Elin Hilderbrand - Summerland

The man nodded. He reappeared a second later with a small blue cup of tepid water. Demeter was so grateful, she nearly cried. She sipped the water, though she wanted to gulp it.

“So, I was asking…”

Yes, Demeter knew what he was asking: he was asking her to rat out the boys. The truth was, both Jake and Hobby had taken swigs off the bottle. And then the four of them had gone to a bonfire on Steps Beach. It was just a general graduation party, there were lots of seniors there-refugees from earlier, legitimate parties-but there were juniors in attendance as well, and some sophomores. The party had livened up when Demeter arrived with Hobby and Jake and Penny. Everyone on earth loved those other three, and Demeter was lucky enough to be with them because she had texted Penny and said that she had a bottle, and not only that-she wasn’t sure that one bottle of Jim Beam would offer enough allure-but there was something BIG and IMPORTANT that she needed to tell Penny. Something ginormous.

There had been a keg at the bonfire, sitting in a trash can filled with ice. There was a line for the keg, but somehow Demeter found herself in charge of the tap. She was a good pour, someone said. Not too much foam. She filled a hundred plastic cups at least. How many of those had been Hobby’s or Jake’s? Two or three apiece, maybe? And Demeter herself had had three or four beers, though after all the hard stuff she’d drunk at home alone, beer had very little effect on her. For her, drinking it was like drinking juice.

“We were at a bonfire on Steps Beach,” Demeter said. “We were drinking beer.”

“Hobson and Jake were drinking beer?”

“Yes.”

“And then what happened?” the Chief asked.

Demeter drank her water down. She needed a hundred more cups just like that, but preferably colder.

“After that?” Demeter said. She wouldn’t talk about after that. She couldn’t. Besides, she was getting confused. Had the party she was talking about taken place that very night? Because it seemed like days ago. Last week. And was Penny really dead? She couldn’t be dead if only hours before she had been talking to Demeter in the dunes. And was Hobby really on a helicopter, in a coma? Sixteen broken bones? Demeter had been in love with Hobby when she was younger. She had berated herself for how unoriginal this was, for everyone on Nantucket was in love with Hobby Alistair-every girl, every mother, every father. Eventually Demeter had grown out of it and moved on to being in love with Patrick Loom, then Anders Peashway, then Jake Randolph, but Jake only because Penny loved him, and Demeter wanted to be like Penny.

Demeter let her face fall in fake disappointment-in-herself. “After that, I can’t remember.”

“You don’t remember getting into the car?” the Chief asked.

Demeter gnawed on her lower lip. She had tried out for Grease this past winter-she’d desperately wanted to play Rizzo-but she’d gotten only a part in the chorus, so she’d quit, much to her parents’ dismay. What Mr. Nelson and Mrs. Yurick hadn’t realized during the auditions was that Demeter was an excellent actress.

“I remember getting in the car,” she said. “I sat in the backseat, on the right. Hobby was in the backseat on the left. Jake was in the front passenger seat, and Penny was driving.”

“Penny was driving even though it was Jake’s car?”

“She was the only one who hadn’t been drinking,” Demeter said.

Even so, Jake had tried to take the keys. He’d held Penny’s wrist and tried to pry open her fingers, but she had swung her arms at his face as if to hit him, and he’d backed off. Penny had been in full freak-out mode. That was exactly what Demeter had thought at the time: She’s freaking out. Freaking freaking.

Hobby had said, with his unflappable calm, “Jeez, Pen, pull yourself together.”

“Please,” Jake had said. “Please let me drive.”

Penny had screamed. No words, just a scream.

Demeter had felt her stomach do funny things. She was certain Penny was going to spill the beans, even though Demeter had made her promise. Had made her swear.

“And Penny drove out to Cisco Beach,” Demeter said. “And she was going really fast.” Even while they were still on the road, the car was shuddering. Jake was pleading with Penny to slow down, while Hobby was leaning forward, trying to see the speedometer. He seemed most interested in finding out how fast the Jeep could go. Demeter was in a drunken daze, a dreamlike state in which she wasn’t sure if what seemed to be happening was really happening. She was, however, wearing her seat belt. And Jake was wearing his. That, she thought, was the result of good parenting. The twins were unbuckled because that was the kind of house they’d been raised in-an unbuckled household. Zoe laid down no rules. “Listen,” Zoe had said recently to Lynne Castle. “Raising them without hard- and-fast rules has worked. Look how wonderfully they’re turning out.”

D.O.A.

Coma.

“And then we crashed,” Demeter said.

