Page 7 of Dead of Summer

Faith sees her mother suddenly and stops.

She is sitting in the front row on one of the white chairs.

She is frozen the way she exists in Faith’s memory, her skin overly tan and her hair damaged from boxed dye bought at the grocery store, the fin from a faded tattoo of a dolphin poking up from the bust of a dress she got from Marshalls.

Too tight and glittery, of course, but she thinks that’s what makes it fancy, her impression of wealth pieced together from whatever Bravo show she is currently watching. Her eyes are red-rimmed.

“Hey, Peanut,” her mom’s voice says in her imagination, hoarse as usual from smoking and self-neglect. The rest of Faith’s fantasy dries up and floats away and she is left standing alone on the lawn with her mom. “Look at you,” her mom says a little sadly, a smile flickering across her thin lips.

A guilty lump forms in Faith’s throat. She looks away from the lawn, her eyes blurring. She wouldn’t invite anyone from her family to the wedding, of course. It was too risky.

To rid herself of the icky taste that has crawled up into her mouth, she takes out her phone and texts Elena. You’d love it here .

Faith wouldn’t have even met David if it wasn’t for one of those benefits Elena was always dragging Faith to.

A thousand dollars a plate for cystic fibrosis or an auction to raise money for glaucoma research.

These things were always filled with the kind of people who made Faith feel especially shy and introverted.

She could never quite figure out where she belonged among them, what she was supposed to say, who she was meant to be.

She’d said no at first but Elena, always eager to network and in the market for her own rich boyfriend, had been relentless this time.

“It’s for Atlantic Ocean animal habitat restoration, Fay,” she’d said. “Why do you hate ocean animals?” She’d pulled up a photograph of a manatee on her phone and turned her lips down into a pout.

“Okay, fine.” Faith had laughed. “I can’t say no to a manatee.” And she also couldn’t turn down a cocktail hour underneath the belly of the giant blue whale sculpture in the museum’s Hall of Ocean Life, where she was assured the who’s who of New York would be in attendance.

It was one of those perfect New York days in late September when the air has a hint of crispness to it and the city feels like it has woken up after the slumber of summer.

Faith had felt a rare surge of optimism as she and Elena had arrived at the Museum of Natural History, laughing and tapping up the steps in their high-heeled sandals.

Elena had dragged her around the room, introducing her to people along the way. They were mostly WASPs with names like Chip and Birdy, a subset of the population that felt foreign and exotic to Faith. She took it all in, downing her drink quickly.

“Come meet Lauren Stamford. She’s the queen of Park Avenue,” Elena had said, grasping her elbow and pulling her into a darkened exhibit room where a woman with a blond bob and rigid posture was holding court.

“Ah, Elena, good to see you.” The woman had kissed Elena’s smooth cheek. Faith was always impressed by how well her friend blended in, how she always knew what to do while Faith had to work at it like she was learning another language.

“This is Faith. She’s up-and-coming in the PR world,” Elena had introduced her generously, giving Faith a little nudge forward.

“What’s your last name, dear?” the woman had said, peering down her aquiline nose at Faith. The rest of the group stopped chattering and turned their eyes on Faith, waiting to see if she was someone they should care about.

“Ellis,” Faith stammered, feeling her cheeks growing hot. The woman had given a little sniff.

“I haven’t heard of you,” she’d said simply, and she turned toward a man to her right wearing an ascot, icing Faith out.

“She seems nice,” Elena had said dryly as they retreated to one edge of the room where a diorama of ocean animals glowed from the wall.

“I don’t fit in with these people,” Faith had moaned, wanting to leave.

“Don’t take it personally. If anything, she’s just jealous,” Elena said, brushing it off.

“Of me?” Faith said in disbelief.

“She’s from that generation that hates any woman younger than them. She’s a nightmare to work for apparently. And totally insecure after that facelift. But her husband’s business is on the verge of collapse. Her reign won’t last much longer,” Elena said, her eyes twinkling.

“How do you know so much about people?”

“It’s a hobby,” Elena said. “My version of sports.”

Faith had smiled at her friend, grateful not to have to navigate the Mitzis and Tads of the world on her own.

She tilted the last of her drink into her mouth as Elena used the new vantage point to scan the room.

There was something in the way she would look for the richest and most influential person in the room that reminded Faith of the old version of herself, the one she’d been trying to escape.

Faith turned away from the party and pushed her face close to the glass of the diorama.

When she was growing up, the ocean always felt mystical to Faith; with its rainbow of corals and shimmering fish, it was a magical place that felt as mysterious and otherworldly as a fairy-tale kingdom populated with unicorns.

This diorama showed a giant squid attacking a whale.

Its tentacles were wrapped around the whale’s belly, ready to pull it into the deep.

“I think I dated that one,” she joked to Elena.

“The squid or the whale?” a surprisingly resonant voice had replied.

She’d backed up, startled. Elena must have wandered off and left her, and now a man stood in her place.

