Demeter took another pull off the vodka bottle. The reassuring feeling returned: everything was going to be okay. She poured three fingers of vodka into a juice glass and added ice. It looked just like water. She would drink just this much, and then she would be done.
Just as she brought the drink to her lips, she heard the mudroom door slam, and she nearly dropped the glass on the floor. She set it down on the counter and whipped around in time to see Mr. Kingsley breeze in. He was sweaty, wearing white shorts and a white polo shirt and carrying a tennis racquet. He seemed as stunned to see Demeter as she was to see him.
“Hey!” he said. He squinted at her and smiled, and she thought, I’ve babysat for these people for five years, and he’s forgotten my name.
“Hey, Mr. Kingsley,” she said. Her head was spinning from the vodka. If he discovered what was in her glass, her life was over. But Demeter felt strangely calm. There was something about Mr. Kingsley that she recognized immediately, something in his demeanor, in the way he was swaying while standing stilclass="underline" he was drunk. He threw his tennis racquet to the floor with a clatter, and Demeter instinctively looked up the stairs, to where the children were sleeping.
“Demeter,” Mr. Kingsley said, as if her name were a tricky crossword-puzzle clue that he had just figured out. “You poor thing, you.” He took a step forward, then stopped. “Is Mrs. Kingsley home?”
“No,” Demeter said. “She left at seven for a… cocktail party in Sconset, I think?”
“Right,” Mr. Kingsley said with an exaggerated nod. “I’m supposed to meet her there. I just got held up at the club.”
“Okay,” Demeter said. It sounded like he was offering her an explanation, but she didn’t need one. She just wanted him to retreat-to shower or change or whatever-so she could pour out her drink. But instead of vanishing into the nether regions of the house, he moved toward her with his arms open. “Demeter,” he said. “You poor thing.”
Demeter allowed herself to be enveloped in an embrace from Mr. Kingsley. Thank God for the vodka; it had lent her a certain remove. She had never before given Mr. Kingsley a second thought; he had always been just the benign presence standing next to his wife. Mrs. Kingsley’s first name was Elizabeth. Demeter didn’t know what Mr. Kingsley’s first name was.
After two or three seconds of hugging-during which Mr. Kingsley was literally patting her back-Demeter tried to pull away. But Mr. Kingsley held on to her. He had his arms wrapped around her-no small feat-and his hips suddenly locked against her hips, and she felt something else there. Was she imagining it? She was at once intrigued and grossed out. Mr. Kingsley was an attractive man, she supposed. He had blond hair styled shaggier than most men wore theirs, though this might be because he was balding on top. He had pale blue eyes and a perpetually sunburned face. He was good-looking enough, but he was old, he was the children’s father, he was Mrs. Kingsley’s husband, and yet here he was in his own kitchen, drunkenly mauling the babysitter. It was stereotypical enough to make Demeter laugh, except it wasn’t stereotypical because it was happening to her.
“You poor thing,” Mr. Kingsley said yet again. He looked at Demeter, and then he kissed her. The kiss was sloppy, and it took her by surprise, but by far her most prominent emotion was fear that he was going to taste the vodka on her lips. However, Mr. Kingsley noticed nothing of the sort. He moved in for another kiss, longer and deeper this time. Demeter felt as if she were standing on the other side of the kitchen and watching herself kiss Mr. Kingsley, but at the same time she was right there, allowing the man to stick his tongue in her mouth.
This, Demeter thought sadly, was her first kiss. The first one, that was, except for the dry peck on the lips that she’d received in sixth grade from Anders Peashway, at a birthday party held in Annabel Wright’s backyard. But that kiss from Anders had been a dare, a joke; he had lured her behind the potting shed, and when they emerged a second later, everyone was laughing, and David Marcy gave Anders a high five, and Anders made some kind of animal noise that Demeter pretended not to hear. And yet she had clung to the memory of that humiliating kiss ever since, because she had nothing else.
Well, now she had this. Mr. Kingsley’s hand found her breast and squeezed it with strong fingers. Demeter realized that if she indulged this behavior for very much longer, he would try to have sex with her. And so Demeter, for once in her life determined to do the right thing, put a hand in the V of Mr. Kingsley’s white tennis shirt and pushed him gently backward.
Mr. Kingsley said, “Yes, that’s right. I have to go.” He turned so abruptly that the rubber soles of his tennis shoes squeaked against the tile floor, and then he vanished down the hallway. The second he was out of sight, Demeter grabbed her drink off the counter and swallowed the whole thing down.
Adults, she thought.
ZOE
It was Dorenda Allencast who told Zoe about the seven-foot-high white cross embedded in the sand at Cisco Beach.
Dorenda was waiting for Zoe with a pot of peppermint tea and a plate of store-bought shortbread on the day she reported back to work. Zoe had never before seen Dorenda do so much as fold a napkin in her own kitchen, and so the event of the tea and the cookies was noteworthy and touching. The Allencasts had, naturally, been as devastated as anyone about Penny’s death; they had known her since she was a toddler. They had seen her every Easter and Halloween and Christmas, the holidays on which Zoe felt the Allencast house would benefit from the presence of children. Dorenda had always given the children elaborately wrapped baskets of candy purchased at Sweet Inspirations, and Mr. Allencast had slipped them five-dollar bills.
Dorenda carried the tea and shortbread to the formal living room-furnished with portraits of Allencast ancestors and a grandfather clock-where Zoe had never known anyone to sit. She nearly recused herself. She didn’t want to be subjected to this expression of tea and sympathy from Dorenda, no matter how well meaning it was. But there were some people Zoe couldn’t refuse, and the Allencasts were two of them. When they’d asked, after the accident, what they could do to help, Zoe had begged them just to please not give away her job. She would be out for weeks, certainly, and she realized it was summer, but if she lost her job, her salary, and her health insurance, things would become very difficult for her and Hobby. Mr. Allencast had assured her that her position was safe, that she could take as long as she needed. He had been as good as his word: her checks had continued to arrive, and her health insurance had covered all but five hundred dollars of Hobby’s medical expenses, even though they had run well into six figures. Zoe knew that the Allencasts must have been living on takeout sushi from Lola; they must have been regular fixtures at the early seating at the Sea Grille.
And so Zoe accepted this sit-down with Dorenda Allencast as a necessary part of her return to work. She wanted to get into the kitchen and start making a beef Wellington, or maybe the shrimp remoulade that the Allencasts liked in the summer. But.
Dorenda Allencast poured two cups of tea and handed one to Zoe.
“So,” she said, and her eyes filled with tears.
Zoe took a sip of her tea and burned her tongue. “Dorenda,” she said. “You didn’t have to go to all this trouble.”
“ ‘Trouble’?” Dorenda said. “I want to know how you’re doing.”
Yes, right: everyone wanted to know how she was doing. The phone rang all the time, but Zoe never answered it; her voicemail was so full that it was no longer accepting messages. Hobby picked up the land line at home if he was awake and mobile, fielding calls from this concerned person or that one. He explained that his mother was asleep, or down on the beach taking a walk, or unable to come to the phone just then. After he hung up, he would turn to Zoe and say, “Mrs. Peashway called to see how you’re doing.”