by Mia March
“I know. That’s why I— Thank you for the book,” Marley whispered, then ran out.
June went after her, but when she opened the door and looked both ways, the streets were so crowded that she couldn’t spot Marley. She headed to the stockroom to get Bean to watch the store while she finally went to see Henry. A few minutes with Mr. Books could always fix just about anything.
Henry was sitting at his desk going over orders on the Mac, a folded white bag that smelled amazing next to it. “There you are. Hope it hasn’t gone cold on you.” He held out the bag. “Come out to the pier with me?”
She smiled and went to tell Bean she’d be away for lunch for the next twenty minutes or so, then headed out with Henry into the brilliant sunshine. He was as hot as Carrie had noted. Even just standing next to him, walking beside him, June was so aware of him, of his height, of his lanky, muscular body in worn jeans and a white, button-down shirt, the sleeves rolled to his elbows. The way his brown hair blew in the breeze against his neck, across his forehead.
She was glad she’d dressed up some today. She usually wore jeans and white, button-down shirts herself, the ever-present wine-colored Dansko clogs on her feet. But today she wore a pretty cotton dress that was just professional enough, just casual enough, for the manager of a bookstore on the second-busiest weekend of the summer tourist season. Henry had told her she looked nice when she’d arrived that morning, and the way he looked at her, the way his gaze lingered on her, made her think that maybe Henry Books had finally stopped seeing her as a twenty-one-year-old kid in trouble.
They walked down the pier near his boat. Henry took off his shoes, rolled up his pants, and eased his long legs into the blue water. June kicked off her sandals and did the same, the early-September sun a soothing balm on her shoulders. Henry unwrapped two fried haddock sandwiches with tartar sauce and lettuce, the most delicious greasy fries, a little cup of ketchup, and two bottles of Boothbay’s Own lemonade next to him.
“You got this for me?” she asked.
“Actually, I got it for Vanessa, but she slammed the phone down in my ear and told me to feed it to my ‘precious fucking swordfish.’ In those exact words.”
June glanced at him. “Trouble in paradise?”
“There’s always trouble,” he said, shaking his head “We used to make up faster, but lately—and I mean the past year—we just argue all the time. Something’s changed, you know?”
“Actually I don’t know. Or maybe I do. My one great love lasted for all of two days. I wouldn’t think that’s enough time for anything to change. I guess something just wasn’t there to start with. For him, I mean.”
He glanced at her, the corners of his deep, brown eyes crinkling from the sun. “What about since then?”
“Well, when Charlie was real little, I didn’t bother dating at all. And then there were some fix-ups once I moved to Portland. A few of your brother’s friends. A couple of customers. The electrician who came to fix some faulty wiring. Jasper’s lawyer. My romantic life has consisted of one date to two and a half months of an almost-relationship.”
“Maybe you just haven’t fallen in love. I’d like to know the guy who wins June Nash’s heart. I’d think he’d have to be one pretty cool dude.”
She smiled. Henry always made her feel that she was something special. The opposite of how Pauline Altman had made her feel five minutes ago. “I’m looking for Charlie’s dad. I don’t know what I’m going to find.”
He took a long swig of his lemonade. “Charlie mentioned the family-tree project when I took him clamming.”
She let out the sigh that had been dogging her since last night. “Once I explained that we were staying here for a while, that he wouldn’t be going back to camp, he was relieved that he didn’t have to hand in the sparsely filled-in tree. He taped it to the wall above his headboard,” she said, her heart clenching in her chest. “And last night, when I was tucking him in, he asked with such hope in his eyes if I’ve found out anything about his father yet.”
“Have you?”
She shook her head. “My research has gotten me absolutely nowhere.”
It had been an entire week since she and Charlie had arrived at the inn, and she knew no more about John Smith than when she’d started her search seven years ago. She’d gotten so nostalgic and wistful the other night while watching The Devil Wears Prada—the shots of New York City, of places she’d been, especially that November when she’d met John and that early January when she’d gone back to school, newly pregnant and desperate to find him. After the discussion of the movie, she’d gone upstairs and spent over an hour online, looking at photographs of Central Park, of the Angel of the Waters statue, where they were supposed to meet. All that feeling came rushing back, how she’d felt about John, how full of hope and yearning she’d been.
