Chapter 13

July 2023

Ash doesn't look any different from the last time I saw her. Thin, tanned, with her hair in immaculate beachy waves, wearing a light pink dress that must've been tailored to her. She had two children in two years, but I always knew her figure would bounce right back.

"Hi," I say.

"I was expecting fuck you."

"The thought had occurred."

"I don't blame you. I'm so, so sorry, Olivia. For all of it."

I blink back the tears that were already forming.

"Can we talk somewhere private?" Ash moves her hands around as she speaks, and I can see her large engagement ring flashing on her finger just above the diamond eternity band. My own rings are shoved into a jewelry box in one of the bags I haven't unpacked yet, my finger bare without them. "And maybe with alcohol?"

"That's probably a good idea."

She smiles, her teeth whitened, her skin that tight, perfect look you only get with treatments. I wish she'd left her face alone, but she wasn't the first or last woman who felt the need to adjust her approach to age. "Does William still keep a bottle in his study?"

"Let's hope."

We walk together to his study, an uncomfortable silence between us, so different from how we never used to run out of conversation.

His study is lined with bookshelves, and there's a bar cart under the window. There's a bottle of twenty-year-old Scotch on it, and two heavy tumblers. I pick them up. "These might be from the last time we did this."

"Does Scotch go bad?"

"Don't think so."

"Excellent."

We exit, and I go to the stairs, some instinct or memory driving me to my room as Ash follows. We used to do this, years ago, when the adults were asleep. Steal liquor and spirit it away to the third floor, giggling quietly so we didn't get caught. We don't need to hide now, but it still seems like the best place to have this conversation.

We enter my room. Even though I opened all the windows and left the fan running, the heat is stifling.

"How can you stand it?" Ash asks, her face already glistening with sweat.

"It cools off at night a bit."

She looks around. "It's exactly the same."

Nothing's changed in here since I moved out for college. Pale blue walls, boy band pictures, a vanity mirror, a princess bed. I remember when these things were so important to me, but now they're just evidence of the person I used to be.

I put the bottle down on the dresser with the glasses and pour us each a stiff drink. I hand one to Ash, and she sits in the old blue rocker in the corner, the one my mother bought for the nursery, that I'd dragged up here after she died, to soothe myself in.

I sit on the edge of the bed and raise my glass to her. I take a sip, the dark liquid rough in my mouth, but she downs the whole thing, not even taking the time to shudder afterward.

"You didn't come to the cocktail party the other night," Ash says, giving me that direct stare I remember from childhood.

"I was looking after Sophie's kids."

"You wanted to avoid Fred."

"An added bonus. Though it didn't work." I take another sip. Do I like Scotch, or is it just a trigger for memories? "He came back to their house with Sophie, Colin, and Lucy. Then drove me home."

"How did that go?"

"About how you'd expect."

Ash stands and crosses to my dresser. She reaches for the bottle and pours herself another glass. "Olivia and Fred. Torturing each other summer after summer."

"Ha."

"Is it funny?"

"No, it's sad."

She cocks her head to the side. "Why the hell is he buying the house?"

"I don't know. I tried to ask, but …"

"You chickened out?"

I smile. "Maybe you could do it?"

"You want me to talk to him now?"

That stings, as it's meant to. Ash is so wound up in me and Fred, the catalyst for our meeting, and a role in more than one of our breakups. It's the reason we aren't talking, though I guess we are now.

"A conversation for good," I say lightly, but she grimaces.

"I think I'm going to stay out of this one."

"That's probably best. But you must be curious."

"I'm curious all right. Curious AF as the kids say."

"Are we not still kids?"

"I wish. I feel like it sometimes. Then a child walks into my room in the middle of the night and calls me mommy, and the illusion shatters."

I've never met Ashley's kids, only done some light stalking on Facebook. "How are they?"

"They haven't let me have a full night's sleep in years."

"That sounds exhausting."

"It is. You'll see."

I finish my glass. "I doubt it. I guess you heard about me and Wes?"

"What happened there?"

"He swore to me he wasn't cheating, but it turns out he's a liar?"

"Ouch."

"Yeah, well … the last couple of years … the pandemic. His business failed, and it turns out spending months together in a one-bedroom apartment exposed some flaws."

"You should've come out here, like the rest of Manhattan."

"Neither of us wanted that."

Ashley finishes her drink and picks up the bottle. "Probably a bad idea to have another."

"Probably."

"Did you want to avoid me too, Olivia? The other night."

"Probably."

"I really am so very sorry."

"You said."

"Is there anything I can do to make you believe it?"

I cup my glass in my hands. "The fact that you're here, trying, helps."

"I'm glad." She checks the gold watch on her wrist.

"Do you have to get home?"

"Do you want me to leave?"

"You can stay if you like."

She takes out her phone and taps out a text, her long nails clacking against the screen. She frowns as she waits for a reply, then her features clear. "Dave's on it."

"How is Dave?"

She sits in the rocking chair, cradling the bottle the way my mother used to cradle me. "He's good. You know, he's a great dad. It's hard to remember what a dummy he was when we were kids."

