Lauren unlocked the front door of the beach house to find an empty kitchen, the sounds of a Bob Marley song audible from the back of the house. As she and May walked toward the sliding screen door leading to the pool deck, she could make out Nate’s voice.
“It’s not like my acting career’s exactly red hot right now. I want to help you. I’ll move back to Boston. Maybe I can get a job with the company.”
May stopped in her tracks, gesturing for Lauren to do the same. Lauren hesitated, torn between her eagerness to tell Kelsey what she’d learned about David Smith and her reluctance to interrupt what seemed like an intense conversation about Kelsey’s decision to have a baby.
Lauren couldn’t hear Kelsey’s response, but she saw her friend drop her head into her hands and run her fingers through her hair. May looked to Lauren with a furrowed brow. They both recognized the worry in Kelsey’s body language. This was Kelsey undecided. Overwhelmed. At peak stress. Was this about the baby, the possibility that the police might call about David Smith, or something else entirely?
As Nate continued speaking, May slid next to Lauren and nudged her toward the staircase, out of sight of the deck. Lauren managed to make out the words “You keep saying that, Kelsey, but it’s not true. It’s never been true. How do I convince you of that?”
“But it’s unnatural. It’s not only a question of biology.”
So they were talking about the baby. For Kelsey to have a biological child, half of its genes would come from Luke. What would she tell her children about their father? Lauren couldn’t possibly imagine making that choice for herself, but as she’d told Kelsey repeatedly, she’d love whatever decision made Kelsey happiest.
Lauren flinched at the sudden sound of a ringtone. May yanked her phone from the back pocket of her shorts and silenced it.
“Hey!” Lauren called out, nodding at May to follow her lead. “We’re back.” She opened the screen door onto the deck, where Kelsey and Nate sat at the dining table, damp-haired and wrapped in beach towels.
“I couldn’t stay away,” May said, dropping a kiss on the top of Kelsey’s head before taking a seat in the chair beside her.
“Welcome back, Hanover. Get your suit on.” The way Nate was squinting at May against the sun, that smile inviting her into the water. That’s not the way Nate ever spoke to Lauren. She could see a flush in May’s cheeks. There was something still there.
“That might have to wait,” May said. “Kelsey, can we maybe talk in private?”
“No time like the present,” Nate said. “Like I told Kelsey, you can get some sun and some Bob Marley whether the police call you about the note or not.”
May stared at Kelsey.
“Wait, am I not supposed to know?” Nate asked. “Oh shit, I’m so sorry.”
“It’s not a big deal,” Kelsey muttered.
It was clear to Lauren from May’s face that she disagreed. “Really? If it was no big deal, we should have told the police everything from the very beginning.”
“Look, May.” Nate pressed his hands together in a prayer gesture. “I didn’t mean to add to the stress level. It’s not like I would ever tell anyone. You know me. If someone tells me to keep a secret, it’s mumsville. I’m a vault, baby.”
From what Lauren knew about Nate, it was true. She remembered May joking one time that Nate could make it through Guantánamo based on the number of times she had pressed him futilely for information he didn’t want to provide—his first time, his exes, how many people, and so on.
Lauren was a little annoyed that Kelsey hadn’t consulted them before talking to her brother, but May was clearly livid. “You’re the one who told us we couldn’t call the tip line or everyone would think we were terrible,” she said, “and now I’ve basically lied to the police because of you.”
“I was talking about strangers who would judge us,” Kelsey said. “Nate actually thought it was funny.”
“Missing people are funny?” May snapped.
Lauren was beginning to wonder if May was especially mad that the person Kelsey had chosen to confide in happened to be Nate. Lauren had always suspected that their breakup had been awkward.
“May, that’s not what she meant,” Nate said. “The note. Sorry, but the note was funny.”
“Leaving it on the car was not funny,” May said.
“Yes, it actually kind of was,” Nate said. “They sound like a couple of douchebags. It’s not like she could have predicted the guy would go missing.”
Lauren clapped her hands twice, demanding their full attention. “It’s not just about the note anymore.” She shared what Thomas had relayed to her, attributing the phone call she had received to a “Wildwood donor.” “That was the guy Marnie Mann was dating her last two years of college.”
Kelsey looked confused as she shook her head. “I remember she had a boyfriend, but there’s no way I’d remember his name. Are you sure?”
“I’m positive. I knew his mother, Tinsley. She was a major donor.” Lauren wasn’t surprised that neither May nor Kelsey remembered Marnie’s boyfriend. To them, Marnie was the competitive girl who tried to boss around the other campers when they had been students. She was also a truly gifted pianist—not as talented as Lauren had been at her age, but almost enough to warrant the term prodigy that parents tossed around so loosely. The only reason May had returned to camp as an adult was because the economy tanked and she needed a job for the summer. And Kelsey had taken the summer gig only because May would be there, one final summer of music and fun before slotting into the track her father had created for her at his company.
But Marnie? Marnie had spent at least part of every summer during college at Wildwood to learn from Lauren, determined to be a working musician. She could be an insufferable brat, but when Marnie ended up dating the son of a generous camp benefactor, of course Lauren had heard about it.
That final summer, Kelsey and May were no longer teenaged girls. They were college graduates delaying adulthood for a few months. Lauren had grown tired of hearing May complain about Marnie treating her like a “second-class citizen.” Yes, with a single mother on a teacher’s salary, May wasn’t raised with the kind of money that the Marnies and the Kelseys of the world enjoyed, but that didn’t mean she went without privilege. It was clear her mother sacrificed so May could have the best education possible. As a result, May spent her summers with fancy kids doing fancy things, and then graduated from a college that immediately opened doors at the highest echelons of wealth and power. And as far as May’s complaints about the pressures of being a “model minority”? She had no idea what it was like to be the other kind.
Lauren remembered snapping at her that “no one likes a tattletale, especially when she’s a grown woman with a degree from Harvard still pretending that she’s part of the downtrodden. Go take care of it.” It was the last time May ever came to her complaining about Marnie or any other counselor.
She had been so pleased to learn that May, Kelsey, and Marnie were all going to the same camping party on their big Off-Campus Night away from Wildwood. And then Marnie never came back. And now, fifteen years later, her boyfriend was missing.