Then she’d checked on Charlie and was reminded of her promise to find his father. She’d chastised herself for reminiscing, for living in the past, in a fantasy world, and had researched Bangor, Maine, prep schools, looking up alumni photos, but the several John Smiths she’d come across weren’t her John Smith. Either they were fair blonds or bright redheads or with features not even close to the beautiful face of Charlie’s father. His intense green eyes, the shock of dark hair. She’d know him the minute she saw him. And he wasn’t on any of the pages she’d gone through. Yesterday, Isabel had brought up the possibility that he’d been homeschooled. And Kat had reminded her that boarding school was also possible. They’d been trying to assure her she’d find him, that she couldn’t give up hope just because he wasn’t in any of the Bangor yearbooks.
June put her sandwich down, her appetite gone. “Last night, Charlie was telling me all the things he and his dad could do together. Fishing and clamming and overnight camping trips. The scary big-kid rides at carnivals. And he had the dreamiest expression before he started drifting off to sleep. But then his eyes opened and he said, ‘Mommy, what if my dad doesn’t want to be my dad because he has another family already and other kids?’”
Henry took her hand and held it. “And you said, ‘Charlie boy, I don’t want you to worry about anything. Especially because there’s no way anyone who meets you could not adore you.’”
June stared at Henry, wishing she could throw herself into his arms and just let him hold her. “That’s exactly what I said. God, Henry, you’re going to make a great dad someday.”
He smiled. “Me? Maybe. One day.”
Henry with a kid or two? Yeah. She could easily see it. Fishing and clamming and hunting for periwinkles and shells. Roaming through the woods with his boy and girl. But June couldn’t picture John Smith married with children. In her mind he’d always be traveling, backpack and map in hand. The kind who didn’t settle down.
She’d been wrong about so many things that she might as well accept that he could be married. With children. And uninterested in the seven-year-old son he never knew about from a two-night stand in New York City.
A chill made its way up her spine to her neck. What if she found John Smith and he didn’t want to be found? What if it hurt Charlie more than not knowing his father at all?
You might be opening a can of worms…
Aunt Lolly might be right. But she didn’t want to teach Charlie that what-ifs and mysteries and fear were meant to be catered to. She would seek out his father and what would happen would be… life. Maybe John Smith would take one look at her, run to her in slow motion, say he’d been looking for her every day for the past seven years, and then rejoice in having a child, a son.
It could happen.
“At some point, I might just have to let it go,” she told Henry. “Accept like my aunt Lolly said I’d have to. Accepting is important, even if it sucks.”
“Well, you’re not there yet, June. Right now you’re looking, and for good reason. If I can help you, I will.” He put hi
s hand on top of hers and shot her one of his trademark reassuring smiles, and for a moment she was transported back seven years ago, when she would find herself staring at him as he spoke and missed half of what he said. “You said he went to Colby, right? We could take a drive up. See if we can get his parents’ address. There were probably a hundred John Smiths at Colby at that time—but I doubt more than one, possibly two, is from Bangor, Maine.”
She explained how she’d gotten nowhere on the phone with Colby College years ago (“We cannot, under any circumstances, give out personal information about our students, past or present, unless they sign alumni documents granting… I’m sorry, however…”). “And I tried typing John Smith and Colby and Bangor into Google and got over 329,000 hits.”
“Maybe there’s something, the smallest detail, you’re not remembering that might help set you off in a new direction.” Henry took a bite of his sandwich and waved away a beautiful dragonfly.
A few nights ago, Isabel and Kat had said the same thing. That perhaps there was something June hadn’t thought of. Isabel had suggested June share every detail of those two nights with them, that maybe June would say something that would spark something for them.
