Chapter 2
CHAPTER 2
Of all the coffee shops in all the world...Who was she kidding? Sea Coast was the only coffee shop in Cranberry Harbor, the run-in was inevitable. But what was he even doing here? Jack had moved away, headed to California, Silicon Valley to be exact.
After graduating from MIT he’d been recruited by the biggest companies out there but had turned them all down preferring to come back to the Cape and start his own company. He had built a small start up but it didn’t go as planned. He’d hoped to be able to bring tech jobs to the Cape and stop the flood of young people fleeing to better opportunities elsewhere, but it didn’t work and he’d lost all his savings, and money from several investors. So, when tempted by a six-figure job at one of the biggest companies on the West Coast, he left. Leaving everything and everyone, including her, behind. After four years together, having known each other since middle school, he left her and all their plans like they had never mattered.
Lizzie decides to play it safe and not stop anywhere else and heads right to her parent’s house lest she spill anything more or run into Jack again.
She pulls into the driveway, she loves hearing the familiar crunch of the crushed quahog shell driveway. She smiles seeing the twinkly lights wrapped around the porch railing and the candles in all the windows. It was the way her parents had decorated the house her whole life and she never wanted it to be any different. She was happy to see in her absence these past Christmases that absolutely nothing had changed. Getting out of the car she smells the smoke from what she knows is a crackling fire in the fireplace, and begins to gather her things from the back of her car.
“Lizzie!” her mom, Gabby, calls to her as she comes running from the porch, followed of course by Daisy, the rescue dog they’d adopted last year. “Oh my goodness, I can’t believe you’re really here! I was so worried something would come up and you wouldn’t be able to make it!” She pulls her daughter close and hugs her. “Never again, okay? You are never to miss another Christmas!” she says mock-scolding her. “It’s not the same without you!”
“Okay, I promise, never again. Hi there, Daisy,” she says, leaning down and kissing the excited pooch. She wasn’t sure she could hold true to never missing Christmas again, but it was easier to agree right now. After seeing Jack she wasn’t sure she even wanted to stay this year, but here she was. Maybe she’d just stay in the house and bake cookies and watch holiday movies with her mom the whole time. That could work.
“Let me help you with all this, honey. What did you bring? Looks like you’re planning to stay a while! Hint hint…”
“Mom,”
“I know, I’ll stop bugging you, but a mom can dream, right? Come on, Daisy,” she calls to the bouncing dog.
They head to the house carrying a suitcase, bags of gifts and all of Lizzie’s work paraphernalia, which she still didn’t know why she’d found it necessary to bring.
“What happened to your jeans?” her mom asks.
“Ugh, a stupid chai accident at Sea Coast, “I’m going to run into the bathroom and quickly change.” She opens her suitcase and pulls out a pair of leggings. “Be right back.” She peels off the wet pants, still feeling the stinging embarrassment of her meeting with Jack. She looks at herself in the mirror and can see her face is still red from the encounter.“Change gears,” she says to herself as she emerges from the bathroom.
“Here, give me those, I’ll wash them,” Gaby says. Lizzie happily hands them off. It’s very nice to be home and have Mom taking care of her.
The house smells amazing, a combination of the warm fire, spices and the huge Christmas tree. Her parents never skimped on their tree. They used to drive to Vermont to cut one down as a family, but for the last ten years or so they’d taken to buying it from the local high school which sold trees to raise money for their music and theater departments.
“Oh my gosh, this smells incredible, Mom,” Lizzie walks over to look at the tree. “It doesn’t have as many ornaments as usual, or am I misremembering?”
“No,” she says as she reaches behind the couch and pulls out a box. “We just saved all of the ornaments you and Matt made or have given us over the years for you two to put on the tree. We wanted to get it up and start decorating, but we need you to finish it. Your brother’s coming over for dinner, so we can all work on it together. Maybe even string some popcorn and cranberries like the old days?”
Lizzie drops onto the couch and begins to relax for the first time in weeks. Suddenly the hustle of all her deadlines begins to fall away, helped by the big mug of hot cocoa her mother just put in front of her.
