Chapter 11
ELEVEN
SADIE
Today was a big day in town. It was the third Saturday of July, also known as the Marswood Harbor Fair.
I’d seen flyers go up over the course of the week, and the regulars at Knead More Bread had talked it up.
It was the event of the summer. And at the very least, it was an excuse to get out of the house that wasn’t just wandering around town, wondering what I was doing with my life.
But when I ventured out to the kitchen, Gideon was there. “Morning,” he said, nodding to a takeaway cup from Knead More Bread.
Half-sweet almond milk matcha latte. Still warm.
My heart turned over. “Thank you,” I said, voice choked with emotion, then cursed myself. He was just being nice. It wasn’t some declaration of everlasting love; it was a hot drink. I sat down on the couch facing the water to enjoy it.
“What’s your plan today?” Gideon asked.
Surprised, I looked over to where he stood in the kitchen. “Why?”
Gideon huffed a laugh. “Don’t sound so suspicious, Sadie. I’m making conversation.”
“Oh. Do we do that?”
He gave me a flat look. “I’m currently regretting my decision to try.”
I rolled my lips to keep from laughing. “If you must know,” I finally replied primly, “I’m attending the Marswood Harbor Fair. A dozen people have told me it’s the best day of the summer.”
“Oh yeah?” Gideon snorted.
“What? It’s not a good event?”
“It’s fine,” he said, grabbing a pan from the cabinet. He put it on the stove, turned the burner on, then opened the fridge to get some eggs. “It’s just…remember that this is Marswood Harbor we’re talking about.”
“A fair is a fair.”
“Said like someone who’s never lived in a small town.”
“Said like someone whose bitterness has taken over,” I shot back.
Gideon tilted his head to concede the point. “You want eggs?” He lifted one up as if I needed extra help understanding what an egg was.
I considered being snarky, but he’d gotten me a matcha latte and was offering to make me food, so I just nodded. “Sure. Thanks.”
Gideon made deliciously creamy scrambled eggs and perfectly golden toast. He even cut it into triangles and didn’t judge me when I smothered my eggs in ketchup.
Well, he might’ve judged me, but he had the decency not to say it out loud.
Henry had hated my liberal use of ketchup as a condiment.
He thought it was uncivilized. And why was I still thinking about my ex-fiancé?
We’d broken up half a year ago, and I was now married to another man.
I should’ve been over the pain of it by now.
“Ready?” Gideon asked when we’d put our dishes in the dishwasher.
I frowned. “For what?”
He looked at me like I was dense. “For the fair?”
“You’re coming?”
His lips twitched. “I’m driving, babe. Wouldn’t want to miss your reaction to the biggest event of the summer.” His sarcasm was so thick I could’ve cut it like jello.
“They should really put you on the Marswood Harbor marketing committee,” I snarked. “You’d have droves of tourists flooding the town with that attitude.”
He laughed, and we went out to the car. It was an easy drive along the coast, and I was once again captivated by the beauty of the region.
The ocean was a wild crash of waves against the shore, and the hills were a tangle of dense forest. The air smelled so clean I wondered what poison I’d been inhaling in the city all my life.
We stayed on the coast road and parked on the far side of Main Street. The Pier was just visible behind us where it overlooked the ocean on top of a bluff. Gideon waited as I hooked my cross-body bag over my head, then nodded toward the seaside road.
And then we were at the fair.
It was about a hundred feet of ragtag stalls.
Half of them were empty. To my right, the words “Petting Zoo” were spray-painted on a piece of plywood that leaned against rickety-looking pens.
Two angry geese were in the first one, followed by a goat, a llama, and finally someone’s dog.
A small stage had been set up at the far end of the road, with a small cluster of people setting up microphones and speakers.
As far as fairs went, it was pretty pathetic.
Gideon’s aunt, Angela, sat behind one stall full of frankly mediocre floral watercolor paintings.
There was a stall selling little pucks of hard-looking bread.
An angry woman sat at the table, glaring at the Knead More Bread stall across the road.
I spotted another stall of secondhand clothes, and one final one with beeswax and honey products. The rest were empty.
“So?” Gideon asked.
He wore sunglasses, but I could see the crinkles at the side of his eyes. “Are we early?” I asked.
His lips spread. “Nope.”
“Why are there so many empty stalls?”
“It’s a first-come, first-served kind of thing, and the people of Marswood Harbor are optimists.”
“Other than you, you mean?”
He laughed. “Where do you want to start?”
I nodded at Caroline manning the bakery’s stall. “Might as well get another drink.”
