Chapter Six
“I just don’t think it’s that big a deal,” Louise says, her back to Aubrey as she busies herself scrubbing a weathered cast iron skillet. The sun is setting outside the kitchen. The two women stand in the dimmed glow of the counter lights and a table lamp tucked between two appliances.
Aubrey watches her intently from a short distance. She hates the feeling of her dress on her skin now, and she’s tied her hair up to keep it off her neck. Heat spreads in splotches across her shoulders. With a tight jaw, she says, “It was really weird.”
“Oh, please. It was a fine, normal conversation between three people. I told you I just think Arthur’s a sweet guy.”
“Yes, and I just so happen to have the ability to make up my own mind about people, all by myself.”
Aubrey hates talking to her aunt like this. It’s not how it usually goes, and it rings too similar to chats with her mom. She tries, pitifully, to soften things up. “I’m just saying, I thought you and I were on the same page.”
Louise nods slowly. “Yeah, we are.”
“About the pressure from people for women to be in relationships all the time, I mean.”
“Mhm. I know.” It sounds as if she absolutely doesn’t know. She shrugs. “I’ve just been thinking about that sort of stuff. It’s true we’re fine on our own, of course. But don’t we deserve to give ourselves a real chance?”
“At what?”
“Well, you’ve never been in love. It’s hard to put into words that you won’t hate to hear.
I know how irritating it is, how it feels like you’re being sold something you never asked to buy.
But I just—I don’t know. I think you deserve to feel it, at least once.
And then if it’s not for you, then, fine. ”
Aubrey is silent for a moment. In the living room, music is still playing from the record player.
She can hear their guests rummaging upstairs, probably getting ready to leave for dinner.
“So that’s why you invited me here,” she says, albeit very dramatically.
Really, she hopes she’s wrong. She holds her breath until Louise responds, “Of course not.”
“So you just so happened to realize, just then, that this random man should be the one to make me discover the absolute wonders of a romantic connection? Regardless of how I should feel about it?”
“Jesus, Aubrey. I promise it’s not that serious. It’s fine if you’re not interested.”
They share a pointed look. Louise insists, “Really, it is. It was just an idea I had, that maybe you’d like him. Obviously I was wrong.” She fixes her gaze, impatient and demanding, on Aubrey.
“I don’t know him,” Aubrey concedes with an irritated sigh. “Of course it’s not that I don’t like him. I don’t like this, now. I thought I was in this with you. Not adhering to expectations, sticking by each other through the odd comments and all.”
“Does that mean we can’t still try?”
Aubrey drags over the old chair tucked in a nearby corner and settles her weight on its worn cane seat, tucking her legs under herself. “But don’t I get to try for myself? On my own terms?”
“Obviously, yes.”
“Okay.”
Louise looks back over her shoulder to catch her eye. “I’m not sure what you’re getting at. I am sorry. Like I said, I didn’t mean for it to be a whole thing.”
Embarrassment creeps along again, and Aubrey sits there and fears she’s overreacting, getting into her own head in the way she does.
She’ll lay in bed tonight thinking back on this and cover her eyes and wonder what’s wrong with her.
She says, “It’s okay, really. Maybe I’m overthinking it.
” Now this does feel like a whole thing.
She picks at the cuticle on her left thumb.
Louise says, “I’m not trying to push Arthur on you. Forget I said anything.”
“I know you’re not. I mean, maybe a little, but in a somewhat fine way, I guess.” It’s a lie. She so desperately doesn’t want things to shatter with Louise. To cover up the tension in her chest, she teases, “For a woman your age.”
Louise sets a large plate down on the drying mat and barks a laugh, water dripping down the length of her arms. “Jesus. Did I really deserve that?”
Aubrey covers her mouth to swallow back a snort. Then she thinks she ought to make herself clear. “It’s just that I really just came here to help out and smell the sea air. Not find anyone. Not like this.”
“I know.” Louise’s gloves make a slapping sound when she yanks them off. She turns to face Aubrey and leans back against the counter. “It’s just sometimes you find yourself most easily through other people.”
