“Storm brewing to the east—see the wind picking up on the water?” The word “water” came out “wudder.”
Anders did not, but he nodded anyway so as to placate the senile old man.
On the sunbaked road leading away from the docks, every building Anders passed looked to be larger incarnations of the crab shanties—houses built with wooden slats or shingles, sanded by wind, salt air, and time. A few had their own hand-painted, often crooked signs declaring what they were—a restaurant called the One-Eyed Crab, an antiques store, and a post office. A rusted-out Chevy with no windshield and three flat tires sat in front of the antiques shop as if it had died there one day and no one bothered to move it. Although where would they move it to? Surely there was no mechanic on the island, for it was the first car Anders had seen. And it would take a barge to get it off the island—probably the same barge that got it over here in the first place, which couldn’t be cheap.
At the end of the road, as promised, Anders came upon a building with a sign that announced: Blue Point General Store. Anders stood for a minute in front of it, considering the rickety stairs leading to a cement slab porch, the air-conditioning unit that precariously hung out the front window at an angle and looked like an insurance claim waiting to happen, the way the building sloped slightly to the left as if a strong breeze had one day pushed it sideways and it never recovered. This was, according to Wikipedia, the only market on the island. The only place residents could buy their groceries. And it was a far cry from a Food Lion.
As Anders stood there, slack-jawed and contemplative in the middle of the road, he thought how he had been to a lot of beach towns before. Small towns, even. But he had to admit, he’d never seen a town quite like this.
Chapter 3
Two Weeks After the Storm
It was two days after the memorial service when Piper woke up suddenly, as if startled by a loud noise, and found herself staring at her husband’s eyes. Eyes she often thought were the color of the Chesapeake Bay, briny and gray with a hint of sky. Eyes she hadn’t seen in two full weeks.
“Tom!” she cried, her heart swelling with joy, relief, and love. Always love.
His face still groggy with sleep, his head lying on his pillow exactly in the dent Piper had been staring at for days, he blinked at her.
“You’re here,” she said, sitting up.
“Of course I’m here,” he said.
“Why didn’t you wake me?”
Tom yawned. “Seriously? I know how much you like your sleep.” He arched an eyebrow. “Why are you acting so strange?”
Piper stared at him, all the words pooling in her mouth—that though she knew better, everyone said he wasn’t coming home; that she’d started to believe them; that the weight felt so heavy in her chest at times, she thought she might never, ever breathe again—but suddenly none of that seemed to matter. He was here. Tom was home. And then, she remembered her hair. She hadn’t bothered pulling it up into a top bun at night or wrapping it in a scarf like she usually did. She couldn’t remember the last time she moisturized or combed it. And only now, when she gently patted it with her hand, did she notice the way the corkscrew curls knotted around each other, matted up in patches, like a mangy dog. She could only imagine how terrible it looked. And that was when the sourness wafted up to her nose, and she realized the only thing rivaling her looks was probably the way she smelled. Half of her wanted to immediately jump in the shower, but the other half was terrified Tom would disappear if she did. So she sat still, torn, while Tom just lay there, smiling at her the way he always did—slightly amused, full of adoration.
“I need to get cleaned up,” she said, reticently slipping out of bed and padding backward to the bathroom, not wanting to take her eyes off him. And then she froze.
“Don’t go anywhere! I’ll only be a minute. Don’t leave.”
“Never,” Tom replied simply. “Piper Parrish, I would never leave you.”
And true to his word, he didn’t. When Piper got out of the shower, Tom was still there.
* * *
—
Seventeen days after Tom’s boat went missing in the storm, Pearl Olecki stood in the kitchen of her bed-and-breakfast, turning link sausages over in a hot pan, when the side screen door squeaked open and Piper came walking through it.
“Piper,” she breathed, turning her wide hips toward the girl, ready to embrace her or feed her or give her whatever she might need.
But Piper slipped right by her and went to the opposite wall, where she tugged her cat-paw-printed apron off a hook and looped it around her neck, expertly tying the side ribbons behind her back. “Morning, Miz Olecki,” she said cheerfully, going straight to the refrigerator to retrieve the carton of eggs, easily falling into their routine as if seventeen days had not passed since they’d last performed it.
Pearl stared at the girl’s back, mouth agape, and then promptly closed it when Piper turned around, clutching the eggs in her right hand. She had lived long enough to know the ways people grieved were as varied as the waves that lapped up on Graver’s Beach at the far end of the island. And far be it from her to say one way was better than another. If Piper chose to face today with a smile, then so be it. The important thing was she was finally out of that house. Pearl turned back to her pan and busied herself with the browning sausage.
“Sunrise was beautiful this morning,” Piper said, as she beat the egg yolks with a fork in the orange ceramic bowl. “Did you see it?”
“I didn’t,” Mrs. Olecki said. She opened the oven door a crack to peek on the cinnamon rolls, thinking how wonderful it was that Piper could still appreciate the simple things, like a glorious sunrise, in the midst of her pain.
“Pinks and oranges—like the sky was on fire,” Piper said.
“Mm,” Pearl said, infusing the sound with sympathy and understanding.
For the next ten minutes, the two women strode around each other in silence, performing their well-practiced dance. Mrs. Olecki tonged the links onto a plate lined with paper towels, while Piper cooked the eggs. When the timer dinged, Piper moved the lower half of her body to the side so Mrs. Olecki could retrieve the cinnamon buns.
It wasn’t until they were standing side by side at the counter, Piper plating the first course for the three guests currently staying at the bed-and-breakfast, Pearl icing the cinnamon rolls, that Piper finally mentioned Tom.
“You want to hear something funny?” Piper asked.
“What’s that, hon?”
Piper paused a beat. And then: “I miss Tom’s snoring.”
Mrs. Olecki froze, holding the piping bag above the round metal pan of swollen, browned buns. “Oh, Piper.”