Falling in with the cool moms of her preppy New England town might upend one woman’s life, in a sparkling and sharp-witted novel about marriage, escape, and deceptively tidy little lives.
Intrigued? Well read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Sara Shukla’s Pink Whales, which is available from June 4 2024.
Charlie is already feeling adrift when she relocates to an exclusive town in coastal New England with her mysteriously distant husband, Dev, and their young twins in tow. She hopes the move will recharge her stalled marriage, and she wants her kids to feel like they belong, even if she’s clearly a fish out of water herself. In a strange new world where summer is a verb and both the harbor and the partygoers are awash in a dizzying constellation of pinks and pastels, she’s never felt so confounded or alone. She’ll need more than a preppy handbook to find her way.
Then a trio of power moms—imposing, beautiful, and monogrammed—comes to the rescue, and Charlie clings to their attention like a life raft. As Dev pulls further away, Charlie dives into her newfound friends’ circle of yacht clubs, rivalries, and bizarre theme parties, hoping to find her sea legs. She even dares to cozy up to a hot, barefoot, and aggressively flirty local. But if she’s running from her problems at home, where exactly is she escaping to? Charlie is beginning to wonder. This ridiculous new normal—and her desire to be part of it—might just eat her alive.
I didn’t mean to misplace my kid. Not in public. I’d lost the coffee maker in the move, but that was understandable. My family’s relocation to New England still didn’t feel real, the chaos amplified by two young children and a husband whose brain lingered on shift at the clinic he’d joined, double-checking orders and charts in his head even while his body, as if in a fugue state, shuffled around our rented yellow cottage. Unable to face another day of opening boxes, unpacking boxes, breaking down boxes (or just breaking down), I herded the twins out the door of the dilapidated guesthouse we now called home. I felt like Ms. Pac-Man, jaw hinging haplessly, chasing two rogue ghosts down the tree-lined sidewalk grid into town.
On the walk, gulls cried over our heads. Kate threw her head back and yelped, “AAAIIIIIEEEE!” in reply, slicing through the still, dignified air. Toby screeched in response. I imagined white-haired men and women in their shingle-sided homes, ironed shirts tucked neatly into khakis, startling from their crossword puzzles, sloshing coffee from their cups and saucers onto antique rugs.
Taking the highway exit into Rumford was like beaming our beat-up Subaru Forester directly into a link from Coastal Living’s “Top Ten Seaside Towns.” When Dev first sold me on Rumford, I’d pictured sunset-saturated photos of our children frolicking on the rocky coastline in white fisherman sweaters. I hadn’t owned a white piece of clothing since the twins were born. Then, when we pulled up to the cottage on Cedar Street, I’d marveled at the overgrown plantings. I’d said to Dev, “Things grow here because drunk undergrads don’t pee on them.”
Back in North Carolina, we’d intended to move from the block of student apartments next to the hospital. But Dev’s call schedule had been relentless. I called it getting raptured, so sudden were his departures. Year after year, proximity won out over wanting a garden with little tomato plants. When both kids were sick, when the power went out during a thunderstorm, when Dev couldn’t even respond to a text about picking up milk or toilet paper, I imagined him swooping down on a distressed patient with a defibrillator, arms outstretched like an eagle’s wings. I’d seen enough episodes of ER to romanticize, when necessary, the human drama that could be monopolizing him, even as I understood that most of his work involved titrating meds and dictating electronic medical records, bursts of electricity confined to a computer’s processing unit.
Still, when Dev said he wanted to leave, it hit me that our current way of life wasn’t unlike being slowly suffocated by a favorite pillow. I was so familiar with the contours, it had taken time to realize I could barely breathe. In Rumford, I told myself, I wouldn’t have to imagine Dev taking heroic measures on someone’s nana while I ate dinner by myself or measured purple tablespoons of children’s Motrin at two in the morning. I wouldn’t be alone.