The words linger in the room for a second. “Is that what you did, then? When you first came up here?”
You’d think Louise would’ve expected the question, but maybe not, from the way she stills.
“Yeah, I’d say so,” she concedes, almost to herself.
She looks girlish now. Her shoulders are low, rounded as she wipes down the counter.
“For a long while it felt like all I did was mess up. Moving here for a boy. But there’s a lot I learned from it.
” She clears her throat, like she didn’t mean to let her thoughts slip out.
Quickly she adds, “And I’m certainly glad I gave it a shot. ”
“Mm.” Aubrey watches her move around the kitchen like her feet are barely earthbound. She almost knows she’ll regret saying what comes next. Maybe they shouldn’t have talked about this at all. “But you understand. Why I can’t make this about a man.”
When Louise says, “Right,” it sounds difficult. Then she walks over to press a soft kiss to the top of Aubrey’s head. It’s quick, almost mechanical. “I can show you around town if that’s what you’d like. It’s just I don’t have that much time.”
“I’m not in a hurry. I don’t think I’d be here now if I was.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” Louise rolls her neck from left to right, then left again. “I’ve got to head off now if I want to be able to feed these people at a reasonable hour tomorrow.”
She clicks the kitchen light off. Aubrey unfolds her legs and offers to stay in until their guests return from dinner in a few hours.
She doesn’t mind waiting alone. She prefers it actually.
The air feels a little too stiff between the two of them right now.
Louise heads back across the yard to the red house, and a minute later a light flickers on in the second-floor window.
In the living room, Aubrey settles in a dusty, threadbare old armchair.
For a second, she thinks of picking up her phone and downloading a dating app again, a familiar reflex borne of morbid curiosity.
But not yet. She’s too comfortable pretending this is a different world, a different life.
That things aren’t the same around here, and all the men are charming delivery guys with slanted smiles and a soft, familiar sense of humour.
She’s too fond of this bubble, not ready for it to burst yet with polite questions about her family, work, long-term goals.
Under the glow of the lamp flickering by her side, she thinks instead of things she should’ve said to Louise.
Thoughts she now itches to share about the pressure of getting set up with strangers, the irony of enjoying dating profiles, the comfort she’d expected to find in her aunt.
How terrified she is of the next few months, so far detached from the reality she knows.
How maybe staying home, exactly where she was, might’ve been best.
She rises from her seat to grab her laptop from a nearby table.
In her email, she opens a blank draft and she writes a long, convoluted message to Louise, a mess of feelings she doesn’t care to iron out.
It’s a terrible block of text. She doesn’t hit send.
Instead, she tucks it away in a new folder. Her heart only feels a little lighter.
She thinks again of downloading an app. She’s been holding back until now—not sending messages, not swiping through the men of Lunenburg, not letting herself try. She wonders how much longer she’ll hold off.
She knows it won’t be long at all.
Reservations pick up quickly over the next couple weeks.
Guests check in and out every few days, a mix of curious locals and summer tourists.
Aubrey finds comfort in her new customer service routine, the speech you come up with after a while of going through the same motions.
Hi, welcome, are you checking in? Oh, wonderful, let’s see what we can do for you.
Are you celebrating anything special? Wow, this many years together, that’s wonderful.
Oh, really, that’s your secret? Amazing.
No, no I’m single, so I haven’t had the chance to stay here with my partner.
Ah, well, you know, it’s really okay, I don’t mind being on my own.
No, really, it’s all good. Follow me up to the second floor, please.
At the pharmacy, she gets stopped by a woman who asks her if she’s Louise’s niece. When Aubrey says yes, the woman laughs gently, to herself, and says, “I’ve heard you’re the exact same as her. Stubborn as a mule, huh?”
Aubrey isn’t too sure what to say to that. The woman adds, “So long as you don’t end up like her, you’ll be just fine!”
Louise and Aubrey see less of each other.
Louise works her other job and Aubrey hangs around The Beauchamp most of the time to make sure guests are tended to.
Sometimes they eat lunch together in the kitchen and talk about how things are going, what they should order more of, what ridiculous request they’d heard that day.