38. Emory
EMORY
Isneak downstairs early so I can make the coffee before Granny.
While it drips, I stand in the quiet, looking at the wall of inner tubes, and swear I can still hear Jake and me laughing as we bounced off them. When Granny hung them up, I doubt she imagined she was creating a full-contact sport.
Now she’ll never take them down.
I walk over and run my hand along the wall. The inner tubes sway under my touch, bumping softly against one another. The white one with pink stripes was always my favorite.
Of course it was.
Even as a child, I had the aesthetic instincts of a themed cupcake.
Then I get an idea.
A wonderful, awful idea voiced in my head by the Grinch.
I glance toward the front windows, then around the shop. Still dark. Still quiet. Then I unhook the inner tube and loop it over my arm.
I look around one more time, making sure the coast is clear, then hurry to the back door. I ease it open, careful not to push it past the point where it squeaks. I have to angle the tube out first like I’m waving a white flag to the morning, then slip out behind it and pull the door shut.
I run over the bridge and across the lot to the truck, open the back, shove the tube inside, and close the doors as fast as I can.
Then I just stand there, bent over, laughing under my breath. “I stole an inner tube from my grandmother,” I whisper to absolutely no one.
It’s like I just pulled off a heist.
I did, sort of.
A heist of history.
I brace my hands on my knees and catch my breath from the sprint and the adrenaline and the sheer absurdity of being a thirty-year-old woman smuggling inflatable nostalgia before sunrise.
Then I straighten and look out. Blue Crab Bay is still asleep around me. And in the dark, some things appear clearer.
Like the channel marker blinking in the distance. When we were kids, Jake and I used to say it was the mermaid’s heart beating for her prince.
The dock lights making tiny runways across the water. The string lights that crisscrossed over The Point are gone now, but the oaks are still glowing, making everything feel a little enchanted and a little watched, which is basically this town’s entire personality.
Town Hall still has the same burned out bulb it’s had the whole time I’ve been here.
I forgot how special this place is.
I stand there in the quiet and make myself a promise.
I will not forget again.
By the time the day finally slows down, I’m being held together mostly by caffeine and sugar.
Everybody in town woke up and decided they needed doughnuts today. Frank and I spent half the day making more while Granny showed every single customer her cast-free leg and defied every instruction the doctor gave her, especially the part about taking it easy.
The tables are still full even though we sold out of both batches. At this point, people are just here for the company.
Mr. Humphrey is asleep at his usual corner table, arms folded over his chest, chin dropped to it like he powered down mid-thought.
Mrs. Kravitz is perched at the front window, keeping a visual record of all comings and goings for later dissemination to the town like some kind of floral print intelligence agency.
“I’ll be back,” I tell Granny.
Half the shop answers me like I just made a public service announcement.
Outside, I pass Lazy Larry’s. “HOW LAZY IS HE?”
I shake my head, smiling.
This town.
The bell over the door of Tall Tales announces me the same way it has every day this summer.
Walt looks up. Sees me. Reaches for a cup before I even get to the counter. He already knows. He always knows.
He writes something on the side, puts on the lid, and slides it toward me.
I look down.
AFTER ALL THIS TIME, IT’S STILL YOU
I just stare at it. “Walt.”
He avoids my eyes and jerks his chin toward the door. “Have a good walk.”
No speech. No follow-up. Just the literary equivalent of setting me on fire and wishing me a pleasant evening. So I go.
I take the loop slow. The Point is winding down into evening. A pelican stands on a piling watching the sun lower toward the water. The air smells like everything I remember before I try not to remember it.
It smells like childhood.
It smells like summers.
It smells like… my Jake.
I pass The Knuckle. I don’t stop. But of course I look.
And for one stupid second, all I can see is every version of him that ever lived there. Boy. Teenager. Man. The one who waited. The one who didn’t stop.
I keep walking.
Near Hart’s Landing, Mrs. Kravitz appears beside me so suddenly I nearly drop my latte. “For what it’s worth,” she says, falling into step with me, “nobody will ever look at you the way Jake Wheeler does.”
I turn my head and stare at her.
She wiggles her fingers at me. “Toot toot.”
Then she veers off without another word.
I keep walking.
Miss Hattie sees me coming and holds out a hot dog before I even reach her cart. “You need to wrap your frown around this,” she says. “It’ll make you feel better.”
I laugh as I take the tray. She even put slaw on it for me.
Her expression softens. “Your granny’s all right,” she says.
