Even After Sunset (Sandy Haven #1)

1. Chapter One

Chapter One

Jackie

I f you spend all your past summer job savings on a rundown motorhome with a history longer than your entire Spotify playlist library, and then paint her in the most glorious sunshine shade of yellow—you need to give her a name. A great name.

Which is why I spent three full lunch hours in the library during the last week of classes poring over a website about baby names and their meanings until I found just the right one.

Trudy.

It means “universal strength”. And also, it sounds cheery.

It suits her perfectly.

Tonight, Trudy and I are heading off on the biggest adventure of our lives. She’s loaded up and ready to go, and I know there isn’t a thing I’ve forgotten. The reason I’m so sure is because I made a fool-proof checklist, which I’ve been adding to and revising and checking and re-checking for the past two months. Every single detail—all two-hundred-and-twenty-seven listed items, have a navy check mark beside them now.

I slam the storage compartment shut and turn toward the house.

“That’s everything!” I call. “She’s locked and loaded!” I pat Trudy’s large rear end and inhale an unsteady breath.

I am actually doing this.

Richard and Meryl make their way down the driveway toward me. Behind them, the outside porch lights are on, illuminating the hanging baskets on either side of the front door. They sway in the evening breeze, and I catch a brief scent of the ocean just a couple of blocks away.

When she reaches me, Meryl places my thin jacket over my shoulders, smoothing it with her fingers before patting my arm. She pulls me in for a long hug, and because she’s tall and I’m short, my face squishes against her massive bosom.

“I love you, sweetheart,” she whispers, and I can feel the warmth of her breath against my skin. “And I am so, so proud of you.”

Her words make my own breath come out a little shaky, because it’s what I want most in the world: to make her and Richard proud. They may have adopted me just seven years ago, but I’ve known them since I was a toddler. Years before my mother’s death and that horrible, blood-drenched afternoon.

Richard pulls me into his own hug. “We’re both proud of you,” he says. “But my Lord, are we ever going to miss you.”

I’m pretty sure I’ll miss them more.

They remind me to call at least every three days, even though they’ve reminded me a dozen times already. Also, not to drive any time I feel tired. To email lots of photos. To take in every moment. And to stop every two hours for a bathroom break.

I hug each of them one last time and then head round Trudy to climb into her freshly vacuumed driver’s seat. If I linger any more, I will cry. Possibly lose my resolve. Definitely wish I hadn’t decided to do this alone.

But I have to do this alone. I haven’t had to do anything on my own since Meryl and Richard took me under their wings and into their world after my mother’s death. And not a day goes by where I don’t remember that Silas was orphaned that day, too. But unlike me, my childhood best friend was left to face everything on his own. While I was whisked from a home filled with memories of our mothers hanging out as friends, he was left to live in a house tainted with their blood. And with an aunt and uncle who resented him.

So nothing I’ve been given since Meryl and Richard took me in is really mine. And even though I love it all: the close-knit neighborhood, the private school, my amazing friends, Meryl and Richard… it’s all just borrowed. I haven’t done a thing to deserve any of it .

This food truck business, selling cookies at festivals across New England over the summer, is one of the few ways I could think of to prove to myself that I can stand on my own two feet. And that I’m more than just a charity-case who hit the mother load. I need it to be successful.

I slam the driver’s door closed behind me and adjust my side mirror. Then I turn and force a smile past the lump in my throat. I’ve been wavering for the past few weeks between excitement and stress and nervousness. And right now, I’m feeling all three.

“Love you,” I say, blowing them both a kiss.

Richard smiles. “You too, sweetheart.”

“Only drink water at the party!” Meryl calls as I start the engine. She doesn’t even bother to wipe away the tears streaming down her face now.

She means my friend Scarlett’s party. Scarr’s throwing her annual end-of-school bash tonight and I told everyone I would swing by for an hour to say my goodbyes before hitting the road. It means I’ll be driving the first stretch in the dark, but I kind of like that. Night-time is my favourite time to drive.

“That’s right! Only drink water!” Richard calls. “Or soda! Just water or soda!”

“Got it.” I laugh, reaching my arm out the window to give them a thumbs up. “No body-shots or beer-funneling before I hit the road.”