She had seen Jordan at the hospital. He was in the waiting room with the Castles. Ava wasn’t there. The fact that Ava wasn’t there was a relief, but not for the usual reason. If Ava wasn’t there, Zoe thought, then things mustn’t be that bad.

The police had called Zoe and told her that there had been an accident and that she should come to the hospital right away. When she arrived and saw the expression on Lynne Castle’s face, she knew. It was death or near-death, but she didn’t know which child. She had read Sophie’s Choice along with everybody else, and along with everybody else she had thought, No, I wouldn’t be able to pick. If they made me choose, I’d tell them to put a bullet in my head. I’d rather die than choose one over the other. Dr. Field came out. Zoe had known Dr. Field for fifteen years. He had sewed up her forefinger after a particularly bad accident with her Santoku knife. He had treated her kids for strep throat and pinkeye and something like fifty-two earaches between them. He had been the one to pop Hobby’s dislocated shoulder back into place, right there on the thirty-five-yard line of the Whalers’ field. He had been the one to show up at the Randolphs’ house when Ernie Randolph died of SIDS. He was the island’s doctor, on-call something like 350 days a year. Zoe felt proud to be his patient. She brought him a jar of homemade mustard and a bag of her from-scratch soft pretzels every Christmas.

She had never seen him look at anyone the way he was looking at her now. Tenderly, and with fear.

“Zoe,” he said. “I need you to sit down.”

“Tell me,” she said. Her voice was froggy. The call had woken her up. “Just fucking tell me.”

“Penelope,” he said.

“Is dead.”

“Yes,” he said.

It was Penny, she thought.

“And Hobson has been flown to Boston. He’s in a coma. And he has sixteen broken bones.”

Zoe swooned. The room melted, and she thought, I’m going down. She thought, Put a bullet in my head.

“Patsy!” Dr. Field called out. He had Zoe by both arms, he was holding her, but she was done, gone, checking out. There was no life for her without those two. She had made her own way and found a modicum of personal happiness, but there was no life left to her without the twins.

Patsy, the nurse, helped carry Zoe to the chairs.

“Get her water and an Ativan,” Dr. Field said.

“No,” Zoe said. She wanted a bullet, yes, but not drugs. She wouldn’t be weak like that. She opened her eyes and focused on the white of Dr. Field’s coat.

He said, “Hobby is alive. He’s on his way to Mass General. You have to get to Boston.”

“Okay,” she said. She was strong enough to open her eyes, but not strong enough to stand, and certainly not strong enough to get herself to Boston. “Can I ask? What happened?”

“There was a car accident,” Dr. Field said. His voice was floating over her head. “Penelope was driving. Hobson was in the backseat.”

“Whose car? Jake’s car? The Jeep?”

“Yes. Jake Randolph was in the car, as was Demeter Castle.”

“Are they dead?” Zoe asked, though she knew the answer.

“No,” Dr. Field said. “They’re fine. Cuts and bruises. A bad case of shock.”

Cuts and bruises. A bad case of shock. Not dead. Not in a coma. Zoe wished she were the kind of person who could be happy that other people’s children were alive and unharmed while her two children were dead and nearly dead-but she wasn’t.

“Mr. Randolph has offered to make sure you get to Boston safely,” Dr. Field said. “And the Castles have offered to help as well.”

Zoe pivoted her head and saw the three of them sitting in chairs. Jordan sat on the edge of his seat, staring at her, and Al and Lynne were huddled together. Lynne was crying, and Al-steady, solid Al-was rubbing her back. The Castles and their smug togetherness, their unassailable bond, made Zoe want to scream. She had-admit it!-used their marriage as a fortress. They were her closest friends, and Zoe had ridden on the coattails of their outstanding citizenship.

Al was a selectman, he owned the local car dealership, he knew everybody, and Lynne, no slouch herself, owned a title-search and permitting business that she ran from home so she could always be around to tend to the fire. They had two sons away at college-Mark at Duke, Billy at Lehigh-and they had Demeter, who was, like Penny and Hobby, in eleventh grade. Demeter was something of a sore spot.

But she was still alive.

I don’t have a daughter, Zoe thought. Anymore.

But no, this was impossible.

Zoe let out a high-pitched noise, a keening, a sound she had never made before in her life. Dr. Field was standing before her; she was staring at his belt buckle. He was an intelligent man, a distinguished man, and she needed him to fix this. When Hobby had taken that hit from the monstrous inside linebacker on the Blue Hills team and was lying on the field writhing in pain, Ted Field had jogged out and, with his magic hands, popped his shoulder back into place.