by Jenny Hale
“Oh, yeah. I forgot. We’re not smart enough in this insignificant town to understand anything.” He took a step back, his eyes still on her. Then, without another word, he walked around the front of his car, got in, and sped away.
Libby stood still for a moment, shock and confusion swimming around inside her.
The light turned green and a few more cars passed, bringing her back to reality. She went into the market and tried to avoid the curious glances of the women in the window, who were now following her every move, their gazes burning into the back of her.
“That’s Celia’s daughter,” she heard one of them whisper before saying something else that she couldn’t hear. Libby’s mother had made her thoughts about the town quite clear, while Libby was growing up, and she’d been sure to let everyone know Libby’s plans for the future. All those carefully executed plans had come crashing down, and Libby felt like it was her failures that everyone saw when they looked at her. She continued walking past the counter and into the bathroom where she finally allowed herself to cry.
Chapter Four
Once she’d gotten herself together, Libby walked the few shady blocks from the market toward Jeanie’s house, shaking her head at how small a block in this little town was compared to the city blocks she used to walk in New York. She’d heard once that about twenty New York blocks equaled a mile. The entire width of White Stone seemed to equal a mile. The Maple trees that lined the sidewalks had grown in her absence, casting dark, thin shadows toward her destination.
With a rolled white paper River Market bag in her hand, containing muffins bigger than a grown man’s fist, she took in the fresh, salty air. She knew that the other women would show up with dishes of breakfast casserole wrapped in warming blankets that they’d prepared early that morning, but, given the circumstances, they’d have to be happy with her offering of muffins. They were made by hand, just not by her.
Jeanie lived in a white bungalow with rectangular boxes of red geraniums hanging from every window. The porch took up the entire front of the house. Sophia and Celia were there, swinging on the bench-style front porch swing. Libby wondered if they had done anything else in the twelve years she’d been away. When she’d left at eighteen, they were having brunch together, playing card games, and sitting on Jeanie’s front porch, and there they were, right in the same place twelve years later.
“Hey there, honey!” Celia waved to Libby as she made her way up the walkway, a nearby gardenia bush filling the air with its sweet smell. The front door had been left wide open with only the glass storm door between her and Jeanie, who held her Yorkshire terrier nestled between her voluptuous bosom and the crook of her arm while waving madly at her with her free hand. Libby smiled despite herself.
She had missed Jeanie.
“Welcome home!” Jeanie said, now holding the glass door open with one hand and allowing her dog, Rascal, to roam free on the porch. “How’s my birthday girl?” Jeanie smiled a smile that enveloped her entire face, her prematurely silver hair flipping out around it.
“I’m well,” she lied. “I brought these.” Libby held up the bag of muffins.
“Bless your heart!” Jeanie took the crumpled sack from her and peeked inside, her eyebrows bouncing up and down with excitement. She reached in and pulled out a blueberry muffin with sugared crumble on top. “I’m just cookin’ inside. I’ll go and get you a chair.” She offered the muffin to Libby.
“Don’t go to any trouble, Jeanie. I can sit on the steps.” She noticed a slight look of disapproval on Celia’s face as she said it. Her mother had already scooted to the far side of the swing, creating an open space in the middle between herself and Sophia. Libby broke a piece of crumble off the top of her muffin. “I’m fine,” she said to the ladies, taking a seat on the porch step. The two women wriggled back into a more comfortable position. Libby watched her mother’s reaction, worried that she’d upset her by sitting on the steps and not in an actual chair, but it hadn’t seemed to bother her too much.
She could tell that Sophia wanted to make conversation, but all she did was grin. A good friend of Celia’s, she probably knew why Libby had returned, and that made it awkward. What could she say? I’m glad you’re back? That would be rude if she knew the truth. Or even, How was New York? Clearly a poor choice of question.
“You’re gonna get your fancy clothes dirty on those steps,” Sophia finally said. Leave it to her to figure out something to fill the silence.
“It’s fine, really.”
Rascal meandered up to the porch from the front yard and sniffed Libby’s new shoes, causing her to focus on how very out of place they were there. She needed to be back in New York with other people like her, not lounging around on a front porch in the middle of nowhere.
Libby hadn’t been back in town since she was eighteen. Her mother had always come to New York to visit, saying she’d rather spend the holidays at Libby’s where she could enjoy the city, and it got her out of White Stone. So basically, one could say that Libby had grown up in New York. She didn’t know how to socialize on a front porch and nibble on a muffin as it balanced on her lap. She knew how to network and drink martinis and hail a taxi when she needed to get somewhere. She knew White Stone inside and out, and, to her knowledge, there wasn’t a single place there that she could even order a martini, let alone find a friend who would drink one with her.
Time was valuable in New York. People had things to do. In the city, she felt like hard work would move her up the corporate ladder and generate a good income. A good income produced a successful life and more opportunities. Not spending every day sitting on a porch swing, in a town where the nearest city was an hour away and there was nothing but home and beach. Until she left, she’d known nothing of the world around her except what she’d seen on television. She didn’t want that for herself or, God forbid, her children.