I scan past the driveway for any oncoming cars. Trudy’s a large gal: she needs a wide berth when she makes turns.

“We love you!” Meryl and Richard call in unison. “Be safe!”

They keep waving like a couple of bobble-heads in my side mirror as I coax Trudy’s clunky gearshift into drive. I steer her out of the driveway—just one party away from a solo summer on the open road.

Scarlett’s cedar-shingled mansion is perched along the waterfront on Ocean Drive, just a few miles from the touristy historic district of Sandy Haven, Connecticut. The house is all lit up, glimmering like a beacon along the ragged cliff, and a deep base echoes across the evening sky. As I get closer, I spot clumps of kids scattered across the terraced front lawn, laughing and drinking and hollering. I can’t even imagine how many people there must be out back.

I eventually find a spot to park on the far side of the house where the property butts up against a forested area. Trudy stands out gloriously among the rows of sleek sports cars and jeeps and shiny SUV’s lining the driveway that curves up to the house. She’s like a smiling garden gnome in the middle of a fancy, manicured garden.

I jump down and scoot around the side of the five-car garage, and through the hidden gap in the hedge border that Scarlett and I discovered when we were playing hide-and-seek back in sixth grade. In the days before she became too judgey and cold to hang out with more than a couple times a year.

“Jackieeeeeeeeee!!!!” A guy’s voice bellows over the pounding music and chatter from at least sixty people mingling on the backyard pool terrace. I jog down the hill and crack a grin when I spot Sebastian Murdoch perched on the roof of the pool house wearing nothing but jeans and a backward ball cap.

Sebastian’s been at boarding school on a football scholarship since grade nine somewhere off in Massachusetts, so these days we only see him when he’s home on breaks. He’s kind of a legend in Sandy Haven. The guy has zero boundaries. As in, he’s up for anything—no matter how crazy or how dangerous. He’s seriously hot and really sweet, but none of that detracts from the fact that he is not the sharpest knife in the drawer. And that’s being kind. Rumor is that he failed this past school year, but just hasn’t told anyone here yet.

“Murdoch is back in town, bitches!” someone hollers. “Shit is about to get craaayzeeee!”

I laugh, shaking my head. Then my attention is drawn lower down to Scarlett’s dog, Cromwell: a miniature white fur ball who acts like he’s hopped up on cocaine even on a normal day. Right now he’s weaving like a wind-up toy between bodies and furniture, his tail working double-time and his tongue hanging out like his end-goal might be the drinks bar beside the barbeque area. And not far behind, Scarlett sashays toward me in designer flip-flops, with a pastel yellow solo cup in each hand. No standard-issue red cups anywhere in sight at a Scarlett Thiels party.

“You came.” She manages to give me a hug without spilling a drop from either of the drinks. I tell her how awesome the place looks. And it really does: she’s hung hundreds of fairy lights around the pool area and even in some of the trees dotting the sloped lawn. It’s honestly stunning.

“Thanks,” Scarlett glances around. “I think it turned out really good.” She looks around the back yard, admiring her vision. She doesn’t really do smiles, but the corner of her lips tip up slightly, which is the closest I’ll get from her. She glances down at the drinks in her hands.

“Oh,I got you a drink.” She offers me one of the cups. It’s filled with a frothy white drink. “It’s a non-alcoholic pina-colada,” she explains. Then she adds, “You know, because you’re hitting the road after this.”

I raise my eyebrows in surprise, accepting the drink. See, that’s the thing about Scarlett: she can be… well, kind of a bitch a lot of the time—but then there are times like this, when there are glimpses of the old Scarlett; sweet and super thoughtful.

“Thanks.” I raise my cup. “To the end of Junior Year!”

“Cheers!” she says and knocks the side of her cup against mine. We both take a sip of our drinks and I decide that virgin pina-coladas are my new favorite drink.

Scarlett flips her auburn hair over one shoulder and her expression turns serious. “So, you’re really doing it? The whole food truck road trip thing?”

I nod. “Yup. I’m doing it.”

“I thought you loved that job at the museum.”

