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  2142 Green Hollow Rd

  Sisters of Edgartown Series

  By

  Katie Winters

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Copyright © 2020 by Katie Winters

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance of characters to actual persons, living or dead is purely coincidental. Katie Winters holds exclusive rights to this work. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited.

  Table of Contents

  Copyright Page

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Other Books by Katie

  Connect with Katie Winters

  Prologue

  23 years ago

  The Sisters of Edgartown sat in the glittering last light of a late August afternoon. They were bronzed beauties at seventeen years old, their glorious, silky hair lined with sunlit-blonde curls. Each wore a bikini and tilted their chins toward the purple and pink haze of sunset.

  They couldn’t have known then that it would be their final summer of freedom. They couldn’t have known that everything was about to change.

  “Why do you think Joel is taking so long?” Jennifer turned her head slowly toward the girl beside her as she asked it. The girl was an exact mirror image of Jennifer: the same shimmering red hair, the same green eyes, the same mischievous smile. It was her twin sister and forever-partner-in-crime, Michelle.

  Michelle whipped off her sunglasses and said, “He’s your boyfriend, isn’t he? How should I know what he’s up to?”

  “On again, off-again, boyfriend — depending on Jenny’s mood that day,” Olivia piped up from the other side of Michelle. She, too, tore off her sunglasses, then adjusted her swimsuit top. Her black hair drew sweat lines down her back. “Don’t forget. Our Jennifer has put Joel through every single wringer this summer. It’s been masterful to watch.”

  “I’m thinking about writing Cosmopolitan about it,” Amelia chimed in from beside Jennifer. “I’ve never seen a boy so hung-up.”

  Jennifer giggled. “You guys, I haven’t been that cruel. I just had to show him who’s boss a little bit, you know?”

  “Sure,” Mila said through a yawn. “As if Joel Porter could ever have eyes for anyone but you, Jennifer Conrad.”

  “Except for that time I sent Michelle out on the date instead of me,” Jennifer said with a vibrant laugh.

  “He knew it was me all along,” Michelle said. “He played along till the last moment when I tried to kiss him and he pushed me back.”

  “That’s right!” Camilla cried. “Jen, I still can’t believe you did that.”

  “I needed to know if he could tell the difference,” Jennifer said with a funny shrug. “And he passed with flying colors.”

  “I wonder what gave it away,” Mila said. She popped up and shook out her sandy brown hair while delivering a sterling, model-like smile.

  “My guess is Michelle was a little too nice to him,” Camilla teased. “Jenny, you know just how to tease him to get him going.”

  “What can I say? I love to dig into him a little. I like to watch him squirm,” Jennifer said as her grin widened.

  There it was: the familiar beep-beep of Joel Porter’s busted-up car. Jennifer stood slowly as another crashing wave of fatigue came over her. These feelings of tiredness had come frequently over the previous week or so. At seventeen, and in the supposed prime of her health, she hadn’t wanted to look too closely at the symptoms. Probably, she should just drink more water?

  “There she is. My girl.” Joel wore only a swimsuit and a pair of flip flops as he strode toward her and dotted a kiss on her cheek. She fell against him and inhaled the salty smell of his skin. He’d spent the previous few hours with his best friends on a beach on Martha’s Vineyard's western side, while the girls had remained in Edgartown. “Who here is ready to get this party started?” Joel demanded.

  The girls gathered up their towels, the plastic containers of suntan oil, the bags of chips. As their conversation bubbled, Jennifer slipped her fingers through Joel’s and beamed into his eyes. There was really no telling what would happen next, now that they surged together toward senior year. Joel had already begun football practice for the year; Jennifer had practiced alongside him in her cheerleader uniform. They were the king and queen of Edgartown High School, the “most beautiful” couple on the island's eastern side.

  As they walked back toward Joel’s car, Olivia mentioned just how hungry she was. Mila and Camilla both complained of the same.

  “Joel, drop us off at Mom’s bakery,” Michelle insisted as she crammed into the backseat with Camilla, Mila, Olivia, and Amelia. “We can meet you at the beach later on.”

  Jennifer slipped into the passenger seat and traced her fingers through Joel’s. She cranked her head around to see all five of her loyal and most beautiful friends crammed in there like sardines. “Everyone buckled in?” she teased.

  “Ha,” Michelle said as she rolled her eyes. Safety had never been their primary concern.

  After a ten-minute drive, Joel kissed Jennifer softly as the girls leaped out from the backseat and shot toward Frosted Delights Bakery, located just a few streets from the beach where they’d planned their End of the Summer Bonfire. “I’ll see you later on,” he told her. “And tomorrow, we’ll officially—”

  “Yeah, yeah. We can talk about it,” Jennifer said. Her throat closed up slightly as she thought about it again: this insane potential. A reality that terrified her. “But let’s just pretend for one more night that everything is the same as it always was. Okay?”

  “Deal,” Joel affirmed.

