Chapter Thirty-Eight

In the days since Fern had left the house, Elise carried herself with a muted sadness. Olivia did not know exactly why Elise was so upset, but her unhappiness was impossible to miss, even for Olivia, who generally focused on herself. And so, when faced with Elise’s melancholy over morning coffee, Mira yawning in her arms, Olivia impulsively said, “Do you need help with the baby today?”

Several hours and many diaper changes later, Olivia was questioning why she’d made this offer. She didn’t know how often most babies cried, but this one seemed to cry a lot—an awful lot. Midmorning, it dawned on Olivia that perhaps this was her fault, that she was misreading the baby’s cues. But what were her options aside from feeding, holding, and changing her? She heated a bottle, pacing in the kitchen, holding Mira, and murmuring “Shh, shh,” while it was warming up.

Passing the window, she glimpsed movement in the backyard. She stopped to take a closer look and found it was Marco hanging fresh seaweed. It was the first time she’d seen him since the day they’d picked oysters together. She jumped away from the window, not wanting to get caught spying on him.

Mira’s crying got louder, if that was even humanly possible. “I have to put you down to get your bottle,” she said, marveling at how quickly she had gotten used to talking to someone who had no capacity to understand what she was saying. She tested the temperature of the formula with a few drops on her wrist like she’d seen her mother and Elise do and determined it was good to go.

The baby’s dark eyes seemed intently focused on her as she drank the formula, her little hand fluttering aimlessly up toward the bottle and then down again.

Olivia exhaled. There was something deeply satisfying about resolving such a primal need.

“You know what I think?” she said. “I think after this bottle, we’re going to take a walk outside in the backyard to get some fresh air.” Yeah, that was the reason. For the “fresh air.” Fortunately, her fussy little sidekick was in no position to judge.

Olivia fought her impatience while Mira sucked down the bottle and then proceeded to take forever to give up a solid burp. Finally, Mira was content enough to be strapped into the stroller and wheeled out the back door.

Marco was just starting on a fresh line. “Oh, hey,” he said. “I didn’t know anyone was home. Wait, let me help you.” He lifted the front of the stroller and together they eased it down the porch stairs and set it in the grass.

“Yeah, it’s just me. Well, just us,” she said, adjusting the hood of the stroller against the sunlight.

“Elise has got you babysitting now?”

“Well, in all fairness, I volunteered. I mean, everyone else is working around here. I need something to do.”

He glanced at her while he adjusted a bunch of particularly long fronds, drawing them back over the line so they didn’t touch the ground. “Anytime you want to help out with the oysters, just let me know.”

“Really?” she said.

“Yeah. I get literally twice as much done with help. And like I said, you seem interested. That’s really half of it right there.”

She swallowed hard. “I loved it.”

He glanced inside the stroller. “It seems you wore her out.”

Olivia looked and saw that Mira’s eyes were closed. “Oh, thank God. You can’t imagine how nonstop it’s been all morning. I mean, she’s adorable—but it’s work. It makes picking those oysters seem like a rest.” She leaned closer to make sure the straps weren’t too tight. “Let me just move her to the shade.” She looked around. “If I can find any.”

“Maybe back on the porch?” Marco said.

“Okay, yeah. Sorry, can you help with the—”

He was already lifting the undercarriage. “I’ve got it,” he said when she tried to help. She followed him up the stairs. The transport didn’t seem to affect Mira. She shifted her head to one side, her eyes still shut tight.

“Well, now I’m not only not helping you, I’m officially slowing you down,” Olivia said.

He walked around from behind the carriage so he was standing beside her. She looked up at him, her insides jumping like popping corn.

“So you’re not helping me work today.”

“Well, no,” she said. “Unless…”

He leaned forward and kissed her. It lasted only thirty seconds, but there, in the bright light of the afternoon, she saw stars. She took a step back, feeling off balance. He reached forward to steady her.

“Okay,” she said, breathless.

“I wanted to do that the other day on the water,” he said.

