Page 3 of Dead of Summer
“Oh, there you are, I’ve been looking for you.” She sighs in relief as David’s hand slips around her waist. His skin smells like aftershave and the bar of triple-milled soap from the walk-in shower.
“Finally awake I see,” his father’s gravelly voice chides David from the table, though his eyes never leave the pages of thePost. “I guess you never were much of an early riser. Preferred to leave that to the rest of us.”
“Dad! I didn’t see you there.” David quickly pulls his hand away from Faith and gives his father a strained grin. “I see you’ve met Faith.”
“What?” Geoffrey Clarke glances up, momentarily confused until his eyes land on Faith. “Oh, right. We’ve met, yes.”
Faith ignores the slight and gives him a cool smile. She takes David’s hand in hers, noticing the strange limp clasp of his fingers. “Should we go into town? I’ll go grab my purse.” She is eager to exit this uncomfortable breakfast and enter vacation mode.
“Town?” Geoffrey’s voice reverberates through his newspaper. “Oh, no, my dear. I’m sorry but David is staying here—for the time being, anyway.” He lowers the page and now she can see a small smile playing on his lips.
“Oh,” Faith says, feeling the coolness at her back as David steps away from her.
“We have some things to discuss, don’t we, David?”
“Sure, of course…” David falters.
“Right now?” Faith’s stomach drops.
“Don’t worry, it shouldn’t be long,” David says, not looking at her.
“Come on, son, don’t have all day.” Geoffrey stands abruptly. “Not like some people.”
“I’ll be done in no time,” David whispers to Faith. “Have fun. Go to the pool. Explore the grounds. I’ll text you as soon as I’m out.” He smiles reassuringly. There is something about how quick he was to change course that makes her uncomfortable. David is not someonewho generally flip-flops on things. His consistency is one of the things she loves about him. But she isn’t going to make a big deal about it. She knows how counterproductive that would be.
Faith learned early on that if you want to make it in this world as a woman, you have to keep your hands on the dials at all times, turning them up and down as the situation calls for it. You can’t ever let them see you lose your composure.
She keeps a placid smile on her face as she watches David follow his father down the hall. Faith has always been extraordinarily good at faking it. It is one of the main tools that has aided her in her rise from a literal nobody speeding toward a life of abuse and addiction in a tiny town to where she is today, in the house of a billionaire overlooking the ocean. To survive as someone like her, she knows that you must always remember who you were, and how easy it would be to fall back.
ORLA
The Hadley Island ferry backs away from the mainland, shuddering loudly. Orla O’Connor has stationed herself on the top deck, her suitcase wedged between her knees and the row of plastic seats in front of her. Their tops are cracked and bleached to the color of orange sherbet from the sun. She looks around at the other passengers, relieved to find that she recognizes none of them. They all seem to be tourists who, despite the relatively cool and windy conditions on the boat, are optimistically wearing shorts and T-shirts. They take pictures with their phones, calling loudly across the deck to one another. Orla feels like she is living on a completely different plane of existence than all of them.
Two women in their sixties settle into the row of chairs in front of Orla. They wear matching straw hats and lean back relaxed as they chatter on about where to get the best calamari on the island. Orla sinks deeper into her seat trying to bury her annoyance. What exactly is it that bothers her about these people? Happiness? The sound of their voices? Or is it that their lives seem so carefree, so different from her own?
The boat picks up speed as it cuts though the sound, and she looks nervously toward the bow where the swells undulate higher and higher, breaking into frothy whitecaps. Is it too soon for more Xanax? The lastone she took was before she got on the bus in New York this morning, her throat sour with what she was about to do. She holds off for now. She’ll certainly need another later.
After nearly twelve years Orla has almost managed to forget what it is like here, the briny vegetal smell of the water, the way the salt immediately tangles in your hair and makes it sticky. The rush of memory makes her stomach turn even before the front of the boat pitches up. It comes down hard, smashing into a wave. Her palms are damp as she braces herself, holding on to the bottom of her seat. It wobbles slightly as the boat collides with another wave, sending a giant spray up across the bow. A few of the people around her scream with delight. Orla wants to turn and glare at them, but she is too busy holding on as tightly as possible. She tries to focus on her breathing, to not let her nerves overtake her. Breathe in, one, two, three, four.
Orla hates the ocean. It is part of the reason she’s avoided coming back to Hadley Island for so long. She cannot even bear to look at it, the way it is constantly moving, how staring down into the churning darkness you can hardly see a thing. The water can trap the light and play tricks on you. When you are out in it you have no idea how deep it is. You don’t have any way to see the untold number of creatures waiting in the dark.
The boat cracks against a large swell, sending another blast of water up over the bow. Orla sinks farther into her seat, gripping the armrests as the tourists shriek with laughter. There are more of them than she expected so early in the season. It’s only the first weekend in June.
The ferry rolls sideways against the waves as they move across the sound. Orla watches the horizon, holding her breath as the island comes into view. It starts as a thin strip of gray and green shimmering above the water. Without moving a muscle, she watches as it grows closer and crisper. The horizon tilts as anxiety grips at her chest.
Soon she can see Hadley Island clearly. Each rocky cove and outcropping comes into focus, familiar as kin, followed by the ellipse of the town’s main beach. A surprisingly large crowd of people are already outthere, folding chairs and umbrellas claiming spots on the soft white-gray sand even though the water will still be too cold for swimming.
She’s been trying to avoid it, craning her neck to look literally anywhere else, but now the ferry is moving directly past the inlet that holds the Clarke mansion. It’s impossible to tear your eyes from the cliff-like marble exterior, blinding white in the sun. It’s set on the back of a vast emerald lawn that slopes down to the private dock and crescent of meticulously combed beach. The only surviving Gilded Age summer home on the island stands in stark contrast to the cedar-shingled bungalows around it.
Orla’s stomach sloshes as she sees a speck of a person step out onto the veranda, but before she can try to identify who, the ferry has pulled forward past a rocky outcropping obscuring her view.
They are almost to shore now, passing through a small city of yachts moored in the harbor. They tower above the little ferry, their multistoried facades stamped with tacky gold names. If engaging with the art world has revealed anything to Orla, it is that you can buy nearly anything in this world but taste.
The woman in front of her turns to her left, pointing at something away from shore. “Look at that house over there on its very own island,” Orla hears her say to her friend. Orla’s heart dips precariously as she follows her gaze to the tiny island. A lone single-story house is perched on stilts atop a gray pile of rock in the middle of the water.
“Like a fairy tale,” the friend replies.
Or a nightmare, Orla thinks.
