Chapter Twelve #4
Right. Okay. “Beer,” I blurted. In the fridge I had a variety of boutique Maine beers Wayne had bought to try. He’d left them for me. “To ease the pain,” he’d joked, giving me a squeeze as he’d said goodbye.
As “Drive My Car” exploded tinnily from Flo’s record player, Jake followed me into the kitchen. He leaned against the doorframe, hands in pockets, watching me as I dropped the flowers on the table and rummaged through the fridge.
The evening was bluing and the kitchen felt unsettlingly intimate.
“Ah, do you mind turning on the overhead lights?” I said, wanting to dispel the intimacy as fast as I could. “What kind of beer do you like?”
Jake flicked the switch and the bare bulbs blazed to life. “Whatever you’re having is fine.”
“I have pale ale from two different places in Portland, IPA from Bangor, lager from Augusta, or stout from Bar Harbor?”
“Pale ale.” He sounded amused. “Doing a tour of the state in there, are you?” he asked as I handed him the aggressively fluorescent can.
“Something like that.” I took a pale ale too and went to find us glasses.
Suni had organized the cupboards, but the glassware was a carnival of jelly jars, wineglasses, tumblers, champagne flutes, and highballs.
Some were crystal, some dime store finds.
I grabbed a couple of oversized wineglasses and handed him one.
“Not using the range to cook?” he asked as he cracked his can and poured it into the glass.
“To be honest, I’m afraid of it,” I confessed.
“I’m calling this one mint!” Flo shouted over the music.
“Good stuff,” Jake called back, without looking away from me. “The woman who bought this house is afraid of a little old range?”
“Yes,” I said fervently. “It’s terrifying. I mean, where do you even start?”
“I’d recommend time travel.” This time the double dimples led to an actual smile. “Will you keep it, do you think?”
“It doesn’t really seem right to get rid of it,” I admitted. “It feels like part of the house. It would be like knocking down a wall.”
“Well, people do that too.”
I shook my head. “It feels wrong to remodel an old house that much.” I thought of the houses I’d seen renovated in reels online. “Have you ever watched TikToks of treasure houses?” I asked him, as I opened a cupboard door to reveal wall-to-wall vases. Marly must have liked cut flowers a lot.
“Have I ever watched what of what?” Jake took a seat at the scrubbed-wood kitchen table as I filled a couple of vases with water.
“Treasure houses.” I explained the reels, telling him specifically about HandyMom24 and her farmhouse in Washington.
The red door and the paddling pool and the Christmas lights, a life built on a foundation of culch.
“I like the ones where people bring the house back to life, not the ones where they remake them into something entirely unrecognizable. For some reason, it makes me sad to see an old house gutted.”
Jake nodded. “Because they lose their identity.”
I blinked. That was exactly it. “Yes. Somehow it erases everything it’s ever been, all the good as well as the bad. Like wiping someone’s memory.”
He gave me an odd look. Then he nodded. “The family wanted to sell to someone who’d love the place for what it was,” he said gruffly. “I guess they knew what they were doing when they let you take it.”
I blinked, surprised by the emotion in his voice.
He glanced at the range. “Best keep the range then, if you want to keep the character of the house.”
“Yeah…” I said slowly, following his gaze.
He was right, it was part of the house. Losing it would diminish the charm of the kitchen.
Even if I didn’t ever cook on it, I could put some of the pretty teapots on display and a potted plant or two.
And then the house would stay whole, and I would still think of Marilla and Green Gables every time I walked into the room.
Jake ran his fingertips over the flowers on the table. “You know what these are?” he said, taking a white petal gently between his fingers.
Startled, I turned back to the table. “Daisies?”
“Oxeye daisies. The town’s named after them.” He gently tugged one from the tangle of the basket and twirled it between his fingers. “They grow all down the coast.” He pointed at the wall. “You ever notice the wallpaper in here?”
Daisies. I had never looked closely at the white floral print, but now it seemed obvious.
The Beatles died abruptly. Then Elvis came on singing “Blue Suede Shoes.”
“Do you know what the purple flowers are, the ones that look like starbursts?” I asked curiously as I bunched the lilacs into a fluted porcelain vase to take upstairs to my room. The rest of the riot of late summer flowers went into a glass vase for the kitchen table.
“Wild bergamot,” he said, taking a long draught of beer. “And the tiny pink ones are swamp milkweed, the fluffy white wands are sweet pepperbush, and the large flat-faced pinky-purple flowers are raspberry. You should find fruit out there soon.”
“Are you an amateur botanist?” I asked, impressed.
“Just a happy gardener.” He slouched back in his chair. “I’m more familiar with vegetables, though.”
I remembered the vegetable beds in the yard behind his store. Not for the first time, I wondered why he was here in Oxeye. “Was your hardware store a family business?” I asked, unable to hide my burning curiosity.
“Nope.” He didn’t elaborate.
“Did you always want to run a hardware store?” I smiled. “And lobster shack.”
“Nope.”
I took the hint. Elvis gave way to Doris Day.
“Flo, you’ll have to listen to more than one song to work out if the record is in mint condition,” I called to her.
“No, I won’t! Jake showed me how to examine them for scratches. I’m just playing these because I want to know what they sound like.” The first verse of “Tea for Two” chirped at full volume from the porch.
“She’s got a lot of energy for a kid who doesn’t eat sugary cereal,” Jake said.
I laughed.
“Her dad’s getting married, huh?”
I darted a glance at him, but his expression was deliberately bland. “Yes,” I said simply. I felt nothing about Tim getting married.