3. Nolani #2
“I’m taking this to the sink.”
“You take it to the sink, then you rinse it. Once you rinse it, you decide the pot needs soaking. Next thing I know, you done cleaned my stove and put labels on my flour.”
“I labeled one container.”
“You labeled both of them.”
“One was self-rising.”
“They were both flour.”
“That distinction matters.”
“Not enough for you to spend your first night here organizing my pantry.”
I put the plate back down. “You’re making me feel useless.”
“That might be your problem. You think resting and being useless are the same thing.”
Nana gathered both plates and carried them toward the sink before I could find a response.
She didn’t soften the observation or circle back to explain what she meant.
Water ran over porcelain while she hummed along with the radio, leaving me at the table with nothing in my hands and nowhere useful to hide.
Later, we sat on the back porch with fresh glasses of tea while the marsh settled into evening.
Frogs called from the reeds, insects gathered beneath the porch light, and somewhere across the water, a boat motor faded toward the marina.
My phone remained inside my purse near the front door, far enough away that checking it would require an actual decision.
I still knew precisely where it was.
“You can check it.”
“I don’t need to.”
“I didn’t say you did.”
“I haven’t thought about it.” Nana turned her head and waited. “Much.”
“That sound more like the truth.”
I smiled and watched moonlight gather in broken pieces across the water.
At home, silence usually meant I’d missed something.
A delayed shipment. A staff question. An email buried beneath another email.
Even after Crème & Chill closed, some part of me remained prepared for the next problem to announce itself as mine.
Here, silence meant Nana’s rocker moving over porch boards, ice shifting inside our glasses, and water tapping against the posts beneath the dock.
Nothing required correction.
“I’m tired.”
“I know, baby.”
“I didn’t know how tired until I got here.”
“That’s how it happens sometimes. Wind keep you so busy holding the roof down, you don’t notice what else been shaking.”
I looked toward her, but Nana had already returned her attention to the water. She didn’t ask me to inventory every burden or pull a deeper confession out of the one I’d managed to name. She heard what I could say and let it be enough.
For once, I tried to do the same.
Friday morning arrived through the scent of coffee, bacon, and biscuits warming in the oven.
Sunlight stretched across the bedroom floor before I opened my eyes, and for several seconds, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d awakened without an alarm or somebody waiting for an answer.
My phone rested face down on the nightstand.
My hand moved toward it out of habit, stopped, and changed direction.
The old photograph on the dresser caught my attention instead.
Nyla and I couldn’t have been older than eight.
We stood ankle-deep near the shoreline in matching yellow dresses, muddy church shoes, and identical faces split by laughter.
I remembered Mama’s frustration when she saw us.
I also remembered Nana turning toward the window so Mama wouldn’t catch her laughing.
We’d dirtied our shoes because the water looked inviting.
That had once been enough reason.
I left the phone where it was.
Nana stood at the stove in another flowered housedress, removing bacon from the skillet while biscuits browned behind the oven window. My coffee waited beside the pot with the correct amount of cream already stirred into it.
“Well, look what finally woke up.”
“It’s eight thirty.”
“Exactly. Sun been handling business for hours.”
“I was awake before now.”
“Lying before coffee is nasty work, as you and your sister always saying.”
“I was resting my eyes.”
“Go sit down before you add perjury to it.”
Breakfast passed without one discussion of Crème & Chill.
Nana wanted to know whether I’d finished the book she mailed me in March, why I still hadn’t sewn the button onto my favorite pink blouse, and what I intended to wear to the waterfront festival.
She rejected my first choice before I finished describing it.
“They’re comfortable.”
“They’re beige.”
“What does that have to do with comfort?”
“Nothing. Got everything to do with you leaving this house looking like you surrendered.”
“My feet aren’t making a fashion statement.”
“Those shoes already made one, and I don’t care for what they said.”
I wore the pink sandals.
Willow Run had begun celebrating before I reached downtown.
Cars lined both sides of Bay Street while children tugged parents toward white tents gathered along the waterfront.
Music spilled from a temporary stage near the marina, brass and drums mixing with laughter and vendors calling out candles, jewelry, fishing lures, paintings, pralines, and enough food to make breakfast feel like poor planning.
