Summer People (20 page)

Blue spirals shot through the air, enhanced by a bunch of silver flashes that sounded like very loud popcorn. David applauded for that one. Beth was bothered by everything David had said earlier. Okay, maybe she did have feelings for him, but any fool could see that the feelings made her so uncomfortable that all she wanted to do was push them away.

The finale started and the sky was a messy artists’ palette of color, one bright burst inside another. The great thing about the finale was that just when Beth thought the sky was saturated, just when she thought it must be the end, they shot off more. It kept going and going. Beth leaned her head back against the webbing of her chair. She tried to conjure Kara Schau’s words:
Don’t think. Smell the flowers.
Don’t worry about packing up and fighting the crowds all the way back to the car. Don’t worry about David Ronan in the chair next to yours. Just enjoy.

Beth couldn’t help herself from doing a visual sweep of their area, mentally calculating how long it would take them to break camp. It was then that she noticed Peyton was gone.

She looked at David. He was grinning like a boy, his face catching light from the sky.

“Did Peyton go to the bathroom?” Beth asked.

David checked the blanket. His smile faded and he sat up straighter in his chair. “Piper,” he said. “Where’s your sister?”

Asking this was pointless. Piper couldn’t hear David over the noise of the fireworks. No one could hear him but Beth. Piper was so absorbed with tasting the inside of Garrett’s mouth that anyone could see the whereabouts of her younger sister was the furthest thing from her mind. David concluded as much after a few seconds, and he picked his way across the blanket, over the cooler and between thermoses, to ask Piper again. Piper sat up and looked around. Shrugged. David asked something of Winnie and Marcus, who mimicked Piper’s actions.
We don’t know.

Beth stood up. She felt sorry for David—a missing child was a parent’s worst nightmare. Even when the child was thirteen. Even in a place as safe as Nantucket.

“They don’t know where she went?” Beth asked.

“No,” David said. He scanned the patchwork of blankets around them. “How long has she been gone? And how did she leave without my noticing?”

“You went to talk to some people,” Beth said. “Maybe she met up with friends.”

“Maybe,” David said. “Or maybe she just went to the bathroom.”

“That’s probably it,” Beth said. She, too, wondered how long Peyton had been gone. Beth remembered handing her two oatmeal cookies and then offering to refill her lemonade, but that was before the fireworks started. Beth tried to remember if she’d seen Peyton with a sparkler. The sparklers were a long time ago, certainly allowing enough time to go to the bathroom and come back. Unless there was a horrendous line.

As if reading her mind, David said, “I’m going to check the bathrooms. Will you stay here?”

“Of course,” Beth said. “She’ll probably make it back before you do.”

Beth’s optimism flagged once the fireworks ended, because at that point, chaos broke out. Children started to whine and everyone and his brother tried to jam their way through the narrow passageway between the dunes that led to the parking lot. People poured past them, like a stream moving around a rock. Beth stood on her chair and waved her arms so that Peyton might be able to locate them. Marcus followed suit, standing on the cooler, waving the flashlight that Beth had packed. Winnie folded the blankets and the unused chairs while Garrett and Piper clung to one another—Piper suddenly so concerned about her sister that she needed constant petting from Garrett. Beth almost snapped at them to separate and help, but what kind of help was needed? They simply had to stay put until Peyton materialized out of the crowd, and Garrett and Piper were doing just that—staying put with their hands all over each other.

David returned, his eyes darting everywhere. The key, he said, was not to panic because Peyton had a good head on her shoulders and she could find her way to the police station once she got to the road.

“It’s not like she’s a tourist,” he said. “This island is her home.”

They waited until the last stragglers left the beach. At this point, Beth was tired and had to go to the bathroom herself. She walked through the cold sand toward the now-abandoned portable toilets. Because she was from New York, she couldn’t help thinking of how the fingers of evil could touch anyone, even here. Beth eyed the dark ocean. With a missing child on the brain, it looked sinister.

