stuff?” Ty laughed. “Who does that?”

“I do,” Ellis said. “I don’t like surprises. And anyway, they usually have good coupons. You know, for, like, a free appetizer or dessert.”

“I thought all women loved surprises,” Ty said. “Anyway, you won’t find Fish Food in a restaurant guide. And I’m pretty sure they don’t give coupons. This is kind of a local place. Eddie, the chef, used to wait tables at a restaurant I worked at in high school. He’s got kind of a squirrely sense of humor, but he knows his way around the kitchen.”

The waitress came, and Ty asked Ellis if she wanted a drink. “I’ll have a Blue Dawg—you’ve got that on draft, right? And she’ll have…” He looked over at Ellis, trying to remember what she’d ordered Sunday night, at Cadillac Jack’s. “A cosmo, right?”

They chatted aimlessly until the waitress was back with their drinks and the menus.

“What’s good here?” Ellis asked, looking down at the grease-spattered photocopied sheet of paper.

She was sitting up very straight in her chair and was fiddling with the ribbon that seemed to tie her top together in the front. When she wasn’t trying to hike the top up to keep her breasts from further spilling out, she was tugging at the hem of her short skirt, which was a lost cause anyway. The skirt barely brushed the tops of her thighs, which were lightly dusted with freckles, as was her nose, or what he could see of her nose underneath the layer of sparkly powder covering it. Ty’s fingers itched to reach across the table and yank at both ends of the ribbons, just to see what would happen. Was that pink lace bra thing attached to the girdle-looking top she was wearing? He decided that would need further study.

“Ty? Oh my God, is that really you?”

He looked up. Kendra and Ryan were standing, waiting to be seated at the next table over. He felt the blood drain from his face. And now Kendra was actually coming over to their table, with Ryan, that fuckhead, trailing right behind.

Kill me now, Ty thought. Right here.

“It is you,” Kendra said shrilly. “All dressed up in your Sunday best.”

Ty Bazemore had been “raised right,” at his mother’s and grandmother’s insistence. Two years of cotillion, relentless etiquette drilled into him. You addressed your elders as “sir” and “ma’am.” You stood when a lady entered the room, and you greeted a gentleman by looking him in the eye, smilingly, with a firm handshake. Reluctantly, Ty stood. “Hi, Kendra,” he said, his face expressionless. He nodded in Fuckface’s direction. “Ryan.” He would not shake Ryan’s hand. If his mother had been alive, even she would have understood. If his grandmother had been alive, she would have applauded, or maybe smacked Fuckface across the face with her ever-present flyswatter.

“Hey, dude!” Ryan, clueless, held out his hand, but when Kendra shot him a withering glance, he dropped it back to his side.

“How are you?” Kendra gave him a hug, standing on her tiptoes, even in heels, to do it. He was enveloped in a toxic cloud of her signature scent, which, to him, smelled like overripe pineapples.

“Just fine,” Ty said, extending only a wooden, one-handed half hug. When she finally released him, he took a step backwards, just in case Fuckface got any ideas. He would throw away this blazer and shirt when he got home. If he got out of here alive.

“Really?” Kendra said, frowning. “You’re sure? I’ve been thinking about you a lot lately. Ever since we moved back. Did you know? Daddy finally talked me into joining the firm. Of course, I think he only did it because he knew he’d get Ryan as part of the package. A twofer, he calls it.”

“Great,” Ty said. “Congratulations.” If there was a bigger, more pompous asshole than Boomer Wilcox on the Outer Banks, Ty had never met him. Ryan and Boomer deserved each other.

“We heard you’re day trading,” Kendra said, her voice oozing concern. “I know that’s got to be tough in this economy, right?”

“It’s all right,” Ty said, managing to unclench his teeth. “You win some, you lose some.” He looked desperately around the room, hoping that something, somehow, would make this horror show grind to a halt. A lightning bolt, maybe. But he’d settle for a minor grease fire.

And now he saw Ellis, still seated, looking up at him, smiling expectantly. In his mind’s eye, he could see his grandmother’s flyswatter hovering at the back of his neck, just waiting to deliver a smack, should he forget his upbringing.

