by Sophie Moss
“I’ll go find them,” Jeff said, already starting across the lawn.
Ryan noticed that Paul didn’t ask Izzy for her opinion, and she didn’t offer it. Twisting around, he saw that she was busy working on another cage. “Want to take a look?”
“No, thanks,” she said, concentrating all her attention on bending a few ragged edges down with a pair of pliers.
Reminding himself of his decision to let her be, Ryan turned back to the screen and clicked through the tabs on the site, more slowly this time. “Where did you find all these images?”
Paul lowered himself to the seat beside Ryan, carefully threading his two prosthetic legs through the gap between the table and the bench. “I took a few shots yesterday, but most of them were already on the hard drive. They’re just placeholders for now until we get some with higher resolution.”
“They look pretty good to me,” Ryan said.
“Those are amateur shots.”
“Amateur shots?”
“There’s a difference,” Paul said. “Trust me. I want to hire a professional photographer to take a series of shots of you and your father. I’ve got a few names, but I wanted to make sure we were on the same page before I contacted any of them for a quote.”
If the current images were Paul’s idea of ‘placeholders,’ Ryan had a feeling he was going to be blown away by the final product. “If Jeff thinks there’s room in the budget to hire a photographer, I say go for it.”
“I already ran it by him and he said we should do it.”
Of course he had, Ryan thought, smiling to himself. He had a feeling that when these three months were over, he was going to have a hard time letting go of Paul.
“Once we have the website set up, I’ll design a logo and then we can build out the rest of your social media sites from there,” Paul continued. “We want to have the same feel on everything, give people an idea of what they can expect from this farm, what an experience here would be like.”
Ryan could hear the excitement in his voice. He could hear his confidence growing with every word. And he didn’t want to take that away from him. But he couldn’t help wondering how he’d managed to pull this off so fast. “You didn’t work on this after hours, did you?”
Paul lifted a shoulder. “I might have played around with it a little.”
A little, Ryan thought as realization dawned. He’d probably been up all night. “I don’t want you to take work back to the inn with you.”
“I bet you take work home with you,” Paul said.
“Yeah, but I’m the owner,” Ryan said. “That’s what I signed up for. I’d rather you get a full night’s sleep and be ready for work during the day than stay up late finishing something you could do here.”
“I don’t really sleep much, so it’s no big deal.”
A shadow fell across the table as Jeff returned with Hailey and Ethan. The three of them had caught the tail end of their conversation, but none of them seemed fazed by what Paul had said.
Wondering how many others had trouble sleeping at night, Ryan hardly noticed when Hailey sat down beside him and started poking around the site. Her delighted squeals and Ethan’s enthusiastic exclamations didn’t allow him to worry for long, though. Paul tried to shrug off the attention and act like it was no big deal, but it was. And they all knew it. He’d done an incredible job and Ryan could see from his face that he was proud of his work.
Feeling a small swell of pride of his own, Ryan thought for the first time since everyone had arrived earlier that week that maybe—just maybe—they were actually going to pull this off.
“Here’s my only issue with the site,” Paul said, turning to face Ryan. “We need to work on your story. We’ll play up the environmental center, your Ph.D. in marine biology, and the fact that your father has been working these waters his entire life. But a lot of farms in this area have hired watermen, several have marine biologists on their staff, and some even have a nonprofit component. We need to stand out, do something different. What sets you apart?”
“Isn’t that obvious?” Ryan asked, looking around. “You guys.”
“No.” Paul shook his head. “We’re temporary labor. In three months, we’ll be gone and you’ll get a whole new group of people. We’re just here to help you get started, right?”
“Well, yeah,” Ryan said. “But…”
“You can’t build a brand around temporary workers. You need something permanent, something that people will remember. And it’s got to be unique—something that’ll set you apart from the other farms in this area angling for a piece of the same pie.”
“This isn’t really my area of expertise,” Ryan admitted.
