Chapter 7
August
Margaux was helping Jennifer in the kitchen.
Callie and I were setting the patio table.
Callie had the placemats. I had the cutlery.
We both stopped at the same time and looked through the open french doors at Margaux, who was standing at the counter next to Jennifer, wearing a plain white linen top and wide-leg trousers, handing Jennifer things from the counter when she asked for them.
Callie looked at me.
I looked at Callie.
“She’s helping,” Callie said.
“She is.”
“Voluntarily.”
“Looks like it.”
Callie set a placemat down very slowly. “She’s jealous of you,” she said. “That’s what this is. She’s decided to out-you you.”
“That’s not a sentence.”
“You know what I mean.” Callie nodded toward the kitchen. “Yesterday she was going after you for being too humble and too thrifted and too flower-girl. Today she woke up and decided to be humble and helpful and dressed down. Because those are your things and she wants to take them away from you.”
I looked at Margaux handing Jennifer a spatula.
“Maybe she just had a change of heart,” I said.
Callie picked up another placemat. “August.”
“People can have changes of heart.”
“Put the fork down the right way. You keep putting the fork on the wrong side.”
I moved the fork.
Inside the kitchen, Poppy appeared from somewhere with a full pitcher of orange juice, carrying it with both hands and her tongue slightly between her teeth. She set it carefully on the counter and Margaux immediately thanked her and told her she was so helpful and so sweet.
Poppy looked at Margaux.
“It’s my chore,” Poppy said. “I do it every day. It’s not a big deal.”
She picked up the pitcher and carried it out to the patio table.
Fletcher came in from the hallway just as I was going back through the french doors for the napkins. He had his phone in his hand, the tail end of a work call, and he was nodding at whatever the person on the other end was saying. He looked up and saw me and nodded once in greeting.
Then he saw Margaux at the counter.
He stopped nodding at his phone.
She turned around when she heard him, and her face did something that looked like relief and delight in the same moment. She crossed the kitchen to him, both arms going around his neck, and she kissed him.
He kissed her back.
His face was toward the french doors. Toward me.
His eyes were open.
For one second, standing in the doorway with a fistful of napkins, we looked directly at each other over Margaux’s shoulder.
His eyes were open and he looked embarrassed in a way that went all the way down, not surface embarrassed, bone embarrassed.
Like he was sorry for something he couldn’t say out loud.
I looked away first.
I went back to the table and counted the napkins and realized I had grabbed too many and went back inside for absolutely no reason except to have somewhere to go.
Poppy appeared at my elbow on the patio.
She had her juice. She sat down next to me and looked through the french doors at the kitchen, where Margaux was now laughing at something Jennifer said, touching Fletcher’s arm, keeping her body turned toward him like a sunflower that had chosen a very specific direction.
“I sense a pivot in strategy,” Poppy said.
I looked at her. “What?”
“Her strategy has pivoted.” Poppy sipped her juice. “Yesterday she tried to make you feel small. It didn’t work. So today she’s trying to be you. She thinks if she takes what makes you likeable, she wins.”
“Poppy, she’s not in a competition.”
Poppy looked at me.
“Okay,” I said.
“The war is on,” Poppy said.
“What war—”
“You’ll see.” She shook her head. “I cannot believe how innocent you are. I genuinely cannot.”
Callie sat down on my other side. “What did I miss?”
“Poppy says the war is on.”
Callie looked at Poppy. “I think so too.”
“I’m not in a war,” I said.
They both looked at me.
Douglas came through the garden gate from his morning walk, cap on, hands in his jacket pockets, the pleased look he always had after an early walk. Margaux appeared at the french doors.
“Mr. Calloway.” She smiled. “Did you see any good fish this morning? For meals today?”
Douglas stopped walking. He looked at Margaux. He looked at the kitchen. He looked back at Margaux.
“I saw some good crab meat down at the market,” he said. He said it the way you answer a question you weren’t expecting from a person you weren’t expecting to ask it.
Callie pressed her lips together.
Douglas came to the table and sat down, and he leaned toward Callie and said quietly, “Is she feeling alright?”
“Perfectly fine,” Callie said. “Completely normal.”
