It took Brynn nearly half an hour to get out of the house, even though she hustled the whole time. She changed Lucas, fed him, then restocked Lucas’s diaper bag with the essentials: diapers and wipes, a pacifier, a bottle of breast milk in a mini cooler bag in case she didn’t want to nurse at the playground, wipes to clean the bottle nipple in case she dropped it, alcohol-free hand-sanitizing wipes, a travel sound machine, a portable fan, an extra outfit for him, burp cloths, a few rattly toys, and an extra shirt for her in case of spit-ups. Then she had to change him again before they left.
Once she was outside, she instantly had to pee, but it was too late. It had taken so much effort from her to get out the door that she was not about to turn back now. She was thirsty, too, and regretted not grabbing a seltzer for herself from the fridge. But her own needs were an afterthought.
Brynn spotted Ginny as soon as she approached the playground. Ginny was unmissable, with long legs, dark skin, curly black hair, and a big toothy smile. She was also pregnant. Very, very pregnant, due in just two weeks. Brynn watched Ginny as she handed her eighteen-month-old daughter, Olivia, a pouch of applesauce, while she simultaneously called out to her four-year-old son, Sam, to be careful going down the slide.
“Hey!” Ginny yelled to Brynn. “Look who it is, Olivia! It’s your buddy Lucas.” Olivia sucked the applesauce pouch down and stared.
“More,” she demanded, and Ginny handed her another. Then Olivia waddled off.
Lucas was now asleep, his brow furrowed in a look of discontent, even though he was peacefully snoozing. Brynn pushed the stroller up next to where Ginny sat. She took out the sound machine and turned it to an ocean-wave setting.
“I got you an iced coffee from 7a,” Ginny said, handing her the drink, with the perfect amount of half-and-half, just the way Brynn liked it. The act was so kind and so necessary that Brynn nearly cried. “And a jalapeño biscuit breakfast sandwich.”
“Thank you,” Brynn said. She shook her head. “You know, I actually mean it when I say that I don’t know how you do it, Ginny. Seriously. Just the logistics of buying breakfast with two little kids. I can barely do anything with one.” Brynn really did mean it, and she often wondered how Ginny completed errands like that with such ease. Did she leave both kids in the car while she went into the café to get the food? Did she let them both come in with her and run around while she waited in line, hoping that they wouldn’t bolt into the busy parking lot? Brynn had no idea how all these other moms juggled everyday things like that, but she never asked.
“Nothing was going to stop me from getting a sausage, egg, and cheese today,” Ginny said. She leaned back, putting her hands on her stomach. “I actually had two of them. And now I feel like I’m going to explode.”
“One for you, one for baby,” Brynn said, eyeing Ginny’s belly. “How are you feeling?”
“Ready to not be pregnant,” Ginny said. “It’s funny. You know I love kids and I love babies, but I fucking hate being pregnant, I really do.”
Brynn had known Ginny for a long time, before either of them had kids. Ginny had always wanted a big family. I want the chaos of a big family, she’d told Brynn long ago. I want the messiness of it all. Brynn had never understood this. The thought of wanting chaos in life made Brynn feel claustrophobic and out of control. But maybe if Brynn had the support system that Ginny had, she’d want that, too. Ginny’s mother and sister lived on the island, nearby, and had the time, energy, and resources to help Ginny out with the kids all the time, so she basically had two free nannies available around the clock. She also had a husband who let Ginny make all the decisions when it came to childcare and preschool, whereas Ross had an opinion on everything.
Brynn’s parents had moved off-island to Falmouth years ago, so she only had her mother-in-law nearby to help her. And while Brynn was grateful to have her, it wasn’t the same. Brynn was mostly on her own.
They watched Sam climb up the slide. Brynn appreciated that she and Ginny could just sit in silence sometimes. They were both exhausted, though it didn’t need to be said. In addition to having two kids, Ginny was a freelance reporter for both of the island’s newspapers, as well as several nationally distributed magazines. Her husband, Trey, was one of the island’s few public defenders, so he was even busier.
“How’s the writing going?” Ginny asked. Brynn could usually be honest with Ginny about their careers. Though they were different types of writers, they’d always shared the same level of ambition.
“It’s not going.” Brynn sighed.
“You know, you had a baby, like, yesterday,” Ginny reminded her. “Why don’t you just put work on hold for a while, enjoy the summer with Lucas?”
“I can’t,” Brynn said. “I have a deadline. I somehow thought that I’d be able to get a lot of writing done during the newborn days. I was such an idiot. And now, if I take a break, I feel like I’ll never start again. You know?”
