But when the first few months of trying yielded nothing, she had started fretting that maybe there was something wrong. He’d told her that it was too soon to worry, that it was fun trying, and that it would happen in due time. And in an attempt to get her to relax, when she’d rushed home from work early one afternoon declaring that she was at peak ovulation, he’d refused to drop his pants and do it immediately—which had been uncharacteristic for him. In those days, whether they were babymaking or not, he’d generally been ready to go anytime. Instead he’d taken her out for dinner in Bayshore, and as they’d driven back to town, they’d realized it was a full-moon night. So they’d nicked some flowers and headed for the pier.
He’d never asked her what she wished for, but it had been pretty obvious.
And it had worked. Or his dinner-and-a-glass-of-wine relaxation method had. Something had worked, because three weeks later, there was the little plus sign on a pregnancy test. She had been so happy.
They both had.
“So these aren’t actually moonflowers?” Nora, who was walking beside him, held up the flower she was carrying, drawing him from his memories. “Maya’s dad said it was an amaryllis? I thought the whole point was moonflowers. This is Moonflower Bay, after all.”
“Yeah, that’s not a moonflower.” She wrinkled her forehead. It was kind of confusing. “You’ve seen the moonflowers everywhere downtown? Or at least you did in the summer?”
“Yeah, they’re lovely. And once I moved into the Mermaid, I was able to appreciate them more, since I was often walking around in the evenings.”
“Yeah, but have you noticed the plaques?”
“Directing people not to use the flowers for wishing? I wondered what that was about.”
“The wishing thing became really popular a few years ago,” he explained. “Tourism has really taken off around here, what with the Raspberry Festival and the Mermaid Parade. People started stealing the moonflowers. There was one year when by the start of August, there were just all these sad vines with no flowers. So the city council installed plaques directing people to buy flowers at A Rose by Any Other Name. Imported flowers also allow the wishing to go on year-round. It used to just be a summer thing—it only lasted as long as the moonflowers did.”
“Hey, are you guys coming?” They had fallen behind the group, and Maya was calling back to them. Sawyer shot Jake a quizzical look over his shoulder.
“Sorry!” Nora caught up with Maya. “Jake was just explaining the reason you don’t use actual moonflowers anymore.”
Sawyer raised his eyebrows at Jake. Yeah, yeah, whatever. He was having a conversation. Honestly. He wasn’t as bad as they all made him out to be. But he didn’t need any grief, so he stayed at the back of the pack. He eyed a display of moonflowers in front of Curl Up and Dye. It was late in the season, and most of the town’s signature flowers had already died, but the salon had somehow kept theirs looking great.
“So why don’t you just import moonflowers?” Nora asked Maya. Even though Jake wasn’t walking next to Nora anymore, he listened in as the women spoke. “That would seem like the obvious thing to do.”
“You can’t retail moonflowers,” Maya said. “They’re flowering vines, so it’s not like you can cut the blossoms off and ship them somewhere. So we import amaryllises and call them ‘wishing flowers.’”
“The town conspires to ruin everyone’s wishes, basically,” Eve laughingly declared.
“No, the town conspires to protect its heritage,” Sawyer said.
“The only way to do it right is to steal one,” Maya said. “But that’s illegal. There’s an actual town bylaw.”
“And if you’re friends with Mr. Goody Two-Shoes,” Clara said, mock-punching her brother in the shoulder, “or related to him, stealing is out.”
Nora laughed as she listened to everyone explain. “No offense, but this town is really weird.”
When they got to the pier, everyone fanned out. Nora was on the far side by herself. Jake made his way over and stationed himself at the railing next to her. “Hey. Use this instead.” He passed her a moonflower like they were doing a drug deal.
She gasped quietly. “Where did you get this?”
“I stole it from Curl Up and Dye.”
She glanced over her shoulder toward Sawyer, who, as far as Jake knew, had never actually booked anyone for grand theft moonflower.
