by Jenn Bennett
“He’s probably here, baby,” Mom says. “They have a boat in the flotilla.”
Oh God. Of course! “I’ve gotta go.”
“But—”
“I love you, but I’ll find you later, okay?”
Wide-eyed and confused, Mom stares at me, holding her chocolate-chip-cookie egg roll creation, as I swivel away and get my bearings. If the Karrases are in the flotilla, they’d be at the end of the line, not with the fancy boats. That means all the way around the Harborwalk, past Goodly Pier, the beach, and the Yacht Club.
I’ll never make it before the flotilla starts.
But I have to try.
I focus on snaking through the Victory Day crowds. Got to get to Lucky. I can do this. I can make it. I have to. Because I was a complete moron, and I need to tell him before my chest explodes. Tonight. NOW.
It’s getting darker outside as I jog through the boardwalk on the edge of Redemption Beach, heading around a clam shack, then a carousel, then a second clam shack. Head back up to the Harborwalk. Keep going.
Past a row of shops, the concrete dips down toward the water and intersects with a dock in front of the Beauty Yacht Club. Fewer tourists here, more locals. Lots of Goldens … a couple I recognize from the party that first night of summer. Maybe some of them saw the nude photo. I don’t even care anymore. Like Lucky’s dad says, it’s only a body, and we all have them.
I just keep going.
My legs hurt. People stare at me, wondering why I’m running. Don’t care. I take a shortcut through a grassy area of the yacht club—technically private grounds, but no one’s paying attention—and as the sun falls behind the purpled horizon, an announcement blasts over the club’s loudspeaker: “Everyone aboard!”
The flotilla is about to launch.
Crap!
I dart back onto the Harborwalk and jog faster, the soles of my sneakers smacking against the ridged concrete. It’s easier to run now. The crowds thin to nothing, only the boaters and a few stray celebrants hurrying to catch a last-minute spot at the edge of the beach.
The flotilla lineup starts here with the big, fancy yachts—the ones I would have been on, had I gotten that magazine internship and been helping out during Regatta Week. Levi Summers’s yacht is probably the first in line, and if I looked hard enough, I might even spot Adrian on crutches. But I don’t look, because I don’t care about him. He’s a mosquito to me now.
The lamps along the Harborwalk dim. A cheer goes up. A loudspeaker announces something in a faraway voice. And like a game of dominos being played with lightning bugs, thousands of white lights suddenly ripple on across the darkness—a wave of fairy lights from stern to bow, deck to deck. It’s shockingly pretty, and the delighted roar of the crowd behind me goes all the way through my spine.
The yachts get smaller. I slow down and begin looking at every boat in line, searching for the Karrases. What boat would they take out? The Nimble Narwhal, I assume. Problem is, all the fishing boats look pretty much the same when they’re covered in white lights. I squint into the brightness, heart pounding, trying to catch my breath. And then—
A siren-like noise cuts through the twilight, and the crowd roars behind me again.
The torches have been lit. The flotilla begins moving.
Slowly, at first—just the big yachts up front.
But as I desperately look for the Karrases, I get more and more panicky. Maybe they aren’t here. Maybe they’re skipping it. It’s only the biggest event of the summer—I should know where he is. And I would know it, if I’d only trusted Lucky when he’d asked me to!
Then—
Right there.
The Narwhal. I do see it.
I see it chugging away from the Harborwalk, three boats from the end of the line.
Already in the flotilla.
Already gone.
I’m too late.
END OF THE LINE: Red graffiti spray-painted over the private property sign posted at the southern end of the Harborwalk. (Personal photo/Josephine Saint-Martin)
Chapter 25
And I know it’s not rational, but it felt as if that was my last chance to fix things with Lucky, that watching the Narwhal getting smaller and smaller as it headed off with the other boats in the flotilla was like watching him sailing away to the other end of the world and not just to the other end of the harbor.
Like the universe was trying to tell me to quit.