“Aw, you even put mini-marshmallows and a candy cane in it, Mom, thank you.” She picks up the steamy mug, leaning back on the couch.
“Of course, I know how you like it,” she takes a moment to survey her daughter. “You okay, honey? You seem tired, are things really stressful at work?”
She takes a sip of the hot and sweet beverage. “No more than usual, I guess. It’s such a Catch-22, I’m being given more opportunities as more people have been let go, but I miss my colleagues and it’s a lot more pressure. There are a handful of us now doing the work of what used to take a whole newsroom. I’m sure that’s nothing new for you to hear. Dad’s been going through this forever. He and Stan have kept the Cranberry Harbor Gazette going for years, just the two of them. I truly don’t know how they do it.”
Gabby sits down and motions for Lizzie to put her feet on her lap and begins to rub them. She had retired last year from her family medicine practice, but she was and always would be a caretaker looking after everyone. “It’s so hard to see the two of them try to keep the paper afloat. But they both love it so much, I don’t think they’ll ever give up. And even though it’s hard, and they have less advertisers, people still love that paper. It’s really the heartbeat of the community. Everyone reads it, but it’s still a struggle.”
“Maybe it’s a matter of a different business model, online and print?”
“Good luck trying to convince your Dad, he’s very old school, ‘You need to hold a newspaper, Gabby,’ he always says.”
“Well maybe I’ll catch him in a weak moment and wear him down,” Lizzie smiles at her mom.
“Wear who down?” laughs Matt Martin, Lizzie’s brother comes breezing in carrying a bundled up toddler whom he sets down next to Lizzie on the couch.
“Oh my gosh, who’s in there??” She teases her niece. “Is it Santa?” The little girl shakes her hat-covered head. “Is it...an elf?” The bundle of hat, snowsuit, scarf and mittens shakes with giggles.
The little girl whips off her hat, “No, Aunt Wiz, it’s me! Sophie!”
Lizzie hadn’t been thrilled when she’d been named Aunt Wiz, a product of the L in Lizzie being a bit of a tongue-twister for baby Sophie, but now she’d grown rather fond of it. She loved this little girl, now a precocious almost-three-year-old. She hated how much she changed in between visits. Matt and his wife Shannon brought Sophie to Boston every few months, wanting her to experience the New England Aquarium, the Children’s Museum, and all the city had to offer. But they were both so busy, Matt with his solar energy business and Shannon as the children’s librarian at the Friends of Cranberry Harbor Library, it was hard to get over the bridge very often. Lizzie made a mental note to stop being so darn selfish and get herself back to the Cape more often.
“Where’s Shannon?” Lizzie asks as she takes off Sophie’s jacket.
“Mommy’s working,” she says as she slides off the couch and runs toward the kitchen. “Cookie!” she calls out as she rounds the corner, Gabby in quick pursuit, and Daisy right behind the two knowing there would inevitably be crumbs involved.
“Hold on there, little missy, just one, because we have to save room for dinner,” Gabby calls after her as she chases her into the kitchen.
“Fine,” Sophie acquiesces, giving in awfully fast for a toddler.
“She’s so sweet, Matt, it almost makes up for naming me Aunt Wiz,” Lizzie playfully chides her brother.
“Hey, that’s all her!” he laughs, knowing full well he’d encouraged it as much as he could. “I’m so glad you came home, it means so much to Mom and Dad. But we all know it’s Mom who really loves Christmas.”
Lizzie gets up and picks up the box or ornaments from behind the couch. “We’re supposed to put these up, come on, help me.”
Matt heaves a sigh and groans as he gets up off the chair he was just relaxing into. “Fine.”
“Jeez, that was the sound of an old man getting out of that chair!” she teases.
“Stop bugging me! You may sit at a desk all day, but I’m climbing on roofs, hauling solar panels, going up and down ladders … you know, doing real work.” he teases.
She throws some little stuffed bear ornaments at him. “Oh yeah? Well, I run all over Boston tracking down politicians, and all sorts of people getting them to trust me to tell their stories.”
He throws some tinsel at her. “Well I, um I… fine, I give up. We both work hard.”
