Two Truths and a Lie(84)

“How dare she!” Rebecca’s face was tight with righteous indignation. “I mean. You’ve been to Brooke’s house. You were at Esther’s birthday dinner, back in the beginning of the summer! You were on the pontoon!”

“I was only on the pontoon as your plus one,” Sherri reminded her.

“But you live here now, and Katie is friends with all their daughters. This is just so stupid. I swear, sometimes I just don’t understand these people.”

“Really, I promise, it doesn’t matter. I don’t care about that kind of stuff. I don’t have anything to wear to a party anyway.”

Rebecca was leaning on the railing of the boardwalk, thinking. Sherri watched as a little white terrier licked at a forgotten piece of ice cream cone. “You know what, though?” Rebecca said, suddenly and conspiratorially. “You should come anyway. That’ll show them. They’re far too polite to say anything if you just show up!”

“Oh, I could never do that,” said Sherri. “I’d feel so awkward.” She made a face to demonstrate the awkwardness she’d feel, showing up uninvited. Desperate.

“Well, in case you change your mind,” said Rebecca, winking like an emoji. “You’ve been to Brooke’s house, so you know where it is. And it starts at seven. Honestly, there’ll be so many people there that I doubt anyone’s checking the guest list. And they’ll all be wasted by seven forty-five anyway. This party is insane. Legendary. You should come just to see the scene, if for no other reason.”

“By seven o’clock I’ll be in my pajamas, watching Netflix,” said Sherri. “You can bank on that. I heard Russian Doll is good. Have you seen it?”

Rebecca hadn’t.

But even as Sherri asked the question, something was licking up at her: a little flame of her former self. She wasn’t going to stay home and watch Russian Doll. No way. Not this time. She’d had enough.





64.





The Squad


Gina to Tammy: Who is Rebecca bringing?

Tammy to Gina: Sherri? She brought her on the boat.

Gina to Tammy: Isn’t Sherri invited already?

Tammy to Gina: ??

Gina to Brooke: Did you invite Sherri to Party?

Brooke to Gina: No. I used same invitation list I always use. Didn’t occur to me to make changes.





As we all said later, it turned out that it didn’t matter anyway.





65.





Sherri


“Enough,” said Sherri Griffin, formerly Sharon Giordano, standing in the dingy kitchen of their tiny half-house the next day. She’d survived a lesser branch of an organized crime unit. She’d sat in the FBI offices and told the agents everything she knew, and then she’d sat in a courtroom and she’d done the same thing. She’d gotten herself and her daughter out of a terrifying situation. She’d taken down men powerful enough that she would forever live with the fear that someone might still be looking for her. She’d changed her hair and her outfits and her address and her last name and her daughter’s school records. She wasn’t about to be done in by a bunch of yoga moms.

Excuse me, pardon me, barre moms.

Sherri had had enough of being meek, and plain, and of wearing unflattering, cheap clothes. She’d had enough of being 100 percent responsible. Careful. Sober. Boring.

“Enough,” she said again. This house wasn’t even theirs; they were renting it, and they shared it with a woman who banged on the wall when Sherri’s child screamed in the night after waking from well-earned nightmares. “Enough,” she said, when she bumped her elbow on the wall of the damp, unfinished, and very likely haunted basement, which absolutely contained mold or asbestos or maybe both. Enough. Enough. Enough. She was going to buy a new dress, and she was going to see if Alexa could stay with Katie, and she was going to go to the party. For one night, just for one night, she was going to be her old self.

While Katie was still at the nature camp sleepover, Sherri drove up to Portsmouth. She found a shop with pretty dresses in the window. The store was called Bobbles and Lace, and she realized after the fact that there was one in Newburyport too. Oh well. It was nice to get out of town, to drive north, to see a different city on a pretty late-August day. Portsmouth looked like Newburyport’s older, slightly more sophisticated sister, with a wider main street and more shops and more tourists but a similar beautiful-city-on-the-water-in-summer self-confidence. The streets were thrumming with activity; she had to circle a bunch of times before finding parking.

She shopped quickly, choosing three dresses off the rack and asking the salesgirl where she could try them on. The salesgirl’s name was Caitlin. She introduced herself when Sherri walked in and then went right back to scrolling through her Instagram feed, smiling to herself.

Into a pile on the dressing room floor went Sherri’s cotton T-shirt, her sensible, ugly, ill-fitting bra, her awful, awful cargo pants. On went the first dress. She didn’t need to try on the second and third dresses. She knew as soon as she put it on that the first one was an instant win.

It was gold. Back in the day she’d always chosen gold for a big night out. It matched her then-hair. “My golden goddess,” Bobby used to call her and, yes, she could admit it, she’d loved it when he called her that. She often painted her nails gold too. Sometimes, gold eye shadow. She wasn’t scared of standing out back then—she liked standing out. Bobby liked it too. He liked for them both to stand out. She even had a gold bikini.