She had worked her way up to manager at Rex’s Diner, all the while getting paid under the table. Lindsay supposed she could take credit for that one. The owner wasn’t a Rex, as the name would suggest; she was a Miriam and had practically raised Lindsay from the time she was seven years old, thanks to the eight years she had been married to Lindsay’s father.
When Hope was in Hopewell, Lindsay knew that she was being looked after—by her father, by the Becketts, by Miriam, by that tight-knit community that had apparently come to feel like an anchor around Hope’s waist.
In a way, Lindsay blamed herself for Hope’s decision to leave. She had been the one to invite Hope to tag along two months before to look at a Hamptons rental she was considering for the summer. No surprise, given the price, that the place turned out to be a dump, but Lindsay and Hope had spent the weekend checking out the shops and restaurants that would soon be too crowded when summer rolled around. They even took a fishing trip as an excuse to get out on the open water. After a third man made some not-too-subtle moves in their (meaning, Hope’s) direction, Hope had announced a new life plan: she’d meet a rich man and spend the rest of her life at a beach house. By the close of the weekend, Hope was saying she was serious about not wanting to leave.
Nine days after returning to Jersey, without telling Lindsay, Hope took the train back to Long Island, renting a backyard Winnebago off Craigslist for $70 a night so she could determine if the Hamptons really might be the right place for her to “start over.” She later explained that, the way she figured, the area was bustling enough to provide the anonymity she yearned for, without the big-city chaos that—to her knowledge, at least—she had never experienced. Due to its popularity as a vacation spot, it drew plenty of short-timers and newcomers, so she’d blend in from the outset. And in her words, it was “the right amount of shady.” Rich people who bought beach houses under LLCs, perhaps tossing some unreported cash around in the wash along the way, would have no qualms about paying her for work under the table if it meant they didn’t have to cover the payroll taxes. She was confident she could find a landlord and an employer who were willing to deal in cash, at least for the right kind of person.
Hope’s gut instincts must have been right, because when she called Lindsay at the end of her trip, she had found both a house and a job. The owner of Hope’s tiny cottage was an older woman who needed to go to Indiana for six months to take care of her even older mother. She wanted someone responsible to cover the costs of keeping the house running and to watch over the place in her absence. Lindsay was mortified when Hope confessed that she’d “borrowed a few details” from Miriam’s biography to explain her need to live “off the grid.” Hope justified it by pointing out that, unfortunately, Miriam’s harrowing move to Hopewell to flee an abusive boyfriend wasn’t especially unique. It turned out Miriam hadn’t minded one bit, assuring Hope that if what she went through could help another woman in even a tiny way, she was all for it. Once Lindsay and Miriam provided glowing personal references, the owner was willing to accept cash as rent. Done.
Lindsay was more concerned about Hope’s job. She had started with the big property management companies and realtors, thinking they would need seasonal help to turn over the short-term rentals. She got a few nibbles, but even with her Miriam-inspired cover story, they all balked at the idea of paying her in cash. But then she’d found an “independent” realtor named Evan Hunter. Lindsay had googled him, of course. He looked slick. Like, literally slick. Dewy skin. Lips that looked freshly licked. Blond hair swept back with plenty of product. At best, he’d pawn all his work off on Hope without cutting her in on his lucrative commissions, knowing she had few options. Or worse, he’d try to use his power over her in other ways. He wouldn’t be the first to try to take advantage.
Hope had eventually decided to leave the armoire as her gift to the Becketts’ apartment, but the rest of the move went forward as planned. According to Hope, everything was going well. The cottage was comfortable and homey. Evan dumped a lot on her plate, but she was enthusiastic about doing something new and thought she could leverage the knowledge she was gaining for bigger opportunities down the line. She had even become a semiregular at one of the local restaurants, where her favorite meal was something she called a “bottomless sandwich.”
Lindsay tried to remind herself that Hope could have chosen worse locations than East Hampton. It was a little farther from New York City than Hopewell, but at least she was still relatively close. Lindsay had even thought about taking a rental—maybe they could find a way to share it. But Hope had asked for space as she got adjusted to her new surroundings. At first, she was at least texting regularly. But for the last two weeks, it had been Lindsay doing most of the reaching out, and Hope’s responses had gotten slower and shorter.
She erased her latest draft message. It was nearly eleven o’clock on a Saturday night. No matter what she typed, Hope would know that Lindsay was worried about her ability to navigate through life anywhere outside of Hopewell. And she’d resent her for it.
Her phone was still in her hands when a new text message arrived. It was from Scott. How was girl day? Wish you were here.
Here would be about a mile away from Lindsay’s Greenwich Village one-bedroom, where Scott owned an apartment overlooking Gramercy Park—the apartment that in theory could be hers by now, too.
Was only girl brunch. Many bloody marys were involved. Surfed Netflix the rest of the day.
She saw three dots appear on the screen, indicating that Scott was typing. She expected a lengthy message based on the delay but received only one word in response. Alone?
Yup.
Oof. Those three letters looked snippier on the screen than she had meant them in her head. And maybe his one-word question wasn’t as clingy as she first read it. She tapped a quick addition. How’d the weekend go?
One little rough spot when I declined an invitation to go to American Girl, but otherwise, it was great.
Rock Center on a weekend? You’re a wise man.
This was Scott’s weekend with his seven-year-old daughter, Nora. He had raised the possibility of Lindsay meeting her with increasing frequency over the past two months, and Lindsay kept finding reasons to defer until another time.
I told her we’d save that trip for you. JK.
Lindsay hoped that he was also kidding about mentioning her to his daughter. Her own father had remarried when she was the same age as Nora. When he and Miriam split eight years later, Lindsay was almost as devastated as that day in kindergarten when her mother finally explained why she had lost so much weight and seemed tired all the time. She and Scott had been dating for almost two years, but on the spectrum between having designated drawer space at each other’s apartments (check) and picking out a china pattern (nope), meeting Nora felt like nailing things down for good.
Her father, on the other hand, liked to remind her that she was “already” thirty-six years old. In his world, that meant she should be married by now and working on getting pregnant, and with Scott being forty-five, he might not be interested in a second kid for long. Her father, like everyone else who met Scott, declared him to be “perfect.” Only Hope knew Lindsay’s reason for not jumping all in.