“Kendra, Ryan, this is Ellis, my, uh, friend.”

“Oh, hi,” Kendra said, her voice going up a decibel. “Alice?”

“Actually, it’s Ellis,” Ellis said. “With an E.”

“Hiya, Ellis,” Ryan said, automatically extending his hand. Ellis, who had apparently also undergone some rigorous training—and who, after all, had no history with Kendra or Fuckface—stood, smiled radiantly, and shook both their hands.

“Ellis is such an unusual name,” Kendra was saying. “I don’t believe I’ve ever met a woman named Ellis before. Are you from around here?”

“No,” Ellis said, “I’m originally from Savannah. My friends and I are visiting here for the whole month.”

“How did you happen to pick the Outer Banks for vacation?” Kendra asked. “I mean, of course, we adore it, but then, I grew up here.”

“It was sort of a compromise,” Ellis explained.

“Wonderful!” Kendra trilled. “Where are you staying? Here at Duck?”

“We’re staying down at Nags Head,” Ellis said.

Ty felt his scalp prickle at the mention of Nags Head. A slow dread started to work its way south. He knew what was coming, and he was powerless to stop it.

“Oh!” Kendra said. “Nags Head. That’s my old stomping grounds, you know. Mama and Daddy have Cedar Haven. Do you know it? It’s that huge, rambling, old pile of junk on the Beach Road.”

Ryan wrapped a proprietary arm around Kendra’s waist. “She calls it a pile of junk,” he said with a chuckle. “What she doesn’t tell you is that Cedar Haven is one of the original houses on Nags Head. There’s only about a dozen of ’em. The ‘unpainted aristocracy,’ they call them. It’s a showplace. Five thousand square feet, and it sits on an ocean-side double lot. Her grandfather built the first swimming pool on Nags Head there.”

“I think I know that house,” Ellis said excitedly. “It’s about a mile from where we’re staying. On Virginia Dare, right?”

Don’t say it, Ty pleaded silently. Do not go there.

“Where are you staying?” Kendra asked.

“The house we’re renting is kind of a dump,” Ellis confided. “I mean, it could be wonderful, but it hasn’t really been maintained in a while.”

Ty looked frantically around the dining room. The waitress was approaching with a basket of bread and a cruet of olive oil. Deliverance. He wanted to kiss her on the lips.

“Hey, listen,” he said. “Here comes our bread. We don’t want it to get cold. They have awesome yeast rolls here. Eddie makes them himself.” He pulled Ellis’s chair away from the table and practically shoved her into it. “Good to see you guys,” he said, giving Kendra and Ryan a dismissive nod.

Kendra gave him an odd look, but she allowed herself to be herded back to her table.

“They seem nice,” Ellis said, helping herself to one of the yeast rolls.

If you only knew, Ty thought.

Dinner was agony. He ordered for both of them, and he tried to act normal. But every time he looked at Ellis, he saw the table just behind her. Kendra and Fuckface, laughing, talking, their golden heads bowed together. Every once in a while, Kendra would see him looking, and she’d lean in closer, her hand hiding her mouth, whispering something in her husband’s ear. They were talking about him, he knew. Mocking him in his yellowing dress shirt and frayed college graduation blazer with the sleeves just a quarter inch too short. His stomach burned.

Their entrées took a lifetime to arrive. He couldn’t have said what he ordered. It was hot, and it was vaguely seafoodish looking. Somehow, he managed to choke it down. Ellis picked at her broiled swordfish, nibbling delicately at the steamed broccoli and the couscous on her plate.

At one point, the waitress appeared with a bottle of chilled wine. It was Moët & Chandon Nectar Imperial Rose; Ty knew the label well. Sixty bucks a bottle, and that was if you bought it at Harris Teeter. “We didn’t order this,” he said, pushing the wine bucket away.

“The lady and gentleman at that table there sent it over. With their compliments,” the waitress said.

