The way Rachel had fled home that summer, though, indicated a disruption in trajectory. She’d still been a kid then, and as far as anyone knew, she’d never returned, not even for summer breaks or Christmas or to show off her new boyfriend. It didn’t seem healthy to Annie, but she liked to think that Rachel had good reasons for staying away—maybe her life on the East Coast was so chock-full of great things that she couldn’t find the time to come back.
Annie wasn’t aware of how hard she’d been pressing the pencil tip to the legal pad until its tip broke off.
The corollary to Mike’s philosophy—people are who they are—was that life wore grooves in people. It changed them.
How very poetic, Annie. How oblique.
Life wore grooves completely glossed over Annie’s part, how she’d watched from the shadows that night, poised to pounce.
Life’s grooves may have eroded the Meeker women’s vibrancy—sure, why not—but you know what had helped things along?
One swift impulsive push from Annie.
If it was murder: What happened between the two of them out there?
An hour before the party, I passed by Lena’s house with the thought of catching her for an early drink, before the crowds. When I arrived, I saw that Annie appeared to have the same idea. She and Lena were outside, sitting next to each other on an outdoor sofa.
I was halfway across the lawn to them when I heard Annie’s sobs, shaky and gasping, as uncontained as a child’s.
Lena looked straight ahead, her back rigid. She wasn’t comforting Annie or yelling at her or, from what I could tell, acknowledging her at all.
Even from several feet away, I could feel that the energy between them was deep and ugly. On the way home, I realized my arms were covered in goose pimples.
At the party, though, Annie and Lena were back to normal, thick as thieves.
So maybe it was nothing.
I can’t exactly ask now.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“The wedding dress is gorgeous,” Lena said.
“It looks okay?” On the video chat, Rachel’s dark eyes were filled with skepticism and hope. “Even from the back?”
“Gorgeous from all angles.”
After a thin smile—I can’t exactly trust you—Rachel ducked her head. “Thank you for buying it.”
“My pleasure.”
Rachel’s wedding dress was a slinky slip of a thing, done in Mikado silk. Its price tag had made even Lena’s eyebrows hike up, but she’d been delighted to pay.
For years, Rachel had treated the money like it was toxic. She’d insisted on living in that tiny apartment, had taken out student loans for business school, and been unnecessarily pious about vacations and restaurants.
For the wedding, however, Rachel had relaxed the self-imposed budget. This had to mean that Rachel was deliriously happy, didn’t it?
Marriage was a statement of optimism and Lena was relieved that Rachel was making it, even if Rachel’s choice of groom seemed safe, a little stale. That Evan Welnik-Boose called Lena dear in their brief video chats, like she was some decrepit aunt—Hello dear. How’s summer, dear?—seemed a tad creepy.
Maybe he thought Lena was a decrepit aunt. Who knew what he’d been told?
Evan’s parents, Samara Welnik, Ph.D., and Miles Boose, M.D., were lovely, cultured, accomplished people who lived twenty minutes from Rachel and Evan, when they weren’t at their beach house on Cape Cod. Miles was a pediatric something or other and Samara was a psychologist specializing in childhood trauma （neither Lena nor Rachel had articulated the ironies of that to each other）， who sent Lena warm notes in a lovely cursive about what a blessing it was that their miraculous offspring had found each other.
The wedding was to be at their beach house, which meant something to Rachel and Evan, if not Lena. The current debate was whether the ceremony should be on the beach （too public?） or in the yard （private, but too small for a tent）。
There was, in Lena’s yard, an expanse of lawn that had been literally designed to fit a party tent. And years ago, Lena had thought that the spot under the bough of the cottonwood tree, between the garden and the gate, with that view out to the snowcapped Rockies, would be perfect for a wedding ceremony.
Lena understood that the fantasy had been imagined for another life, but it didn’t mean she couldn’t notice the loss of it.
Lena’s own wedding to Tim, which her mother Alma had planned entirely, had been at Lena’s childhood church. Lena had worn Alma’s wedding dress, let out to fit Lena, and there had been a reception afterward in her parents’ backyard. She recalled no choices, only traditions to uphold.