Chapter 12 #2
After that, Willa walked Marius through each scene of the Christmas commercial.
They discussed which of his horses would be best, how he could maneuver the carriage through downtown, and what light was best for each stage of the filming process.
Willa wrote up a big document, which she would later send to her crew.
Steve and the others had already agreed to come up as early as next week.
When they were finished, Willa stood and shook Marius’s hand.
He held it for too long, his skin warm and calloused from his years of hard work.
“I have a couple more hours of work before I can take you to dinner,” he said, proof that he hadn’t forgotten their deal.
“Why don’t you hang out here for a little while?
Make yourself at home?” He gestured toward the cabinet, explaining that there was plenty of wine, crackers, peanuts, and cheese if she wanted a snack.
“You’ll have to tell me what kind of food you’re hungry for,” he said, walking backward out of the kitchen and reaching for his coat. “Working all day long outside makes me so hungry. Anything goes.”
Willa said she’d think about it. When the door closed behind him, she sat in stunned silence, both of her palms on the kitchen table. She couldn’t believe she was going out to dinner with Marius Isaacson after all this time.
Hours later, Marius parked his carriage a block down from the Mackinac steak house, where they grabbed a seat by the window and ordered a bottle of wine.
Through the window, Willa watched as gentle snowfall fell, tourists and locals milling about, dressed in so many winter clothes that they seemed to struggle to walk.
The steak house was decorated with Christmas trees, string lights, and little angels, and the Christmas music “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas” was piped through the speakers.
A man eating alone and one reading a book were the only other people in the restaurant. They kept glancing over at Marius and Willa until Marius waved over at them and said, “Hey, Barb. Tom. How are you?”
Barb and Tom were in their fifties and relatively new on the island, apparently.
Marius explained in a slight whisper that Barb had previously wanted Marius to date their daughter Stacy, but Marius hadn’t wanted to.
“It means they’re mad that I’m out with someone else,” he said, giving Willa a funny smile.
“Is that right?” Willa said. “Everyone always wants to meddle.”
“On this island, for sure. What about in the big city? Do your friends meddle with your life there?” Marius asked.
Willa thought of her countless nights alone, eating dinner alone, watching television alone, and going for walks alone. There wasn’t anyone to meddle with her life back there.
“Not as much,” she said, because it was too embarrassing to say that she didn’t have anyone, not even a friend.
They ordered steaks, potatoes, and asparagus. Willa knew she needed to ask about the fudge shop, about what was going on with her family. But she was caught up in the good time she and Marius were having, telling funny stories from their pasts and making too much eye contact.
Barb and Tom were just about sick of them.
Willa could hear Barb saying, “He thinks he’s too good for our daughter?
I don’t understand it. They could have had a wonderful life.
” It was clear they thought Willa was just a tourist, someone passing through.
But wasn’t that what Willa was? Wasn’t her plan to get out of Mackinac as soon as she’d filmed the commercials?
From the intensity that brewed in her heart, she sensed it wouldn’t be so simple.
“I can’t believe you’re putting me in your commercial,” Marius was saying, looser, now that he’d had a glass and a half of wine. “Tell me. Did I inspire you when I picked you up in the buggy on that first day?”
Willa cackled. “I don’t want anything to go to your head. I told you. I panicked and had to tell Hannah and the others the first thing that came to my head.”
Marius pointed at his temple. “But the first thing that came to your head was this face. Admit it!”
Willa stuck out her tongue, as though she were a teenager again, as though she and Marius had managed to go back through time.
Her heart shifted. Nothing ever happened between Marius and me, she reminded herself, forcing her smile to soften.
I’m swimming down a tunnel of nostalgia, and it’s dangerous.
But when Marius asked her to go for a walk after dinner, before he dropped both her and her bike off at Rosemary Cottage, she couldn’t refuse.
Off they went down the dark and twisting roads, their hands shoved in their pockets, their conversation still burning.
Willa had the sensation that they could talk all night and not run out of anything to say.
Had she felt like this about Marius as a teenager?
She wasn’t sure. She suspected that they hadn’t been so creative or so engaging back then, that their attraction had been purely physical: teenage hormones and all that.
Before either of them knew what they were doing, they found themselves in front of Caraway Fudge Shoppe.
Willa hurried to the glass window and tried to see as much as she could inside.
Again, there was no fudge, no proof that anyone had been there.
Her heart ached. Soon, Marius joined her at the glass.
His hand was on her shoulder, as though he wanted to steady her.
But just as Marius began to speak, they heard a smattering of piano keys and the vibrant call of a trumpet.
Marius and Willa whirled around and bounced across the street to peer into the window opposite the fudge shop, where a five-piece jazz band played on a little stage.
About twenty people were watching, bobbing their heads and drinking wine.
It looked like something out of the 1920s. Willa’s heart raced.
“What is this?” she asked Marius.
“It’s a bed-and-breakfast owned by a French guy,” Marius said.
“But I don’t know anything about this.” He meant the music, the joy.
Willa guessed that Marius didn’t often go out, as he was needed bright and early in the horse barn.
Maybe there was a whole life he hadn’t been allowed to live, simply because he was too responsible.
But Willa continued to peer in, fascinated, grateful to think about something that wasn’t the fudge shop behind her. It took a moment for her to put all the pieces of the jazz club together. When she did, she nearly fell to her knees.
It wasn’t just anyone playing the piano.
The woman at the piano was old, at least in her eighties, with bright white hair and still-wiry arms. She bounded all over those keys as though the spirit of jazz moved through her.
Impossibly, it was Grandma Mary.
Willa gasped and threw her hand over her mouth.
She hadn’t seen Grandma Mary since she was eighteen, yet here she was, filled with joie de vivre, playing like her life depended on it.
Next to the piano was a saxophonist, performing a solo, bending at the knees, and crying out.
Directly in front of the saxophonist, clapping wildly, was a woman who looked exactly like Willa, with bright red hair and all.
It was Willa’s sister. It was Amelie.