“I know.”
“But you’re not.”
I look down at the cup in my hand. At Walt’s writing. Miss Hattie wipes her fingers on a napkin. “You don’t have to tell me your business. I’m gonna guess at it wrong either way.”
That gets another laugh out of me. Smaller this time. “Thank you, Miss Hattie.”
“Don’t do anything stupid,” she calls after me. Then she pauses. “Unless it makes an excellent story later.”
The loop curves toward the water, and before I even see him, I know Willard will be on his bench.
“Sit down before you wear a trench in the path,” he says.
I sit. With Willard, silence counts as a full conversation. Usually a better one than most people manage with words.
We watch the water for a while. Chip chatters somewhere above us in the oak. French Fry circles overhead like he’s conducting aerial surveillance.
After a few minutes, Willard nods toward my cup. “What’d Walt have to say?”
I turn it so he can read it. He nods, rustles the peanut bag, and tosses one into the grass. Chip appears from under the bench and starts nibbling.
Willard watches him for a second. Then he says, “Funny thing about people. Always wanting somebody else to tell ‘em where home is.”
I glance at him. “That sounds suspiciously like advice.”
“It ain’t advice.”
“No?”
“Nope. Advice is longer and more annoying.”
That gets a real laugh out of me.
He tosses another peanut. “Besides, if you’ve gotta ask, you probably already know and just don’t like the answer.”
The evening light catches in the deep lines of his face. He keeps looking at the water like he isn’t saying anything important at all, which is how he always says the important things.
My throat feels dry, which is unfair given the amount of latte currently in my system.
I sit there a little longer, trying not to come apart on a public bench in front of a squirrel and a man who can see through walls.
Then I reach over and squeeze his hand. “Willard…”
He squeezes back once. “I know.”
I stand and start walking again.
I end up at the jetty.
The lighthouse stands at the end of it, familiar and white and impossible not to turn symbolic when your life is uncertain. I sit on the warm stone edge and let my feet hang over, drinking the last of my latte.
The water is calm.
I am not.
I pull my knees up and rest my chin on them. A breeze lifts my hair, cooler now that the sun is dropping lower, but the stone still holds the day’s heat.
A minute later, I hear footsteps on the rocks behind me and know it’s him before I turn around.
For a second, I wonder if Willard sent up a flare.
Jake sits down beside me. Hank backs up against me with so much commitment that if I move, he’d probably tip over.
Jake nudges my shoulder with his. “Hi,” he says.
“Hi.”
We both look out at the ocean.
“Figured I might find you here.”
I turn to him. “Why?”
“Because when you’re thinking, you end up at the farthest edge of the nearest body of water.” He glances at me. “You’ve been doing that since you were nine.”
I look back out at the ocean. “I’m not thinking about anything.”
“Okay.” He reaches into his pocket. “Close your eyes. Palm up.”
I turn back to him.
“Trust me.”
That has never been my problem with Jake. I close my eyes and hold out my hand. Something cool and metal settles into my palm, followed by the soft brush of fabric.
“Open.”
I do. For a second, I just stare. Cream face. Pink second hand. Blue numbers. White band with blue and pink stripes.
My breath catches.
I know this watch.
Not this exact one.
But this watch.
Close enough that the memory hits all at once, full force. Me at twelve, sunburned and dramatic, standing on the dock with a striped watch on my wrist and a melted Popsicle stain on my shorts, informing Jake that if he didn’t hurry up and bait the hook, all the fish would leave.
My thumb slides over the face. It’s like the one I wore every summer until I lost it in college.
A month before everything changed.
“Jake.”
“I found one,” he says.
I turn to look at him. “You remembered?”
That dimpled smile of his fades.
He meets my eyes.
“Mo. I never stopped.” Jake looks back out at the water like he didn’t just reach into my chest and close his hand around my heart.
He shrugs one shoulder. “You used to wear one every summer. I figured it belonged back on you.”
I curl my fingers around it. The second hand ticks against my palm. My eyes sting, and I blink hard, trying to force them not to.
After a minute, he says, “I was thinking maybe next month we do an overnight trip out to Moke’s Island. It’ll be cooler by then, and the skeeters won’t carry us off. What do you think?”
Next month.
He says it easily. Naturally. Like of course there’s a next month. Of course I’m in it. “That sounds incredible,” I manage. And it does.
He smiles, still looking out at the water. “I’ll have a surprise for you by then.”