“Yeah.” Ginny watched Olivia push a toy dump truck around on the grass in front of them. “But trust me, you will. I know it feels like you’ll never get your old energy or drive back, but you will. Eventually. For now, you’re still in the eye of the storm.”
Brynn nodded, but she wasn’t so sure. She’d seen the way Ginny had thrown herself into a routine after having Sam and Olivia, and it wasn’t something she herself seemed capable of: the way Ginny had returned to the gym as soon as her doctor cleared her, the way she brought both kids with her to run errands as if it were no big deal, the way she locked in babysitters early on so that she and her husband could have regular date nights. Ginny even found the time to read both The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal every morning! Brynn only scrolled Instagram while sitting on the toilet these days, her eyes glazed over. She could practically feel her brain cells evaporating with each passing day.
But there was something else that separated Brynn from Ginny, and the other playground moms, too. Something that felt more sinister to Brynn. Even when Ginny complained to Brynn about her struggles of motherhood—the kids’ sleep regressions, the difficulty of potty training, the tantrums, the fights with her husband—there was always an unspoken implication that Ginny nevertheless loved being a mother, and that she loved her children.
It was this understanding of unconditional love that entitled Ginny to lament her exhaustion and frustrations. Even the sharpest anger toward her kids on a given day could be excused by the unwavering fact that motherhood was, to her, a sacrifice she was always willing to make. Happily.
Brynn’s truth was that she wasn’t necessarily willing to make the same sacrifice. She thought she would be willing, but now that she was a mom, she wasn’t sure she could, even if she wanted to. Whenever she opened up to Ginny about her difficulties with Lucas, Ginny assumed that Brynn also felt the same unconditional love for her child that she felt. She assumed that Brynn loved Lucas above all else. Because that was what mothers were supposed to feel. But Brynn knew, deep down, that she didn’t feel that way. For her, it wasn’t just a bad day, or a rough night, or a tough fight. It was all of it. It was her decision to become a mother in the first place. It was the way she’d been swallowed up by her own life, unable to claw herself out. It was how she often regretted becoming a mother.
Brynn and Ginny appeared to be in sync, on the surface of things, but Brynn knew she existed somewhere else—a darker place, a lonelier place. She didn’t want to drag Ginny—or anyone else—down there with her, so she kept it hidden.
“What about you?” Brynn asked. “How’s the story going?”
Ginny paused and gave Brynn a quizzical stare, like she’d been caught in a lie.
“Oh,” she said, “right. The motherhood story. Good, actually.” Ginny had been writing a piece on the specific challenges of motherhood on an island—how hard it was to find year-round childcare, or baby supplies, or access to certain pediatric healthcare. It was the kind of article Brynn wished someone would finally write. It was a conversation that needed to be had on the island. “There’s just so much to cover,” Ginny added. “This island is like a microcosm of our country, really.”
Before Brynn could respond, they both heard voices from the parking lot.
“Hi ladies!” Their friends Annie Adams and Marcus Haywood were walking toward them. Marcus cradled his six-month-old, Liam, while Annie pushed a double stroller, containing her twin toddlers, Stella and Benji, who were both gnawing on bright pieces of fruit leather, staining their lips red.
“So much for a relaxing morning,” Ginny said, though Brynn knew that she was joking. Annie and Marcus were their close friends, but any time spent with them was sure to be full of chatter. The two of them loved to talk. Whatever the island gossip was, they knew it before anyone else, and they were quick to share it, too. They spent nearly all their time together, so much so that strangers often thought they were a couple. Marcus was always fast to correct that assumption.
“I’m married,” he would tell people, flatly, “to a man.”
Annie was a gossip magnet—it followed her everywhere—since she was the island’s preeminent wedding planner. She knew before anyone else who was getting married, who was splitting up, who was behind on their Big Sky rental bill, and which mother-in-law was trying to elbow out another one for the prime wedding weekend at the Edgartown Yacht Club. But Annie never spilled anything about her clients. That is, unless they treated her staff poorly or tried to shirk their bills. Annie and Brynn had grown up together on the Vineyard, but both had fled the island after high school, with Annie winding up in Los Angeles and only returning years later when her dad got sick. Today, the two of them shared an understanding that while they might have become legging-clad, stroller-pushing island moms, they once had big lives in big cities. They saw each other’s former selves, and that was something for which Brynn was always grateful.
