Brynn picked up the phone to call Ginny and ask her what the hell she had been doing exchanging cryptic texts with her husband. There were only two texts between Ginny and Ross: one from last week asking him to meet her at the state forest parking lot on Barnes Road, to which Ross had replied “ok.” Brynn had no idea what this meant, but her mind raced.
She tried not to, but she couldn’t stop herself from imagining filthy scenes of the two of them together, just as she’d imagined Ross with Cecelia. She pictured Ross kissing Ginny’s neck, Ginny reaching for his crotch, the two of them breathing heavily … except … Ginny was incredibly pregnant. Sure, Brynn remembered feeling very unexpected waves of … desire when she was pregnant, but she knew that Ginny had been supremely uncomfortable lately. She constantly complained to Brynn about her back pain and her incessant burping. The idea of Ginny and Ross having a torrid affair now just seemed … unbelievable. Still, what if Ross had been having affairs with multiple women right underneath Brynn’s nose? What if he was some kind of sex-crazed psychopath, and she had no idea?
The only logical thing Brynn could think of was that Ginny must have known something about the Nelson & Sons business—something like what Ross had whispered to her. But how bad could it be that she’d keep it from her best friend? What could she possibly have discovered that would make her go behind her best friend’s back to her husband? Brynn recalled her recent interactions with Ginny. It all seemed pretty normal, but Ginny had been somewhat standoffish with her that morning. Maybe Ginny knew what the orange sun was. Brynn started to write a text to her, but before she sent it, her kitchen door opened and she heard Sawyer’s voice. She’d forgotten that Sawyer, Margaux, and Henry were all coming over.
“Brynn?” Sawyer entered the kitchen with a pizza box in one hand and a six-pack of Offshore Ale East Chop beers in the other.
“Hi,” Brynn said, taking the box from him.
“What a shitshow,” Sawyer said.
“Yeah,” Brynn said. “That’s the only way to describe this.”
“How are you holding up?” Sawyer sat down and cracked two beers, then handed her one.
“Not good. This is just … I guess I’m in shock.” She remembered what Ross had told her about not trusting Henry. And Jacob, too. Don’t trust the Nelsons. But it wasn’t that simple for Brynn. She’d known Sawyer longer than she’d known Ross.
“Well, I’m pissed,” Sawyer said. “This isn’t right. I mean, obviously the police have something on Ross, but … I’m sorry, there’s just no way he did this. It’s Ross we’re talking about. He’s a fucking square!”
Brynn smiled and let out a little laugh, the first in a while.
“I know,” she said. “I just don’t understand how they could possibly think he did it. I … I went to the station. I talked to Pete. I needed some answers, you know? But he didn’t tell me anything. Just that Mauricio isn’t a suspect, even though I saw him there in one of the interrogation rooms, which makes no sense at all. And he said that they have evidence on Ross.” Brynn sighed. “It was so crazy, Sawyer, sitting there and listening to this, not being able to do anything about it.” She paused. “And honestly, not knowing what to believe.”
Sawyer drank his beer. “I’m just so confused,” he said.
Brynn wanted to tell Sawyer about the texts she’d discovered between Ross and Ginny. She wanted to ask him about the orange sun. She had so many questions. But she held back.
“Sawyer,” Brynn said, “do you think Ross has been acting different lately? Have you noticed anything off with him?”
Sawyer furrowed his brow. “Only that my dad’s really been pushing him hard lately. And I think Ross has been pretty stressed about that. My dad’s been … I don’t know. He’s been acting different, that’s for sure.”
Brynn nodded. Ross had been stressed about work lately, more than usual, and Henry had been particularly hard on him recently. Henry had always held high standards for Ross, but lately, those standards felt unattainable. He’d been pushing Ross to his limits, dangling his own retirement in front of him, just out of his reach, but within sight. He’d thrown him into tricky situations without any preparation, demanding that Ross find solutions to problems that Henry himself had created: promising a client a backordered slab of marble within a week, forgetting to budget in the cost of trucking hundreds of tons of unusable kaolin off-island during a pool dig, commencing the build of a beach-stone fireplace when the client wanted bluestone instead, promising building permits within days when they normally took months to get.