#
By the time the kids and I arrived at the Jib, a café on Market Street, my running shorts clung to my thighs like plastic wrap. This trip would be fast—in and out. I hadn’t met anyone in town beyond our mail carrier, and I wasn’t primed for first impressions. I adjusted the backpack I’d grabbed on my way out the door and winced as something sharp dug into my shoulder blade. It was a gardening shovel Kate had found in the new shed. She’d demanded I carry it with us at all times in the event she needed to dig an emergency snow cave. Never mind it was July. Never mind Kate was six. When I told the kids we were moving to New England, to a town they’d never seen, an hour north of a city—Boston—they’d never heard of, Kate took an intense interest in survival training.
Toby stalled as I nudged the kids inside, and the door swung shut, trapping my backpack. I clawed at the bag with one arm, like it was caught in a bear trap.
“Use the shovel!” Kate suggested loudly.
After finally freeing myself, I scanned the café for a free table and noted four canvas tote bags, each monogrammed and nestled next to their owners like small, fashionable dogs. Could I monogram my JanSport backpack? If only it were so easy, to land someplace and solidify to match it, like Jell-O spreading into a mold.
I readied myself for some adult interaction. It had been seven days since the four of us traded the mountains of our university town for flat, tidy lawns and shingled sea captain homes. Five days since I’d had a conversation with another adult that didn’t involve an invoice or a sandwich order. Two days since I’d laid eyes on Dev, though we technically shared the same bed. Two hours past when I should have had a cup of coffee—which was the one problem I could solve.
“Mama, look who’s here!” Kate said. She stopped short, and Toby bounced off her.
I followed Kate’s gaze. I’d texted Dev to let him know we were going into town, feeling like I should send evidence we were, in fact, settling in, even if each successive day made it look like more bombs had gone off inside our two-bedroom cottage. Dev hadn’t replied, but that was nothing new. Maybe he’d managed to sneak away and meet us. But instead of finding my husband in a wrinkled button-down, dark curly hair brushing the top of wire-rimmed glasses, I saw Kate pointing to Santa.
To be fair, I was less surprised to see Santa.
On a table, a square sign printed on thick, cream-colored card stock lay propped against a coffee cup. The sign read: It’s Christmas in July! Get a jump on the holidays and help kids at Bradley Elementary get a jump on school supplies. Bradley was the town where Dev worked, a handful of miles and seemingly worlds away.
Two women flanked Santa, and a little girl with straight blonde hair and enviable posture sat on his lap. She looked bored. At Santa’s feet, I spotted a fifth tote bag. Its looped canvas handles stood at attention like bunny ears.
One woman wore a linen dress, its navy-and-white stripes as crisp as her canvas bag, as precise as the ribbon in the little girl’s hair. Her body was a study in lines: her blonde hair was expertly trimmed to an inch above her shoulders, her dress tailored to just above her knees. A pair of oversize tortoiseshell sunglasses held her hair back from her face, while her hands rested on her narrow hips. Clearly nothing that touched her body was the result of an impulse purchase from an Instagram ad at two in the morning.
The other woman held a camera so high tech it looked like it could transform into a robot and walk away. Her hair was darker and pulled into a tight, high ponytail. Her skin was smooth, her makeup minimal. She was shorter than the other woman, and looked like she could dominate a squash tournament at a moment’s notice. A white quilted leather backpack lay beside the table, and I wasn’t sure if it was for the camera or her gym clothes, both of which probably cost more than my student loan payment. Her tennis whites were fitted and flawless, and her teeth were bleached the same shade as her skort.
I felt sweaty, not dewy, and suddenly being barely a year past thirty felt borderline adolescent. Was it these women’s actual ages—midthirties at least?—or did their dry-clean-only clothing simply make them seem more experienced?
I tried to straighten my spine, but the shovel dug in deeper. Glancing down, I saw a stain in the shape of small fingers near the hem of my rumpled T-shirt. It’s pizza, I thought. We had pizza last night. We had pizza a lot of nights.
I gripped Kate’s and Toby’s hands and tried to lead them to a table in the back, but the currents of their tiny bodies pulled in opposite directions.
“Ivy, just a few more shots. Stop squirming,” Navy Stripes said. To Tennis Whites: “Honestly, Poppy, if I hear him say cap rate one more time, I’m going to put Ambien in his single malt. Ivy, keep smiling.”
