Chapter 5 #2
He took the bag. "Thank you. That's very kind."
Apollo whined, his tail wagging tentatively.
Daniel usually loved to pet him and would throw sticks for him to chase while chatting with Vivienne and me.
Now, he didn't seem to see the dog at all.
The lines around his mouth, which usually crinkled with warmth and laughter, had deepened into something harder.
I peered around him. "Is Vivienne...?"
"She hasn't left her room since Saturday. The doctor prescribed Valium. She can't… she's not doing well." An orthopedic surgeon at the Orthopedics and Sports Medicine Center in St. Joe, he was accustomed to competence, to repairing shattered bones and torn ligaments, to fixing broken things.
Now, he was helpless. He could do nothing to bring his daughter back or ease his distraught wife's pain, or his own.
My chest ached for both of them. "I understand. If there's anything you need. Anything at all."
He nodded, his gaze unfocused. "Thank you, Dahlia. Vivienne and I appreciate that, truly."
I stood there for a moment after he shut the door, staring at the brass knocker. I pictured Vivienne lying upstairs behind drawn curtains, sedated against the unbearable weight of her grief. Every waking moment a nightmare, her only child gone forever.
I imagined them trapped in that house, locked in their grief. I knew what it felt like, the misery within those walls. The despair.
Apollo nudged my hand with his nose. I couldn't bear the thought of going home, of sitting alone in my quiet house with my spiraling thoughts and the ticking clock counting down to tomorrow at 10 a.m.
We kept walking. Brooke's house came next, a modern black farmhouse with huge black windows and a gleaming copper roof. Her Mercedes was absent from the driveway. I knocked anyway, but no one answered.
She should've been home. Brooke was a lifestyle influencer, her Instagram and TikTok accounts showcasing filtered images of her perfect family—vacations to Europe and the Maldives, charity galas for various causes, and glowing moments with her two kids, Alexis and her younger brother, Falcon—each caption an eye-rolling humble-brag.
Her husband Jason was a hedge-fund manager with offices in Chicago. He was hardly ever home.
We kept going. I headed west back to Wyld Wood Lane and turned north instead of south toward my cottage. A few houses down, the Everett place sat dark and vacant, a FOR SALE sign tilted in the overgrown lawn.
Apparently, the family had left suddenly last spring before we’d moved in. Something terrible had happened to their daughter, though no one talked openly about it. Just another empty house, another family vanishing under a dark cloud of tragedy.
Apollo and I continued down the street. The morning had warmed, the sun breaking through the clouds in pale streaks.
At Camille's, a modern steel-and-glass house with floor-to-ceiling glass panels for walls, her son Zion was shooting hoops in the circular driveway.
He was tall, wiry, and athletic like his parents and younger sister, Zara. A junior at Lakeshore Prep and the team's starting point guard, he should have been at school.
As Apollo and I approached, he glanced up and gave me a brief wave, then took a shot. It bounced off the rim. “My mom's at work.”
"I know." I hesitated at the edge of the driveway. Camille's husband Jerome often played basketball with Zion for hours in the evenings, though Jerome was at work now. He was a beloved math teacher at Lakeshore Prep. "Is Zara home?"
Zion caught the ball and held it against his hip. "She's up in her room. She's not sleeping or eating or anything."
"Yeah, Mia, too. Well, tell your mom and sister I stopped by."
"Sure thing."
I waved goodbye and continued walking. We passed Whitney's house—no Range Rover in the driveway, no lights on—and kept going.
Near the end of the road, Mrs. Atkins was kneeling in her front garden, pruning daffodils, pansies, and hyacinths with a pair of shears. She sat back on her heels, set down the shears, and shaded her eyes with one gloved hand. "Dahlia, dear. How are you holding up?"
"As well as can be expected." I managed a wan smile.
Mrs. Atkins had lived in Blackthorn Shores longer than anyone, since the 1980s, before it was transformed into a gated community, when the lots were bigger and the houses significantly smaller.
Now in her late seventies, she spent most of her days rocking on her front porch, monitoring the neighborhood for infractions, real and imaginary.
"Such a terrible tragedy," she said, shaking her head. "That poor girl. And poor Vivienne. I can't imagine."
"None of us can."
“Just terrible.” She clutched her cardigan closer. Her squinty hazel eyes were bright with something that might have been concern, or more likely, curiosity. "Were you there when it happened?"
"No, I—"
"I told Harry something didn't feel right that night.
I said, 'Harry, something's not right.'" She leaned in, lowering her voice as if we were co-conspirators.
"I couldn't sleep, you see. It was like my bones knew something terrible was about to happen.
The neighborhood's not the same anymore.
I told him they keep letting in those maids and housekeepers.
You know all those landscapers are up to no good. "
Mrs. Atkins had a reputation for frequently crying wolf to the HOA about suspicious activities, from teenagers smoking marijuana to strange vans that turned out to be the HVAC company servicing a nearby home.
"What happened to Leah was a terrible accident," I said firmly.
"I truly hope so." She picked up her shears again. "You take care of yourself and that daughter of yours, dear."
Almost without thinking, I continued down the street toward Rowan's house.
The neighborhood's grandest homes lined Wyld Wood Lane, perched high on the bluffs with sweeping views of Lake Michigan, and Rowan's house was the crown jewel of them all.
It was a massive stone-and-cedar modern lodge with soaring windows and a wraparound deck that looked out over the water.
As I approached, my steps slowed.
Brooke's Mercedes sat in the circular driveway. Whitney's fluffy Pomeranian, Percival, was tied to the front porch post. He leapt to his feet when he spotted Apollo and barked, his squat body wiggling in excitement, his rhinestone collar glinting at his furry throat.
