39.

The Squad

Sometime during July Alexa Thornhill posted on her Instagram a photo of Katie and Morgan at Canobie Lake.

(We all followed Alexa’s Instagram account. She knew a lot about fashion! And makeup! When she Rented the Runway for her prom dress she posted the three dresses she was deciding among. Most of us voted for the KaufmanFranco red high low gown, which she did, in the end, choose. Though two of us stood firm for the Giambattista Valli sweetheart dress.)

Anyway, when we saw that photo we were all like, Whaaaat? Canobie Lake is typically a group activity. Three of the moms take all of the girls. It’s always been that way, since they were too small to go on the Yankee Cannonball, since before they built Untamed. Maybe not everybody can go every year, maybe somebody is at summer camp or on a family vacation or what have you, and the moms rotate in and out, depending on who is available, but at least everybody is included! Everybody is invited! Everybody is given the chance to opt in!

This year, apparently, it was a couples’ activity, the couple being Morgan and Katie.

After that, Maya and Riley went to Canobie together. Then Callie and Izzy. Taylor and Audrey ran into Anna and Abby, and it was said that they didn’t even make eye contact in the line for the log flume.

It was almost funny, but not that funny, how Katie Griffin changed everything. Forever, the girls had all been one big happy group, and suddenly there were these . . . well, for lack of a better word, these factions forming. Everybody starting to break off in twos. We’d been working hard since these girls were in Pull-Ups to keep this group together, and it was not nothing to do that. The organization required. The group texts that had to be tended several times a day. The plans that had to be considered and reconsidered before being offered to the whole group. We had done all of this upfront work for a reason. We were going to go to middle school as one, a united front, a whole lunch table.

And then one new person came in, and look what happened. Things started splintering like pieces of a felled tree. Breaking off like icicles from the edge of a roof.

Maybe we are mixing our metaphors here. But surely you get the picture.

40.

Sherri

“Do you want to cover this bit of gray here?”

Sherri put an alarmed hand to her temple, where the stylist, Brittany, was pointing. Sherri had come to the salon that Rebecca had recommended, Shanti, for a simple cut, although she wished she were getting full foils, like she would have in the old days. She missed her glimmering, shimmering hair. It wasn’t in the budget, even if she could have allowed herself.

“Yes!” she said. “Absolutely.” Sherri had been blond for so long; she’d only gone back to her natural color in that tiny bathroom in the awful motel room. She hated her natural color—a beigy brown that made her think of sand after it had been doused by a wave. She hadn’t noticed the gray in her temples. How long had it been there? She supposed the blond highlights had covered the gray all that time.

“It’s just a tiny bit,” said Brittany merrily. “No worries.”

Well, that was easy for Brittany to say. She was probably twenty-four years old. It worried Sherri plenty.

“Lean back,” said Brittany later, when she’d retrieved Sherri from the cozy chair where she’d been dozing while the color set. Brittany’s skin was smooth and plump and her eyes were gigantic. She wore several bracelets on each arm that clinked musically as she went about her business, and after she washed the color out of Sherri’s hair and put the conditioner into it she gave Sherri a scalp massage that was so good it was practically orgasmic. It had been a really long time since another person had touched Sherri with any sort of tenderness.

Suddenly Sherri thought about Katie at the amusement park. What if she got separated from Morgan and Alexa? What if somebody from their past had followed them there and was going to snatch her from one of the lines? An amusement park would be a very easy place to snatch a child. Sherri never should have allowed Katie to go.

She strained very briefly against Brittany’s hand as though she planned to lift her head out of the sink, wrap it into a towel, and drive to Canobie Lake herself. Brittany kept her gentle grip, and Sherri forced herself to settle. The girls were with Alexa, not by themselves. Everybody had a phone. Katie knew to shout for help—no, to scream for help—if she ever found herself in trouble; and the girls knew to stay together the whole time, even in the bathroom. Especially in the bathroom.

Soon enough, because of the warm water, the ambient white noise of the salon and the comforting sensation of Brittany’s fingers, she allowed her mind to drift.

Three days after she found the necklace, Bobby told her he’d be out of town for two nights. Business, he said. She didn’t ask where: she never asked.

The morning he left she called the FBI. She’d expected that when she spoke her voice would be shaky, but it was sure and strong. She said, “I have information on the kidnapping and murder of Madison Miller.”

They asked her to come to the local office. They greeted her politely, like she was a dinner guest. They got her coffee. They brought her to a room and sat her down with three FBI agents, two male and one female. Sherri kept her gaze on the female agent. She felt more comfortable talking to her. The female agent had hair in a blunt bob and a no-nonsense way about her but at the same time she had really kind eyes. She was part badass, part therapist. She wore a wedding ring, and Sherri could picture her at home in her kitchen, mixing oatmeal for breakfast, checking a child’s math homework. This image made Sherri want to do a good job for her; she wanted to do a good job turning in her criminal husband.