Chapter Sixty-Four
Sixty-Four
September rolled around and Shelby was still living at Hunter’s. With the ongoing housing crunch, it could be months until she found a place of her own. The apartment above the shop was out; the Community Trust was keeping it as designated office space. As a group, they knew that saving Land’s End was just the beginning of their work. If they wanted Provincetown to still be Provincetown in five years, there’d be more battles to come.
“You were always ashamed of this giant house,” Shelby told Hunter. “But I wouldn’t be able to get the store ready without somewhere to stay. So, I hope you see things a little differently now,” Shelby said on one of their daily calls. Hunter was busy with her new job and her new boyfriend, Ezra, but they still checked in with each other constantly, leaving Shelby to wonder how she’d managed her own time in the city without their closeness.
“I see a lot of things differently,” Hunter told her.
Shelby walked up Commercial towards Land’s End. She still had another week to go before it was ready to reopen. The storm damage repair was finished, but they were now upgrading some of the shelving fixtures. The bookstore would now make it to its eighty-first summer, and rumor had it that the Hendrik’s was closing next week, after Labor Day. It would not be reopening.
Apparently, Kate’s enthusiasm for a Cape Cod outpost ended alongside her relationship with Justin. Shelby wasn’t surprised: bookselling was a passion business. If your heart wasn’t in it, what was the point?
Shelby peeked at Hendrik’s from the opposite side of the street, keeping in stride with some tourists. The front door opened, and a familiar herringbone blazer caught her eye. It was Anders. His sandy brown hair was cut shorter than when she’d last seen him. She ducked behind a pilaster on the porch of a T-shirt shop, then peeked out again. He held the door, and out walked Kate. They turned in the opposite direction and he put his arm around her.
Shelby covered her mouth with her hand. She hadn’t seen that one coming! The only thing she felt was mild amusement, as if she were watching two characters on a show. It was hard to believe that just weeks ago he had actually been a part of her life.
A block away from the bookstore, she stopped into a coffee shop.
Justin was walking out.
“Oh!” She hadn’t seen him since the afternoon of the Community Trust vote. Doug had been scheduled to go on a research trip for CCS, but since he was on paternity leave Justin went in his place. The research trip must have been days on the water because he was tanner than she’d ever seen him. His forearms were brown against the white of his CCS T-shirt. The color on his face made his cheekbones more defined, and his irises looked like brown velvet. His dark hair poked out from under a blue baseball cap. “You’re back.”
“I am,” he said. “And rumor has it, so are you. You’re going to be sticking around for a while?”
She nodded. “Yep. I’m officially the proud new manager of Land’s End.”
“Congratulations,” he said. They looked at each other for a second. To break the awkward silence, she said, “I’m a little apprehensive about my first winter on the Cape. I hope I can roll with the climate. You’ve told me it can be a test of endurance.”
“I think you’ll do just fine. You’ve proven yourself to be impressively resilient.”
She smiled. “I’ll take that as compliment.”
“As it’s intended. And speaking of climate, they’re about ready to send our Kemp’s ridley down south.”
The turtle she’d found on the beach that night with Anders.
“He’s recovered?”
“She,” Justin said. “We named her Ladyslipper. And yes, she’s ready to go. I’m on my way now to see her off. Why don’t you come along?”
Shelby climbed into the passenger seat of Justin’s Jeep.
The worn passenger seat felt familiar. There was a tiny pebble crack in the windshield just below her eyeline, and the floor mats were faded by saltwater. The local radio station played an old Bruce Springsteen song. Justin cranked it up, looking at her with a smile, singing along. They cruised past the town limits, along marshes and green fields. She watched a slow-moving heron, astonishing with its long legs and curved neck.
“So. You’re staying,” he said, tapping the wheel. “I’m really surprised.”
“I’m have to admit—so am I.”
He laughed. “I don’t think I fully believed it until right now. With you sitting here.”
When he glanced over, their eyes met and she felt herself holding her breath. They didn’t talk for the rest of the ride, letting the breeze and the music fill the silence.
The Marine Animal Rehabilitation Center was a large warehouse building in Wellfleet, complete with an adjacent landing field for emergency animal transport. Inside, it smelled like the aquarium room at the Central Park Zoo. They walked past cinder block walls to the inner sanctuary filled with turtle tanks. The expansive room was filled with round, waist-high, aboveground pools. She counted a dozen or so turtles.
“In the fall, we rescue so many turtles they can’t house the long-term cases. That’s when the volunteer flights taking them to warmer beaches really save lives.”
“Yeah, your gal beat the rush,” said the volunteer who greeted them. She wore khakis and a green MARC T-shirt and blue surgical gloves. She led them to the pool to see the Kemp’s ridley. Shelby covered her mouth in awe.
It was hard to reconcile the robust animal gliding through the water with the stunned, still creature she’d found in the sand. Wildlife was resilient. And now, she realized, so was she.
The turtle swam close to where she stood, surfaced, and appeared to look at her. A number was written both on her shell and on a bright orange tag fastened around one of her front flippers. Her eyes opened and closed slowly.
“You’re lucky to have a second chance,” Shelby said softly.
“She looks good, right?” Justin said.
She nodded. They watched Ladyslipper swim as the loud ambient hum of the lights and the tanks filled the void between them. Neither of them spoke, and she didn’t want to be the one to break the quiet.
A curly-haired technician walked over and scooped up the turtle. She waved her front flippers in protest.
“You’re going home,” Justin said.
Jan placed the turtle in the same simple cardboard banana box that they used to rescue her from the beach. She carried the turtle outside to a tarmac and the waiting Cessna, and they followed.
Justin greeted the volunteer pilot, someone he knew from the various organizations he was in constant contact with to coordinate rescues. He took the turtle box from the MARC biologist, and walked it over to Shelby so she could see her one more time before he helped load it onto the plane headed for Texas.
Shelby covered her ears against the roar of the plane propellers as it took off. With Justin beside her, she watched until it disappeared.
“Look at that,” Shelby said. “Literally flying off into the sunset.”
He looked at her. “Do you mean that thing you say—that you write fiction because it’s the happy ending you can’t have in real life?”
“Yeah. Maybe it’s not why I write, but maybe it’s the reason behind what I write. Am I wrong?”
“About happy endings in real life? It’s tough to say,” he said, his brow furrowed. “As a scientist, I like to have all the facts.”
“Of course,” she said with exaggerated solemnity.
“But I would theorize that happy endings are possible,” he said.
She nodded as if considering this. “Tough to prove.”
“It is. But I’d like to test the hypothesis. Know anyone who could help me with that?”
He looked into her eyes and smiled. She leaned against him, nodding, and he pulled her close. She tilted her head up, and he kissed her.