I wave at her. She waves back. I make a “come here” gesture. She gathers up her mat and walks to the back door, where I meet her with my cup of coffee in hand.
She dabs sweat from her forehead with what I recognize as a bath towel from the caretaker’s cottage. Then she smiles at me, revealing a charmingly wonky left incisor. “Sorry about that, I should have asked if you’d mind if I did yoga on your lawn. But the sunrise was so glorious, I couldn’t resist. The day was calling to me.”
“Not at all,” I said. “In fact, I was just thinking that I should join you tomorrow.” Too late, I realize that this sounds pushy, presumptive.
But she smiles. “Absolutely.” She points to the mug in my hand. “Can I beg a cup of coffee off you? We don’t have any in the cottage.”
“Of course!” I am unduly pleased. “You don’t have to beg.”
She steps into the house, and there it is again, that warm penumbra that surrounds her, the life of her, the glow of her. When she enters my space it feels like an electric shock, heating me back up.
“Michael doesn’t do yoga with you?” I putter around the kitchen, fiddling with the fussy Italian coffee machine that I haven’t quite mastered.
She gives a low laugh. “I think that if I woke him up this early he would literally bite my head off.” She takes the coffee from me and sips it, smiling at me over the rim. “Let’s just say that yoga is my thing, not his.”
“Ah.” I refresh my coffee and then stand there, awkwardly, trying to come up with something to say. When was the last time I attempted to befriend someone? What does one even talk about? I think back to my friends in New York—Saskia, Evangeline, Maya, and Trini, my constant companions and partners in visibility. We were together so much and discussed so little. Our conversations mostly revolved around brand names and diet trends and restaurant recommendations, which at the time felt like a relief—to just skate along the surface of things without having to think about the darkness below—but now I see as a symptom of the dreaded shallow. When my father died, they sent texts, but didn’t pick up the phone. Maybe that was the moment that I realized that my friendships were like the thin crust on a frozen lake, a barrier blocking the way to anything deeper.
Maybe Ashley intrigues me because she is my only friend option at the moment, but there is also something about her, the way she seems to be connected to something meaningful, that I find refreshing. As she walks through the kitchen of Stonehaven, lightly touching the surfaces as if testing them for solidity, she doesn’t seem to register my curiosity about her. Does she know that I am looking at her as a buoy to cling to, one that might keep me from drowning?
Please don’t hate me. I know there are so many things about me to hate. That I am vain and superficial and privileged; that I haven’t done more to make the world a better place; that I focus on my family’s sorrows rather than those of society at large. That instead of actually being a good person I have focused on looking like a good person. But isn’t that the best way to start? From the outside, in? Show me what else I should do.
“Want to go sit down in the library?” I blurt. “It’s warmer in there.”
She lights up. “Lovely!”
I usher her into the library, perhaps the least forbidding room in the house. I’ve got a fire going, the couch is soft, all those books speak of weightiness. I sit down, leave room for her on the cushion beside me. But Ashley hesitates in the doorway, flicks her eyes across the bookshelves as if looking for something, before gingerly depositing herself on the couch. I wonder whether she is worried about transferring the sweat from her yoga pants to the velvet of the couch. I want to reassure her that I don’t care.
She is staring across the room with an odd expression, as if riveted,