“Hm?”

“I do hope you will continue to swim. You may keep the key. Our Arrangement for your training stands.”

Recognizing this for the gift it is, I say, “Thank you.” And leave before I can say more.

With no schedule, no babysitting or breakfast shift or lifeguard gig, days and nights bleed into one another. I can’t settle down during nights and spend them roaming the house restlessly or watching Lifetime movies, where everyone is worse off than I am.

Why don’t I call my sister?

The answer is, of course, that I do. Of course I do. She knows this situation from the inside out, knows Mom, me. Knows it all. But here’s what happens when I call:

Straight to voicemail. My sister’s husky voice, her deep-from-the-belly laugh, so familiar and so far away. “Got me. Or not, really. You know what to do. Talk to me! I may even call you back.” My imagining: Tracy out on beach, bright blue eyes squinting against the sun, having that carefree summer she told Mom she’d earned, phone in Flip’s pocket, or switched to off, because what was the big deal. Their perfect summer. I open my mouth to say something, but snap the phone shut.

The strangest part? Mom used to notice if I had a nearly invisible stain on my shirt, or hadn’t conditioned my hair enough, or if my morning routine deviated in some miniscule way: “You always have a smoothie before work, Samantha. Why are you having toast? I’ve read that a change in a teenager’s routine could be a red flag for a drug habit.” But now? Clouds of pot smoke could be unfurling under my door and that probably wouldn’t stop the blizzard of Post-it notes that are her primary form of communication these days.

Please pick up my silk suit at the dry cleaner. Toile chair in study has stain, apply OxiClean. Will be out very late tonight; turn on alarm when you go to bed.

I’ve quit all my jobs and become a recluse. And my mother doesn’t seem to notice.

“Sweetheart! Good timing,” Mom says jovially as I drag myself into the kitchen in response to her Yoo-hoo, Samantha, I need you. “I was just showing this nice man how I make my lemonade. Kurt, did you say your name was?” Mom asks the man seated at our kitchen island after waving cheerfully at me with the lemon zester.

“Carl,” he responds. I know him. He’s Mr. Agnoli, who takes the photographs for the Stony Bay Bugle. He always photographed the winning swim teams. Now he’s in our kitchen, looking starstruck by Mom.

“We thought a quick piece about the state senator at home would be great along with pictures of her making lemonade. A metaphor for what she can do for the state,” Mr. Agnoli tells me.

Mom turns around and checks the sugar/water mixture melting on the stove, enlightening Mr. Agnoli about how it’s the added lemon zest that really does the trick.

“I’m going back upstairs,” I say, and do so. Maybe if I can just sleep for a hundred years, I’ll wake up in a better story.

I’m jolted awake by Mom jerking on my arm. “You can’t doze the day away, sweetheart. I’ve got plans.”

Everything about her looks the same as always: her smoothly uptwisted chignon, her faultless makeup, her calm blue eyes. I’m in a backward version of the way I felt after Jase spent the night. When big things happen to you—shouldn’t they show on your face? Not on Mom’s, though.

“I took the whole day off.” She’s rubbing my back now. “I’ve been so busy, neglecting you, I know. I thought maybe we could go get facials, maybe—”

“Facials?”

She pulls back a little at the sound of my voice, then continues in the same lulling tone, “Remember how we used to do that, the first day of summer vacation? It was a tradition and I skipped right over it this year. I thought I could make it up to you, we could go out to lunch afterward—”

I sit up abruptly. “Do you really think that’s how it works? I’m not the one you need to make it up to.”

She walks over to the window overlooking the Garretts’ lawn. “Stop this. It’s not doing any good.”

“Maybe if I could understand why not, Mom.” I haul myself out of bed and stand next to her at the window, looking down on the Garretts’ house, the toys in the yard, the inflatables floating in the pool, the Mustang.

Her jaw tightens. “The truth? Fine. I never enjoyed it when you and Tracy were small. I’m not like that woman over there—” She gestures out the window in the direction of the Garretts’. “I’m not some broodmare. I wanted children, sure. I was an only child growing up, I was always lonely. When I met your father with his big family, I thought…But I hated the mess and the smells and the constant distractions. As it turned out, he’d had enough of all that growing up too. So he took off to be a boy again, and left me two little babies. I could have afforded ten nannies, and you just had the one, and she only came in during the weekdays. I got through that time. Now I’ve finally found a place for myself.” She reaches out, takes hold of my upper arm again, jogging it, as though she’s trying to wake me up all over again. “You want me to give that up?”

“But—”

“I work so hard, have worked hard for longer than you can even remember. I’m supposed to pay penance for the rest of my life for one night where I was able to relax and have a good time?”

Another arm-shake. Her face is very close to mine.

“Do you really think that’s right, Samantha?”

I don’t know what’s right anymore. My head hurts and my heart feels nothing but numb blankness. I want to reach into her argument and pick out the thread that’s wrong, but it all seems like a tangle.

I still watch the Garretts, relieved when I see signs of normalcy—Alice lying in a lawn chair tanning or Duff and Harry having a squirt-gun fight. But watching doesn’t give me the feeling it used to—at once hopeful and calming, that there were worlds other than my own, where extraordinary things could happen. Now it feels like I’m exiled, back in Kansas with all that color bleached to black and white.

I try hard to skirt around memories of Jase, but they’re everywhere. I found one of his shirts under my bed yesterday and stood there with it in my hand, frozen in amazed horror that I hadn’t noticed it—and Mom hadn’t either. I shoved it to the back of my own shirt drawer. Then I pulled it out and slept in it.

Chapter Forty-six

I’m walking up our driveway, one of the few times I’ve cast my shadow outdoors, when I feel a touch on my shoulder and turn around to see Tim.

“What the fuck are you doing?” he demands, grabbing hold of my hand.

“Leave me alone.” I yank it away from him.

“The hell I will. Don’t you pull that ice queen bullshit with me, Samantha. You dumped Jase with no explanation. Nan won’t say jack shit about you except that you aren’t friends anymore. Look at you—you look like hell. You’re all skinny and pale. You don’t even look like the same girl. What the fuck’s happening to you?”

I take out my key to unlock the door. Despite the heat of the day, it feels like it’s made of stone, so heavy and cold in my hand. “I’m not going to talk to you, Tim. It’s none of your business.”

“Screw that too. He’s my friend. You were the one who brought him into my life. He’s made things better. There’s no way I’m going to stand by and watch you crap on him when his world is already messed up. He’s got enough to deal with.”

I open the door and drop my purse, which also feels as though it’s made of lead. My head hurts. Tim, of course, king of no mercy, follows me right in, letting the door slam shut behind us.