Douglas looked unconvinced. He picked up his coffee.
Jennifer and Margaux came out carrying the breakfast trays together. Margaux had a tray of eggs and fruit in both hands. She was wearing heels. White kitten heels on a patio that connected to a garden that connected to a beach.
Fletcher came behind them with the toast and the butter.
I watched Margaux navigate the step down from the french doors.
Her weight shifted wrong on the heel. The tray tilted.
I saw it before anyone else did — the angle, the speed — and I was up and across the patio before I’d finished the thought, both hands catching the tray from underneath and my other hand grabbing her arm at the elbow to stop her from going down.
Everything steadied.
The eggs didn’t move. The fruit bowl rocked once and settled.
Margaux looked at me.
She looked at my hand on her arm.
She pulled her arm away. Not fast. Deliberately. She straightened up, adjusted the tray, and looked around at the table.
“I almost tripped,” she said. “These steps are uneven. I caught myself though.”
She walked to the table and set the tray down.
I stood where I was.
Fletcher was right behind her. Which meant he was right in front of me. Which meant he had seen all of it — the tray tilting, me crossing the patio, Margaux pulling her arm away, Margaux telling everyone she’d caught herself.
He looked at me. His jaw was tight.
I went back to my seat.
Breakfast was loud and warm the way Calloway breakfasts always were. Callie had questions about the crab. Jennifer was already planning lunch. Poppy was eating methodically and listening to everything.
Margaux was everywhere.
She reached the juice pitcher before Fletcher could touch it and filled his glass.
She passed him the butter before he asked.
When I picked up the toast tray to pass it down to him, her hand came across and took it first, smoothly, like we were both reaching for the same taxi, and she set it in front of him herself with a smile in my direction that had nothing behind it.
Then she leaned back in her chair and looked at me.
“It’s so sweet,” she said. “How you’ve been part of these summers for so long.” She smiled at the table, at everyone and no one. “You’re almost like a fixture here. Part of the furniture.”
She laughed lightly.
The table went quiet.
Not all of it. Just the right parts.
“August is family,” Fletcher said.
He didn’t raise his voice. He said it the way you state a fact about the weather.
“August has been family since before you started coming here,” Callie said. “So if we’re talking about fixtures, I’d sort that list differently.”
Margaux kept her smile exactly where it was.
Douglas set his coffee down. “I’m going to get that crab meat this morning. Fresh from the market. Who wants crab for lunch?”
Everyone said yes. All at once. The table moved on.
Poppy appeared at my elbow. She had relocated from her chair and was now crouching next to mine.
“You want to go to the beach with me?” she said quietly.
“Of course.. Right after I help clear up the table.” I said.
“I’ll come too,” Margaux said, from across the table.
Poppy looked at Margaux’s shoes. She looked at Margaux’s trousers. She looked back up at Margaux.
“Your things will get ruined in the sand,” Poppy said. She said it as a service, not an insult. “The fine ones.”
Margaux looked down at her outfit and then back up. Then she looked over at Fletcher.
“Oh Fletcher, look at you. Babe, you look so tired. I think you need some ocean air.”
“I am fine, Margaux.”
She put both her hands on his shoulders. “You’re not fine babe. You’ve been tense all morning. I can feel it in your shoulders. Come to the beach with me. You’ll feel a lot better, trust me babe.”
She steered him gently toward standing and he stood, and she slipped her arm around his waist.
He put his arm around her.
I was stacking the empty toast plates because it gave me something to look at that wasn’t them.
I looked up once. Just once.
Fletcher was looking at me.
Margaux was talking about something, turned slightly away, and Fletcher was looking across the patio at me. His arm was around Margaux’s waist. His eyes were on me.
I looked back down at the toast plates.
I stacked them carefully. One on top of the other.
Maybe I had been wrong this whole time. Maybe I had been building something out of things that didn’t add up to what I thought they added up to.
Maybe he looked at me the way he did because I was Callie’s friend and he was a good man who looked out for people he cared about.
Maybe that was the whole story and I had been adding chapters that weren’t there.
I picked up the plates and carried them inside.
***