To give up.
Accept defeat and move on.
And maybe that’s not true, but it’s enough to sober me up and make me step back to think about things. Because it’s not as if having proof that Lucky didn’t send Adrian the photo changed anything; I already knew in my heart he hadn’t sent it anyway. I think it just felt like it gave me permission to go talk to him. Or a push. And then when that push didn’t pan out, that felt like a sign.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Mom asks a few days later as she adds money to a parking meter where the Pink Panther is parked. It’s almost lunchtime, and we’re in the historic district while Evie watches the Nook. We’re on a food mission. There’s a colonial landmark tavern here called the Fife and Drum—the oldest tavern in Beauty. They have amazing lobster rolls on freshly baked bread with lobster that they bring in from up the coast. The lobster salad is on their menu all the time, but the lobster rolls are sort of a town secret: They only sell them one day a week between noon and one from June until October. They’re dirt cheap, and they only sell one per customer. We’re headed there now to stand in line.
“I hope this isn’t bargain lobster that’s going to make us sick,” I tell Mom.
“Why would everyone in Beauty line up for food that makes them sick?”
“You have a point.”
“Besides, it’s the thrill of the unknown that makes it fun,” she says, brows waggling behind her cat-eye glasses.
“Okay, cookie egg roll.” The raw cookie dough inside made everyone violently sick. Even my grandma, which made it almost worth it, because my Aunt Franny said it was revenge for the bargain biscuits that Grandma made her eat in Nepal.
“It will be fine,” she assures me as we pass a pair of cosplaying colonial men, bewigged and dressed in white breeches and red regimental coats, one of them toting a drum across his chest—we’re getting close to the sandwich of our dreams. “Tell me what happened between you and Lucky on Victory Day at the flotilla.”
“Nothing happened. I was wrong, that’s all.”
“About what? Come on, talk to me. What do you have to lose?” she asks, elbowing me playfully as she matches my hurried pace on the sidewalk.
“My self-worth and dignity?” I joke.
“Overrated,” she says with a smile.
It’s strange, having her poke around in my business. Not strange-bad. Just … strange. We’re talking more often now, and I’m not quite used to it.
“It’s not that I don’t want to tell you,” I say. “It’s that it involves the photo, and I don’t want to keep digging it back up again after we’ve buried it.”
She groans. “That thing is worse than a B-movie monster that won’t stay dead. Go on. Give it to me. Tell me what happened.”
So I do. As we dart around the last of the summer tourists, I show her Adrian’s texts and tell her about my fight with Lucky. I tell her everything, all the stupid things I said. The accusations I made, and how he asked me to trust him. How I couldn’t, even after he trusted me that we weren’t leaving town. I even tell her about seeing Desmond Banks before the flotilla, and how I could have avoided all this by just talking to Evie.
All of it.
When I’m done, she blows out a long breath, puffing out her cheeks. “Wow.”
“Your daughter is kind of a dingbat.”
“From a long line of dingbats,” she says with a soft smile. “But hey. Let’s not forget that he made a stool for the Nook with his own two hands. A beautiful stool. A work of art.”
“He’s a craftsperson, not an artist
.”
“Well, la-di-da,” Mom says lightly.
I laugh. “But, okay. I see your point. Yeah, he did make the stool for us. That was something. Right?”
“Definitely. I think it’s a clear sign that he’s trying to talk to you.”
“You do?”
“I can’t read his mind or yours, but maybe, just based on what you’ve told me, maybe he realizes that you were going through some difficult things that day, and finding out about your father may have messed you up a little bit and made you act a little irrationally. Speaking from experience—when I found out the truth about your father, I packed up and took you away from Beauty for five years.”
“Oh,” I say as this clicks into place in my head.
“Yeah,” she says, nodding. “So maybe this is how it affected you. And I can’t be certain, but he seems like a smart guy, so maybe he worked that out for himself and is trying to establish a line of communication with you again, in his own way.”