He looked up, and Kendra gave him a little finger wave. The Imperial Rose was her favorite, and it had triggered many a fight when they were practically penniless first-year law students at Carolina. Their friends were all in the same boat, living on ramen noodles and Hot Pockets. When they had parties, they were glad to swill whatever rotgut was on sale. But Kendra, who said life was too short to drink bad wine, would appear with a bottle of her Moët & Chandon, paid for with the money Boomer had transferred into their checking account every month.

“How nice,” Ellis murmured. Ty couldn’t send the bottle back, not without making a scene. So he allowed the waitress to pour Ellis a glass, but he’d be damned if he’d touch the stuff himself. Instead he asked for another draft Blue Dawg.

He emptied the glass in a couple of long swigs. Ellis sipped hers slowly.

A dead, awkward silence fell over the table. He thought he’d averted disaster, but he’d been wrong.

The waitress came back to their table. She was a local, with purple-streaked blond hair and too much black eyeliner and a tattoo of an octopus whose swirling tentacles slithered all the way across her chest and probably cost more than the girl made in a week working for Eddie. She looked down at their half-eaten meals and shrugged, although she didn’t bother to pick them up. “Dessert?” she asked, putting a large black slate on a stand on the table. “Eddie’s got fresh peach cobbler with homemade lemon-basil gelato, and the cheesecake tonight is turtle track, which means it’s done with toasted pecans and butterscotch topping…”

Ty gave Ellis a questioning glance. “I don’t know,” she started to say.

“Just the check, please,” Ty said brusquely.

And of course it took her forever to come back with the check. Ellis sipped her wine and Ty drummed the tabletop with his fingers, determined not to look over at Kendra’s table.

Finally, the waitress brought the check. He was tucking the cash in the leather-bound check holder, his escape imminent, when out of the corner of his eye, he saw Ryan get up from his table and start to approach.

Ty tried to calm himself. Even Fuckface had a right to go to the men’s room, and he couldn’t get there without passing the table where Ty and Ellis had been seated.

But no, Ryan stopped right beside their table. Ty stood and pulled Ellis’s chair out, his back to Ryan, determined to make his escape unscathed, even if it meant ignoring Fuckface.

“Hey Ty, buddy,” Ryan said, putting his hand on Ty’s sleeve, leaning in, talking low, confidentially. Like they were old pals. “Look, Kendra and I were just talking. We saw the notice about Ebbtide in the legal ads. Kendra was saying Ebbtide’s been in your family as long as Cedar Haven’s been in hers. Helluva note, losing it after all these years. Thing is, we’re in the market for a place of our own. So maybe we could help each other out.”

Ty froze. Could this really be happening?

Ryan reached into the inner pocket of his sport coat and came out with a sterling silver monogrammed card case. Somewhere, in the boxes he’d never unpacked after moving back to Nags Head, Ty had an identical card case, although with his own initials monogrammed on it. His had been a wedding gift from Kendra’s mother, who was never noted for her originality.

Now Ryan was holding out a business card, casually, between his thumb and forefinger. “Gimme a call, will ya? No need to let the bank take Ebbtide.”

Ty dropped the card onto Ellis’s plate of half-eaten swordfish. He took Ellis’s hand and pulled her not so gently away from the table. Away from a restaurant called Fish Food. And Kendra and her fuckface new husband and their sixty-dollar bottle of pink wine.

28

Ellis allowed herself to be rushed out of the restaurant and practically slung into Ty’s Bronco. She managed to keep her temper tamped down for maybe five minutes. Then she exploded.

“You own Ebbtide?”

He winced, then nodded. “I do. For now, anyway.”

“And Mr. Culpepper? Our crusty-but-kindly landlord?”

Ty sighed. “You’re looking at him.”

“This whole time? I’ve been e-mailing you? Asking Mr. Culpepper about you? Complaining about you?”

“Afraid so,” Ty admitted.

“Cute,” Ellis said, biting off the word. “I bet you think you’re really cute, pulling one over on me like that. I bet you’ve been laughing your ass off at me, over there in that garage of yours.”