The woman in tennis whites, Poppy, held the camera in the air, not actually taking any pictures, though she seemed to be the one in charge of the Santa operation. She looked like she could be in charge of any number of operations. Her taut arm balanced a clipboard as she smiled and set the camera on a tripod. Navy Stripes dropped two twenties into the donations jar, kissed Poppy on the cheek, and motioned for the little girl to follow. They made it look so easy, to move through the world like everything wasn’t about to fall apart.
Santa’s lap was available seating, and I hadn’t let the kids out of my sight in almost a week. In the pilled red velvet, I saw my chance to do one thing by myself, with two free hands, while someone else poured coffee over ice for me. I plopped Kate and Toby onto Santa’s knees, told them to smile, and assured Poppy I’d be right back.
She glanced at her gold chronograph watch. “We got this!” she said, and her smile let me relax just enough to step away.
In line behind Navy Stripes and her daughter, I leaned sideways and checked my reflection in the pastry display case, then looked away just as quickly. The bags under my eyes could hold groceries, and my dry shampoo that morning had sprayed out nothing but air.
Two teenage girls giggled about a late-night party. I listened, nostalgic for the days when a cup of coffee could cure a hangover, when my skin withstood all-nighters with such alarming elasticity.
I ordered an iced coffee. The ice maker at the cottage grumbled on and off without producing anything cold, and by midday I longed for the central AC of the south like a jilted lover. I turned to see if Poppy needed me, digging into my wallet for some bills to put into the donations jar. But Kate was the only one with her. Where there should have been two children, Santa’s lap was half-full.
I blinked. Where the hell was Toby?
I scanned the shop for Toby’s brown curls, a shade lighter than his father’s though equally unruly. My chest felt hollow. I forced a slow, shaky breath and tried to think. Toby couldn’t have gone far. It was a coffee shop. The bell on the door rang sharply. Toby was small for his age and could slip out a door quicker than a shadow. I held my breath and craned my neck to look out the window. Two thoughts flashed in my head: If Dev was here, this wouldn’t be happening. Then, also, I’m not telling Dev this happened again.
“Charlie,” the barista called.
The harbor was two blocks away, its water so smooth that just yesterday Toby asked if he could walk on it. The chipmunk scampering in my chest did a cartwheel.
But, as I lunged for the door, hand pressed to my rib cage, I caught sight of two toothpick legs sticking out from under a square table. I knew those toes; they’d been painted orange by his sister. Toby sat there, perfectly at home on the smudged tile floor at the feet of a well-dressed, oblivious man speaking heatedly into a Bluetooth earpiece. I let out my breath. It’s okay, I thought. He was here all along.
Squatting, I motioned for Toby, but he shook his head. He started picking at something stuck to the underside of the table. I hissed his name and waved harder.
“Charlie,” the barista repeated. She sounded bored. Was she going to throw out the coffee? Wait, was that gum Toby was pulling from the underside of the table?
The businessman sitting at the table stamped a tan Sperry boat shoe into the floor as he drove home a point about a 7.5 percent cap rate, and Toby startled. Before I could reach out for him, he darted on all fours like a squirrel across the aisle and under the next table, knocking a tote bag to its side and spilling its contents onto the floor.
It was Navy Stripes’s bag. Of course it was. I frantically mouthed sorry in her general direction.
Suddenly the town, the coffee shop, the bags, it was all too much. I was sticky with dried sweat, I was severely undercaffeinated, and I wanted my son back. I crouched on my hands and knees and dove under the table. A chair groaned against the tile. My knee landed on something wet. I grabbed hold of Toby’s ankle and pulled him to me before he reached the remains of an oatmeal raisin cookie. Emerging from under the table, I banged my head and let out a curse that would make a sailor blush.
Upright, I held Toby around the waist and tucked him into my elbow like a football. He kicked and screamed, “Cooookie!” I refused to make eye contact with the women whose table I’d dive-bombed, pivoting instead and squinting for my coffee at the end of the counter, my free hand outstretched like a running back.
