Linus rubbed his temples. “We need a lawyer.”
“We do not need a lawyer,” Holly said. “But we may need a new gardener.”
“Are you firing Oliver?” Francine looked alarmed.
They all looked at Holly. “I’m not firing anyone. I’m just not sure he’s coming back.”
A small noise escaped Francine and they turned to her, startled. “Franny, are you alright?”
Francine shook her head, ever so slightly. “I’m sorry, but this is all very upsetting. The wedding, and Oliver, and all the hard work you’ve put in. And it may all go to waste!” She reached for Bee’s hand. “I think I would like to go home now.”
Bee took Francine’s hand. “We’ve seen enough for one night.”
Holly walked them out. When she returned, Greta and Linus had pulled stools up to the kitchen island in mutual misery. “I really thought this venture would turn the inn around,” Holly said. “The wedding industry is booming here on the coast. The revenue opportunities are huge. But all it’s been is one headache after another.”
“You can’t blame yourself for a hedging bride,” Greta told her.
“Besides, she hasn’t called it off yet,” Linus added. “It may just be a bout of cold feet, and tomorrow could be perfect like the rest of the weekend.”
“Perfect?” Holly coughed out a small laugh. “The whole weekend has been a disaster. The clambake was canceled, we held a forced lobster boil in the side yard. The brunch…” She looked at Greta and decided not to finish. “Tomorrow may very well be the final blow. And Francine trusted me.”
“She trusted me, too,” Greta said. “The brunch was on me.”
“But you saved us with the lobster boil,” Linus added. “And tonight was perfection.”
“Until I gave Oliver the note. I shouldn’t have.”
“She would’ve found a way to get to him somehow.”
“Still,” Greta said. “When I came over from Sweden, this place felt like home.”
Holly nodded. “Growing up here every summer, this placewashome.”
“I’d never even been to Cape Cod when I answered Francine’s ad for an inn manager,” Linus admitted. “Coming from the Midwest, I thought a Boston Whaler was a fish.”
“And yet here we all are,” Holly mused sadly. “A bunch of wash-ashores.”
No one complained when Linus disappeared and came back with a bottle of Sissy’s good champagne and three fresh glasses. Greta watched as he uncorked the bottle expertly. This time there was no celebratory pop, but, fittingly, a gentle carbonated sigh. When Linus passed her a glass, she took it, waiting for Holly to say something.
Holly couldn’t. So she did.
“To the wash-ashores,” Greta said, as they clinked glasses. “Tomorrow, come what may.”
Ezra
It was the finest sunset of the summer, perhaps the finest he’d seen in several summers, when he really thought about it. Ezra leaned back in his Adirondack chair. “Isn’t she a beauty?” he said aloud. In his mind, he pictured Rachel nodding in agreement.
Once upon a time this was how their weekends began, after he finished his rounds at the hospital midday Friday and drove down to the Cape to join the family. Almost always there was a chilled bottle of wine, if he was lucky a Barossa Valley Shiraz, waiting for him. He and Rachel would bring it out to the patio and enjoy it, side by side in these very chairs, as they took in the view and reviewed their week. Without thinking, it’s what Ezra had done tonight. He’d stumbled across a lovely bottle of Barolo in the bottom cupboard, wondering how long it had been there and where it had come from. It was strange, the things a person living alone stopped doing, he thought, as he uncorked the bottle. A wine lover might not open a good bottle for just themselves, just as a cook mightn’t go to the bother to whip up a nicemeal only for one. Why did a person shrink their life like that, after it had already been reduced by the absence of their partner?
Holly had suggested he take time off given the lineup of wedding events, and frankly, he’d needed it. He was still reeling from the sailboats he’d retouched in the library and then that lobster boil he’d been pulled into; what a good mess that had turned out to be! At the end of the night, he’d stumbled home to bed full of all the fine food Greta kept bringing out, and full, too, from all the things he’d seen and done and heard at the inn. At the risk of sounding like a jerk, Ezra felt heroic. Sure, he was just an old man from next door, but reinforcements had been needed and he’d answered the call.
So he’d used the day to recover from the inn. The burn on his hand was still bandaged; the blister was less angry now, but it still smarted. His limbs ached from hauling pots of water for the lobster. And his back was acting up from standing on the ladder in the library to paint the sailboats. Oh, but he felt alive!
That was how he ended up on the patio with the good bottle of Barolo, which took two glasses for him to remember that he and Rachel had gotten it on a trip to Italy with his brother and sister-in-law, years ago. Why did people save joy? he wondered as he took a long sip.
As he sat outside that evening he’d listened to the muted chatter and thin trail of music wafting up over the trees from the inn. Surprisingly, it was enjoyable. He hoped the big dinner was going well. As a thank-you for all his help the night before, Greta had sent him home with so much leftover food that he’d held his own little dinner party for one there on the patio. In doing so, he’d almost felt part of the festivities.
After the sun set and night fell, Ezra went inside for a sweaterand returned outdoors. The stars were particularly bright given the cloudless sky. To the east, a half-moon was rising. Looking up, he spied the Little Dipper and Orion. As he searched for other constellations, his mind drifted. The wine had worked itself into his limbs, leaving him with a pleasant wooziness, when he heard the snap of a branch. Ezra turned, tipping his ear toward the sound. It came from the side of the inn, from the little strip of brush and scrubby trees that separated their properties, the same one from which Bruce had catapulted himself that first time, and soon after, Holly. Now, Ezra listened. Yes, there it was. The sound of rustling, growing closer. Was Bruce on the loose at this late hour?
