Ben
“I didn’t do anything,” Jonah told him. “But I think I’m about to.”
Jonah was homesick for the East Coast. “I’ve been keeping my eye out for opportunities closer to you, Mom, and Dad. Remember the shellfish company in Chatham?”
“No, I mean the farm on Oyster River. The business is for sale. I want to buy it and transfer the grant for the flats.”
“The last time we spoke, you mentioned taking a leave. You’ve been burned out at the firm for a while now.”
“I’m not burned out,” Ben had insisted.
“Let me ask you this. Are you happy?”
“Pull up along the left side of the FLUPSY,” Jonah called back to him now, standing at the head of the deck.
The floating upweller system was where juvenile oysters were grown from seed.
Some days Ben was still overwhelmed by how much he had yet to learn.
He had three months to figure it out before the firm expected him back.
He waited while Jonah hopped off the barge and onto the deck to inspect the silos, lifting and closing lids as he went. Inside each watery bin were hundreds and hundreds of baby oysters. They required daily inspection.
“Too much algae again?” Ben called. It had been the running concern that week. Each week it seemed there was something.
“They look good, actually,” Jonah reported. “Since I got the pump sorted, the flow rate seems better.” Satisfied, he hopped back on the barge. “Alright, back to the dock.”
Ben couldn’t lie. Despite his trepidation about taking a leave of absence from a job he was good at and partnering in a business he knew nothing about, there were some bonuses.
Here he was out of the office and on one of the most beautiful shorelines in New England.
He got to work shoulder to shoulder with his brother.
It was summer, and the living, though not easy in this industry, was honest hard work.
Best of all, the oysters. Forget the succulent briny oysters they got to shuck and tip back right on the boat; there was something about taking the skiff out to the nursery on a foggy morning at low tide, about scooping your hand through hundreds of baby oysters—the tingle of the salt water on your skin and the weight of the shells in your palm.
Jonah was right; despite the labor, there was magic in it.
They were the Oyster Boys, a name Jonah came up with that the customers and restaurants seemed to love.
Ben joked that he got to keep his hands clean with the legal, marketing, and ecotourism aspects of the business, while Jonah handled the physical slog with his own small team of workers out on the water.
The days were long: checking the tides and the weather, sorting, grading, and processing the oysters.
Constantly checking the nurseries, the cages, and the equipment.
Some days even their parents chipped in, helping with delivery driving.
It was a family-run operation in the truest sense.
At the end of each day Ben fell into bed spent, his mind and his muscles pleasantly worn.
He had no idea if this venture would work, but there wasn’t much time for fretting.
In the same vein, Ben tried not to think about the firm he’d taken three months of leave from.
Or about Laura, who’d divorced him the year before.
The one thing he could not stop thinking about, however, was Holly Goodwin.
Ben knew Holly would be back at some point that summer.
After all, returning to Chatham for a couple weeks each summer was what they’d always done, independent of one another.
The last time they’d spoken, she’d been working for the same hospitality corporation that kept her traveling more often than not.
It was an odd job for the quiet girl he’d known in the summer, who loved adventures on a local level, but loved the cozy pleasures of family and the inn and Chatham even more.
He’d almost reached out to her when he agreed to help Jonah get the business up and running, but their relationship had taken a turn after he’d told her about his plans to marry.
It was a regret he still felt. After that day, Holly had basically disappeared from his life.
So it was a particular shock when he received his copy of Chatham Life magazine, featuring Oyster Boys.
He’d been paging through, looking for their article, when he saw Holly’s grandparents’ inn featured on page six.
Only her grandmother was not featured. Holly was.
His breath caught when he saw her leaning against the same red door Ben had run in and out of hundreds of times as a kid.
Holly was still beautiful, but gone was the girlish shyness in her eyes.
The woman in the photo was as at home in her skin as she was standing in that doorway.
It had done something to him, seeing that.
He’d not been able to stop thinking about her since.
“So are you going to call her?” Jonah had always been a mind reader. He’d also always been a pain in the ass.
Ben jerked the barge sharply to the right, but Jonah was ready. He laughed as he righted himself. “You know you want to!” he shouted over the outboard motor.
Ben did want to, more than he cared to admit to himself or his nosy brother. It was an urge he couldn’t shake. What had stopped him was his doubt that Holly shared it.
They’d reached the landing. As Jonah tied off, Ben hopped out and walked up the dock to the shop.
Oyster Boys operated out of a small town landing in one of Chatham’s neighborhoods, set on a large saltwater pond that connected by river to Nantucket Sound.
The shop was a quaint shingled affair, perched on the waterfront.
They shared the small strip with only two other outfits, a private boatyard that specialized in marine services and a fishing charter.
At the end of the landing was a boat launch.
Ben liked the cozy feel of the landing. Set at the bottom of a narrow driveway, the parking lot was small and the two other businesses friendly.
There was little traffic, beyond occasional boaters and a few local kids with fishing poles.
The shop was a narrow gray-shingled two-story that looked like something straight out of a children’s storybook.
Downstairs, at dock level, was the processing room.
There, harvested oysters were brought in right off the boat, inspected, cleaned, and measured for market.
Upstairs was the business office in the back and a small market counter out front.
While most of their customers were local restaurants, they also sold oysters by the half dozen to visitors.
