Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
Amelie
It was the afternoon after Amelie’s arrival, and she was hard at work in the kitchen of Pascal’s bed-and-breakfast, up to her elbows in suds, her fingers throbbing from the water’s heat.
There’d been a small lunch rush, followed by coffee and pie and cake, which she’d served.
And now, she was cleaning everything up, smiling to herself.
Although it was across the street from the Caraway Fudge Shoppe, she felt as though she had a purpose in life again, as though everything was simple.
And the way Pascal looked at her made her delirious.
Pascal appeared in the kitchen, rubbing the back of his neck. “I think you’ve already earned a week of room and board,” he said.
“I don’t think that calculation is correct,” Amelie said.
“I’ll have to start paying you,” Pascal said.
“I only accept pie as payment,” Amelie said.
Pascal chuckled. “No. Let’s sit down and go through the numbers. I want to make sure you’re being compensated.” He paused, reaching for the coat that hung on one of the rungs near the office door. “I didn’t get a chance to ask, like, what you do.”
Amelie laughed. “I’ve always thought that’s a really strange question.”
Pascal’s cheeks reddened. When he was nervous or embarrassed, his French accent returned with a vengeance.
“Oh, oui, yes. I mean, of course. It is very American of me to ask such a thing. What do any of us do? I am a musician, but I also serve cake and pie to tourists. I do a little of this, a little of that.”
Amelie smiled wider. Why was he so darn cute?
“I’m actually a writer,” she said. “Or I’m trying to be one.”
Pascal looked amazed. “What kind of writer? Books?”
“Yeah, books. Sometimes short stories.” Amelie winced. After recently losing her agent, the last thing she wanted to think about was her failed writing career.
“Who are your favorite writers?” Pascal asked.
Amelie thought for a moment, then decided to tease him. “Flaubert? Baudelaire? Simone de Beauvoir?”
Pascal’s lips parted with surprise. “French writers!”
“I do love them,” Amelie said. “Your country has quite the literary history. I used to read long European novels during the summers, when I went to the beach.” She stopped herself from saying which beach it was, because he’d know the one.
For a few minutes, as Amelie dripped with suds and Pascal played with the zipper on his coat, they discussed books, writing, and music. After so many years of solitude, talking to Pascal felt like a revelation. Amelie didn’t want their conversation to end.
But end it did.
“I have to head out to the mainland,” Pascal said, his shoulders hunching. “I’ll be back before nightfall. Do you need anything?”
Amelie shook her head. With Pascal and the bed-and-breakfast, she had everything she needed in the world.
With Pascal gone and the kitchen and dining room clean, Amelie went upstairs with the idea that she’d look over her book an additional time and research new agents.
But when she sat at the simple desk, she felt overwhelmed by the view of the abandoned fudge shop across the street.
Within ten minutes, she’d flown back downstairs, put on her coat, and run across the street.
She couldn’t resist it despite knowing it would hurt her.
She needed to get inside.
Crime rates on the island were low, even in the high season, and barely anything happened in the winter months, which meant that Amelie’s father had put a key under a rock under the back porch.
Amelie and Willa had used that key exclusively through the years, never bothering to carry one around.
Amelie rushed to the back porch, pausing for a moment to grip the railing and gaze out at the icy water.
None of it had frozen over yet, but it looked as though it wanted to, as though in another five minutes of below-freezing temperatures, it would crackle over.
Amelie bent down to find the rock, and it was still there—sturdy, with a sharp point on one end. She flipped it over. No key.
Amelie frowned. Nervous, she flipped over all the rocks and found nothing, no proof of a previous key, no sign of another entry. She stood and stared at the back door, which opened into the mudroom and the staircase that led up to the apartment. The doorknob glinted suggestively.
Amelie tugged a bobby pin out of her red locks and strode toward it.
The summer when Amelie and Willa were eleven, they learned how to pick locks.
With the old doors in their house and the even older doors at the fudge shop, they were able to peer through the hole in the knob, find the glinting piece that needed to be struck, and burst their way through most locked doors.
But Amelie couldn’t remember ever having tried the back door, probably because, if it had broken, there was more at stake.
Amelie prayed that nobody was looking out their back window to see her. Perhaps some people would recognize her, but it was likely that most wouldn’t. They’d think she was the first person ever to rob an abandoned fudge shop.
It took Amelie about fifteen minutes to get the door open, during which time her fingers nearly froze. She couldn’t operate the bobby pin correctly with her gloves on. When the lock finally clicked, she almost couldn’t believe it. She’d been seconds from giving up.