On the way back she was more hopeful. But from a hundred yards away she could see David standing on the cooler; as she neared, she heard him calling out Peyton’s name. Beth joined Winnie and Marcus who were huddled nearby. They told her that Garrett and Piper had gone to the lost child tent, or whatever it was, that the police had set up.

Beth helped David down from the cooler. Even touching his hand made her feel conflicted.

“She’ll turn up,” Beth said.

“Oh, I know,” he said. “I’m not worried.”

“Of course you’re worried,” Beth said. “She’s your baby girl. You don’t have to play tough guy with me, not under these circumstances. Maybe she went home.”

“There’s no way she would have gone home without telling me. It’s too far to walk. It’s four miles in the dark.”

Garrett and Piper approached; Piper’s face looked ready to crumble. “The police haven’t seen her,” she said. “Your friend was there, Dad, Lieutenant Egan, and he said he’d send his guys out to scan the area. He said if she doesn’t turn up in the next twenty minutes, you should go talk to him.”

“Twenty minutes, my ass,” David said. “I’m going to talk to him now.” David charged through the sand toward the parking lot, calling Peyton’s name along the way. Beth stayed with the other kids.

“None of you saw her leave?” Beth asked. “Who spoke to her last?”

“I told her I liked her shoes,” Winnie said. “But that was during dinner.”

Piper nuzzled Garrett’s neck and ran a hand inside the collar of his polo shirt. Something about Piper touching Garrett made Beth uncomfortable. She wondered if this were a typical mother-son-girlfriend dynamic at work, or if there was actually something about Piper that was unlikable, which only Beth discerned.

“This isn’t like my sister,” Piper said. “Peyton is such a goody-goody. It’s not like she ran off to smoke and drink with her friends. She never does anything on her own unless she asks Dad, like, six times if it’s okay. So I don’t know what to think. Maybe she was abducted?”

“She wasn’t abducted,” Beth said. “But she may be lost.”

Piper sniffed. “We used to play on this beach when we were kids. If she got lost, she’d wait for us in the parking lot. Plus, the police tent is in the parking lot and she wasn’t there.” Piper’s tone was condescending—it was the tone of voice she normally reserved for David, and Beth was about to let her know that it wasn’t an okay tone to use with her boyfriend’s mother when David jogged toward them through the sand.

“They’re going to start a real search,” he said. “I’ll stay here. Beth, you take the kids home. To my house. Keep your eyes peeled for her on the way. The police seem to think she got bored, or angry, and decided to walk home. They said they see it every year. Also, check the machine, Piper, when you get in. Maybe she left a message. I’ll call you later to see if she’s turned up.”

Beth and the kids trudged back to the car, everyone so loaded down with stuff that there was no opportunity for kissing or hand-holding. It was a silent march out to North Beach Street and then up the Cobblestone Hill. They piled into the Range Rover and drove to David’s house, slowing to check the identity of each person walking on the side of the road along the way. No Peyton. The house was dark except for the onion lamp by the front door.

“She’s not home,” Piper said. “God, I hope she left a message.”

The kids trooped into the house while Beth stood at the back of the car and separated out David’s belongings from her own— his chairs, his thermos, his blanket. She knew there wouldn’t be a message. No one had spoken to the girl, no one noticed her missing until she was long gone. Peyton had been ignored, so she ran away. It didn’t take a brain surgeon to figure it out, only a mother.

When Beth walked into the kitchen, the kids were sitting on barstools around the island.

“No message?” she said.

Garrett shook his head. Piper started to cry quietly. Beth put a hand on her back.

“And you checked the whole house?”

Piper nodded, then moved into Garrett’s arms where she collapsed.

“Maybe she went to our house,” Winnie said. “It’s closer. Maybe she got tired and decided to wait for us there. She knows we don’t lock it.”

“Okay, we’ll check,” Beth said. “Piper, you stay here and wait for your father’s phone call. Tell him our plans.”

Piper clung to Garrett with a ferocity Beth had only previously seen in two year olds. “Can Garrett stay with me? Please? I’m freaked out to be here by myself.”

Beth hesitated. Garrett staying here meant only one thing: sex. In a bed, probably, which would have irresistible appeal. Beth fought off images of the cottage on Bear Street with David. All summer long, sex on a bed, sex every which way.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Beth said. “Because how will he get home?”

