Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
The promenade was different early in the morning.
Meredith had slipped out before anyone else was awake. She'd wanted the air. The stillness. The version of Sea Isle that existed before the beach crowds descended and the day demanded something from her.
At seven-thirty, the concrete path belonged to joggers and a few older couples moving slowly with their coffees.
The shops were still shuttered, metal gates down, the gift shops and boutiques and bike rental places all waiting for the sun to climb higher.
A man in a faded Phillies cap was hosing down the sidewalk in front of a breakfast place, and the smell of bacon drifted out through the propped-open door.
She passed someone unlocking the door of a surf shop, a stack of boogie boards visible through the window. Two women in visors power-walked past her, deep in conversation about someone's daughter-in-law. A city worker emptied a trash can near one of the benches, nodded at her, moved on to the next.
Two days in, and she was already remembering why she'd loved this place.
Sea Isle had been part of her summers since she was a kid.
Family vacations first, then college weekends with the girls after they'd all met at Rowan University, then the early years of marriage when she and Tom would rent a small place for a week in August. The town had changed, of course.
New restaurants, fancier houses, the promenade more polished than it used to be.
But underneath all of it, Sea Isle was still Sea Isle.
The salt air, the sound of the waves, the particular way the morning light hit the concrete path. Some things you didn't forget.
She cut off the promenade and walked the block to Cafe 4109 on Landis.
The line was short this early, just a couple ahead of her, and she ordered an iced coffee for herself.
The barista was a college-aged girl with a nose ring and a tattoo of a wave on her wrist, and she made small talk while the espresso machine hissed.
"Here for the week?"
"The summer, actually."
The girl's eyebrows went up. "The whole summer? Nice."
Nice. Meredith supposed it was. She'd been planning this for so long that she'd stopped thinking about whether it was nice and started thinking about whether it was possible.
Whether the house would work, whether the kids would get along, whether five women and six teenagers could share a space for three months without someone ending up in the ocean.
So far, so good. But it was only day three.
She took her coffee and headed back toward the house. More people out now. A family loading beach gear into a wagon. Two teenagers on bikes weaving between parked cars. A woman in running shorts stretching against a stop sign, earbuds in, oblivious to everything around her.
By the time she turned onto 59th Street, the house was awake.
Sophie was in the kitchen when Meredith came through the door, phone pressed to her ear, pacing the length of the island.
"Okay," she was saying. "Okay, great. I'll be there. Thank you so much."
She hung up and turned, face lit in a way Meredith hadn't seen since they'd arrived.
"I got it."
Meredith set her coffee on the counter. "The Crabby Catch?"
"Hostess. I go in for training tomorrow, then I start for real later this week.
" Sophie was already moving, grabbing her phone, probably to text Trevor, then stopping herself.
"They said I could pick up extra shifts if I want.
And the tips are good, apparently, even for hostesses, because people tip on their way out and—"
Meredith crossed to her and pulled her into a hug, the kind that Sophie usually squirmed out of but this time didn't.
"I'm proud of you," Meredith said.
"It's just a hostess job."
"It's your first real job. That matters."
Sophie pulled back, but she was smiling. "I have to figure out what to wear. They said black pants and a white shirt, but like, what kind of white shirt? There are a lot of kinds."
"We'll figure it out."
The others filtered in over the next twenty minutes, drawn by Sophie's excitement.
Lori appeared from the hallway, still in her robe.
Carrie came down from upstairs, hair wet from the shower.
Jen wandered in from the deck, where she'd apparently been sitting with her laptop, though the screen was dark now.
Sophie told the story three more times, each version a little smoother than the last. By the third telling, she'd added details about the manager, a woman named Diane who'd been running the restaurant for fifteen years and had "a really good energy."
"What does that mean?" Brittany asked, appearing in the doorway with Ava behind her. "Good energy?"
"It means she's not going to yell at me," Sophie said.
"Low bar."
"It's a bar I appreciate."