“Look, it wasn’t just about you,” Ty said. “I never tell my tenants about Mr. Culpepper. If they knew the landlord lived just over the garage, I’d never get any peace. They’d be hammering on my door at midnight, bitching about the hot water heater, or the bugs, or any damned thing. Or they lose their key. And I’m supposed to drop what I’m doing because they can’t keep track of something as simple as a key? You wouldn’t believe what a pain in the ass people can be. This way, I’m just some anonymous slacker dude next door. If they want something from Culpepper, they have to e-mail him. And he takes care of it. Eventually.”

“And I’m the biggest pain in the ass of all, right?” Ellis said. “Bitching night and day.”

“Well, yeah, at first,” Ty said truthfully. “I mean, I thought you were a pain in the ass at first, but then, when I met you, well, it was different. Hey, I got you a new stove, didn’t I? And those dishes with the pink flowers? Those were my grandmother’s dishes, you know. And I wanted to tell you about Mr. Culpepper, I really did.”

“But you didn’t,” Ellis said, crossing her arms over her chest. Julia’s underwire bra was cutting into her rib cage, and the corset thing was tied so tightly she couldn’t breathe, but she didn’t dare touch the ribbons lacing it together, for fear she’d explode out of the stinking thing. Why the hell had she let the girls talk her into this outfit? What was she doing with this loser, this liar?

“I was going to,” Ty said. “Like, tonight. I was going to tell you. But I didn’t get the chance.”

“Unbelievable,” Ellis said. She turned and stared out the window.

Eventually, they pulled into the crushed-shell driveway at Ebbtide. He parked the Bronco beside the garage, and before he could get out and come around to open her door, she opened it herself and was out of the car like a shot.

“Ellis,” he started.

“Thanks for dinner … Mr. Culpepper,” she said. It was all she could do to keep from running into the house. Anyway, she couldn’t have run in those damned high-heeled sandals Madison had loaned her. She walked, head up, back straight, just as fast as she could, without as much as a backward glance at Ty Bazemore, aka Mr. Culpepper. And when she got to the screen door at the house, its slam echoed in the still, hot, summer air.

*   *   *

Dorie and Julia heard the screen door slam from the kitchen, where they’d been playing a desultory game of Hearts.

“What the hell?” Julia said, glancing at the kitchen clock. It was barely nine o’clock.

They heard the furious tapping of the stiletto heels on the worn wooden hall floors, then heard them ascending the stairs, and then the second slam, of a bedroom door.

“Uh-oh,” Dorie said. “That can’t be good.”

“Damn,” Julia nodded in agreement. “And I had such high hopes.” She raised an eyebrow. “Do you think we should go up there and talk to her?”

“Ix-nay,” Dorie said, yawning. “If she wanted to talk about it, she’d come looking for us. You know how Ellis is.”

“I do,” Julia agreed. She sighed loudly. “I really thought this guy might be it, you know? He’s totally hot, and he’s hot for her, and I thought she was kinda hot for him.”

“You know something I don’t?” Dorie asked suspiciously.

“I kinda saw them making out the other night,” Julia said sheepishly.

“What?” Dorie slapped her cards down on the table. “And you held out on me? In my condition?”

“It was totally by accident,” Julia said. “Not like I was spying on them or anything. It was late, and Booker called, and I was kinda pacing around the room talking to him. I just happened to look out my window, and I saw this couple—just, wrapped up in each other, out on that boardwalk over the dunes. And it was just so sweet, you know? Summer love, that whole thing. It wasn’t until they pulled apart—reluctantly, I might add—and the girl was walking back towards the house, that I realized it was our Ellie-Belly. With garage guy.”

“I’d never say this to Ellis, but Ty doesn’t really seem like her type,” Dorie mused. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, I think he’s adorable, but nothing like the guys she used to be attracted to.”

“She is, though,” Julia said. “Sunday night, when we were at Cadillac Jack’s? That whole ‘I’ve got cabin fever, let’s us girls go out on the town?’ All a ploy. She knew he was working there that night. She only dragged me along so it wouldn’t look like she was stalking him. You should have seen Ty’s face when he caught sight of her, Dorie. There were all these hoochie mamas and pretty young things hanging around the bar, hoping he’d give them a glance, but when he saw Ellis, it was like he’d just been handed the biggest lollipop in the store.” She sighed. “So, so, sweet. And of course, Ellis was all nervous and tingly. Dorie, did you know she hasn’t, like, been with anybody since whatsisname?”

