Chapter 2 #2
Jen had been quiet through all of this, looking out at the water rather than at any of them.
Carrie nudged her. "Any news from the dating apps?"
"I deleted them."
"Again?" Carrie said.
"Permanently." Jen took a bite of her hoagie. "I've decided I'm done looking."
"You're forty-five," Lori said.
"And?"
"I'm just saying. There's time."
"I know there's time. That's not the point." She wiped her hands on a napkin, slow and deliberate. "I spent twenty years waiting for the right person. Maybe they don't exist. Maybe I'm fine on my own."
"You're not fine," Olivia said. "You're writing a book about it."
Jen laughed, caught off guard. "That's different."
"Is it?"
"The book isn't about me."
"Sure." Olivia was grinning now.
A chip flew at her. Olivia ducked, and the others joined in—Carrie snorting into her drink, Lori rolling her eyes. For a moment it was just that: five women on a beach, giving each other a hard time.
"More chips?" Carrie held up the bag.
"Please," Jen said.
They passed the bag around. The afternoon stretched out—hours lost to the water, to naps in the chairs, to walks up the promenade for ice cream.
By three the umbrellas started coming down around them.
By four they'd packed up and made the slow walk back, everyone sun-tired and salt-sticky and ready for a shower.
The outdoor shower off the side gate ran for forty-five minutes straight. The teenagers cycled through first, loud and impatient, tracking sand across the deck and arguing about who'd been in there longest.
"Max, you've been in there for twenty minutes," Sophie yelled through the slats.
"I'm rinsing."
"You're stalling."
"I'm thinking."
"Think faster."
By the time the women took their turns, the sun was lower and the water pressure had recovered.
Meredith went last. The water was lukewarm now, but she didn't mind. She could hear the others out by the pool—splashing, voices, the clink of ice in glasses.
The pool filled up without anyone organizing it. The teenagers claimed the water; the women took the middle deck with their drinks. Carrie had found a bag of pretzels and put them in a bowl. Lori had her feet up. Jen had the chair facing the street, not the ocean.
"I could stay right here forever," Lori said.
"Until the hot tub's ready," Carrie said.
"Even better." Lori stretched her arms overhead.
Carrie threw a pretzel at her. Lori caught it and ate it.
Olivia's phone buzzed. She glanced at the screen—Dan—then turned it face-down on the armrest.
"You can answer that," Jen said.
"It's fine." She didn't look up. "It's just Dan."
Nobody pushed. Carrie slid the pretzels toward Jen.
"I'm going to grab more water." Olivia stood and went inside. Through the sliding door they could see her moving through the kitchen, phone in hand now, then through the living room and out of sight.
Jen's eyes followed her. So did Meredith's.
Inside, the trash was overflowing. Meredith dealt with it herself, then wrote "trash" on the notepad she'd left on the counter that morning.
She called everyone together before dinner—"just a quick thing"—and went through the chore chart she'd made before they'd left home. Trash rotation, dishes, beach gear.
"Is this mandatory," Brittany asked from the doorway, "or more of a vibe?"
"Mandatory," Meredith said.
"Got it. Just checking the vibe."
The chart went on the refrigerator. People drifted back to wherever they'd been.
Lori stayed at the counter after the others had gone, fingers wrapped around a glass of water she wasn't drinking. "I keep thinking he'll snap out of it," she said, voice low. "But he's just getting further away."
Meredith leaned against the counter, listening.
"He used to talk to me," Lori said. "Before the divorce, even when things were bad, he'd still talk. Now it's like he's behind glass."
"He's angry."
"I know he's angry. I just don't know how to reach him through it."
"Maybe he needs to come to you."
"And if he doesn't?"
Meredith didn't have an answer. She wasn't sure there was one.
Carrie's laptop was open on the bed.
The spreadsheet had not changed since she'd last checked it—same columns, same numbers, same dread. Column A: fixed monthly. Column B: variable. Column C: what was left. That last column was what she kept returning to, as if the numbers might rearrange themselves into something less frightening.
She'd paid for her share of the hoagies without blinking.
She'd brought the cheese board from Whole Foods that she hadn't needed and did not regret, mostly.
Richard would have had something to say about all of it—Richard, who had managed their money for twenty years, who had left her with a house she couldn't quite afford and a future she couldn't quite see.
Divorce was math. Nobody warned you about that part. Lawyers and feelings, yes, but underneath all of it: math. What you had, what you owed, what was left when you divided everything in half and subtracted the cost of starting over.
Three more months. She just needed to keep the numbers from getting worse until then.
