The High Season(66)

Lucas texts me and says he’s sorry about the glass and it was fun to see me without a cash register in front of me. Wtf. The farm stand doesn’t even use cash registers.

I’m still mad so I text back whatever.

And he gets it. He texts back that he really meant the apology. He says: I hate emojis. But if I had to design one right now it would be an exploding star of sorry.

And so I forgive him, because it really was all Meret’s fault mostly. And because an exploding star of sorry is so cool. You know what, Ollie? He’s sorta sad. I know what that emoji means because I feel that way literally all the time. That star is in my pocket every day.

xojem





38


THE WATCH WAS GONE.

She’d left it on Carole’s dresser.

Hadn’t she?

She raced through the big house. Then the playhouse. Under furniture, on the tops of tables, under sofas. Nowhere. It had tumbled into the black hole of missing things, single earrings, stones out of rings, buttons, socks.

It couldn’t be just…gone.

She sat in Jem’s room, surrounded by pink toile. For the first time she realized that it was made up of Alice in Wonderland imagery. Poor Alice, trying to hit a croquet ball with a flamingo. Poor Alice, down the rabbit hole, and having to make sense out of nonsense. She’d never liked Alice in Wonderland as a child. It had made her feel queasy to think of a world without rules.

What kind of an idiot criminal loses the loot? Had she left it on the dresser, or had she worn it again and just thought she put it on the dresser?

She heard Jem’s step and a moment later she swung in, a little rushed, a little distracted. “Sweetie, have you seen a watch lying around?”

    “You don’t wear a watch.”

“I mean, just, a watch. Have you been in Carole’s house?”

“Why would I go in Carole’s house?”

“I’m just asking. I’m missing something. I left it there.”

Jem had her head in the closet. “Where?”

“On Carole’s dresser. I think.”

“I haven’t seen a watch.”

“Are you sure?”

“Is this an interrogation?” She tossed a sweater on the bed, light and soft, in a shade of blue that was close to the color of her eyes.

“That’s pretty,” Ruthie said. She crossed to pick it up. She read the label. Isabel Marant. “Where did you get this?”

“More questions!” Jem’s mood had shifted to defensive. “Adeline bought it for me a while ago. That time we went to East Hampton for lunch with Roberta. I was cold. She went next door and bought me a sweater.”

“She bought you a designer sweater because you were cold?”

“It was no big deal!”

“It’s got to be two hundred, three hundred dollars. It’s a pretty big deal!”

“Not to her. It’s like a Gap sweater to her. What was I supposed to do, say no?”

“We haven’t really talked much about her,” Ruthie said. “I mean, you and me. I guess you’ve talked to Daddy.”

“Yeah. We had a chat.”

“What did he say?”

“That he hoped that I didn’t think that you two were getting back together. Which I didn’t, duh. And he said we have to give you room to adjust and everything? But that it will all work out in the end. Daddy says since you lost your job, you need time, but if Adeline bought the house it would solve things. Like, you’d have money. And there would still be the house in the family.”

    “In the family?”

“That’s what he said.”

“Adeline’s not family.”

“Well.” Jem slipped her arms into the sweater. “That’s what he said.”





39


THE AIR WAS full of water and Ruthie was drowning. Humid day had followed humid day. Floorboards swelled. Dogs panted. The water settled into Ruthie’s bones. She felt a tug like a current, sweeping her toward Joe, and it took all her will to resist it. She yearned for him. She could feel the word, yearn, like the plucking of a string.

A hurricane with an alarming tendency to wobble moved up the coast. Landfall was uncertain. Weather broadcasters had been blown sideways in the Carolinas, shouting of approaching doom.

People decided they needed bread and milk, even if they didn’t eat bread, and the country store was crowded. Everyone really just wanted to talk about the storm arriving and storms from the past. Sandy, of course. Irene, Floyd, the letdown that was Charley. There was no panic. These were Long Islanders. It was just a storm.

Ruthie bought her bread and her milk and left the market as quickly as she could. She was now in that peculiar place of being a source of gossip. She knew the gossip wasn’t unkind, that it was sympathetic, neighbors and friends angry or worried about what had happened, but since nobody knew what had happened, speculation reigned. She knew that a petition had gone around to reinstate her. She knew many had signed it, but she also knew that Mindy had come out swinging, making phone calls with one message: “It’s better for Ruthie and better for the museum if she goes,” a form of professional assassination that was not fully recognized as the slime it was. Some people wondered if she was ill, or had embezzled. She had disappeared so fast. With her severance and nondisclosure agreement in hand, she could say little to defend herself. Instead of a lump sum, severance was being paid monthly. Mindy controlled the strings. If she said anything to defend herself, or told the truth, she knew Mindy would cut them.