Last spring, during a visit to the Squamish liquor store, a woman he hadn’t noticed before pushed a loaded dolly down an aisle toward him. She grinned so warmly that for a moment he thought they might have been acquainted, but he couldn’t think from where.
“Nice day to be out and about. A little sun finally, eh? Not going to last, though—weatherman’s prediction: thunderstorm tomorrow, of course!”
He couldn’t place her. She swiftly slit open crates with a little pocketknife, whipped bottles out of the boxes and began shelving them. “So what can we do for you today?”
He realized that she was just being friendly. After that first time, whenever he went into the store, she seemed to go out of her way to chat with him, once even stepping away from her cashier’s counter to offer him assistance. On one occasion, as he was leaving, she lifted her work badge toward him and said, “Kay. That’s my name. And you?”
He clutched his paper bag of wine, twisted it at the bottles’ neck, reached in the pocket of his jacket for his car keys, and said, all at once, “St. George. Harry St. George.”
“St. George! Harry! Now, who would have guessed? Okay, St. George. Don’t stay away too long, you hear? You come back and see me soon.” But she was already taking a bottle from the next customer, so he couldn’t tell if she was flirting, being friendly, or just spewing meaningless words. As he reached the door, he heard her shout out, “Don’t get too burned in that sun.” He turned to see her smile mischievously.
He found himself thinking of her now and then after that. He would walk in one day, he had thought, not buy anything, but go straight to her and invite her to go with him for a quick coffee in the mall. But he kept putting it off. Then summer came, and so did Rose, and Harry no longer had mind or heart for anyone but Rose.
It wasn’t until Rose was back in Guanagaspar, and the days in Elderberry Bay were approaching autumn, getting shorter and cooler, that Kay and Harry were to run into each other again.