Page 46 of Count My Lies

It was a cheap trick, and I knew it. So did Jay, his mouth set in a thin line as Harper swiveled to look at me, her spoon suspended in midair, an expression of pure excitement on her face.

“Come on, Jay, what do you say? You loved Block Island.”

We spent a long weekend there shortly after we moved to New York. Harper was almost four at the time, Jay and I optimistic about our future, hopeful that we’d left the hardest days, the fighting, the arguing, behind us in San Francisco. We spent every day on a beach blanket, Harper digging in the sand at our feet, strolling through the little town when we got hungry in search of lobster rolls and hand-churned ice cream, sunburnt and happy.

It was Jay’s first time to the island, but it wasn’t mine. Far from it. I’d spent every summer growing up there, from the week after school let out in June to the last weekend in August, in my grandmother’s vacation home. She’d spent her summers as a girl there, too, then after she retired and my grandfather died, she moved there permanently.

At first, we went as a family, but as I got older, my parents would fly me out, stay a week or so, then fly back to San Francisco, which was fine by me.Don’t let the door hit you on the way out, I wanted to call after them as they rolled their suitcases down the pathway to their town car. I was happy to see them go, happy to stay. I loved it there. I loved it so much that in my senior year of high school, I moved in, unpackingmy things into the dresser in my grandmother’s spare room. It felt like more of a home than I’d ever had before.

I adored my grandmother. She wasn’t one of those older women with a stiff perm and even stiffer upper lip. Unlike my parents, she didn’t care if my T-shirts were Popsicle-stained or if I never used a brush, if my skin was sticky from sunscreen. Her shirts were stained, too, hair also wild. She wore cutoff jean shorts and went barefoot. She sailed, shucked oysters, laughed with her mouth wide open. We were equals from the start, partners in our island adventures. With her, I could be myself, and she loved me for it.

We’d start our mornings on the front porch with a coffee, mine mostly milk and sugar, flipping through the paper, then bike into town to pick up groceries for that night’s dinner. During the day we swam in the ocean, searched for shells in the sand, read on beach towels. I told her everything, about my life at home, about what I wanted to be when I grew up, how I really felt when Caroline, who I thought was my best friend, didn’t invite me to her birthday party, even though I pretended not to care.

She was the first person I told when Danny kissed me. I’d had a crush on him since the first day I set foot on Block Island. We’d met when we were six, on the beach in front of my grandmother’s house.

“Want to help me build a castle?” he had asked. He had these bright amber eyes, a mop of curly hair to match, a dusting of freckles on his nose, and, even then, this deep, melodic voice that made anything he said sound like a serenade. I’d waited ten long years for him to kiss me. Ten years that we’d chased each other around the island, fished in his boat, snuck out to swim in the dark, that we’d jumped on my bed singing Prince songs at the top of our lungs,I would / die for / you / yeah / darlin’ if you want me to!He knew me better than I knewmyself. The real me, not the me I had to pretend to be for my parents, always prim and smiling, never a hair out of place.

Danny was one of a handful of true locals whose family lived on the island year-round. His dad was a doctor, his mom a waitress in his aunt’s restaurant. They weren’t wealthy, and even though they did well, it wasn’t enough to keep my parents from looking down their noses at Danny, telling me I could—and should—do better. But no one was better than Danny; no one had a heart like he did.

Then, a few weeks after our first kiss, just after my sixteenth birthday, he told me we couldn’t be together anymore. He’d met someone else. My grandmother wiped my tears. “It’ll all make sense one day,” she whispered into my ear, and she was right. She’d seen the bigger picture, she always did. She was everyone’s lifeline, her hand always outstretched to lift you up, pull you out of the depths of whatever murky water you were flailing in.

I was a freshman in college when she died, suddenly, of a heart attack, only a few weeks before I was supposed to fly to the island for Christmas. My mom called me at six in the morning on a Sunday with the news. It was the first time I’d heard from my mother in months. I was bleary-eyed, confused, last night’s mascara still gluey on my lashes, then, when it sunk in, devastated. I wrote a speech for the funeral, but I never read it; I was crying too hard to speak. Jay and I had just started dating, and he sat beside me on a pew, his arm around my shoulder.

