That Summer Read online

  The dead girl had been easy to find online. She’d looked so perfect, rich and beautiful and perfect, with honey-blonde hair and sun-kissed white skin and the kind of slim-hipped, big-busted body that it usually took a surgeon to achieve. She’d had a Harvard degree and a man who’d loved her, money, about a million followers on social media, and a huge, global brand. Only none of it had been real. The dead girl’s death had exposed the truth of her life, the way she’d been two people, the real one and the one she’d portrayed on social media.

  For the rest of the summer, Beatrice thought about Drue Cavanaugh. Maybe Drue had learned to swim at Gull Pond or waited in line to buy croissants at the boulangerie on Route 6 in Wellfleet; maybe she’d walked into the bay at low tide, with a bucket made of metal mesh banging against her hip, feeling for clams with her feet. Maybe she’d eaten fresh oysters at Moby Dick’s or gone fishing for stripers with her father. It had made Beatrice feel strange in a way she couldn’t describe; newly aware of the world, and the people around her. It had made her think about her own future: what she wanted, where she’d live, what kind of life she’d have, when her choices were her own. Right now, she could run her Etsy shop, she could pierce her ears and color her hair and wear long Laura Ashley dresses instead of Lululemon leggings, but when she’d timidly brought up the topic of applying to one of the city’s magnet art schools, in the car on the way home, her dad had said, curtly, “You’ll go to Emlen, and after that you’ll get a liberal arts degree. Do whatever you want after that.” He’d concluded with one of his favorite sayings: “He who pays the piper calls the tune,” and her mom had closed her eyes like her head hurt.

  Tomorrow isn’t promised, Beatrice typed. She couldn’t remember if she’d read that somewhere, or just seen it on a handmade sign at a store, next to the ones that said LIVE LAUGH LOVE and IT’S WINE O’CLOCK. She sighed and erased it, hearing Mrs. Hardy say cliché! She thought for a moment about how to express what she was trying to say, and the difference between being a thing and only seeming that way, and, when the bell rang, she finally wrote, “Cape Cod is one of the most beautiful places in the world. It’s always been my favorite place, the place where I’ve made some of my happiest memories. But what I learned last summer is that it isn’t a safe place. Maybe there are no truly safe places for girls and women. Drue Cavanaugh and I probably looked up at the same stars from the same spot on the beach and thought about our futures. Only now she’ll never have one. And I am thinking even harder about mine.”

  3

  Daisy

  In 2018, the iconic signboard at Thirtieth Street Station, the one that had clickety-clacked through train numbers and gate assignments and destinations, had been replaced by a new, blandly digital one. Preservationists had written petitions, newspaper columnists and the Historical Society had complained, every passenger Daisy had ever met preferred the old version, but the outcry had not been enough to get the Amtrak executives to change their minds. Daisy missed the sign, even though the station retained its grandeur, with soaring ceilings and gold marble and the enormous statue of Winged Victory, her arms enfolding a man’s body, in honor of Philadelphia’s wartime dead.

  On Sunday morning, Daisy arrived at the station an hour ahead of time, and it only took her two tries to liberate the ticket to New York City that she’d reserved from the machine. At a coffee shop near the waiting area, she bought herself a cup of coffee and, after some deliberation, a warm chocolate croissant.

  She and Beatrice used to go to New York City every year, for Beatrice’s birthday. They’d get their nails done ahead of time and purchase a new dress for Bea. They would take the train up, and see a Broadway show, and spend the night in a hotel, and have brunch at the Plaza. Daisy still had the Playbills in a box in her closet: Waitress and Avenue Q, Wicked and Legally Blonde. The last time she’d mentioned her birthday and the possibility of a trip, Beatrice had said, “I’m going to do something with my friends.” She hadn’t been rude, or dismissive, or sarcastic. In fact, she’d spoken so gently that Daisy suspected that Beatrice was worried about hurting her feelings. Which, of course, had injured her more than sarcasm would have.

  Sighing, she thought of Hannah, and wondered what her friend would have said. Don’t take it personally, she imagined, and pictured Hannah’s pale, freckled skin, her reddish hair and eyes like dark chocolate drops, her sly smile.

