The Summer Everything Changed

by Holly Chamberlin

  Chitchat they did, and then Flynn got to work. Louise busied herself with cleaning the fridge and thinking about the celebrity wedding that was looming. She wondered if Flora Michaels had ever been married, and if she had, Louise wondered if she had inflicted on herself a wedding planner. The thought was actually amusing, the imperious wedding planner getting a dose of her own medicine. Wedding planners. How long had they been around, anyway? Back when Louise had gotten married, a woman planned her own wedding, with the help of her best friend (if she had one; Louise had not) and her mother. Then again, she hadn’t been born and raised in a world where people hired caterers to feed their picnic guests. You did that yourself, with a bowl of homemade potato salad, a package of hot dogs, and a tray of cupcakes made from a mix. Maybe wedding planners, like party planners, had always been around, for the relative few who could afford them.

  “All done,” Flynn announced, bringing Louise back to the moment.

  “Thanks so much, Flynn,” she said, closing the door of the fridge. “I owe you one.”

  Flynn grinned. “As long as there’s some of Bella’s baked goods on hand, or a glass of lemonade, we’re even.”

  Catherine came by just then, half-running through the kitchen door after Charlie, who was straining on her leash.

  “Afternoon, Catherine,” Flynn said with a grin.

  Catherine caught her breath before responding. “Flynn.”

  “And how’s the Princess today?”

  In response, Charlie threw her considerable bulk against Flynn’s legs and turned up to him a look of abject adoration. Flynn obligingly scratched her head until she had had enough of his attention. For the moment.

  “Ladies, I’m off. Louise, call me if that food disposal acts up again.”

  “I will, Flynn. And thanks again.”

  When he had gone, Louise turned to her friend. “Flynn likes you.”

  “He likes everybody.”

  “You know what I mean. He like-likes you.”

  Catherine hooted. “Are you twelve? He’s a nice person. Like I said, he likes everybody and everybody likes him back.”

  “Look, the first thing he said to me, after ‘hello’ and ‘I’m here to fix the food disposal,’ was ‘where’s Catherine’. All I could tell him was that you were out and about somewhere with your easel and paints and canvasses. No doubt if I had been able to tell him exactly where you were creating a masterpiece, he would have hightailed it off in hot pursuit.”

  “I think it’s cute the way you hallucinate.”

  “Hilarious. Where are you two off to now?”

  “Obviously,” Catherine said with a frown, “I’m not off to the beach, what with that ridiculous law about not allowing dogs in summer.”

  “Well, it does make some sense,” Louise argued.

  “It’s not the dogs’ fault if there are piles of poop along the sand, it’s the fault of the idiot parents who don’t clean up after them.”

  “Be that as it may . . .”

  “Oh, don’t worry,” Catherine said, with a dismissive wave of her hand. “I’m not going to violate any laws. I want to keep a good reputation here, especially if I’m going to live out my days in this little town. I know I’m still eyed with suspicion by a good portion of the old locals. You are, too, my friend.”

  Catherine took her leave then, the Princess leading the way, as princesses are wont to do.

  When she had gone, Louise thought about what Catherine had said just before Charlie had pulled her off. The town was eying her with suspicion. Yikes.

  And how would the townspeople feel about a celebrity wedding in their midst, especially one hosted by a newcomer? She hadn’t once considered it, but now that she did consider it, she felt a little sick. She couldn’t imagine the town elders appreciating a media circus, no matter the immediate business it might bring to store and restaurant owners. “I just might have committed social suicide,” she said aloud.

  Maybe she should have talked to Flynn before signing that contract. Maybe he could help her research local laws about the release of dyed birds . . . Dye couldn’t be good for a bird, could it?

  And neither could lack of water be good for a plant. Louise filled two plastic watering cans at the kitchen sink and went out to the porch to tend to the hanging plants.

  A few moments later, a very sleek and very shiny car Louise hadn’t seen before made its way up the drive and came to a stop. A young man got out of the driver’s side.

  “Mrs. Bessire?”

  “Yes,” Louise said, setting down the watering can. “I’m Louise Bessire. May I help you?”