The town had changed since my childhood without becoming unfamiliar.
The old bait shop now shared its building with a coffee counter, but the faded scales still hung near the entrance.
The movie theater had become a performing arts center, its marquee restored instead of replaced.
New restaurants occupied storefronts near the water while handwritten signs still announced whatever fish had come in that morning.
Willow Run had made room for new things without erasing everything that came before them.
I parked behind Franklin Books and entered through the side door.
The bell above the frame announced me to a room dense with paper, polished wood, and cinnamon coffee.
Shelves crowded every wall. Stacks rose from the floor in arrangements that looked accidental until somebody requested a title and Mr. Franklin retrieved it without hesitation.
He looked up from behind the register. “Well, I’ll be. The deserter returns.”
“I sent you a case of brown butter pecan last Christmas.”
“And I forgave you until February.”
“You ate twelve pints in two months?”
“Don’t come in here counting another grown person’s blessings.”
His daughter, Camille, emerged from the back, carrying a box of bookmarks.
She hugged me and immediately started discussing a winter pop-up with Crème & Chill.
Normally, I would’ve reached for my phone before she finished the thought, opened my calendar, found a date, and turned a casual possibility into something I was responsible for delivering.
Instead, I accepted her card and tucked it into my purse.
“Call me next week. Nyla and I can look at dates together.”
Mr. Franklin pressed his hand to his chest. “You letting your sister look at the calendar now?”
“She’s always looked at it.”
“That ain’t what I heard.”
“Why is everybody discussing my business?”
“Because your business got good ice cream and interesting management.”
I bought two novels, allowed Mr. Franklin to add a third after accusing me of neglecting my literary education, and wandered back into the festival.
Near the children’s activity table, a little boy sat with a fishing pole across his knees, struggling to loosen a knot while his father spoke with a vendor several feet away. Frustration sharpened each attempt until the tangled line nearly disappeared beneath his fingers.
A handsome man stopped beside him.
He crouched, held out one hand, and waited.
The boy surrendered the line.
Within moments, the stranger loosened the knot, showed him how to pinch the loop before pulling it through, returned the pole, and kept walking.
His father never looked over.
The boy did.
So did I.
Warm brown skin. White T-shirt. Broad shoulders. An easy stride that didn’t seem in any particular hurry to be noticed.
Then Camille called me over to meet a local teacher interested in bringing her students to Scoops & Stories, and by the time our conversation ended, he’d disappeared into the crowd.
I spent the next hour with nowhere particular to be.
A gallery held paintings of Willow Run through hurricanes, sunsets, weddings, and funerals.
I bought Nana a small print of the marsh, sampled blackberry jam from a vendor who insisted his grandmother’s recipe had never disappointed anybody with sense, and watched two children debate whether a crab in a touch tank looked angry or merely disappointed.
Nobody called my name because something had gone wrong.
Nobody handed me a decision and waited for an answer.
I followed whatever interested me, and somehow, the world continued operating.
Miss Eloise’s tea booth stood near the far end of Bay Street, draped in peach-colored fabric with baskets of lemons arranged around glass dispensers.
She greeted me with a squeal, hugged me, and informed the woman beside her that I was “Nadine’s baby who went off and made something beautiful out of ice cream and books. ”
“I didn’t go far.”
“Far is anywhere your people can’t see your face regularly.”
I couldn’t argue with that.
Nana had requested two gallons, one sweet and one unsweet, so I waited while Miss Eloise filled the jugs and marked both lids in black.
I ordered peach tea for myself and accepted a cucumber sandwich I hadn’t requested because refusing food from an older Black woman in Willow Run required more energy than I possessed.
By the time I stepped away, I carried two gallons of tea, three books, Nana’s print, my purse, my own cup, and the sandwich wrapped in wax paper.
Even on vacation, I’d found a way to fill both hands.
The festival map at the intersection showed a narrow path behind the waterfront restaurants that appeared to lead toward the parking lot. A flower display covered part of the sign, but the remaining arrow looked clear enough.
I followed it between two buildings, passed a locked delivery gate, and emerged onto a service lane curving in the opposite direction.
“Of course.”