Owen’s gaze returned to her left hand. “So you’re married.”
“For thirteen years.” Owen raised his eyebrows. Twenty-five wasn’t young to be a bride in most of the country, but it was among her friends and, probably, his, too. Before he could comment on it, Sarah hurried to change the subject. “How about you?”
He put his hands in his pockets and shook his head. “No one could ever live up to you,” he said. His tone was teasing, but his expression was serious, and Sarah had stood there, not knowing what to say.
When Sarah had been little, she’d had a fantasy of being constantly observed; watched by an invisible but surely vast audience as the star of the story of her own life, a story that someone else had already written and that it was her job to perform. Here’s Sarah on her first day of school, walking into her new classroom. Who will be her friends? Here’s Sarah on soccer-team tryout day; here she is at her piano recital; here she is in the cafeteria at school. With every new development in her life, she would imagine an audience watching, with approval or shock or delight. When she performed in front of an audience for the first time, at her first recital, she felt, instead of stage fright, a click of recognition. Ah, she thought, looking out at the assembled faces as they waited for her to begin. There they are.
Even as she imagined the audience, Sarah also pictured herself as an observer; that she was both the star and someone waiting to see how the action would unfold. Oh, she’d think to herself, so that’s what happens next.
Was this, then, what happened next? Sarah leaves her joyless marriage to reconnect with her old flame? Or was this a test? Was she meant to renounce Owen and recommit to her family, to her boys and to Ruby, who loved her and needed her?
“Hey,” Owen said. He reached for her hand, then seemed to think better of it. “Are you rushing off somewhere? Do you have time for a coffee?”
Sarah imagined her audience; invisible and attentive, watching and waiting for her decision. “Not today,” she said. A refusal, then, but not an absolute one. She’d closed the door, for now, but she’d left it unlocked.
Owen nodded at the business card. “Well, now you’ve got my number. Give me a call if you want.” He took a step toward her, close enough for her to appreciate, once more, the otherworldly blue of his eyes, and brushed his lips against her cheek. She smelled what must have been cologne or aftershave, layered over the scent that she remembered, the one that was just soap and Owen’s skin.
“It was good to see you, Sarah.”
“You, too,” she’d said, and she’d walked to the subway, then home, with her heart pounding, her fingers returning, over and over, to the spot on her cheek where he’d kissed her.
* * *
Sarah Levy-Weinberg had heard about the Lassiters before she’d met them. Her mother referred to them, and to all the families with houses in the woods of Wellfleet and Truro, as the Pond People. She’d heard her parents discussing them at parties, when talking she and Sam would sneak out of their beds and up to the kitchen. They’d ease the sliding door open and tiptoe onto the half-moon-shaped deck, where they would watch, and hear, the grown-ups below them, gathered around the glowing turquoise rectangle of the pool. WASPs. Snobs. Anti-Semites. “They think they own the Outer Cape, and they don’t like it when people like us show up,” she’d heard her mom telling her aunt Suzanne, who’d crinkled her nose and said, “Are you sure they just don’t like you?”
Sarah first encountered the Pond People when she was seven. It was the first summer she and Sam had managed to swim all the way across Gull Pond, with her mother swimming with them, encouraging them, letting them tread water and catch their breath while they held on to her shoulders. Every few strokes, Sarah would lift her head and squint at the shoreline. In the distance, through the reeds, she could see a house. At first it was just a blur, but as she got closer, she could see it in more detail: a one-story building with a shingled roof and red paint, set on a little rise behind the shore, with a splintery wooden dock sticking out like a stubby finger into the water. Sarah swam and swam for what felt like forever, and the reeds and the house shoreline never seemed to get nearer, until finally, in tiny increments, she could feel the water growing warmer, could see it changing color. First she felt the tickle of reeds against her feet, and then, a few strokes later, she could just brush the sand on the bottom with her toes. A minute later, Sam came up behind her, gasping and splashing.