  The young man extended his hand. As she took it, Louise noted that it was nicely manicured. Not a farmer then, or a fisherman. Well, certainly not either if he drove a Jaguar!

  “I’m Jeff Otten,” he said, “of the Ottens on Ocean Circle. On behalf of my family, I want to extend a welcome to Ogunquit. I apologize for it being so terribly belated. I thought one of my parents had certainly stopped by before now. I myself would have come by, but I’m away at school most months. And most summers I’m off traveling. But this year I’m sticking around town, helping my father with the business.”

  Louise smiled. “That’s very nice of you,” she said. “To come by and welcome us.”

  “My pleasure. If there’s anything we can do for you, here’s my card. Just give me a call.”

  “Well, thank you. I think we’re all settled in,” Louise said, “but you never know!”

  Huh, Louise thought as the young man got back in his car and disappeared around the curve in the road that would take him toward the heart of town. That was nice of him. She looked at the card. JEFFREY RICHARD OTTEN, V.P., OTTEN CORPORATION. Contact information followed.

  She made a mental note to ask Flynn about the Otten family the next time he came around. She had heard of them, of course, everyone had, but beyond the common knowledge that they were wealthy, had lived in the area for generations, and were active in state politics and their local church—facts that were true for just about any of the old families thereabouts—she knew nothing else.

  Well, Louise thought, when Isobel started to date, and it would probably be before too long, she hoped she would choose someone with the good manners of a Jeff Otten. Too many young people these days were rude and disrespectful and—

  Whoa. Louise grimaced. Where did that burst of grumpy old lady come from?

  Hmm. She wondered how the Ottens would view the wedding of celebrity couple Emory and Drake. Or Kassandra and Mack. Or whatever their names were. As one of the leading families of the area, their opinion probably carried a whole hell of a lot of weight. They might even have the influence to drive the Blueberry Bay Inn out of business . . .

  Louise sighed and went back to watering the hanging flowering plants. Well, it really was too late to pull out of the project now. As her mother had been fond of saying, she had made her bed and now she must lie in it. Fatalistic and depressing to the end, Louise thought. Good old Mom.

  Chapter 10

  CITYMOUSE

  Salutations!

  I just discovered that Miss Kit-a-Cat has the most fun book in her library. It’s a big picture book called My Love Affair with Jewelry and it’s all about Elizabeth Taylor’s passion for collecting (buying, as well as getting as gifts) exquisite rings and earrings and bracelets and necklaces and even tiaras! I don’t know much about her movie career—or about that infamous love affair with Richard Burton, who looks kind of hot in an older-guy-from-the-old-days sort of way—but I’m going to find out!

  At some point Ms. Taylor supposedly said, “Big girls need big diamonds.” I guess she was talking about herself, what with all of her mondo diamonds, like, for example, the Krupp, though she looks kind of tiny in pictures. (People who mocked her when she gained weight as she aged and because of battles with her personal demons should be ashamed of themselves. Who among us is perfect, huh? And enough with women and weight, already! Sheesh!) Anyway, no matter her physical stat
ure, her personality certainly was enormous!!!

  Anyway, the book made me think. I’m only fifteen (almost “sweet sixteen”—uh, right!), and already I’ve collected so much neat stuff, from beaded purses from the 1950s to funky pins from the 1970s to newer stuff that just looks great. Will I continue to collect until I’m old and gray? Will I someday start weeding out my collections of baubles and bangles, and replacing pieces with, I don’t know, more expensive stuff, or more boring stuff, or maybe even more weird-er stuff? And in the far, far future, will there be someone I can leave my stuff to, like a daughter or a granddaughter? Who knows! Maybe I’ll turn out to be a minimalist, though honestly, it’s kind of hard for me to imagine myself liking less instead of more!

  But I guess that’s part of the fun of life, right? You just never really know what to expect. Except for death and taxes, which is something my father always used to say, and maybe he still says it but I wouldn’t know. (Hey, Dad? You out there?)