“You did?”

“Yeah. But I was afraid it might count as workplace harassment.”

Olivia hesitated only a second. “Well,” she said. “I’m officially off the clock.”

He kissed her again.

  

Determined to find a festive place for dinner, Ruth called the one person she could think of who might have an idea.

“Ciro and Sal’s,” Clifford Henry said immediately. “You can smell the history. It’s in the air.”

That was the easy phone call to make. The next one, to cancel her plans with Tito, not so much.

“My daughter is leaving tomorrow, so I want to spend time with her,” Ruth said. She conveniently left out the part about her ex-husband, but really, what did it matter? People had friendly meals with their exes all the time (didn’t they?). Yes, she’d been having some…feelings. But they weren’t anything that couldn’t be handled with an emergency phone call to Dr. Bellow.

Tito sounded understanding when he said, “Another time.” But they didn’t pick a night and she wondered if he had lost interest, or if she’d imagined his interest, or if he felt like she was blowing him off (which she was, but truly, for her daughter). This type of stress was exactly why she didn’t want to date in the first place.

Ruth made a stop before meeting Olivia and Ben at the restaurant. It took longer than anticipated, so she was running late by the time she turned off Commercial onto Kiley Court.

Ciro and Sal’s was nestled in the middle of a red-brick courtyard bordered by a vine-covered white trellis and marked with a chalkboard sign on the ground reading WELCOME TO CIRO & SAL’S—PROVINCETOWN’S HIDDEN GEM. The building was surrounded by plants, flowers, and trees, some with low-hanging branches strewn with tiny lights.

She walked through the shingled front doorway, and as soon as she stepped inside, the vibe changed from enchanted garden to hidden speakeasy. The restaurant was dark and cave-like with low ceilings, brick walls with built-in wine racks, and Chianti bottles hanging everywhere.

A hostess led her to the table where Olivia and Ben were already seated.

“Interesting choice, Mom,” Olivia said when Ruth slid into the seat next to her, across from Ben.

“Sorry I’m late,” Ruth said. “How’s the menu look?”

“Northern Italian,” Ben said. “How could it be bad?”

“Did you order anything yet?”

“Just the wine,” Olivia said. Ben picked up the bottle of red and filled Ruth’s glass.

Dean Martin played over the sound system. The place smelled woodsy and musty, and Ruth could feel the decades that had passed within the walls. She knew exactly what Clifford meant when he had said that history was in the air.

Ben raised his glass. “To Olivia, who has rebounded after a tough start to the summer. Onward and upward.”

“Onward and upward,” Ruth repeated. All she could think was how strange and yet familiar it was to be sitting at a table with Ben and their daughter. When was the last time they’d done this? Maybe a college-graduation celebration dinner, but there had been other couples then, Olivia’s friend’s parents. And then she remembered that the day after her sister had had surgery, Ben and Olivia stopped by the hospital. At some point, the three of them had gone to the cafeteria for lunch or coffee. Still, nothing like this. Something about being around Ben and Olivia together made her feel whole. There was an ineffable rightness about it, and it warmed her more intensely than the wine that was already lighting up her bloodstream.

“And to our last night in Provincetown,” Ben said.

Olivia lowered her glass. “We’re leaving tomorrow?”

“We discussed this,” Ben said.

“I thought you meant next Friday,” Olivia said.

Was Ruth imagining the note of distress in her voice?

“Olivia, I said I’d come out for a night or two. It’s been a week. Besides, I know you’ve been dying to get back to the city.”

“I never said that.”

Ben looked at Ruth.

“Why don’t you stay a bit longer,” Ruth said, never one to miss an opening. “Maybe through the Fourth of July? The Barroses are having a party, and the Fourth is always a great weekend in town.” She could not bring herself to meet Ben’s eyes as she said this. For years, even after they were married, they had informally celebrated the Fourth of July as their anniversary.

“Perfect!” Olivia said.