  Daisy had met Hannah when she was eight months pregnant and had ended up alone in a Bradley Method birth class. Hal had been scheduled to be there with her, but he’d been called away to Ohio for a case that had unexpectedly gone to trial, and Daisy had ended up sitting by herself, stiff and self-conscious in a Pennsylvania Hospital conference room, aware that she was younger than the rest of the women in the room by at least six or seven years. She could feel their eyes on her, and was fiddling with her engagement ring so they wouldn’t think she was a single mom when Hannah hurried through the door, plopping down in the seat beside her just as the lecture began.

  “Birth is a natural process,” said the instructor. She was middle-aged, and wore a long strand of chunky amber beads over a long-sleeved black dress, black leggings, and black clogs. “It’s a task your body was built to perform, and there’s no reason for interventions like epidurals, or drugs to hurry labor along. Now, Dr. Bradley developed this method in the 1950s, when most women labored in what was called twilight sleep.”

  “Those were the days,” murmured Hannah (they hadn’t been introduced yet, but they’d all been given name tags). Daisy glanced sideways, as discreetly as she could. Hannah was petite, one of those pregnant women who looked like she’d stuffed a basketball under her shirt while staying skinny everywhere else (as opposed to Daisy, who just looked bigger everywhere).

  “Dr. Bradley was raised on a farm, where he saw many animals giving birth. As a result of what he saw, he believed that women could give birth without drugs or distress.”

  “Moo,” said Hannah softly. Daisy bit her lip. Hannah raised her hand.

  “Yes?” said the instructor.

  “I’m just curious. How did Dr. Bradley know that the animals weren’t in pain?”

  The instructor, smiling tightly, said, “I’m assuming he was able to tell whether or not a horse or a cow was suffering.”

  “But how? They can’t scream, or moan, or curse, or anything like that. Maybe they were in absolute agony, and just, you know, suffering in silence. Maybe,” Hannah continued, “if they could have asked for epidurals, they would have.”

  “I guess we’ll just have to take Dr. Bradley’s word for it,” said the instructor. “And remember that more than eighty-five percent of the women who’ve completed the course have had natural, vaginal births.”

  Daisy didn’t like the word “vaginal.” She supposed, if she stuck with the course, she’d be hearing it frequently. Hannah tapped Daisy’s shoulder. “Want to be partners?”

  Daisy looked around. The instructor was removing a stack of pillows from a closet, and the other couples were grabbing pillows and arranging themselves on the floor.

  “Which one of us gets to be the mother?”

  “We can take turns. Or,” Hannah whispered, “we can go get a burger.” When she saw Daisy hesitating, she pointed at the stack of documents they’d been given, whispering, “Protein! It says we’re supposed to be eating lots of protein!”

  They’d slipped out the door and gone to Butcher and Singer on Walnut Street. “How’d you get interested in the Bradley Method?” Daisy asked as they walked.

  “My sister gave birth to twins in her bathtub,” Hannah said, lifting her narrow shoulders in a shrug. “I’m competitive. But I think in this case I’m going to let Rose win.”

  Daisy learned that Hannah was a preschool teacher, that her husband was a nurse at Pennsylvania Hospital, that they lived in Bella Vista, the neighborhood right near the Italian Market, and that they, too, were expecting a girl.

  “What about you? Are you really going to do this Bradley stuff?”
Hannah had asked Daisy.

  “I’m investigating,” Daisy said. “My husband’s a fan of natural birth.” She finished her glass of water. “My husband was also supposed to be here tonight, but he got stuck at work.”

  “And he’s not the one actually having the baby,” Hannah pointed out. “Shouldn’t this be your call?”

  Daisy toyed with her ring again. She lived in Hal’s house, supported by Hal’s money. She honestly didn’t feel like much of anything was her call these days. “I guess.” She tried for a smile. “Honestly, if they were still doing twilight sleep…”

  “Ha!” Hannah’s bark of laughter, startling from such a small woman, was so loud that Daisy saw heads at other tables turning. “I know, right! I mean, I understand it’s supposed to be better for the baby if we don’t get drugs. It makes sense. But we’re people, too, right?”

  “We are people, too,” Daisy affirmed.

  “So what’s your story, morning glory?” Before Daisy could answer, the food arrived. Hannah’s face lit up, and she lifted her burger with palpable gusto, her jaw seeming to unhinge as she took a gigantic bite. “Oh, God, that’s good,” she said after she’d swallowed. “I’m so hungry all the time. Are you hungry all the time? What have you been craving?”

