As shaken as Elise was by the police visit, there was no time to deal with it on any emotional level. By the time she arrived at Tea by the Sea, the line of customers stretched from the counter to the front door. Again, she was saved by the kindness of others, as Jaci had volunteered to help out in Fern’s absence.
Elise had to admit, the girl’s excitement over the tea shop had rekindled her own enthusiasm. She felt a renewed sense of gratitude toward Fern for making it all happen and resolved to tell her that as soon as she returned that night.
The question was, should she tell her about Brian Correia’s visit? Did she have a choice?
Jaci pulled her aside and told her a customer was asking for instructions on how to brew loose-leaf tea. The woman was deeply tanned, in her midthirties, with blond hair twisted into a knot and an expensive-looking pair of sunglasses perched on top of her head. Her wrists were covered in beaded bracelets, and she was dressed in white denim shorts and a gauzy shirt with a drawstring.
“This place is just so cute! I want everything,” the woman said. She held two tins of tea. “So tell me what to do.”
Elise explained that one option was to brew the leaves directly in the teapot—a classic method—and then use a metal mesh strainer to catch the leaves as you poured the freshly brewed tea. “Or you can buy a tea infuser, which is a metal ball with mesh coverings or little holes. You can fill the infuser with the leaves and place that inside the teapot to brew. It works just like a—”
The front door opened, and in walked Ruth Cooperman with Mira in her stroller. What was Ruth doing with the baby?
“Excuse me for a moment,” Elise said to the customer.
Ruth had the diaper bag over one shoulder, a bottle in her hand, and a very, very irritated expression on her face.
“Ruth, what are you doing with Mira? I left her with Rachel,” Elise said, keeping her voice low.
“Rachel had some sort of emergency, and she left her with me. She didn’t want to bother you at work. But I have no problem bothering you here because I did not sign up for this. This was not part of the deal. Understood?” Ruth said. Elise looked around to see if the customers had noticed the heated words, but no one seemed to be paying any attention to them. Probably because one of the customers in line was a shirtless older gentleman with a cockatoo on his shoulder.
She was just relieved Fern wasn’t around to see this disaster of a day. “I’m sorry, Ruth. I’ll take it from here.”
“Elise, my daughter is visiting for the weekend. It’s a small miracle I got her to come out here in the first place. If I could find somewhere else to stay for the weekend, I would, but I can’t. So I need you to respect my privacy, maintain boundaries, and make it clear to Rachel and Amelia and whoever else is sharing baby-watching duties that I am out of it. Understood?”
“Understood,” Elise said, swallowing hard.
“And by the way, she’s fed,” Ruth said, handing over the diaper bag. With that, she marched out the door.
Olivia had not known what to expect of Provincetown, but she had imagined something quaint and a little sleepy. Instead, she threaded her way through packed sidewalks, her sagging energy lifted by a raucous, carnival-like atmosphere. People were everywhere; the narrow street was jammed with cafés and stores—a coffee shop painted in lavender, an open-fronted variety shop of some sort that offered an explosion of trinkets, sweatshirts, and summer gear. The second pink pedicab she’d seen that day inched along beside her, stuck in traffic, the driver blasting Madonna’s “Lucky Star” from an old radio rigged to the front.
This was where her mother had chosen to retire? Olivia felt that she simply didn’t know the woman at all. And what was with that baby at the house? She shook away the image of her mother cradling it protectively against her chest. She could hear her father’s words hanging in the air: “Your mother is just not the nurturing kind.” Well, maybe her mother just hadn’t been interested in nurturing them.
Olivia paused under an awning to check her phone. It was a compulsion, she knew. Every five minutes she was scrolling through Instagram, a constant loop of checking her own feed and her clients’. But it’s for work, she told herself. This is my job. She knew the schedule of weekend posts for the ten celebrities on her roster almost by heart. They had been carefully orchestrated by the team well in advance. A few of the clients were posting photos from earlier trips, photos they’d banked for later use. They didn’t want to show where they were actually vacationing lest the paparazzi be tipped off.
Satisfied with everyone’s feed, she switched over to an app to find the best place for lunch. There were so many restaurants with rave reviews within feet of one another, she simply picked the one closest to where she was standing.
Spindler’s had an open-fronted bar on the street level, a deck on the second floor, and an adjacent coffee bar and café. Olivia snapped a photo and posted it to Instagram. The place was packed. “There’s a twenty-minute wait for a table,” a young man told her. He was blond and great-looking in his black Spindler’s T-shirt and tight jeans. “There might be space at the bar.” A quick glance told her there was no space at the bar.
The room was elegant and rustic, with a wood-planked ceiling and a wood-backed bar, deep blue walls, and arrangements of sunflowers and lavender tucked into metal pails.
“May I see a menu?” she asked, light-headed with hunger. She was running on four cups of coffee, a protein bar, and a bag of pretzels. But she figured if she left to find someplace else, she would just encounter the same crowds. Again, she felt a surge of irritation at her mother.
She’d better have a damn good reason for summoning her all the way out there.