And she’d replied to that small, insistent voice. Shut. The. Hell. Up.
It was almost August. No way was she canceling this beach trip.
So here she was, sitting in a restaurant in Nags Head, North Carolina, and two weeks’ worth of her severance package had already been eaten up. She didn’t care. In the past five years, she’d taken exactly one week of vacation per year, spending Christmas with her mother and aunt at the condo down in Sarasota, listening to her mother bicker with Aunt Claudia.
In April, Ellis had sat next to Julia in the front row of Blessed Sacrament Church in Savannah. Dorie sat on the other side of Julia, and Willa sat beside Dorie. Booker, Julia’s boyfriend of many years, couldn’t make the trip from London. All four of the girls clutched each other’s hands as a young priest none of them recognized, Father Tranh, said the Mass of Christian Burial for Catherine Donohue Capelli. Later, back at the Capelli house, after all the funeral-goers had finally cleared out, the girls had taken off their funeral dresses, climbed into pajamas, and sprawled out on the double bed in Julia’s old bedroom, just like they’d done all those Friday nights in the old days. Only this time, instead of sipping Pabst Blue Ribbon stolen from Mr. Capelli’s beer fridge in the garage, they’d gotten shit-faced on a pitcher of cosmos.
And that’s when they’d hatched the plan. No more catching up at funerals. Ellis’s father had died two years earlier, and Mr. Capelli had been gone, what? Six years? No more of that, Julia had declared, waving the empty pitcher in the air.
“We’re gonna go away together,” she announced. “To the beach. All of us.” She’d looked over at Dorie, the newlywed of the group, and added, meaningfully, “Just us girls.”
The group had elected Ellis, the planner, the organizer, ruthlessly efficient Ellis, to put the trip together. And that’s what she’d done. And now here she was, jobless, but with the whole month of August to spend in a summer rental with her best friends. Plus Willa, Dorie’s sister, who’d invited herself along.
She felt positively giddy at the prospect. The amber-hued summers of her girlhood had been the sweetest of her life. She and Dorie and Julia had been inseparable, spending weeks at a time at Julia’s grandmother’s rambling cottage on Tybee Island, lazing around the beach during the day, spending hours getting ready to go out in the evenings.
Dorie always trailed a wake of would-be boyfriends, so they’d traveled in a pack, cruising the beach road in Julia’s mother’s big Fleetwood Caddy. It hadn’t mattered that Ellis didn’t have her own boyfriend. The Caddy was white with a moonroof and the fifth tire mounted on the trunk, a total pimp car, which they all thought screamingly hysterical—that Julia’s churchgoing mother drove a pimpmobile. They loved the Fleetwood because it could fit six or seven people on its big leather bench seats. They’d roll the windows down and blast their favorite song, screaming the tagline—“WHOOMP, There It Is!”—over and over again, and the Fleetwood would rock with the heavy bass beat.
They’d dance at a club whose name Ellis had long since forgotten, but she could still remember the boy she’d met and danced with all night long the last summer weekend before her sophomore year of college. His name was Nick, and he went to Boston College, and she’d gladly let him grope her while they swayed to “I Swear,” and she’d allowed herself to fantasize that it was Nick who was promising—by the moon and the stars above—to love her forever. Then school had started, and he’d e-mailed a couple of times, and then nothing.
Ellis looked down at the iPhone. She opened an e-mail window and typed in the address:
Dear Mr. Culpepper. I realize that my group’s check-in time for Ebbtide technically isn’t until 2 p.m. today, but I find myself in the area earlier than planned, and wonder if it would be possible to have access to the house any earlier. Say around noon? I’d be totally grateful. Sincerely, Ellis Sullivan.
She pushed the send button and a moment later heard the soft whooshing noise that notified her the message had been sent. Not for the first time, she pictured Mr. Culpepper as a wizened but kindly old duffer. She imagined him in a faded but starched Hawaiian shirt, with knobby knees protruding below madras Bermuda shorts, and wearing high black socks and beat-up sandals. His face would be weathered, his head nearly bald. He would take an instant liking to her and the girls, calling them “sweetheart” and “dearie.”
She couldn’t wait to meet Mr. Culpepper in person.
3
Maryn drove south, switching between the interstate and winding back roads, with no specific destination in mind. Away. That was the only place she knew she was going. Away from her home, what little family she had left. Away from Biggie; that one really hurt. But there was nothing she could do about that. She could still see Biggie’s melting brown eyes watching as she rushed around the house, throwing her things in a duffle bag. He’d followed her from room to room, and then, when she was about to leave, he’d met her at the back door, his red leather leash in his mouth, convinced they were going to the dog park.
It broke her heart to leave Biggie behind. She told herself the aging golden retriever would be all right. He would never harm Biggie, not even to get back at her. He adored Biggie, had raised him from a puppy. Biggie had been there before her, and he would be there after her. Wouldn’t he? Anyway, the main thing was that she had to get away. From him. And that meant leaving Biggie behind.
Thinking of him, she twisted the diamond solitaire on her ring finger. She’d wanted to fling it at him so many times, tell him yes, he’d bought her with it, but he’d gotten the deal of a lifetime. She’d almost left it behind, along with her other belongings. But at the last second, she decided she would keep wearing it, a reminder—as if she needed one—of how easily and cheaply she’d sold herself to the devil.
Maryn glanced down at her arm. Her sleeve hid them, but she could still feel the bracelet of ugly purple bruises on her left forearm. Another reminder of the real Don Shackleford. The bruises would fade, she knew, but she doubted she would ever forget his icy rage, the way he’d so easily clamped a hand around her arm—squeezing until she’d cried out in agony, his expression never changing as he told her exactly what he’d do to her if he ever caught her snooping around in his private business again.
“I’ll bury you,” he’d said, a strange light coming into his pale blue eyes. “Someplace where you’ll never be found. Nobody will even know you’re missing until it’s too late. Not Adam, not your mother, nobody will know what happened, where Maryn has gone.” He’d smiled at the thought of that. A moment later, he’d released her arm, but not before bending his head to her forearm and tenderly kissing the angry red welts he’d left there.
By the time she heard his Escalade roar out of the driveway, she’d already started planning her escape.
She locked the front door and ran to her bedroom. When she retrieved the money from the Ugg boots at the back of her closet, she was startled to discover that she’d amassed nearly six thousand dollars. Her seed money was twenty-seven hundred dollars in winnings from an April trip to Atlantic City, money she’d won at blackjack, and which she’d told Don she’d spent on clothes and shoes. Lying to him came easily to her and didn’t seem wrong. The rest of the money was added in spurts: a twenty picked up from the wad of bills Don tossed on his dresser at night, a hundred saved back from the money she told him she needed for a new jacket, five hundred dollars realized when she exchanged the ridiculously expensive (and ugly) watch he’d given her for her birthday for a more suitable model.