Excerpt from The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern by Lynda Cohen Loigman, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Back in New York, the pool teemed with swimmers, but here, she had every lane to herself. Here, there were no splashing toddlers, no shouting mothers, no other distractions. Lap by lap, Augusta swam forward, her heart pumping contentedly in her chest. Thirty minutes later, when she emerged, her face was flushed with satisfaction. She removed her goggles, pulled off her swim cap, and let the morning sun warm her skin. In the time it had taken to complete her workout, several of the empty lounge chairs had been filled. She walked the perimeter of the pool, trying to remember where she'd left her towel.

She had just spotted her sandals and bag on a chair when she heard a man calling to her from behind. "Goldie!" said the voice. "Is that you?"

Augusta froze solidly in place. Despite the heat and the sunshine, she shivered visibly in her swimsuit. Goldie? She hadn't allowed anyone to call her that for more than sixty years.

Impossible, she told herself.

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.

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.

Excerpted from The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern by Lynda Cohen Loigman. Copyright © 2024 by Lynda Cohen Loigman. Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.