LITMIR.BIZ

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own drawers and closet from winter to summer. Then she made the usual suburban rounds: pharmacy, bank, dry cleaner, post office, supermarket. Back home, she threw together a pot of homemade chicken soup—an odd craving for an unseasonably hot and humid late-May afternoon. She left it simmering, wearily climbed the stairs, lay down…and here she is.

      Cam stretches. Sleep will have to wait till bedtime. She swings her legs over the edge of the mattress, half-expecting her feet to encounter a pair of Mike’s shoes cluttering the floor beside the bed.

      Then she remembers.

      Old habits die hard.

      The first thing Mike always did every night after work was sit on the bed, take off his shoes, and leave them where they lay. It drove her crazy from the start, but he couldn’t seem to remember to pick them up, and she stubbornly refused to be that kind of wife. Instead, she grew accustomed to stepping over and sometimes on his shoes.

      Not anymore.

      These days, Mike’s shoes occupy another bedside about twenty miles away from Upper Montclair, New Jersey. His new place is, ironically, a stone’s throw from their old newlywed apartment on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, where they spent the happiest time of their lives.

      These days, real estate in that neighborhood is booming and the narrow old streets are crawling with hipsters. Who could have foreseen that?

      Who could have foreseen any of this?

      Not even me, Cam thinks grimly.

      How bitterly ironic that Camden Hastings—who once upon a time could foresee the bitter fates of strangers—was ultimately blindsided by her own.

      Mike moved out in mid-March.

      For all she knows, some other woman is sharing his new bed in his new place in his new life.

      If not now, then probably soon.

      Mike won’t be alone for long. And when he finds someone new, he’ll go for someone who’s the opposite of Cam.

      That’s no premonition. She hasn’t had one in years. Just a gut feeling.

      Mike will find some woman who is everything Cam isn’t, at least not anymore. Some woman who’s skinny, financially independent, optimistic, emotionally stable. A woman who is all the things Cam never even was in the first place: blonde, petite and perky, elegant, efficient, self-disciplined…

      Cam can’t bring herself to ask her husband—soon to be ex-husband, that is—if he’s started seeing anyone in the two months since they separated.

      Nor has she asked their daughter what, if anything, she knows about her dad’s new solo lifestyle. It’s not fair to expect Tess to spy on him during their scheduled visitations.

      Anyway, Cam should probably get used to the fact that after all these years of a shared life, certain aspects of Mike’s are no longer any of her business.

      Just as aspects of her own life are no longer any of his business.

      Right. But one aspect of your life most certainly is Mike’s business, and you need to tell him about it. Soon.

      With the official start of summer a month away, Long Beach Island—a skinny, twenty-one-mile-long barrier island off the coast of central New Jersey—is still relatively uncrowded. The busiest town, Beach Haven, has been a bustling resort for well over a century. On this warm, still Tuesday afternoon, though, all is quiet here.

      The sun, dazzling when it rose this morning, is high overhead but its light seems filtered now, more white than golden. Off to the west, above the Victorian rooftops of the historic district, the sky—so blue just an hour ago—is tainted the color of an angry bruise. A pleasant sea breeze has given way to brine-scented air hovering ominously close, as if Mother Nature is holding her breath in anticipation of a coming storm.

      The forecast doesn’t call for rain.

      But that’s the glorious thing about the weather here on the coast. Nobody ever seems able to accurately predict what’s going to happen.

      So different here than out West, where every day brings more of the same: calm, dry, sunshine. Or the Deep South, where late-afternoon summer thunderstorms are as predictable as the sun going down.

      Yes, it’s far more interesting to know that on any given day, the weather might remain calm from dawn to dusk—or a powerful, exhilarating storm might blow in to wreak havoc on this peaceful little town. This so-called haven.

      The afternoon may be waning and the weather threatening to turn, but the beach remains dotted with chatting senior citizens in lounge chairs, young mothers chasing after toddlers, and the occasional power walker plugged into an iPod.

      Nobody seems to be paying any attention to the solitary figure standing at the edge of the surf, testing the waters, so to speak.

      Cam walks slowly down the stairs, past the framed family pictures that line the angled wall.

      There’s Tess as a bald, chubby baby, as a tow-headed preschooler, as a gap-toothed first-grader. There’s that lone, stiffly posed professionally taken family portrait of the three of them, and a couple of framed snapshots, and, of course, their formal wedding photograph.

      Cam averts her eyes as she passes that oversized frame, thinking she probably should just take it down.

      Their wedding day was joyful, and every time she sees the picture, she’s flooded with memories—now bittersweet.

      She remembers exchanging handwritten vows in the little white seaside chapel on the Jersey Shore; the best man’s simultaneously funny and moving toast at the reception; her first married dance with Mike to—appropriately—Etta James’s “At Last.”

      Though it took them awhile to hang their large wedding portrait in their first apartment, that was one of the first tasks Mike accomplished when they moved up here to the suburbs. He did so with uncharacteristic efficiency—almost pointedly, Cam remembers thinking at the time. As if he were determined to prove that they were going to create a fresh start here in suburbia—together.

      By then, though, the tension between them was already pervasive.

      Still, it took almost another decade for either of them to do anything about it.

      Now that the marriage is all but over, the picture hangs here still: white lace and broken promises.

      I really should take it down, Cam tells herself, not for the first time, as she passes on by. And she will, as soon as she has a chance.

      But there are some things she can’t keep putting off.

      You have to tell him, Cam admonishes herself again, reaching the first floor and heading toward the kitchen where she can hear Tess rummaging through the cupboards for a snack.

      Of course I’ll tell him. I’ll call him and say we have to talk…

      Just—not yet.

      This early in the season, the Atlantic surf is icy enough to shoot twin darts of pain from ankle to thigh.

      But physical pain is nothing compared to what I’ve been through.

      Physical pain, like the tide, eventually ebbs.

      Even now, the waterline inches farther from shore with every lapping wave. A flat, soaked, darkened strip at its foaming edge is strewn with glistening relics deposited by the sea: pebbles and shells—mostly shards, with an occasional intact treasure among them.

      Gleaming in a relatively empty patch of wave-packed sand is an eye-catching sliver of something wet and black that just washed ashore.

      Hmm. Can it be…?

      If it is, then it’s a sign.

      One doesn’t come across sharks’ teeth very often on these populated northeastern beaches.

      Be casual. Don’t just snatch it up. Someone will notice.

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