“So Sass and Anders got divorced, and the Camp got sold,” she said. “You could have told me that’s what was happening. Why didn’t you call me? Or email me? Even if we weren’t still going out, we could have been friends.”
“You wouldn’t have wanted to hear from me.”
“Well, maybe not right away, after being dumped by email. But eventually…”
He shook his head. In a soft, toneless voice, he said, “You wouldn’t have wanted to hear from me because I lied to you.” Sarah just looked at him as Owen said, “I wasn’t at Duke. I didn’t get in.”
Sarah stared across the table, shocked into silence. Over the summer they’d spent together, Owen had spoken in elaborate detail about the campus, about the lacrosse team’s preseason and its coach. He’d told her the name of his dorm and the name of his suitemates and teammates, the classes he was going to take and how he was already planning to sleep outdoors in a tent in K-ville, named in honor of Duke’s famous basketball coach, in hopes of getting tickets to the games.
Sarah shook her head. “I don’t understand.”
Owen sighed, the memory of old disappointment darkening his features. “Believe me, neither did I, at the time. My guidance counselor said I was a sure thing.”
“And you were a great lacrosse player!”
Owen made a scoffing noise. “Good. Not great. Definitely not as good as I led you to believe.”
“Weren’t you All-State?”
“In Rhode Island,” he said, shamefaced. “It’s not a very big state.”
“I…” She licked her lips and rubbed her hands against her thighs. “I don’t know what to say. So it wasn’t that you’d met some other girl?”
He shook his head. “All summer long, every day, I’d wake up and think, Today I’m going to tell her the truth. But I couldn’t.” He shook his head. “You were this perfect, shining thing. You were so talented, and you were going to be a famous pianist—”
“—and you can see how well that turned out,” Sarah said, and hoped she sounded wry, not bitter. Hoping, too, that her face didn’t show how the words perfect, shining thing were ringing through her, making her feel trembly and flushed.
“I was embarrassed,” Owen said. “I felt like a failure, and a fraud and a liar. Probably because I was a liar. But, more than that, I didn’t want you thinking…” He paused, tilting his head toward the ceiling again. “I wanted you to think I was what I pretended to be. A rich, preppy kid on his way to play lacrosse at the Harvard of the South. That’s who I wanted to be.” He lowered his head and looked at her. “Because that’s the boy you were in love with.”
“No,” Sarah said. She reached across the table and touched his hand. “I was in love with you.” She felt herself blush at the words, but how could she not have said them? She’d loved Owen the way she’d never loved any boy or man. There was nothing as pure or as passionate as that kind of first love. And, she thought, nothing as devastating as that first breakup.
Owen smoothed his cropped hair with both hands. “In my family, lying was a way of life. I was just keeping up the family tradition.”
“Where did you go?” Sarah asked. “You did go to college somewhere, right?”
“University of Vermont,” said Owen, and gave her a crooked smile. “I did a lot of skiing. It wasn’t so bad. After Sass sold the Camp, there was some more money. Then, after she got married again, and moved out of Westport, there was even more.”
Sarah said nothing. She was remembering how she’d felt, the summer after her freshman year, swimming across the pond, hoping to see Owen, and, instead of his house, seeing nothing but a hole in the ground. How it had felt hearing that automated voice in her ear, telling her there was no listing for any Lassiters anywhere.
“The house was a teardown, but the land itself was worth a good bit of money. It got us back on our feet.” He looked up, his brilliant blue eyes finding her gaze. “But I couldn’t tell you what was really going on. And my mom…”
He paused. Sarah waited, realizing that this was the first time Owen had called Sass his mom. “The Cape was a huge part of her identity. She’d gone there as a kid, and it meant a lot, that she’d been the one to inherit the place from her grandparents. It killed her, having to sell it.” He was quiet for a minute, smoothing the shreds of his napkin with one long-fingered hand. “She had kind of a breakdown that year, after she and Anders split. I think losing the Camp—losing her place—was worse than losing her husband.” He gave Sarah his rueful smile again. “It’s hard to play it off like you’re part of the landed gentry when you don’t have any land.”