Meet Me at Sunset (Evening Island)

by Olivia Miles

  Well, who said that Ellie’s wasn’t? Naomi was her friend, but she was also a tough islander who didn’t sugarcoat the truth.

  Ellie wondered what she would have to say about Simon being back in town, and what this meant for Ellie’s future. Naomi had never met him, only heard the stories. Originally from Blue Harbor, she’d taken over the store about five years ago, and had quickly become one of Ellie’s biggest supporters and closest friends.

  Ellie pulled in a breath, wondering where to start, and then decided not to say anything—yet. She’d rather wait and see for herself. For the first time in a while, this island was full of possibility again, and that was a feeling she wasn’t ready to part with just yet.

  She waited for Naomi to hand her a check for her sales, tucked it into her pocket, and then pushed back out into the street, her hands bare, but her heart full.

  Only one thing—or rather, one person—could make it fuller.

  Fighting off a smile, she hurried her step down to the Trillium Café, which had always been Simon’s favorite spot in town mostly because it was right on the water and no one served better pancakes than Marge, who had owned the place forever.

  She walked into the restaurant, which she frequented a little too often since she’d become a permanent resident of the island, even if that meant having to sometimes chitchat with the more eccentric residents. Sure enough, Ches was perched at the counter, and he grinned a little too widely when he saw her, revealing what was now three missing teeth (she grimaced to remember that one had been wiggly around mid-January) and patting the seat next to him.

  “Oh, I—” Her eyes darted around, but it was just a sea of locals, and none of them young, because young people didn’t live on a remote island in the middle of the Great Lakes, did they? Young people went out into the world, made something of their lives, and then vacationed here.

  She tried to think of an excuse fast enough, something that wouldn’t take too much light out of poor Ches’s eyes, when she felt a hand graze her lower back, ever so briefly.

  “She’s actually grabbing a table for us both, Chester,” Simon said, ever so smoothly.

  Ellie inhaled a breath. Her knees felt more than a little weak. And her heart, well, it positively soared like the seagulls that swept and dove all along the shoreline. If only she could capture this feeling as permanently as she captured the birds on canvas. She wanted to hold onto it. Never let it go.

  And maybe, if Simon stuck around a little longer, she wouldn’t have to.

  “Thank you,” she whispered, once they were out of earshot.

  Simon grinned as he slid into a booth near the window. “You weren’t waiting for anyone, were you?”

  Just you, she thought. She’d spent an entire summer waiting for him once.

  Best not to think about that heartache, she told herself. She opened her menu, even though she of course had it memorized. The blueberry pancakes were the best in the Midwest, and she had travelled enough to be able to say that, despite the fact that she now hadn’t left Evening Island since…she frowned. Well, there had been that shopping trip to Blue Harbor last November, before the big snow hit. And stayed.

  “No, my sister Gemma arrived last night and she’s taken over the place so I thought I’d get out for a bit.” She’d dared to think that having Gemma around would be fun, like all the other summers growing up were. That Evening Island brought out the best of them, and that Sunset Cottage was a place of good memories, not the usual arguments that bogged them down once they got back to the “real” world.

  Except that this was her “real” world now. And she liked it just the way it was. Wildflowers in the yard and all.

  She glanced at Simon across the table. Well, she liked it a little better now that there was some excitement to be had.

  “Gemma’s back in town?” Simon smiled fondly.

  Ellie pursed her lips. “Yes, well.” No sense in dragging down this special breakfast by talking about the recent shifts in her family dynamic. “And Hope is coming with her twin girls today.”

  “Everyone is back then!”

  Simon’s grin was broad, and oh, so appealing, that for a moment she just stared at him. It wasn’t until the space between his brow knitted that she realized she had gotten a little too caught up in the moment.

  Quickly, she cleared her throat and closed her menu. “Yep. Everyone is back.” She smiled at him, hoping he couldn’t hear the pounding of her heart across the table.

  She glanced down at his hands, still clutching the menu, thinking how wonderful it would be if he just moved them a few inches closer to hers.

  The waitress approached (new seasonal hire, college kid) and they placed their orders. She filled their coffees and hurried off to the next table, looking so nervous and flustered that Ellie had half a heart to warn her how things would be by Memorial Day.

  But she had better things to think about right now. Like how blue Simon’s eyes were. And how intensely he was looking at her, just like when they were younger. No one had ever looked at her that way since. Surely that still meant something?

  “So, tell me everything you’ve been up to.” He leaned forward, giving her his full attention, and her heart began to race. “What’s it like living here year-round?”

  “Quiet. Lots of inspiration for my work, of course.” She wasn’t so sure that she sounded convincing.

  “Winters must be tough,” he remarked, looking at her as if genuinely wanting to hear what she had to say about that.

