A door opened and the pleasant tang of ocean air wafted into the lobby. Natalie turned and looked longingly at the terrace,where guests were drinking cocktails or having lunch. Surely the dress would be safe with her out there. Feeling a bit like a modern Ms. Havisham, Natalie left her suitcases with the bellhop and carried the garment bag out to the terrace, placing it carefully on the chair across from her. She smiled as she accepted a menu from the waiter, then winced when she scanned the prices. The cheapest entrée was a twenty-eight-dollar club sandwich, fries not included.
With a sigh, she started to log into her banking app to see how much was in her checking account before remembering that she could charge lunch to her room, which Marigold’s parents were paying for. They wouldn’t bat an eye—they’dwantto cover her overpriced lunch at the expensive hotel they’d chosen. But there was a difference between accepting an invitation to dinner and billing something to their credit card without permission.
“Would you like to start with anything to drink?” the waiter asked.
“I’m good with water, thanks… No, wait, I’ll have an iced tea.” She glanced at her phone, where her bank balance had finally materialized. “Sorry, water is fine, actually.”
“Are you here for the wedding?” the waiter asked, nodding at the garment bag.
“Yep. I’m the maid of honor–slash–dress courier. I’ve literally taken a plane, trains, and automobiles to get it here. And a boat, of course.”
“Sounds like you could use a drink,” the waiter said. “How about a mimosa? On the house.”
Natalie gratefully accepted and, a few minutes later, felt the stress start to slip away as she sipped the cold, fizzy-sweet cocktail. She loved it up here in Maine, the one part of Marigold’sworld where she felt truly at home. She loved that you had to take a ferry to reach Sandpiper Island. (Apart from when she had a wedding dress in tow.) She loved that cars weren’t allowed and that everyone rode around on rusty, squeaky bikes, or lumbering golf carts. She loved drinking coffee on the porch in the morning, taking deep breaths of pine-scented air while seals splashed in the bay. She’d even accepted Bill and Lulu’s invitation to stay at the cottage after Marigold and Jonathan left for their honeymoon. Perhaps she’d finally finish the query letter she’d been rewriting for five months. Part of her was desperate to send her novel off to agents, but the thought of a publishing professional frowning over her manuscript—dismayed that yet another talentless wannabe had wasted their time—made her want to puke.
After mustering the courage to order the club sandwich, which was, after all, a steal compared with the forty-two-dollar lobster roll (fries not included), she opened Instagram and perused the accounts of her fellow bridesmaids, checking for important life updates so she’d be prepared for small talk. Liesl had posted another moody black-and-white photo of her smoking on a fire escape; Bri had gotten one of the new salmon semen facials; Richie shared a selfie of her and Margaret Qualley from theirHarper’s Bazaarphoto shoot, and based on her excitement over their “newest addition!” Hannah was either pregnant again, adopting a puppy, or renovating their house.
Natalie placed her phone on the table as the waiter arrived with the sandwich, but then her phone buzzed and without thinking, she rushed to grab it, jostling the mimosa she hadn’t realized the waiter had moved to make room. “Sorry, sorry,” Natalie said, using her napkin to mop up the droplets with one hand while she grabbed her phone with the other. Her brainraced through a variety of scenarios: the hairdresser was sick, the guy delivering the ring had (literally) missed the boat. Or maybe, just maybe, this was the text she’d been waiting for, the one where he finally admitted that he’d made a terrible mistake…
But it was just a text from Mrs. Friedlander, the mother of Natalie’s least-favorite student.
“No worries,” the waiter said kindly as he cleaned the stem of her champagne flute with a cloth.
Natalie checked to make sure nothing had spilled on the garment bag, then opened the message with a sigh.
natalie r u free today esme needs help with draft of admissions essay due to college advisor monday. can you call her at 4 thx.
Typical. Natalie had told Mrs. Friedlanderthree timesthat she’d be unavailable this weekend, but it never made a difference with the Upper East Side families who comprised the majority of her tutoring clients. They wanted her to be on twenty-four-hour call, just like the rest of their extensive staff.
Hi Mrs. Friedlander, I’m sorry but as we discussed, I’m taking a few days off for a friend’s wedding.
A moment later, Mrs. Friedlander’s reply popped up.
r u serious? esme is freaking out this is very unprofessional.
Natalie rolled her eyes. There was no point in reminding Mrs. Friedlander that Natalie had given her and Esme ample warning, let alone trying to explain why this was an essay Esme needed to at leasttryto draft herself. For the past two years, Natalie had sat by Esme’s side for hours at a time whenever she had a paper due, guiding her sentence by sentence until they both grew so tired and frustrated that Natalie eventually grabbed the laptop and cranked out the rest for her. Their agreement was that Esme would rewrite it “in her own voice,” but of course, that hadnever happened. Natalie didn’t have strong moral qualms about enabling Esme’s cheating—everyone at her sixty-thousand-dollar-per-year private school had tutors doing the exact same thing, so the playing field was level. But college applications were a different story. Esme would be competing against all sorts of kids, most of whom didn’t have access to this kind of help. Natalie couldn’t stomach the thought of giving her lazy, entitled, not particularly bright student a leg up. But if she refused, Mrs. Friedlander would bad-mouth her to every mother north of Fifty-Ninth Street.
God, she really needed to sell her book. Even a moderate advance would be enough to let Natalie quit tutoring for a year, enough time to figure out something that’d allow her to pay her bills without mortgaging her soul.
Okay. I’ll see what I can do. I’ll get back to you shortly.
what is bella garfield writing about? I know ur helping her too. she did the same summer program as esme so make sure she doesn’t write about volunteering in mexico that is esme’s topic.
As Natalie did her best to decipher the text—Mrs. Friedlander tended to dictate while she worked out on the Peloton—a voice behind her made her jump. “What are youdoing?” Natalie whipped around to see Olivia striding toward her. As usual, Marigold’s older sister looked like she’d come from a work cocktail party in her navy silk sheath dress and heels, her hair pulled back in a sleek ponytail. “Why is the dress out here?”
“Check-in isn’t until three!” Of course Olivia was going to treat this as the screwup of the century. She was constantly in crisis-management mode, even when there was no crisis. “I couldn’t take anything up to my room.”
“So you decided the best idea was to dump mimosas on it?” She pointed a pinky-beige nail at the single orange droplet thathad made its way onto the heavy plastic garment bag. It was so small, Natalie hadn’t noticed. “Are you drunk?”
Natalie could feel her cheeks turning as red as the bottoms of Olivia’s shoes. “Come on, you think I’d get drunk attwo in the afternoon?”
“I don’t give a shit what you do on your own time. I just don’t want anything to happen to Marigold’s dress.”
Yeah, right, Natalie thought.You’dloveit if something happened to the dress. You’d love to prove that Marigold blew it by not choosing you as her maid of honor.
“Come on,” Olivia said with a sigh, hoisting the garment bag over her shoulder.
Natalie jumped to her feet to follow, then glanced back at her untouched sandwich. “Oh, wait. I need to pay for that.”
