It wasn’t until she’d covered up the girls and said good night to Alexa and was lying in her bed, waiting for sleep, that she realized that she’d spilled everything about her history while Sherri had said almost nothing. Again.

43.

Alexa

The next day Alexa was so jittery that she did a terrible job on her video about accrual bonds. It was so slipshod that she didn’t even post it: she decided she’d try again later in the day.

She was working at noon at the Cottage. Her mother asked her if she could drop Morgan and Katie at Theater in the Open camp at nine thirty—Rebecca had a meeting at the school.

When Alexa was young, before she understood that theater was mainly for the misfits, she too loved this camp, which took place completely outside, in the middle of Maudslay State Park. As she waited in the line of parents to pass through the turnaround line, where the counselors did awkward, theater-y things as the kids jumped out of the cars, she noticed that Morgan and Katie were two of the tallest, oldest campers here. They looked like full-grown trees among the small sprouts of younger kids. Alexa felt a stab of sadness for their departing childhoods. She almost started crying, thinking about how far she’d let herself get from Morgan lately.

After the girls got out of the Jeep, Alexa thought she saw a man she’d never seen in the rearview mirror, driving a black SUV. He wore dark sunglasses. Her heartbeat picked up, and her hands instantly began to sweat and slide across the steering wheel. There didn’t appear to be anyone else in the car. Didn’t gangsters drive black SUVs? Was this car following her to theater camp drop-off?

Then three kids with backpacks and lunch boxes slid out of the back seat, and she realized it was just a carpool dad.

Inhale, exhale. Calm down. The bad men are coming. Inhale, exhale. Calm down. No they aren’t. Yes they are.

Alexa glanced at her phone. It was only 9:40. Alexa had lots of time to kill before work. From Maudslay it was an easy drive up Hoyts Lane and into Turkey Hill, Cam’s neighborhood, and then down his street. Not that she’d see him. What were the odds that he’d be out front at the very minute she was driving by? He was probably at Market Basket, or raising baby chicks in an incubator, or working on a community garden.

As luck would or wouldn’t have it, Cam was in his front yard, practicing his golf swing. Peter used to play some golf and he’d once taught Alexa the three parts of a swing: backswing, impact position, follow-through. She was never interested in going to the driving range with Peter. Now she wished she had.

Alexa slowed the Jeep to a crawl and watched Cam. She didn’t know enough about golf to know if he had a good swing or not, but she admired the way his shoulder and back muscles moved under his shirt.

Then he saw her. He lifted his hand in a wave. His face remained sober. She pulled into the driveway and jumped out of the Jeep.

He was wearing a St. Michael’s visor. He smiled, but she calculated it at only half a smile.

“You look like you’re still mad,” she said.

“I am still mad.”

“About the Griffins?”

Cam said, “Shhhh!” and looked around the neighborhood. Nobody was out except two little kids riding their bikes around the cul-de-sac in furious circles. They looked like they were going to crash into each other, but somehow they never did.

Alexa said, “Cam. Those kids can’t hear you. And if they could, they wouldn’t know what you were talking about.”

Cam laid his golf club down on the grass, gently, like he was putting a baby to bed, and walked toward Alexa. He was frowning. “I know those kids can’t hear me, Alexa, but what if somebody else does?”

They both surveyed the street. From far away came the sound of a car starting, along with the usual summer noises of chirping birds, faraway lawn mowers. A truck for a lawn care business rolled down the street. The guy driving waved, and Alexa shivered. What if it wasn’t a lawn care company? What if it was a front for something? Wasn’t that how the Mob operated, making fronts out of everyday businesses? The woman across the street was weeding her garden, wearing a big floppy hat. But what if she wasn’t really the woman from across the street? What if the floppy hat was hiding someone more sinister? Alexa turned back to Cam and saw her own fear reflected in his eyes.

“Listen, Alexa. I know we talked about this the other night. And honestly, like I told you then, I don’t really want to talk about it again. But since you’re here, and since you’re asking, yeah, I’m still mad. This is somebody else’s secret, Alexa. This is serious, serious stuff. I don’t think you thought it through before you spread it around.”

“I didn’t spread it around,” Alexa said defensively. “I told you, Cam, only you.” Her voice cracked on the last word.

He didn’t seem to have heard her. “You know what makes me the most mad about this? Nobody gave you this secret. You read it in a little girl’s diary. You took the secret. And when it got too heavy for you, you handed it to me!”

Her face burned. She was tan enough that she didn’t think it showed, but she could feel it. She thought back to the day she first opened the notebook. In fairness, she didn’t know what it contained. But part of her, glittering evilly in the darkness of her psyche, knew that she would have done it anyway, had she known. In fact, she might have done it faster. In a very small voice she said, “I didn’t think—”