“Just text when you’re ready to come home,” Kate said.
Sam gave her a sharp glance. “It’s not really home,” she said. “Where I live, lived, with Mom. That’s home.”
“I know,” Kate said.
Sam headed down School Lane to meet Rebecca, and Pete got into his black Mercedes S560. Kate hung back while he drove out of the parking lot. Then she put her car in gear. She stayed a quarter mile behind Pete’s car as he headed north along the river.
Kate didn’t know where he planned to go, but she was going to follow him and find out.
10
Sam slouched in the front seat of Rebecca Dwyer’s rust-pocked VW Bug as they headed toward Hubbard’s Point, the most magical beach in Connecticut. Driving along the main road, you’d never even know it existed—there were no signs. But once you went under the train trestle, everything changed: the real world slipped away. The security guard leaned toward the car window to ask whom Rebecca and Sam were visiting.
“The Waterstons,” Rebecca said.
“Isabel!” Sam said, leaning across Rebecca. “And her sister Julie, too, that cute little unicorn. You know her, right? We’re all going to build sandcastles and live happily ever after.”
The guard smiled and shrugged and made a notation on his clipboard. He waved them in, and Rebecca drove down the narrow beach road.
“Why did you act like that?” Rebecca asked.
“Like what?”
“I don’t know, sarcastic. Kind of rude,” Rebecca said.
“I’m sorry,” Sam said, her throat tight. Coming to Hubbard’s Point, no matter what was going on in her life, had always made her feel happy and safe. But right now, entering this haven of sun and sea, she felt as horrible and dead inside as she had since Kate had given her the news.
“It’s okay,” Rebecca said, giving her a concerned look.
“You know what that funeral jerk said? That they had a place reserved. Her spot in the ground. Like at a death hotel.”
“That’s horrible,” Rebecca said.
“It is,” Sam said, closing her eyes. She had the feeling she might fall off the world. Everything felt dangerous; she wasn’t sure her skin could hold her bones and blood and heart inside.
“Do you want to go home?” Rebecca asked.
Sam shook her head. Hubbard’s Point and the Waterston family were her second home. “I just really, really hope Isabel has some weed.”
“Sam,” Rebecca said, sounding helpless. “I know this is a terrible time. But you got weird last year, and, well, your mom hadn’t even . . .”
“Been murdered yet,” Sam said. It was true. Rebecca was a very straight arrow and didn’t smoke or drink, but she was right. Sam didn’t used to do those things either. She used to take honors classes. She had been chosen as one of only ten students in Connecticut to take a special Saturday seminar in stage design at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center in Waterford. Her mother had been so proud—a subspecialty of the gallery were paintings of opera sets by Dr. Elemer Nagy, artistic director at Hartford’s Hartt School of Music decades ago. They were perfect, delicate watercolors of productions such as The Princess and the Vagabond, and Sam had loved them since she was a little girl.
But things in her family were going downhill fast, and so was Sam. She had stomachaches too many Saturdays, so she dropped out of the O’Neill seminar. Her straight As plunged to B minus, then dropped more, and it was clear she had to leave the honors program.
Her family pretended they didn’t know what was wrong, but she couldn’t believe they hadn’t figured it out. Her mother took her first to Dr. Alonzo, her pediatrician, then to a gastroenterologist at Yale-New Haven—but all her tests came back showing she was totally healthy.
Sam wanted to tell them to skip the tests. Her parents had tried protecting her from the truth for months, but try hiding a seriously deep, dark secret from your teenage daughter—it’s a colossal waste of time.
Her dad was cheating with Nicola, from the gallery. As soon as it started, Sam felt a storm cloud settle over her house. She began listening at doors, and when her father left his computer on, she read his email. The truth was right there in front of her face: gushy notes to Nicola, sometimes complaining about Sam’s mom. Having a dad who lied, who wanted to be with another woman instead of staying home with his wife and daughter, sucked in a way that made Sam literally sick, to the point she couldn’t concentrate on schoolwork. Or anything.
Sam listened to her parents whisper and fight in their bedroom with the door closed. She wanted to hear every single detail and pretend it wasn’t happening, both at the same time. One day they walked out of their room, stone faced, and caught her standing in the hallway.
“I know,” she said.
“What do you know?” her father asked.
Sam looked at her mother. From the stricken look in her eyes, Sam could see her mother understood. Her mom had a sixth sense when it came to Sam.
“Why did you bother dragging me to all those doctors?” Sam asked.
“Because of your stomachaches,” her father said. “And the fact you’re failing in school.”
“You can tell him the real reason for that, Sam,” her mother said softly.
Sam wanted to, but she couldn’t bring herself to say the words. Her mother said them for her.
“It’s you,” her mother said.
“I know about Nicola, Dad,” Sam whispered.
Her father didn’t hug her or apologize to her mom or anything else. He just stood there as if he had frozen. Sam waited for him to say something. His mouth started to form words, but no sound came out. The tension in that hallway was so intense Sam couldn’t take it anymore. She ran out of the house and didn’t stop until she got to Hubbard’s Point, across the sandy parking lot and right into Isabel’s arms.
After that, her parents didn’t even bother to hide their fights. The night her father’s son, Tyler, was born was one of the worst of her life. Sam and her dad were in the den watching Vice Principals on HBO. They were on the couch, feet up on the big footstool, eating ice cream and laughing at who could be the biggest jerk at the school. It felt good, almost normal, as if they were still a real family. But then her mother walked into the room, holding up her dad’s cell phone.
“You left it in the kitchen,” she said.
“Yeah, we’re watching the show. Come sit with us,” he said.
“You have a text,” she said, handing the phone to him. Sam leaned over to read the screen.
Nicola had texted: My water just broke.
That was that. Her father didn’t say a word, didn’t kiss her goodbye, just left the house. He didn’t return for two days, and when he did, he didn’t mention Tyler. Sam had to find out the details, the fact that she now had a half brother, by hearing her mother talk on the phone to Isabel’s mom.
So partying began to make more sense than studying. Isabel was into it too. She had had some family stuff she hadn’t wanted to talk about, but Sam had been able to tell by the way their moms had whispered on the beach that they had had dark secrets in common.
“Be all right,” Rebecca said.
Sam looked over at Rebecca, her big brown eyes, blonde hair falling in ringlets to her shoulders, her mouth quivering as if she was about to cry.