Chapter 4 #2
over her shoulder. “You’ll be home for dinner? I’m making pesto.”
Augie said of course. Even in high school, she’d always been home for dinner. “Sounds great. Love you. Have a good class.”
Alone at the table, Augie felt even more unsettled.
While her mom had been supportive through the fallout of her job, assuring Augie she’d find something else and couldn’t have controlled the agency merger (which Augie had blamed for her firing, instead of admitting the truth), Augie felt horrible.
She knew her mom had once dreamed of living in New York.
While she didn’t talk about it often, Augie had learned that after she’d finished graduate school at Bowdoin, she’d hoped to work at a publishing house in the city.
That was the summer she got pregnant. Instead, she’d stayed in Maine, married, gotten a job at the local college, helped with the restaurant.
It wasn’t until years after her dad left them that she even started applying to better teaching jobs, which landed them in Minnesota.
Augie was glad when her phone suddenly chimed, the screen filling with Leah’s name and the words En route!!!
It was a bright day, and Augie soaked in the winking waves and boats bobbing in the distance as she curved along the bays
to Leah’s. While she couldn’t stop thinking about Chat, she was glad to be out of the house, passing the mansions that felt
like old friends: the Lincoln Log castle with its four floors and flagpole; the cottage-core palace with its wavy roof and
six-car garage; and Augie’s favorite, the pale yellow mansion that looked like a hotel in New England. The homes you could
only see from the lake were even more sprawling and jaw-dropping—one could watch endless videos online of Lake Minnetonka
estates—but Augie enjoyed these roadside homes all the same.
It was busy for a Monday. Everyone seemed to be outside, escaping the heat and carrying colorful beach bags along sidewalks—especially as she passed Mike’s Marina and its sister restaurant, The Manor.
Augie and Leah tried to avoid The Manor.
Crowds filtered in and out on boats and Jet Skis all day long.
People were often coming from Big Island, too, the nearby party spot where everyone anchored their boats and turned the shallow water into a drunken rave.
It unsettled Augie, how frivolously these big machines were treated on the lake, how people pretended BUIs weren’t real.
Everyone seemed to ignore the reality that there were over a hundred boating accidents each summer.
Augie rolled down the window, enjoying the sun on her face, and wondered what Leah would tell her to do about Chat. Augie
was notoriously bad at making decisions, so afraid to make the wrong choice that she’d get lost in a web of reasoning—even
when ordering from a menu. As Leah said, she was bad at following her gut. Leah was the pragmatic one.
With Micah, though, Augie hadn’t been thinking at all. Now, she hated that no one could know the truth, especially not Leah.
Or Robin. They would never speak to her again. She was grateful Robin was up at the cabin today; she wouldn’t have to face
her yet.
Augie whipped her car around the Greenes’ driveway (barely reacting to the white-and-black house that spread the length of
a football field), parked, and rushed around back to the pool. She felt instantly better as she dropped her bag on her favorite
lounger, the water shining like ice before her, its infinity edge dissolving into the lake view beyond.
“There she is, the manny magnet!” Leah emerged from the basement carrying towels.
It was cathartic to recount everything again as they settled into their usual tanning positions, heat draping across their
bodies. This was at least one perk of being back: her favorite routine.
“So do you think I should ignore him?” Augie finally said, flopping her arms on the sides of the lounger. “Do you think that’s even possible if they’re at the Club all the time, like he said? I don’t want it to be weird. I don’t want to be a jerk, either.”
“Oh, you’re never a jerk.” Leah sat up. “Okay, don’t hate me, but I have to confess something.” She grimaced as she adjusted
her swimsuit straps, exhaled, and twisted to Augie. “The Babe . . . Danny . . . asked me for your number Wednesday. He said
the guy you were flirting with at the party asked him for it. It must have been after Chat saw you at the happy hour.”
“What?” Augie sat up fast, matching Leah.
“I didn’t know the details! I swear.” Leah raised her hands. “You know Danny’s clueless, and Chat didn’t explain. I figured
he just wanted your number to keep in touch. That you were that good in bed.” Leah poked Augie’s side. “Obviously, I said
he couldn’t have it.”
Augie was sweating. “Did he say anything else?”
“No, it was only a quick thing, seriously. Danny did say he gave Chat my number in case he wanted to ask me directly for yours, but Chat never texted, so I figured he got the hint. I really didn’t
think he’d pop back up like this. I’m sorry, though. I should have told you earlier.”