  Isobel stopped typing. She debated deleting those last lines. True, she hadn’t heard from her father in almost two weeks; his periods of prolonged silence were becoming more usual, but it was still troubling. She really didn’t want to end the post on a grim or a whining note. The heck with it, she thought, letting that shout-out to her father stand. Isobel’s fingers flew across her keyboard once again.

  The awesome LouLou surprised us last night with a homemade apple pie that was worthy of Julia Child (genius!) and left us groaning in warm, crusty, oozy delight! Gwen had her slice with ice cream and proclaimed the gustatory experience one of the best in her sixteen years. (Isn’t that a great word—gustatory??? I came across it recently in an article and loved the sound of it in my mouth but had to look it up in my big old trusty dictionary, as it was new to me. Context told me a bit, of course, but it’s always good to confirm that you really know what you think you know.)

  Here’s a picture of the ceramic pie plate in which LouLou baked her latest masterpiece. It weighs about fifteen pounds. Okay, maybe about two. And, as you can see, it’s a really interesting shade of turquoise. (I’d love a scarf that color. Must keep out an eye!) LouLou found it at a yard sale a million years ago and remembers paying less than a dollar for it. Less than one hundred pennies! (Note to self: Start rolling your pennies, dimes, quarters, and nickels.)

  I don’t know how she does it, our LouLou, working from dawn to dusk and sometimes beyond, catering to all sorts of personalities and planning to host the wedding of the century (that’s all I’m allowed to say about THAT), while keeping a genuinely sweet smile on her face and managing to look très chic all the while!

  Well, every good thing (and bad, I suppose) must come to an end. So long for now, Dear Readers!

  Isobel posted the blog and put her laptop to sleep.

  And she thought about Jeff Otten.

  Her mother had told her about how he had stopped by to introduce himself and to offer any help they might need “settling in.” Well, that had been very nice of him, but why would a guy like Jeff Otten be likely to pay attention to an obscure mother and daughter (obscure compared to people like the Ottens!) taking up residence?

  Anyway, she guessed he hadn’t said anything about his having met her in town, which was a little odd. Then again, she hadn’t said anything to her mother about their running into each other—and that was the really odd thing. She knew she should say something soon, even if they never saw Jeff Otten again, because what if, just what if, he actually liked her? It was not good to start a relationship with a lie of omission, even if the lie was to her mother.

  Whoa! Isobel thought. Talk about jumping to impossible conclusions, thinking that Jeff Otten might actually like-like her! Sure, she had always been popular in school with both boys and girls, but she had never had a genuine boyfriend. A few guys had asked her out (the first when she was nine and he was eight! She remembered thinking it was totally funny and laughing and then, when the boy started to cry, wow, she had felt so bad!), but not anyone she liked enough to say yes to. There was plenty of other stuff to do besides hold hands with some guy you could barely tolerate, like so many of the girls she knew from school did. Or, worse, have sex—oral or other kinds—with some guy just because you were “supposed” to be having sex.

  Anyway, Isobel didn’t really know who all these teens were who were supposedly having sex. She wasn’t one of them, and neither was Gwen. Isobel had concluded that a lot of guys at their school were probably put off by Gwen’s fiercely independent appearance and her perfect grades; she had heard the term “man repeller” (from that cool fashion blog) used about Gwen and about herself, too, once. Maybe in a big city it would be different, but in a small town there just wasn’t a whole lot to choose from, and on the whole, people chose what was familiar, not what was wearing pink hair one week and green hair the next. It was understandable, if often frustrating.

  As for Isobel, her mother’s own cautionary tale hadn’t put her off guys or scared her or resulted in anything negative or restricting like that. On the contrary, her mom’s forthrightness about her own bad experience and her being so involved in the education of girls (all those workshops about girls’ empowerment she had led!) had made Isobel feel pretty strong and smart about things.

  And even though her father had become inattentive (to put it mildly) in the past two years, for a long time he had been a positive role model of true manly behavior. Well, maybe that very fact—his good behavior—had made his veering so wildly off course that much more difficult for Isobel to accept. If he had always been a bit of a slacker, then the contrast to what he was now—an absentee father—might not be so brutally clear.