Ross didn’t know how else to respond to Henry’s demands other than doubling down on his hours, his efforts, his blood, sweat, and tears. Brynn could tell that no matter how hard Ross worked, it wouldn’t ever be enough for Henry. But Ross refused to see it that way. He’d never stop.
There was something else that felt different with Henry, though, lately. It was something that had nothing to do with work. In the office and on the jobsites, Henry was tougher than ever. But at home, at the club, and at dinners, he was sentimental, effusively emotional about almost everything. He got teary-eyed whenever he held Lucas. He told the same stories again and again at family dinners—how he arrived on the island right after graduating from Durfee High for a summer gig painting houses and how he’d started his own construction company within just two years. How he’d built homes for a former president, several Fortune 500 CEOs, Pulitzer Prize–winning authors, and yet he was just a kid from Fall River. He talked as if his life was over and all he could do now was look back on it instead of looking forward, as if it were all slipping through his fingers. His emotion didn’t seem to come from a place of joy. It seemed to come from a well of regret, a lifetime of remorse. For what, Brynn didn’t know. But something was eating away at Henry from the inside out.
Brynn desperately wanted to tell Sawyer what Ross had whispered to her before his arrest—about not trusting Henry. But she couldn’t. “I’m actually worried about Henry,” she said. “And now with Cecelia dead, I just feel like he’s…”
“Losing it?” Sawyer asked. “I know. Me too. I think we all see it but don’t know how to deal with it.” He had another sip of his beer. “Anyway, do you think Ross has been acting different lately?”
“No,” Brynn said, maybe a little too fast. The truth was, he had been acting different, too. Not just Henry. Maybe it was just the pressure of work, or maybe it was something else. She wasn’t sure now. “Nothing unusual,” she added.
“Look, Brynn,” Sawyer said. “Ross is innocent. This whole thing is a big, fucked-up mistake. He loves you. It’s going to be okay.”
Brynn smiled, though she wanted to crumple into Sawyer’s arms and cry. Sawyer was nothing if not loyal, especially to his big brother. Brynn felt bad about not being more upfront with Sawyer, not telling him that she had to find the orange sun, or that Ginny and Ross had shared a suspicious text exchange. But she couldn’t tell him. For his sake, she wanted to keep him out of it.
Brynn and Sawyer first met during Brynn’s first summer working at the Galley, a burger and milkshake joint in the fishing village of Menemsha. She’d known who Sawyer was already, of course. They were both going to be seniors at the high school that fall. His older brother Ross was already off at college. The Nelson brothers were the kings of the island. They were natural athletes, playing on the varsity football, hockey, and baseball teams since freshman year. They excelled academically, too, especially Ross, who everyone knew would probably get into an Ivy (which he did—Cornell). They were kind and inclusive, known for bending the otherwise rigid social hierarchies of the high school, having friends in all different groups. And their family hosted epic parties. Brynn had never attended one, but she’d heard about them. The Nelsons had once hosted a fundraiser for Martha’s Vineyard Community Services where James Taylor himself had appeared for a surprise performance.
Ross and Sawyer Nelson were island royalty, and Brynn knew all about them before she’d even met them. But it would be nearly a decade before Ross knew Brynn.
That summer, Sawyer was working as the unofficial first mate to a fishing charter captain who kept his boat at the docks right behind the Galley. Each day, when Brynn got in for her shift before lunch, she would see Sawyer cleaning the boat or fileting fish, already back in from the morning charter, hosing off fish blood and guts, scrubbing the crusted layer of salt off the center console, dumping out old ice and half-empty iced-tea bottles. At first, they only waved to each other, and she wondered if he knew her—an up-island theater kid, a writer, a bookworm. Not an athlete, not a party girl, not a cool girl.
Eventually, they started chatting, at first about fishing. Brynn impressed him with her fishing knowledge. Her dad had taught her to fish for bluefish and stripers on Lobsterville Beach right outside their house when she was as young as five. She knew how to rig her own fishing rod, she knew how to tie lures so that they wouldn’t break. She knew how to hold striped bass by hooking her fingers inside of their mouths, and how to hold bluefish by the head and the gill plate, to avoid their sharp teeth. She could even handle herself on the Menemsha jetty during a crowded derby morning. Sawyer told her that he’d never met a girl who knew so much about fishing. “Are you an alien?” he’d asked her.