"Not a dummy, exactly," I say. "Maybe a bit of a bully."

"He feels so bad about that. We both do." She puts the bottle down at her feet. "God, we were awful, you know? Both of us."

"People change."

"Not around here."

"This house is going to change pretty soon."

"That must be weird for you?"

"It's weird going through everything, especially my mom's things."

"I assume Charlotte and Sophie aren't helping at all."

"Nope."

"Why do you let them walk all over you like that?"

I shrug. "It's the role I play. And I didn't want all of Mom's things tossed away like so much trash."

"And you wanted to see Fred?"

"I didn't know he'd be here."

She makes a face. "Really?"

"No one told me he'd bought the house."

"So many secrets."

"I'm kind of sick of them."

"Yeah." She fans herself. "Fuck it's hot in here."

"I can't find an air conditioner anywhere."

"I can take care of that for you."

"How?"

She pulls out her phone again and taps, taps, taps. "I have people."

"Air-conditioning people."

"People for everything." She puts her phone down. "Someone will come tomorrow. In the meantime, we need to get out of here."

"Where do you want to go?"

"Let's go to Bonne Amie. My driver will take us. And before you even start that eye roll you want to make, yeah, yeah, I know."

"I wasn't going to eye-roll."

"Uh-huh," she says.

"Okay, maybe a little."

"I'd be upset if you weren't. Because then that would mean I don't know you at all."

Bonne Amie is a French restaurant, on the main street, that you usually need a reservation for. But Ash has always operated by her own set of rules, so when the car drops us in front of the white and blue facade surrounded by cute black bistro tables full of people, we sail past them to the ma?tre d', Claude.

"Bonsoir," I say.

"Good evening, madame," he replies in thick, accented English. His black hair is mussed, and he's got a very French-looking mustache, too large and droopy. He's wearing a crisp white shirt and black dress pants. He directs us to a table in the corner and pulls out Ash's chair and then mine.

"White wine?" I say to Ash.

"Please."

"Que nous conseilleriez-vous de boire? Nous aimons le blanc." For years on the tour, I had a French hitting partner who insisted I learn French, but I don't get to use it much.

"Oui, oui. White wine is good," Claude says without adding a suggestion.

"Avez-vous une recommandation?"

Claude is clearly struggling to understand me, and I wonder if it's my accent, though I never had any trouble being understood in Paris.

"We have some excellent white wines for you this evening," he says.

Ash gives the eye-roll she was chastising me for earlier and takes control. "Do you have any Domaine Leroy or Domaine Lecomte?"

Claude's eyes light up, and I gather Ash is speaking his language now. "Oui, oui, I will bring you a bottle."

He beetles off and I watch him go. "You think he speaks any French at all?"

"Doubtful."

"How stressful."

She pours water into her glass. "How so?"

"What does he do when actual French people come in here?"

"Welcome to my French restaurant, folks," she says in a broad American accent.

I throw back my head and laugh, and God it feels good. I can't remember the last time I did that, which is the saddest thing I've thought of in a long time.

"You okay?" Ash asks.

"Trying to be."

She picks up her menu. "So, am I forgiven?"

Her face is half hidden, but I can guess at her expression. "Are you really sorry?"

The menu drops. There are tears in her eyes. "I've never been sorrier for anything in my life." She extends her hand and I take it. Her fingers are cold.

"You didn't reach out," I say.

"And you didn't either."

"Was it my job to do that?"

"No. It was mine. But I was so ashamed. And then when things seemed to work out with Wes … I thought it was better to leave it."

That's what I'd thought too, all those times I almost called her. Better to leave well enough alone. "I get it."

"You know, I kept thinking I'd run into you in the city. Or out here. I thought—we'll run into each other, and then it will all be okay. Neither of us has to climb down off our high horse that way."

"But we didn't."

"I was always looking for you, though. For a while there were a couple of strawberry blondes in my neighborhood who thought I was stalking them."

I smile. "And I never came here."

"I know."

"So you have been stalking me?"

"I've been hoping that things would work out. That's why I came the other night. To finally face the music."

I let her hand go. "And instead, all there was, was Fred."

Her cheeks are tinged pink. "I didn't talk to him."

"It's okay if you do."

"No, Olivia, it's not. I said it earlier and I mean it. I know from the outside—the car, the table here, whatever ridiculous bottle of wine I just ordered—I know it looks like I'm that same shallow girl who interfered in your life for I-don't-even-fucking-know-what reason. But I'm not. Having kids changed me. Dave too. And I want you to know that I get it if you can't forgive me. But I really wish you would."

There are tears in both our eyes now. The chatter around us, the tinkling of glasses and silverware, other people's laughter and lives fade away. It's just us, Ash and Olivia, the team we used to be every summer, the team I thought we'd be for life.

I open my mouth to say the words, but Claude is there at my elbow, holding a bottle and presenting it on his arm.

"Madames, I have this wonderful bottle for you, oui oui. You will love it so much."

Ash laughs quietly, and we come back to ourselves.

Claude uncorks the bottle and pours a bit for Ash to taste. She sips it and nods, and when he fills our glasses and then leaves us again, the moment has passed.