Begin Reading
Table of Contents
About the Author
Copyright Page
Thank you for buying this
Flatiron Books ebook.
To receive special offers, bonus content,
and info on new releases and other great reads,
sign up for our newsletters.
Or visit us online at
us.macmillan.com/newslettersignup
For email updates on the author, click here.
The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.
For Chris
PART ONE PALM BAY PREPARATORY SCHOOL, FIFTEENTH REUNION
November 2018
CHAPTER 1 Molly
If you ever find yourself hosting an event that requires a rented white tent, you can be certain that I, Molly Marks, will RSVP with regrets.
If your tent is festooned with off-season flowers, or thousands of fairy lights, or embossed linen place cards—if it’s bedecked with a dance floor, a wedding band, a dais for the giving of toasts—rest assured I’ll be there in absentia, cheersing you, my dear friend, from hundreds of miles away.
It’s not personal. I’m sure your event is momentous and that you’re a wonderful host.
But the rented white tent is a monument to public displays of emotion, and sentiment makes me squeamish. If I must evince a feeling—and, gross—I want to do it at home, with the blinds drawn and the lights off, in a robe covered in frosting and dribbles of sauvignon blanc.
You can thus understand why, on this sultry night on this star-glimmered island famed for its champagne-colored beaches, I have the enthusiasm of a woman hobbling on heels to her tropical, waterfront grave.
For approaching us in middle distance in the pearlescent glow of the full Florida moon is the hungry white mouth of a tent the size of a cruise ship.
And beneath it, draped in fake bougainvillea and lit up in spotlights flashing from violet to rose, a banner proclaims in a jubilant font:
WELCOME TO YOUR 15TH REUNION, PALM BAY CLASS OF 2003!!!
Three exclamation points. Lethal.
I will allow that under the right circumstances—if I were another person, for instance—the atmosphere that greets me beneath the billowing canvas might be called dreamy.
The air, after all, smells like jasmine, and orange blossoms, and the salty breeze rippling off the Gulf of Mexico. Tiki torches cover the dance floor in flickering light. There’s a champagne bar and a lobster station. Carefully dressed men and women are embracing with genuine sincerity, beaming at each other. On a few faces I even spot tears.
I put my hand to my throat to feel my fluttering pulse. It was a mistake not to take a Xanax at the hotel. Perhaps I can hide in a lifeguard station.
“I can’t do this,” I whisper to my best friend, Dezzie, who along with her husband, Rob, is the closest thing I have to a date for the evening.
She squeezes my hand with immoderate pressure—a gesture meant to be either reassuring or painful enough to scare me straight.
“You will do this,” she whispers back.
“This is how I know my wife went to an obnoxious prep school in Florida,” Rob remarks, unperturbed by my nerves. “Her fifteen-year reunion looks like a destination wedding.”
“Actually, this is ten times nicer than our wedding,” Dezzie says, dragging me past a table of welcome bags full of sparkly flip-flops and bug spray. We pause to take in centerpieces that involve pineapples, orchids, and foot-long diamanté palm trees.
“That’s what you get for marrying an impoverished social worker,” Rob says. “Maybe we can hijack the reunion and renew our vows.”
“If there is one thing worse than a high school reunion,” I say grimly, “it’s a high school reunion slash vow renewal. Besides, it is a law of the universe that every couple who renews their vows breaks up within a year. You guys are too well-matched to throw it all away for some coconut shrimp.”
“I see we’re in a chipper mood tonight,” Rob says, reaching out to flick my shoulder.
Rob is lucky I’m too miserable to retaliate, or I would frog him right between the ribs. He and Dezzie have been together for so long that Rob and I are almost like siblings. The kind who love each other dearly and show it through bickering and a touch of light physical violence.