When Jay and I took Harper to Block Island last May, it was the first time I’d been back since I was eighteen. My heart ached when we disembarked from the ferry. It felt like coming home. The island was more crowded than it had been when I’d left—more tourists, new hotels and houses dotting the coastline—but it smelled the same, likehand-pulled saltwater taffy, had the same dreamlike quality to it that it always had, its edges soft and hazy.

On the way to our rental, I asked Jay to drive by where my grandmother’s bungalow had been. I frowned, confused when I didn’t see it, only to realize that the lot had been bulldozed, a modern three-story monstrosity built in its place. I was surprised, but more than surprised, I was angry. What kind of person would tear down a historic landmark? I wanted to take a bat to the floor-to-ceiling glass windows, drag its occupants out by their hair.This land doesn’t belong to you, I’d yell. But I sat in the passenger seat quietly, my nails digging into my palms. Jay didn’t notice a thing.

I’d thought that I would recognize everyone, that everyone would recognize me, but for the most part, I was anonymous, another tourist, another New Yorker passing through. I turned heads in my Missoni cover-up, high-cut bikini bottoms, but it wasn’t because anyone knew who I was. It had been too many years, the ties that I’d had long faded.

On our last afternoon, I snuck out to browse in the little boutiques while Harper napped, stopping for a glass of wine at a sidewalk café before I went home. The waitress was in her fifties or sixties, with graying hair and an open, pleasant face. “Violet?” she’d asked, studying me. “Rebecca’s granddaughter?”

I’d nodded and then realized it was Danny’s aunt, his mom’s youngest sister. We hugged and she told me how sorry she was about my grandmother’s passing. “Wait until Danny hears I saw you,” she said. “He’s always had a soft spot for you.” I hadn’t spoken to him since my grandmother’s funeral over ten years ago; I’d closed that part of my life, of myself. I’d packed her away, hidden her under clothes that weren’t my style, a life I barely recognized. I’d thought I had to. I’d thought that’s how I made people love me. In fact, Harper was theonly glimmer of who I’d been on the island: her giddiness, giggles, wild curls a vestige of the old me.

But now, I needed to go back again. It was the only place that made sense. So I put on an amiable face, smiled at Jay. “Come on,” I had said. “Remember the lobster rolls?”

“I’ll think about it,” Jay answered. But he agreed, finally, after I asked again, this time in the dark, under the covers, his hand between my legs. I bit down on the inside of my cheek so hard it bled, but I needed him to remember how things used to be, how things could be again, maybe, if he said yes. I squeezed my eyes shut as he touched me, pretending I was somewhere—anywhere—else.

Now, to Sloane, I say, “Harper is going to be so excited when I tell her. She loves you, you know.”

Sloane smiles broadly, flattered. “I happen to adore her, too.”

I believe her. I was hesitant, at first, to leave Harper alone with Sloane, busying myself with the laundry while they played in the next room, making excuses to join them at the park, but the more I watched them together, the clearer it became how much Sloane enjoyed spending time with Harper, how good she was with her. Little things like squatting down to Harper’s level when they talked, making up silly songs when Harper’s on the verge of throwing a fit, assembling snacks to look like animals—pretzel butterflies and peanut butter toast in the shape of a cat, sliced strawberries for the ears. It’s one of the things that endears her to me. Funnily, I don’t hate her. You’d think I would, given what I’m planning to do, but I don’t. In some ways, I’m grateful. She’s a means to an end. The answer to a problem. And she makes me laugh.

“Then it’s settled!” I say. “You’re coming. The only thing I need from you is your driver’s license. For the ticket.”

Sloane’s face changes, paling. “My driver’s license?” she squeaks. For a minute, I’m confused, but then I remember. It has her real name on it. She doesn’t want me to see it.

I nod. “Yeah, it’s some new security requirement for the ferry. And I’ll add you to the rental car reservation, in case you want to take Harper anywhere.”

Sloane’s throat moves as she swallows hard. “Sure,” she says slowly. “No problem.” She opens her purse and begins to rifle through it. She looks back up, furrowing her brow, in faux surprise. “It’s not in here. I must have left it at home. Can I swing it by tomorrow?”

“Of course,” I say. I can’t wait to hear the lie she comes up with when she hands it to me.

After Sloane leaves to get Harper, I take my laptop to the kitchen counter, then pour a full glass of wine. As I sit down on a bar stool, my inbox dings. It’s the travel agent I’ve been working with. I click into the email excitedly.

Good news, it reads.Call me.

I grin, picking up my phone.

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