Then I remembered I had another child. Kate was still frozen on Santa’s lap. They stared at each other, Kate and Santa, neither willing to make the first move. I could already see Kate adding the big man to her flip-top notebook of worst-case scenarios.
“Kate!” I hissed. Toby writhed like an octopus, all arms and legs, clamped between my hip and elbow. I tried again. “Kate, hop down!”
Poppy, clipboard balanced on her forearm, glided toward Kate, hands outstretched to lift her from Santa’s lap. But Kate recoiled and grabbed the poor man’s beard instead. From the look on his face, it was real.
I heaved Toby over to his sister, palming my coffee as I passed the counter. When he realized he was close to Santa again, Toby kicked. His foot caught around a leg of the tripod where Poppy had set the camera. I spun to watch the entire setup clatter into the fake fireplace, upending a collection of soy candles. As I watched the candles topple, one after the other like environmentally conscious dominos, Toby’s flailing limbs swept a half-full latte from the table to the floor. Lukewarm froth seeped into my canvas sneakers.
I shook my soggy sneaker and mumbled a defeated, “Sorry, so sorry,” to anyone in earshot—Santa, Poppy, the postparty teenage girls making a note to refill their secret birth control prescriptions. I held out my own hard-won iced coffee as an offering for the spilled latte. But instead of taking it, Poppy scooped Kate from Santa’s lap like a basketball.
“Don’t be silly,” she said, waving over one of the teens from behind the coffee counter. “They think it’s a hoot to use the mop.”
Poppy plopped Kate into an empty chair at the table with the other women.
This was not the plan. People in Rumford barely made eye contact. Dev called it “New England Charm.” Could I simply make a run for it? I could go home, shower, change, sedate the children, then return us all to the coffee shop and sit back down.
But as Poppy looked at me expectantly, I fell into a seat, still holding Toby to my hip.
“Thanks,” I said. I tried to smile. I wasn’t sure what was actually happening on my face.
Poppy nodded at Kate with approval. “She’s unfazed.”
“Not much fazes Kate,” I said. I gave a small wave with my free hand. “I’m Charlie. I’m fazed by many things.”
When neither of the other women spoke, Poppy held out her hand. “I’m Poppy,” she said. Her grip was firm, like her arm. “Are you summering? Have I seen you at the beach club?”
“We just moved here,” I said. “We have a summer rental for now, on Cedar Street. But we’re not, um, summering?”
Did I just use summer as a verb?
“Oh, the guesthouse!” Poppy said.
I turned the coffee cup around in my hands. “I call it the cottage since, you know, we’re not visiting. And we don’t know the couple who owns it. I heard they’re in Europe? I was going to go to Europe once, when my brother graduated from college, but I got pregnant instead.”
I sucked on the straw to stop talking. They didn’t need my OB-GYN history. The truth was, we’d rented the “cottage” unseen. All we knew was that the owner’s children were grown, and the empty nesters—whose main house was enormous—were traveling abroad, or had another house in France. They were renting out the guest cottage, and the real estate agent had made it all sound very Great Gatsby on the phone. She hadn’t mentioned how the dishwasher was ancient enough to sound like a tsunami, or how the bedroom carpets were the color of tree moss.
“It’s adorable. Isn’t it, Heidi?” Poppy said. She looked to the woman sitting next to her, whose long honey-colored hair fell in waves over a gauzy black top. She pulled gold aviator sunglasses over her eyes in response. Poppy nodded as if she’d spoken out loud, and said, “I know just the one. I played house there as a kid. I wonder if they’ve updated it since then.”
While they had not, in fact, updated anything since the early nineties as far as I could tell, I almost said I was playing house, too. I liked to imagine the four of us walking down Market Street together, mailing crayon rubbings of seashells to Dev’s mother, popping into the little grocery store, which we’d soon learn to call the market. Rumford would be a place where I could stand beside a table made of reclaimed barnwood, ladle chowder from a stainless steel pot into four bowls made of bread.
In this scenario, too, the strange, simmering tension between Dev and me would simply dissipate as well, like so much steam from a perfectly seasoned chowder.
“So, Poppy, is this enough for your merit badge?” Navy Stripes asked, motioning toward the now-empty and clean Santa corner.