  Bottom line was that Isobel liked guys and was excited about the whole dating thing. Her basic nature was positive; she insisted on seeing the good before the bad, on seeing the potential for love before the possibility of hate. She just didn’t assume the worst about people, and she was kind of proud of that. Not that she was a saint or anything, but she didn’t look at the world and its inhabitants as inherently or necessarily flawed. Why should she? That option seemed too depressing. Maybe, like Gwen had said to her recently, being positive was a lot more exhausting than being negative, but that was just the way it was with her.

  Isobel realized that she was smiling. So, Jeff Otten had come by the Blueberry Bay Inn . . .

  Chapter 11

  Louise had been out of bed uncharacteristically early, unable to sleep. All night she had been anticipating what she knew was going to be an unpleasant day. Today she was to meet the formidable Flora Michaels in person. Try as she might—and her imagination was a fertile one—she had little clear idea of what to expect, other than a nightmare of bossy behavior and miscommunication.

  At exactly 10 a.m. a Hummer painted a strangely nauseating combination of red and purple (Louise cringed; some people’s tastes!) roared up the drive of the Blueberry Bay Inn and came to an ungraceful halt by the foot of the porch, spewing gravel over the bottom steps. Three people climbed out of the vehicle, two men and a woman.

  Louise and Isobel stood on the front porch, ready to receive wedding planner to the stars, Flora Michaels. At the first sight of her, Louise decided that the woman’s name was about the only normal or inoffensive thing about her. She was painfully thin (Isobel had whispered that she made Rachel Zoe look robust and Victoria Beckham downright fat); the veins in her arms and hands protruded to a startling degree, and the tendons in her neck, not to mention her cheekbones, threatened to burst through the taut skin. Louise had a huge urge to run for a can of Boost and call for an intravenous drip.

  Making the wedding planner’s awkward appearance even more disturbing was the fact that she was wearing the most absurd outfit Louise thought she had ever seen other than on a couture runway. It appeared to be one piece, but whether it was in fact a sort of dress or a sort of jumpsuit, neither Louise nor Isobel could determine. It also appeared to be constructed of a variety of fabrics in strips of varying width, sewn together with crudely
obvious stitching. The garment, Louise thought, would depress even the jolliest clown.

  The shoes were beyond absurd, more (bad) architecture or (bad) sculpture than functional footwear. How she could walk without severe injury to her spinal cord was anyone’s guess, and more than once during the course of the day (more like tens of times) Flora Michaels tottered dangerously as she made her precarious way across the back lawn or down the sloping front lawn, forcing Calvin Streep, her trusty and ever-scowling assistant, to grab at and steady her before she pitched to the damp grass face-first. Louise had been tempted to offer a pair of her Keds to the woman but realized almost as immediately as the idea had come to her that Flora Michaels would probably rather commit a particularly nasty suicide before sliding her narrow feet into a pair of something as common as a pair of sneakers, let alone sneakers belonging to another woman.

  It was impossible to guess Flora Michaels’s age. Louise decided on “indeterminate” as the nicest way to put it. The woman’s makeup was flawless but in a heavy, masklike way, which was as fascinating as it was frightening. Her hair hung to her shoulders and was artfully and professionally colored in the ombre fad, but it was so thin that her scalp was clearly visible at the crown of her head. Too many extensions, Louise thought, that or poor nutrition.

  Not once during the interminable day did she let go of her handbag, which was approximately the size of a chunky one-year-old and the shape of a—well, of a chunky one-year-old. Except that chunky one-year-olds weren’t known to come in a puce and kelly green print. Isobel dubbed the bag The Incubus, for reasons she chose not to share. Louise was reminded of the enormous handbags carried by one of her favorite Elizabeth Peters’s heroines, and then felt bad for having made such a poor comparison. She doubted Flora Michaels had ever brilliantly fought off the criminal element with her own appendage as had Jacqueline Kirby. When Louise helpfully suggested Flora Michaels set the bag down in the parlor, she was met with a look of such horrified disbelief she really wondered for a moment if she had committed a serious social blunder.