and the summer wedding that has the whole town talking

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Lauren Edmondson’s next novel

Wedding of the Season

Coming February 2023!

Chapter 1

Net-a-Newport 2h

Maggie Coventry-Gilford & Jack Utterback’s engagement party @ The Land tonight

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A single weekend, I assured myself as I turned onto the Avenue and slowed beneath the canopy of mature trees—oaks, willows, maples. Pink flowers and vines cascaded from black streetlamps, styled to look old-fashioned, and ruler-straight hedges teased glimpses of the staggering, lavish mansions beyond. Old. Exclusive. Private. There was the hulking Romanesque revival, its tan sandstone tower making it more castle than house. To its east, the exaggerated Italianate villa and its second-story loggias that allowed residents to look down their noses from every direction. And, too soon, the wrought-iron gate of The Land.

Driving from this direction, it always felt as though my world was narrowing.

I unbuckled my seat belt, leaning halfway out my window to punch in the code: 1899, the year construction finished. The gate creaked open and I inched my greige rental sedan through to the pea-graveled allée that over the centuries had welcomed everything from livery and horses to Model Ts to Aston Martins. Maybe I should’ve had a heavier foot on the gas but despite the circumstances—I was running late—two miles per hour seemed plenty.

Straight ahead, in all its conspicuous excess, loomed my destination, tall above the rustling tulip trees. The Gilded Age titans and their heiress wives referred to it as a cottage. On their website, the Historical Society describes it as a beaux-arts masterpiece. Some locals might still call it the Coventry mansion. For me, it had been home.

For so many years, I believed we, my siblings and I, were The Land’s heartbeat. What oak tree on the property hadn’t we climbed? Which one of the Cottage’s thirty rooms hadn’t been explored, turned into pirate ships or volcanoes, floors bubbling with lava? Which of the property’s outbuildings hadn’t been ruthlessly annexed as a clubhouse, no adults allowed? But I hadn’t been back in almost a decade, and it had managed to go on without me.

I bent forward to look through the windshield as the trio of massive Corinthian columns appeared, the stucco garlands hovering above each window, some rectangular, some square, most bracketed by dramatic black shutters. Iron Juliet balconies edged the windows of the imposing east and west wings, which jutted out symmetrically on either side of the main hall. The roof was a varied landscape of peaked gables, flat cornices, brick chimneys, and—on the conservatory off the east wing—standing-seam metal the color of a polished copper pot. The first place I got felt up was in that conservatory. Garrett with the great hair. Tall. Sweet. Decent kisser. And no longer in my life because—well, because of everything.