Ruth napped for about as long as the baby did—close to two hours. They both woke up hungry and cranky. There was food in the house for only one of them.
After Ruth fed and changed the baby, she dialed Elise, hoping she’d say she was on her way back. No such luck; her call went straight to voice mail. If Ruth wanted to get out of the house, she’d have to take this baby situation on the road.
She strapped the infant into her car seat and carried her to the back porch where Elise kept the stroller frame. She latched the car seat onto it and headed off.
It had been a long time since she’d pushed a baby stroller, and she’d imagined the next time she was at the helm of one, it would contain her grandchild, not a mystery baby. And this was certainly not how she had envisioned the start to her carefree summer. And yet, the farther she walked, the more she thought about how things might have been different if she had allowed herself to enjoy her own early motherhood a little more. How many leisurely strolls had she taken with baby Olivia without worrying about the business?
The narrow sidewalk was crowded but she was reluctant to move the stroller into the street. Cars crept by carefully, but she didn’t want to take any chances. Her progress toward the Canteen was painfully slow. She needed a cold drink and, after last night’s gluttony, something healthy to eat, maybe a quinoa salad.
She checked her phone again—still no word from Elise.
Ruth passed the library, one of her favorite buildings in town. The landmark structure, built in 1860, had originally been a Methodist church and was topped by a dramatic spire that rose one hundred feet from the ground. She saw a familiar figure leaving the building; Amelia Cabral spotted her at the same time and gave her a wave and then raised a finger, signaling for her to wait. She held a thick coffee-table book in her arms, the glossy cover featuring New Orleans’s Bourbon Street.
“Hi there,” Amelia said cheerily when she reached Ruth. She slipped the book into her tote bag. “I’m getting a head start on my planning for Carnival. The theme this year is Mardi Gras by the Sea.”
Carnival was P’town’s largest summer celebration. For Ruth, the word Carnival—pronounced in P’town as “Carni-vall”—conjured an instant memory of late summer 1978. Commercial Street had been packed end to end with revelers from morning until—well, the following morning. She remembered standing outside of Spiritus Pizza in a crowd so thick she couldn’t see the entrance and could not make her way back to the sidewalk behind her. It was a situation that would make her anxious today, but it had been exhilarating in the moment.
“I see you have company,” Amelia said, peering into the car seat with a smile.
Ruth didn’t know what to say. Was she supposed to make up some sort of story? Oh, how had she let Elise Douglas put her in this situation? “I really have to get going,” Ruth said.
Amelia waved her hand in front of the baby. “They change so fast at this stage. Pretty soon she’ll figure out how to get her fingers into her mouth. My son was like that—constantly sucking his thumb. In some ways, it was better than a pacifier because it couldn’t fall out or get lost. But the bad part is you can’t just take it away when you decide it’s time to stop. He was sucking that thumb until third grade.” She looked up at Ruth. “I’ve already met the little one. This morning. Elise brought her by the inn.”
“Oh. Well, I’m actually on my way to find Elise at the shop. I have things to do, and, frankly, babysitting is not my forte.”
“Why don’t you let me take the baby off your hands,” Amelia said. “I’ll bring her back to the inn. Rachel and I can manage until Elise is free.”
“Oh…are you sure?”
“Of course,” Amelia said. “But it was very generous of you to step in. The world works in mysterious ways, right? Some babies need a mother. Some mothers need a baby. You’re a mother—you understand.”
Amelia shuffled through a stack of colorful flyers in her tote bag, then offered one to Ruth. “I was just putting these up on the bulletin board. I’m teaching a mosaic class starting tomorrow morning. Please join us. It’s a great way to meet people.”
Ruth glanced at the sheet and nodded. “Oh, well—thanks. But I’m not very artistic.”
“Everyone says that at first,” Amelia said. “You’d be surprised.”
“I’ll think about it,” Ruth said, just relieved to be unburdened of the baby. She couldn’t think about tomorrow. She needed peace and quiet.