Marcus was a respected Wampanoag tribal member, born and raised on the island, and a math teacher at the high school, revered for his ability to connect with even the most math-averse students. He often told Brynn and their friends that they were his only outlet to talk about everyday parent life, especially during the summer, his precious time off from school. His husband ran a successful caretaking company and was always on call, 24/7, especially in the summer. Brynn knew that Marcus yearned for more family time together. After all, they’d spent five agonizing years going through the adoption process before finally bringing Liam home four months ago. But Marcus did have his mother to help him. She lived just down the road from him and came over daily to help cook and clean.
“So,” Annie said once she took Stella and Benji out of the stroller and let them run to the slide with Sam. She looked toward Ginny and Brynn. “Did you guys hear?” She sat down and stirred her thermos of iced coffee with a metal straw. Brynn knew that sometimes Annie liked to gossip to deflect attention away from herself. If anyone ever asked Annie how she and her husband were doing, she’d say Great! and that would be that. Everything had to be fine, all the time. But Brynn knew better. “About the girl?” Annie continued. “The dead body?” Annie looked at them all like they hadn’t heard her. “Hello?”
Marcus sat on the grass in front of them, and gently put Liam on the ground for some tummy time. “Brynn, what did Ross say about it?” he asked.
“Ross?” Brynn looked at Ginny to see if she was equally lost, but Ginny cast her eyes downward. “What are you guys talking about? A dead body?”
“Yes. A body was found at Norton Point,” Annie said, leaning in. “It was a girl, a woman.” She paused. “Cecelia was her name. Cecelia Buckley.”
“The paper said that she worked at the Oyster Watcha Club,” Marcus added. “Did you know her, Brynn?” It wasn’t a surprise that Marcus would ask Brynn if she knew Cecelia. All of Brynn’s friends knew that Brynn and the Nelson family spent a lot of time at the club. It was where Margaux had thrown Brynn’s baby shower, and where she and Ross had hosted their wedding rehearsal dinner. And Ross was there almost every night. Of course Brynn knew Cecelia Buckley. All the Nelsons did.
Brynn’s throat tightened.
Cecelia Buckley was dead.
She tried to process it.
Cecelia Buckley was dead.
It didn’t make sense. Brynn had just seen her a few days ago when she, Lucas, and Ross had met Henry and Margaux at the club for Sunday brunch.
“The usuals for you all?” Cecelia had asked them when they had sat down. She’d worked at the club for the past three summers, and because the Nelsons were always there, they’d all gotten to know her. Brynn knew that Cecelia wanted to be a veterinarian, and that she spent her summers working around the clock at the club to save money for school. Cecelia had told her that she’d earned a scholarship to attend Middlebury, and that she was from somewhere in Pennsylvania. She’d also told her that she had been dating Jacob Hammers, a young Edgartown police officer and the son of the police chief.
“I did know her, yes,” Brynn said. “She’d worked there for a few years.” She cleared her throat. “She … Henry especially loved her. They were close.”
“What do you mean close?” Marcus asked.
“Not like that,” Brynn said. “Margaux loved her, too. We all did. Everyone at the club did. She was just a hard worker, smart, always took great care of the members.”
Brynn didn’t tell them that Henry’s fondness for Cecelia was in fact somewhat like that. It wasn’t romantic, not at all, but it was … noticeable. A little strange, even. Henry thought of her like a daughter. She was his point person at the club, the place where he felt most important and the most at home. Cecelia knew exactly how he liked his gin martini, how he took his after-dinner coffee, what time he finished his daily round of golf, which David McCullough book he was reading, and of course what Margaux’s favorite wine was and how she only liked the tuna tartare with no green onions. Henry often asked Cecelia to sit with him in the library or on the porch overlooking the golf course as he finished his last drink. He would ask her about school and her ambitions. None of this was secret. The club manager, Mauricio, was aware of it, and he ran a very tight ship, never allowing staff members to cross inappropriate lines with members or vice versa. Even Margaux was aware, and didn’t care. But now, the relationship between Cecelia and Henry somehow made Brynn queasy. Now, it somehow felt wrong.
Lucas woke from his nap just then, blinking his eyes and releasing a groan. The June sun had intensified since the early morning. Brynn felt the back of Lucas’s neck. It was slightly sticky. She needed to feed him.
“Hold on,” Brynn said, still in disbelief. She took out the bottle she’d packed. “What do you mean she’s dead? What happened?”
“Trey learned about it first thing this morning,” Ginny said. This made sense; Ginny’s husband was always aware of the island’s criminal activities. Most of the time, he had to clean up the mess. He practically lived at the courthouse. But this was the first time that Ginny had spoken since Annie and Marcus had arrived. She hadn’t even mentioned Cecelia to Brynn before that. How come everyone else had heard about this but Brynn hadn’t? Ross and his family were usually some of the first people to know about anything related to the club.