Augie reclined back into the cushions. Here Leah was apologizing for a tiny white lie while Augie was hiding so much worse.
“It’s okay. It’s just odd, right? What are the chances?” She stared up at the sun. “Of course he’s working for the Crawleys,
of literally everyone. Mrs. Crawley is such a nightmare.”
“Indeed.” Leah cleaned her sunglasses with her towel. “I honestly can’t imagine him with Danika every day.”
“Do you really think she treats him like a pool boy, like you said? Do you really think she thinks he’s hot? Do you think
he thinks she’s hot? I mean, she is hot.
I’m grossed out.” This had been bothering Augie more and more over the past two days: the fact that Mrs. Crawley was only ten years older than they were—that Micah had been almost twenty years older than Augie.
She hated to imagine Mrs. Crawley and Chat flirting. She knew she was a hypocrite.
“Yes, they’re all objectively hot. But I doubt she’s after him. It’d be too Mrs. Robinson. Too on the nose. Humiliating. Nah.
I’m sure she just likes having someone to boss around. I don’t think Bill gives her a whole lot of attention. My mom says
she feels bad she’s so closed off. Has such a stick up her ass.”
Augie tapped her fingers over her stomach, feeling her silent laughter. She always loved hearing Leah say anything bad about
members. It was always the ones who deserved it.
“I don’t know. Whatever.” Augie turned her head, the cushion warm against her cheek. She wished she had a better way to describe
her true feelings: excitement, panic, shame. She hoped her feelings of attraction wouldn’t be linked with self-loathing for
the rest of her life.
It went quiet, and Leah lay down, too. Augie watched her adjust on her chair, and her eyes instinctively landed on the white-ink tattoo of her late brother’s initials on her wrist. The way Leah moved around the loss was like the tattoo itself: You couldn’t often see her grief, but the pain was there.
There had been an investigation after the boating accident, but despite the money the Greenes poured into the case, it wrapped quickly.
Law enforcement focused on the evidence and the clear story it painted: Nineteen-year-old Lyle and his friend Grant were out drinking with teammates at The Manor at the end of training camp, and while the other boys left before midnight—with alibis to prove it—Lyle and Grant had stayed until close, after two a.m. Everyone knew Lyle was obsessed with speedboats, and that the new $400,000 Cigarette X42 had just arrived in the marina next door.
The lockbox that held the key had been broken into.
The boat had crashed into the railroad bridge dividing Crystal and Smith bays.
The boys were thrown from the boat. Both suffered blunt force trauma to the head and drowned.
Of course, Augie hadn’t known this when she first met Leah. It had happened three years before she moved to Aldon Lakes. Augie
would never forget the night Leah told her. They were having a sleepover, and Augie had made the mistake at dinner of asking
where her oldest brother went to college—having noticed all the pictures of him, his handsome square jaw and movie star smile.
He looked like Leah’s dad. The entire table went quiet.
Later that night, in the safety of the dark, Leah had let everything out. She showed Augie the shoebox she kept under her
bed filled with printed articles about the accident, the investigation reports, photos of Lyle from his summer training camp—the
last of him alive—and all the birthday cards he’d written her. He never would have stolen a boat, she insisted. He was the
kind of guy who never let her cheat at board games. He always bought everyone ice cream. He never forgot a birthday. But what
could she do? The investigation was over. Her brother was gone.
Leah didn’t bring him up anymore, but Augie sometimes wished she would. She knew it still tugged at her friend, that neither
Leah nor her family had real closure. Leah sometimes cried after drinking too much, her buried feelings surfacing, and Augie
wished she could do more to help. Instead, Leah always seemed to be the one helping her.
“Okay, so here’s what we do about Chat,” Leah said as she moved her hair from one shoulder to the other. “Nothing. I think
your instincts to ignore him are right. I mean, you don’t have to pretend he doesn’t exist . . . just be friendly and professional
if you see him at the Club. It’s not worth anything more complicated. It will only stress you out.”
Augie rolled in her lips, disappointed. Despite everything, part of her had hoped Leah would tell her to go for it.
“I will ask Mallory about him, though. Chitty Chatty Bang Bang. I’m too curious.”
Augie stretched out her legs and bounced her knees. Mallory Harrison knew everyone and everything in Aldon Lakes. She probably
did have answers.