Chapter 10
Ten
The online ordering for Sugar & Salt is starting to make my eyes cross by the time Rose and Posey stomp through the front door, the bell jangling over their heads to announce their entrance.
“Close it down,” Rose announces, twirling a finger to encompass the whole store. “It’s lunch time.”
I glance up just long enough to glare at her. The counter’s covered in boxes, all nearly assembled and now ready to be packed with the various and sundry orders that somehow appeared overnight.
A wonderful problem to have, but work to be done nonetheless.
“I need to ship these out as soon as I can.” Why did everyone order rush? Why did I not take down the rush order option? Who let me be in charge of my business? Who let me be in charge of anything at all.
“You are literally shaking,” Rose observes.
“You are coming with us.” Posey crosses her arms over her chest, menacing despite her small size. Oatmeal pops her pink nose out of her chest pocket and copies her look. “You obviously need food. Not sugar, real food.”
“Nonna’s gonna yell at me about Caleb.” It comes out a near caterwaul of despair, and Gunner, who I thought was sleeping in the back, pushes his forehead against my calf.
“She’s going to feed you carbs and cheese. If she says anything rude, we get more bread and use that as an emotional seawall.” Posey mimes bricking up a wall, and Rose slathers some imaginary mortar — or butter — on the wall as they continue to stare me down.
“But the orders—”
Rose looks up from her phone. “I canceled all my lessons for tonight. Okay, two lessons. And they are the Delucco twins. They have strep throat. Anyway—” she clears her throat. “I will help you box up your orders tonight, for the small fee of candy.”
“I closed my shop for the day too,” Posey chimes in. “I will also accept candy as payment.”
I press my gloved hands against the countertop, feeling a sudden urge to cry well up out of nowhere. “What do you all think is going on?”
My voice sounds scared. Reedy. Thin.
Vulnerable.
“I don’t know,” Posey says, then nods once. “But we’re going to make it better. Grandma wouldn’t have left us here if she didn’t think we could do it.”
“And we’ll have Hazel soon, too.” Rose grabs a rose macaron from the display and pops it in her mouth. “Between the four of us? Silverlight Shore won’t even know there’s anything wrong.”
I sniffle, surprised to find a traitorous tear leaking out of my eye.
“Bread is the answer.” Posey turns and starts walking out the door, clearly unwilling to see any more tears.
“Pasta is the answer,” Rose calls out.
“I think Nonna will have the answer you need, Ivy.” Gunner touches his wet nose to my knee again, and I peel my gloves off and give him a good scratch.
I sure hope he’s right.
Nonna’s Table, like everything else in downtown Silverlight Shore, is only a few blocks away, and it takes us no time at all to find ourselves in front of the iconic restaurant.
It’s exactly the same as it’s always been, a little bricked up eatery that somehow feels old world and contemporary at once. Cozy without being cloying, comforting without sepia nostalgia. Clean white tablecloths neatly tucked around rectangle tables and sturdy wood chairs.
A wind’s kicked up off the ocean, and it ruffles our hair as we walk through the front door.
It’s past the lunch rush, though at this time of the year, lunch rush isn’t nearly the problem it is during the summer months.
One of Nonna’s many family members seats us without much fanfare at an empty table that looks out over the choppy water of the Reach.
Dread curls up my spine, a tentacle of unease that tugs at something deep in my skull.
Something is out there, and I don’t know what it is, and I can’t control it.
“I can’t do this alone.”
“You’re not alone,” Rose whispers, grabbing my hand and squeezing.
I didn’t mean to say it out loud.
“No, you’re not alone, and you’re not getting rid of us, so you’re just gonna have to deal with that,” Posey says.
Nonna herself chooses that moment to appear, bearing a tray piled high with steaming crusty bread, a cast iron pot of mussels in what smells like a white wine butter sauce, and bresaola and eggplant rollatini with arugula scattered around it like little green punctuation marks.
“I have missed my girls,” Nonna tells us, leveling us each with a serious glare that says she means business… and we’re about to leave here uncomfortably full. Her jet-black hair is the same it’s been my whole life, pulled back into a severe high bun that makes her look even more regal.
“It has been too long since you let me feed you,” she continues.
“We’re sorry—” Rose starts.
“Bah!” Nonna says, loading her plate with the rollatini and setting it in front of her, a challenge in her eyes. “You don’t apologize to me. You let me feed you. That’s your apology.”
“As if we could say no to that,” Posey says sincerely, and I get the feeling she’s very much enjoying herself. “Do you have any spaghetti today?”
“Spaghetti and meatballs? Is that what my Posey girl wants? That’s what my Posey girl will get.”
“I’d like—”
Nonna holds up a hand, cutting Rose off. “No. Nonna knows what you need. Posey gets the meatballs, of course. You get what Nonna knows you need.” She nods to herself. “And you, my Ivy, you have seen our Caleb is back?”
There it is.
I exhale through a clenched teeth smile. “Yes, Nonna, we had dinner last night. It was nice.”