“I’ll have Dad run him home when he gets back.”

“David shouldn’t have to do that,” Beth said. “It’s late. Garrett will see you tomorrow.”

Garrett threw Beth a dirty look. “I’m not ten years old, Mom. I’ll stay here with Piper and if David won’t take me home then I’ll walk.”

“In the dark?”

“Yes,” Garrett said.

Beth heard the challenge in his voice and decided she wasn’t up for it. “Well, if Peyton’s at our house, we’ll come back. Obviously. And if she’s not there, I guess we’ll come back anyway and wait to hear what David says. Or I will. Marcus and Winnie may want to go to sleep.” Beth closed her eyes. Teenagers were going to be alone in a house full of beds no matter what she decided, that much was clear. “So I’ll be back in a short while, then. A couple of minutes.”

Beth drove to Horizon saying a prayer to God and Arch and anyone else who would listen.
Please bring the girl home safely.
Horizon, too, was dark, except for the porch light.

“She’s not here,” Marcus said. “Man, this is getting weird.”

The three of them went in, Beth and Marcus each carrying a load of picnic stuff.

Winnie said, “Mom doesn’t care who’s dead or missing as long as the dishes get done.”

“Winnie, that’s not fair.”

Winnie acknowledged as much with a pat to Beth’s head. “Sorry, Mom.”

Beth turned on some lights and checked all the rooms on the first floor. She checked the deck then went upstairs and poked her head into the bedrooms, hoping to find Peyton asleep, like Goldilocks. No such luck. Beth returned to the kitchen. “Listen, you two stay here. I’m going back to the Ronans’ house in case another vehicle or another set of hands is needed. You guys get some sleep.” She wanted to get back to Garrett and Piper as soon as possible.

“We’ll clean up,” Marcus said.

“If you want,” Beth said, so grateful for this offer that she wondered if Winnie’s statement weren’t right on the money. “Garrett and I will be home shortly.”

“Okay, Mom, good luck,” Winnie said, and Beth could tell Winnie was anxious for her to leave.
Are you watching this?
she asked Arch on her way out to the car.
Everyone wants me to leave so they can fool around!
Somehow the prospect of Winnie and Marcus didn’t worry her nearly as much as Garrett and Piper, and so she hurried back to David’s house.

The house was as she left it, with the front light on and a light in the kitchen. Beth slammed the car door to warn of her impending arrival. But no one was in the kitchen. Beth called out, “Hey, I’m back!” and was met with silence. She listened to the hum of the refrigerator and the drip of the sink, her heart racing. She twisted the spigots of the sink and the dripping stopped.

“I’m back!” Beth shouted.

Silence.

“Garrett!” she hollered. “Garrett Newton, get down here this instant!” She marveled at how much like a typical mother she could sound.

Still nothing. Either the house was remarkably well built or they, too, had disappeared. Beth was faced with having to go upstairs and check on them. She was starting to boil inside. How dare they put her through this! She stormed up the stairs, only partially cowed by the fact that she’d been up these stairs two weeks earlier when she was snooping around. She heard noises coming from the bathroom. Beth moved toward the door. She heard a groan, her own son’s distinctly sexual groan. Okay, that was it. Beth couldn’t stand to hear anything more. She pounded on the door.

“Meet me downstairs, Garrett,” Beth said. “We’re going home.”

There was silence, then some shuffling, then an, “Okay, Mom, give me a minute?” As though she was supposed to believe he was in there alone.

Beth returned to the kitchen, furious. She started rehearsing a lecture for the drive back to their house—God, what was she going to say? She should have stayed at home in blissful ignorance. They were upstairs in the bathroom. Unbelievable. No parent would tolerate this! Beth studied the pictures on the refrigerator, but only for a second. The pictures of David, whom she had kissed! The pictures of Piper who was having sex with her son upstairs! Suddenly, Beth was distracted by flashing lights. A police car pulled into the driveway. Beth went to the door. David and Peyton stepped out of the car.