Page 18 of These Summer Storms

“So do I! You know all those songs about being left on read? Try being left onunread!” Gabi had been Alice’s closest friend since halfway through their first year at Amherst, where they’d been reluctant roommates from wildly different worlds (was any world the same as Alice’s?). After a few months, their mutual love of bell hooks andGossip Girl(feminist cognitive dissonance be damned) forged their friendship, and by the end of their first year, Gabi was the only person on campus (outside of the Board of Trustees) who knew the truth about Alice’s family. She’d been sworn to secrecy during the helicopter ride to Boston when Alice had broken her arm. Her only response to the revelation?I guess that explains why you’re so fucking precious.

They’d been inseparable ever since.

“It’s been eighteen hours since you texted me last. What the hell, Alice?” A pause, Gabi moving on her end, getting out of bed. “And every call going straight to voicemail? I thought you were dead.”

Alice looked down at the contents of the suitcase, a bizarre mix of toiletries, shoes, and clothes that might or might not be useful in the next few days (pack in haste, repent at leisure). She pulled out a pair of white slip-on sneakers and tossed them into the corner of the room. “I’m not dead. Cell service on this island is nonexistent.”

It was a reality Franklin could have changed if he’d wanted to, butthere was nothing her father loved more than imposing control on his visitors like a benevolent dictator—all those William Randolph Hearst biographies he’d read had left a powerful mark. So it was spotty Internet beamed in from the mainland or nothing.

Another voice murmured in the background. “She knows what I mean,” Gabi said before returning to Alice. “Was that insensitive? Referencing death? Roxanne says it’s insensitive.”

“You’re a lawyer; I expect a level of insensitivity.” Alice carried her toiletry bag to a low table beneath one of the windows. She watched the boats come in across the water.

“Exactly. It’s part of my charm.” Gabi didn’t hesitate. “And Roxanne only cares because she’s desperate to know the family gossip.”

An outraged squawk sounded in the background, and Alice laughed at the familiar back-and-forth. Roxanne Wolf was the society editor forBonfire Magazine,one of the few print magazines that had both the respect of New York’s literati and enough money to keep itself afloat. Years earlier, it was Roxanne who’d helped Alice tell the story that had changed everything—the one that had demolished public goodwill for Storm, decimated the company’s C-suite, and destroyed her relationship with her father.

And though the story could have sent Roxanne’s career into the stratosphere, instead she’d passed it to a colleague she trusted, refusing to be the instrument of whatever unavoidable repercussions would visit Alice. When push came to shove, Roxanne would always choose their long-standing friendship over column inches, and all three of them knew it.

Gabi was still talking. “Where’ve you been? Are you okay?”

“My phone was off.”

A pause. “Yeah, well, that sounds like something that should be for other people. Not me.”

Alice smiled as, despite the questionable connection, she heard the quiet slide of the pocket door that separated the bedroom and living room in Gabi and Roxanne’s Boerum Hill garden co-op. She closed her eyes and wished she was there, in that room, full of thrifted rugs andcomfortable furniture and enough books to cut the usable square footage in half.

“Tell me,” Gabi prompted.

Alice stared down at the glittering sea, one of the most beautiful views in the world, surely. “It’s weird.”

“That makes sense.”

“No, I mean, it’s…” She paused, searching for the right way to describe her feelings. A futile effort. Instead, she said, “The paparazzi met me at the train station.”

“Oh shit. Really? Do you want Roxanne to get into it? I mean, I guess your dad’s people could also—”

Her dad’s people. Even dead, he had people. How was that not weird?

“No,” Alice said. “I took—It’s taken care of. And I’m on the island now, anyway.”

“Ah. The island.” In all the years of their friendship, Gabi had only been to Storm Island a handful of times. A spring break during college. A few weekends over the summers after college, until Alice stopped coming back. “And?”

“And…” She hesitated. On the other end of the call, Gabi waited until, finally, Alice finished. “Five more days.”

“That bad, huh?”

“Well, please remember that my family isn’t exactly good at…feelings.”

“And you, so great at them,” Gabi said, dryly.

“Hey! I’m…getting better.”

“You are,” Gabi replied instantly, in that way best friends did, knowing when to recognize flaws and when to absolutely ignore them. “How are you doing?”

“I’m…okay?” What else was she supposed to say?

“Bullshit. Do you want me to come?”