A very handsome man. He held a glass of wine in one hand, the other was on the waist of his jacket. He peered through the glass.

“Oh, I don’t know, probably both of them at one time or another,” Faith said, turning to face him. Just past his shoulder she saw Elena deep in conversation with a tall, serious-looking woman in black-rimmed glasses.

“Oh, I wonder which one I’d be if any of my exes were here to speak,” he replied, amused by her reaction. She’d tapped her chin, gazing around the room.

“Probably the anglerfish,” she said. “Something about the eyes.”

His laugh was genuine. “I’m David,” he said, adding, “Clarke,” a moment later and pausing as though the name should mean something to her. She would have to ask Elena later.

“Faith,” she replied, letting him take her hand and shake it. He raised his eyebrows presumably at her name or perhaps the very slight twang left over in her voice, a sound she’s since managed to nearly eradicate.

“Can I get you another drink?”

“Sure,” she’d agreed quickly, liking the way they looked together in the reflection of the exhibit.

Perhaps too quickly , she thought, glancing up at him.

He was handsome, sure, but there was something else about him.

A certain kind of vulnerability that showed in his face.

It made her feel an immediate connection with him.

“What were you having?” He nodded down at the bright pink remnants of her martini glass.

“I think it was the Axolotl Punch,” Faith said, smiling at the silly name. “But I’m up for a new adventure.”

He’d looked at her for a beat, infusing her words with more meaning than she’d intended. “Excellent.”

As he left to get her a drink, she saw Elena was now watching their exchange. Faith raised her eyebrows at her friend and gave a little shrug, like we’ll see .

But Faith hadn’t needed to wait long for her and David to slip into the rhythm of a relationship together.

From the very start their dates were weekly events, but these quickly turned into every other night sleepovers until she was practically living at his West Village apartment.

It was all more than fine with her. Faith preferred the comfort of his apartment, spacious and sparsely furnished, with its chrome espresso machine and bank of windows looking out over a street full of tasteful brownstones.

It’s the sort of place a thirty-one-year-old woman should live , she thought.

And it was refreshingly far from the chaotic roommate situations she’d found herself in the last ten years, the only thing she was able to afford in the city.

Sometimes they went out with other couples from his work, but more often just the two of them.

She noticed that he never seemed to have much use for other people.

His friends blurred together, and Faith felt sometimes as though they were only there as props, dull to make their own relationship sparkle and shine in the foreground.

She never minded much, enjoying the way she and David got along, the relaxed back-and-forth, the easy laughter.

She started to feel more confident with him and then with herself. She didn’t need anything else.

In those nights spent over at David’s, she’d started to allow herself to imagine a life of comfort and stability.

She began to crave the feeling she got every time she woke up there—the peacefulness she found with him amid the clean Scandinavian furniture and the still, open space. It was what she had always longed for.

“Move in with me,” David had begged Faith one unseasonably warm spring evening while they were out having oysters at one of their favorite neighborhood restaurants.

Her head had snapped toward him.

“So soon?” she asked.

But David, whose entire life existed in this space of beauty and privilege, didn’t seem to have any worry about moving things along. “Just think, we could have this every night. No more of you rushing back and forth to your apartment to get things.”

Faith had been watching a parade of people pass by on Christopher Street.

The neighborhood was so lovely it made her insides hurt.

She’d have been lying if she said it wasn’t a relief to slip into the warm feeling of not having to worry day in and day out like she had growing up.

To order whatever she wanted off a menu, without thinking about the bill at the end.

It shouldn’t have felt crass to say it, not when she came from so little.

“You really think you have enough closet space for me?” she’d finally said slyly, not wanting to give him a full answer right away.

“Sure. And if I don’t, I’ll get rid of my stuff.” He’d tossed a hand in the air.

“Oh, is that right? Just toss it?” The wine was kicking in and her words floated from her lips into the hazy summer evening.

“Why not? You can throw it into the street for all I care. I want your things displacing mine.” His eyes shone in the last of the late-evening sun. He gave her that disarming smile of his, the one that was somehow both boyishly earnest and a little mischievous below the surface.

They’d clinked glasses, and she’d leaned back in her chair, letting her body relax. So, this was how it was going to go, she thought, watching appreciatively as he ordered another bottle of wine and a plate of frites.

Later, in the restaurant’s cramped bathroom she’d washed her hands and smiled at her reflection in the speckled glass mirror.

Faith marveled at this unlikely cozy cocoon of belonging she’d found with the son of a billionaire.

She’d never had anything like it before.

And if in the process the relationship, as her friend Elena so delicately put it—“changed her financial situation” for the better—what was the harm in that?

There was a brief moment, a rush of nerves, as she put her hand to the door to leave, when she’d imagined her mother’s face in the shadow behind her.

“Be careful with that one, baby doll,” her mom said to her reflection, her fingers twitching nervously as she raised a Virginia Slim to her lips and inhaled deeply. “We don’t want you getting hurt.”