Demeter had shut off her light intentionally. She sat in the dark, counting her breaths. Ten minutes, fifteen minutes, thirty minutes. Her plan was so twisted, so truly evil, that she couldn’t believe she was really going to execute it.

But, yes, she was. She had to.

Out the window, down the sloping roof, and boom! onto the front lawn. The lawn had just been cut that day, Demeter had heard her father out on the mower, and this reminded her that she had a job set up with Frog and Toad Landscaping for the summer. She had spent the previous two summers working at Island Day Care, looking after the infants. She had spooned pears and sweet potatoes into their mouths and changed their diapers; she had held and rocked the babies, sterilized their pacifiers and mixed up formula for them. Demeter had a way with babies, or so she liked to think. Babies didn’t threaten her; babies didn’t know she was fat. Babies just needed love, and believe it or not, Demeter had plenty of love in her heart to give. But the day care was an indoor job, the air at the day care center was stuffy and overly warm and redolent of souring milk.

Her father had offered her an office job at the car dealership, but that held even less appeal. And so, during a moment of belief that self-improvement was possible, Demeter had decided to pursue an active summer job that would permit her to be outside in the sun, but not a job lifeguarding or camp counseling, for which she would have to wear a bathing suit. And certainly nothing in food service. Demeter eventually set her sights on landscaping. She would wear cargo shorts and work boots, she would push a mower in the sun all day, which required no actual athletic ability but would enable her to lose weight and get a tan. She would work with El Salvadoran men and improve her Spanish. The man who owned Frog and Toad, Kerry Trevor, was a friend of her father’s. Kerry bought and serviced his fleet of trucks at Al Castle’s dealership, so securing Demeter a spot on one of his crews had been a piece of cake.

She was supposed to start on Monday, but that wouldn’t happen now. The gung-ho girl who had allowed herself to get excited about a possible personal transformation via a summer of yardwork had died in that Jeep along with Penny.

Demeter inhaled the scent of fresh-cut grass under her feet and bemoaned the loss of her summer.

Alcohol, she thought.

She couldn’t risk driving. Her parents might hear the car start, and if they woke up and found that the car was gone with her in it, they would put out an all-points bulletin. So Demeter could ride her bike, or she could walk.

It was eleven-fifteen and pitch black; there were a zillion stars but no moon. It was too dark to ride, she thought. She would walk. It was far, a mile and a half, maybe two. But the exercise would be good for her.

She used her cell phone as a flashlight. She hadn’t turned on her phone since the police gave back her fake Louis Vuitton bag, minus the bottle of Jim Beam. Even having a cell phone was a sensitive issue for Demeter. So few people ever called her, what was the point? But now, when she turned it on, it started dinging and vibrating like a slot machine in Vegas. She thought it must be malfunctioning. She checked the display: seventeen text messages, nine voicemails. From whom? Well, five of the text messages and three of the voicemails were from Jake. The text messages said: Need 2 talk 2 u, Can I come see u?, Pls call me, Need 2 talk 2 u, Coming over now.

Right.

The other text messages were mostly from other people in Demeter’s class-Claire Buckley and Annabel Wright and Winnie Potts and Tracy Loom, Patrick’s younger sister-and then there were two texts apiece from Demeter’s two brothers, Mark, who was doing an internship with Deutsche Bank in New York City, and Billy, who was in England studying at the London School of Economics. Demeter scrolled through the texts: Claire and Annabel and Winnie had wanted her to come to the vigil that was held the day before, they had wanted her to speak at the vigil-and the others wanted to see if Demeter was okay, which was a euphemism for asking, What the hell happened? The voicemails, she supposed, were more of the same-people asking how she was, offering thoughts and prayers, people wanting to get close to her now, to claim a connection with her now, because she was, well, a celebrity of sorts. She had been in the car when Penny died and Hobby sank into a coma. It was likely that everyone knew that Demeter had been in possession of a bottle of Jim Beam that was found by the police-and what would they all make of that? Demeter had wondered if she would be blamed for the accident, but people knew that Penny had been driving, and Penny had, of course, been sober. So the fact that Demeter and the boys had been drinking alcohol that Demeter provided was just a sidebar. It was a given. After all, it was graduation night, and every single person who was out that night had been drinking, except Penny.

