Chapter 44
chapter forty-four
Audrey
Today's vocabulary word: premeditation
There was an art to holding my parents at an arm's length. Expert-level prevarication required planning and finesse, and a quick inventory of the evasions I'd used in the past.
Since I'd thrown myself into the deep end of this post-Jude funk and couldn't be called upon for more than brittle bitterness and reading books that I knew would make me sob, I ran out of excuses when my mother insisted I attend a clambake in the Hamptons.
I tried to hang it all on Bagel. I needed to be home for Bagel.
He was still very confused about his current living situation and it didn't help that I talked to myself while I baked.
But she knew I'd pet-sit for others who worked with this fostering organization at the last minute because I'd burrowed into that excuse to skip out on another of her parties in the past.
My family didn't always have this kind of money.
We'd always been comfortable. Extremely comfortable, even.
But we didn't have waterfront summer house in the Hamptons money until I was out of elementary school.
I hadn't realized it at the time, not in any concrete way, not until my parents announced I wouldn't be going to the local middle school with my friends and neighbors as planned.
I remembered getting upset about that. Crying, probably yelling too. Mostly because I hadn't wanted to wear a uniform to school. But my father said it was foolish for me to react that way since I'd finally be going to school with the right people from the right families.
The people and the families were of no concern to me.
My only priority had been escaping the uniform with its plaid, pleated skirt in a god-awful shade of burgundy.
But I'd learned that night—with my mother telling me to stop being hysterical because it made my skin ruddy and my eyes bloodshot, all of which rendered me rather ugly, she didn't hesitate to say—that my father only cared about getting close to the right people.
That he'd sacrifice anything, no hesitation.
I knew this because I'd been sacrificed before. More times that I wanted to admit. If the trappings of this clambake were any indication, I was about to be sacrificed again.
And I knew exactly what I had to do.
I spent the entire ferry ride from New London out to Long Island trying to read one of the books I'd be teaching in the fall but mostly stalking Janet and Rita's social media pages.
I didn't know what I thought I'd find there—false; I went looking for any glimpse of Jude—but the two of them posted like squirrels with unlimited access to espresso martinis.
It'd been thirteen days since Emme's wedding and I still hadn't heard a peep from him. It was like I'd dreamed up the whole thing. If not for the lizard magnet on my fridge, I'd doubt the truth of it too.
But I knew there had to be an explanation.
Something serious must've happened. With work or Janet or Percy.
Something came up—an emergency. But when I woke up tomorrow morning, there'd be two entire weeks between me and the last time I saw Jude, and chances were high I still wouldn't have an update from him.
No matter how many times I stepped back from the facts as I knew them and peered at the sharp angles, I couldn't explain this without scooping up the blame and carrying it away with me.
Had he planned it that way? To fly in here at the last minute? Drag me away to the back of the barn and then send me off wearing his jacket? And then disappear without a backward glance?
I couldn't escape the sense that he wanted me to know the kind of helpless agony and unyielding grief he'd felt when I'd disappeared on him. I didn't want to imagine Jude masterminding anything like that but I couldn't shake the thought that it was possible.
"Audrey, come back here!" my mother called.
I shrunk a little deeper into the leggy embrace of the hydrangea.
I'd made myself very busy with the shrubs and flowers ringing the property since arriving at the clambake.
If I looked like I was engrossed in my study of the leaves and the blooms, and not replaying every second Jude and I spent behind the barn or the thirteen painfully silent days since, no one would try to talk to me.
And that was important since I didn't like clams and my social hourglass was maxing out after five minutes. Even if I did have a few landmines to bury.
"I swear I saw her just over there," my mother said to a guy in pink seersucker. "She probably didn't hear us over the waves."
I ducked under a floppy blue mop head and crept, hunched over, between the bushes and the weathered gray shingles of the house.
I didn't need anyone to explain to me that my behavior had crossed into bizarre territory.
I knew this. But I also knew the best place for me was trapped in this cool, quiet world. At least while I gathered some intel.
