At the edge of the frame, you can see AD Massey slowly stand. His senior partner gives him a glance. Hold on.
“Tell me about the poem, Anna,” she says.
“She lives in this castle on an island, near Camelot. And she’s cursed to sit at a loom and weave only what she sees in this mirror, which is kind of a reflected window to the world around her.” She pauses. “I’m not explaining this right.”
“It’s okay,” Detective Holloway prompts. “Keep going.”
“Um, so the lady watches this newlywed couple in the mirror, and wants what they have. They’re real; all she has is a shadow of real life. And then she sees Sir Lancelot, and she turns and looks directly out the window, which triggers the curse. She’s doomed, but she leaves her castle and finds a boat and sets sail to Camelot, even though she knows she’ll die before she gets there. The boat becomes her grave.”
For so long you might think it’s a mistake, the only sound on the recording is the scritch-scritch of AD Massey’s uniform pants rubbing together at the seams as he shifts uncomfortably from side to side.
“And so you found a boat for Zoe?” Detective Holloway asks. Her voice is a song now, the jagged edge smoothed away entirely.
“Maybe I thought it’s what she would have wanted. Maybe I was trying to make things right.”
“Make things right?” The detective repeats Anna’s words back to her.
“In some small way. After what I’d done. It was an accident, but … I killed Zoe Spanos.”
2 THEN
June
Two months earlier … Bridgehampton LIRR station, Long Island, NY
I DON’T KNOW why I expect the station to be right on the ocean. Train doors sliding open to the thin cry of seagulls. The mist of salt air. Sand kicked up by the sea breeze to nip at my skin. Welcome.
It’s nothing like that. When I step onto the platform at Bridgehampton, train doors closing behind me, my flip-flops land on a dirty strip of concrete. In front of me is a matchbox of a station. Through the windows, I can see a couple benches, a single ticket machine. Along the length of the platform, a green-painted railing stretches for yards in both directions, overlooking not the ocean, but a parking lot.
I adjust my shades across the bridge of my nose and squint into the low-hanging sun. All around me, passengers stream down the ramp to the parking lot, clamber into waiting cars and taxis and shuttles. It’s Monday. I can’t even imagine what this place looks like on a Friday, the tourists and “summer people” here to claim the weekend, make the Hamptons their own.
I’m not here to summer. I’m here to work. I’ve only met Emilia and Paisley Bellamy once, and suddenly I’m not sure I’ll recognize them. There are stylish mothers with their equally stylish kids everywhere, mixed in with the couples, the businesspeople, the groups of girlfriends. I look for Paisley’s fine blond hair, the delicate slope of her nose and chin. Her mother’s chestnut bob, tennis player’s physique. First day on the job, and I’m already floundering, the familiar dread of arriving to class on time but unprepared settling in my stomach like a stone.
From somewhere in the depths of my backpack, I can hear my phone buzz. I’m already regretting this respectable sundress, its lack of pockets. I’ve been told I will need to “dress for dinner,” but I hope my regular summer uniform of cutoffs and tank tops will be permissible around town. Otherwise I’m going to be recycling the same four dresses until I get my first paycheck.
I roll my unwieldy purple suitcase across the platform and prop it against the railing, shrug my backpack around to the front to dig for my phone. It’s new, a graduation gift from Mom, gold case still sparkly and screen not yet scratched. I should take good care of it—it’s the nicest thing I own—but chances are I won’t.
The texts aren’t from Emilia Bellamy, or Tom, the husband I haven’t yet met. They’re from Kaylee.
I can’t believe you abandoned me.
We JUST graduated like ten seconds ago.
What am I supposed to do with myself all summer?
Anna, hello?
A guilty twinge in my chest says I should have given Kaylee more of a heads-up about my summer plans, but I knew she’d react like this. I close out of my messages and make sure my ringer is cranked all the way up in case the Bellamys call. By now, the platform has cleared out, and most of the parking lot too. I hope I’m in the right place. That I got the meeting time right. It would be just like me to fuck this all up, which is exactly why I’m here. To get out of Bay Ridge. Away from Kaylee. Away from myself. In two months, I’ll be a first-year at SUNY New Paltz while Kaylee starts community college in Brooklyn. We’ll both be starting new lives, or at least I will. But I can’t wait another two months. I need this fresh start now.
I’m debating calling Emilia when a shiny black Lexus SUV pulls into the lot below. A man’s tan arm and face lean out of the window, peer up at me. “Anna Cicconi?” he asks. He’s handsome in a dad way, or at least he’s what I imagine a young, successful dad would look like. I used to have one of those. When I was a kid, he was always working. Now I barely remember his face.
I give him a small, awkward wave. “Mr. Bellamy?”
“Call me Tom,” he says, motioning me over. Backpack over one shoulder, purple monster wheeling behind me, I make my way down the ramp.
* * *
It’s a quick ten minutes from the train station into Herron Mills, one of the many ocean-side towns dotting the southeastern shore of Long Island like jewels on a sandy crown. To my surprise, we pass as much farmland as we do art galleries and private homes on our drive toward the shore. The sun flares low and hot and orange against the tree line. I squint into it, trying to take it all in. I haven’t seen the water yet, but this is definitely not Brooklyn.
“First time in the Hamptons?” Tom asks.
I turn my head toward him, tearing my eyes from the hedgerows and entrance gates that obscure what promise to be jaw-dropping houses from public view. “Yeah. Yes. I think so, anyway.”
My interview for the nanny position took place last month, in Manhattan. I met Emilia and Paisley on the terrace café at MoMA, and the three of us spent the afternoon together. Emilia paid for my iced tea but not my entry to the museum. They probably have a membership. I guess little things like fourteen-dollar student tickets don’t cross your mind when you’re rich. In my lap, my hands clench and unclench.
“Then let me give you the lay of the land,” Tom says. His teeth flash white and straight against his tan skin. The weather just warmed up last week; I wonder how he’s had the chance to spend so much time in the sun. “The Hamptons stretch along the East End of Long Island. Twenty or so hamlets and villages in all. We’re on the South Fork, the branch of the peninsula that meets the Atlantic. To our north is the bay, then the North Fork.”
“Got it.” I did look at Google Maps. Maybe not until I was packing this morning, but still. I’m hoping for more local history, less geography, but I don’t want to be impolite.
“Herron Mills is one of the oldest villages, so you’ll see a real mix of architecture, everything from Dutch colonial to very modern. And Restoration everything. Clovelly Cottage is English country traditional, so it blends in with the older architecture on Linden Lane, but it’s a 2011 construction. We’ve made a few updates over the years, but we bought it turnkey because Emilia needed to be settled before Paisley came. Barely made it too; we closed in late February and she went into labor three weeks later.”