“Just take it. You should have a real one your first time.”
God. Listen to him. “You should have a real one your first time”? Had he sustained a head injury?
Very possibly, because when she held out her amaryllis and said, “Okay, swap,” he switched flowers with her.
He should just tell her to use them both and make two wishes. But that would usher in a whole conversation about why he didn’t want to make a wish.
“I have no idea what to wish for.” She extended her palm out over the lake. But then, seeming to think better of it, she quickly retracted it. “I guess I shouldn’t be displaying my contraband so overtly.”
He chuckled. “It’s fine. No one’s paying attention.” It was true. Sawyer and Clara were chatting, having done their wishing already. Maya and Eve were laughing and leaning out theatrically over the water.
“Just so you know,” Sawyer called to them, “I wished that nobody would fall in this evening, so watch yourselves there.”
“Make a wish,” Nora mused, waving to acknowledge Sawyer’s warning. “It’s so vague. Like, I should wish for world peace, right? Or at least comprehensive vaccine coverage?”
“In my experience,” he said slowly, formulating his thoughts as he spoke, “you should wish for something personal, and it should be small.” He always used to do that. For example, the last wish he’d made here, that night he was pretty sure Kerrie had wished for Jude, had been for some hot, non-chore-like sex—given Kerrie’s focus on conception, things had become a bit mechanical in the bedroom. “If you keep it specific, and within the realm of possibility, it’s more likely to come true.”
“But is it actually a wish then, if it’s already likely to come true?”
He smiled. “You got me there, Doc. I’m never going to win any philosophical arguments with you. Or anyone else. But especially you.”
“Are you saying I’m a snob?”
“No! I’m just saying you’re smarter than I am.”
“No, I think you might be right.” She extended her arm again, this time with her palm over the flower to obscure it. “Okay, a specific, within-the-realm-of-possibility wish. Let’s do it together.”
Well, crap. He was not prepared for this. He had only planned to come along to…why? He had no idea.
Regardless, the path of least resistance was to just drop the flower into the lake. She would never know if he made a wish or not.
“On three,” she said as his own words echoed in his head. Specific. Within the realm of possibility. “One, two, three.”
It popped into his head just before his flower hit the water.
I wish Nora could find a place to live where she can hear the lake.
Chapter Eleven
The Saturday morning of the Anti-Festival dawned clear and cold. It was one of those falls when it felt like someone had flipped the switch from “summer” to “not summer.” Jake didn’t mind. Fall meant the town would slow way down and shed its seasonal tourists. The lake would become less welcoming and make you work harder to love it. He didn’t mind that, either.
He had never actually been to the Anti-Festival other than to attend the plays Maya directed, and only when Sawyer’s sister Clara was in them. Generally he would spend the days leading up to the weekend building whatever sets or stages were needed for the play or other events like the bachelor auction and the dunk tank, and then he would get the hell out of there until the play on Sunday afternoon.
But not today. Today, he was installing a giant sign on the Vaccine Machine that said, “Do No Harm; Stick Out Your Arm” and a companion one th
at showed a mermaid fighting off a giant cartoon flu virus.
Because that was apparently what he did now.
He was unloading the signs Maya and Pearl had made from the back of his truck when the van wheezed around the corner. It was sputtering like a dying old man.
He jogged to get ahead of it—he didn’t have to jog very hard—so he could remove the traffic cones that had been blocking off a spot for it in the parking lot behind the Mermaid.
Maya hopped out of the driver’s seat, and Pearl and Eiko emerged from the bakery. Pearl generally left the back door open on account of how hot it got in there with the ovens going—but maybe also so she could eavesdrop on everyone.
“I’ll get the new signs installed for you and get out of your hair,” Jake said.
Pearl laid a hand on his arm. “Thank you for helping with this. I know it can’t be easy.”
It was and it wasn’t. Yeah, helping with the flu-shot clinic made him think of Jude, but thinking of Jude wasn’t as gutting as it used to be. And he certainly didn’t want anyone else to lose a kid to the flu. So here he was.
