Chapter Thirteen
Thirteen
Justin’s parents, Carmen and Bert Lombardo, lived in a middle Georgian built during the whaling era, complete with a widow’s walk. A fence bordered the property, and he opened the gate to the stone walkway leading to the rear of the house. No one used the front entrance, and considering his family’s entire world centered around their restaurant, entering the home through the kitchen was fitting. The windows were wet with condensation from his mother’s cooking, and the air was pungent with fresh garlic.
Tuesday night was the Lombardo family dinner night. It was the slowest night in town, after the weekenders left and before the next crop of visitors arrived, and therefore the only time his parents were willing to leave the restaurant in the capable hands of the managers.
“Hello?” he called out, checking his phone for the time.
He was a few minutes late, and everyone was already at the dining room table. He planted himself in one of the craftsman chairs, opposite his father. The long table was covered with food from end to end. His mother served linguini in a bowl hand-painted with roosters—Portuguese pottery that had been part of their meals for as long as he could remember. The crusty garlic bread in a basket was his sister’s contribution, the only thing she ever “cooked.” His father was busy decanting the red wine. Two big platters of chicken parmesan rested between his parents, and he knew his mother would send him home with leftovers to freeze.
“Sorry I’m late. Work was busy.”
“Mia mentioned. All those fish! Is it a red tide situation?” his mother said. She had initially been disappointed when he said he didn’t want to take over the family business, but she respected his choice in vocation. She understood the value in the work he was doing. It was impossible to live on the Cape and not experience the fallout from water pollution, climate change, overfishing, and countless other threats to their beloved home.
Justin shook his head. “We don’t think so. Not this time.”
Mia, busy eating, offered a distracted wave. He wondered if she’d told their parents about Shelby Archer’s return, and decided no, she wouldn’t. Why give them another reason to push back on her bookstore job? They’d argued for weeks about her decision not to work at the restaurant.
He wasn’t surprised that Colleen needed help managing the store. When Doug confided in him that Colleen was pregnant and said “nothing will change,” Justin thought he was being naive. He still had a vague memory of being ten years old and the arrival of his baby sister—how it turned their family of three into something exponentially different. But what did surprise him was that a) the person she had asked for help was Shelby and b) Shelby had actually come back to Provincetown. She’d made it clear when she left three years ago that she didn’t plan to be back, and certainly didn’t want any obligation to be. That was what their relationship had been reduced to in the end: an obligation she couldn’t meet.
He’d never understand why she moved to New York without even trying to make it work. It made him wonder if it had been a one-sided relationship all along. But he had to hand it to her—she’d done it. She was a published novelist.
For a while after Shelby, he couldn’t get emotionally invested in anyone. But he’d come to realize that timing was everything in life. That was why he was optimistic about the way things were going with Kate. They’d met through a shared interest, a passion project. They were geographically compatible—especially now that she was opening a store in Ptown. And they wanted the same things out of life: meaningful work. Life on the Cape. Someday, a family of their own.
He never imagined he’d be thinking of the future in such permanent terms at just twenty-eight years old. But the way Doug and Colleen had escalated things so quickly, it changed his perspective. No, he couldn’t say for sure that Kate was the one . But he did hope to someday have a marriage like his parents’. Carmen and Bert had met in their twenties while vacationing separately in Sicily. They’d grown up an hour away from one another in Boston, but it took a trip across the ocean for them to cross paths. They’d been together ever since. They married, had Justin, and opened their first pizza place on the Boston waterfront, all by the time they were thirty. Could Justin fill in so many blanks in his personal and professional life within the next three years? Did he want to?
“I had a beer with Bill Hockney last night,” his father said. “He was fishing over in Yarmouth, had a striper on the line, and a seal snatched it right off.”
“I’m not surprised,” Justin said. Halichoerus grypus , gray seals, were the most common species of seal found in Cape Cod waters during the summer. The males could grow larger than ten feet long and weigh over eight hundred pounds.
“Well, we didn’t have this problem thirty years ago. Now folks like your boss are passing all these laws that do more harm than good.”
“Dad, look at what the Marine Mammals Protections Act did for whales and manatees. I don’t hear you complaining we have too many of them .”
“Well, they’re not the ones attracting sharks.”
His dad had a point there: the increase in white sharks was a problem. Justin was working in a program that captured sharks and tagged them with accelerometers to track their movement. They’d logged hundreds of miles so far.
“Nature is a delicate balance,” Justin said. Another reason why he’d chosen to work in Ptown was that he understood the balance there innately, almost instinctively. He felt it was his life’s purpose to be its steward. And it wasn’t just about marine life; the change in climate was affecting every aspect of their lives on the peninsula, with more and more damaging storms that were hurting businesses and threatening their way of life.
But he wasn’t in the mood to debate that tonight. The news about Shelby was bothering him more than he wanted to admit. “Mia’s workday was actually more eventful than mine,” he said. She set down her fork down and shook her head.
“Oh?” his mother said, turning to Mia, who shrugged.
“Shelby Archer is working at Land’s End for the summer,” Justin said, trying to sound nonchalant. But it felt wrong to say her name aloud, as if he were welcoming her back into his thoughts. And the last thing he wanted was to think about Shelby. So he brought it up to get the news out of the way.
