Page 34 of The Note

They talked most days, but not all. And they saw each other regularly, but for them, that meant at most once a week, and only when they were in the same city. At first, she told herself that was enough. She was an artist. She moved—a lot. She traveled. She toured. She composed. She had no interest in having children. She had no need for a traditional, glued-at-the-hip relationship.

But then friends started getting married. They sent out holiday cards with happy photographs in front of vacation beaches and Christmas trees. She convinced herself she deserved the same things. But,oof,the expectations of the men with whom she tried to make a go of it were absolutely suffocating. It turned out that someone to talk to and spend a night with once a week or so suited her just about right. And besides, no one else loved her, looked at her, admired her, smiled at her, flat-out adored her like Thomas Welliver. He said he had no idea what happiness was until he met her.

Well before Lauren was in the picture, he and Jessica were so unhappy that they agreed to separate, but while the divorce papers were beingdrafted, Jessica decided that she didn’t want to lose all the perks of being Mrs. Thomas Welliver.

The Welliver marriage endured for the sole purpose of continuing Jessica’s role as one half of a Texas Power Couple. Thomas believed he owed her that much since she had made the decision not to have children in large part because that was his preference. So the marriage and accompanying philanthropic efforts continued, while they each had quiet relationships with other people.

Thomas had offered to leave Jessica many times over the years. More than offered. Almost like he asked permission. But if that happened, Lauren might be expected to act like a Mrs. Thomas Welliver. It wasn’t for her.

“You can’t even let me sweet-talk you,” he said.

When she had been the one to insist on tendering her voluntary resignation from Wildwood after the drowning, she had assumed it would also be the end of their relationship. She was always a little out of sync with the camp parents’ expectations. But she had talent—something the kids recognized because they didn’t respond to résumés or networking allegiances. They could feel at a cellular level that she loved music and was able to bring out the best in them.

In another world, it’s possible she would have eventually set aside her career as a working musician—composing, performing, conducting, producing—to settle into a year-round jobteaching children how to do all the things she had wanted to do for as long as she could remember. But then Marnie Mann drowned.

By that time, it was her ninth summer at the camp. She would have expected to be treated as part of the mourning family, like everyone else. But she was the youngest, by far, of any adult with responsibility at the camp. She was the one who acted as the bridge between the elders and the kids. And she didn’t look like everyone else.

Apparently, if something really bad happens in an idyllic place, all eyes move to the person who’s not quite like the others. And the rumors about her and Thomas certainly didn’t help.

She was tempted at first to fight for her position. She even called her mentor at the Louisiana Philharmonic for advice, who put her in touch with the president of Tulane, who contacted their very successful alumnus Thomas Welliver, who owned the camp. And that was, well, ironic.

Lauren was only thirty-one years old at the time, but she wasn’t stupid. She had never been stupid in her whole life. She knew how the world worked. Marnie’s death was terrible, but it was also an accident, and all those parents knew that. But they also knew they couldn’t continue to send their beloved kids to Wildwood to get them out of their hair without finding someone to blame. As long as they had someone to blame, they couldadd more adult managers, institute new rules about monitoring the activities of counselors off-camp, blah blah blah.

In short, it would be easier for the camp to survive the scandal if someone at Lauren’s level appeared to be getting the ax. The truth was that she already knew her viable days at Wildwood were numbered when Marnie had walked in on her and Thomas in Lauren’s cottage, Thomas’s hand not moving quickly enough from beneath Lauren’s dress.

She’d known Marnie since she was thirteen years old, and Marnie was constitutionally incapable of keeping a secret. Even so, the anonymous note slipped in the middle of the night beneath the door to the administrative offices seemed out of character. She would have predicted that Marnie, always vying for popularity she never managed to find, would use her newfound secret as currency among the other counselors and campers.

Once Lauren began to hear rumors that the camp owner’s hand had gone up her skirt, she knew she could not remain an effective den mother. When Marnie died, the answer seemed clear. It was time for her to go. Two potential scandals killed with one resignation.

But despite all her assumptions, it had not been the end of her relationship with Thomas.

He must not have been exaggerating aboutmissing her, because he had called her every day since she’d been in the Hamptons. “I am looking forward to being back in my own house,” she said.

“I’ve got your flight information. Can I be your ride?”

“Can’t wait.” She couldn’t think of anything more romantic than someone as busy as he was picking her up from the airport. “I love these women, but lord, I forgot how the two of them together can be a whole situation.”

She had been so excited for the Crew to reunite. But Kelsey and May both wanted so much from her that after only three days it was exhausting. There was a reason she didn’t have either a husband or children, and the combination of the two women could still feel like parenting.