“I think we should focus more on the island,” Paul said, “on the water where we’re growing the oysters. Sort of like vintners do with wine. You know, how the grapes pick up the different flavors of the soil where they’re grown?”
Ryan nodded. He liked the sound of that.
Paul shifted on the bench and pulled something out of his pocket, setting it on the table between them. “I found this old map on a bookshelf at the inn last night.” He unfolded the crinkly, yellowed paper, smoothing it out so Ryan could see.
Ryan recognized the map immediately and felt a touch of uneasiness.
“This is where we are, right?” Paul asked, pointing to the mouth of Pearl Cove on the map.
“That’s right,” Ryan said slowly.
Paul moved his finger about an inch on the map, to a curve of land about halfway up the cove. “There’s a spot here,” he said, pointing to the letters faded from years of overuse. “I can barely make out the words, but I think it says, ‘Selkie Beach.’” He looked up at Ryan. “Is that right?”
Ryan nodded, careful to keep his voice neutral. “It’s just an old beach that eroded away years ago. I think it’s completely underwater now.”
“What’s a…selkie?” Paul asked, sounding out the strange word.
Ryan was vaguely aware of Jeff and Ethan staring down at the map from behind him, as interested in his answer as Paul.
“It’s just an old folk tale,” Ryan said. “It’s a story that some of the watermen tell to the tourists who come to the docks in the summer to buy crabs.”
“A folk tale?” Paul asked, lifting a brow. “Like a legend?”
“Yeah,” Ryan said, “something like that.” Feeling trapped, he considered coming up with something for them to do, just to distract them, but he could tell that everyone was listening to him now, hanging on his every word. Don’t make a big deal of it, he thought. If you make a big deal of it, they’ll know something’s up.
“Will you tell us?” Hailey asked eagerly.
Ryan looked out at the water, at the high tide swelling against the shoreline, spilling into the marshes, filling in all the spongy gaps in the soil. Across the channel, his father and the other two veterans were hauling up cages in the mouth of Pearl Cove, a location they’d chosen not only for its convenience, but for its mysterious ability to produce abundant seafood harvests for fisherman since the early 1900s.
“The legend,” Ryan said, as he watched his father reposition the workboat to catch the angle of the current, “is about a fisherman who lived on this island about a hundred years ago. One night, he went out in his boat and got caught in a terrible storm. The seas were so rough that he got thrown off course and couldn’t find his way back in the dark. Suddenly, there was a voice in the wind, a strange voice that he’d never heard before, and something inside him told him to follow it. It led him home, and when he returned, there was a rowboat washed up on the beach. Inside it was a woman.”
He looked up at the faces of his new employees, remembering how he had felt the first time he’d heard this story, how he’d been practically obsessed with it as a child. “The woman was wearing only a dark leather cloak and a long strand of pearls around her neck,” Ryan continued, sinking into the rhythm of the story that his mother used to tell him before bedtime at night. “Her hair
was knotted with seashells and eelgrass. And the fingers on her right hand were webbed. She didn’t know her name or where she’d come from, but she had a beautiful lilting Irish accent and she loved to sing.”
He waited as Ethan and Jeff came around to sit at the table across from him. “There were some Irish immigrants living here at the time—early settlers to the region. They whispered that she was some kind of seal-woman, an enchantress who could shed her skin and transform into a beautiful woman on land. They warned the fisherman to stay away from her, that she would put a spell on him. They told him that he would be a fool to try to claim her, for she would never belong to him. She belonged to the sea—and only the sea—and one day she would return to it.”
Absently, he picked up the map, his fingers tracing the faded letters over the cove. “The fisherman didn’t believe them—or didn’t want to believe them. And it was too late anyway, for he’d fallen in love at first sight, as any man would have if they’d been in his shoes. He convinced her to marry him and they moved into his home on the shores of Pearl Cove. They had three healthy children, and it seemed, for a time, that the Irishmen were wrong.”
