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would have hurried back to her side to tell her right away that I'd fucked a stranger in the parking lot, or at least that I'd found a guy selling weed, but I was beginning to learn that adulthood had a way of putting distance between you and the people who had once shared your secrets. Everyone had their own problems and anxieties, and to pass them on was no longer a confidence but a nuisance, heaping your own baggage on top of someone else's.
     On the morning of the Sunday when she was due to leave Burlington we acted like we had all the time in the world, drinking espresso in European style cafes, strolling around hipsterish little art galleries whose works had their tags written all in lowercase and the prices were conspicuously absent. Courtney made me join in an open-air yoga session on a park lawn and they tolerated our giggling for all of about five minutes before my attempt at the tree position nearly tipped over a whole row like dominos.
     "I would never have dared do that in Westerwick," I said, as we scurried off in disgrace. "I'd never hear the end of it. Maybe I should move somewhere like here. Somewhere big."
     Courtney laughed at that, as well she might. "Big? Are you kidding? This place is adorable. It's like a pretty little college town."
     "Size is relative," I said. "This is big for Vermont. Have you ever been to Montpelier? It's a village."
     "You should come on down to old New Amsterdam sometime. When you've lived in a city of nearly eight and half million people it tends to skew your sense of scale."
     I wanted to ask her if it was because New York made her feel tiny that she seemed to be trying to disappear, but I'd understood why she got mad at me for asking about her weight. We could always find a way to understand one another and it was this that kept yanking at my nerves - that one day we might grow into people who asked each other "How are you?" and we'd say "Oh, you know - I'm fine," even when we really weren't fine at all.
     She took a flight back to New York and I drove back home, where I was surprised to feel a whole lot better. Maybe I'd needed to get laid; it had been a while after all. I'd broken up with Jesse after two years because three weeks into senior year he'd started worrying about what we'd do after graduation and while it was a reasonable thing to worry about his timing was anything but reasonable. And senior year had left me with little to no time for guys.
     It was a good thing Courtney had kept me distracted, because every time I thought about what had happened in the parking lot I blushed. I was sure Aunt Cassandra would notice, but I didn't see her until the Tuesday and it was one of her better days. I don't know what she saw in the mirror or the bathroom scale that had pleased her especially that morning, but as soon as Dad saw the spring in her step he bolted into the workshop and left me to take the brunt of it.
     "I can smell fall in the air," she said. "Better get this place in order before the hordes descend."
     I said nothing and pretended to be busy writing up price tickets for the new stock. I was thinking of maybe doing them all in lowercase, like the gallery in Burlington; a great deal of the business of living in a tourist trap is about parting the rich and the hopelessly pretentious from their money. While I was lurking I saw Cassandra run her finger over the top of a roll-top desk that she had informed me on several occasions was actually an 'escritoire'.
     I typed it into my laptop.
    escritoire. 18th century french influences. $700.
     Nice. The lowercase worked. I added a fifty to the price tag.
     "Lacie, are you even listening to a word I'm saying?" said Cassandra.
     "Um, yeah," I lied, and added a 'sort of' as her eyes bored into me. "I had maybe half an ear out," I confessed.
     "Then where's the polish?" she asked. "The wax. Not the spray can - the lavender beeswax. This place needs to smell of it. People smell that and they know that the