23

For the rest of lunch, I wrestle with whether I should show the pictures to Mom. This could clinch our case that Hubert is bribing the inspector to harass Gusty’s and that Slick is his go-between. Except, that’s not exactly what they show. One captures Slick and the inspector friendly-like and goofing around. The other shows Slick talking to the inspector and smiling and moving his arm, plus a view of the inspector’s back. You have to put the second image together with Ben and Ella’s testimony to establish that an envelope passed between them. And the first thing Mom would say is, But we don’t know what’s in the envelope. And I’d want to whine a little bit and say, What else could it be? And she’d say, That’s circumstantial evidence and not very persuasive circumstantial evidence. We need a real link.

I mull this over as I swallow my last bite of lobster roll. Even if Willy is up to no good, the stuff in that envelope could have been money to bribe the inspector to give Hubert’s a good health rating. I have no proof it relates to Gusty’s. I’m pretty much concluding I should wait to show Mom the pics, when the café door opens and Martin Candor comes in. I almost forgot about him for a minute.

“Don’t stare,” Dominic whispers to me.

“Right,” I say, but I keep checking him out. Same shirt, same pants. Same business casual clothes. He smiles. Not too small, not too large. Seems comfortable in his own skin. Waits casually for a seat.

Something comes over me, and I wave him to our table. “Over here, mister. You can sit here. We’re leaving.”

He raises his hand slightly as if to say hi and thanks at the same time.

We’re filing past him when I get a burst of boldness. “Can I ask you a personal question?”

He reels back a bit but says, “Maybe. It depends on how personal it is.”

“The first day you were here, I saw you take a picture of the café. Why’d you decide to do that?”

His brow wrinkles like he’s trying to remember the first day he was here. Then he laughs. “Well, that’s not so personal. I’m an architect. I like buildings—especially old café buildings like this one. You know, some people like barns. I like these.”

“What do you mean?”

He takes out his phone and scrolls to the picture he took of Gusty’s, then starts pointing to various spots on it. “The frame of the place is similar to many built during the postwar period . . .”

It starts to sound like blah blah blah blah de blah. I look to the door. Everyone’s gone outside, except Dominic, who is giving me bug eyes. I wave at him to go ahead, then turn back to Martin Candor. “I’m Quinnie Boyd,” I say and stick out my hand.

“Martin Candor.” He shakes my hand. His hand feels like a normal hand. Not the hand of a saboteur. “Are you related to Gusty?”

“He’s my dad.”

“Well, Quinnie Boyd, you live in a very special town and you have a very special father. And this is a classic New England structure.”

I leave the table pretty convinced he’s not planning to hurt this historical site.

* * *

Outside, Ben, Dominic, and Ella are waiting.

“So where’s Zoe today?” Ella asks the group.

“She’ll catch up with us,” says Ben. “She said she was eating lunch at home so she could wait for the mail. I guess she was getting a box from Scotland.”

Once again confirming she left her heart—and maybe her brain—on a sheep farm across the Atlantic. I tell myself to relax. Re-acclimating takes time. But I hope the box doesn’t have more haggis chips.

Ella must have been watching me because she leans over and whispers, “She’ll be fine, Q. Born a Mainah, always a Mainah. Right? Isn’t that what you told me?”

Well, that kind of makes me want to cry. I’m on the verge of tears much too much lately. I do not care for it. Focus.

Dominic also seems to sense that something’s up with me. “What was that with the Lone Man?”

“Let’s go to the beach and I’ll tell you,” I say. I can always get my focus from looking at the ocean.

* * *

“So?” Dominic demands. “What did Lone Man show you on his phone?”

“Pictures of buildings—cafés from the olden days.” It takes me a while to explain it all, but eventually I get across that Martin Candor seems to be the real deal when it comes to architecture, and we can cross him off our list once and for all.

At the end of the beach, we find Ms. Stillford sitting on a rock, staring out to sea. It strikes me how much more gray—and how much less blonde—her hair is than it was last summer. She seems unaware of us as we approach. One of her Birkenstock sandals is dangling off her foot as she leans back with the sun on her face.

She startles a little when I say, “Hi, Ms. Stillford!”

She points to a shallow reedy area between two sandbars. “Remember when that bed used to have decent clams? And we used to take pails out there?”

“That was fun,” Ben says.

I stare out at the old clam bed like I’m watching myself seven years ago, wearing shorts and a canvas hat, bent over, digging in the wet sand for quahogs with Ben and Zoe.

“You and Zoe would have been six, Quinnie, and you seven, Ben.” She shifts on the rock and goes silent for a couple seconds. “Such happy times.”

The way she says it is so sad, like we don’t have happy times anymore. I want to give her a big hug, but she’s perched up on the rock. Instead, I lean against it. “We have lots more happy times to come, Ms. Stillford.”

She shakes her head a little. “So much change. Too much change.”

Ben tries in his way to lighten the mood. “Yeah, that Hubert restaurant is too weird, with its asparagus spoom and all.”

Ms. Stillford laughs. “Oh, I don’t know. The food is fine, I suppose. It just doesn’t feel very Maiden Rock.” She turns to me. “No need to tell your dad, Quinnie. I had to find out what it was like, but I won’t be going a second time.”

“Did you have the lobster with the beam of light?” Ella asks.

“Sounds like you kids have been reading the menu. No, I had sunchoke, oyster, and eggplant involtini with celery-infused cream. It was actually very tasty but too expensive. The place has an ambiance, though, I’ll grant it that.” She laughs again. “The day I was there, so was that woman with the dog, and she was giving the waiter what for because the salad plates weren’t cold enough. She poked her finger in his face and demanded the plates be five degrees cooler!”

Ms. Stillford gets down off the rock and looks from the ocean to the row of beach houses. “I never thought I’d say this, but I don’t want to see America. Not if it means spending the next year away from Maiden Rock.”

Ella rushes over and hugs her. “You don’t have to! Just stay here.”

“Owen doesn’t really want to go either,” Ms. Stillford admits.

This cracks my heart wide open. Ella has her arms around Ms. Stillford’s shoulders, so I go for her waist. I’m squeezing her with my face pressed against her back, and the next thing I know Ben is standing by us joining the hug-in. Not to be left out, Dominic piles on.

From deep within our little huddle, I hear Ms. Stillford say, “I love you kids.”