“Doesn’t surprise me,” Dorie said. “After whatsisname, I didn’t think she’d ever allow herself to fall for another man.”

“She tried, though,” Julia said. “She was doing online dating! Do you believe that?”

“I know a lot of girls who’ve met their husbands online,” Dorie said. “But I am a little surprised that our Ellis got up the nerve to try it. And that she admitted it to you.”

“I swore not to tell,” Julia said. “But she had to know I’d tell you.”

Dorie patted Julia’s hand. “That’s all right. You’re great at keeping your own secrets, but everybody else’s? Not so much.” She yawned again. “God, I feel like I can never get enough sleep. I’m going to bed. Maybe by tomorrow, things won’t look so bad to Ellis. Maybe this was just a little tiff. Or something. I want this for Ellis.”

Julia cocked her head and studied Dorie. Her strawberry blond hair was gathered into pigtails, and her face was pink from the sun and just a little fuller than usual. It was hard to believe her old friend, who looked barely out of her teens, would be a mother in a few months.

“What do you want for Ellis?” Julia asked. “A good lay? God knows, she’s due. It’s been twelve years or something. Who knows, she might have forgotten how.”

Dorie rolled her eyes. “No, not just a good lay. Stop being such a cynic. Ellis deserves everything. True love, a husband, children, all of it. I don’t care what you say, Julia Capelli, I think that’s what all of us really want. You just think it’s not cool to admit it.”

“I do?”

“Absolutely. You had a great career, and I know you say that’s all over, but it still looks pretty fabulous from where I’m sitting. And you’ve got this great guy, Booker, who loves you and wants to marry you and give you whatever you want. And you’re just too stinkin’ cool to say yes.”

Julia pushed her chair away from the table. “Thanks for the cut-rate analysis, Eudora. Now, let me ask you something. Are you telling me that after all you’ve been through with Stephen, who has essentially left you for another man—while you are carrying his child—that you still believe in that happy-ever-after fairy tale stuff? Can you tell me that, straight-faced, with your own screwed-up family history, you buy that crap?”

Dorie leaned forward, her green eyes glittering with intensity.

“Look at me, Julia. I am telling you, yes. Yes, with absolute sincerity, despite Stephen, despite my parents’ shitty marital history, despite all evidence to the contrary, that yes, I do still buy what you call ‘that crap’. I have to believe Stephen really did love me, and that I loved him, and that we will love this baby I’m carrying. I’m furious and sad about what happened with us, but that doesn’t make me believe that what we had wasn’t real. And it doesn’t make me believe that I won’t find something that real again. I may be looking at being a single mother, at having to move in with my mom again, at working my ass off teaching school for peanuts, but you’re the one I feel sorry for, Julia. Because you do have it all, but you don’t believe it, and you don’t appreciate it. And that’s the saddest thing of all.”

*   *   *

Ellis kicked off the high-heeled sandals and peeled herself out of Julia’s clothes. She climbed into her cupcake pajamas and went into the bathroom, where she brushed her teeth until they bled, and scrubbed off every trace of the face Dorie had so carefully painted on her only a few hours earlier.

“Idiot,” she said, scowling into the mirror at the real Ellis Sullivan.

Back in her bedroom, she got out her cell phone, and erased each and every duplicitous e-mail she’d sent or received from Mr.Culpepper@Ebbtide.com.

When she was done, she padded back and forth in her bedroom, stopping every so often to glare out the window in the direction of the garage apartment. The lights were all on, but she couldn’t see Ty. Wait. As she watched, he came down the stairs from the apartment and went over to the Bronco. A moment later, the headlights flashed on, and he was backing out and down the driveway. Well, it was only 9:30, after all. Maybe he had another date. Maybe he was heading over to Cadillac Jack’s, to hook up with one of the willing women who’d flocked around him at the bar there. She didn’t care, Ellis told herself.

Screw him.

