“June had a little episode,” Caroline announces, in a bright, astringent voice that positively invites a punch directly in the head. Being around Caroline reminds Lilly of the very first days after they moved to Pemberly Grove from the Valley, back before she met Isobel and learned how to stand for a photograph—the feeling of knowing she had the wrong kind of jeans and backpack and mother, of knowing she didn’t belong. It makes her want to chew with her mouth open. It makes her want to pick a fight, feeling anxious to communicate the gravity of the situation, even if nobody else seems to think it’s that big of a deal.
“It wasn’t a big deal,” June tells Charlie now; Will is still glowering in the corner like a bridge troll, water bottle dangling from his long, elegant fingers. “I think I was just a little dehydrated, that’s all.”
“She fainted,” Lilly reports. “She hit her head.”
“Holy shit,” Charlie says, crossing the room and putting both hands gently on June’s skull, feeling carefully around for the bump with the authority of a person who has played a doctor on three different nighttime soaps. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” June insists again—laughing, ducking out of his touch as her cheeks get pink. June is preternaturally shy about PDA of any kind. “Your sister has been taking good care of me.”
Lilly blinks, stung in spite of herself, even though she knows June didn’t mean anything by it. She should have tagged along this morning, even if it meant doing one-handed planks with Caroline and her trainer. She should have made June eat a Clif Bar while she watched. “We were just about to get going,” she announces,not wanting Will to get the idea that she was lurking around here like some kind of weird Shakespearean fangirl hoping he’d show up, but Charlie is already shaking his head.
“No, no, you guys should hang out for a while,” he says easily. “Have you eaten? We can grill.”
Lilly opens her mouth to say they can’t—meeting of the Reality Show Trash Bags of America, maybe, board elections, can’t miss ’em—when June cuts her off. “Sure,” she says, her cheeks still flushing prettily. “That sounds great.”
Lilly frowns. “Junie,” she says quietly. She feels jangly and nervous and twitchy to leave, like there’s something she ought to be doing; she’s thinking about Joe, about staving off disaster. About how to save people from themselves. “You should probably rest, no?”
But June shakes her head: “It’s okay,” she says, “I promise. I really am feeling a lot better.”
June digs her heels in once, maybe twice a year, which is how Lilly knows whatever’s happening between Charlie and her must be serious; still, she’s about to keep arguing when a scruffy brown dog comes careening down the stairs, his nails clicking wildly on the hardwood. Ranger is smaller than he looked inPeople, a shepherd mix with a foxlike tail and freckly muzzle. He swerves at the last minute and heads directly for Will, who crouches down on the floor and runs his palms along his bristly back, the two of them wrestling for a long, unconscious moment. The dog rolls over and exposes his smooth pink belly, wiggling delightedly.
Finally Will looks up, noticing Lilly staring. “What?” he asks, his expression turning defensive.
“I—nothing,” Lilly says, recovering a beat too late. “I’m just surprised, that’s all. You didn’t really strike me as a dog person.”
“I didn’t really strike you as adogperson?” Will laughs at that, though Lilly isn’t sure if she’s imagining that he looks slightly stung.
“Aw, he’s cranky, Lilly,” Charlie tells her, slinging a friendly arm around her shoulders and steering her and June back in the direction of the fully stocked bar out on the patio. “He’s not a serial killer.”
Lilly feels her cheeks get a tiny bit hot. “Can’t be too careful,” she manages to reply. Ranger butts his head against Will’s hand.
In the end it turns into a little bit of a party, Caroline’s friend Lucy showing up with a bottle of tequila and a couple of tech bros Charlie knows dropping over with some weed from an organic cannabis outfit they’re hoping he’ll invest in. Anne Mulgrew stops by, though it’s unclear to Lilly who would have invited her; an Icelandic pop star named Sera Foye floats, happily stoned, across the length of the pool. Lilly remembers this, from back before her family’s empire began to crumble: the way people come and go in houses like this one, the luxury and the largesse. More wine appears, seemingly out of nowhere. Charlie makes guacamole with avocados right off the tree.
The sun is just starting to set when Lilly ducks inside for more ice and finds Will standing freshly showered in the kitchen in jeans and a soft-looking Henley, gathering ingredients for a salad. “You need help?” she asks, surprised; she figured he’d disappeared entirely, off to quietly recite theAeneidto himself in the original Greek or whatever it is he does for fun.
Will shakes his head. “I’m okay.” She’s just about to turn and head outside when he continues: “Caroline told me you walked here.”
“Is that... noteworthy?” Lilly asks, lifting an eyebrow.
He shrugs. “To Caroline, it is.”
“I walk a lot.”
“Me too,” he says. “Back at home, anyway.”
“Where are you from again?”
“New York,” he says immediately, then realizes a beat too late that she’s screwing with him. “Oh.”
“I’m teasing you.”
“I realize that now.”
“Welcome to the conversation.”
“Thank you.” He smiles then—a real smile, disarming. Before she can help herself, Lilly smiles back.
She sits down at one of the tall stools at the island, watching as he pulls a sharp-looking knife from the block. Lilly isn’t much of a cook herself, but she can tell from years of being around Charlotte that he knows what he’s doing, his hands quick and confident and keen. He adds walnuts and goat cheese and fat slices of peach to the big wooden salad bowl, working the fruit loose from the stone with the edge of his knife. “I have to say, Will Darcy,” she tells him, plucking a blueberry out of the punnet on the counter and popping it into her mouth, “if I didn’t hate you so much, I might be a little bit impressed right now.”
