11. Chapter Eleven Lucy
Chapter Eleven: Lucy
“ D id you guys hear old man Beaufort passed away last weekend?” says Tasha, leaning back against the couch cushions as she unfolds a Korean face mask and smooths it onto her face.
“That’s a cheerful topic for a slumber party,” replies Sam—or rather, Mayor Dechaine—with a sarcastic snort. She doesn’t look very Mayor-like at the moment, though, considering she’s in a bright pink pajama set.
In fact, we’re all in matching, brightly-colored pajamas. Even though we technically had the J-and-E B-B-B, I planned for this final low-key bachelorette event to take place the night before the wedding so that we could all enjoy some much-needed girly time after the chaos of this past week. One last final farewell to Josie’s single life, even though we’ll definitely still be having slumber parties until we’re old and wrinkly.
“Isn’t gossiping, like, a key part of slumber parties?” Mabel adds to the conversation.
“Who is old man Beaufort?” asks Brittany, mine and Josie’s cousin from Pennsylvania. She’s a small business owner just like us, but didn’t hesitate to take time off to drive all the way out to the Cape for the wedding festivities.
“Roger Beaufort,” Amy clarifies for her. “He owns Beaufort Manor.”
That clearly means nothing to Brittany, who didn’t grow up in Mermaid Shores, so Amy’s twin, Ruby, jumps in to explain.
“It’s a huge estate out on the cliffs, not far from Blakeley Manor.”
“It’s not nearly as well-maintained as Blakeley, though,” Amy adds.
Ruby gives her sister a disapproving look. “Well, he’s just one old man. I don’t think he has any family. Meanwhile, the Linworths have been taking care of Blakeley as part of a team effort for over a century. There are tons of Linworths.”
“My mom, for example,” Tasha chimes in.
Ruby grins at her. “Exactly. How is your mom, by the way? I’m in New York so much that I can hardly stay up to date with everyone back home.”
Tasha shakes her head and waves off Ruby’s question. “She’s fine. Same old Greta. Still trying to perfect the art of homemade vegan cheese.”
“Hey, at least she doesn’t give up on her goals,” replies Ruby with a shrug.
“Wait, can we circle back to Beaufort?” Mabel pipes up while she arranges an array of sugary snacks—all courtesy of Gigi Lee—on the coffee table. “If the old man has passed away, what will happen to the manor?”
That puzzles all of us. Mr. Beaufort was a notorious hermit. He came to this town as a tourist in the eighties, purchased the historic manor, renamed it after himself, and has been here ever since. Despite that, he’s rarely been seen around town, even during the off season when the tourists empty out and this place gets calm and quiet for a few months.
The last time I saw him was maybe four or five years ago. He was down on the public beach in late October, right after tourist season had officially ended. I remember it because Josie pointed him out and wondered if, in his extremely advanced age, he had gotten a little lost and confused. It was a pretty chilly day to be down on the beach, after all. In the end, however, we agreed to leave him alone, since it seemed he was at least walking along the shore with a semblance of purpose.
I’ve never seen him with anyone else, though. No spouse. No children. No friends, either.
Suddenly, I feel a bit sad.
Tasha, after chewing on her lower lip thoughtfully for a moment, answers Mabel’s question with a dramatic shrug of her shoulders. “If he really has no family, maybe the town will repossess it?”
Practically in unison, we all look to Sam. The mayor of Mermaid Shores pauses with a handful of jelly beans halfway to her mouth. “Oh, uh, I’m not sure about that. I don’t think towns can do that. The state can, though. If the manor doesn’t have an inheritor, it will probably sit there until the state decides to sell it. Or maybe they’ll allow the town to claim it as a historical monument. We could turn it into a museum, I suppose. Except, last I heard, the place is in almost total disrepair. It’d be a costly project.”
For a minute, we all think on that. It’s an oddly serious moment for a slumber party, but we all care so much about Mermaid Shores that things like this are important to us. Even Brittany, who doesn’t live here, seems invested in the conversation.
“Well, anyway,” Mabel breaks the silence, lifting her glass of bubbling rosé into the air. “Let’s have a toast to old man Beaufort. Rest in peace, beloved hermit.”
“Rest in peace!” we echo, clinking our glasses of various drinks.
Then, because the whole thing feels slightly ridiculous, we burst out laughing.
