She stared at him. “Wait. Hang on. I thought—”
“I know what you thought.” Owen sounded unhappy. “You thought Sass was an heiress, and that Eliza and I were rich, and that Anders was…” Owen tilted his head back, staring at the ceiling, like he was reading a quote written there. “The wealthy scion of a prominent banking family. Right?”
Sarah nodded. Not only had that been what she’d thought, but it had also been what the New York Times had said, in Sass and Anders’s wedding announcement, which she’d seen in a photo album, on the sagging shelves in the Camp’s living room that held more board games than books.
But that hadn’t been the only thing convincing her that Owen came from old money. “You went to private school. You and your sister.”
He nodded. “My great-grandparents set up a trust to pay for that. We got financial aid, too. Sass couldn’t touch that trust.” His eyes were fixed on the table and the napkin. “Believe me, she tried. And as for Anders, he might have come from a prominent banking family, but when my mother married him he was unemployed, and he wasn’t speaking to his father. My mom thought she’d married into wealth, and when she found out she hadn’t—that Anders’s grandfather had money, and his father had money, and his brothers had money, but what Anders had was some kind of bullshit degree as a life coach, and no clients—she was furious. She started cheating on him on their honeymoon.”
“No,” Sarah breathed.
“Yes,” said Owen. “With the golf pro at the resort in Bermuda, I think. At least, that’s what Anders would say when they were fighting.” He folded his hands. “Sass hoped that Anders would get it together, or that his father would forgive him, and let him join the family business. And she didn’t want anyone knowing what was going on.”
“Oh, God.” Sarah was thinking back, her mind shuffling through the minutiae of Owen’s life that she’d collected over that summer, rearranging that evidence to tell a different story. She remembered how all of Owen’s clothes were frayed or faded; how his swim trunks hung low on his hips because they were missing their drawstring （not that she’d minded, back then）; and how one of his sneakers had a hole in its sole. He’d always seemed to have enough money in his pocket for the minimal expenses of their dates, but back then, their most expensive night out entailed the purchase of two tickets to the drive-in and two lobster rolls. At first, Owen had insisted on treating, but Sarah had worn him down, telling him that she was a feminist, insisting that she wanted to pay her own way.
She remembered feeling charmed by his nonchalance, finding his family’s indifference to the material world endearing. At eighteen, it had compared favorably to the way her own family lived—the single thin, frayed towel that Owen brought to the pond versus the stacks of plush fabric softener–scented beach towels that her mom kept piled on the pool deck, for family and guests; the nicked and weathered butcher-block counters of the Camp’s kitchen versus the brand-new granite countertops and state-of-the-art appliances in their house. The Lassiters had an ancient toaster with a fraying electrical cord, a wedding gift to Sass’s own mother that sometimes shot sparks when you plugged it in. The Levy-Weinbergs had a fancy new toaster oven. Owen’s mother collected cosmos and catmint, seagrass and hydrangeas, and made charming, casual arrangements that she stuck in empty jam jars that still wore the remnants of their labels and rode an elderly three-speed Schwinn with balding tires and an ancient wicker picnic basket bungee-corded to the rear rack. Sarah’s mom hired florists and drove a minivan. At Owen’s house, they kept the windows open, the patchy screens admitting flies and mosquitos to be cursed at or slapped away. At Sarah’s house, her mother could control the temperature with the touch of a button and used a remote control to raise or lower the blinds.
Owen’s people would swim in the pond or the ocean in the cool morning hours, nap during the heat of the day, and eat, and drink, late into the night, by the glow of the bonfires they’d light on the beach. Members of her family bent the climate to their will; shutting out the sounds of the wind and the sea with double-paned glass, installing a swimming pool, with its bright, chlorinated water, instead of being content with the bay or the ponds.
Now, here was Owen, telling her that the choices she’d found so charming were not quirks or idiosyncrasies but plain old poverty. It was unsettling. She felt terrible for assuming, and for romanticizing; a little uneasy about what else she’d missed or gotten wrong. And she still didn’t understand how Owen had vanished so completely, like he’d erased himself from her life and somehow managed to take his house with him.