Anthony, walking down Water Street, turned when he heard his name. Joy. His heart thumped and turned over, once, twice, experimentally, like an engine trying to start in the cold. He turned around. He’d missed her so much, but now here she was in front of him, and his heart was still full of his father’s death. It was hard now to find room for anything else.
“I just heard about your father, Anthony. I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.” She held up a copy of the Block Island Times. Leonard’s author photo was on the front page. “I wish I knew sooner. I just found out. Anthony—” She raised an arm like she was about to hug him, but something in his face must have stopped her because she let it fall.
Every time Anthony forgot for a fraction of a minute and was then reminded, he broke anew with the realization. His father was gone. “Thank you,” he said formally.
“Can you come by the shop for a minute? Can I make you a coffee?”
He hesitated. “I don’t want to leave my mother for too long. And I don’t really want to see anyone.”
“Just for a minute? We just reopened.”
“Okay. Just for a minute.” They made the short walk to Joy Bombs in silence. Olivia was working behind the counter, doing her usual thing. There was a small line. Anthony didn’t want to see any people. He felt raw. His sleep had been fractured; his organs felt swollen and tender.
“Here,” Joy said. “Come back to my office. I’ll get you a coffee and bring it to you.”
Anthony sat in the corner of the kitchen at her desk, which was piled high with paper and order forms and a manila folder that said invoices in Joy’s beautiful, crooked handwriting.
When she returned with the coffee, Joy said, “Your mother was able to come. That’s really great.” She squeezed his hand.
“My mother’s been here for several days,” he said. “Even before . . . It’s a long story. It’s a very long story. Cassie and Max were here too. My mother and I are leaving on the last ferry today. The funeral is on Sunday. My mother—” He was supposed to be good with words, but, of all of the words in the universe, there were none that felt right for Dorothy.
The kitchen smelled like the remnants of that day’s baking (chocolate, lemon) and also like something surprising (basil?), and even besides that there was something else, something particularly Joy, something as wild and unsettling as the ocean itself. The way the light caught Joy’s face and her hair: his heart lurched. He might never have an opportunity to say what he wanted to say.
“Listen,” he said. “Give me one more chance to say I’m sorry about the whole mess. I’m sorry about my secret past. I just need to say that, before I go.”
“I just need to say that I don’t care that you plagiarized.” Joy’s voice was gentle. “I never cared about that. I cared that you lied to me, Anthony, that you didn’t even tell me you had a son.”
“I know,” said Anthony. He shook his head. “I know. It’s terrible. And I love my son so, so much. You don’t even know.”
“Of course I know. I’m a parent too. I’m divorced. I have a daughter. You didn’t have to hide any of your things from me. You didn’t have to be ashamed of them.”
Anthony looked around the kitchen. The giant mixer, the prep tables, the cart that held dozens of empty trays waiting to be filled—it was all so familiar, so strangely intimate. He felt an ache in his throat.
“I was ashamed of everything, Joy. Ashamed of my whole life before. When I came here, I just wanted to hide out. I didn’t even want to talk to anyone, never mind fall in love with someone. I wasn’t expecting any of this—I wasn’t expecting you, Joy Sousa. And once I met you, and Maggie, and even Pickles—and you all liked me the way I was, the guy without a past—I didn’t want to suddenly become the guy with a past.”
Joy smiled. “I’m pretty tough, Anthony. I can handle a past. It wouldn’t have mattered to me.”
“I know that now,” he said. “I even knew it after the first ten days with you. But by then it seemed like it was too late.”
“It wasn’t.”
They were both quiet for a moment.
“I had this whole When Harry Met Sally list ready for you. The day of the storm. I looked for you, but I couldn’t find you. And then, my father—” His voice broke.
She squeezed his hand again. “A When Harry Met Sally list? Like at the New Year’s Eve party?” The corners of her mouth turned up, just a little. He nodded. “I want to hear it.”
“Now?”
“Yes, now. If that’s okay with you. If you feel up to it.”
“Okay, then,” he said. He took a deep breath. He’d had this list ready since they’d fought out by Settlers’ Rock. “Here goes. I love how tough you are. I love that your daughter is fierce and independent because that’s how you are, Joy. Heck, I love that your name is Joy and that you pull it off. I love that you picked this island out of all the places in the world and you said, I’m going to set up shop here, and you did it. I love how you look in just your underwear. I love that you make fun of the tourists even though they’re the ones who buy most of your whoopie pies. I love that you drove that old neighbor of yours to the doctor once and instead of pretending you didn’t notice his shirt was on inside out, you told him so he could fix it before he embarrassed himself. Speaking of shirts: I love Maggie’s T-shirts, and I love that you actively seek out more of them for her. I love that you brush Pickles’s teeth.” He took a deep breath. He was surprised by how readily everything had come out. Grief could do that to you, though. It could open all of your pores, let all kinds of emotions escape, not just the sad ones. “I love how you brush your own teeth, for that matter, the way you come at them so earnestly, like you’re doing the most important job on the planet.”
Joy was smiling. “But I don’t go too rough on the gums,” she said. “My dentist is very clear about that.”
“No,” he said. “You’re totally gentle on the gums.”
She nodded crisply. “Okay,” she said. “That’s a decent list.”
“Now you say, ‘You say things like that, and you make it impossible to hate you.’”
“Oh, brother,” she said. “I’m not going to say that.”
“Because it’s not true?”
“No,” she said. “Because I’m going to do this instead.” She kissed him, long, deep, and then he drew back, and then he kissed her. This was what he needed. This was solace.
“Do you think you could come?” he asked, when they paused. “To the funeral?”
She hesitated. “You don’t want me there. Do you?”
“I do.”
“Well, then I’ll be there. Of course I’ll be there. If you want me.”
“Max won’t be there,” he said. “He’s too young. But Cassie will. It might be strange for you to meet them. But then again, it might not.”
“As it turns out,” she said, “I’ve met them both. Sort of accidentally.”
“Really?”
“Really. I’ll tell you the whole story, another time.”
“Okay.”
Her smile was whole and open. Her eyes were a mix of fondness and kindness and possibly—dare he say it?—love. She didn’t know about Dorothy, and what he’d found out about his father’s career. She didn’t know everything that had happened in the bookstore. There was so much left to talk about, so much left to say. “Definitely,” she said. “Another time.”
Taken alone, they didn’t mean much, those two words: another, and time. But together—oh, the promises they held.