“And another toast!” Mabel adds, turning to Josie with a bright smile. “To our beautiful Josephine Adelaide Montgomery and to the wedding that Mermaid Shores has been waiting for over a decade to attend!”
We toast again, giggling as we lean across each other with more gusto and tumble out of our seats to reach out with a clink of glass. We look like a squirming kaleidoscope in our rainbow of pajamas.
Josie turns to me. “Are you going to make a toast, too, my dear Maidzilla?”
I smirk. “Nope. Mabel covered it. I’m saving all my wordsmithing for tomorrow.”
Mabel winks at both of us.
For the first time in days, I allow myself to relax slightly. The conversation drifts away from dark topics like the death of a local and more toward things like harmless town gossip, who’s dating whom, how wild everyone plans on being at the afterparty tomorrow night, and detailed descriptions of what people are wearing to the ceremony. The dress code is formal, but those are the only guidelines Josie decided to give.
While we gab and giggle, we pick away at the snacks and refill our drinks, testing out the face masks and scented lotions that Brittany brought from her organic beauty supply store.
When the eating and drinking slows, I decide that it’s the perfect time to continue with the rest of my plan for Josie’s final evening as a bachelorette.
“Okay, guys,” I call, hauling out a large cardboard box that I’d stowed in the hall closet. “In honor of Josie’s love of nostalgia, I’ve collected some old-school board games for us to play tonight. The sort of stuff we might have played at slumber parties in the early aughts when we were all kids.”
Everyone gasps and leans forward to get a glimpse of what’s inside the box. I had to scour yard sales and eBay for weeks to collect them all. Amy pulls out Girl Talk and squeals with delight.
“Oh my gosh, we loved this game, didn’t we, Ruby?”
Ruby laughs and nods. “You were ruthless with the dares, though.”
Mabel takes out a vintage game called Pretty, Pretty Princess and both Tasha and Sam immediately dissolve into chatter about how that was their favorite one to play as children. I had desperately hoped this would be their reaction, since you never really know if a bunch of women in their late twenties and early thirties will actually be interested in this stuff. Luckily, my judgment never fails me.
Lastly, I lay Mystery Date , a real girly throwback, onto the coffee table and smile at Josie. She’s grinning ear-to-ear, but there’s also a twinkle of emotion dampening her eyes.
Before I know it, she’s throwing her arms around my shoulders.
“You thought of everything, Lu,” she murmurs, her voice muffled by my thick hair. “It’s perfect. Better than perfect.”
When she pulls back, I have to blink several times to stop my own happy tears from spilling over. Still, I manage a casual shrug. “All in a day’s work.”
“I actually have another idea for something we could do,” my cousin whispers conspiratorially. “And then we could save the board games for after?”
“I’m all ears, bride-to-be.”
Josie dabs at her eyes to dry the last of her joyful tears, then turns to face everyone. “So, girls, I’ve been planning something kind of… mischievous.”
That gets everyone’s attention fast.
I raise my eyebrows at her. “Mischievous?”
Josie beams. “A prank. I mean, I’ve really only been planning it since, like, today, but still… hold on. I’ll be right back.”
We all wait, vaguely confused, as Josie scurries upstairs to her old room, where a bunch of half-packed boxes are still waiting to be transported down the street to the new Cromwell abode. Less than a minute later, she returns to the living room with flushed cheeks.
Slightly breathless, she sets down a handful of Walmart bags—the contents a mystery—on the armchair she just vacated. “Okay, so the boys are all over at the new house, right? They’re doing boring guy stuff in the backyard, I think. Grilling meat and drinking whiskey and talking about stocks or whatever. Elijah said it was just a low-key thing, and he only planned it because he knew I’d be here tonight. So, I was thinking, why not make his little bachelor hangout a bit less boring? With a fun little prank!”
Mabel raises her eyebrows questioningly at Josie. Ruby quirks her head to the side while Amy smirks, a devious glint in her eyes the moment she heard the word prank.
Josie lets out a nervous bubble of laughter and then reaches into one of the bags. She pulls out a colorful plastic package and holds it high above her head like she’s hoisting a trophy into the air. It takes us a moment to realize what it is.
Water balloons.
Josie bounces on the balls of her feet as everyone breaks into smiles. “It can’t be a real slumber party unless we cause a little bit of trouble, right?”
I glance into the bags. She must’ve bought hundreds of little, rainbow-hued water bombs.
“Absolutely, Jo,” I say. “You’re a genius.”