So they’d sat around the kitchen table, sipping their iced tea and taking bites of their scones to the music of the cicadas, and June recounted every detail. How she’d felt when she realized this beautiful guy was staring at her—sweetly, intently, interested. How they’d talked about Maine. About how he’d once gotten to shake Stephen King’s hand at a local reading. How he’d told her she was startling beautiful, the only man who’d ever said that to her. She’d described his face, his body, long and lean, like a baseball player’s, and noticed Isabel had jotted that down. But as June spoke, she’d realized she couldn’t visualize John so clearly anymore. For the longest time, she could remember the exact shade of green of his eyes, like emeralds, the number of beauty marks she’d counted on his right thigh, in the shape of the Big Dipper. But now when she thought of him, the details blurred with Charlie’s sweet face. Charlie’s emerald-green eyes. Charlie’s beauty marks. Charlie’s same dark, straight hair that fell over his forehead.
The thought of John was so clear, but the specifics of his face had begun to fade. June was gripped by a hollow sense of loss again, a loss of… nothing.
Maybe he had a family now. Maybe he wouldn’t welcome a blast from the past. Maybe this, maybe that. But she would find John Smith for Charlie. She’d given up on herself and love a long time ago. But she wasn’t giving up on her son’s dream.
Bean came rushing out. “Guys, I hate to bug you during lunch, but a tour bus of people just came in, and there are like thirty people in the store.”
As she and Henry collected their wrappers and bottles and walked back up the pier toward the back entrance to Books Brothers, Henry slung an arm around her shoulder, the best kind of comfort there was.
The moment June stepped through the doors of the inn at eight thirty that night, she smelled popcorn. The bookstore had been so busy all day that she’d forgotten it was Movie Night.
“Oh, there you are, June,” Lolly said, holding some fresh-cut flowers in a vase. She set it down on the hall table. “I wasn’t sure if you were back from your first day. How was it?”
“Very busy. Everyone came in for their beach books.” And Marley Mathers told Pauline Altman to shove it and made my day. The thought made June smile. Until she remembered that Marley was probably sitting home alone right then, worrying herself or reading What to Expect When You’re Expecting with no one to talk to about any of it. She’d have to track down Marley’s number.
“Come chat with me in my office for a moment, will you?”
Uh-oh. June hoped this wasn’t bad news. June knew that Lolly had been feeling tired the past couple of days—from the chemotherapy. That morning, Isabel had found strands of Lolly’s hair on her pillows when she went to change her bedding. Lolly’s blue eyes were clear and bright, but with uncharacteristic dark circles underneath, and her cheeks did seem flushed.
June followed Lolly inside the small, square office. Photographs of the inn, beautiful shots in black and white and color from over the years, since the inn was built in the 1800s, graced the walls, along with shots of the family. Generations of Nashes and Wellers. Lolly, young and healthy. June stared at one photo of Lolly in a bikini, her hair in a seventies-era shag. What was that adage? Days pass in years, but years pass in minutes.
“Lolly, are you feeling all right? Did you hear something from your doctor?”
Lolly shut the door behind June. “No, no, it’s nothing about that. I just thought I’d better ask… Pearl chose Mamma Mia! for tonight’s Movie Night because it’s so uplifting and fun, but if you think it hits too close to home right now, we can just pick something else. It’s Complicated, perhaps.”
Mamma Mia!? June hadn’t seen it, but she remembered hearing about it. Meryl Streep played a single mother who lived in a beautiful old villa in Greece with her twenty-year-old daughter—who just got engaged to her young beau. The daughter has never known the identity of her father, so she secretly invites three possibilities, whom she read about in her mother’s diary, to her wedding, hoping the truth will come out.
June couldn’t remember if it did or not.
“Thanks for being concerned about my feelings, Aunt Lolly,” June said, kissing her aunt on the cheek. “But it’s really okay. Maybe I’ll learn some detective work or something about how to track down one guy.” She’d planned to spend the evening online, researching John Smiths, hoping to find something, anything, that would link back to the guy she’d known, but a movie to shut out the world right then sounded pretty good.
