11. Changes
Chapter eleven
Changes
The bell over the coffee shop door gives one bright little jangle after Annie and Jake walk out.
Ellie watches them through the front window, smiling around the straw of her drink.
I watch.
I’m a man with eyes and memory, and Annie Lockhart in running clothes is not a harmless thing to put in front of me before noon.
Jake’s arm had gone around her easily. Casual. Familiar. A move made without permission but obviously not unwelcome.
Annie leaned into him before they left.
For half a second, the image sits in my head beside a darker one. Annie pressed into me, her warm mouth taking my tongue deep, her hand fisting my cock. Hot, reckless, and…
“Dad?”
Ellie’s voice yanks me back to the table.
I am not revisiting that topic in front of my child.
I look at her. “Yeah, kiddo?”
“What do you think about fishing?”
“Right.” I pick up my coffee, mostly to give my hand something more to do than tighten into a fist. “Fishing.”
She tilts her head. “Dad, you with me?”
“Of course. I was just processing the fact that you voluntarily want to murder worms.”
“If I have to become a murderer to be good at fishing,” she says in her best martyr voice, “then so be it. I want to learn how to fish.”
“And where do you draw the line?” I snark. “Should I start saving for bail money and lawyers instead of college?”
“Oh, Dad. You’re so dramatic.”
“So, it’s me you get it from then?”
Her nose wrinkles and she laughs, but the interest in her face doesn’t fade. A month ago, she wouldn’t have asked. Six months ago, she wouldn’t even have registered it.
In Boston, new things carried too much effort. Sad girl. Dead mother. Father everyone looked at with careful sympathy. Lawsuit updates dictating our lives.
Here, she’s asking about fishing because a friend mentioned it and she doesn’t want to feel clueless.
I can work with that.
“Well then, you’re going to need supplies.”
Her head comes up. “Really?”
“Unless you’re planning on standing near the water and intimidating the fish into surrendering.”
“I could, but I’d rather fish like the rest of the mere mortals do.”
I laugh and pull my phone out. “Let’s find a bait and tackle shop.”
The man at the counter hears me and points with his thumb toward the door. “Down toward the waterfront, past the old cannery, left side. Jensen’s. If Cal’s working, don’t let him sell you the fancy stuff. He likes beginners with hope and credit cards.”
Ellie laughs. “Thanks for the tip. That’s super helpful of you.”
“It’s Coupeville,” I say. “Everybody is helpful.”
We leave the coffee shop with her half-finished drink and the paper bag of pastries she insisted we take because future Ellie might have a carb craving later. Outside, the town is already moving.
Someone drags a broken branch away from a storefront. A woman in a red raincoat stands in front of the bakery, telling another woman the power came back at two in the morning and the refrigerator made a noise like a dying walrus.”
Ellie looks up at me. “Do you think Annie will actually take me?”
“She said she would.”
Ellie gives me the look every parent recognizes, the one where your child lets you know she has found your answer lackluster but not worth bothering with.
“She’s nice,” Ellie says.
I glance down at her. “I thought she was a porcupine.”
“She can be both.”
That one makes me laugh. “That’s very true.”
We turn toward the waterfront. The old cannery appears ahead, larger than it looked from the road before. The building has weathered brick, tall windows, and a rough dignity that survives neglect.
The bait and tackle shop sits across the street near a place selling postcards and tourist T-shirts with whales on them. Jensen’s smells like rubber boots, coffee, and bait.
Ellie stops just inside, eyes moving over rods, reels, hooks, lures, nets, and shelves of things neither of us can identify with any confidence.
An older man behind the counter looks up. “Morning.”
“Morning,” I say. “Beginner here. Fourteen-year-old. Not looking to outfit a commercial vessel.”
Ellie elbows me. “Dad.”
The man grins. “First rod?”
She clears her throat and stands taller. “Yes.”
“Good way to spend a morning.” He comes around the counter and points her toward a row of rods. “You fishing from shore?”
“Probably,” she says. “Annie Lockhart is going to show me where.”
That earns immediate recognition. “Then you’ll be fine. Annie knows what bites and what doesn’t, people included.”
Ellie laughs.
“Cal Jensen.” He holds his hand out to Ellie.
“Ellie Bie. Nice to meet you, Mr. Jensen.”
My heart swells with a little pride in the young lady she is becoming.
Cal walks Ellie through the basics without talking down to her. Rod length. Reel type. Hooks. A small tackle box. A few lures. Something about tides that I file away for later review.
I’m a physician, not a fisherman, and there are limits to one man’s transferable competence.
