Page 89 of Swan Song

Very clean? Kacy thinks. She finds herself wanting to protest. I’m not very clean!

Against all odds, Stacy Ambrose is cool. Yes, she has summered on Nantucket her entire life, and yes, she grew up climbing on the giant anchor on the lawn below them, but she seems almost apologetic about her privilege. “This place has an underbelly,” she says. “Trust me.”

Stacy is just a year younger than Kacy. How did they never meet? Stacy grew up in a big, ramshackle house on Hulbert with a bunch of cousins. They played sardines and a lot of Monopoly, badminton in the side yard. “We weren’t allowed to go to the parties or the bonfires,” she says, and Kacy admits that, as the daughter of the police chief, she wasn’t either.

As Stacy is telling Kacy about her job—she’s a guidance counselor at McDonogh, a private school in Maryland (yes, Kacy has heard of it; very fancy)—Kacy’s phone rings.

“You can’t talk on your cell here, sorry,” Stacy says. “I break every rule at this club, but not that one.”

“Right, no, obviously,” Kacy says, reaching into her bag and turning off her ringer by feel. “I’m sorry.” She takes a quick peek at the display: Isla.

Isla is calling for the first time all summer now? While Kacy is on a date?

“Everything okay?” Stacy says.

“Yeah, of course.” Kacy turns her attention back to Stacy and their martinis and the dish of Bugles that has appeared between them. Stacy places a Bugle on each of her fingertips like little hats and eats them that way.

“So what do you do for work?” Stacy asks. She gives Kacy the up-down. “I’m thinking fashion or lifestyle influencer.”

“Ha! Hardly!” Kacy says, though she’s flattered. “I’m a NICU nurse. I’ve been living and working in San Francisco for seven years.”

“And you took the summer off?”

“I came to a crossroads,” Kacy says. “Something bad happened at work and then something bad happened in my—” Kacy’s phone buzzes. Kacy should turn it all the way off, and she will, but first she peeks at the screen. Is this a joke? Does Isla have a sixth sense? Does she know Kacy is out with a woman who is normal, maybe even better than normal?

“Do you have to take that?” Stacy asks. “If you do, there’s an old-school phone booth next to the ladies’ lounge.”

“No,” Kacy says, but a second later a text comes in from Isla: Pick up, it’s an emergency.

“Okay, yeah, maybe. I’ll return this call real quick.”

“I’ll get two more martinis,” Stacy says. She hops up and leans over the bar in a way that is undeniably appealing.

Stacy is Her, Kacy thinks.

Downstairs, tucked into a phone booth minus the phone, Kacy texts Isla back. What is it? I’m kind of in the middle of something.

Kacy’s phone rings and Kacy thinks, Okay, I guess we’re doing this, and picks up.

On the other end there’s silence, then a breath, then a long, loud wail. Someone’s dead, then. Isla’s father? Her mother? Kacy has never been introduced to Isla’s family.

“Hey,” Kacy says. “What is it?”

“He’s sleeping with Tami!” Isla shrieks. “He says he’s in love with her! They’ve been screwing around for a year and a half!”

The first thing that strikes Kacy is Isla’s voice. She forgot how much she loves it. “Calm down, I can barely understand you.”

This is met with sobs, then Isla blowing her nose, then a deep breath. “Dave is having an affair with Tami Dunne.”

“Dr. Dunne’s wife? The chick with the ridiculous eyebrows and the fake tits?”

“They’ve been together since the fall before last.”

So have we, Kacy thinks. She remembers back to the last time she saw Rondo—midday at the elevator bank, looking as though he’d just taken a shower. Kacy had thought affair then, but she never would have guessed Totally Tami Dunne, his best friend’s wife. Apparently Rondo isn’t Mister Rogers after all.

“It’s going to be okay,” Kacy says. “I know it feels bad now—”

“He lied to me!” Isla says. “He cheated on me!”

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