So there it was. “I will never, ever forgive you,” Augusta spat, getting into the car and slamming the door. She left Fran standing there and pulled quickly away, aware that she was shaking with rage.
“Mommy, what happened?” asked Charlie.
“Nothing, sweetie,” Augusta croaked, swiping at her eyes. She was crying and trying so hard to fight it. “You were so good and I am so very proud of you. I just got a bad headache and so that’s why I’m sad.”
“Poor Mommy,” Charlie said quietly. “When we go home, I’ll get you a snack.”
Jane and Beatrixwere still awake when they walked in the door, but Augusta couldn’t face them. She asked Zoey to stay for another hour and start the bedtime routine while she went back out for a bit. She was crying and she drove aimlessly, off toward the castle, but it was dark and the gates would be closed, so she turned around and headed downtown. As she crossed over the Choate Bridge, she saw the lights twinkling in the pub and, on impulse, pulled into one of theparking spots out front. She would sit alongside the old men and drink a glass of wine and stare at the game. The wine would be bad, and the game would be baseball? Basketball? She didn’t even know, but she just couldn’t be home.
She found a seat and ordered from the woman behind the bar, an older lady with dry blond hair in a clip and gold necklaces that fell across her tan, crepey throat. The wine wasn’t good, but it was cold and she drank it quickly and ordered a second.
She was furious with Fran. Furious to realize just how foolish she had been. If Fran knew about Colin and Eben then so did RJ. Van must have known too. And her own mother, Augusta realized with a start. How could her mother have missed it? Augusta was the only one who hadn’t seen what was right in front of her face.
What was the most humiliating part? Was it that he had been with her brother, or that he had kept it a secret? Would she be more or less upset if Colin had slept with a sister? The fact that he had been with a man felt like an implicit rejection, or a double-layered deceit. He had hidden more than a relationship, but some part of himself. And she had shared everything with him, even the hard and shameful bits. She had told him about the time she’d passed out on a sofa in an off-campus house in college and woken up to find cigarettes stuffed up her nose, boys she didn’t know taking her picture. She told him about a one-night stand and broken condom at age twenty, the pharmacy clerk who refused to give her the morning-after pill for religious reasons, the gray dawn hours she spent driving around trying to find a Plan B. She showed him how she liked to be touched, where she wanted to be kissed. Colin was her intimate, her holder of secrets, her most sanctified. And yet he had kept this huge and heartbreaking thing locked away from her. And he had let it become a wedge between her and her own brother.
Augusta finished hersecond glass of wine and then a third. The crowd at the bar was turning, the kitchen closed, the old men eating fish and chips went home to bed, and only the true drunks remained. When the baseball game ended, the bar down the street at Riverview locked up and there was a changing of the guard, a flood of new bodies arriving at the pub. When Augusta felt hands on her shoulders she turned; it was Van’s friend Stavros, wasted and grinning hugely to see her there. They hugged like they were long-lost sailors meeting by chance at a tropical island port. Stavros was drinking whiskey and made Augusta take a sip. She locked her eyes on his and bolted the entire glass in one and he cheered and called for another round.
The rest of the night Augusta would only ever be able to remember in flashes: shots of tequila, spilling the contents of her purse on the pub’s bathroom floor, leaning against Stavros on the sidewalk, dropping her keys on her own lawn. Had she really driven that drunk? Of the many things she would never forgive herself for, that would remain near the top. She must have given Zoey money, Zoey must have seen the whole thing. Augusta and Stavros had opened a bottle of red wine—she would discover a dark stain on the counter in the morning—then they were in her bed, and she remembered nothing more.
Fifteen
Bailey
The Ripple Effects
For the last fifteen years, all anyone wanted was for Bailey and Van to be a couple, and now that they finally were together, now that they brushed their teeth side by side and mixed up their socks in the laundry and had kind but boring discussions every morning about how well or poorly they had slept, everyone else was in disarray. Colin had been kicked out of his house, Fran was constantly annoyed at RJ, Eben was devastated, and Augusta was having a deranged and unceasing emotional breakdown about her life.
Caroline Lash’s stupid short story had destroyed them, had fractured their tight-knit group, and it was Van’s fault for having invited that little idiot into their circle in the first place. He had taken it upon himself to try to fix it, but it was honestly like watching one of those videos where an NFL player attempts to do ballet, all bulky and clumsy. Vanny was a WASP with a mid-level EQ and a lifetime of repressed feelings. He was ill-equipped for anything more emotionally complicated than a sandwich order, and so it fell on Bailey to help.
Bailey invited Augustato the nail salon, and she showed up looking hungover and tired and like a horse that might scare easily. Augusta was mad at everyone in the group, furious that so many of them had known about Colin and never told her, but she was angriest at Fran. Bailey hugged her hello and treated Augusta like a bottle of seltzer that had been dropped on the pavement, resolving to open the conversation slowly and carefully, aware that it might all blow up. Together, Bailey and Augusta played the game they always played. While they got pedicures, they sat next to each other in giant massage chairs, the motorized fingers grinding up and down their backs, not speaking, just texting back and forth. They texted jokes, memes, pictures, and videos and the rule was that the first one to laugh out loud lost.
Bailey sent a video of a teenage girl drinking the full carton of cold brew, not realizing it was the kind you were supposed to dilute with water.
Augusta sent a video of a little girl running her father over with a golf cart.
Bailey sent a video of a guy in rubber waders perfectly mimicking a loon call and wrote “Van initiating sex.”
Augusta sent a picture of a suntanned, bleached blonde, wrinkled old woman looking like an animated corpse in lipstick and wrote “Your sisters before they got so old.” Bailey grinned.
Bailey sent a video of a dog humping a mirror and wrote “Caroline Lash.”
The manicurist tapped Bailey on the leg and held up a bottle of polish, sports car red, and Bailey nodded.
Do you think Caroline does buff-no-polish?Bailey texted.
Hundred percent, Augusta texted back.Full bush or landing strip?
Barbie privates. Totally smooth.
Augusta cracked a smile.She once had a sex dream and then apologized to herself
Sorry I had an orgasm
She totally said that to Van after
And then Van made sure to offset the carbon emissions
After their toenailswere painted Bailey and Augusta got twenty-minute back massages, climbing awkwardly onto the leather seats, face down on the paper headrest, careful not to mess up the polish.