Not even a lie. It was nice. It was fine.
“He is a handsome man. Tall.” She nods, like being tall is the real standard for all things manly.
“He likes spaghetti and meatballs,” Posey says. “Tall men like that.”
“Of course they do, Posey girl.” Nonna nods approvingly. “You been feeding your man my spaghetti recipe?”
“Not recently,” Posey says, while Rose and I gape at her.
Posey has a man she’s been feeding like a stray cat? Will wonders never cease.
“Nonna,” Posey presses, all charm and cleverness, like the ferret nosing around in her pocket somewhere, “We have something we need help with.”
“I know,” Nonna says, looking baffled that this even has to be said. “Why else would you be here? Eat, eat.” She waves her hand at us. “I will bring you what you need and then you can tell Nonna whatever else is left once your stomachs are full.”
“Sounds good to me,” Posey positively sings it at her, and I vaguely wonder if I shouldn’t have been paying more attention to the meals my sisters are eating.
We all get spaghetti and meatballs. We get enough spaghetti and meatballs for a football team. Then there’s the ricotta lasagna. The small plate of grilled octopus. More bread. Olive oil strewn with spices.
When Nonna finally brings over a platter of cannoli and a pot of espresso, I’m wishing I’d stopped after the first plate of food and not the third.
It doesn’t stop me from eating her famous cinnamon flecked cannoli, though.
“Better?” Nonna nods at us all, looking pleased. “Now, now you can focus on telling me what’s wrong, my girls.”
“There, ah, have been a lot of weird of things happening around town,” Posey says, which is quite an opener.
I bite back a sigh.
“Of course there are. That is the nature of living by the sea. Everyone knows this.” Nonna puts more cannoli on my plate.
It would be rude not to eat them.
“The lighthouse, you know, Caleb’s lighthouse…” I trail off, trying to find the right words for what is going on without… well, telling her about magic.
“It has been failing for months. Everyone knows this. That’s why Caleb says he’s back.
Surely he told you that.” She shrugs, smushing her lips together.
“I know that’s his story: fix the lighthouse, automation, clean up the grief of his stubborn uncle.
But you know how these men are. They use these words and they aren’t at all what they mean. He’s tall, though.”
Again, with his height. I take a bite of cannoli to keep from laughing, and manage to spray powdered sugar and cinnamon everywhere.
“He is here for you, Ivy girl. Let yourself decide what to do.” Nonna pats my hand.
“There was something we found in our grandmother’s scrapbook.” Rose’s voice is strangled as she tries to steer an unsteerable woman back to the real problem here, which is so not me and Caleb. “It was a recipe for bread made in a cast iron pan. We’d never seen anything like it.”
Nonna sits back slightly, something loosening in the way she holds her face.
“Oh, that was a fun day. Different, but fun. A little scary. I didn’t think it would work. Your grandmother, you know how she is. She was certain. I didn’t know if would work, but we did it anyway.”
“What would work?” I press, trying to be casual and completely failing.
“You’ve lived here your whole lives, girls.
This was a storm they said would take us all.
” Noona snaps her fingers, and there’s a ring of real worry in the noise.
In her eyes. “You know no one is as stubborn as those that make their lives from the sea. That is what Silverlight Shore is. We fed the town that day. Everyone who boarded up their windows, who laid out sandbags and prayed to our God in heaven for mercy. This recipe, the cast iron bread one? It was a pain.” She shakes her head, smiling faintly at the memory.
“Your grandmother insisted everyone have a pan of the cast iron bread, said it was a family recipe. She made sure the whole town had enough, in case it was as bad as the weather men were saying.”
“The storm missed Silverlight Shore,” I say slowly, testing the words, thinking it through.
“It might have just been the whims of the sea.
" Nonna adjusts the heavy gold rings on her fingers, brow furrowed.
"You know how hard it is for them to know what will happen, no matter how much science they science and math they math. But your grandmother… she was going to make sure all of us who stayed behind were as well taken care of as we could be.”
Posey pinches the bridge of her nose, and I know were both frustrated about the same thing. This has nothing to do with Watchmere Light, or the ward, or whatever the hell is in the bay.
Ugh, just thinking about that eye makes goosebumps pebble all across my arms.
“You think this is about something else. A trick to make sure bad things never happen?” Rose suggests, eyes narrowed.
Nonna nods, knowingly, scooting a third cannolo onto my plate. I sigh and take a bite of it.
“Bad things happen all the time. No one can fix that. But not all storms are weather, yes? Some storms start in here, and only get bigger when they’re ignored.” She taps her chest, then lays a warm, dry hand on my shoulder.
“You have to listen to your own weather, my Ivy. You are full of storms and sunshine, my girl. Don’t pretend otherwise.” She taps the side of her nose. “That’s what the bread was for. Remembering that even when everything seems like it might fall apart, we still have each other.”
I swallow hard, nodding, placing the dessert down.
I’m not hungry anymore, not at all.