I did love that job. I’ve worked at the small but awesome Sandy Haven museum for three years, now: two weekends a month during the school year and five days a week in the summer. I’ve helped organize more than a dozen weirdly epic exhibits: everything from “Slasher Comic Book Art” to “The Early Days of Submarine Building”. But that job was just handed to me—just like everything else. It fell in my lap because my art teacher knew I was interested in that kind of stuff and passed my name on to her friend who’s the curator at the museum .

I shrug. “Yeah, the museum gig was awesome. I just wanted to try something on my own, you know?”

“Yeah. For sure.” Scarlett says. But her expression tells me she doesn’t get it at all. And to be honest, I’m pretty sure none of my friends get it. Most of them didn’t believe I would actually go through with it when I told them about my plan until I pulled into the school parking lot three weeks ago, driving Trudy.

Except for my good friend, Xavier. He gets it. Because it’s exactly the kind of thing he would do. Only he’d probably sell cookies out of a tent instead of a camper.

Suddenly there’s a deafening splasshhhh!!! behind us. We both turn just as everyone cheers—as if Sebastian just performed some elaborate stunt instead of a cannon-ball that soaked everybody within a fifteen-foot radius. The party kicks up a notch, then—because any gathering where someone jumps off a roof into a pool is bound to go down in the history books.

“Come on,” Scarlett motions to the pool with her chin and kicks off her flip flops. Then she settles down on the edge with her feet dangling in the water as she takes a long sip of her drink. I sit next to her and Seb wades over to us across the shallow end.

“You guys coming in?” he asks, glancing back for a second when a tall blond I don’t recognize pops up behind him and drapes her arms around his shoulders.

“Nope, just dipping my feet,” I tell him, swaying them back and forth through the water. “I’m leaving pretty soon, so I want to stay dry.”

“Hair,” Scarr says, tossing her auburn waves over her shoulder; the one word apparently her full explanation for not going in the water.

“Okay. You’re safe,” Seb tells me. Then he takes a step closer to Scarr, his dimpled grin full of mischief as he wraps both arms around her waist. “You’re not,” he warns, then in one swift move, lifts her as if she weighs nothing and throws her in the pool with a loud splash!

Scarr comes up sputtering and scowling. “You’re so dead, Murdoch,” she calls, raking her dripping hair off her face. Seb just dips his head back and laughs. He has an awesome laugh that is insanely infectious. “Bring it on, baby,” he winks. Then he turns his attention back to the blond beside him, who’s adjusting one of her bikini straps. A couple seconds later, he’s making out with her, and Scarlett has pulled herself out of the water. She sits next to me, leaving enough distance that she doesn’t drip all over me.

“I hope you get Herpes!” Scarr calls over to him, and he turns his head and grins at her without even breaking the lip-lock he’s got with his flavor of the moment. He and Scarlett are best friends, so he knows she’s all bite, no bark.

I think.

“Gosh, get a room!” I shout, picking up a pool noodle beside me and launching it at Seb. It hits him smack in the side of the head, bullseye, and the two of them jerk back, mid makeout session. Seb turns and laughs when he realizes I was the instigator of the attack, grabs the noodle and strides through the water toward me with a predatory smile.

I scuttle across the pool deck to reach for another stray noodle, and seconds later, the two of us are involved in a swash-buckling noodle sword fight. And two minutes after that, more people have joined in, too.

I’m going to miss this: summer pool parties and spontaneous backyard barbecues, group trips for ice-cream at Scoopies that turn into evenings on the boardwalk and midnight skinny dipping.

All stolen moments, I remind myself, that don’t really belong to me.

A sophomore interrupts our epic battle when she makes her way down the steps from the main house and calls over to Scarlett. “Some guys from Allerston Lake just tried to crash the party!”

Scarlett puts down her drink and gets to her feet.

“ What?! ”

Her reaction is a little over-kill. Allerston Lake is just a less affluent town, about forty-five miles from here. It’s actually the town where I grew up. Where Silas still lives, as far as I know: I haven’t seen my former best friend in almost seven years. Since the day two police officers came to pick me up from school in fifth grade to tell me the news about my mother. And two other officers dragged Silas from his home, kicking and screaming, because he didn’t want to leave his parents lying face up in a puddle of blood on the kitchen floor .

