Two Truths and a Lie(85)

It felt good to be wearing a pretty dress again. No, more than good—it felt amazing. Sherri Griffin took a deep breath and stepped out of the dressing room to access the three-way mirror. Caitlin, who was leaning on the counter that held the register, turned around, put her phone down, and started to look interested. “Wow,” she said. “You look super hot in that dress.” She didn’t even add, for an old person. (At least not out loud.)

“Thanks,” said Sherri modestly, but not too modestly. Because Caitlin was right. Sherri examined her reflection from every angle. The dress clung to her in all the right places. It fell to just above the knee, where it flared out a bit, but before it got there it lay flat against her stomach and hugged the curves of her hips. The dress had two thin straps across each shoulder and took a generous dip between her breasts. Sherri hadn’t worn a dress like this in—well, it had been a long time. It had been so, so long.

She studied her reflection some more. In the beginning of the program, and before that, during the nightmare days of the trial, and before that, during the even bigger nightmare days following Madison Miller’s disappearance, she’d lost too much weight, and her curves had departed without warning, like tired party guests. Her skin had started to sag. But over the course of the summer, ice cream cone by ice cream cone, lobster roll by lobster roll, she’d filled back out. She and Katie had put in enough hours at the beach that her color was good; the gold of the dress made her skin positively glow. And her cleavage! Her cleavage was back, like a dear friend who’d gone on a long voyage but now had returned.

“I’ll take it,” she told Caitlin.

“Uh, yeah!” said Caitlin. “Of course you will. Do you have shoes?”

“No!” cried Sherri, as horrified as if Caitlin had said, “Do you have syphilis?”

“I have the perfect pair,” said Caitlin. “They’re in the back, we haven’t even finished unpacking them.” She glanced knowledgeably at Sherri’s feet. “Are you a seven?”

“And a half.”

“Right back,” said Caitlin. “And then we’ll accessorize.”

The shoes—heels! Sherri was back in heels!—were great, and so were the earrings Caitlin chose, which were long and fringy and felt like friendly little brooms sweeping at Sherri’s shoulders. Sherri loved all of it, and as it turned out, the dress was part of the end-of-summer sale; the charges came only to one hundred and twenty-eight dollars, which, reflected Sherri, wasn’t so bad for a total transformation.

Just past noon, Sherri texted Alexa to see if she was available. The gods of desperation and babysitting were on her side. Alexa was available.

Out on the street, catching her reflection in the shop window, she spotted her remaining problem. Her hair. She could wear it up. She could wear it down. But whatever she did it would still be the same drab color.

She pulled her phone out of her bag. First she called Rebecca to see if she wouldn’t mind picking Katie up from nature camp when she collected Morgan. Of course Rebecca wouldn’t mind—she was still chagrined about mentioning the party to Sherri; Sherri could tell she’d do anything to help. She could have asked Rebecca to change the oil in her Acura or aspirate a cyst and Rebecca would have answered in the same willing, cheerful way. Then she called the salon.

“You’re in luck!” cried Brittany. “There’s been a cancellation! Do you want it? How soon can you be here? How lucky are you?”

“Pretty lucky,” said Sherri. “I want it.” She believed that sometimes you made your own luck but that other times the luck was handed to you, a gift from an anonymous donor with no strings attached. This appointment would put her over her budget, but she’d cut back next week to make up for it. “I can be there in twenty-eight minutes,” she said.





66.





Alexa


Alexa’s phone pinged with two texts as she was in the line at Commune to get a coffee and a crepe on Saturday, just past noon. Then her phone rang.

There were three people ahead of Alexa in line so she answered. It was Hannah, her coworker at the Cottage.

“Hey, Amazon!” said Hannah, and Alexa rolled her eyes. If this was about getting Alexa to work that day, no thank you, she wasn’t interested.

“I can’t switch shifts,” she said preemptively, combatively.

“Calm down, Amazon. That’s not why I’m calling.” Hannah was chewing gum, loudly and right into the phone. If there was one thing Alexa couldn’t abide, and there were many, it was gum chewers. If you needed to cleanse your breath and your toothbrush wasn’t near, try a mint. “I just wanted to let you know that some guy was looking for you today.”

“Some guy?” Alexa’s hands tightened around the phone. Despite the generous air-conditioning in Commune, she began to feel warm. The bad men are coming.

“I told him you were off.”

“What guy? Tyler?” She hadn’t had any contact with Tyler since the night of the Yankee Homecoming fireworks.

“No!” said Hannah. “I’d recognize Tyler. Duh?”

“Cam, maybe?”

“Who’s Cam?”

Alexa didn’t feel like going into the whole story of her romantic entanglements just now so she ignored Hannah’s question. “Was he wearing either golf clothes or St. Michael’s College spirit wear? Was he smiling like a really big and enthusiastic smile?”