Their conversation evolved slowly into other topics—their love-hate relationship with tourists (hate the crowds and the attitudes, but love the hefty tips), their jobs (pros: close proximity to the beach; cons: blisters, long hours, and the occasional rude customer), school (whatever)—and eventually they just talked about themselves and whatever was going on in their lives. Sawyer opened up about the pressure he felt from his parents to succeed. To Brynn, it seemed like Sawyer was already perfect; how could they demand more from him? But Sawyer said his brother Ross was much more focused than him, much more ambitious, which was what his parents expected—or wanted—from him, too. But Sawyer just wanted to enjoy summer. He wanted to surf, fish, and hang out. He wasn’t sure college was right for him at all, though his parents said he didn’t have a choice.
“You’re lucky to have parents who push you, though,” Brynn had told him one afternoon as they sat with their legs dangling off of the dock, sipping milkshakes from the Galley. “They believe in you. I’m not sure my parents expect much from me. They just sort of let me … figure it out on my own. Sometimes, I wish they were harder on me, if that makes sense.”
“Sounds like we’d have the perfect parents, combined,” Sawyer had said. He’d turned to her then, suddenly, and planted a kiss on her lips. It was completely unexpected, but Brynn hadn’t leaned away. She had wanted it to happen. Sawyer had tasted like the salt from the ocean and the sugar from the milkshake, warm and innocent.
But it had been the first and last kiss they ever shared. When school started again in the fall, they’d both returned to their designated social roles, which kept them apart. And the following summer, Brynn packed up her things and drove to UMass Amherst, and Sawyer headed to the University of Vermont. They’d planned to keep in touch, to see each other whenever they were home. But once Brynn started college, she was introduced to an entire world she hadn’t known existed: people from the other coast, other countries, other religions, other belief systems. She wanted to absorb it all, she wanted to grow, and most of all, she wanted to redefine herself, on her own terms. She wanted to leave the island behind for a while, even if it meant turning her back on the person who had been the brightest spot in her life.
Brynn wondered if Sawyer had been angry at her that fall when she’d gone dark. He had never said so. But she had been the one to end things between them, not him. She hadn’t even had the courage to break it off formally. There was nothing formal to break off anyway, she’d told herself. Even at that young age, Brynn was certain that the two of them could never actually make it together on the island. Sawyer and his brother were down-island royalty, and she wasn’t part of that world.
So, she’d simply stopped returning his calls. She began answering his texts with single words and smiley faces instead of real responses. Time passed, and there was never an opportunity for him to confront her about it. Life went on. They grew up. She met Ross.
Though Brynn never asked him about it, she always thought it was funny that Sawyer had a job all the way up in Menemsha. He lived on the complete opposite side of the island, in Edgartown, his family’s turf. Sawyer could have easily gotten a job in Edgartown on one of the charter boats there. But Brynn soon realized that the distance was exactly why Sawyer had chosen that job. At the time, he had wanted to be as far away from Edgartown—and from his family—as he could get.
“I think my parents will be here soon,” Sawyer said. “Want another?” He lifted a beer bottle.
“Sure,” Brynn said. She drank the rest of hers and then accepted the new one from Sawyer. Fuck it, she thought. She could pump and dump later.
While Sawyer put the pizza in the oven to keep it warm, Brynn defrosted a bag of breast milk for Lucas, whose murmurs she could hear on the monitor. He was waking up from his nap and was hungry.
She couldn’t shake the question she herself had asked: Had Ross been acting different, and how so?
Ever since she’d known Ross, he’d always been humble. Never flashy. He didn’t care about having the fanciest car or the brand-name clothes, even though he could afford them. He preferred to keep a simple, low profile.