Even the other night, when May went on about instantly knowing Josh was the one, Lauren suspected she’d been putting on some kind of act for Kelsey’s benefit, maybe to make sure that Kelsey wasn’t still disappointed that May and Nate had not become a permanent item. Lauren knew damn well that when May clicked with a guy from day one, it said more about the nights that might follow than any long-term plans for the future. Until three years ago, Lauren would have bet hard cash that May was going to join Lauren in the never-marry club. Every time anything started to get serious with a guy, she’d make certain it didn’t stay that way by finding someone else to hookup with—someone who didn’t see her as a perfect little nice girl. After Lauren’s first two encounters with Josh, she figured he was on borrowed time. But when faced with the choice of being locked alone in her studio apartment for the foreseeable future or hunkering down with Josh, May made the move, with the engagement to follow.

May had confided in Lauren that since she began therapy after the subway incident, she was talking openly about issues beyond her anxiety. Apparently her shrink thought May had something like a female version of the Madonna-Whore complex, dividing potential partners into two camps—the fun ones and the “good” ones. It sounded like a lot of psychobabble bullshit to Lauren. Maybe May just liked a certain kind of relationship with a certain kind of man. Or maybe Lauren was, as the therapists called it, “projecting.” But sometimes Lauren worried that May had agreed to get married so she wouldn’t have to admit to anyone—especially herself—that she’d only moved in with Josh because she feared being lonely. And if lying to Kelsey about being in love at first sight was part of the cover, so be it.

When Lauren had first asked Kelsey to contact May because she needed a friend, Kelsey said she wasn’t sure she could ever forgive her for not reaching out to her after Luke was murdered. As hard as she knew the two of them had worked to be there for each other the past year, it was clearLauren was still their common connection. She had always been the kind of person who, once she made a friend—a real friend—was a friend for life. Found family, is how she thought of it. As good, if not better, than blood. As different as she was from her family of origin, she still loved them unconditionally, even if they didn’t understand the choices she had made since she started out on her journey as a young teenager. She was lucky because not all families were connected like that. Some of the parents at Wildwood were so psyched to dump off their kids that they literally high-fived each other as they walked back to their luxury SUVs on drop-off day. And then there were kids like May or Kelsey, who had either lost a parent or never knew them to begin with.

It was only natural that some of them looked to the camp’s adults to be their family, if only temporarily. Kelsey, as much as she tried to act all grown, had always struck Lauren as a kid searching for love. She was an okay flutist and a fairly gifted vocalist—more poppy than classical—but musical training was never her passion. The camp was special to her because it felt like home.

Had Marnie lived, they probably would have remained close professionally. Marnie had said so many times, “I want to be you when I grow up,” and Lauren had been encouraging her to keep working on her original compositions. But when Marnie died, May and Kelsey were the oneswho were there—no longer children but not quite Lauren’s peers either—and their mutual need to connect had nothing to do with music. And after all these years, she had come to see Kelsey and May not like children or sisters precisely, but also not merely friends. She knew they felt the same way about her. She just wished they’d feel that way about each other again, too.

Kelsey especially needed the support of found family. Of all the overly doting and protective parents Lauren had dealt with at Wildwood, Bill Ellis arguably outdid them all, especially after the divorce from Nate’s mother. Even now that Kelsey was a grown woman helping him run his real estate empire, he treated her like a child. If she didn’t answer her phone on a Friday night, he’d want to know not only where she was but who she was with. When she wanted to buy her first apartment in Roslindale, he gave her an extra three hundred and fifty thousand dollars so she could buy in what he called a “safer” neighborhood that also happened to be closer to him. And though he paid her a meaningful salary, it was clear to Lauren that he was never going to pay her enough to be able to turn down Daddy’s help when he offered it.

Kelsey even joked that she owed her alibi at the time of Luke’s murder to her father’s overbearing ways. The night he was robbed, she was supposed to be on a date with a guy she met onOkCupid, but her father insisted that it would be embarrassing for him to receive an honor at the International Achievement Summit without her at his side. Her would-be date ghosted her after news of the murder got out. Kelsey had tried masking her despair with humor, saying that she never got a third date, but did get filet mignon and an alibi.

No matter how many years passed, Kelsey’s father was never going to stop treating Kelsey like a child. But if she did go forward with her decision to have a baby alone, that might be a way to bring her fractured family back together, which Lauren knew was what her friend wanted most in this world. Nate would definitely be a rock-solid uncle. And if Nate was helping Kelsey, it would be hard for Kelsey’s father not to accept him. Perhaps even Nate’s mother, Jeanie—despite the memory loss—would understand at some primal level that the baby was a part of her family.

Lauren told Thomas she’d call him tomorrow and made her way to the backyard, where Nate was still swimming laps. She and Kelsey were halfway through the chips and guac when Lauren’s cell rang. The ringtone was “Maggie May” by Rod Stewart. She answered on speaker.

“Hey there, woman. We were just saying we miss you.”

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