We ambled up to her stall, and she arched her brows at me. “I don’t have matcha capabilities here, I’m afraid,” she told me, and put her hands on two big silver carafes of coffee. “I have dark roast and darker roast.”
“I’ll go with dark,” I answered, then glanced at the bread stall across the way. “What’s the story with that bread lady?”
“Eat at your own risk,” Caroline answered, and Gideon snorted.
We got our coffees, paid, and then faced the fair. “I was expecting more,” I admitted, which made Gideon laugh again. I couldn’t help staring at him when he did, my own lips curling in response.
“This is as good as it gets in this town, I’m afraid,” he said, looking down at me. The sun gilded his dark hair, and I couldn’t help the yearning that ached in my chest. I still wanted him as badly as I had two weeks ago, when we were married. He arched a brow. “Regretting your decision to stay?”
“No,” I answered, and turned toward the pens. “Let’s go see the animals.”
Gideon followed me as I gave the geese a wide berth—devil creatures, as far as I was concerned—and started with the dog.
He looked like a collie crossed with something big.
A lab, maybe. He had dark fur with gray eyebrows, floppy ears, and a whipcord tail that wagged violently.
He came panting up to the fence and put his paws up on the edge of it, aggressively happy to see us.
The whole pen tilted as he did, and Gideon leaned against the wire frame to stop it from toppling.
“Hey, boy,” I said, scratching the dog behind the ears. “Aren’t you gorgeous?”
Gideon reached over to pet the dog, making clicking noises with his tongue and grinning when the dog licked his fingers.
An older man walked up to us, wearing faded jeans and an old T-shirt. “Still a soft touch with animals, eh, Gid?”
“Can’t beat a loyal dog,” Gideon replied, then nodded at me. “Sadie, this is my uncle Walter.”
“Congratulations,” Walter replied, and I recognized him as the snoring mustachioed man at the wedding.
“Thank you. I haven’t seen you at Etta’s Sunday lunches.”
“Too busy with the animals,” Walter said. “And too many people at them lunches. Mom doesn’t care that I don’t go as long as I show up for the important things.”
Gideon grunted, and I went back to petting the dog. “Etta is your mother?”
Walter nodded. “Me, then Angela, Susan, Peter, Mark, and then Jennifer.”
I’d met everyone but Mark. I guessed that was Gideon’s late father. I was starting to make sense of the family connections. “I see. You’re the eldest. Do you have any kids?”
“Sure do. Two boys and a girl. Their mother took them away when we split, but they come and visit often enough now that they’re all grown up.”
“Hard to keep people in this town,” Gideon replied, and it had the sound of an old, familiar line. How many people had they seen come and go? Was that why Gideon was so sure I wouldn’t want to stay?
Walter made a noise in agreement. “Mom’s gotten some crazy ideas in the past, but this is a new one,” he said, nodding at me. “But you’ve lasted two weeks, so you might last two more.”
“I actually really like it here,” I said, oddly offended.
Walter just laughed. “Can’t say that until you’ve had a winter here.”
Gideon grunted. “You coming to Grandma’s birthday party?”
“That, I can’t miss,” Walter said, and he laughed. “See you both there?”
Gideon nodded, and when Walter went to chat with someone else, I asked about the birthday party. “She’s turning ninety next week,” he told me.
“Do I need to get her a present?” I asked, looking around a little frantically. There weren’t even any knick-knacks at this terrible fair.
Gideon just smiled. “No. As long as we go, she’ll be happy.”
I nodded, gave the dog one last pat, then moved to the next pen. The llama looked a little angry, so I just gave it a tentative smile and went to the goat. It munched on the grass in its pen, then hopped up onto a bucket and bleated. I jumped back, startled, and laughed. Gideon chuckled beside me.
A moment later, the llama made a noise, and a stream of spit came flying toward me. I screamed, throwing my hand up too late, and stumbled sideways. Gideon tried to reach for me, but he bumped the goat’s pen. The goat leaped from the bucket, jumped the divider, and landed between the two geese.
Covered in llama spit, I watched as the geese began to honk with fury.
“Oh, my God,” I said, a moment before the goat panicked and leaped toward the pen’s wire fence. I saw its hooves, the whites of its eyes, and its little horns, and then the whole pen collapsed and the goat made a run for it.
Leaving me standing four feet away from the devil creatures.
The closest goose’s neck extended toward me, and a loud honk came blaring out of its beak. Its wings spread and started beating, sending flutters of goose-scented wind toward me. I screamed.