Ellie asks questions. Good ones. She concentrates and finally chooses a rod after Cal tells her it’s a solid starter and not “pink nonsense made by somebody who thinks girls can’t cast.”
She likes him instantly after that.
At the counter, she watches him ring everything up. “Do I need worms today?”
“Not unless you want to carry them around town for fun,” Cal says.
“I don’t.”
“Smart girl. You should get your worms the morning you are going. You want them alive and very wiggly.”
I pay before she can worry over the cost. She accepts the bag with the tackle box and holds the rod with a seriousness I haven’t seen from her in a long time, outside of homework.
On the walk back to the car, she says, “This is going to be fun.”
I look at her, hair escaping from her hood, cheeks pink from the wind, eyes on the rod in her hand.
“Yeah,” I say. “I think you’re going to really enjoy it.”
***
Monday begins before I’m ready.
The clinic parking lot has two cars in it when I pull in, and Mr. Adams is already waiting by the front door with his shoulders hunched against the wind and a thermos in his hand.
“You’re early,” I call over to him.
“So are you,” he says.
“I have to be.” I wave the keys.
He smiles, and follows me inside after I unlock the door.
By the time Annie arrives, I’ve got Mr. Adams in exam room one, Mrs. Nguyen on hold on the phone asking whether a storm can aggravate arthritis, and a blinking light on the answering machine with a message asking if we knew when the pharmacy’s computer system would be back to normal.
Annie comes in with damp hair tucked behind one ear, a canvas bag over her shoulder, and a contained expression I’ve learned means she is not caffeinated enough.
Keep your distance.
She hangs her jacket and moves straight into work. No hesitation. No private look. No sign she spent part of Saturday morning at a coffee shop with my daughter.
And no sign she had me inside her Friday night.
I follow her lead because patients are waiting and I’m not an idiot.
For the first two hours, we don’t get a breath. Mr. Adams’s hip is more serious than he wants to hear. A blood pressure check. A child with an earache. Two prescription refills. A cut hand from storm cleanup that needs cleaning and a lecture about gloves.
And then Mrs. Dorsey.
She sits in exam room two with one sleeve rolled up for a blood pressure check and says, “Doc, did you hear there’s going to be a town hall tomorrow?”
Annie’s hand pauses on the cuff.
“Town hall?” I ask.
“For the cannery,” Mrs. Dorsey says. “Some developer wants to restore it. Boutique hotels, shops, restaurants, public spaces, something along those lines. I don’t know. Margaret said jobs. Louise said traffic, so naturally they’re at war.”
Annie pumps the cuff. “Margaret and Louise are always at war.”
Mrs. Dorsey looks at me. “You should go, Doc. Since you’re new. Good way to see how this town argues and settles its differences.”
“I’ll consider it.”
Annie releases the valve. “Pressure’s up.”
Mrs. Dorsey sighs. “That’s Louise’s fault.”
By noon, the cannery has been restored, ruined, saved, exploited, celebrated, and condemned by six different people.
A fisherman with a splinter under his thumbnail thinks the project might bring life back to the waterfront.
A retired teacher worries about parking and rent.
A young mother likes the idea of jobs but doesn’t trust anyone who uses the word revitalization more than once in a sentence.
A man whose name I haven’t learned yet tells Annie his grandfather worked there and says the building deserves “better than another rich man’s fantasy.”
Through all of it, Annie works in her usual competent, quick, and useful ways. But every mention of the cannery changes her.
She stands a little straighter, she starts being more precise in the way she gives out information and instructions. Her warmth with patients doesn’t vanish, but it starts developing little edges.
And with me, she’s flat-out short.
By the time we get ten minutes between appointments, I’ve heard enough to know the cannery is not only a building. It is history, money, worry, pride, and fear all under the same roof.
I find her at the front desk, entering a note into the new system. Her fingers move faster than they did last week. She’ll never admit she’s getting good at it.
But she is.
I lean against the edge of the counter. “What’s your read on the cannery?”
She doesn’t look up. “My read?”
“The rumors.”
“That depends. Are you asking as the new local doctor, the tourist who’s walked past it, or the outsider who hasn’t been here long enough to know what it means when someone with money starts using pretty words and talks about development visions?”
“All three, I guess.”
Now she looks at me.
The look has teeth.
“It means people are about to be sold a dream with a demolition clause buried somewhere underneath it that they won’t see coming until the wrecking ball hits them.”
I study her face. Her answer is easy enough to understand, but the way she holds herself after it makes me want to ask the next question. And I’m pretty goddamn sure I won’t get a straight answer, if any.
“That’s pretty specific.”
She purses her lips.