Was that possible?
“And,” Mom continues, “if he’s trying to communicate with you through his art—excuse me, through his craft—”
“He’s a stickler about that.”
“—then maybe you should do the same and communicate with him through your art.”
I blink at her. “Through my photos?”
“Why not?” she says with a shrug. “That’s what you’re doing by taking pictures of your signs, right? Using photography to communicate? That’s what it says in your portfolio.”
“Well, yeah …”
“So use your photography to communicate with Lucky.”
I think about this as we stroll past Lady Arabella’s, an old-fashioned store that carries vintage toys, its window filled with jars of colorful marbles, hoops, tin soldiers, and cornhusk dolls. “So, you’re saying I should send one of my photos to the boatyard?” I ask Mom.
“Maybe?” she says, moving out of the way as a small child runs out of the toy store carrying a stuffed whale. “Send him a message. Strike up a conversation. See where it leads. Maybe even grovel a little, because that’s something dingbats should probably do.”
“Probably,” I say with a groan.
“But shutterbug?”
“Yes?”
“If I’m wrong about this, and he’s not ready to talk, then you need to respect that. You can’t be an Adrian.”
I nod, stomach dropping at that possibility forming in my head—that Lucky isn’t ready to talk. Regardless, I think Mom may be onto something. I think this isn’t the worst plan.
I think I want to try to strike up a conversation with Lucky again, and this may be a good way to try to do that. What do you know? Talking out my problems with real-life people actually results in real-life solutions.
“Hey, Mom? While we’re talking about relationships, don’t think I didn’t notice that you still avoided driving down Lamplighter Lane on the way here. You can’t avoid Drew Sideris forever, you know. This town is too small,” I tell her, as Lucky once told me. “Maybe you should be striking up conversations of your own.”
She gives me a sidelong glance. “Last time I checked, I’m the one who’s supposed to be handing out advice.”
“Saint-Martins have never been very good at following rules. Something about breaking them and doing it the right way … I can’t remember.”
Mom snorts a laugh. “Fine. I’ll think about it, but that’s all I’m promising. Now, come on, rebel.”
As we round the corner of the block, heading toward the harbor, the Fife and Drum comes into view: gambrel roof, dusty blue clapboard walls, and white pediment-topped door. It’s been standing here since the 1600s and will surely be standing here long after I’m gone. There’s already a line queuing up for the lobster roll. People in Beauty are serious about their seafood. We should’ve come earlier, but if we hurry, we can still make it.
We both pick up the pace and jog toward the back of the line as the restaurant’s server comes to do a head count. Another couple tries to beat us, but we’re too competitive and have no shame whatsoever about racing for bargain lobster rolls.
“Victory,” Mom says as we claim the last coveted spot in the queue.
I smile at her, and she smiles back, both breathless.
“Hey, look at us.”
“A pair of old gal pals, scoring cheap seafood sandwiches,” I agree.
“And actually talking.”
“That, too,” I say, feeling a little tender in my chest as a few knots that have been there for a long time begin to loosen. “Thanks for listening, Mom.”
“It’s not so scary, right?” she says, but what I think she’s also saying is: I’m glad you’re not going to California.
“It’s almost as if we like each other, or something,” I tease, but what I’m also saying is: I’m not going anywhere. I just needed this.
“Imagine that,” she says with a gentle smile, slinging her arm around my shoulders. “Imagine that …”
* * *
I consider my Mom’s suggestion to reach out to Lucky with a photograph during the remainder of my shift at the Nook that afternoon, and now I’m spending the night looking through prints of photographs. Nothing seems to fit. Or maybe I’m not sure what it is I want to say. I’m sorry I freaked out on you that day? Please forgive me for not trusting you, the one person in town who deserved my trust more than anyone? The one person who’d proved to me time and time again over the years that he was worth my trust?
How do you say that with a photograph? I’m not exactly sure I can.
