“The guy who was so rude about Dusty’s book?” Libby clarifies.
I nod and stab a surprisingly juicy tomato in the salad, popping it into my mouth.
“What’s he doing here?” she asks.
“I don’t know.”
“Ohmygosh,” she says, “what if he’s a Once in a Lifetime superfan?”
I snort. “I think that’s the one possibility we can rule out.”
“Maybe he’s like Old Man Whittaker in Once. Just afraid to show his true feelings. Secretly, he loves this town. And the book. And the widowed Mrs. Wilder.”
I’m actually unbearably curious, but we’re not going to solve the mystery by guessing. “What do you want to do tonight?”
“Shall we consult the list?” She digs the sheet out of her bag and smooths it on the table. “Okay, I’m too tired for any of this.”
“Too tired?” I say. “To pet a horse and save a local business? Even after your nap?”
“You think forty minutes is enough to make up for the three weeks of Bea crawling into bed with us after a nightmare?”
I wince. Those girls must have an internal body temperature of at least three hundred degrees. You can’t sleep next to them without waking up drenched in sweat, with a tiny, adorable foot digging into your rib cage.
“You need a bigger bed,” I tell Libby, pulling my phone out to start the search.
“Oh, please,” Libby says. “We can’t fit a bigger bed in that room. Not if we plan on ever opening our dresser drawers.”
I feel a spark of relief right then. Because the change in Libby—the fatigue; the strange, intangible distance—suddenly makes sense. It has a cause, which means it has a solution.
“You need a bigger place.” Especially with Baby Number Three on the way. One bathroom, for a family of five, is my idea of purgatory.
“We couldn’t afford a bigger place if it were parked on top of a trash barge forty-five minutes into Jersey,” Libby says. “Last time I looked at apartment listings, everything was like, One-bedroom, zero-bath crawl space inside a serial killer’s wall; utilities included but you provide the victims! And even that was outside our price range.”
I wave a hand. “Don’t worry about the money. I can help out.”
She rolls her eyes. “I don’t need your help. I am a whole adult woman. All I need is a night in, followed by a month of rest and relaxation, okay?”
She’s always hated taking money from me, but the whole reason to have money is to take care of us. If she won’t accept another loan, then I’ll just have to find her an apartment she can afford. Problem halfway solved.
“Fine,” I say. “We’ll stay in. Hepburn night?”
She gives a genuine grin. “Hepburn night.”
Whenever Mom was stressed or heartbroken, she used to allow herself one night to lean into that feeling.
She’d call it a Hepburn night. She loved Hepburn. Katharine, not Audrey, not that she had anything against Audrey. That’s how I wound up with the name Nora Katharine Stephens, while Libby got Elizabeth Baby Stephens, the “Baby” part being after the leopard in Bringing Up Baby.
On Hepburn nights, the three of us would each pick out one of Mom’s over-the-top vintage robes and curl up in front of the TV with a root beer float and a pizza, or decaf and chocolate pie, and watch an old black-and-white movie.
Mom would cry during her favorite scenes, and when Libby or I caught her, she’d laugh, wiping away her tears with the back of one hand, and say, I’m such a softy.
I loved those nights. They taught me that heartbreak, like most things, was a solvable puzzle. A checklist could guide a person through mourning. There was an actionable plan for moving on. Mom mastered that, but never quite got to the next step: weeding out the assholes.
Married men. Men who didn’t want to be stepfathers. Men who had absolutely no money, or who had lots of money and family members all too willing to whisper gold digger.
Men who didn’t understand her aspirations to be on stage, and men who were too insecure to share the spotlight.
She was saddled with kids when she was little more than one herself, but even after everything she went through, she kept her heart open. She was an optimist and a romantic, just like Libby. I expected my sister to fall in love a dozen times over, be swept off her feet over and over again for decades, but instead she fell in love with Brendan at twenty and settled down.
I, meanwhile, had approximately one romantic bone in my body, and once it shattered and I pinned myself back together, I developed a rigorous vetting process for dating. So neither Libby nor I have need for our old-fashioned Hepburn nights. Now they’re an excuse to be lazy, and a way to feel close to Mom.
It’s only six o’clock, but we change into our pajamas—including our silk robes. We drag the blankets off the bed in the loft and down the iron spiral staircase to the couch and pop in the first DVD from the Best of Katharine Hepburn box set Libby brought with her.
I find two speckled blue mugs in the cabinet and put the kettle on for tea, and then we sink into the couch to watch Philadelphia Story, matching charcoal sheet masks plastered to our faces. My sister’s head drops against my shoulder, and she heaves a happy sigh. “This was a good idea,” she says.
My heart twinges. In a few hours, when I’m lying in an unfamiliar bed, sleep nowhere to be found—or tomorrow, when Libby sees the lackluster town square for the first time—my feelings might change, but right now, all is right in the world.
Anything broken can be fixed. Any problem can be solved.
When she drifts off, I pull my phone from my robe and type out an email, bcc’ing every real estate agent, landlord, and building manager I know.
You are in control, I tell myself. You won’t let anything bad happen to her ever again.
* * *
My phone chirps with a new email around ten p.m.
Ever since Libby shuffled up to bed an hour ago, I’ve been sitting on the back deck, willing myself to feel tired and nursing a glass of the velvety pinot Sally Goode, the cottage’s owner, left for us.
At home I’m a night owl. When I’m away, I’m more like an insomniac who just mixed a bunch of cocaine into some Red Bull and took a spin on a mechanical bull. I tried to work, but the Wi-Fi’s so bad that my laptop is a glorified paperweight, so instead I’ve been staring into the dark woods beyond the deck, watching fireflies pop in and out of view.
I’m hoping to find a message from one of the real estate agents I reached out to. Instead CHARLIE LASTRA is bolded at the top of my inbox. I tap the message open and barely avoid a spit take.
I would have preferred to go my whole life without knowing this book existed, Stephens.
Even to my own ears, my cackle sounds like an evil stepmother. You bought the Bigfoot erotica?
Charlie replies, Business expense.
Please tell me you charged it to a Loggia credit card.
This one takes place at Christmas, he writes. There’s one for every holiday.
I take another sip, contemplating my reply. Possibly something like Drink any interesting coffee lately?
Maybe Libby’s right: Maybe Charlie Lastra was secretly as charmed as the rest of America by Dusty’s portrayal of Sunshine Falls and planned a visit during publishing’s annual late-summer hibernation. I can’t bring myself to broach the subject.
Instead, I write, What page are you on?
Three, he says. And I already need an exorcism.
Yes, but that has nothing to do with the book. Again, as soon as I’ve sent it, I have to marvel-slash-panic at my own unprofessionalism. Over the years, I’ve developed a finely tuned filter—with pretty much everyone except Libby—but Charlie always manages to disarm it, to press the exact right button to open the gate and let my thoughts charge out like velociraptors.
For example, when Charlie replies, I’ll admit it’s a master class in pacing. Otherwise I remain unimpressed, my instant reaction is to type, “Otherwise I remain unimpressed” is what they’ll put on your headstone.