Ben shook his head. “Thanks, Ruth. That’s very generous of you. But I really should get home. Olivia, if you want to stay and feel you can travel back on your own, that’s up to you.”

Ruth opened her bag and dug around for the papers that she had picked up on her way to the restaurant. “Well, if you don’t want to stay until the Fourth, you might want to consider coming back for that week. There’s a lot of stuff going on in town.” She slid a brochure from the Fine Arts Work Center across the table, opened to the page of July workshops. She’d circled the five days of playwriting intensives.

Ben picked it up and held it close to the candle in the center of the table, then, still unable to read it, he pulled his glasses out of his jacket pocket. When he finally realized what he was looking at, he placed the brochure on the table, removed his glasses, and folded his arms. “Ruth,” he said, shaking his head.

“I just thought it might be fun.”

“What is it? What’s going on?” Olivia said.

“Nothing,” Ben said. He reached for his wine.

The waiter appeared and took their orders, but after that, the conversation that had flowed so easily over the wine somehow dried up. The Fine Arts Work Center brochure sat in the middle of the table like untended baggage at an airport terminal—glaring and potentially dangerous.

“So, Dad, what do you say? We’ll stay until the Fourth?” Olivia said. “What’s the point in being retired if you can’t be spontaneous?”

Ben, incredulous, looked at Olivia. “Since when has spontaneity been high on your list of priorities?”

She shrugged. “You’re the one who’s been telling me to take time off, to slow down.”

“Everything in moderation. I’m glad you’ve slowed down a little, but eventually you have to get back to real life. This town has a way of diverting you from reality. But the reality is there, waiting. You might as well face it sooner rather than later.”

Ruth reached across the table, retrieved the brochure, crumpled it up, and shoved it back into her handbag.

The town had diverted her from reality. For weeks now, she had been walking around in a fog, a fantasy, imagining that somehow, she could hit the reset button with her daughter. And maybe she had, if just a little. That was a major victory, and she should have been content with that. But then Ben had arrived, and she started having the same feelings of wanting to correct the past.

This isn’t about them, a voice in her head told her. This is your stuff.

She had avoided the messiness of her marriage and motherhood, choosing instead to channel all of her energy into something more manageable: her company. Now her company was gone, and the dangling threads of her life were unbearably loose. But there was no way to completely tie them back together again. She had to find a way to make peace with the past. She needed to remember her original motivation in moving to Provincetown: to start fresh. To create a new home that was built for this new stage of her life, not a home for raising children, not an apartment that was easy to maintain while she traveled for work. A home that she could grow old in.

Ben was right; Olivia had to get back to her real life and face whatever problems she had in her career. She had to find her own place in the world. It was selfish for Ruth to try to keep her in town just because she wanted the chance to mother her. And of course, Ben had his life.

Ruth had planted the seeds of her new life in Provincetown. Someday they would take root. Until then, she would have to be patient. There were no shortcuts to emotional peace.

“Your father is right,” Ruth said. Both Ben and Olivia looked at her in surprise. “You need to get back to the city.”

“I’m not avoiding reality,” Olivia snapped. “I’m trying to figure it out. There’s a difference.”

Ruth and Ben instinctively looked at each other, the shared glance of parents. Everything she’d been thinking just moments before—about letting the past go, about starting over—evaporated. She was tired of going it alone. She missed wordless communication. She missed sharing her life with someone. She missed her husband.

“Okay, okay,” Ben said. “There’s no need for anyone to get upset.”

Ruth sensed a slight opening and decided to push. “For the record, I don’t think some more vacation time would hurt either one of you. In fact, I think you could both use it.”

Ben looked at her in surprise.

“Yeah, Dad,” Olivia said. “I mean, it’s the summer.”

Ben signaled for the waiter, ordered another bottle of wine. He did not say yes, but he did not say no. And after all these years, Ruth knew Ben. And she knew that he would stay through the Fourth of July.

Ruth looked around the table at her family. A few more weeks.