“Visiting!” cries Aggie.
Aggie’s blond (can’t be real, not anymore) hair is artfully beach-wavy, and she’s tanned in that perfectly even way that Louisa’s Irish roots would never permit. Dress: resort casual.
“I thought Minnesota was the Land of the Ten Thousand Lakes,” says Louisa. “Why are you visiting Maine?”
Aggie sighs. “All lakes and no oceans make Aggie a dull girl, Louisa.” Inwardly Louisa groans. She had forgotten Aggie’s habit of talking about herself in the third person. “Also,” Aggie continues, “I havesuchfond memories of being in the area at your wedding. I’ve always wanted to come back here. It’s been on my bucket list forever.”
Frankly Louisa is surprised Aggie had retained any memories of their wedding at all. She’d gotten very drunk and had gone back to the Samoset, where most of the guests stayed, with one of Steven’s groomsmen, sullying, Louisa worried, her family’s decades-old sterling reputation at the resort. Although surely Aggie wasn’t thefirst person—nor would she be the last—to show up green at the gills to a morning-after champagne brunch.
“I’ve been saying to Ernie for such a long time: We havegotto get to Maine. I told Steven we were going to be up here! Didn’t he tell you? I told him to tell you!”
Louisa shakes her head. This is her own fault. Steven wanted to tell her one more thing about Aggie. And Louisa, stung about the money, hadn’t wanted to hear it.Serves you right,she tells herself. Serves. You. Right.
“I was hoping you and I could get together,” Aggie said. “I asked him to pass along my number to you. Did he not?”
“He did not.”
“Oh, Steven.” Aggie rolls her eyes and gives Louisa a conspiratorial look, as though Steven is a mischievous child and they are the parents, trying to outsmart him. “But look, here we are now, anyway! We’ve just had sixgloriousnights at the Inn at Ocean’s Edge, and tomorrow we head down to Portland to fly back home. Do you know the Inn at Ocean’s Edge?”
“Only by name,” confesses Louisa. The other half of the “we” must be Aggie’s husband, Ernie, whom Louisa has never met. Louisa and Steven had been unable to make it to Aggie’s wedding almost three years ago—it was in September, too close to the beginning of Louisa’s school year.
“Well. It’s wonderful. If you ever get the opportunity to go you should take it.”
Louisa thinks, but does not say, that she probably won’t get the opportunity. A week at the Inn at Ocean’s Edge would eat up her book advance.
“This trip has sort of a special reason,” Aggie continues, apparently not noticing that Louisa hasn’t responded. “Asadspecial reason.” Aggie’s eyes fill almost immediately with tears, which stop at the edges before they spill over and threaten her makeup. “If I start talking about this I may lose it.”
“You don’t have to tell me!”Please,thinks Louisa,please don’t tell me.
The foot traffic in The Smiling Cow is picking up; Louisa begins to worry that they are blocking people from reaching the lobster buoy Christmas ornaments and the dish towels that say things likenever trust a skinny cookandbe grateful, with a drawing of a cheese grater. But every time she attempts to move away from Aggie, to build some space around them, Aggie moves forward and creates a new block—a pawn challenging Louisa’s opening gambit.
“Oh, I don’t mind. There’s no shame in it, after all.” Aggie releases a world-weary sigh. “We finished our final round of in vitro and it didn’t work. So we decided to drown our sorrows in luxury.”
“Oh no!” says Louisa. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t know.”
“How would you know?” asks Aggie. “I haven’t seen you in ages.” She presses her lips together and shakes her head, and Louisa can’t help it: she does feel bad for Aggie. She’d never pegged Aggie as someone who wanted children; she imagined her like one of the characters onSuccession,cruising exotic islands in a yacht the size of Louisa’s Brooklyn neighborhood without a care in the world except for when the Veuve Clicquot would be chilled enough to drink.
“I know, but I have friends who have been through that. I know it’s rough. I really am sorry.”
“Thank you,” says Aggie. She turns, looking over the sea of tourists between her and the door, and says, “There he is! My love.”
Instead of what Louisa was expecting—a Hugh lookalike, maybe, Jackman or Grant—she sees a man at least two inches shorter than Aggie, with a balding pate and a wildly unfashionable pair of sneakers. “Ernie!” calls Aggie. “Over here!” Ernie makes his way over and Aggie kisses him in a way that stopsjustthis side of inappropriate—the kiss almost makes Louisa blush! “Ernie’s my heart and soul,” says Aggie. “Ernie, Louisa. Louisa, Ernie. Louisa is Steven’s better half.” Louisa searches Aggie’s voice for signs ofirony but finds none at all. Next to Ernie, Aggie looks like Princess Kate posing for a photo with a commoner. “Ernie’s going to look in The Leather Bench. AndI’mlooking into becoming vegan, so I won’t go in there. I’ve been reading up on the meat industry and global warming, and honestly I don’t think I ever need to eat another burger in my life. Hey—if you’re free, why don’t we get a drink?”
Louisa looks surreptitiously at her watch. It’s just past eleven-thirty; her iced mocha has barely made its way down her digestive tract. “I should be getting back,” she says. “I left the kids with my mom.” She doesn’t say that she left them with plans to be gone all day.
“Oh, come on,” says Aggie. “It’ll be fun! Like old times.”
Louisa squints at Aggie. She’s not sure she and Aggie have experienced enough old times together to relive them.Stevenand Aggie, for sure. But it appears that Aggie is not taking no for an answer. Before Louisa has a chance to say more, Aggie has grabbed her by the wrist and is pulling her toward the door. Over her tanned shoulder Aggie calls out, “Louisa and I are going to Peter Ott’s, okay, sweetheart? We’ll be on the deck. You go ahead and enjoy the leather, and meet us there when you’re done.”
Aggie leads Louisa down the street to Peter Ott’s and asks for two seats on the deck. They are given a corner table under a dramatically flourishing hanging flower basket. “Dark and Stormy?” asks Aggie. “That’s my favorite thing to drink on vacation. Now that I’m not trying to get pregnant any longer.” She sighs.
“Sure,” says Louisa. “Dark and Stormy it is.”
“It’s so nice to sit with a friend,” says Aggie. “Now tell me what you’re working on. A book about Fiji or something? Is what Steven said?”
“Pitcairn,” says Louisa.
“Pitcairn. Ofcourse!” says Aggie, like Pitcairn is her favorite dog breed. Louisa feels like she’s living in some alternate universe.Aggie Baumfeld isn’t scary or threatening, the way Louisa has always thought of her, the way she’s been thinking about her in particular since she found out about the money. She’snice!Sure, she’s the richest person Louisa will ever have a Dark and Stormy with, and her makeup is flawless, and her dress is gorgeous, but like everybody else walking around on God’s green earth she’s harboring legitimate heartache. Besides that, she’s in love with her homely husband. There is absolutely no indicationwhatsoeverthat she’s trying to appropriate Louisa’s.
