The entrance opened into a round living room surrounded by a winding staircase that, if you climbed it, led you through a series of round spaces: a bedroom, then the dining room, then a library with enormous windows that looked out at the water. （That was the first library in which Nick and Laurie had awkwardly made out while the sun was going down.） In the boxy section beside the tower—the part that looked like a regular little house—were Ginger’s bright yellow kitchen, her primary bedroom suite, a powder room, and a small sitting room that unofficially belonged to the dogs.
As long as Laurie could remember, she’d never been able to find so much as a dust particle on a surface where Ginger was in charge. Having spent so much time in Dot’s cluttered house with half-empty boxes and stacks of photos, Laurie could have been self-conscious in this bright oasis. But Ginger gestured at a cream-colored couch—Cream! In a house of dogs!—and Laurie and Nick sat together, much as they would have when they were seventeen. On the coffee table, there was already a glass carafe of orange juice and an opened bottle of champagne in an ice bucket. “I’m not telling you what to do,” Ginger said over her shoulder as she headed into the kitchen, “but I’ll be right back, the glasses are right there, and you can follow your bliss.”
“Follow your bliss,” Nick whispered as he poured orange juice into a tall glass and topped it with a glug of champagne, then did the same for her. “What are you making in there, Gran?” he called out.
“We’re having some fruit, and some very delicious pastries and coffee,” she answered, “because I couldn’t get the good eggs this week. They mob that farmers market, I tell you. I get there fifteen minutes early and the tourists from the cottages clean out the eggs before I get to the front of the line. I don’t know what they’re even making. Who eats that many eggs on vacation?” She appeared with a tray that held a plate of croissants and muffins, plus a pot of coffee and two white mugs with photos on them of small children grinning to show off mouthfuls of teeth that sported a few gaps. “Now, do you know who these beauties are, Nick?” she asked as she set down the tray.
“Oh boy,” he said, picking up one of the mugs. “These are the children of…one of my cousins.”
She clicked her tongue. “One of your cousins. Shame on you. These are Betsy’s boys. That’s Clayton with the bat on his shoulder, and that’s Calvin with the cat in his lap.”
Laurie poured herself coffee in the Calvin mug. “Betsy is John’s daughter, right?”
“Show-off,” Nick muttered as he filled the other one.
“That’s right,” Ginger said. “John’s got Betsy, she’s a nurse, and Brian, he’s a dog trainer, and Tracy, she works at a coffee shop in Bangor. I supported her at the Pride parade, you know.” Ginger got up and went to the mantel, where she took down a small framed photo. In it, Ginger had a full rainbow of colors in her hair, and she was wearing a shirt that said BI BI LOVE, and Tracy, a brunette with a short bob, was grinning and kissing her cheek.
“That is a beautiful picture,” Laurie said, handing it to Nick. “How’s your team doing, Ginger?”
“So far, so good,” she said. “They lost to Freeport the other day, but only because some lucky bastard put a little grounder past my David. Utter luck, it was a terrible bounce. You have to come to a game, Laurie. They’re just such fun.”
“Do they still run the cereal-box race?”
“Oh, yes.” Ginger sat in a green wing chair. “You know, they added a box. There are four now. There’s one for Raisin Bran. Raisin Bran hasn’t won yet, but people are going to go crazy when it happens. The little girl, Lily, who’s running in Raisin Bran next weekend, is supposed to be a real pistol, so we’ll see. How are things at Dot’s, my love?”
To her own surprise, for the briefest moment, Laurie thought she might burst into tears. God, how were things at Dot’s? She had cleaned out maybe a third of the closets. She had stacked books. She might have given away a priceless antique after being swindled by a man who somehow understood precisely the variety of kindness to which she would immediately overreact. “I’m doing my best,” she said, running her finger along the rim of the mug. “I’m afraid I’m going to miss something important that my mom or my aunt would want. I don’t know if it’s enough, what I’m doing, but I’m really trying.”