Ryan looked back out at the water. “But as the years went by, the woman became restless. She began to spend all her free time wandering the shoreline. She would get lost in the marshes, leaving her children alone for hours at a time. At night, she would slip from the house and wade into the cove and sing—deep, mournful songs of heartbreak and loneliness that had the rest of the islanders begging the fisherman to make her stop. But he never had the chance. Because one day, not long after, she disappeared.”
“She left?” Hailey asked.
Ryan nodded. “Just as the Irishmen said she would. She took her rowboat and her leather cloak. And the only thing she left behind was a single strand of pearls, lying on the beach.”
“Did he go after her?” Ethan asked.
“He tried,” Ryan said. “But she’d disappeared without a trace, never to be heard from again. After months of searching, the fisherman finally gave up.”
“What about her children?” Hailey asked.
“They were devastated,” Ryan said, knowing far too well what it felt like to be abandoned by a mother, and not understand why. “Every year, on the anniversary of her disappearance, the fisherman and his children would walk down to the beach and drop a single pearl from her necklace into the water to try to lure her back.”
“Did it work?” Hailey asked hopefully.
“No,” Ryan said, looking up at her. “The woman never returned to the island, but the watermen swear she left a little bit of her magic in the cove, since it always produces the biggest crabs, oysters, and clams, year after year. Some say that if you walk into the marshes at midnight, you can still hear her singing. Others say that if you close your eyes when a storm’s on the way, you can hear the faintest clinking of shells in the wind. But the strongest magic is when the moon is full; there’s something about the way the surface runs through the marshes, the reflection of the moon is multiplied to make it look like a strand of pearls, rather than just the reflection of the moon.”
When he stopped talking, no one said anything for several long moments. They just stared at him, speechless. Even Izzy had stopped building cages and had walked over to listen.
Ryan cleared his throat. “Obviously, this is Maryland, not Ireland. There aren’t any seals here—the water is too warm—so there can’t be selkies.” He folded his hands in front of him on the table, as if he were perfectly relaxed. “Not that they even exist.”
“Hold on.” Paul stared at him, his eyes wide. “You’re saying these women are like…magic or something? That they come out of the sea? And that they’re so beautiful that men fall in love with them at first sight?”
“Yes.” Ryan nodded slowly. “But…like I said, it’s a fairy tale.”
“A fairy tale that’s connected to the cove where we’re growing our oysters?” Paul asked.
Ryan shifted uncomfortably. He didn’t like the way everyone was looking at him. He should have kept this story to himself. “Yes.”
“Dude.” Paul’s face broke into a grin. “You need to tell that story to everyone.”
“What?” Ryan regarded him warily. “I don’t think—”
“This is what we’re going to do,” Paul said, grabbing his laptop and opening to a new document. “I want you to tell me that story again, word for word. I’m going to write it down, then we’re going to come up with a marketing plan for two different oysters—one called Pearl Coves and the other Selkie Pearls. The Pearl Coves will be our main oyster, which we’ll market to everyone—men, women, seafood markets, grocery stores, any restaurant that will take it. The Selkie Pearls will be our fancy, boutique oyster that we’ll only market to high-end restaurants, five-star hotels with honeymoon packages, and swanky wedding planners. It’ll be smaller. It’ll be prettier. And we’ll focus it entirely on women, on romance, and on the fairy tale.” He smiled. “There’s your tagline, man. Taste the magic. Taste the love.”
“Two brands?” Ryan held up his hands, shaking his head. This was all happening too fast. It had been hard enough talking his father into promoting one. Two was asking too much. “I think we might be getting ahead of ourselves.”
“Are you kidding me?” Paul said. “It’s perfect! Everybody’s going to want to eat these oysters!”
Ryan looked at the rest of the faces around the table. Everyone nodded.
“I think it’s amazing,” Hailey said, looking at Paul. “If I heard there was an oyster that could put some kind of love spell on a guy I had a crush on, I would totally try it.”
