Chapter Five
Suddenly, it’s Monday afternoon, and Aubrey is handing out hors-d’oeuvres to the locals that crowd every inch of the inn for opening day.
They finally settled on a name in the early hours of the day—The Beauchamp, obvious and simple, but nice because it’s Aubrey’s family name.
Even though she’s Aubrey Campbell from her father’s side, she’s always liked the sound of the name Beauchamp, especially because her aunt bears it.
Louise promises she’ll get a sign made for the front porch.
Aubrey smiles and nods and introduces herself to people who won’t remember her in a few minutes. At least they all seem to know who Louise is, and collectively agree that she and Aubrey sort of look alike.
Louise had baked the canapés in a frenzy yesterday, minutes before midnight. From Louise’s house, where Aubrey was reading alone, she could see the lights on in the inn’s kitchen and Louise pacing through the window. Aubrey had rung her just to make sure she hadn’t completely lost it.
“Oh, yes, of course, baby,” Louise had huffed into the phone. In the background, the oven beeped. “I’ll be in shortly.”
“Right.” Aubrey stifled a yawn. “I’m off to bed now.”
“Yes, brilliant idea. Get your rest, big day tomorrow.”
“Do you need me to do anything? Bring something over?”
“No, no, I’m all set. Just an hour or two and I’ll be in.”
Today, you couldn’t tell that Louise had barely slept at all the previous night—unless you really knew her, which Aubrey does.
There’s the tightness in Louise’s close-lipped smile, the shadows under her eyes, how she uses her hand to lean against nearby furniture.
In the living room, Aubrey weaves her way through the crowd to join her aunt, who stands by a window and watches the party like she’s forgotten something she can’t quite put her finger on.
“It’s going great,” Aubrey offers.
Louise’s mouth sets in a downward curve. Still, she hums in reluctant agreement. “Place looks nice, doesn’t it?”
“Very nice. Like a movie set.”
Louise snorts, amused. “Perfect.” For a second she looks over to the back of the house, at the kitchen. “Would you do me a favour?”
“I think I’m contractually obligated to say yes.”
“Right, shit. The contract’s still not done.
Tomorrow night, I’m on it. But I meant, Arthur’s meant to drop by with a delivery.
Stuff for dinner and the upcoming days. We need to sign and let him know where to drop things off.
I can’t have him filling up the kitchen with crates now, with everyone here—can you keep an eye out and help load things off in the basement instead? ”
Louise touches her forehead as she speaks, and Aubrey rushes to say, “Of course, yeah.”
“You’re the best.”
Aubrey sets her platter of canapés down on the coffee table. “Help yourselves!” she announces, which brings on a sea of smiles and wandering fingers searching for sustenance.
She’s wearing her nicest summer dress for the occasion, white and lacy with sleeves that puff just a little down her arms, leaving her shoulders bare.
Perhaps the white was a mistake—she feels a red flush spreading across her skin, spurred on by the attention of the crowd.
She smooths down the front of her dress and crosses over from the living room to the kitchen, which is much warmer but also quieter, isolated from the noise of the party.
She takes a second to grab her phone from the counter and send a short message to Maggie, checking in and begging for a few encouraging thoughts on her first real day of work. She’s been meaning to write her for days. She always does.
Then she fills a glass with tap water and as many ice cubes as she can fit.
Maggie texts back that work is dreadfully boring and that she wishes she could be in Luninburg instead.
Aubrey doesn’t correct her and insists instead that she’d probably be just as dreadfully bored up here.
The last few days have been fine, slow and fast all at once.
The world is silent in these two houses Aubrey splits her time between, but it’s also eclectic and dizzying.
Maybe that’s just life with Louise. They talk over music and argue about decorations that ultimately don’t really matter.
It’s hardly been a week, but Aubrey’s feet are already finding ground, and not everything feels new and foreign anymore.
That’s what she types to Maggie, and she’s just hit send when a knock echoes off the exterior kitchen door and a new face appears in its window.
“Oh!” Aubrey rushes over to open the door, where a tower of boxes sits precariously on a bright red trolley. “Yes?”
