Silver Girl by Elin Hilderbrand Page B

thing about the past two days was that, for the first time in years, Connie hadn’t been alone.
    Connie flung open the sliding door, and Meredith scurried to the other side of the room, as though she were a vampire, allergic to daylight. Connie went outside and stood on the deck. The jig was up. Meredith was here. Connie wanted to face the ocean and anyone hiding in it and shout,
She’s here! Meredith Delinn is here!
The world could tell Connie she was unstable, insane, or just plain stupid, but at that moment, she made a decision: Meredith was staying.
    Meredith was afraid to read on the deck. Meredith was afraid to walk on the beach. Connie sat on the deck herself. She peered at the water. Around noon, Harold appeared, alone. Connie watched him frolic in the waves, then felt lonely. She went inside and made turkey sandwiches.
    “Meredith!” she called. “Lunch!”
    Meredith didn’t answer.
    Connie went upstairs and tapped on Meredith’s door.
    Meredith said, “
Entrez.
”
    Connie opened the door. Meredith was lying on her bed wearing her bathing suit and cover-up, reading.
    “Come out on the deck and have lunch.”
    “No,” Meredith said.
    Connie wondered if Meredith was more frightened of the Russian mob or the FBI .
    “No one is trying to hurt you. They’re just trying to scare you.”
    “They succeeded.”
    “Well, they didn’t succeed with me. I’ve been sitting on the deck all morning and nothing’s happened.”
    Meredith said, “Someone knows I’m here.”
    Connie sighed. “What can I say? Someone knows you’re here. You know, we might feel better if we called the police.”
    “We can’t call the police,” Meredith said. “Absolutely not.”
    “Why not?” Connie said. “You’re scared, you feel threatened, you call the police; they write up a report, wave their guns, anyone watching us knows we’ve called the police, they get intimidated, they leave us alone.”
    “No one can know I’m here,” Meredith said. “Not even the police. If this gets out, everyone’s going to hate you.”
    “No one’s going to hate me,” Connie said, “and the police would keep it quiet.” But she knew Meredith was right: the police talked to the fire department who talked to Santos Rubbish who talked to the guys at Sconset Gardener, and soon everybody on Nantucket knew that Meredith Delinn was hiding out at 1103 Tom Nevers Road. “Okay, we won’t call the police. Just please come outside.”
    “No,” Meredith said.

    For dinner, Connie made cheeseburgers and salad. The cheeseburgers had to be cooked on the grill, which put Connie out on the deck with her back to the ocean. It was unnerving, she had to admit. She kept whipping around, but when she did, no one was there.
    At Meredith’s request, they ate inside. They needed a safe topic of conversation, which meant they had to venture pretty far back. Growing up, high school—but not Toby. Meredith again unearthed the names Wendy Thurber and Nadine Dexter, and once Connie had sifted through the archaeological ruins of her mind and figured out who these names belonged to, she hooted. Wendy and Nadine had been good, close friends. They had once been a part of Connie’s everyday, though she hadn’t seen them in over thirty years. What were Wendy and Nadine doing now? Meredith remembered Wendy as clingy and pathetic, and Nadine as a stout lesbian in the making.
    “Yes, so do I,” Connie said, although really it had been so long ago and Connie’s memory was so poor that she was helpless to do anything but agree.
    At nine thirty, Meredith said she was going upstairs. “It’s my bedtime,” she said, and Connie remembered that both Meredith and Freddy had always stuck to an early bedtime, as though they were children with school in the morning.
    “Freddy’s not here,” Connie said, pouring herself a third glass of wine. “You can stay up with me.”
    Meredith said, “Are you afraid to stay up by yourself? Admit it, you are.”
    “I’m