“Yes we do, but I give you points for doing it while being married and having a toddler. I only have myself to worry about.”
“We’re lucky. Since Mom retired she’s been a huge help, and Shannon's parents and her sister help us a lot too. We couldn’t do it without family. I don’t know how people without family around manage. I really don’t.”
“How’s the business going?”
“It’s been crazy busy. Everyone wants solar panels, which is great, but I need more help, and it’s hard to come by,” he says, doing his best to artfully arrange a bunch of ornaments that are so old they’re held together with hope and scotch tape.
They both keep rummaging through the box finding old favorite ornaments from the past.
“Oh my gosh,” Lizzie says, holding up a dilapidated paper reindeer, “I can’t believe this is still intact!” She inspects it closer, “Well, sort of intact?” She places it carefully on some underbranches on the tree. “I’ve been reading in the Gazette how much the housing crisis here is impacting businesses finding help.”
“Oh yeah, I’m having a really hard time. This isn’t a business a sixty-five-year-old retiree with a second home here wants to try out as a part-time gig. I really need young adults,” Matt says. “But I don’t want to bore you with my problems. How’s Boston?”
“Your problems are never boring to me.” She puts her arm around her brother’s waist, and hugs him. “Boston’s okay. I pay an insane amount of rent for a tiny apartment, and work more than ever for no more pay. It’s not wonderful.”
Matt hugs her and then goes back to decorating the tree. “Do you ever think of going anywhere else? New York? L.A.? Back here?”
“No, no and really no,” Lizzie says emphatically. “Too expensive, too far and no way could I ever live on the Cape again. I don’t feel like I fit in anymore. And besides, I hardly know anyone here, and oh, you just said no one our age can afford to live here.”
“So not true,” he interrupts her. “But hey, you know us, you know Hope…”
Lizzie puts her hands on her hips and laughs, “You’ve got to come at me with more than a toddler, as adorable as she is, and my former boss who, while lovely, probably isn’t going to be signing up for Zumba classes with me anytime soon, and you and Shannon who have your own busy lives.”
“Okay, so we’d need to expand your circle beyond us. But there are some awesome new people in Cranberry Harbor. The couple who took over the bookstore are great, and under 40, and Ben Knowles is back. He took over the Marshview Inn from his parents.”
Lizzie sits down on the couch to untangle some gold garland. “Look, I know you love it here, and you’ve built a business and a wonderful life, but it’s not for me. I’ll figure it out. If the Sentinel lays me off, it might be time for a plan B.” She gets frustrated and throws the garland back in the box.
Matt fishes it out and in short order untangles it. “How did you...?” Lizzie laughs at how quickly he undid what she couldn’t do.
“I am the problem solver,’ he jokes. “Give me anything knotted up and I can untangle it.”
Lizzie sighs and leans back on the couch. “How come you got that talent and I didn’t?”
“I was always good with my hands, and you were always good with words.” He shrugs his shoulders. “I can see the forest for the trees, and you can write about what the forest looks like.”
Matt sits down beside her. “I hate seeing you like this. You don’t seem happy. Is there something else going on? What about that guy you were seeing…Ted? Fred?”
“Ed, Edward. Nah, that’s over. He traveled all the time for work and we didn’t really like the same things. He didn’t like dogs.”
“You don’t have a dog,”
“Yeah, but I might want one...someday.”
“Okay, but still...”
“I might want one someday, okay?” she says emphatically. “And not liking dogs says a lot about a person. Seriously, what kind of person doesn’t want to snuggle a puppy?”
“Okay, okay, I hear you. Someone who doesn’t like dogs is not the right person for you. Got it.”
“Thank you.”
“Dinner’s just about ready,” Gabby calls from the kitchen.
Matt stands up and heads toward the dining room. “Jack Cahoon’s back in town for the holidays. Maybe he’s got a dog?” He smiles, shrugs his shoulders and walks out, “Come on, dinner’s waiting.”
Lizzie rolls her eyes, and mimics her brother. “Maybe Jack Cahoon has a dog!” Of course he probably does.