Paul grinned back at her, nodding.
Hailey looked away and blushed.
Feeling cornered, Ryan glanced at Izzy. She seemed like the last person in the world who would believe in fairy tales. But she was staring down at the map, her expression as captivated as the others. For the first time since he’d laid eyes on her, her guard had dropped completely.
“What do you think?” he asked.
“I think,” she said, with an oddly nostalgic tone to her voice, “that if I owned a restaurant, and you walked into my kitchen and told me that story, I’d want to buy your oysters.”
Six
Fairy tales, Izzy thought as memories of long, hot days in the fields swam back to her. She still remembered the stories her mother and grandmother had told while she’d trailed behind them, her nimble fingers plucking vegetables from vines. There’d been other children in the fields, and they’d listened, too, following the Rivera women up and down the rows, picking as close to them as possible so they could hear.
She hadn’t known, then, that children weren’t supposed to work alongside their parents. Or that the tales her mother and grandmother told were simply a way to distract them all from the backbreaking labor.
No. She hadn’t known any of that.
Those stories had defined her childhood in a way very few people could relate to. They’d been the building blocks of her education, a stepping-stone into a new language, a bridge between two worlds. At night, in the ramshackle camps that slept eight to a room, bone-weary workers had gravitated to their kitchen, crowding into the tiny space, hoping to hear more of the magical tales that reminded them of home.
It was there, in the camps, where she’d first learned how far food could stretch, how many mouths you could feed with a pound of dried black beans, and to never let anyone go hungry. But it wasn’t just the amount of food, or the stories her mother and grandmother told, that brought people back, night after night, to their kitchen. It was the way the food tasted, and the way it made them feel afterwards, like all their troubles had washed away.
Just like the women in the fairy stories, who could spin straw into gold, the Rivera women were known for creating their own kind of magic in the kitchen. They knew, instinctually, which combination of flavors could ease a restless mind, which spices could soothe a shattered spirit, and how three chili p
eppers seared over an open flame could heal a broken heart. With access to only the most basic ingredients, they could prepare a meal that could bring tears to a grown man’s eyes.
Izzy had taken that talent with her into the military, transforming bulk shipments of second-rate ingredients into extraordinary meals for the soldiers. She had worn her chef’s apron over her uniform with pride. And she had made a name for herself with the knowledge she’d inherited from generations of Rivera women who’d come before her.
Stepping back as Ryan rose, she remembered something that Colin had said on their first night at the inn—that Ryan’s father was a fourth-generation waterman. If Ryan had returned to carry on that legacy, that would make him the fifth.
Five generations of Callahan men working these waters.
This wasn’t just a business to him. It was in his blood—the same way cooking was in hers. Was that what he’d been trying to tell her yesterday? That the Bay was dying and he was fighting to save it, because losing it would mean losing himself?
His eyes met hers briefly before he turned, and the emotion in them nearly stole her breath. While everyone else at the table gathered around Paul’s computer, searching for images of pearls and oyster shells and magical seal women, Ryan quietly withdrew to the water’s edge, where he stood for a long time with his hands in his pockets, gazing out at the cove.
For the first time since meeting him, she wanted to go to him. She wanted to ask him what happened. She wanted to know why that story made him so sad. But no one else seemed to notice, and she didn’t know how to approach him without drawing attention to herself. So she stayed where she was, watching him as he turned slowly, and made his way over to the pier. Without so much as a glance back in their direction, he untied one of the small, flat-bottomed boats, stepped into it, and motored out to the mouth of Pearl Cove.
He spent the rest of the afternoon on the water, helping his father work the rows of cages. And by the time she and the rest of the vets piled into the van to return to the inn, and he gave them a halfhearted wave goodbye, Izzy had no doubt that there was more to that story. There was something he wasn’t telling them. And whatever it was, it had caused him a great deal of pain.