“For community engagement, yes, thank you for asking,” Poppy replied. She said to me, “My boys, Pax and Dodge, they need to check some boxes for the upcoming school year.”
I looked around, but I didn’t see any boys, only Poppy.
Navy Stripes sipped her coffee, then made a face. “This is vanilla,” she said, frowning. “You both know I gave up sugar.”
Heidi swapped the cups without speaking.
“So what brought you here?” Poppy asked me. She was still the only one of the three who’d formally acknowledged my presence. “Usually the new faces in Rumford come from the dermatologist’s office.”
Heidi snorted. A church bell rang a few streets away. Navy Stripes flicked an annoyed glance at the man with the Bluetooth earpiece. I put my hand on Kate’s head and smoothed her hair, until I realized Poppy was still looking at me, waiting.
“My husband took a job in Bradley, at a health care practice,” I said. “We needed a change, and Rumford sounded nice, I guess. You know, small town, pretty sidewalks, lobster rolls . . .”
“That’ll do it,” Poppy said. She tapped the table for emphasis, like I had aced her pop quiz.
“He left out the part about his ex-girlfriend being his new boss and how she basically begged him to join her, but I’m sure it won’t be weird at all,” I said, immediately wishing I hadn’t left my filter somewhere along the six-hundred-mile stretch of I-95 we’d traveled to get here.
But that was when Navy Stripes seemed to finally take note of me. As she turned, her hair swung like a golden curtain.
“Your husband,” she said. “He’s at the health care place in Bradley?”
Kate piped up. “My dad’s a doctor,” she said. “He fixes people.”
Navy Stripes settled back in her chair, but she fixed me with a hungry look.
“Rumford is lovely, isn’t it?” Poppy said. “Do you love it?”
I hesitated. It felt like I needed to give Poppy the right answer again or I’d disrupt some delicate balance in the very fabric of the community. Anyway, love was a complicated word. We’d only been here a week. I didn’t not love it. I just didn’t understand it, or how I fit into it, or, really, why exactly we were here.
“It helps if you know where to go,” Poppy said when I didn’t answer. “Like the yacht club! It’s around the corner. I’m sure you’ve seen it.”
“Totally,” I said. “It’s great.”
I hadn’t seen it. I didn’t know about any clubs, other than a YMCA in Bradley, around the corner from the clinic. I did know I didn’t want Kate and Toby to spend every summer watching Scooby-Doo and eating microwave popcorn like my brother, Simon, and I had. I hadn’t admitted it to Dev, but part of moving to a small town appealed to me. Small towns had traditions, predictability. In a way, I was hoping the town would tell me what the heck to do.
“We’ll have to drop by,” I said. “The yacht club, I mean.”
“Oh, you do have to be a member there,” Poppy said, as if I couldn’t have a puppy.
Navy Stripes put her elbows on the table and leaned forward. I leaned back reflexively.
“Charlie. It’s Charlie, right?” She looked to Poppy, not me, for confirmation. “I’m Lacy. Come to the yacht club tomorrow night. I insist.”
I looked from one woman to the other. “Are there, like, guest passes?”
“You can be Poppy’s guest,” Lacy said. She pushed back from the table and squared her bare shoulders. “You don’t need a pass. But only if you promise to bring your husband.”
Poppy clapped her hands. Heidi got up to throw away her coffee. These women were over the top and a little frightening, but I wasn’t awash in invitations to do, well, anything. And maybe Dev would be excited to do something new. The only place he’d gone since we arrived in Rumford was work. Maybe this was just what we needed. We certainly needed something.
“Thanks,” I said, focusing on keeping my voice steady, as if we were invited to exclusive parties after trashing a coffee shop every day. “That’s so nice of you. I’m sorry about the mess we made here.”
Poppy waved her hand. “Oh please, it’s not like you burned the place down.”
The door opened, and I took a deep breath, willing the salt air to fill me, to make Rumford feel more like home.
Excerpted from Pink Whales: A Novel by Sara Shukla. © 2024 Published by Little A Books, June 4, 2024. All Rights Reserved.