“And my niece Halle is one of the beach patrollers at Norton this summer,” Marcus said, “so all the twentysomethings are talking about it.” Norton Point Beach was one of the island’s most popular beaches in the summer, because it was one of the only ones that you could drive your car onto. In the summer, employees of the preservation organization that owned the beach patrolled it to make sure that dogs were kept on leashes and that cars didn’t drive over the endangered piping plovers’ nesting areas.
“I guess a guy shore fishing for stripers found her last night on the beach. She’d been in the water,” Annie said. “Seems like a drowning.”
“Honestly, the way kids drink these days, maybe there was a beach party, and she drank too much, went for a swim, and just drowned?” Marcus suggested. “Sorry to sound so callous. But it’s happened here so many times. And Halle told me the popular drink these days with kids is called fire water. It’s literally just tequila and water. Not even ice. Can you imagine? Blugh.”
“Yeah, but supposedly there’s no sign of a party having happened out there on Norton that night. I mean, it’s so hard to drive all the way out there anyway, no one goes there late at night anymore except for fishermen,” Annie added. “And I heard that, like, none of her friends were with her last night. So, I guess they’re not ruling out any kind of foul play.”
Brynn began to feed Lucas, who stared up at her, his tiny body sinking into her arms. Her friends kept talking, guessing about what had happened, who was involved, what clues there might be. But Brynn couldn’t hear. It turned to white noise.
She tried to imagine what Cecelia could have been doing before her death. Brynn knew facts about her, she realized, but that didn’t mean that she actually knew her. She had no idea who her parents were, or what kind of parents they’d been, or whether Cecelia had even been close with them or not. Brynn had a vague recollection of Cecelia telling her once that she had a brother, but she wasn’t sure. She wondered if her parents had already been informed. Had they cried, or screamed, or sat in silent shock? Would they be looking for someone to blame? But she did know that she had a boyfriend. And he wasn’t just any guy on the island.
“Her boyfriend is a cop,” Brynn said, thinking out loud. “Jacob Hammers. And his dad is the chief.”
Jacob’s dad, Pete Hammers, the longtime and revered Edgartown chief of police, was close friends with Henry. They were proudly cut from the same cloth—self-described “washashores” who arrived on the island with nothing and rose to be prestigious leaders in the community. Brynn hadn’t ever really interacted with Jacob herself, though she’d seen him at barbecues and at hockey games. He played in the same winter men’s hockey league as Ross.
“Oh, interesting,” said Annie. “I wonder where he was last night.”
“It’s always the boyfriend, right?” asked Marcus. “Ginny, what do you know? You always know everything.”
“Nothing,” Ginny said. “They still don’t know if it was just an accident.”
This wouldn’t be the first time that Ginny was withholding confidential information that Trey had given her or that she’d heard on the local news circuit. And Brynn could understand why Ginny would be secretive about this one. The police chief’s son’s girlfriend found dead! Brynn was certain that this case was going to be kept far away from the scrutiny of the public eye. Or as far away as it could, in a small community like this one where secrets never stayed secret for long.
“Ugh,” groaned Annie, breaking the conversation away from the news about Cecelia. She was looking at her phone. “This fucking bride is going to be the end of me.” Annie was supposed to be taking it easy this summer so she could spend more time with the twins, but she’d begrudgingly agreed to plan the wedding of a well-known Edgartown socialite, Joanna O’Callahan. “Shit,” she said.
“What happened?” asked Marcus.
Annie let out a frustrated sigh, and frantically started typing into her phone. “We were supposed to have the welcome dinner for this wedding at Oyster Watcha—this weekend. But I just got an email from the manager saying that it’s going to be closed. Out of respect for Cecelia. So the staff can mourn.” She continued to type. “Great. Now I have to find a whole other venue. Hold on, I need to call this guy.” Annie dialed. “Go figure. It keeps going straight to voicemail.”
“Is it Mauricio you’re calling?” asked Brynn. “The club manager?”
Annie nodded. “You’d think this would be an important time to be reachable. So annoying.”
While Annie called her assistant next, Brynn’s phone vibrated. She was certain that Ross would be calling her now that he’d heard about Cecelia. I can’t believe it … so terrible, he’d say. She was a good kid. My dad’s really broken up.… Or maybe Ross already had the full story; maybe he’d tell her that he’d heard that the staff at the club had all gone out partying together and Cecelia never made it back. Maybe she’d gone swimming. Maybe she’d taken pills. Maybe she’d drunk too much.
But instead, it was a text from him:
Trust me. Please. I can explain everything. You’ll understand soon.