But the thing was, she did care. She’d let down her guard, let herself believe somebody like Ty Bazemore could care about her, let herself believe that she could ever be with somebody like him. Which was a joke, right? And she was the punch line.

Eventually, she heard footsteps on the stairs, light ones that must have been Dorie, barefoot, going to bed early. Maybe half an hour later, she heard the soft flapping of leather-soled sandals—those would be Julia’s. She heard their bedroom doors close, thankful that neither of her best friends had knocked on her own door to enquire about her “big date.”

What a laugh.

She tried to read her paperback, but gave up after realizing she’d reread the same chapter three times. Ellis settled back into the pillows on her bed, staring up at the ceiling fan whirring overhead. She studied all the cracks in the plaster ceiling, the watermarks on the faded flowery wallpaper. The air conditioner wedged into the window by the bed wheezed and rattled the window glass in a futile attempt to cool temperatures that were probably in the eighties. The place really was a dump. She’d been so happy to finally be here with her friends, so full of anticipation of the month, she’d glossed over the truly deplorable condition of Ebbtide.

It had been a grand old house at one time, she could tell. Large, square, high-ceilinged rooms, generous windows with amazing views of the ocean and dunes. Ryan, that guy at the restaurant, had mentioned that the house had belonged to Ty’s family. And that the house was about to be foreclosed on.

Served him right, Ellis tried to tell herself.

But it didn’t wash. Ty had told her he was a day trader, trying to recoup his losses in the stock market. The reality was that he was trying desperately to keep from losing his family home. Which explained why he rented out the big house and lived in the garage apartment. But it still didn’t explain why he couldn’t have just told her, after their first encounter on the beach, that he was Mr. Culpepper.

Not that it mattered. He didn’t owe her anything. She was just another pain-in-the-ass summer renter.

With only two weeks left at the beach.

Screw it, Ellis thought.

She jumped out of bed and padded barefoot down the stairs, and out through the kitchen. She wasn’t worried about encountering Ty Bazemore again, as she had last time. He was out tomcatting around Nags Head.

Ellis found the deck of cards the girls had abandoned on the kitchen table. She dealt herself a hand of solitaire, but gave up on it after fifteen minutes. She couldn’t even beat herself at cards, she thought, slapping the cards down in disgust. It was hot in the kitchen too—suffocating, really. She wet a paper towel and dabbed her forehead and wrists to cool herself down.

A walk on the beach, she decided, might be the only thing to calm herself down. Upstairs, she pulled on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt. She picked up the sandals Madison had loaned her only a few hours earlier, and tiptoed upstairs. She paused outside Madison’s door. The light was on, but she heard no movement from inside. She was probably reading. Ellis thought about knocking, about blurting out the truth of her whole, awful evening to a pair of neutral ears, but decided against it. Madison wasn’t the kind of girl who wanted to hear about somebody else’s drama. Instead, Ellis set the shoes carefully on the floor and left.

She let herself out the kitchen door and sped over the boardwalk and down to the beach. A slight breeze ruffled the sea oats, but otherwise, it was quiet. She left her flip-flops on the soft sand at the base of the steps and hurried out to the water’s edge, not stopping until her toes were licked by the cool wavelets. The moon was still near full, shining brightly on the gleaming silvery beach.

Better. She took a deep breath and started walking on the hard-packed wet sand. She wove her way up the beach, side stepping the incoming tide, although occasionally a wave caught her, slapping water up as high as her thigh. She kept walking. The farther south she went, the closer together houses were packed. Lights were on in some of the houses, and occasionally she heard a drift of music, or laughter, but the beach was otherwise deserted.

Ellis stopped occasionally, bent over and picked up a seashell, but dropped the ones that were crushed or broken. At one point, she found a perfect, white, palm-sized sand dollar at the water’s edge. With her fingertip, she traced the indentations in the brittle surface of the shell, trying to remember what Sister Marguerite, her biology teacher back at Our Lady of Angels, had told her the indentations meant. Something about the cross, and the trials of Jesus. Carefully, Ellis tucked the sand dollar into the pocket of her shorts and kept walking.