“God, I can’t believe how long it’s been since I’ve actually seen you in person. I mean, it must have been at the wedding?”
May shook her head. “No, um, it was before that—when I was in Boston for depositions.”
“Right, at Garvey’s! It’s so sad that place is gone. It was always my mom’s favorite for a special occasion. She’d eat a dozen oysters all by herself with an extra-dry martini.” Kelsey’s thoughts appeared to drift, but she suddenly perked up as she spotted the owner’s note and plucked it from beneath the refrigerator magnet. “Wow, this is extremely detailed. Arianna needs a gummy.”
“Or maybe too many gummies explains why she thought the note should be addressed to ‘Callie,’ ” May said.
Kelsey dropped the instructions on the kitchen counter and did a quick walk-through of the first floor, taking in the shabby-chic decor. The living room was bright and airy, with white furniture and pops of color from throw pillows and the vintage beach posters that lined the walls. “I hope you guys like this place. I know how busy you are.”
Lauren wrapped an arm around her waist and handed her a flute of prosecco as she gestured toward the glass doors leading to the deck. “Are you kidding? Look at this view. You can almost taste the salt from the bay.”
May was rolling Kelsey’s powder blue Rimowa through the kitchen when Kelsey stopped her. “Where are you going?”
“To your room.”
Kelsey followed her to the suite off the kitchen. “One of the rooms is down here?” Her gaze lingered on the stairs. “I guess I didn’t notice that in the listing.”
May was quick to explain. “We can switch if you want to be upstairs. There’s a suite and the small room I took, with a bathroom in the hallway.”
“We barely unpacked,” Lauren added.
“No, I’m being silly. I just want us all to be together as much as possible. If I get too lonely, I can always take May’s room when she leaves. And if Nate decides to come out, I’ll definitely move upstairs with you.”
“Nate’s coming out?” May asked. She had been preparing herself for a weekend away from her usual routine, but her ex was definitely not part of the plan.
“Unclear. I told him about the trip and that you were leaving early, so he knew I’d have an extra room. He’s not sure about his schedule yet, but, Lauren, are you sure you’re okay if he decides to join? This was supposed to be a girls’ trip.”
“Please, Nate’s family. He can have temporary membership in the Crew.”
Was Kelsey already counting down the hours until her departure? May stopped herself. Why did she always have to overthink everything? Kelsey seemed to be over the fact that May had been a shitty friend for a while, but May wondered if she would ever stop feeling guilty.
A ringing sound came from the back pocket of Kelsey’s overalls. She glanced at the screen and then rejected the call with an eye roll. She didn’t need to explain that the caller was her father. “It’s nonstop, you guys. I’ve begged him to text, but he pretends he doesn’t know how.” She waited for the ping of a new voicemail message and hit play.
“Can you let me know you got to East Hampton okay? And send me pictures of the house and the neighborhood. I don’t trust those internet rentals. If you get a bad feeling about the neighborhood, go to a hotel. Use the corporate card. Don’t take any chances with your safety.”
Kelsey shook her head in frustration as she listened. “This is what I deal with every day. Only my father could treat a trip to the Hamptons like I’m embedding myself in a war zone.”
“Do you need to call him back?” May asked. Her mother could be overbearing, but William Ellis made Coral Hanover look like an absentee parent.
Kelsey returned her phone to her pocket. “I’ll do it once we’re settled in.”
While Kelsey was unpacking her bag, May was prone on the floor, pulling one leg into a much-needed hamstring stretch after all the time in the car, while Lauren was splayed out on the bed, her phone held over her face. “Okay,” Lauren said, “our final two words both start with L. One is six letters and one is seven.” They were on the tail end of the bee, down to the cheat sheet, which listed the number of words beginning with each letter and the length of each word.
“Wait, I think I know it,” Kelsey said, sliding a dresser drawer shut. “Two words we always miss. A single and a plural.”
May sat upright. “Oh, oh, I know. Three syllables. The white part of your fingernail. We’ve looked it up before.” She began tapping at her own screen, trying various letter combinations.
“Yes, we know this,” Lauren said. “Luluna. Lunaca? Wait…try lunula!”
“And the plural,” Kelsey added.
May smiled as her phone app accepted first one word and then the other. She held up her phone in triumph. “Our first Queen Bee in the same room!”