The door creaked open, bringing her back into the familiar mudroom.
A pair of men’s worn boots waited for her father, and there was a stack of towels and cardboard boxes in the corner.
Amelie shivered, walking into the familiarity.
It was like a haunted house. She closed the door and stood in stunned silence, gazing through the glistening white kitchen and into the shop just beyond.
She knew that if she went too far toward the street, someone would spot her.
Rather than take that risk, Amelie went up the stairs, drawing her fingertips along the wallpaper and thinking about her mother.
How many nights had her mother come up these stairs and slept in the apartment by herself?
What had that felt like? Had she missed Willa and Amelie, just up the hill, sleeping in their own bed?
Or had she enjoyed the solitude? Amelie reached the landing and struggled to breathe.
What was she doing here? What had she expected to find?
Amelie walked over and sat on the edge of the bed, letting it bounce gently beneath her.
It had been the summer that Willa and Amelie were seventeen when their mother had moved into this apartment.
Amelie and Willa had been so angry with her!
They hadn’t talked to her for a week, which had probably destroyed her.
Amelie remembered watching her mother like a hawk, searching for clues that she would return home soon, or leave the island and abandon them.
She remembered how their mother had said that she never got to leave the island or experience anything else.
Their mother had wanted so much for them.
But what would their mother say about Amelie’s life?
Would she say Amelie was a vagabond without a book deal and should have just stayed at the fudge shop?
Or would she have compassion? Amelie didn’t know.
She lay down on the bed and pressed her hands over her heart. It was overwhelming.
Suddenly, the front door opened downstairs, the same jangling bell that always sang its song when someone came in or left.
Amelie was on her feet, frantic. Who could it be?
And how could she get out before she was discovered?
She crept to the top of the stairs, listening hard to figure out what was going on.
She heard the opening of the fridge in the kitchen, followed by a familiar whistling.
Someone was whistling “Silver Bells,” the Christmas song.
At the sound of the whistling, Amelie knew exactly who it was.
It was hard to fathom at first.
She knew she shouldn’t sneak up. She knew it was reckless and maybe even mean. But she hurried down the stairs, unable to stop herself. Before she knew it, she was in the kitchen, gazing with love at the woman whose whistling had always captivated her.
Grandma Mary stood in the refrigerator door, contemplating something, when she heard Amelie’s footsteps and yanked herself around. At eighty-something, she had pearl-white hair and a sharp gaze. But at the sight of Amelie, she melted.
“Oh! Willa!” she said, closing the fridge door and gaping.
“Willa, you came back! For the commercial! I didn’t think you’d come!
Oh, Willa!” She threw a set of keys on the counter and hurried toward Amelie.
But then, she stopped short and let out a brilliant laugh.
“No. I’d know that face anywhere. You’re Amelie. ”
When Grandma Mary first called her Willa, Amelie hadn’t been able to breathe.
Now that she’d recognized her, Amelie hurried over and threw her arms around her grandmother, so grateful that Grandma Mary hadn’t lost her ability to tell the twins apart.
It had been too long. But their love remained strong.
Amelie bit her tongue to keep from sobbing.
“I can’t believe it,” Grandma Mary said, drawing Amelie toward the little table in the corner of the kitchen and sitting her down. “If I didn’t see you here myself, I wouldn’t believe it. Maybe I’m dreaming.”
Amelie shook her head. “You’re not dreaming. I drove many days to get here.” Unless that was a dream too, of course. But whose dream was it?
Grandma Mary put her hands on her hips. “And your sister?”
“She doesn’t know I’m here,” Amelie said. Although I gave her a hint that she hadn’t responded to, she thought.
“Oh.” Grandma Mary looked terribly sad. “You girls aren’t talking, are you?”
Amelie shook her head. Grandma Mary turned and walked to the stove, where she put on a kettle and fetched some tea leaves. All Amelie wanted in the world was a mug of tea from her grandmother. She suddenly realized that was the medicine she truly needed.
As the water warmed and bubbled on the stove, Grandma Mary whirled back around and said, “Tell me absolutely everything, honey. I don’t want you to leave anything out.”
Amelie smiled at the older woman, tears filling her eyes.
She realized there was nothing she could say to make up for all the time she’d lost. She now felt that she’d wasted nearly twenty years, running from place to place, and never returning here where she belonged.
She would regret it for the rest of her life.
Before Amelie could say a thing, her grandmother lowered her head and said, “I’ve read everything you’ve ever written, Bug. Every single word.”
Amelie let out a sob.