Amelia winked, then reached for the stroller and turned it in the direction of the inn. She looked back once with a wave, calling out, “See you at the class!”
Ruth stood alone on the sidewalk. She felt strangely lost—almost empty. It took a moment for her to remember where she had been going, what she wanted to do. If it weren’t for the sudden hunger pangs, she might have turned around and gone home. Instead, she sought out a place to sit, regroup, and have lunch.
The Canteen was busy; Ruth had to wait in line. At the counter, she ordered a warm lobster roll and, in a nod to trying to be healthy after the previous night’s indulgence, a side of brussels sprouts. She took the placard with her number and walked out back to sit at one of the communal tables overlooking the bay.
She poured herself a cup of water from a cooler set up at the condiments table. An iPod on a dock played a rotation of classic pop songs. Blondie sang, “The tide is high and I’m moving on…” and Ruth felt nostalgia rolling in again.
Determined to shake it away, she looked out at the water and focused on rooting herself in the moment. Everything was fine. How fortunate to run into Amelia and be relieved of the babysitting obligation.
You’re a mother—you understand.
Did she? Thirty years of motherhood, and frankly, Ruth didn’t understand a thing. Thirty years of motherhood, and she was sitting alone in a town with no family.
Maybe it was time to do something about that.
She reached into her bag and pulled out her phone.
Olivia’s chest was still tight with congestion, her energy level markedly low. But staying home even one more day—one more hour—was unthinkable.
“Good morning,” she said to Dakota, already at her desk. Uttering the simple greeting prompted a coughing fit. “Come into my office.”
Dakota followed Olivia and closed the door behind them. “Jeez. That doesn’t sound too good. You sure you’re not coming back too soon?” Dakota said.
Olivia’s response was a raised eyebrow. “I’m going to call a team meeting in an hour. I just need to do some catch-up. But fill me in on anything I need to know.”
While Dakota rattled off updates on various accounts, Olivia clicked through the photos on her computer screen, image after image of a nearly naked woman standing under a tropical waterfall. A client had recently landed a deal for a coffee-table book of her selfies and she wanted Olivia’s “thoughts.” Olivia looked at the carefully staged, professional photographs, and her main thought was that the woman didn’t know what the word selfie meant. Of course, she would keep that to herself.
“Um, Olivia?” Dakota said. “Did you do those Happy National Wine Day posts on purpose?”
Olivia looked up. Dakota was hunched over her phone, scrolling intently.
“Yes. I did a little work on Friday. I set up some posts for Sam.” Sam Saphire was a singer-songwriter whose career had taken off when he opened for John Mayer. For National Wine Day, Olivia programmed a day’s worth of wine-related images with quotes like “It’s always wine o’clock.”
“Um, yeah,” Dakota said, looking up with wide eyes. “Except you posted it through April’s account.”
What?
Everyone at HotFeed used a social media–management tool to schedule posts to go out at a certain time. She uploaded all the images and programmed the date they were to be sent out. It was simple; it was routine. And yet…
Heart pounding, Olivia grabbed her phone and tapped open Instagram and Twitter. Sure enough, the wine posts had gone out on April’s feed. April, who was famously, loudly sober as of two years ago.
Oh my God!
She must have been so foggy from fever and the lack of sleep and the cough medicine—she had never made a mistake like this! And of course, she wouldn’t have gotten sick in the first place if she hadn’t been so upset about the breakup with Ian. This was why she shouldn’t get involved in relationships. Nothing but problems.
“Damn it.” She logged into her laptop; her fingers flew over the keyboard to delete the posts. In a matter of seconds, they were gone.
“Okay, well, it’s so early,” Dakota said. “I doubt anyone—”
Olivia’s cell phone rang.
She was tempted to send it straight to voice mail, but she was experienced and disciplined enough to know she had to deal with a crisis like this head-on.
“It’s April,” Olivia whispered.
Dakota shook her head.
“Hi, April,” Olivia said, swiveling her chair so she faced the window instead of her assistant’s horrified expression.