"Very choppy out there today," Seersucker replied. "But I'm hearing tomorrow will be perfect for getting out on the water."
"What a relief," my mother said, as if she knew anything about sailing. "The water was empty today. Such a disappointment."
My mother was beautiful in an ageless, eerie way.
Her work was her face, her figure, but it was also her faith.
There was relevance in that plumped-up perfection.
There was value. In her world, the only women worth keeping around were the ones who'd figured out how to stop time.
Their virtue lived in that plastic youth, and they were nothing without it.
Sometimes I wondered when she'd stopped being a real person.
I knew it came before the fillers and the surgeries and the every-four-weeks root touch-ups to keep the silver out of her cornsilk blonde.
Her ability to wield power in this world existed only in relation to her willingness to uphold its pointless beauty standards.
It was like she'd stepped into a small square of wet concrete and she had to live out the rest of her days there—or cut off her own feet to get free.
"My goodness, Brecken," she said. "I just don't know where that daughter of mine ran off to if she's not over here."
"Not to worry." He said this with the easy grace of someone who understood the level of bullshitting required at these affairs. That helped. This wouldn't work if I had a short fuse on my hands. "She'll turn up."
"I appreciate your patience with this expedition I've taken you on," she said.
"No patience required," he said, which I interpreted to mean I've done my community service for the day and now I'm breaking free from your clutches, lady.
I crouched down to stay out of their eyeline but as I moved, a branch shifted, whipping the side of my face.
I had to swallow a yelp unless I wanted them to notice my hiding spot.
I'd survived many unpleasant things but getting caught in a hydrangea bush and then having to fight my way out while people watched would make for a new all-time low.
I held my breath as they strolled back to the heart of the party.
Once she dropped off Seersucker, my mother would come looking for me.
She'd quietly enlist everyone in the search—waiters, bartenders, the young men tasked with parking the cars far enough away to give the impression that everyone teleported here.
All of which was to say I couldn't stay in the bushes all day. Either I dashed back inside, grabbed my things, and made a break for the ferry or I dredged up the ability to interact with other people. To do what I came here to do. There was no in between.
I gave myself a few more minutes behind the hydrangea to check my messages.
Nothing from Jude though I did find a bitchy notification that I was consuming significantly more screen time than usual this week.
I read a new chapter of a fanfic I followed and looped back to Janet and Rita's socials (also nothing), and then checked the departure times for the ferry. Just to be sure.
I discovered it'd been easier getting into the bushes than it was getting out. My arms were scratched and my hair was full of leaves and floral debris but not in any whimsical bohemian way.
I shook the dirt from my sundress and hiked through the front yard and into the house. If I ran into my mother, I'd blame my absence on my belly. She hated being reminded that my gut had a lot in common with sweating dynamite. Nice, marriageable women didn't have those problems.
I was waiting at the bar, sunglasses shielding my eyes as I grinned up at the late afternoon sun, the picture of summertime bliss, when I felt someone sidle up beside me.
"Audrey, isn't it?"
I kept my chin tipped to the sky, taking in Seersucker from the corner of my eye. Up close, I placed him around a decade older than me, maybe more, though the wonders of fillers and Botox and money made a plausible case for mid-thirties.
"It is." I gave him my breeziest smile, the one that dug lines into my cheeks. "You'll have to remind me where we've met. My memory isn't with me today."
"Apologies," he said with a light laugh. He held out his hand. "Brecken. Wilhamsen. We'd meant to connect at the Aldyn Thorpe reunion weekend."
I treated him to all the standard apologies and pleasantries as I sipped my drink, and he did a fine job of acting as if he understood. It was all very civilized and that was the real irony of my parents' events.
"If I'm being honest," he said, edging in close like we were already coconspirators, "I didn't really want to be there. You did me a big favor by canceling." He shot a glance at the bow-tied staff standing watch around the clambake pit. "I'm not completely sure I want to be here now."
That earned a real laugh from me. I reeled him in with a stiff grin that said you and me both, friend.