Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
The checklist was sunscreen, towels, cooler, chairs, speaker—and eleven people who had agreed to leave at nine and were now treating that as a suggestion.
By the front door, beach bag over one shoulder, Meredith watched the house fail to mobilize. Carrie was looking for the beach tags. Sophie and Brittany had already left. Somewhere upstairs, Ethan had not responded to the last three times Lori had called his name.
"Beach tags," Meredith said. "Who has them?"
From behind the kitchen island, Carrie held up a zippered pouch. "Got them."
"Ethan. We're leaving." Lori was at the top of the stairs now.
"I heard you." His voice came through the door, flat and unmoving.
She stood there a moment longer, hand on the railing. Then she came down without him.
The walk to the beach should have been simple. It wasn't. Someone went back for the speaker. Then someone went back for the speaker charger. Then Olivia pointed out that Carrie had been holding the speaker the entire time.
"I thought this was the sunscreen," Carrie said, looking at it.
"The sunscreen is in the bag," Meredith said.
"Then what have I been putting on my arms?" Lori asked.
Carrie looked at Lori's arms. Lori looked at her own.
The beach at 59th was busy—umbrellas and pop-up tents staked out in clusters, chairs angled toward the water, the first round of sand castles underway near the break.
Two lifeguards sat high in the stand, scanning the surf.
The waves were rolling in clean sets, not big, the kind that were perfect for just standing in the break and letting it push you sideways.
The air smelled like salt and sunscreen, and somewhere nearby a radio hummed with a song none of them recognized.
Sophie and Brittany had already claimed a spot about twenty feet back from the water, towels spread, sunglasses on, looking like they'd been there for hours. Setting up camp took twelve minutes and involved a negotiation about umbrella placement that nobody won.
By the time they had chairs arranged and the cooler positioned where everyone could reach it, the teenagers had scattered toward the water and were in—all except Ethan, who hadn't moved past the wet sand. Arms crossed, facing the horizon.
The women took the chairs. For a few minutes nobody said anything—just the ocean, the distant calls of kids down the beach, a lifeguard whistle somewhere.
"This is the thing," Jen said, face tilted toward the sun. "Right here. This is the thing."
Lori reclined and exhaled like she'd been waiting eight months for this chair. "What are we doing for lunch?"
"It's nine-thirty." Meredith didn't look up from her book.
"I'm thinking ahead."
"Wawa," Carrie said. "Hoagies."
"Done." Lori pointed at her.
They talked about nothing in particular after that—the drive down, the weather forecast, whether anyone had remembered to bring cards for the evenings, whether the hot tub on the roof actually worked or was just for show.
Carrie had already looked it up: it worked, but they'd need to wait twenty minutes for it to heat.
Lori said she could wait. The conversation looped back on itself, easy with the quiet.
Dripping, towel wrapped around her shoulders, Sophie came up from the water. Sand clung to her calves. She'd walked past The Crabby Catch during the ice cream run last night and asked if they were hiring. Interview tomorrow at ten.
"That was fast," Meredith said.
"I saw the sign in the window." Sophie grinned. "Figured why not."
"You're going to be insufferable by August," Brittany said.
Sophie shoved her, and they headed back toward the surf, both of them laughing.
Lori's eyes found Ethan, still at the waterline. "He's applied to six places. Nothing back yet. Not even a no."
Down the beach, Sophie and Brittany were walking past the lifeguard stand. One of the guards—tan, dark hair, college-aged—glanced down at them. Brittany looked straight ahead, very deliberately not looking. Sophie didn't bother pretending.
"He looked," Sophie said, once they were past.
"I know." Brittany still didn't turn around. "I have peripheral vision."
"You should go talk to him."
"I'm not going to talk to him. He's working."
"He's sitting in a chair."
"He's watching for drowning people, Sophie."
"Nobody's drowning."
They kept walking toward the jetty, the sand hot under their feet. Sophie glanced back once. He was scanning the water again, left to right, but then he stopped. Looked right at her. She held it—a second, maybe two—and walked directly into a sandcastle.
"No," Sophie said, stumbling. A kid started wailing. The mom looked up from her phone.
"Keep walking," Brittany said, grabbing her arm. "Just keep walking."
"I destroyed it. I destroyed his whole castle."
"He'll rebuild. Walk."
They didn't stop until they were out of sight. Sophie looked back.
"He definitely saw that," Sophie said.
"Like, definitely."
"Stop."
"Peripheral vision," Brittany said, and Sophie bumped her so hard she almost fell.