  “I was hungry all the time before I got pregnant,” Daisy admitted. “And I’m eating a lot of grilled cheese.”

  “Grilled cheese!” Hannah said. “Ooh. I haven’t had a grilled cheese sandwich in forever. I shall add it to my list.” She’d pulled out a BlackBerry and typed it in. “So, back to you.” She’d looked Daisy up and down. “Where do you live?”

  “Gladwyne. And I’m twenty-two,” said Daisy, even though Hannah hadn’t asked.

  “Wow. I remember my twenties. Vaguely.” Hannah ate another bite of burger. “How long have you been married?”

  “Almost two years,” Daisy said. It was closer to a year and a half, but she wanted to make it clear that she’d married Hal because she wanted to, and not because she’d needed to.

  “Mazel tov,” said Hannah, and licked her fingers.

  “How old are you?” asked Daisy.

  “How old do you think I am?”

  Daisy took her honest guess and revised it downward by two years. “Thirty?”

  “Ha! I’m thirty-five. A crone!” Hannah patted her lips with her napkin and looked around for their waiter. “Do they have ice cream here?”

  They ended up at Scoop DeVille, where they shared a banana split, and when Hannah said, “Do you want to meet up and go for a walk tomorrow?” Daisy hadn’t even had to think about it.

  “Yes,” she’d said.

  Daisy knew that she and Hannah were going to be friends. She’d hoped that Hal and Hannah’s husband, Eric, would like each other; that they could be couples who did things together, but they’d never really meshed as a foursome. Hal said he liked both of the Magees, but Daisy could tell that he was irritated by Hannah’s loudness, her brassy voice, the way she never wore makeup or heels and would ask anyone anything. Her house was comfortable in Daisy’s opinion, “a mess” in Hal’s (and Daisy had to admit that there was a certain amount of dog hair on, and in, things at the Magees). As for Eric, Daisy figured her husband would dismiss a male nurse as a man who hadn’t been able to make it through medical school, a man who probably wasn’t as smart or accomplished and who definitely wasn’t as well-off as he was. “If you like them, that’s what matters,” he’d said after an uncomfortable dinner at the Shoemaker house, where Eric had done his best to act interested in bass fishing, and Hal had barely tried to act like he cared about European League soccer, which was Eric’s passion. “They’re your friends, not mine.”

  It turned out that the group that clicked didn’t involve Hal at all, but Daisy and her brother and Danny’s husband, Jesse. Jesse worked in an art gallery and taught dance, and Danny was a counselor at a high school in Trenton. Every month or two, they’d all meet for dinner, sometimes in the city, sometimes in Lambertville or New Hope, or at Daisy’s house, where Daisy could cook. For years, Daisy had been trying to coax the Magees out to the suburbs. “Forget it, I’m not going to the dark side,” Hannah would say. Still, every time Daisy saw a listing for a house she thought would work, she’d text the listing to Hannah, and Hannah would text back GET THEE BEHIND ME SATAN.

  And then her friend had died. “Bad news, kiddo,” Hannah had said on the phone one afternoon, her normally ebullient voice so muted that Daisy almost hadn’t recognized it. “The docs found a lump.” She’d named it—of course she had—but even after Larry the Lump had been excised, even after a round of radiation and three months of chemotherapy, there’d been more lumps. Son of Larry, and Return of Larry, and Larry Two: Electric Boogaloo. Then they’d found masses in her liver, and spots on her lungs, and Hannah had stopped making jokes.

  “I don’t think I’m going to beat this,” she said. She’d lost her hair and thirty pounds by then, and was sitting in bed, her tiny frame swimming in a flannel nightgown, with thick fleece socks on her feet. “To the extent that it was ever a battle or a war, I’m pretty sure my side isn’t winning.”

  “Yes, you are. Don’t say that!” Daisy had taken her hand. “Zoe needs you. Eric needs you.” She’d swallowed hard. “I need you.”

  “Oh, kiddo.” Hannah had squeezed her hand, but her eyes were far away, and Daisy thought, She’s already only mostly here. Part of her is already gone. She’d thought Hannah had fallen asleep, but then her friend had licked her lips and opened her eyes again.

  “I need you to promise me something,” Hannah had said.