Ben’s hope was to expand upon that model and incorporate ecotourism into their farming practice.
As much as Jonah enjoyed educating visitors about aquaculture and their husbandry practices, his effort and energy were consumed by farming.
Still, Ben was sure there was a market for bringing people on-site and offering personalized experiences, just as breweries and distilleries had opened their doors to the public and created tasting rooms and dining spaces.
Jonah trudged upstairs and joined him. “Lunch break.” He sank into a chair by the window with his sandwich. Oyster Bay sparkled behind him.
“So how’s it going at Mom and Dad’s?”
Ben eyed him over his laptop. “Cozy.” It had been one thing to sublet his apartment and leave his job. Moving into his parents’ summer house was quite another thing altogether.
Jonah chuckled. “I know Mom loves having you. At least there’s no rent.”
“I’d pay double for a place of my own. But even with my salary at the firm, I couldn’t touch this market this time of year long-term.”
Chatham was a summer destination of the highest scale.
With its beaches and Main Street lined with old-fashioned ice cream shops and boutiques and galleries, most houses were private residences, and those that were rentals commanded top dollar during summer vacation season.
Jonah, who’d moved back before he did, had found a one-bedroom renovated boathouse on a private property to rent.
“I’d share my place, but there’s no room. Have you looked in Orleans or Dennis?”
Ben shook his head. “I’ll stay put for the summer and revisit finding a rental come fall. There’s enough to figure out here as it is.”
“No kidding. We need to hire another driver.”
Ben groaned. “We just went over the budget. Can’t Will or Amy fill in?”
“They’re pulling ten-hour days as it is.” Which meant Jonah was pulling twelve or more.
Will and Amy were their two farmers, besides Jonah. Will came on from the previous owner, which was good—he knew how everything ran. Amy was a recent marine biology grad from UConn. With summer demand for oysters at its highest, their driver, David, was already stretched too thin.
“Honestly, I don’t see how we can afford it. But we can’t keep pulling Mom and Dad in to drive.”
“And we’ve already tried to consolidate routes.” Jonah looked at him hard. “Maybe we can spare you a couple of hours each day.”
“That’s rich. I got my law degree to chauffeur shellfish up and down Route Twenty-Eight?” But Jonah wasn’t kidding, and he wasn’t wrong. Deliveries equaled sales. And their budget was tight.
“Just for a couple days,” Jonah said. “I’d do it, but then we’re down a farmer. Plus this will buy us some more time to see if we can somehow consolidate routes and delivery times better.”
Ben put his hands up. “I get it, I get it. I’ll fill in today and tomorrow.”
That night, after dinner with his parents, Ben went out to the back deck and sank into a lounge chair.
Tomorrow morning he’d be delivering oysters.
If his colleagues back at the firm ever caught wind of this, he’d never hear the end of it.
Across the cove the public beach had emptied out, save for a couple of dog walkers on the sand.
Ben shifted his gaze left, past the beach and up the rise where a handful of houses rested atop the bluff.
It was easy to pick out the Cranberry among them.
Its roof was high and its back patio wide over the water.
Somewhere under that roof was Holly. Ben imagined her running down the wood steps that led to the beach, flip-flops in one hand, the other waving wildly at him as he pulled his boat into the shallow waters of the cove.
He wondered what she was doing right now.
He wondered if she was doing it alone. It seemed most people their age were either married or getting married.
Not many were married and already divorced, like him.
Despite their shared ambition and love of the law, he and Laura, it turned out, had not been right for each other.
From the beginning each was more devoted to their career than the other.
The rare evenings they were home together, their laptops were positioned between them, each one’s face aglow in blue light.
They’d always talked about having children, but when Laura began to drop hints they should start trying, Ben secretly worried it might have more to do with keeping up with their friends than the fact that she really wanted to.
When neither wanted to visit the other’s family for Christmas, the year before, Ben realized they wanted other things more than they wanted each other.
When they returned to Providence, separately, for the new year, Laura verbalized the same sentiment.
The divorce was clean and quick. Their apartment was sold.
Thankfully, Ben thought sadly, there weren’t children involved.
Looking at the inn, Ben wondered if Holly had married.
If she had children, even. As much as he’d always wanted her to be happy, he suddenly found himself hoping neither was true.
His phone dinged. It was Jonah, reminding him what time deliveries started in the morning.
Twice more it dinged, with the route. Ben silenced his phone; he’d check it later.
Now, sitting beneath the remnants of sunset, he didn’t want to think about work.
Later, when he went to bed in his old childhood room, Ben looked out the window.
Holly’s bedroom had been on the back of the inn, facing his house.
He doubted it was anymore, but just for the hell of it he turned his light off, then on, then off again.
Ben stood in the window, looking across the cove.
Beneath the night sky the water reflected silver and gray, like mercury.
He waited, then flicked his bedroom light on and off once more for good measure.
Across the cove, the upstairs windows of the inn remained dark.
What had he expected? Sighing, he climbed into bed.
Before turning his phone off for the night, Ben checked Jonah’s messages.
Delivery started at eleven a.m. Tomorrow he’d take the downtown, Harwich, and Orleans route.
He scanned the list of stops: Chatham Squire, Impudent Oyster, Wequassett Resort.
Sacred Cod and Beach House Grill, at Chatham Bars.
His breath caught in his chest at the final destination: Cranberry House.