  Oh, she had to a lot to say. Being a resort island, most of the businesses closed down in winter. Many restaurants were seasonal—their owners had primary residences in Michigan or Wisconsin, and the gift shops took long breaks too. Sales were low, she’d expected that, telling herself it gave her time to boost her inventory, and that she had done. She had an entire closet full of winter landscapes. But there were only so many snow-frocked trees that you could paint, she realized…

  “Christmas is really magical here,” she said, holding onto the one shining moment of that long, cold stretch. She didn’t say that after the holidays, it was all downhill until April, when the snow finally began to thaw. “They put a tree right there—” She motioned out the window to the edge of Main Street, but Simon didn’t follow her gaze. Instead, she realized with a flutter, he was looking at her.

  She felt her cheeks heat. She took a sip of her coffee. She’d forgotten to add sugar to it, but she found that she didn’t even care.

  “And you?”

  She glanced up to see the waitress already delivering their food, looking rather smug about that, if Ellie did say so herself. Couldn’t she have postponed things a little longer? Really, did the kitchen have to be quite so efficient?

  Simon swallowed a mouthful of hash browns. “I started my own law practice, actually. It’s not easy, but it’s given me the opportunity to spend some time out here this summer.”

  She didn’t let on that she of course knew he was a lawyer, just as he’d planned to be. It was forgivable, she supposed, given how small the island was and that all the locals knew all the locals and all the seasonal people too. And Simon and his family were seasonal people. They were property owners. That made them islanders. And that made their business, well, everyone’s business.

  “My mom hasn’t been well,” he explained, “She wanted to get back here for the season and it seemed like an opportunity for me to help.”

  “It isn’t anything serious?” She felt guilty for not knowing, even though she hadn’t seen Mrs. Webber on this island in at least two years.

  “She had pneumonia over the winter,” he explained. “And she’s been struggling to get back on her feet. I’m hoping the warm weather will help her improve.” He grinned, and Ellie set a hand on his arm. Warm and soft, she let it stay like that for a moment.

  “I’m sure that having you here will help her improve.” She grinned. Like old times.

  “I’m fixing up the house for her, not doing much, of cou
rse, but more than my father can do. He’s getting on in age.”

  “And you work remotely?” she asked, sipping her drink. She couldn’t peel her eyes from him. She feared that if she did, she would wake from a wonderful, delicious dream, one that she had had many times over the years, flashbacks, really, to the last summers she had spent on this island before it became her permanent residence. When Evening Island and Simon Webber were interconnected, one and the same, where it seemed that one couldn’t exist without the other.

  He nodded. “I’m a contract lawyer, not a trial attorney. I spend a lot of time reading.” He went on to describe a current case.

  Ellie nodded, opening her eyes, pretending to find this not only interesting but also new information, despite Gran filling her in on all she’d heard in her weekly quilting club. But what she was really thinking was that his smile was just as adorable as it was ten years ago.

  “And you’re doing all that while helping around the house too?”

  “Well, my fiancée is better with the domestic side of things…”

  She felt the blood drain from her face. For a moment, she wasn’t even sure she was breathing. She stared at him, and his brow flinched, forcing her to recover, and quickly.

  “Fiancée? Well, this is news!” She smiled brightly, even though her heart felt like it was breaking into a million pieces, just like it had all those years ago, when he’d left the island, gone to college, and the year after that, when he’d stayed at college to take summer classes instead of come back to the island like he used to.

  Like he’d promised.

  He shrugged, looking nonplussed. “Thanks, I guess. It’s what people do, right? Grow up? Get married?”

  She nodded, smiled tightly. Yes, it was what people did. But not what she had done. It wasn’t by choice. It was more that her life had never been one to follow a conventional path, even if she’d tried.

  And just like that, it seemed all too clear. Simon might have been the guy who splashed with her in the water and kissed her on the sandy shore and trotted alongside her through the woods that divided their two houses, always going faster than her, even though her horse was definitely faster, who picked berries with her off wild bushes and then biked home, only to stop and eat them all before they made it to the kitchen. His skin was always bronzed, bringing out the blueness of his eyes, but even then, way back then, he had plans.

  And she…she didn’t.

  She glanced at her watch, pretending to find surprise in what she saw, even though she barely registered the second hand. “Oh! I completely forgot that I’m meeting a client to hand over a commission.”

  “A commission?” He looked impressed.

  Ellie slid out of the booth. On a few occasions, someone saw her work in one of the shops in town and then made a point of finding her studio, where they asked for something specific to be made, a portrait of their child playing down near the water, or one of their sailboats, docked at the harbor. But today, there was no commission to hand off. The season had just started.

  And now, she realized, it was going to be a very long season indeed. Just as bad as the winter.

  Maybe, between her sisters and now Simon’s fiancée lingering about, worse.

  Chapter Six

  Hope

  Hope was prepared for the drive. That was the thing about her, she thought, as she pulled into the ferry lot at the northern tip of Michigan. She was always prepared. She had snacks for car trips, Band-Aids in the small pocket of her handbag for scraped knees, and an extra five hundred in cash in her bedside drawer, for emergencies. She had spreadsheets made up for all their family vacations: detailed daily schedules right down to the exact outfits and hair bows the girls would wear. She packed accordingly.

  She had not been prepared to leave her husband, if that was what she had done. She wasn’t sure, actually.