“All right.” Pearl, back to her chairperson-of-the-festival persona, spoke brusquely. “I have to find Law and get him to release Amber from her bartending duties to cover the flu clinic while Nora’s in the auction.”
Wait. What?
“I thought Amber quit the bar when she finished school,” Maya said.
“She did, but now that Law is doing pizza for the festival, he needs more help. Amber agreed to work the outdoor bar while he mans the pizza oven, but that was before Nora agreed to stand in the auction.”
Once again: Wait. What?
“Anybody can bartend,” Pearl went on, “but only Nora and Amber can give flu shots, so I need Amber over here for the auction and aftermath. That was the only way Nora would agree.” She threw her hands up in the air. “Logistics!”
“I have to admit, I’m a little surprised you got Nora to agree to be in the auction,” Maya said, voicing a severely understated version of Jake’s sentiment.
“Yes! And isn’t she going to be a catch?” Eiko said happily. “Jason Sims told me he’s been working on his hamper all week. Isn’t that adorable?”
Adorable. That was not the word Jake would use. Jason Sims was not Nora’s type. He was boring, and he had bad hair.
But whatever. Nora was probably just doing a good deed. And with Pearl on her case, she probably hadn’t stood a chance. It was just lunch.
With Jason Sims.
He started setting up the van. Pearl was still hovering, so he asked, “When you said Jason was working on his hamper, what does that mean?”
“Oh, well, you know, the lunch hampers that are part of the auction.”
He didn’t know. He had never attended or apparently paid any attention when it was talked about. He hadn’t known, for example, that they’d added bachelorettes to the lineup.
Pearl must have interpreted his silence as her cue to explain. “The idea at the beginning was that the person doing the bidding would pack a lunch for the person they won in the auction. People have started getting really creative with their lunches. It’s become part of the theater of it all. You announce your monetary bid, but you also say what’s in your hamper. And I have to say, last year, a lot of people got really creative about presentation. We had some crystal goblets and fine-linen picnic blankets.” She paused. “And you know Jason.”
He did not know Jason, not really, on account of the whole as-boring-as-watching-paint-dry thing. But he gathered that Pearl was saying Jason was going all out. Which sort of went with Jake’s impression of him, and of his profession in general. He would fuss over details that ultimately didn’t matter and be rewarded for it.
He never would have said that to Kerrie, who was also a lawyer. And of course he understood the principle of people needing lawyers in certain circumstances, but it wasn’t like lawyers were out there, say, saving lives. Or delivering babies on the town green.
He had finished installing the new signs. He stood back. “Well, there you go.”
All three women started oohing over it.
“Do you know where Nora is?” he asked. She was the one he was doing this for.
He’d thought he was talking to Maya, but Pearl answered. “Oh, she was on her way over, but I sent her out for some chocolate chips.” She smiled. “I had a little chocolate chip emergency this morning.”
Nora felt like she’d lived an entire life before she got to the flu clinic just as it was set to open at nine. First she’d encountered Pearl in the lobby of the Mermaid freaking out over chocolate chips, which she’d apparently not ordered enough of for the massive batch of chocolate chip cookie pies she was making for the festival.
She’d been in such a panic that Nora had offered to go buy some, but Pearl had needed so many bags that she’d had to drive not only to Grand View but up to Bayshore because she’d bought out the store in Grand View. She’d texted Maya, who assured her that she and Jake were fine getting everything set up without her.
Then Eiko had cornered her on the street and insisted that the interview she kept putting off simply had to be done. Nora wasn’t clear on why it had to happen at that exact moment, but she acquiesced, reasoning that it would be good exposure for the clinic—and also that actually doing it would be faster than arguing with Eiko about it.
Then she had to go back to the clinic to get her supplies and the cooler of vaccines. By the time she had lugged everything to the van, a small line of people had already formed.
