Page 57 of Surfside Sisters

“I don’t blame you one bit,” Eloise said. “This is a turbulent time for you.” She sat on the sofa next to Keely and hugged her tightly. “You’ve been in spots like this before. When you had to quit college your junior year and come home to help me. When Isabelle got sent to that writers’ colony…remember your distress? But you sucked it up and moved on and now look at you. You wrote a novel. You sold it! You paid off your ancient mother’s mortgage. You have a wonderful life ahead of you.”

Keely sniffed. “Thanks, Mom. You’re right. I know that. I just don’t know what to do. I wanted to throw a big party to celebrate my book contract. But Isabelle’s parents are throwing a huge engagement announcement party at the White Elephant for Isabelle and Tommy. I can’t compete with that, and I don’t want to try.”

“Why don’t you do what you always do when you’re upset?” Eloise asked.

“What’s that?”

“Go in your room and work on a novel.”

Keely burst out laughing. She dried her tears. She went into her room. She wrote.

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Working on her second book,Poor Girl,kept her sane. She rearranged her room to make more space for her piles of paper and discarded pages and Post-it notes. She went for a long run every morning, wrote for most of the day, and collapsed with a book in the evening. Autumn arrived, with cooler, dryer air, and puffy clouds rolling across the sky. Keely took her mother with her for several days to New York when Keely had her author photo taken. Juan sent her the edited manuscript ofRich Girl,and as Keely read it, she was relieved and grateful for the opportunity to change and improve the book.Write what you know,everyone said. She had done that, using the emotions from her life to sharpen her writing.

She thought of Isabelle every day. She considered calling Isabelle, but decided Isabelle should call her. After all, Keely hadn’t done anything wrong by having a book accepted for publication. Keely thought—hoped—they’d run into each other in the grocery store or the library, but that didn’t happen.

Keely stalked her on Facebook, where Isabelle posted daily some adorable photo of her and Tommy. Apparently Isabelle was busy decorating their apartment, too busy to call Keely, or to text, or to send an email congratulating Keely on her book contract. Just as Keely was too busy to send an email congratulating Isabelle on her engagement.

But she missed Isabelle so much. Janine told her that she’d gotten an invitation card. Isabelle and Tommy would be married on December2. Keely didn’t get one.

Christmas came. Isabelle posted on Facebook a picture of a new Sea Hunt fishing boat tied up to the pier in Madaket. The caption read, “Thanks, Dad!” The boat had to cost over fifty thousand dollars. Tommy had christened itIsabelle.In the photo,Tommy was at the console of the boat, and Isabelle stood behind him, arms around him, head resting against his broad back, smiling like a child on Christmas.

“Well, well. Look at that,” Keely said aloud in her room. “So Isabelle’s father gave them a place to liveandthe boat of Tommy’s dreams. Mr. Maxwell just about wrapped Tommy up in tissue, tied him with a big red bow, and presented him to Isabelle, a present for his darling daughter.”

She thought she kind of hated Isabelle’s father, how he could choose to buy his daughter the man she wanted, not caring or even noticing that Keely had been going with him for two years.

But her heart lifted to see Isabelle’s smile. Really, she was glad Isabelle was happy. Her sorrow was how much she missed her friend. If she and Isabelle were together, they’d be jumping up and down and screaming with happiness about Keely’s book, Isabelle’s marriage.

New Year’s Eve arrived. Eloise was working, as usual, so the younger nurses could have the time to be with their families. Keely didn’t mind. The two of them didn’t need to toast with champagne—they’d already been doing that. Keely was glad to spend New Year’s Eve alone. She didn’t want to attend any party where she might run into Isabelle and Tommy. She was a coward, she knew, but she was a coward with a book contract, and that made all the difference.

Most of the cold winter evenings she spent with her mother. On weekends, she went out to dinner with girlfriends or to a movie at the Dreamland or a lecture at the library. She didn’t look for Tommy or Isabelle, and when she saw them in the distance driving down a street, she held her head high and acted as if she didn’t know them. But she seldom saw them. The island was changing. Super wealthy people were snapping up land and houses. Islanders were selling their homes for fortunes and moving to the mainland. It was easy to avoid Isabelle and Tommy because the town, shops, and restaurants were packed with new people.

The flurry of activities surrounding her book’s upcoming publication began to mount up. Excitement was building. The pre-orders were tumbling in. It was time for her to get involved in social media, so she worked with a website manager from New York. She took photos of the island to use on her website—a task that made her see the island with fresh eyes. She networked, connecting with other new writers in faraway states and book lovers and bookstore owners and fun bloggers. She put out a daily blog, counting down to her publication date, talking about what inspired the book, life on the island, the posh galas the girl inRich Girlattended.

She could have this, Keely thought. She could have an island life. She could live here and take her runs through the charming streets of the town, swim in the ocean, have fun at parties and maybe even find a guy to flirt with. She didn’t have to center her life on the loss of her best friend and her boyfriend. She was free. She was home.

In March, Keely drove out to Bartlett’s Farm. She loved strolling through the farm store, feasting her eyes on the island-grown vegetables. She pushed her cart around a corner, heading for the arugula, when something flashed in the corner of her eye, as bright and restricting as a red traffic stop sign.

She pulled her cart back into her aisle. She craned her neck to see around the corner.

Isabelle and Tommy. Really, she thought, it was surprising that she hadn’t run into them before now. She took a deep breath, her inner cheerleader telling her she had this, she could do it.

Isabelle and Tommy moved more into her view. They stood before a pile of apples and pears. Tommy was smiling down at Isabelle with such tenderness Keely’s eyes stung with tears. Isabelle turned toward Tommy, and tilted her head in that winsome way she had.

And Keely saw clearly the baby bump swelling from Isabelle’s waist.

Isabelle was going to have a baby. She was at least six months pregnant.

“Oh, Isabelle,” Keely whispered. Unconsciously, she put her hands over her heart, as if protecting it. All the moments of her life when she and Isabelle had discussed how many babies they would have, and what they would name them, and if they were going to have natural childbirth and how could they manage to get pregnant at the same time so they could have their babies grow up as friends—all of that flooded back around Keely, submerging her in such sweet memories that tears filled her eyes. How had it happened that they were so far apart, that their real grown-up lives were so different from their dreams?

As she watched the couple, another married pair, Rosaline and Warren, approached Isabelle and Tommy with hugs and kisses. Rosaline was pregnant, too, Keely saw, and the two women stood side by side, comparing bellies and laughing smugly.

Keely left her cart in the aisle and fled. As she wound her way through the aisles, keeping as far away from Isabelle and Tommy as possible, she dug her sunglasses out of her bag and put them on, so that no one would see her tears.

She made it out the door, across the parking lot, and into the safety of her car without seeing anyone she knew. She didn’t pause to put on her seatbelt. She fired up the engine and drove away, down the narrow farm lane to the wider road. The seatbelt alert blinked rapidly and shrilly, keeping time, it seemed, to the pounding of her heart. At an intersection, she paused and clicked on the seatbelt to silence it.

She drove home with great care, afraid to get pulled over by a policeman—she knew so many of them personally—desperately wanting to avoid being seen as she was, with tears streaming down her face. She pulled into her driveway and rushed into the house, and while she caught her breath, she saw herself reflected in the mirror above the table that held their mail and keys.

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