But it’s not until I’m shutting off the light in the stockroom and I catch sight of a box that an idea comes to mind. The box contains all of Grandma’s postcards from Nepal—we took them down from the front counter after she returned. I thumb through them now, all the colorful photos that grace the fronts of each card, and I begin hatching a scheme.
A strategy. A plot. A plan.
I can make Lucky a postcard from one of my own photos.
And I know exactly which one.
In my darkroom, I find the right negative, and I develop the photo I took on Rapture Island of the dock house. Bordered by beach roses … before the storm.
It’s a good photo. But it’s the meaning behind it, what that building represents, that I’m hoping he understands.
I want to be sure I’m doing the right thing, myself. So I think about it. I sleep on it, even. And when I’m sure—as sure as someone who is teetering on the brink of uncertainty can be—the next morning before breakfast, I carefully mount the photo on a thick piece of paper using four archival corners. On the back of the paper, I write him a message:
Dear Lucky,
Though I tried to catch you on the Narwhal before the flotilla in hopes that we could talk, I didn’t make it in time. If you have a minute to listen, I’ll be at our old meeting spot tonight after work. Thanks for being patient with me.
Always your friend, no matter what,
Josephine
There. That’s my message and my plan. And as the mid-August sun rises over the harbor, I’m somehow able to slip the note, unnoticed, into the slightly open crack of Lucky’s helmet compartment on his Superhawk … before rushing away.
Okay. It’s done. I did it.
It’s sent. My postcard from paradise.
Nothing to do now but wait …
Hours.
And hours.
For the longest work shift in the entire history of the world to end.
And when it finally does, I wish I had a little longer, because I’m terrified to face him. And terrified that he won’t show up. All the terrors, I have them. But I try my best to bottle them up, and with the sun warming my shoulders, I tell Mom and Evie where I’m going, cross the street toward the harbor, and head out to the southernmost point of Beauty.
The first few minutes of my walk, I toss looks behind me at the boatyard as the Karrases’ big boat crane gets smaller and smaller, hoping I’ll catch a glimpse of Luc
ky following me. But I don’t. Seagulls soar over dark blue water as the sky becomes purple around the horizon, and to my right, the warehouse buildings get farther and farther apart with more parking lots between them.
Then I see it, right where the rocky shore curves inward.
The end of the Harborwalk. The concrete just stops, and there’s a sign here that’s been vandalized. It’s so far away from the tourist area of town that no one’s bothered to clean it up. I step through a flimsy gate, shoes crunching over gravel, and I search the wooded area that fans out from the rocks on the shore.
I see the old pier first, almost lost under the waves that lazily crash over it. And there’s what I’m seeking. The old meeting place.
The North Star.
The abandoned cedar-plank building is easy to miss. Back in the 1940s or 1950s, it probably was a serviceable little boatshed, built to winter a fishing boat. Someone owned these woods—maybe they fished and hunted here, who knows. But the pier and the shed were lost to time long before Lucky and I found it.
And it looks like only two walls stand now, the two sides. The tree that was growing through the roof has fallen. Maybe taken by a storm. But the marker that provided the shed’s name is still hanging on one of the standing walls, an old tin sign with a faded blue star and two hand-painted words: NORTH STAR.
The first sign I ever photographed.
Seeing it now brings back a rush of bright, sharp emotions and a flurry of memories. Lucky and I finding this place. Playing our poorly planned Harry Potter D&D campaigns and listening to music out here after school. Walking home together after dark. I let these memories wash over me, breathing in the salt-tinged harbor air, until it all ebbs, and I’m settled again.
A tiny shape races toward me from the woods. I scoot back, unsure if I’m being attacked by a feral squirrel, but then there’s a wagging pink tongue, and it’s definitely of the canine variety.
“Bean the Magic Pup,” I say, heart beating wildly as I crouch to scratch his ears and pick up his dragging leash. “Why are you loose and unsupervised?”