She paused and took in the current incarnation of the van. As before, her response was Wow. There was a mermaid sucker punching a green flu-virus cartoon with three eyeballs and another mermaid getting a shot from a smiling but slightly demented-looking doctor Nora sincerely hoped wasn’t supposed to be her.
“Wow,” she said again, this time out loud.
“It’s really something, isn’t it?” Karl Andersen, who was the first in line, asked.
“It really is.” She shook her head. “Just give me five minutes to get set up and we’ll get started.”
“Thanks. I’ve got emcee duties at the Pie Walk, and then I need to move the prizes for the three-legged race and the egg toss from the store to the Mermaid—we’re staging the awards ceremony out of the kitchen there.”
Nora worked at a steady pace all morning. She would have been stressed by the size of the line if it hadn’t seemed like everyone was happy to chat while they waited. When Law, who was manning the outdoor pizza oven behind the bar, noticed, he started taking orders for slices and shuttling them over to people.
She probably should have lined up a helper, someone to do the paperwork and bring her water and stuff like that. She could have asked Wynd if she was free, but it hadn’t occurred to her. Probably because she wasn’t used to needing helpers.
Because usually, if she needed something done, Jake was just there doing it. Before she could even verbalize anything.
But of course, he wouldn’t be here today, at a flu clinic of all places. And she would never ask him to be. She kind of wished he had a phone so she could text him and ask him if he was okay. But anyway, what was she going to say? “Hey, how’s it going? I’m thinking about you and your dead kid as I slide into hour three of jabbing needles into people’s arms”?
“Hey, Dr. Walsh, nice to see you again.”
Speaking of Jake. It was his dad. “Hi, Mr. Ramsey.”
“Call me Art. Have you met my wife, Jamila?”
They greeted each other, and soon she was gloved up and preparing to inoculate Art.
“I had a grandson who died of the flu,” he said softly as he sat.
Something twisted in Nora’s chest. She’d been so focused on Jake’s pain, but of course Art had experienced Jude’s death as a terrible loss, too. “I know,” she said softly. “Jake told me.”
His eyes widened. “He did?”
“Yes. It sounds like Jude was a great little guy.”
<
br /> She pressed a cotton ball against the injection site and for some reason felt compelled to leave her hand there.
Jamila put her hand on her husband’s shoulder. “There’s been so much loss in this family.”
Art looked up at his wife with such love in his eyes that it almost took Nora’s breath away. It seemed all the more amazing knowing that Jake’s dad and Jamila were only together because Jake’s mom had died. But if there was one thing she had learned in her time as a doctor—on the job, because they didn’t teach this in medical school—it was that the human heart was capable of holding conflicting emotions at the same time. Real love, which it was clear these two had, was expansive. It did not demand exclusivity across time. It made room for grief.
She realized with a jolt that she had never had that kind of love with Rufus, even in their earliest, allegedly happy, days.
Jamila must have sensed Nora’s unease, because when she sat for her shot, she started talking about furniture. “I hear you’re living temporarily at the Mermaid but looking for a new place? I gotta tell you, I have a serious antiquing habit. You want any help with furniture, you come to me, okay? You’ll make my day.”
“Lord knows she has enough in storage, she could start a lending library for antiques,” Art said.
“You better watch what you say, my love, because I might just start a shop when I retire.”
“No way. We’re hitting the road when you retire.” It was Art’s turn to aim an aside to Nora. “We’re buying an RV.”
“Well, we’ll see about that.”
The two of them bantered while Nora finished up with Jamila. Soon it was noon, and Amber showed up to take over.
“On the one hand, thank God.” Nora took off her gloves and shook out her hand. “I think I have carpal tunnel. I feel like the whole town has been here.” She eyed the line. It was down to two people. “Actually, maybe they have been.”
“Well, I’ll do these two and stay open for any stragglers.” She sat in the chair Nora had vacated. “You said, ‘On the one hand, thank God.’ What’s the other hand?”
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