  “Of course,” Daisy said. “Of course. Anything.”

  With a visible effort, Hannah rallied herself. She’d licked her dry lips again and said, “I’ve already given Eric permission to remarry,” she said. She stared up into Daisy’s eyes, her cold hands feeling claw-like as she pulled Daisy closer. “But you have to promise—and this is my sincere dying wish, so you have to swear to me—to keep him away from that whore Debbie Conover.”

  Daisy started laughing. Then she’d started crying. Sniffling, she’d squeezed her friend’s hand. “I promise,” Daisy said. “I promise.”

  Three days later, Hannah had died. A few months after that, Eric had put their row house on the market, and he and Zoe had moved to Wisconsin, to be closer to his parents. Daisy missed her friend with a pain that felt physical, a wound that refused to close. She had plenty of acquaintances, other moms she could call up for coffee or a barre class, but Hannah had been her only real friend.

  In preparation for her meeting with Diana, Daisy had done her googling, but she hadn’t learned much. Diana.S@earthlink was Diana Starling, the founder and principal of a business called DS Consultants. She had a website, but it was full of lingo that Daisy, as a non-businessperson, found completely incomprehensible. We help our clients transform and evolve in our fast-moving modern age and embrace transformation and disruption as a continuous way of working. She knew what each of those words meant, on its own. Combined, though, they might as well have been a language she’d never learned.

  There was a picture of the other Diana on the website, a headshot of a middle-aged white woman with dark hair and a confident look about her. The “about our principals” page listed her degrees: undergraduate from Boston University, MBA from Wharton, and no information about when those degrees had been awarded. From what she knew about the working world, Daisy supposed it made sense. Young women were seen as ditzy and clueless and inconstant; flighty things who could quit at any moment to have a baby. Older women were barely seen at all. “Ms. Starling is based in New York City,” read her bio. There were no details about where the other Diana had grown up, or any hobbies she had, or if she had a spouse or a family.

  Daisy had continued her search on social media. The DS Consulting Twitter account specialized in bland retweets of Wall Street Journal and Business Today stories and Contact us today to see what we can do for your business! It also seemed to delet
e its tweets after six weeks, which didn’t give her much of a history to peruse. Diana Starling was on Instagram, but her account was private, the picture it displayed a version of the headshot on the corporate website. Same with Facebook. The only information Daisy was able to glean came from the misdirected emails, which suggested a life of revelry and glamorous destinations; parties and dinners and girls’ nights out, although the other Diana had been quick to assure her that this was not the case. I promise you, these are work obligations disguised as parties.

  “Regional train one eighty-six making station stops in Trenton, Metro Park, Newark, and Penn Station, New York. All aboard!” called the conductor. Daisy brushed croissant crumbs off her top and got in line. When she boarded the train, she found two empty seats in the quiet car. An excellent sign. She sat, settling her purse in her lap and wondering if she would look hopelessly dowdy next to the other Diana. She’d blown out her hair, to the best of her abilities, and packed a black knit jersey tunic to wear over leggings and black boots, along with a necklace made of gumball-sized blue glass beads that the salesgirl at J.Crew told her was a statement piece. As a size fourteen, her options were limited, but even if they hadn’t been, fashion had never been her thing, and she was too old to reinvent herself as a fashionista.

  “All tickets, please!” called the conductor. Daisy handed over her ticket, which the conductor scanned with some kind of chirping electronic device that looked like a phaser from Star Trek. It gave Daisy a pang, remembering how the conductors used to use a hole punch, leaving the car littered with tiny circles of paper. She had half a dozen paperbacks with old Amtrak tickets as bookmarks, relics of the trips she’d made to the city with her husband and her daughter. That made her feel even worse, realizing that she was now one of those annoying women, prattling on about how much better things used to be.

  I’m getting old, she thought, and settled back with a sigh. She had a book, Alice Hoffman’s latest, and there was always her phone, with its games and social media apps and the entirety of the world’s collected knowledge. She could sort through her photos, which she’d been meaning to do forever; she could email the school’s decorating committee, which she had recently joined, to see if anyone had any great ideas for giving Melville’s all-purpose room the feel of a glamorous destination (their theme was “A Night at the Opera.” Hal’s single, non-helpful suggestion had been hiring a fat lady to sing).