Lily came down next, then Max, the two of them arguing about something that had happened in the pool last night that neither of them would fully explain. Olivia followed, phone in hand, expression guarded.
Ethan appeared last, tall and tanned from yesterday's beach day, hair still messy from sleep. He moved past the group to the Keurig and started a cup without saying anything.
"Sophie got the job," Lily announced, as if he hadn't heard it through the walls.
"Yeah, I heard." He leaned against the counter, waiting for the cup to fill. "Congrats."
Sophie looked at him. "Thanks."
"When do you start?"
"Tomorrow. Training first, then real shifts by the weekend."
He nodded. "That's cool. You'll be good at it."
And then, before anyone could ask him about his own search, he grabbed his coffee and headed for the back door. "I'm gonna go for a walk."
The screen door closed behind him.
By evening, they'd left the kids at the house and claimed a corner table at La Finestra.
It was BYOB, so Jen had brought two bottles of red. They'd snagged a table on the second floor, white linen, ocean views, their server opening the first bottle while they settled in.
Five women, midforties, taking up space like they'd earned it.
Lori sat across from Meredith. Tan and athletic now, transformed since the divorce.
She'd cut her hair into a choppy bob, dyed it a shade darker, started running and lifting.
Six months after Kevin left her for a trainer, she'd finally joined a gym.
But it wasn't about him anymore. It was about reclaiming herself.
Olivia had that Mediterranean beauty. Dark hair, olive skin, expressive brown eyes. She'd dressed carefully tonight, a silk wrap dress in deep green, delicate gold hoops. She was the kind of woman men noticed, though she'd stopped noticing them noticing her years ago.
The first half of dinner was easy.
They talked about the menu, about someone's sunburn, about whether Lily would actually apply to ice cream shops. Light conversation that didn't require anything from anyone.
"Sophie seems happy," Olivia said, when the conversation turned to the kids.
"She's thrilled," Meredith said. "First job jitters, but the good kind."
"Lily's jealous," Olivia admitted. "She wants to find something too, but she's only fifteen."
"Ice cream shops hire at fifteen," Jen said.
"That's what I told her. She said ice cream is beneath her."
"Beneath her?"
"She's fifteen. Everything is beneath her."
They laughed again. The wine was poured, refilled, poured again. The conversation moved the way it did when you'd known each other long enough that silence wasn't awkward and no topic was off-limits.
Except that wasn't quite true anymore, was it? Somewhere along the way, updates had replaced real conversations. They knew the surface of each other's lives, but not what was underneath.
Then Carrie reached for the bread basket and said, almost to herself: "I should probably skip the lobster. Given, you know, everything."
It landed wrong.
Everyone went still. Jen stopped mid-bite. Lori looked up.
"I'm fine. I'm joking." Carrie's smile fell flat. "Really. I'm fine."
But she wasn't. And they all knew it.
They'd shared some of this at the beach yesterday. The affairs, the divorce, the engagement. Headlines. But sitting here now, leaning in over the noise of the crowded room, headlines weren't enough.
It started with Carrie, because she'd been the one to crack first, and once she did there was no point pretending everything was fine.
"You know Richard left," she said. "But I didn't tell you all of it.
He left for Diana. His business partner.
" Carrie's fingers traced the stem of her wine glass, not drinking, just holding.
"Except I was his business partner first. My idea, originally.
Back when we were young and broke and didn't know anything about anything. "
Carrie had done the books. Found the first clients.
Built the whole thing alongside him until the girls came and someone had to be home.
Richard promised it was temporary. That she'd come back once they were in school.
But temporary stretched into years, and by the time she was ready to return, there was no room for her anymore.
"Then Diana came on five years ago. Smart.
Capable." She looked down at her wine. "Younger.
She'd been a client first, one Richard landed three years before she joined the company.
I used to joke that she was his favorite, always laughing at his jokes, always requesting him specifically.
Then he offered her the partnership that should have been mine. "
Carrie tucked a strand of curly red hair behind her ear.