So there remained the mystery: What happened?

Demeter’s phone buzzed in her hand. She was confused until she realized that a text was coming in at that very moment. She checked: it was from Jake. It said, R u awake?

Demeter was spooked. It was as if he could see her, but of course he couldn’t see her, she was walking down a deserted dirt road toward the ocean.

It occurred to her to ask him to meet her there.

Bad idea. She didn’t trust him. She didn’t trust anyone.


The Alistair house wasn’t a real house. It was a summer cottage that Zoe had done a middling job of winterizing. It sat on the bluff overlooking Miacomet Beach, which made it a great place to live in the summer. It had a wide deck and a huge outdoor shower and a staircase down to the beach. There were sliding glass doors off the great room, and the whole place would be filled with light and the smell of Zoe’s cooking. But in the winter, the doors rattled in the wind. Demeter’s father sent someone over every year to help Zoe shrink-wrap them in plastic. Zoe kept the woodstove burning, but the house was always cold. The cottage consisted of two parts. The great room was the public part, living room, dining room, and kitchen, with a powder room. The private part was the three bedrooms-Hobby’s, Penny’s, and Zoe’s-and a full bath that the three of them shared. Demeter had slept over at the cottage numerous times as a child and had felt uncomfortable sharing a bathroom with an adult. At her house, her parents had a suite, she had a suite, and her brothers had the whole third floor to themselves. She couldn’t imagine using the same toilet as her mother-and yet that was what Penny did, every single day. In later years Penny had talked about sharing makeup and tampons and toothpaste with her mother, and she’d talked about how Hobby stank up the bathroom in the mornings, and Demeter had shuddered, while at the same time experiencing awe and wonder at how closely the three of them coexisted. It seemed indecent somehow. Demeter had once asked her mother if the Alistairs were poor, and Lynne had laughed and said, “Heavens, no! Beachfront property? Any idea how much Zoe paid for that place? A fortune. She could sell it for double that now and buy a mansion on Main Street. But she won’t. Zoe adores her ocean view. It makes her feel free. And God knows, Zoe likes to feel free.”


The Alistair cottage was dark. Thank God: Demeter had imagined it surrounded by cruisers, crisscrossed in yellow police tape, and encircled by Claire Buckley and company, all holding candles and singing “Kumbaya.” Demeter held out her phone to illuminate the sandy path that led through the eelgrass to the Alistairs’ front door.

Just like Demeter’s own house, the Alistair cottage was never locked, and so Demeter walked right in. It smelled like fresh basil and, under that, onions and garlic. Zoe was always cooking something delicious. Demeter debated turning on a light, then decided against it. She used her phone to negotiate her way into the kitchen. She saw the herb garden Zoe kept on the slate countertop, and a bowl of shrunken peaches covered with fruit flies. There were books and papers all over the counter, there was a wine glass in the sink, and Demeter imagined Zoe sitting out on her back deck the week before, enjoying the warm night air and the stars and the sound of the waves hitting the beach. She would have been thinking about the twins’ becoming seniors; she would have been remembering how beautifully Penny had sung the National Anthem during graduation.

Demeter opened the fridge. There was three quarters of a bottle of chardonnay. Demeter lifted the bottle, her hands shaking-not in fear but in anticipation.

She drank.


She was in the Alistairs’ house, drinking Zoe’s wine. What is wrong with you, Demeter Castle? she asked herself. But she knew the answer:

Everything.

JAKE

The Chief had asked, “Can you tell me what happened?”

She was dead. Penny. His girlfriend. “Girlfriend” was insufficient; he was a wordsmith, he could do better. His lover. No, his beloved. His Juliet, his Beatrice, his Natasha, his Daisy Buchanan. What did it matter what had happened when Penny-the Penelope to his Ulysses-was dead?

Dead. He let out something between a cackle and a scream, and as he watched the features of the Chief’s face soften, then harden, he could see the Chief wishing that he would act like a man, and he wanted to grab the front of the Chief’s sweatshirt and say, “I am seventeen years old, and the girl I’ve loved for fourteen of those seventeen years-since I was old enough to think and feel-is dead. She died right next to me.”

The Chief cleared his throat and started again. “Had Penelope been drinking?”