“‘Hi, April’?” said the woman on the other end of the line. “That’s what you have to say to me? Do you have any idea how many messages I just woke up to? From my friends, my family, advertisers for the shows—my AA sponsor? What the hell, Olivia?”
“First, please know the posts are down. I’m so sorry. I must have logged into the wrong account. I was out all week with the flu and—”
“I don’t care if you had the bubonic plague! This is a disaster!”
“I will take full responsibility for the posts.”
“Oh, great. Why don’t I just put out a press release saying I don’t do any of my own social media? My fans will be thrilled to learn they’re messaging with a bunch of suits!”
She had a point. “Let me just—”
“You’re fired!” April hung up.
Olivia felt woozy. She didn’t know if it was because of the disaster unfolding like a six-car pileup or the virus still lingering in her system, but coming into the office suddenly seemed like a very big mistake.
Her phone rang again. It was her mother. What on earth could she possibly want? This call, Olivia did send to voice mail.
Ruth couldn’t help imagining her daughter seeing the incoming number and pressing a button to exile her to voice mail. But, to be fair, Olivia was probably at work. Ruth left a message; she would just have to wait patiently for a return call.
She was also waiting for a call back from Clifford Henry. Maybe she had not fully conveyed the gravity of the situation with Shell Haven. She would leave another message. Now, what to do with her afternoon?
The beach was an option, but Ruth was already in the middle of town and didn’t want to walk back to the house to get her bathing suit and a towel. Still, the water did beckon to her.
One option was a boat tour of Cape Cod Bay. She knew these excursions launched from Barros Boatyard in the West End, just a short walk from the Canteen.
Ruth passed a small restaurant called Joon. Across the street was Provincia, a gift shop where she’d bought hand-painted Portuguese dishes.
She turned left down an alleyway and passed an aluminum-sided building with arrowed signs reading BOAT RENTAL. She kept walking, the sun-dappled bay now in view. The pavement extended all the way to the water, where an American flag was raised high above a wood dock. To the right, a clapboard shed with another BOAT RENTAL sign. Two white bikes were parked in front of it.
Ruth stopped in front of the boat-rental office. A couple stood at the window booking an excursion. She turned to look around, shielding her eyes from the sun with her hand. Behind her was a three-story wood-frame building with a gray-shingled roof. The second and third floors had wraparound decks. To the side of the house, metal rafters held boats in various stages of repair.
When it was her turn at the boat-rental station, a broad-shouldered man perhaps a few years older than herself helped her. He had small dark eyes, and his features were blunt, unrefined, and unremarkable, but he had a thick head of white hair and an air of authority.
“What can I do for you, young lady?” he said.
Ruth knew not to take the “young lady” as anything more than rote, casual flirtation he probably doled out generously to all his female customers. Still, out of habit, she glanced at his left ring finger and saw that it was bare. This is not why you’re out here, she reminded herself. “I’m looking to do a boat tour. Do you have anything leaving soon?”
“We have a shuttle to Long Point leaving in an hour and a seal-watching boat leaving in twenty minutes.”
Seal-watching? She didn’t know the bay had enough seals to merit an entire tour based on their presence. The thought made her uneasy. Where there were seals, there were sharks. Ruth had an intense fear of sharks, like a lot of people of her generation, and this fear had a specific onset date: the summer of 1975. At age fifteen, Ruth had sneaked out to see the movie Jaws. It was rated PG, but her parents, having heard from their friends that it was terrifying, had forbidden her to see it. She wished she’d listened to them.
“Do you have any issues with sharks?” Ruth said.
The man gave her a bemused smile. “I guarantee, ma’am, that the captains of all our boats are ready, willing, and able to fight off any shark threat to our passengers.”
Ruth crossed her arms. “I believe it’s a legitimate question.”
“With all due respect, sharks are typically found oceanside. Nothing is impossible, but I’d say you’re pretty dang safe.”
Ruth did not appreciate his tone. “Well, thank you. This has been an enlightening conversation.” She turned and headed back to Commercial Street.