Page 52 of Count My Lies

Sloane nods. “Then it’s settled!” I pronounce. “I’ll take Harper down to the beach when she wakes, and we can make dinner when you get back.”

“Are you sure?” Sloane asks. “Because I can stay with Harper if you want.”

“Completely,” I say. “Really, I’m exhausted. And it’ll give me some time to unpack. You guys have fun, enjoy the island!”

I pretend not to notice the look Jay gives me. He’s confused at my enthusiasm, doesn’t quite know what to make of it. But I keep my face blank and after a beat, he turns and smiles at Sloane. “All right, let’s do it,” he says, holding the front door open for her. She smiles back, blushing slightly. She’s besotted, poor thing.

When the door closes behind them, I smile. It’s important that they’re seen together from day one. Mr. and Mrs. Jay Lockhart.

23

When I’m alone, I take my suitcase and lug it up the stairs, down the hall to the master bedroom. The room is beautiful, beachy and light-filled, with two big windows looking out over the ocean, the sand stretching out to meet the frothy surf. On the wall to my right, there’s a king-sized bed flanked by two doors, one to a large walk-in closet, one to a bathroom. On the left wall, a modern dresser, armchairs on either side.

I toss my suitcase onto the bed. First things first. Gina, the agent, assured me that there would be a safe available somewhere in the house. I find it in a linen closet in the master bathroom; I use my grandmother’s birthday as the code, the same password to my burner phone. In it, I put three things: the gun, the phone, and the manila folder my lawyer sent me last week, divorce papers inside.

Once I relock the safe, I unpack only one thing, a red Hervé Léger dress that I purchased last week, hanging it up in the walk-in closet. The rest—two modest one-piece swimsuits, shorts, a few T-shirts—I leave in my suitcase. I want to be able to easily move everything into Sloane’s room later this week.

I go back downstairs and take the remaining luggage up: Jay’s into our room, Sloane’s into hers, Harper’s outside her door. As I set it down, I hear a rustle inside.

“Mama?” Harper calls out. Her voice is small and froggy with sleep.

I ease the door open gently. “Did you have a good nap, lovey?” I ask. “You fell asleep on the way to the house.”

Harper sits in the middle of the bed, bleary-eyed, her hair sticking up in fuzzy tufts. “Are we at the beach?” she asks.

I nod. “Want to go play in the sand?”

Thirty minutes later we’re on a beach blanket, our skin glistening with sunscreen. Harper is using a little plastic shovel to dig a hole next to the blanket, searching for sand crabs. I lie back, arms behind my head.Maybe, I think hopefully,Jay will get hit by a car on the way back.

We’ve been on the beach about an hour when I see Jay and Sloane approaching on their bikes. “Look!” I say to Harper. “There’s Daddy and Caitlin!” I raise a hand above my head and wave. Harper waves, too.

Both Jay and Sloane wave back. I see Jay say something to Sloane, then they both dismount from their bikes. He takes a paper bag from the basket of his bike and heads toward the house while Sloane starts down the path leading to the beach.

Sloane approaches us with a wide smile. She looks giddy, her eyes sparkling, cheeks flushed. They had a good time, I can tell. I knew they would. Jay, with his easy smile, the way he looks at you, makes you feel like you’re at the top of a roller coaster, just about to tip. Exhilaration and anticipation, stomach flipping, heart pounding. It’s like a drug. If you’re not careful, you’ll turn into an addict, track marks on your arms, veins shot.

It’s the way I felt when I first met him. He sat in the desk next to mine my freshman year in college, smiling at me as he lowered himself into the chair. It was only the second week I’d been on campus. “Is this seat taken?” he’d asked.

“It is now,” I said.

He walked me back to my dorm but didn’t leave. We sat on my bed, talking, our thighs touching. I could barely breathe around him. He was the kind of good-looking that makes you ache. And he was funny, made me laugh until my sides hurt. But really, it was how his eyes never left mine, how everything else disappeared around us. He asked me to be his girlfriend two weeks later, and then, when we graduated, to be his wife. Both times, I said yes before he’d even finished the question. I knew I’d never get tired of the way he looked at me; it never occurred to me that he’d ever get tired of looking. I worked so hard to make sure he wouldn’t, my body sweaty and sore from the effort.

“Jay’s going to start the grill,” Sloane says as she nears. “He said to come up in an hour.”

“Did you have fun?” I ask. I motion for her to join me on the beach blanket.

She nods as she sits, stretching her legs out into the sand. “It’s gorgeous here.” She tilts her head back and breathes in deeply. “Like nothing bad could ever happen, right?” she says, looking over at me, smiling.

I nod. I know what she means. Except bad things do happen here. Drownings, overdoses, drunk-driving deaths. More than you might think, dozens each summer, careless tourists with too much money and not enough regard for themselves or anyone else.

Bad things happen, but they’re cleaned up quickly, wiped away,made neat by money and power. Nothing examined too closely. Accidental deaths or natural causes, always, the coroner’s signature loose and sloppy, just like him. Rumor had it he was happy to look the other way, sign the paperwork, no questions asked—as long as it was worth his while.

Like the time an intern disappeared from a senator’s vacation home, poof, just like that. Everyone had seen them together that summer, noticed how beautiful she was, how young she seemed—especially compared to his wife. Her sudden absence was explained away, never mind the shouting we all heard the night before we never saw her again, the cleaning crew at his house the following morning. It was something only the locals knew about, our secret to keep, one of our many own Chappaquiddicks. No one wanted the beauty of the island untarnished more than we did, not even the ones writing the checks.

Nothing—no one—is perfect, not even the things you love the most. Growing up, I couldn’t quite make sense of it, how a place so bright could also be so dark, but now, it suits me. In fact, it’s one of the reasons we’re here.

I reach out and squeeze Sloane’s hand. “Thanks for coming, Cait.”

She squeezes back. “Thanks for inviting me.”

---