  They’d gone about the rest of yesterday as if the conversation hadn’t happened, and Evan had only brought it up again when he saw her pull their suitcases out of the spare room closet.

  “I’ll see you when I get back,” was all he said that morning as he slipped out the door for the cab that was waiting to take him to O’Hare. He wouldn’t be back for three weeks or until the merger closed. She’d said nothing.

  She hadn’t prepared to go to Evening Island, either. She hadn’t bought the necessary staples required for such a trip! She knew that if she took the time to go to the store, load up on sunscreen and new swimsuits, got the girls haircuts, and fretted over snacks for the car ride that she would lose her nerve, stay put, and she didn’t want to stay put. She was frankly starting to fear that if she did stay put she would go crazy.

  But now, sitting in the car at the ferry dock in Blue Harbor, staring at the lake and the island off in the distance, she feared she had gone crazy. She’d done it. Loaded up all the clothes that made sense into the suitcases, stuffed in toiletries and hairbrushes and a hair dryer and her cosmetic case, all without a list. She had the unsettling feeling that she had forgotten something (contact lens solution, or her toothbrush) but then she told herself to calm down, that she could just buy it there. She just needed to get there, first. She needed to get out of the car and go.

  She turned to the girls, who were quietly eating their crackers. The backseat was covered in crumbs. Empty (at least, she hoped they were empty) sugar-free, organic juice boxes were splayed on the seat between them.

  “Ready for some girl time?” That’s what she’d called it, because that’s what it was, really. A little time with her sisters, her daughters, not much different than the summers she’d spent here with Gran and her mother.

  The twins cheered, even though she suspected they had no idea what girl time meant and were only picking up on her enthusiasm, even if it was coming from her strangled throat. On the drive here, she’d received no less than four phone calls from various neighbors, and one from the dentist, whose appointment she had skipped, literally clear forgotten and skipped, scheduled for ten o’clock this morning! She religiously went with the girls every six months, all three of them keeping their oral hygiene in order, checking that box and moving on, and now, she had played hooky.

  Would she like to reschedule for another day this week, they had asked. And she had experienced the strange thrill of saying no, she couldn’t, and she actually couldn’t reschedule at this time at all!

  For the first time in her entire existence, her calendar did not contain a dentist appointment on it for the foreseeable future. She felt scared. She felt rebellious.

  She felt freaking wonderful.

  She took the bags from the trunk and, with a daughter on either side of her, managed to get everything to the ticket booth. “Three to the island,” she said.

  “Round-trip?” When she didn’t respond immediately, the man inside the booth added, “Good for a week.”

  “One way then,” she said, fighting back a wave of nausea as he handed her a long-term parking sticker for the car.

  But it wasn’t until they were seated on the boat, her hands now gripping the bodies of her wiggling children so they wouldn’t slip and fall as the motor started and the boat began to slide over the smooth water of Lake Huron, that what she had done finally sank in.

  She had done it. Done what she had said she would do. She hadn’t just muttered under her breath or gone to bed angry or passive aggressively left Evan’s dirty mug on the counter instead of placing it in the dishwasher with the others. She had packed up her girls, driven four hundred miles, and now she was on a boat, the wind in her hair, the air so fresh and clean that she could almost smell the island, and Chicago, and her life, was so far behind her that for one glorious moment, she nearly forgot it ever existed.

  That moment ended quickly, when Rose tapped her on the leg, looked at her with round, scared eyes, and then vomited all her crackers, organic juice, and carrot sticks into Hope’s lap. Onto her white capris, technically.

  Rose started to cry, and Victoria, seeing what had h
appened, started to scream.

  And for a moment, just one moment, Hope began to wonder if this had been such a good idea, after all.

  “Oh, let me.” A man was beside her, handing her a wad of napkins that bore the logo of a fast food chain she would never allow her girls to eat at, not on her watch. (Evan, she knew, had snuck them there the very few times he had “babysat” so she could attend a meeting at the preschool or, once, the neighborhood book club, that only lasted one session when it was clear no one wanted to actually read the book—well, Hope had read the book, and taken notes in the margin.)

  “Thank you.” Flustered, Hope took the napkins, using them first to wipe Rose’s face and then attempt damage control on herself.

  Rose’s face was chalk white now, and Hope was intensely afraid that she would throw up again, but by her calculation, there was probably nothing left in her.

  She pulled her daughter down into her lap. “We’re almost there,” she said, as much to herself as to the girls. They were almost there. They’d actually done it. And once there, everything would be better. It always was.

  “I have some…” The man, whom Hope finally looked at properly, pulled the sticks of what appeared to be a couple lollipops from his pocket. “I always grab a few when I stop by the bank.”

  He was attractive, a few years older than she was, with kind hazel eyes and a rather amused smile, all things considered. Dressed in a white polo and khakis, it was hard to determine his reasons for travelling to the island. Hardly vacation attire, and he didn’t look familiar.

  His grin quirked and she felt her shoulders relax. Normally, she never gave her girls high-fructose corn syrup, let alone red dye, but normally she didn’t feel a little flutter at the kindness of what she now realized was quite a handsome man, either.