There was a tiny scratching sound, and Rascal stood, wagging his tail, awaiting Libby’s assistance with the door. She was glad for the slight diversion. Before she could get up to let the dog in, Jeanie opened the door and scooped the puppy into her arms. “Y’all come on in and eat. Food’s ready.”
Libby held the door open for Sophia and her mother. “Libby, honey, you need to eat. You look so thin,” her mother said as Libby followed behind them into the house. There was entirely too much food for four people, but that was how things were done there, she did remember that. The table was set with the Willow plates Jeanie had collected over the years at antique stores. Each plate was piled high with different variations of eggs, potatoes, and sausages.
“So, I hear you’re sellin’ Hugh’s place.” Jeanie said as Libby took a seat in front of one of the plates.
The other ladies were looking back and forth at each other, clearly uncomfortable. Is my life the elephant in the room? she wondered. Probably. Celia, who always praised her publicly, may just as easily seek the pity of her friends by telling Libby’s sob story about her depressing life.
“Yep,” she said, setting her muffin on a napkin and scooping a bite of casserole onto her fork.
Jeanie, now seated beside her, nodded and draped a cloth napkin in her lap. “That place is so nice, and nobody seems to want it,” she pointed out.
“It is nice,” Sophia piped up, Celia nodding vigorously in response while chewing a bite of food. Libby watched Celia closely, terrified she’d bring up how much Libby had paid for the cottage or something else inappropriate, but she stayed quiet.
“What do you mean, ‘nobody seems to want it’? Was it on the market long before I bought it?” Libby had a pang of worry, wondering if there would be more work required on the cottage than what she could see on the surface. Was there something about the house that she didn’t know? Surely her mother would have shared it with her if that had been the case.
“No, you snatched it right up, first week on the market.” Jeanie picked up a glass pitcher of orange juice, poured some into her own goblet, and then offered it to Libby. �
�But Hugh only put it on the market ’cause Pete didn’t want it either.” Libby filled her glass and passed the pitcher along, her attention on Jeanie. “Looks like neither you nor Pete want it now. But then again, you two always did think alike,” she winked.
“Libby got a new job!” Celia changed the subject, pulling everyone’s attention toward her. “She’ll be a part-time accountant at Marty’s firm.” The ladies all nodded.
Libby wasn’t nodding. She was thinking. She and Pete did think alike—on everything except their future. That was a pretty big thing on which to disagree. She did wonder, though, about him. What had Pete been doing in those twelve years? She’d moved on. Had he? Did he snuggle up next to someone every night, give her kisses on the top of her head while she lay on his chest like he had with Libby so many years ago? She let her focus sharpen on the plate in front of her to keep the tears from coming back.
“Well, Miss Birthday Girl with a new job, we’ve got somethin’ for ya,” Jeanie said.
Sophia reached under the table and pulled out a small gift bag. “It’s just a little something. We thought you may need it,” she said, handing it to Libby.
Libby took the bag by its purple handles and set it in her lap. With a quick look around the table, she dug her hand through the tissue paper and felt a rectangular object the size of a credit card. It was, upon inspection, a gift card to Wentworth’s, the local hardware store.
“Thank you very much,” she said. “That was so kind of you all.” She thought to herself how that little cottage was a lot like her: it needed some fixing to make it presentable again.
* * *
Libby approached the cottage slowly, swinging her gift bag and trying to make out the identity of a woman standing on the front lawn. “May I help you?” she called out.
The woman spun around, her face swelling into a smile. She started walking toward Libby, her arm outstretched. Her pencil skirt was just snug enough to limit the length of her stride, causing her to take two steps for every one of Libby’s. They met on the front walkway and shook hands.
“Hi,” she said, “I’m Veronica Redgrave. I work for Our Home Realty.”
Those were the only foreign faces in town. Her entire life, she’d seen them in their cars with the big magnets on the side, walking the streets and putting up signs in yards. The coast pulled in young real estate agents who thought they could sell more when at least a third of the real estate was waterfront property. They never stayed long, though, once they realized that most of the people there weren’t selling, and vacation cottages usually stayed in the family for generations. She wondered how this one had gotten wind of her intent to sell. Had Wade sent her?
When Libby didn’t respond, the agent added, “Pete Bennett said you wanted to put the house on the market.”
Pete? What does he care? “I hadn’t planned on selling just yet…”
“Oh!” the agent seemed surprised. “Pete called on your behalf. He had thought you were going to stay, but when he found out you intended to sell, he wanted to do anything he could to facilitate that process to get you back home as quickly as possible.”
“Did he now…?” Her mind was racing with the things she wanted to say to Pete Bennett. It was bad enough that she didn’t want to be there, but the fact that Pete didn’t want her there either made her almost want to sell the cottage immediately—for whatever profit—take the money, and run away never to return.
“He was mistaken. I’m not quite ready to put the house on the market yet. I’m so sorry that he sent you all the way out here.” She said the words, trying to maintain composure, but she wanted to explode. Being back was exhausting. What if it took months, not weeks, to get another job? What if she was stuck there and months turned to years? Suddenly, she could feel what her mother must have felt.