Lolly gripped June’s hand, as if to keep the warmth of the moment, of their closeness. But then Kat called for Lolly, and Lolly headed for the door. June took a last look at her aunt in the bikini with the shag hairstyle. People seemed to live so many lifetimes. Phases.
“Let this just be a phase,” June whispered to herself. The phase with cancer. Remember when Lolly was being treated for cancer? she would say to Isabel years from now as Lolly served one of her fabulous, traditional Thanksgiving dinners. I didn’t think any of us would get through that time, Isabel would say back, and they’d give thanks for one another, the way families did on TV and in movies… well, sometimes.
Isabel, Kat, and Pearl, and one set of guests, a pair of elderly, widowed sisters-in-law whom Lolly introduced as Frances Mayweather and Lena Haywood, were arranged around the parlor, the elderly pair delighting in the fancy swirl of icing on Kat’s cupcakes.
June took a chocolate cupcake with white icing, poured a glass of iced tea, and settled next to Isabel on the love seat. Their spot, she realized. June wasn’t sure she’d ever had a “spot” in this inn before. Especially one she shared with her sister.
“Everyone ready?” Lolly asked, sliding the disc into the DVD player. She sat down next to Pearl on the sofa, remote control at the ready.
Kat got up and shut the lights. “Looks like everyone’s ready.”
“Where is this, Italy? Greece?” Pearl asked as the movie opened, the beautiful blue Aegean Sea and whitewashed villa on the cliffs above the beach.
“Greece,” Lolly said, taking a handful of popcorn into a napkin on her lap. “That’s another thing I love so much about movies—you can travel to so many beautiful, interesting locations without leaving your living room.”
“Wait a minute—Meryl can sing too?” June asked while Meryl started belting out a strong, fun song about not having enough money as she moved about the villa. “That’s almost wrong. How talented is this woman?”
“You just reminded me that we’ll have to see Postcards from the Edge,” Lolly said. “She sings a song at the end of that movie that is so good I was sure it was a famous country singer.”
“And wait till you hear Pierce
Brosnan sing,” Kat said, laughing. “It’s been a while since I’ve seen this movie, but I remember he sort of sounds like he’s underwater.”
The movie was as uplifting as Lolly had said. How had June missed seeing this? Well, she knew how. Getting a sitter to see a movie when a trip to the theater cost a fortune, and popcorn and soda and Junior Mints topped the ticket price, meant waiting for movies she wanted to see to come to cable. Not that June had ever had cable.
She was surprised to find out that Meryl Streep wasn’t actually sure which of the three men her daughter had secretly invited to her wedding festivities was her father. Apparently, she’d told friends and family that one was the father—but withheld that she couldn’t be sure. Because after Pierce Brosnan had broken her heart, she’d taken up with another man. And then another.
“Three lovers in the same week!” one of the elderly sisters-in-law muttered, shaking her head.
June and Isabel glanced at each other and smiled. June was more focused on the bond between Meryl Streep and beautiful Amanda Seyfried, who played Meryl’s daughter and who had a voice to match her angelic face. Even though Amanda had grown up without a father, she seemed confident and happy and had found a wonderful young man to marry. It was just a movie, but it made June feel good. Charlie would grow up confident and happy and also find a wonderful young woman to marry. Though at twenty, June realized, they were awfully young to be getting married.
One of the possible fathers, Pierce Brosnan, whom June had always thought one of the world’s most handsome men, was questioning Amanda Seyfried about her life plans once she married, which involved staying at the villa to help her mother. Didn’t she want to leave the island and see the world? Pursue her talent as an artist?
June glanced over at Kat, wondering if she ever thought about leaving the Three Captains’. Surely if she and Oliver got married, which June figured was in the cards, they’d live in their own house. Or maybe they’d take over the big attic room and the duties of the inn. Well, Kat, anyway. As Amanda Seyfried responded that she was staying at the villa because her mother needed her, June noticed something shift in Kat’s expression.