“The riptide is notoriously bad up here,” Kacy says. She served as a town lifeguard as a teenager, but even she wouldn’t swim today. “Plus the seals mean there could be sharks. And the water is freezing this time of year.”
Coco skips toward the water, undeterred. “I’m a good swimmer,” she says. “I grew up in Arkansas with a pond in my backyard where I had to outswim the snapping turtles. Then I moved to the Lake of the Ozarks, where I had to avoid the water moccasins. I’ll take a shark over a swimming snake any day.” With that, Coco splashes into the water and freestyles out. She has a nice stroke and her kick is strong, but all Kacy can think of is the woman who went swimming out here at night—she and her friends called themselves the night swimmers—and disappeared. Kacy keeps her eyes trained on Coco, steeling herself every time Coco goes underwater. Coco dives, flipping her legs up like a mermaid’s tail. She’s down for so long that Kacy is about to go in after her—but then Coco surfaces, holding a sand dollar.
“Can you come in, please?” Kacy calls out, windmilling her arm. She knows she sounds like a mom, but the last thing she wants is for Coco to drown out here on her watch.
Coco rides the next wave to shore, shakes her short hair dry like a dog, and rubs at her face with a towel. “That was sublime,” she says. “Now, what did I do with my wine?”
The first bottle of rosé goes quickly. Kacy opens the second bottle (Andrea gave her a look, but thank god she brought two). She pulls out the sandwiches, the chips, a cluster of frosty red grapes. The wine goes straight to Kacy’s head; there wasn’t a lot of day-drinking in the NICU. “So tell me about you,” Kacy says.
“What do you want to know?”
“What was it like growing up in Arkansas? I can’t even picture it. And the only things I know about the Ozarks, I learned from the show. What about your parents, do you have siblings, why did you go down to the Virgin Islands, what’s on your bucket list, have you thought about the future?” Kacy takes a breath. “I know basically nothing about you.”
Coco reaches for her wine. “Well, for parental figures, it’s my mom, Georgi, and her live-in boyfriend, Kemp. Georgi works the deli counter at Harps, and Kemp owns a tobacco shop, which has become all about vaping. Both Kemp and my mother vape nonstop and will probably end up with popcorn lung. No siblings unless you count Kemp’s daughter, Bree, which I don’t. Their idea of vacation is survivalist camping. So when I was growing up, I learned how to make a lean-to, start a fire, track animals, shoot a bow and arrow, purify water—”
“You are kidding me,” Kacy says.
“Forage for nuts and berries and wild greens, identify trees, stuff like that.”
“That is so cool,” Kacy says.
“Or so lame,” Coco says. “My dream was to stay in a hotel with AC and a pool.” She sighs. “A pool with a sliding board. As a kid, I was always reading—my mother used to make fun of me for it. Then in high school I became close with Ms. Geraghty, the town librarian. My mother approached her at my high-school graduation and accused her of corrupting me by giving me so many books, but books are what saved me. The only reason I’ve even heard of Nantucket is because Ms. Geraghty gave me Moby-Dick.”
Kacy feels embarrassed that she’s never read Moby-Dick. Like all the other nurses on her unit, she reads Colleen Hoover.
“What about now?” Kacy says. “What do you want to do? You’re going to work for the Richardsons this summer and then… what? Go back to St. John to bartend?”
Coco shrugs. “I guess if things don’t work out, yeah.”
“Work out how?” Kacy asks.
Coco hesitates. She has been keeping her script a secret; like making a wish on birthday candles, she fears that talking about it will jinx it. But now that the script is finished and she has somehow managed to score a job with a movie producer and she seems to have made an actual friend, why not? “I’ve written a screenplay.”
“Oh my god!” Kacy says. “You’re kidding! What’s it about?”
“It’s about growing up in Rosebush, Arkansas,” Coco says. “It’s basically my life story.”
“Would you let me read it?” Kacy asks.
“Would you want to?”
“Are you kidding me?” Kacy says. “I’ll be able to say I knew you when.”
Coco lets herself get swept up by Kacy’s enthusiasm for a second, though she’s terrified. Kacy will be her first reader. What if she hates it? Worse, what if she pretends to like it?
A bank of clouds rolls in, and the wind picks up. “Should we head home?” Kacy asks.
“Already?” Coco says. “We drove all the way out here. And I could use a nap.”
Kacy is feeling dozy as well. If Coco isn’t complaining about the weather, Kacy shouldn’t either. She’s the native Nantucketer, hale and hearty. She lies down on the blanket next to Coco and closes her eyes. But the wind whips sand into Kacy’s face, which feels like ten thousand tiny needles.
“Let me move the Jeep,” Kacy says, “so that it blocks the wind.”
Coco has her eyes closed and doesn’t answer.
Kacy climbs in the Jeep and throws it into reverse, but it won’t budge. She senses she’s about to face a reckoning. She hits the gas a little harder; the tires spin, chewing deeper into the sand. She shifts the car into drive, though she has to be careful because the front of the Jeep is dangerously close to the water. Was she really that careless, or has the tide come in? Both, she thinks. The Jeep edges forward a few inches and Kacy is heartened. She moves up a bit more, thinking, Forget the wind block, I just need to get the Jeep on firmer ground. But she succeeds only in putting her front two tires into wet sand, which is very bad. She tries to back up—nope. She turns the wheel, but this takes her closer to the water.
No! she thinks.
Coco is now on her feet. “Can I help?”
Kacy says, “I’ve got it,” and her voice is still sort of cheerful because she’ll figure it out. Let’s not forget, she grew up driving on this beach! Her father taught her that if she ever got stuck, she should let more air out of the tires. Kacy does this only in the back because the front tires are in a sucking wet morass. Her only hope is to back up.
She throws the car in reverse with her teeth clenched. Her tires spray sand all over Coco, who shrieks and jumps out of the way. The car doesn’t move.
Kacy climbs out and gazes down the beach. There’s normally a ranger making sure that nobody hangs out in the delicate ecosystem of the dunes or lights an illegal bonfire or gets herself stuck at the water’s edge like a person who has never driven on a beach before. But it might be too early in the season for a ranger. Kacy grabs her cell phone, thinking she’ll call her father and he’ll contact the gatehouse, and Pamela can come to their rescue. Kacy will have to eat a big plate of Look at Miss Smarty-Pants, but fine, whatever.
Kacy’s phone has no service.
“Do you have service?” she asks Coco.
Coco checks her phone. “No. Why, are we in trouble?”
The Jeep is stuck in soft sand and the tide is rolling in. Yes, they’re in trouble.
“Someone’s coming,” Coco says.
Sure enough, in the far distance, Kacy sees a truck trundling up the beach, probably settled in the tracks Kacy blazed. Kacy hopes the truck drives all the way out here instead of turning off to Coatue or Coskata Pond. She’s tempted to jump up and down and wave her arms. Then she does—because what are their options? Walking the three miles back from the beach? Hoping a boat comes close enough to notice them?