  Jennifer raced after her best friends and twin sister. Inside, they found Jennifer’s mother, Ariane, alongside Amelia’s mother, Anita, and Camilla’s mother, Carol. It wasn’t such a strange thing for all of their mothers to be together, especially this late on a gorgeous summer’s day. They loved to drink wine, gossip, nibble on the little snacks Ariane baked at the bakery, and roll through the hours together. In fact, it was strange that the other mothers weren’t there yet. Apparently, they were on their way.

  In a sense, everything that the Sisters of Edgartown were, was passed down from their mothers. They’d met one another when the girls had begun pre-K, age four, and their mothers had become thick as thieves since then. They’d helped one another through motherhood, through professional fall-backs, through fights with husbands. They’d been one another’s backbone.

  And Jennifer knew that she and her best friends would always be there for one another in precisely the same way.

  “There they are. The girls, at it again,” Carol, Camilla’s mom, said. She placed her hands on her hips and grinned widely at the six gorgeous teenagers. “I heard a rumor about a bonfire tonight?”

  “You know these girls,” Ariane said with a sigh. “They’re always up to some kind of trouble.”

  Michelle snuck her ar
ms around Ariane and hugged her tight. “Mommy, we’re hungry,” she cooed.

  Ariane rolled her eyes. “I guess you’re lucky I set aside some snacks for you girls. I had a hunch you’d stop by. Follow me.”

  The six girls followed Ariane into the back of the bakery, where she had set aside two French baguettes, spinach and artichoke wraps, and sliced watermelon. There were already six chairs back there, positioned around a little table. Above the table hung two photographs: one of the five mothers of the teen girls, taken around fifteen years before, and another beside it, taken the previous summer when they’d been sixteen.

  Together, the girls collapsed in the chairs around the table and dug into the food before them. Ariane, Carol, and Anita appeared seconds later with slices of cheese for the bread. They ripped at the baguettes in their hands and chatted amicably. All were in equal agreement that senior year would certainly be something amazing.

  “It’s so cool they made both Jenny and Michelle captains of the cheerleading squad,” Anita said.

  “They did it for their own good,” Michelle said with a laugh. “There’s no way Jenny and I could have followed the other’s rules.”

  The only other teen in their circle who was a cheerleader was Mila. She was a long-legged and beautiful flier, always the one they had the guys toss into the air to flip around and fall back down gracefully in their arms. Amelia and Olivia were both on the artier side, always painting or attending drama class after school. At the same time, Camilla was a go-getter in the medical field, already volunteering up at the hospital when she could. She always said she wanted to get a head-start on her career. The other sisters teased her for this, but their pride for her was also unmatched.

  The girls always complemented one another beautifully. They were puzzle pieces that fit together snugly; each was necessary in her own right. It had always been this way.

  “Make sure you girls don’t stay out too, too late tonight,” Ariane said as they finished up their snacks. “I’m sure you girls haven’t forgotten that your daddy is police chief of Edgartown.”

  “As if he’d ever let us forget it,” Michelle said with a wild smile.

  “Don’t you dare let him hear you tease him!” Ariane said. She let out a laugh, then swung both arms around her twin daughters and hugged them close. “Keep each other safe tonight, girls. I know I won’t have you at the house much longer in this life. But I plan to enjoy every minute of it.”

  IT SEEMED LIKE EVERY time they had a beach bonfire, they tried to make the fire bigger and better than before. As the girls marched up, several of the high school boys threw even more logs onto the pile and hollered out. They were acting like a bunch of rabid wolves that had just been released into the wild. Jennifer’s heart beat wildly when she spotted Joel on the other side of the flickering flame.

  “There they are,” Olivia’s boyfriend, Tyler, said. He wrapped his arm around her slender waist and tugged her into him. “I thought you girls wouldn’t make it before we cleared the first keg.”

  “As if. You want that thing all for yourself.” Olivia cackled as someone passed her a red solo cup filled with golden brew.

  After a minute or two, everyone received a cup, including Jennifer. She peered into it, then turned her eyes back toward Joel’s. He gave a half-shrug, then sipped his own. Nobody noticed that Jennifer didn’t drink. And in fact, after a while, Jennifer forgot that she even cared about it. There was something about the frantic nature of these final summer nights. She felt giddy with adrenaline and didn’t need the booze anyway. She gripped Mila’s hand and danced around the fire, her toes thrusting her body into the sky as flames flickered out from the logs.

  As the night carried on, the boys’ eyes grew hazy with booze. One of them, Josh, took a chance and kissed Mila, and she bent all the way back with the kiss until the rest of them cat-called. Michelle rushed toward Jennifer and leaned down to whisper in her ear. “I am really starting to like Max. What do you think of him?”

  Like Joel, Max was a football player, with beautiful dark blonde locks, stern eyes, and muscles that cut out from under his black t-shirt. As Michelle whispered to Jenny, his eyes turned toward them and seemed to beckon for Michelle to come.

  “There’s no way he’s not into you,” Jennifer returned under her breath. “I’ve told you that since Christmas. I don’t know why you wasted all that time on Quintin.”

  Michelle shrugged playfully. “Quintin’s hot.”

  “And rude. And stupid. And—”

  “All right, all right. You’ve made your opinions about him clear,” Michelle said. She giggled and flashed her red hair back behind her shoulders. After a moment, she furrowed her brow and said, “Is there something wrong, Jenny?”