Then Silas’s aunt Deborah agreed to become his guardian and made it clear that she didn’t want him seeing me ever again. Which I understand, given everything that went down. But still, I wish we could have at least stayed in touch. I wish he was on social media even, so I could see what he looks like at least.

I would be lying if I said I don’t drive out to Allerston Lake sometimes, past his house even, hoping to catch even a glimpse of him.

Anyway, all this to say that Allerston Lake is kind of a run down town. No gated subdivisions. Definitely no historic cobblestone shopping district or French patisseries or coffee shops with flowery wreaths on the door with bells that jingle when you leave. So I guess in Scarlett’s world, maybe that equates crime and mayhem and midnight rumbles at the drive-in.

“There were three of them. Totally hammered, and trying to pick fights and stuff,” Scarlett’s self-appointed messenger informs her. “But they’re gone now: Xavier and a few of the other guys kicked them out.”

“Are they definitely gone?” Scarr asks, glancing around as if one of them may have wandered out into the back yard un-noticed.

The girl shifts, still not leaving. “Um, yeah. They’re gone…It got a little rough. That’s what I wanted to tell you: one of the Allerston Lake guys shoved someone into that blue and yellow sculpture in the front hall. The glass one?” She lifts her shoulders bashfully, like she’s the one who was throwing punches in the front hall. “And it broke. Like, it shattered all over the floor.”

“Oh my God!” Scarlett shrieks. “The Chihuly? Those thugs broke my dad’s freaking Chihuly sculpture? ”

“Relax, Scarr.” Sebastian hoists himself out of the pool. “It’ll be fine… It wasn’t like it was any of your friends who broke it or anything. Your dad will understand.” He hands her another drink from the side of the pool, and the two of them get into a quiet conversation. I decide this is a good opportunity for me to head indoors and find Xave.

Inside, the music is even louder, and the air feels warm and thick—probably from the crush of bodies crowded in the sun room. The space is so huge it boasts three entire seating areas, and still, it feels cramped.

There’s a heightened vibe in here; a lingering sense of chaos… of violence. It’s the intensity of the chatter and the stretched-out expressions on people’s faces. Also, the way everyone is clustered into a large mob by the half wall that separates the sun room from the informal eating area. A couple of girls are crouched down, attempting to sweep broken bits of blue and yellow glass against the high baseboard with a towel.

As I make my way closer to the three steps at the far end of the room that lead up to a wide hallway, a group of six guys approach from the arched opening. They’re all tall and built; all on the football team. My close friend Xavier is among them, and when he spots me, he heads in my direction as the others break off and disappear into the crowd.

“It’s the gypsy queen!” Xave grins when he reaches me. I start to smile, but then notice that the whole left side of his face is red and swollen.

“Your cheek! Oh my gosh!”

He rubs it lightly with his fingers, glancing over his shoulder. “Yeah, there was, uh… a small altercation.” He returns his attention to me. But then his eyes flit over to the low wall where two more girls have joined the shattered glass clean-up crew. “We had to escort a couple of unwanted guests out.”

“I heard. Are you okay? Should I get ice?”

Xavier laughs. “Already iced it. I’m good.”

We talk about other stuff for a while and then join a group of friends sitting on one of the sectionals by the fireplace. By nine o’clock, I’ve had my fill of socializing and saying my goodbyes, and I’m ready to hit the road.

Everyone crowds around the driveway when I announce that I’m leaving, and we go through another round of hugs. People cheer and wave as I climb into the driver’s seat and a couple of girls even throw handfuls of rice, which is kind of funny because I’m pretty sure you’re only supposed to do that for weddings. But it doesn’t matter because I’m so pumped that I am actually doing this. I. Am. Actually. Doing. This.

I feel more alive right now than I’ve felt in my entire life.

I turn the key in the ignition. Trudy stutters, then growls to life and people cheer louder. There’s an awkward moment where my girl-power pride deflates a little as I wrestle with the gearshift, yanking it forward and back, then forward again three times before it locks into drive.

And then I’m off, rattling along the winding cobblestone path and onto the main road, hoping that someone is filming right now—because I can’t imagine what this must look like: a giant yellow camper pulling out of a fancy suburban driveway in the middle of the night.

I want to remember this moment forever, because I know that the next time I’m back in Sandy Haven, I’ll be a different person than the girl I am tonight.