A frown fringed by blonde hair answers from somewhere behind the boxes. “Delivery for Louise?”
“Right, yeah.” Aubrey steps outside and shuts the door behind her as she motions to the exterior entrance leading down to the basement. It’s a dodgy door covered in more spiderwebs than chipped paint. “She’s asked me to help you put everything down here.”
The man Aubrey assumes to be Arthur backs up with a grunt and angles his trolley toward the basement door. “Fine, okay. Seems the whole town’s here today, huh?”
“Mm, sure!” Aubrey says, in that tone you have to use when agreeing with something you couldn’t possibly know anything about. She fiddles with the doorknob, then with the lightbulb dangling above the steps leading under the house. “Good turnout, I’d say.”
Arthur drops the trolley and picks up the first box off the top. With a quick smile, he says, “Hopefully it stays that way, so I’m not out of a job,” and Aubrey laughs, hesitant but earnest. She knows what he means.
He looks about her age, maybe a little younger.
It’s hard to say, but he has the air of someone who’s not quite grown up yet.
His hair is undone by the wind and his skin speckled by the sun.
He wears worn sneakers and a vintage t-shirt, bleached and frayed in places.
Just a little taller than her, he has the sort of features Aubrey’s seen on a lot of men in the past, not striking in any particular direction, just pleasantly average.
Strong brow, pale eyes, an air of careful confidence.
She picks up the next box and follows behind him. “I’m Aubrey, by the way,” she says to his back.
“Ah, I’ve heard of an Aubrey. You must’ve heard of an Arthur.”
“I’d be lying if I said I haven’t.”
He makes an amused kind of sound. Aubrey likes the feeling of having made him laugh.
“I’ve known Louise for a while.” Arthur turns his head for a second as if to look back at her, but he doesn’t quite reach. “But I’ve never seen you around.”
The basement is dark and humid, with cement floors, stone walls, a ceiling barely high enough for them to walk around without having to bend over.
Boxes already crowd the corners and bins overflow with rusty tools.
Narrow windows let in just enough light for Aubrey to spot the second lightbulb and click it on.
Its glow is soft and yellow in the thick, earthy air.
“I just got here a few days ago. Louise is my aunt.”
Arthur nods along, and they head back up the stairs to get more boxes.
“I’m spending the year here to help out with the inn,” Aubrey feels the need to explain.
“Mm, gotcha. What is it—the classic year away to find yourself sort of thing?”
He picks up two boxes this time, flashes a knowing, nearly cocky smile on his way past Aubrey, and vanishes back into the basement. She leaves the boxes behind to make her point.
“Not exactly.”
She doesn’t want him to think she doesn’t know who she is.
She hasn’t spent so long on her own not to at least come off as a little fulfilled.
She can’t let this be who Arthur thinks she is—here on a flimsy, clichéd whim.
It doesn’t matter that he’s just their delivery guy.
If Aubrey is to start over in this new place, she has to at least have a little control over what these people think of her.
“No?”
“It’s more of a nothing’s holding me back, if not now then when thing.”
“Ah. Okay.”
“Not that you asked, I realize.”
“Well, no, I asked, actually. I myself picked up this gig on a find yourself, quarter-life crisis whim, so I get it.”
“This is different.”
“Not that different.” He laughs very quietly, as if he finds himself amusing. Already he’s heading back out, leaving the boxes piled up around Aubrey. “I’m sure you’ll find what you don’t think you’re looking for.”
She trails behind him. “Have you?”
“I certainly like this much better than computer science. Take it as you will.”
Aubrey says nothing for a second. She’s keeps expecting to feel nervous or uncomfortable in the presence of someone so similar to the men she felt uneasy around in the past, and it doesn’t come.
Even if he looks like the guys she went to school with, the outdoorsy type she passed on her town’s small campus, who wrote about enjoying hiking in their online profile even though they hardly ever left the house.
Arthur doesn’t seem like he’ll spend an entire dinner talking about how awful dating has been lately, how the girls he’s been out with have nothing interesting to say.
She wants to keep talking to him. If anything, he’s certainly more interesting than the party.