After making small talk for a brief moment, Veronica Redgrave got back into her car and drove away leaving Libby alone once more in the cool breeze. She walked around the house to the backyard and put her hands on her hips as the sea rippled in the sunlight. This beautiful bay was the only thing that made her nostalgic.
She remembered the old tire swing in her neighbor’s backyard that dangled from a pine branch the size of her torso. Her mother wouldn’t let her on it because she’d said that it was too dangerous, but her friends had convinced her to do it on the days her mother was at work. It was positioned right at the bank, and when she pushed herself off the tree, the long rope swung her out over the water, the movement of the waves beneath her causing blinding white sparkles in her vision. Like a life-sized pendulum, the wind picking up with every swing, she held onto the rope, her hands sweaty from the rush of adrenaline as it suspended her over water only briefly before pulling her back to the shore. The wobbly rubber tube beneath her as her only security, she had trembled her way to a standing position, her fingers crawling up the rope until she was ready. Then, with a shot of panic to her chest, she leaped, splashing into the water below. There was that one moment just before the splash, when she was suspended in air, falling, knowing her fate. She loved that feeling, no matter how much it terrified her.
That’s what it was like when she’d left home to live in New York. She was leaving the security of what she’d known, but she was soaring, floating, on her way to that final splash where everything felt right. She wanted that feeling again of knowing her fate. She wanted it more than anything in the world. This—this small town with its quirks and gossip and ghosts of people I left behind—this is not my fate, she thought.
Her mind went back to Pete. She did wish she could explain things, say something to make him understand. Then, shaking the thought free, she turned around and walked toward the rental car, her gift card in hand. Maybe she’d run into him in town and she could give him a piece of her mind for sending out that real estate agent.
Chapter Five
Wentworth’s Hardware looked exactly the same as it had when her father had made her go with him as a kid. She still disliked the musty smell of it and the sandpaper feel of the concrete floor beneath her shoes as she walked. In the last decade, she’d seen the invention of file-sharing, learned various new forms of social networking, and marveled at all she could do on a smart phone, yet at Wentworth’s it seemed that absolutely nothing had changed right down to the push-button cash register.
Choices were limited. There were no interior designers in town that she knew of, so she’d have to rely on her own tastes and what was available to make the changes necessary to put the Roberts’ cottage on the market—or at the very least make it inhabitable for advertisement to out-of-town renters.
All the gadgets, screws, nuts and bolts before her reminded her of the odds and ends in her memory box. On separate occasions, her mother had tried to empty out her memory box, telling her that she needed to rid it of all of the junk that was inside—rocks, old pieces of cement, ribbons—but she’d refused.
The last time she’d put something in it was right before she’d left New York. She’d picked up a runaway flier, a pink half sheet of heavy paper advertising a stage show off Broadway. It had floated past her on her way home to her apartment for the last time. She’d picked it up, folded it twice, and placed it inside her memory box before packing it up to ship to the cottage. It was at that moment that the flier had crossed her path that she’d stopped to watch all the people crossing the crosswalk in front of her. All those faces of New Yorkers—driven, busy, walking at a clip, oblivious to her stares. The flier would be a tangible reminder of those faces.
There were other memories in the box too. The pebble she’d taken from the driveway outside her house the day her father had packed the last of his things in his car and moved out for good. She’d held it in her hand as the other pebbles had crunched beneath his tires, his car pulling out in front of her, his eyes visible in the rearview mirror. She had also held on to a twig that she’d taken from the butterfly bush next to Pete’s window the day she’d snuck over to his house to take one last look at hi
m before leaving him and never coming back.
Libby had known that the only way to get Pete to understand and not try and convince her to stay was to tell him straight out what she thought about leaving. That day was burned into her memory—every bit of it as clear as if it had happened yesterday.
“How can anyone be successful here?” she’d said. “I want to be around people who have ambition.”
“So going to a school closer to home doesn’t show ambition?” Pete had said, his face indignant. “I can’t believe you just said that.” He looked down at the floor, his jaw clenched. When he looked up at her, it was as if he were just seeing her for the first time, his eyes scanning her up and down. “Is that all that matters to you? What about your family? What about Pop and Nana? Don’t you want to be close to them? What if, God forbid, something happened to one of them? Wouldn’t you want to be able to come home and see them? Is your ambition worth that much?”
She did care about Pop and Nana. She did care about being able to see them, but she couldn’t do anything about it. She needed to attend an elite university to be surrounded by other people with goals like hers, people who could challenge her, push her to be the very best version of herself that she could be.
“I need a competitive university to get me where I want to be in life. If I go to college around here, I know I’ll end up staying in White Stone.” His expression looked annoyed, irritating her. “The best I can hope for here is an unimportant job at one of the little office buildings in town!” she could hear her voice rising. “This is an insignificant little town with no opportunities.”
“Wow,” he’d said, shaking his head, incredulity in his eyes. He was quiet for a moment, just staring at her as if he could not believe what he’d just heard. Then, quietly, he said, his face turning red from the anger that he was clearly attempting to control, “Then go, Libby.” That was all he’d said before he walked out of the room and left.