But recently, something had changed. She thought about the babymoon Ross had surprised her with last year to Turks and Caicos. They’d stayed at Amanyara, a resort so luxurious and expensive that she’d lied to her own parents about it because she was too embarrassed by its lavishness, telling them instead that they were staying at an all-inclusive resort using credit-card points. She thought about the outrageous new boat Ross had treated himself to: a twenty-eight-foot, pale blue Regulator with two 300-horsepower Yamaha outboard motors. (Sawyer had aptly called it a fuck you boat.) She thought about the new Volvo SUV he’d bought her in anticipation of Lucas’s arrival, so that she wouldn’t feel unsafe driving him around in her 2012 RAV4. She thought about the UPPAbaby stroller system, the Coterie diaper subscription, the Nanit baby monitor, the Artipoppe carrier—all the baby gear that was too expensive for her to even put on her registry. Ross had simply told her, “Bee, put it on the credit card. It’s for our baby.”
The credit card was a shared one, but one that Ross was responsible for paying. Brynn used it for groceries, household needs, and certain expenses for Lucas. She never used the card for herself, or even for Lucas’s clothing. Those things, she paid for herself. The family card was for things that the family needed, and both Ross and Brynn felt it was fair for Ross to foot the bill, since he was currently making more money than she was. The card was not, however, for things that Brynn might want but that she didn’t really need, even if they were for Lucas. She and Ross had agreed to be sensible when it came to spending; his recent looseness with it was uncharacteristic, she thought, though at the time she didn’t object. She had just used the card, and now she felt foolish for relying on him so much. That was something she’d always told herself she wouldn’t do.
Ross made good money, and Brynn’s book deals weren’t too shabby either, but neither one of them had exorbitant amounts of extra spending money. What if all this extravagance had been a red flag that she’d blindly ignored? What if Ross’s behavior had told her everything she needed to know, and she’d just chosen to ignore it?
Everything that Ross had described to her—how Henry had been destroying the company for years—Ross himself could have done, too. Brynn felt sick thinking about the possibility, but she knew that he was capable of it. Maybe not morally capable of it, but he was certainly smart enough to pull it off. Ross was brilliant.
She thought back to so many of their arguments and debates: where to buy a house on the island, which preschools Lucas should be on the wait list for, even who Lucas’s pediatrician should be. Sometimes, like with the pediatrician choice, she and Ross agreed. But with almost anything else, Brynn ended up deferring to Ross. She wondered if she’d ever really stood up to him about anything, ever.
“This is all just … too much,” Brynn finally said. She stared out the window at their backyard. Ross had seeded the lawn himself last fall. It was now a vibrant green and surrounded by bright summer flowers that Brynn had carefully picked and planted herself just a few weeks ago. The beauty of it now somehow felt wrong and out of place. “And I can’t believe Cecelia is dead. I mean, why Cecelia? How could she have been involved in anything that would make someone want to kill her?”
“I don’t know,” Sawyer said, shaking his head. “None of this makes sense. And I wish they would tell us how they even know it’s a murder to begin with.” He paused and looked down. “What went wrong?” he asked, looking up at her. “What happened? Between us, I mean.”
Suddenly, there it was: the question she’d been hoping he would never ask, throughout all these years. She froze. She’d had half of her life to think of the answer, but she had nothing to say to him now.
“We grew up,” Brynn said, looking away.
“Did we, though?” he asked. “Have things really changed?”
Brynn could feel Sawyer’s eyes still on her. She turned toward him. She wasn’t the girl at the Galley anymore. She was someone’s mother, someone’s wife, an author, someone who paid taxes and had medical insurance and took vitamins each morning. These things meant that she had grown up. And yet, Sawyer had a point. Just because time had passed, and her life had changed, and she’d created a human, had she herself actually changed all that much? What did it even mean to have grown up, when she still longed for the past?
Most days, since Lucas was born, Brynn yearned for her former self, the one that she felt had been erased. It was like no one saw her anymore as anything except a mother, a vessel and caretaker for someone else. Sawyer, though, saw her right now. He saw the old Brynn. And it felt so good to be seen, to be appreciated, to be remembered as something and someone more.
“Everything’s changed, Sawyer,” Brynn said, pulling herself away from him before something happened that she could never take back. They both heard a car outside pulling into the driveway. Margaux and Henry had arrived. “Or, at least, I have.”