“ That one’s back?” his father said. Ever since Shelby left, he’d referred to her only as “That one.” His parents had taken the breakup almost as hard as he did. They’d adored her. But while his father dealt with it by never mentioning her again, his mother took the opposite tack. “It’s hard when you’re young,” she’d said at the time. And then continued to ask about her for months until she finally gave up.
“Well, that settles it, Mia,” Bert said. “No more wasting time at the bookstore. We’re short-staffed and you can earn more money with tips.”
“The bookstore job will look better on my college applications,” Mia said.
“She’s right,” Justin said. “But Mia, if you want to work at a bookstore, work at the new one.”
“What new one?” Carmen said. His mother had selective memory.
“I told you, Ma: Kate is opening up a Hendrik’s here for the summer. And hopefully, longer.” He wasn’t surprised his mother had conveniently forgot the news. She didn’t seem to like Kate. He wasn’t sure why. It wasn’t her fault she had a gluten allergy and couldn’t eat pasta.
“Work for a competing bookstore? I would never do Colleen dirty like that,” Mia said. “And I can’t believe Doug isn’t totally pissed at you.”
“Mia, you know I don’t like that expression,” Carmen said.
“Why would Doug care?” The truth was, Justin only considered the new bookstore as competition for Colleen’s business after the fact. He hadn’t considered it until Duke brought up the issue at the board meeting. But the way Justin saw it, Land’s End was an institution. Hendrik’s was just a little summer bonus catering to the massive wave of visitors. There was so much summertime foot traffic, he was sure both bookstores could successfully coexist.
He wasn’t so sure about himself and Shelby Archer. It had taken him a long time to get over her, and the one thing that helped was the fact that they lived three hundred miles apart.
His father muttered something he didn’t catch, and his mother laughed. The big belly laugh that made everyone around her smile, too. Shelby laughed like that. He had a memory of Shelby and his mother leaning in towards one another, shaking with laughter at that very table.
He pushed the thought away.
The problem, he realized, was that his mother simply hadn’t spent enough time around Kate. He’d have to do something about that.
They had their routines, Carmen and Bert. It varied from season to season, but in the summer, it went something like this: Tuesday was their weekend. It was the only night they trusted their kitchen and the front of the house to run smoothly without them.
After dinner with the kids, they drove their open-topped Jeep to Herring Cove beach, parked in the lot, then walked their oversize blanket to a spot near the water. The blanket was one of her favorites, Turkish cotton, purchased at a now-defunct store called Loveland. Stores came and went in PTown, just like people. She and Bert were among the few who stayed, year in and year out.
Sunsets on Herring Cove were like a magic trick in the sky. Relaxing on the beach among her neighbors and watching nature’s light show was usually enough to make her forget any worries. Not tonight.
“You’re quiet,” Bert said. She knew it was his way of asking what was wrong. If he just came right out and said, What’s wrong? she’d reflexively reply, Nothing .
“I’m thinking about Mia,” she said. “Every time I try to talk to her about college, she shuts down. We’re running out of time.” Summer went quickly. In the fall, she’d have to start doing her applications. She had friends whose children were already working on their essays.
“She mentioned it tonight—how the bookstore job would look good on her application.”
“That’s a smoke screen. She just wants any excuse to work there.”
“There’s time,” Bert said, reaching for her hand. He wasn’t necessarily the calmer of the two them, but he did tend to see things in reductive terms. As far as he was concerned, there was time until the applications were actually due.
“At this point, I’d settle for an opinion about where she’d like to go.” Carmen didn’t understand why this was so much to ask. Mia loved books. So why did she hate school?
“Frankly, I think the more immediate worry is Justin,” Bert said.
She knew why he felt that way. Shelby Archer. As Justin’s father, Bert was more of a confidant to their son. He’d no doubt heard a lot more about their son’s heartbreak three years ago than she had. Around her, Justin always put on a brave front. So maybe it was easier for her not to feel cynical about Shelby. They’d been so young! But whenever she said that in Shelby’s defense, Bert replied, “ We managed to make it work.”
It was true. They’d met at the same age as Justin and Shelby. But unlike Carmen in her early twenties, Shelby had professional dreams—and the maturity to know that a serious relationship might not be compatible with her ambition. She wished her own daughter had some goals for the future.
“Maybe having Shelby back is a blessing in disguise,” Carmen said. “She sets a good example for Mia.”
The truth was, Carmen had enjoyed getting to know her that one summer. She was able to talk to her in a way she didn’t connect with her own children. Justin was good kid, but as a boy he’d always been closer with Bert. And Mia, once such an easygoing child, saw her now as someone to rebel against. But Shelby had seemed to genuinely enjoy Carmen’s company, asking her about cooking and the restaurant business and her early years on the Cape. Shelby confided in her about her rootless childhood, admitting that she didn’t have a great relationship with her own parents but hoping that might change one day. Carmen had been impressed by how focused she was on having a career and financial independence.
Carmen liked to think of herself as having been mature for her age when she met and married Bert. But she didn’t think she’d ever had such concrete goals. She’d just stumbled along, lucky to find the right partner and willing to figure it out from there. Shelby wanted to figure it out first, then find the right person. She couldn’t blame her. Really, it made Carmen respect her.
Bert cast her a sideways glance. “ We set a good example for Mia. Things might be bumpy with her right now, but don’t lose sight of that.”
He leaned over and gave her a kiss. She hoped he was right. But just in case it turned out he wasn’t, she was keeping her eyes open for another way to reach Mia. And she couldn’t help feeling that might have something to do with Shelby Archer.