Brynn hastily said goodbye to her friends, muttering something about Lucas having a pediatrician appointment. She called Ross as soon as she got in the car. But he didn’t answer. She called again. And again. No answer. She called the Nelson & Sons office, but all she got was the receptionist Loretta’s voicemail.
Brynn had a sour taste in her mouth, and she started to feel bile rising up in her throat. Maybe Ross’s text to her had nothing to do with Cecelia at all. It was possible he still didn’t know. After all, he was busy with work, and the news about Cecelia had only broken early that morning. Maybe he was only texting her to apologize for forgetting to take the trash out, as he’d promised he would the night before. Or maybe he’d made some outlandish charge to their credit card—another set of golf clubs?—and wanted to explain. Maybe the text was just bad timing. Or maybe he and Mauricio were together at the club. Maybe Mauricio had called him to help relay the news to Cecelia’s family. That wouldn’t be so strange, would it? Maybe that was why they both were unreachable right now.
Except that none of those possibilities really made sense.
Brynn’s mind reeled. Did Ross know something about Cecelia’s death? Was he involved in some way? Had they been having an affair?
She called Ross’s brother Sawyer next. He probably knew where Ross was, since he worked for Henry, too.
“One sec, Brynn,” Sawyer said when he answered, on the second ring. He was driving, too, and she could hear him rolling up the windows of his vintage Bronco. The engine roared like a fire; it was a distinct sound that she’d known since Sawyer bought the car, more than fifteen years ago, when they were both teenagers. Back then, Sawyer wasn’t just Ross’s brother to Brynn. Back then, it was the other way around. Back then, Sawyer was the one that Brynn thought she’d end up with.
“Sawyer,” Brynn said, “did you hear about Cecelia?”
“I just heard,” he said. “I can’t believe it.”
She could hear Sawyer take a sip of his coffee. She waited for him to say more.
“Well, what do we know?” she asked. “Have you … have you talked to Ross? Where is he?” She was yelling.
“Yeah, he’s at the office with my dad,” Sawyer said. “Brynn, is everything okay? You sound really panicked.”
Sawyer had always been a glass-half-full kind of guy. At times, this was endearing. His positivity reminded Brynn not to take things so seriously. But sometimes it drove her mad. Sometimes, he was too laid-back. Everything will work out, he’d always say. And she didn’t agree. She’d learned from an early age that sometimes things didn’t work out, and that was that.
Even though Ross and Sawyer were born just eighteen months apart and practically raised like twins, they were opposites in pretty much every way—and always had been. Ross had darker hair, olive skin, and the same compact frame, height, and square shoulders as Margaux. Sawyer was built just like Henry—towering at almost six foot five, lean, and fair-skinned, with a wave of blond hair always peeking out of his backward baseball cap. But the brothers were opposites in how they carried themselves, too. Ross was clean-cut, well groomed, on time, organized, polite, in control, reliable. Sawyer, on the other hand, came and went like the wind, always misplacing his wallet or his shoes or his keys, never on time, one of his legs constantly bouncing during the rare times he sat down, always scruffy and unshaven, slightly dirty.
Once in a while, only when Ross really annoyed her and she could barely stand the sight of him, Brynn imagined what life would be like if she’d ended up with Sawyer instead of with Ross. She never used to imagine this. Before Lucas, Brynn had hardly even thought about Sawyer romantically—at least not since they were teenagers. She looked at Sawyer now like a little brother, even though they were the same age. He hadn’t grown up, and she had.
But when Ross was physically and emotionally distant, as he so often was lately, Brynn allowed herself to imagine what this alternate life might be like. With Sawyer, she thought, life would be full of laughter. He’d crack jokes, he’d give her back massages, he would blast music in the kitchen for impromptu family dance parties. He’d tell her that she was beautiful. The only thing Ross told her lately was when he’d be home, and it was always late. Ross didn’t see Brynn anymore. But she felt like Sawyer did.
“I don’t know,” Brynn said. “I’m just trying to reach Ross and he’s not answering.”
“My dad’s pretty bent out of shape over this,” Sawyer said. “He’s real sad. I’m sure Ross is getting an earful right now.”
“Right,” Brynn said. She felt silly for jumping so quickly to such wild conclusions. Ross’s text meant nothing. He was a notoriously bad texter anyway, and she knew this better than anyone. He was just busy consoling his dad and trying to take things off of his plate at work.
“Well, I’m headed to our Fuller Street job now,” Sawyer said. “It’s turned into a big mess with the new septic system.”
Brynn didn’t know how Sawyer was able to return to work as if someone they’d known for several years hadn’t just suddenly been found dead. But Sawyer never really seemed to think too hard about anything.
“Wait,” Brynn said. “Did you guys see Cecelia last night at dinner? Was anything off?”
“Yeah, we saw her, like normal,” Sawyer said. “Everything seemed fine, like it always does. And then we all left around … I don’t know, ten? That’s when young people just start their nights. You remember.”
“Right,” Brynn said.
When she hung up, she turned the car around and began to drive toward the Nelson & Sons office in Edgartown instead of home. If Ross wasn’t going to answer the phone, then she was going to go see him. As much as she tried to reason with herself, something didn’t feel right about Ross’s text, or the way she’d learned about Cecelia after everyone else. Something felt wrong.
As she drove, she tried to remember last night, but it was hazy. Everything had been hazy since Lucas was born. What time had Ross come home? Had she felt the rustle of the bedsheets when he climbed into bed next to her? Had she been in Lucas’s room when he got home, half asleep in the glider chair, feeding him for the millionth time that night? Or had he come home earlier, and she just couldn’t remember? She had a vague recollection of Ross still not being home when she gave Lucas his dream feed, the feeding around ten o’clock that she always hoped would finally be the one to get him through the night. But she wasn’t sure.
Still, even when Ross enraged her, she never felt that she couldn’t trust him. It wasn’t in his nature to lie, and certainly not to her.
She couldn’t stop her mind from picturing Cecelia’s thin frame and long, thick hair, her narrow hips and bony knees. Brynn’s own body was bloated, her flesh pliable like soft dough. Characters in her books worried about husbands with wandering eyes, or wives having torrid affairs. She had friends who’d dealt with it. But her and Ross? She’d never even imagined it.
She called again; nothing.
The only other time Brynn had gotten truly angry over Ross being unreachable was a few weeks ago when an angry-looking rash had suddenly appeared on Lucas’s back. Brynn had raced to the pediatrician and called Ross frantically on the way, but he didn’t answer.
“You have a son now, Ross!” she’d yelled at him when he finally called her back later that day. By that time, she’d returned home with Lucas, and she was exhausted from having spent three sweaty, stressful hours in the hospital only to be told that the best she could do was monitor Lucas’s symptoms and hope it didn’t get worse.
“I’m sorry, Bee,” he had said. “We were digging the foundation and hit some stuff, it turned into a whole situation, I couldn’t be checking my phone.”
“I need to know that we’re your priority,” she had told him. “Not work, but us. Your family.”
“You are. You and Lucas are all that matters to me,” he had assured her.
She had believed him then.
But now, she wasn’t so sure anymore. Now, she wasn’t sure she had ever been Ross’s priority.