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When she didn't answer, the man spoke again."Goldie? Goldie Stern?"

The voice was rough and much too loud, causing the other pool-goers to stare. Augusta felt all their eyes upon her as they looked up from their books and magazines. Even the women in the shade paused their card game to squint at the newcomer. There was nowhere now for Augusta to hide, nothing to do but turn around. Half-naked and on display, she felt like a cheap music box ballerina, forced into a clumsy spin.

"It 'is' you, Goldie!" the man bellowed. "I'd know that tuchus anywhere!" He stood in the same direction as the sun, so it took a moment for her eyes to adjust. Bit by bit, he came into focus: gray-haired and shirtless, still broad-shouldered, but now with a prominent potbelly that was slick with sunscreen and impossibly tan.

Before she could protest, he embraced her, pressing his naked, oily torso against her thinly covered flesh. She tried to extricate herself, to put some physical distance between them, but his arms were stronger than she remembered. While keeping one hand around her waist, he removed his sunglasses with the other.

However much the rest of him had aged, his eyes, at least, were the same—heavy-lidded, naproxen blue, full of timeless boyish mischief.

"It's me," he said, as if she didn't know. "Irving Rivkin. Remember?"

The last time she'd seen him, she was eighteen years old—young and trusting and deeply in love. She was none of those things now. She removed his hand, took two steps back, and crossed her arms over her damp chest.

"Of course I remember," she snapped.

"I thought you said you'd never leave New York."

"And I thought you'd be dead by now."

He threw his head back and barked out a laugh. "Still as sharp as ever," he said. "What brings you to Rallentando Springs?"

"I moved here yesterday," said Augusta. The whisper of panic in her head grew louder. "Don't tell me you live here, too?"

The smile he gave transported her back to the first day they met in her father's drugstore—back to a time when her heart was still soft, like overripe fruit left out in the sun. Back to when lines were still blurry, hope was abundant, and love did not seem so far out of reach.

Irving Rivkin winked at her slyly. "You'd better believe it," he said.

* * *

CHAPTER TWO

JUNE 1922

Growing up in the apartment above her father's drugstore meant that Augusta Stern was bound from childhood to the world of the shop below. As a baby, she was mesmerized by the show globe in the window—an antique glass pendant filled with emerald-green liquid that hung from the ceiling on a shiny brass chain. Her favorite sound was the bell on the door that chimed whenever a customer entered. Not only did she take her very first steps in the aisle between the Listerine and the St. Joseph's Worm Syrup, but when, as a nearly mute eighteen-month-old, she slipped and fell headfirst into the display of McKesson & Robbins Cold and Grippe Tablets, family lore had it that the first word she spoke was not Mama, Papa, or boo-boo, but aspirin.

Every person within a half-mile radius of the corner of Sackman Street and Sutter Avenue knew Solomon Stern and Stern's Pharmacy. They sought his advice regarding every kind of ailment—from fevers, coughs, and constipation to insomnia and skin infections. They wandered into his shop from the delicatessen next door to ask what to take for their upset stomachs. They carried their screaming children to him directly from the playground down the block because he could disinfect a bloody knee with iodine faster than any doctor in town.

Not only was Augusta's father a skillful practitioner, he was also a thoughtful listener. To his customers, he was priest and rabbi, social worker and secret keeper. The precision with which he formulated his treatments—whether pills or powders, creams or tinctures—was lauded by everyone in the neighborhood. His medicines made everyone well.

Everyone except for Augusta's mother.

Irene Stern developed diabetes at the age of thirty-seven, when Augusta was only twelve years old. She saw all the specialists there were to see, but there was no medication available to help. When the doctor first made his diagnosis, Irene knew what lay ahead. She did not rail against her fate but set about making the two years she had left as pleasant as possible for her daughters. Even in her final weeks—starved to a bony, fragile shell—Irene was a calm and easy light, devoid of any bitterness. In the end, she simply floated away, like a blue balloon in a cloudless sky that, once set free, rises up, up, up until it vanishes entirely into the ether.