  Jennifer’s heart dropped. Was it possible Michelle could tell? They did have whatever “that twin thing” was. Usually, they knew what the other was thinking.

  And it wasn’t like Jennifer to keep something from her sister. Not that she knew for sure what was wrong, yet.

  “I don’t know what you mean,” Jennifer said.

  The look in Michelle’s eyes told her just how much she didn’t believe her. She pressed a finger into Jennifer’s upper chest and said, “We’ll get back to this conversation later, Miss. But right now, I have a little bit of flirting to do. We’re only young once, right?”

  “That’s what they keep telling us,” Jennifer said.

  As the night drifted toward ten, the black sky flung itself out like a dense blanket, flecked with glittering stars. Michelle and Max rushed back from wherever it was they’d spent the past thirty minutes making out. Michelle staggered forward, her eyes electric as she shouted, “Max wants to take us out in the boat! Let’s go swimming!” She then spun in circles wildly, her arms extended.

  Jennifer had always loved this side of her twin sister. Michelle was like freedom personified. She took risks and tore through life with madness. Nobody had ever managed to tell her what to do, least of all, Jennifer. Although Jennifer and Michelle were similar in many ways, Michelle had always been seen as the “free-spirited” one—the one that always took a chance without knowing the outcome.

  Jennifer, Joel, Camilla, Mila, Michelle, Max, Olivia, Amelia all piled into Max’s parents’ speed boat. Jennifer gripped Joel’s hand as the boat geared up and rushed toward the dark waters of the Nantucket Sound. The air was blissful and thick with summer heat, and Jennifer curled up inside Joel’s arms and tilted her chin toward the moon.

  “Hey. Jen.” Mila’s voice found Jennifer’s ear in the midst of the chaos and screams of the others around them.

  On cue, Max turned on an old radio, which blared a summer favorite by Incubus.

  “What’s up?” Jennifer asked.

  Mila leaned closer and spoke over the radio. “I think Michelle is really hammered.”

  Jennifer arched her brow as she glanced toward the far end of the boat. There, Max had his arm flung over her beautiful sister as she giggled madly. She wore only a bikini, and her red hair caught the light of the moon.

  “She’ll be fine,” Jennifer replied. “This isn’t the first time we’ve been intoxicated on a boat. Remember a few weeks ago? Johnny had to carry you to the car.”

  “Shut up,” Mila said with a raucous laugh. “I wasn’t that bad.”

  “Let’s go swimming!” Max called out. He sprung up, placed his toes on the edge of the boat, and then jumped into the air in a perfect flip. The moonlight caught across his perfect muscles.

  Soon after, nearly everyone followed. Jennifer held back for a second, glanced again at Mila, and said, “What should we do about Michelle?”

  “I’m not letting her in that water,” Mila affirmed ominously. “I’ll stay up here and talk some sense into her.” Mila turned quickly toward Michelle. She gripped her hand and said, “Babe, I think you’ve had enough Coors Light. Don’t you?”

  “What?” Michelle pouted as she lifted her can of Coors. “Is Mila playing mom again?”

  Mila
stiffened and placed her hands on her hips. “If you go in that water, you’re in big trouble, Missy.”

  Michelle cackled with glee. At that moment, Joel appeared at the edge of the boat. His face and upper shoulders shifted at the top of the water. He beckoned for Jennifer and said, “Come on, baby! Get in here. The water’s fine.”

  Jennifer grinned as her heart surged with love for this man—her future, her life. She rushed toward the darkness and leaped over his head. When she rose to the top of the water, she called out for her other friends and swam toward them. As she raced, they splashed her silly and yelped. Their voices rang out across the Nantucket Sound.

  They were all so used to the enormity of the Nantucket Sound that not a single one of them thought about how deep and dark it was below their legs.

  This was their world. They’d grown up alongside it. Their soul was a part of it.

  About a half-hour later, Max admitted he needed to get the boat back “just in case Dad notices.” They piled back in, all of them feeling no pain and chilly from the water. Michelle had drunk her beer and had remained in the boat with Mila. She pouted at Max as he dropped down to kiss her.

  “I wanted to go swimming!” she said.

  “Did Mila keep you on the boat?” Max asked with a laugh.

  “I hope she learned her lesson.” Mila rolled her eyes.

  “You must have me mistaken for Jenny,” Michelle said. Her drunk glossy eyes flashed toward her twin, and her smile was infectious. “Teach me to be responsible like you, Jenny.”

  Jennifer dropped down beside Joel, who wrapped her tightly again in his thick arms. Max stood in front of the steering wheel and pointed back toward shore. “Everyone, hold on tight!” he yelled out. “Let’s get back to the bonfire!”

  The motor roared beneath them. Jennifer dropped her head against Joel’s chest as the night air flowed over them. Only the sound of the engine and the crackle of the radio filled their ears. Clouds had formed over the moon and the stars and shrouded them in darkness. In these moments, Jennifer felt several things: fear about whatever it was that was wrong with her; fear of the unknown next-steps; fear of whatever it was she and Joel were getting themselves into.