“You are so lucky,” Ran said. “I wanted to do that, but my dad wouldn’t let me—said I could figure out what I wanted to do with my life while I was taking care of the basic coursework at the community college.” She scowled toward the front of the store.

Maggie wasn’t exactly taking a gap year. She chewed on her lower lip, thought about correcting the girls’ assumption, but decided against it.

“Did you go to school around here?” Hope asked.

She shook her head. “Vermont.” Then, quickly, to change the subject: “I’m staying with my aunt. She has a place by the lake.” She breathed a bit easier. At least that was true.

Ran looked even more aggrieved. Leaning back in the rocking chair, she muttered, “Traveling is what I wanted to do, too.”

Hope grunted. “Your parents must be cool, Marge.”

A librarian and an accountant? Maggie didn’t correct that assumption, either.

Ran sat up and nodded at the book in Maggie’s lap. “What did you think about My Name Is Lucy Barton?”

“It was good.” At least she thought it was. Honestly, she wasn’t sure. She’d been so distracted while she read it. She shrugged. “I liked it.”

The girls gazed at her expectantly. Kindly. Without judgment or suspicion or—worse—titillation.

And suddenly, Maggie felt intensely, almost limply relieved. She was doing what she’d set out to do: start over from a point of anonymity. She didn’t know these girls. More important, they didn’t know her.

This book club was just what she needed.

Pressing the novel against her chest, she racked her brain to think of something to say about the book and settled on the one thing she’d noticed: “Lucy’s relationship with her mother was interesting, how the two are close without being…” She glanced around, searching for the word, and finished, “Open.”

Ran hummed a note of agreement. “There was something really tender about that mother-daughter relationship…” She kept talking, going on about the ways the characters showed their love, and Maggie half-listened.

But the other half of her was replaying her own words: how the two are close without being open. Maybe that could happen in her relationships, too. Close but closed. Friendly but private. She felt a tiny thrill at the possibility and thought, That’s how I’ll operate. I can be interesting Marge, enjoying a gap year, traveling, visiting my cool aunt. I can be whoever I want!

She realized this probably wasn’t the point of Strout’s book—realized, too, some self-serving self-justification was going on with her interpretation.

She didn’t care.

7

MAGGIE HOVERED IN the studio doorway, took a step forward, changed her mind, and stepped back. She should have waited until lunchtime to pass along the information. Her aunt was busy, working at the potter’s wheel.