Voices drifted through the open living room window, low and urgent. I recognized Whitney's low tenor, Brooke's shrill whine, and Rowan's calm, steady reply.
Heat flushed my face as I pulled out my phone and checked my messages.
Nothing. No group text. No invitation. Just the same three messages I'd been staring at all morning: Camille's text about the interview, a notification from my cell phone provider, and a reminder about Mia's dentist appointment next week.
Last night, Rowan had texted a link to a podcast about supporting friends after a tragic loss, but there was no invitation to her house.
The realization that I’d been excluded sat cold and heavy in my stomach. They were grieving, pulling back to be with their families, holding their daughters tighter. They simply forgot to include me.
The silence still stung.
The old shame rose, choking my throat. I was twelve again, watching the popular girls whisper and laugh in the hallway while I sat alone at lunch. Thirteen and invisible in the back of the classroom while my classmates passed notes and made weekend plans.
Things were different now. I was a mature adult, not a cowering, mousy kid anymore. I owned a house in this luxurious neighborhood, a dilapidated fixer-upper, yes, but didn't that still count? I wasn't sure that it did.
We only lived in this exclusive gated community because the ramshackle cottage set on the undeveloped plot at the end of the road had been in my husband’s family for three generations, and after his eccentric great-aunt died within a month of Marcus's passing, it had been willed to Mia and me.
Built long before the HOA was formed, it was the only house left standing from the original 1940s neighborhood that hadn't been bulldozed and replaced by a mansion.
The taxes remained cheap because the house was about to slide over the bluff into Lake Michigan. Not next month or even next year, but its days were numbered. I was probably the only one crazy enough, desperate enough, to bet that it wouldn't happen soon.
I shouldn't have been here with these people. These effortlessly chic, successful, beautiful women, with their glossy salon blowouts and dewy skin from monthly facials that cost more than my grocery budget, with their elegant style and natural coolness.
They all owned lavish, expensive houses.
They vacationed in Aspen and Turks and Caicos, drove Range Rovers and Teslas, and discussed nannies and housekeepers like I discussed couponing.
Most of them filled their days with leisurely lunches, book clubs, spa appointments, hot yoga, and charity fundraisers.
Other than Camille with her high-powered career, of course.
I looked down at myself. In my dead husband's ratty old U of M sweatshirt, with my chipped nail polish, frumpy off-brand jeans, and frazzled auburn curls that I could never tame.
Constantly calculating the property taxes due next month, the climbing electric bill, and how many more freelance assignments I could pick up to cover the bills.
And yet somehow, impossibly, I was included here. Welcomed. Invited into the inner sanctum. They'd made me feel like I belonged, like the gap between us didn't matter that much. Like I had real friends.
I'd had coffee with Camille and Vivienne last week, volunteered with Rowan twice for the Lakeshore Prep bake-sale fundraiser, and often jogged with Whitney and Rowan on Sunday mornings, though I hated every second of the actual exercise part.
Running was torture, but I did it to be included among them, to breathe the rarified air of their approval and acceptance, to become a small part of their glittering world. If I stayed close enough, maybe a bit of their sparkle would rub off on me.
Why, then, were they all here without me? There were so many unspoken rules to follow to fit in, and though I tried as hard as I could, I was certain I must still be breaking them somehow. And now here I was, excluded once again.
I stood rigid at the end of the cobblestone driveway, uncertain, torn. Part of me wanted to turn around, to pretend I'd never walked this far, had never spotted Brooke's car or heard their voices. But I couldn’t.
I couldn't move, couldn't walk away.
Apollo whined softly, pressing against my leg. I reached down and scratched behind his ears. I was being silly, ridiculous. After all, these women had been there for me when I moved here last April in the aftermath of Marcus’s death, still traumatized and shell-shocked.
We had fled Chicago, grief-stricken, hurting, desperate for a safe place to land.
I had convinced myself it was enough. That Mia and I could carve out a new life here in the safe enclave of Blackthorn Shores, a gated lakefront community nestled in the coastal town of St. Joseph, Michigan, where Marcus had grown up.
I had no family anywhere else. My mother had died of breast cancer when I was in my early twenties, and my father had abdicated his role long before that, abandoning my mother and me to start a new family in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin.
We saw him and my two grown half-brothers once or twice a year for holidays.
They weren't my family. Marcus had been my heart, my everything, together since we'd met our freshman year at DePaul University in college algebra, which I’d nearly failed. He’d offered to tutor me, and the rest was history.
After his death, I was desperate for a place where we could belong. That we would be safe.
These women had barely known me, yet Rowan had organized meal trains, Whitney had driven Mia to school some mornings, and Brooke had shared the juiciest neighborhood gossip to distract me.
My aching heart longed for Whitney's dry humor, for Camille's steady capableness, for Brooke's boisterous laughter, for Vivienne's soft encouragement, even for Rowan's Type A volunteer-for-everything, everywhere, all at once personality, always dragging us along with her.
They wouldn't exclude me. Not now. Not when I needed them most.
I forced myself forward. I wound Apollo's leash around one of the porch's cedar beams so he and Percival could sniff each other. Their tails wagged in curious enthusiasm.
The voices inside went quiet.
A shadow moved behind the frosted glass panel beside the door.
My heart hammered against my ribs. For a moment, I considered running, turning tail and fleeing before anyone saw me, before I had to face the humiliation of the cool girls meeting in secret without me.
But I was being ridiculous. These were my friends. I wasn't in middle school anymore, and I no longer needed to fret about being excluded from the popular lunch table.
Pushing down my sense of disquiet, I raised my fist and knocked. Three sharp raps that echoed louder than I'd intended.
Footsteps approached. Rowan opened the door with a wide dazzling smile. "Dahlia! We were just talking about you."