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That’s when I bumped into Esme, coming out of a small boutique. She had a hand-stitched teddy bear in her hand.
“That’s adorable!” I shrieked. She looked at it and smiled.
“My sister and her husband just found out they’re approved to adopt a baby from foster care,” she said. “A little boy. He’s two. They are picking him up tomorrow. I didn’t want to go home empty-handed.”
“That’s wonderful news!” I said. “Congratulations to your family. How excited you all must be!”
She nodded. Her bright smile stretched across her face, and her eyes gleamed with joy.
“I also wanted to tell you how sorry I was to hear you’re leaving the crew,” I said. “Matteo told me. I hope that’s okay. You do a wonderful job. I’m sure it will be a loss to everyone.”
She shrugged. “It is what it is,” she said. “I have enjoyed my time there, but now I wish to be home with my family more. I found a job at a resort near my home. I will be able to work and come home every night. Working on the boat was a fun adventure, but I think being an Auntie will be an even better one, don’t you?”
I smiled. “I think you’re exactly right,” I said.
She waved me goodbye, and we parted ways. She was headed back toward the boat. I was still looking at shop names, trying to decide where I wanted to spend my time.
I came across a small blue building on the end of the block with a yellow door opening up onto the corner. There was no business name listed, but painted across the front windows in large letters read the word “Books.”
It reminded me of the type of bookstore you’d see in a movie, so I decided to go inside and have a look around. To have looked so small on the outside, the inside was gigantic. The walls had shelves two stories high with rolling ladders along each. The floor was scattered with brightly painted bookshelves, and signs hung from chains on the ceilings marking genre.
I walked through the romance section, perusing the well-worn paperbacks for a title that might interest me. They reminded me of the dime store novels my grandmother had kept in the basket near her sewing chair in the living room.
I wandered into mystery and found a small collection of books written by Joseph’s favorite author, Ashleigh Quinn. I took a picture to send to him later. Although our relationship had not worked out, I had a feeling he and I might salvage a friendship, and I knew he’d be interested in the find.
Then, I wound up in cookbooks. Mostly, it was title after title of Caribbean cuisine. But there, at the end of the aisle, I saw it. A large, leather-bound collection of seven books. “Eating the Earth.” Each book was labeled with a different continent.
It was the set Matteo had spoken about his grandfather leaving him. The set he had always regretted losing along the way!
“Excuse me!” I called out to the clerk. “I’d like to buy this set of books.”
He looked at the set and back at me, his face unsure.
“That’s a very rare collection,” he said. “It is quite expensive.”
“I don’t care about the cost,” I said. “Whatever it is, I’ll pay it.”
“Do you have means to carry them?” he asked. I looked at the books again. Those seven behemoths stacked together would probably weigh at least half of my weight. There was no way I could carry them all the way back to the ship alone.
“I don’t,” I said. I would need to figure something out.
“Wait here,” the clerk said, bounding into a back room. A few moments later, he emerged with a little wooden wagon. “Eight hundred dollars for the book set, twenty dollars for the wagon. Deal?”
“Deal!” I said, smiling ear to ear. I couldn’t believe my luck. I knew that my gift still might not change anything with Matteo, of course, but at least I’d be able to do something kind for him. After all, he had done so much for me on this trip. It was well worth $820 to repay him for the years’ worth of therapy he’d managed to pack into a few short days.
I quickly paid for the books as the clerk stacked them carefully into the wagon. I rolled out the yellow doors onto the sidewalk and turned the corner. The wagon left much to be desired. It was wobbly, and the handle was loose. It was a hard pull, and I realized too late I had traveled downhill in town, which meant an uphill trek back to the docked boat.
“You come from the boat?” a woman asked as she passed.
I nodded.
She raised her eyebrows and laughed, eying the wagon full of books. “You have quite a workout ahead of you,” she said.
“A workout,” I smiled. Yes. A workout. I loved workouts. “I suppose I do,” I said as I took a step forward, heading up the hill.
It was hard to get the wagon to tilt up the sidewalk without spilling the books. I eventually had to stop and turn them all crossways in the wagon with the binding down to prevent any from sliding over each other out over the edge of the wagon. I noticed, when I stopped, that a small crowd had gathered at a bistro table nearby. Their eyes fixed on me. I could almost hear them placing bets on whether or not I’d be able to make the climb.
I persisted, though, pulling the wagon of heavy books up and over the hill. When the boat came into sight, I started laughing, knowing I was almost at the end of my trek. It was a relief.