Around eleven, Max and Lily volunteered for the Wawa run. Carrie handed over her card, and they headed back toward the house, their voices fading as they crossed the dune.
At the shoreline, Jen stood just inside the break, the water barely to her ankles. She'd said she needed to cool off and walked down ten minutes ago, and she was still there. Not watching the water, not looking at her phone. Just the tide around her feet and her arms crossed over her chest.
Lori had her eyes closed, might have been asleep. Olivia had her book open but hadn't turned a page in fifteen minutes.
The hoagies arrived. So did Jen, finally back from the water, dropping into her chair without a word.
"So." Carrie unwrapped hers and looked around at the group. "How is everyone? Actually."
A seagull landed on the cooler. Nobody moved fast enough. It grabbed a chip bag and was gone before Jen could get a hand up, wings beating hard as it lifted off toward the dunes.
"That's mine," Jen said.
"Was." Carrie was already laughing.
A second seagull landed. Then a third. Jen lunged at them with her book and they scattered, screaming, only to circle back and land three feet away.
"They're organizing," Lori said.
"They're not organizing." Jen tossed a chip toward the dunes to lure them away.
Two more seagulls landed.
"You just made it worse," Carrie said, wiping her eyes.
"I panicked."
When the laughter faded, nobody jumped in right away.
"Tom's retiring," Meredith said finally, because someone had to go first. "Or thinking about it. He's been running numbers for six months."
"That's good, right?" Lori asked.
"It's fine. It's just—" She stopped. "He'll be home. All the time."
"Ah," Jen said.
"I love him. I'm just not sure I want to see him that much."
None of them flinched. They'd known each other long enough that the ugly truths didn't need softening.
"Richard used to work from home on Fridays." Carrie half-smiled. "I'd hide in the laundry room."
"That's not the same," Olivia said.
"Yeah." Carrie picked at her chips, eyes somewhere else. "It's worse now. The house is too quiet."
The waves rolled in. Rolled out.
"Six months," Carrie said. "And I still expect to hear his car in the driveway."
"It gets easier." Lori reached over and squeezed her arm.
"Does it?"
"Easier isn't the right word." Lori thought about it. "You just stop waiting."
Carrie nodded, though she didn't look convinced.
Meredith turned to Olivia, who had been watching Max and Lily in the water—Max trying to catch a wave, Lily floating nearby on her back. "Dan coming down this weekend?"
No answer right away. Her eyes were on the water, or maybe on nothing at all.
"Dan had an affair," she said.
Nobody moved.
"What?" Carrie's voice came out strange.
"Emotional. Not physical. At least that's what he says." Olivia pulled at a thread on her beach towel, not looking at any of them. "A woman at work. They texted. All the time. For months."
"When did you find out?" Meredith asked.
"February. He left his phone on the counter and I saw her name." She lifted one shoulder, let it drop. "I wasn't looking. I just saw it."
No one said anything.
"We're trying. Counseling, date nights, all of it. He says it's over." She finally looked up. "I don't know if I believe him. I don't know if it matters."
"It matters," Jen said.
"Does it? He didn't sleep with her. He just—" She searched for the words. "He talked to her. About things he should have been talking to me about. And now I'm supposed to forgive that because it wasn't physical."
Carrie shook her head slowly. Lori put a hand on Olivia's shoulder.
"The kids don't know," Olivia said. "They know something's wrong. They're not stupid. But they don't know what."
"I'm sorry," Meredith said. "I didn't know."
"I didn't tell anyone." Olivia took a long sip of iced tea, her hand steady. "It's easier to pretend it's fine."
"It's not fine," Carrie said.
"No. It's not."
Carrie turned to Lori, shifting the weight. "And you? Anyone new?"
"No." Lori shook her head. "I'm not ready. I don't know if I'll ever be ready."
"You'll be ready," Jen said.
"Maybe." She didn't sound convinced. "It's been three years, and I still flinch when someone asks me out for coffee."
"Give it time," Olivia said.
"What about Ethan?" Meredith asked. "How's he doing with everything?"
Lori glanced toward the water. Ethan was sitting on the sand now, apart from the others. "Ethan doesn't think anything. Ethan doesn't talk."
"He's seventeen," Carrie said.
"He was talking fine until Kevin announced the engagement."
She hadn't meant to say it like that—hard, bitter. She took a breath.
"His dad's getting married again. To someone who's basically Sophie's age."
"She's not that young," Meredith said.
"She's thirty-two."
"Okay, she's young."
"And Ethan has to be in the wedding. Kevin wants him to be a groomsman." Lori exhaled. "He hasn't said yes. He hasn't said anything. He just—stopped."