“Oh my god,” Kelsey said, “I love us so much together. Okay, I’m unpacked and ready to rumble. Let’s go into the village and get the lay of the land?”
May had been hoping to take advantage of the view and the pool while it was still sunny, but waited for Lauren to weigh in.
“Sounds like a plan,” Lauren said, heading toward the kitchen. “Let’s do it.”
The thought of traipsing around town with crowds of vacationers packed into tiny stores and cramped restaurants made May’s brain itch, but she was clearly outvoted.
Kelsey pulled her tank top away from her chest and gave it a quick sniff. “I’m gross from the trip though. I need to make myself look more like an actual person.”
“I’ll order the Uber,” May offered. “How long do you need?”
“Let’s just drive,” Kelsey said. “We might want to tool around. Dinner in Sag Harbor maybe? Or Montauk could be more fun.”
“It’s just…we’ve already been drinking,” May said.
“I’ve had like two sips of prosecco,” Kelsey said. “And after boozing it up through the bad times, my threshold is still through the roof. I can drive, but it’s going to have to be your car if that’s okay? Mine’s a two-seater. Meet in the kitchen in fifteen all dolled up? That’ll give me time to call Dad, too.” She unclipped the bib of her overalls and stripped off her tank top on her way to the bathroom. The sound of a running shower followed through the open door.
As May closed the bedroom door behind her, she wondered if she was supposed to change, too. She went upstairs and slipped on her black shirt-dress. She was, in her opinion, as put together as she could be.
From the backseat of Josh’s car, May found herself studying Kelsey in the rearview mirror. May didn’t believe in false self-deprecation. She knew she was not the least bit unattractive. She had almond-shaped eyes, a heart-shaped face, and flawless skin she’d inherited from her mother that probably wouldn’t see any wrinkles of note for another decade. Her nose was flatter and wider than she wished, but she was—by any reasonable standard—a nice-looking human.
But Kelsey Ellis? She was in an entirely different category. A lot of it came naturally—full lips, long legs, flat abs, a cute nose sprinkled with just the right number of freckles to make it even cuter.
But when she actually made an effort? Kelsey Ellis was the kind of pretty that made May wonder how it must feel to experience the world while looking like that. It helped that she had long blond hair and blue eyes, which, all things being equal in May’s experience, tended to correlate highly with subjective measures of attractiveness.
But Kelsey was beyond that. She had a look that meant they never paid for drinks at their usual haunts in Boston. One time in New York, a guy had even left the hotel bar to go to the front desk and pay for their room, even though Kelsey had made it blatantly clear to him that he would not be going upstairs with them.
Kelsey was beautiful in a way that made men literally stupid.
But to May’s surprise, Kelsey’s current version of “dolled up” was nothing like it used to be. She had chalked up Kelsey’s appearance on their various Zoom calls to the fact that she, like May and everyone else May knew, gave zero fucks what they looked like on a girlfriend Zoom party. But she could see now that the expensive highlights were gone, leaving Kelsey’s hair more of a light brown than any shade of blond. And instead of the perfect tumbles of messy curls that used to fall to the middle of her back, her hair was pulled into a loose ponytail at the nape of her neck, topped with a cream-colored fedora. The only makeup she appeared to have on was a sheer rosy lip gloss. Most of her face was hidden behind aviator sunglasses that were even bigger than Lauren’s retro frames.
May wasn’t sure she would have even recognized Kelsey if she happened to pass her on the street. And then she realized that was exactly the point. Beautiful women turn heads, which means they get attention, which means they could be identified as the woman who may or may not have been involved in an estranged husband’s unsolved murder.
What had brought May, Lauren, and Kelsey together again was the shared anguish of becoming notorious. But not all notoriety is the same. As hard as May and Lauren had been tumbled around in the media cycle, the scrutiny to which Kelsey was exposed after Luke was killed dwarfed their experiences many times over. Kelsey wasn’t accused by strangers of being “problematic” or “toxic.” She was accused of hiring someone to murder her husband.
As they walked down Newtown Lane through the main shopping district in East Hampton, May noticed that when they passed other pedestrians, Kelsey would turn her face away or pause to look into the window of a store she wasn’t actually interested in. She kept her sunglasses on, even when they stepped inside a shop to browse around. She checked her hat in the reflection of parked cars, keeping the brim of the fedora tipped low.
Kelsey was still beautiful. She just lived her life in disguise.