She stared at the ceiling.
Downstairs, she could hear the TV, footsteps moving through the kitchen, someone opening the refrigerator. Normal sounds. A house full of people going about their evening.
She shut the laptop, left it on the bed, and went downstairs.
The middle deck had emptied out except for Olivia, who sat with her phone face-up on the arm of her chair.
There was a text. Not from Dan.
How's the house? Thinking about you.
She read it. Read it again. The words were simple—friendly, even. Innocent, if you wanted them to be. But she knew what was underneath them, and she knew he did too.
The ocean moved in the dark below the dune. From somewhere inside she could hear the television, voices.
You're writing a book about it. That's what she had said to Jen at the beach. But wasn't Olivia writing something too? A story she was telling herself about why this was okay, why texting someone who wasn't her husband didn't count, why she could stand on this line without crossing it.
She typed a reply. Stopped. Deleted it.
Dan had texted too. Hope you're having a good time. Miss you.
Before February, that text would have made her smile. Now she didn't know what to do with it.
She didn't answer either of them.
The sliding door opened. Jen, with two glasses of wine.
"Thought you could use one."
Olivia took it. Jen leaned against the railing, looking out at the dark.
"It's not Dan," Olivia said. "The texts."
Jen didn't seem surprised. "I figured."
"How?"
"You check your phone like you're waiting for something good. That's not how people check for their husband."
Olivia drank from the glass. Jen was right.
"We don't have to talk about it," Jen said.
"Not tonight."
"Okay."
They stood there together, watching the pool lights shift on the water below.
"His name is Michael," Olivia said, barely audible.
Jen nodded and left it there.
Later, the house had gone quiet. Most of the teenagers were upstairs. The TV in the living room played to no one.
Jen had the couch to herself, laptop balanced on her knees.
Her editor's email was still there, still unanswered. Four days old now. Just checking in on the draft, no pressure, but we're coming up on...
She typed a sentence. Deleted it.
A summer away—that's what she'd told herself this was for. Fresh perspective, her agent had said, as if the problem were geography.
She thought about standing in the shallows that morning—the water around her ankles, the horizon line, how small it had made everything else feel.
She typed another sentence. Then another. Read them both.
Left them there.
Two sentences. She'd take it. She closed the laptop and sat with that small victory until her wine was gone.
In the converted sunroom at the back of the house, the lights were off. Max was already asleep, or pretending to be. Ethan lay on his bed with his earbuds in, something low and steady playing—not loud enough to hear the words, just the pulse of it.
He'd checked his phone twice since dinner. Nothing from any of the six places he'd applied. Not even a text. Sophie walked past a restaurant once and got an interview the next day. He'd walked in, filled out the applications, and heard nothing back.
Through the thin walls, he'd heard his mother's footsteps earlier—heard them stop outside the sunroom door and wait there, long enough that he knew she wanted to knock.
She didn't. That was what got him. She wanted to—he could practically feel it—but she didn't.
He didn't know if that made it better or worse.
His phone buzzed. His dad. Hey bud, give me a call when you get a chance. Want to talk about the wedding stuff.
Ethan read it then dropped the phone on the mattress beside him.
The music kept playing.
He closed his eyes and tried not to think about any of it.
By eleven, the noise had faded to murmurs.
The market lights along the pool fence swayed in a breeze that had come up off the ocean. Inside, the TV flickered blue and low.
On the rooftop, Meredith finished her wine and set the glass on the arm of her chair.
A whole summer. She'd made a chore chart, and nobody had refused to follow it—yet. She had a daughter leaving in September and a husband back home running retirement numbers and her oldest friends all under the same roof, bringing their messes with them. They always had. That was the deal.
The first stars were out, bright and steady over the water.
She thought about what Olivia had said at the beach. What Carrie hadn't said. The way Lori kept watching Ethan like she could pull him back to her through sheer attention.
Everyone had brought something with them this summer. Suitcases and beach chairs and the kind of baggage that didn't fit in a car.
Somewhere below, she heard Lily laugh—sudden and easy—followed by Sophie, then Ava. The three of them finding something funny at eleven o'clock on the second night of vacation.
Meredith stayed where she was.
Tomorrow they'd figure out groceries. Tomorrow Sophie had her interview. Tomorrow Ethan would still be checking his phone, and Olivia would answer Dan's texts or she wouldn't, and Carrie would check her spreadsheet again and try not to let it show.
And Meredith would be watching. She always was. That was what it meant to be the one who organized—you saw everything, even the parts people thought they were hiding.