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Prologue
April 2024
The weather forecast called for overcast skies, or at least that was the excuse I gave my Uncle Larry as his motorcycle idled next to where I stood on the sidewalk. When he didn’t say anything, I offered two more. I had a job interview the next day and needed to review my notes, and I was feeling a little queasy from eating three-day-old Szechuan leftovers for breakfast that morning. There were also a few excuses I kept to myself. Riding on the back of his Harley terrified me, even though he promised to take only the back roads, and I had cramps.
“I’ll be able to see the eclipse just fine from here,” I told him. “Seriously, you go on without me. They said on the news that traffic is backing up already. It might take you a few hours to get there.”
I stepped back as if the motion might convince him my decision was final, but Uncle Larry just shook his head. “We’re not in the path of totality here, Beans,” he said, tilting his head toward the sky. “You want to miss a solar eclipse in your own backyard? It’s a time for spiritual awakening.” He patted the empty space on the seat behind him. “Come on. Let the universe take you down a path. Trust it to guide you where you need to go. I dare you.”
“I’m fairly confident my spiritual needs can hold on for the next one,” I said, certain at least of that fact. “And I do want to experience it in my own backyard. My actual backyard.” I gestured at the alleyway next to the building that led to a small scrap of grass in the back. “I’m sorry, really I am. Next one, I promise.”
Larry sighed, and I knew he was done arguing with me. He lifted the lapel of his black leather jacket and reached inside to pull something out. “Okay,” he said, holding out a strip of brightly colored cardboard, which he unfolded. It was a pair of those cheap solar eclipse glasses you can buy online.
“August twelfth, 2026. Peñíscola, Spain. It’s a date.” He bent across the handlebars of his bike and held out the glasses until I leaned forward and allowed him to slip them over my eyes.
“There’s a great little spot called Restaurante El Peñón. It’s the best suquet de peix you’ll ever have. We’ll make a week of it.”
I tried to roll my eyes, but I couldn’t see anything through the lenses. “Really? Spain.”
“You promised next time,” Uncle Larry said, laughing a little as he slipped the glasses from my face, leaving me to blink rapidly until my eyes readjusted to the daylight.
He reached out as if to hand me back the glasses but stopped himself. “On second thought, maybe I’ll hold on to these.” He tucked them into the inner pocket of his leather jacket. “Keep ’em safe.”
This time, I managed to roll my eyes. “Always looking out for me.”
Larry smiled and turned his wrist, revving the engine of his motorcycle twice. “Always will, kiddo. No matter what.” He brought his hand to the brim of his black helmet in a mock salute before cranking the radio on his bike as high as it would go. “If you like piña coladas…” blasted through the speakers as he pulled out onto Queen Street and made a quick U-turn. I heard the faint traces of the chorus as his bike became indiscernible from the rest of the traffic heading toward Bathurst, many of them also on their way to Niagara Falls to watch the solar eclipse.
If this were the tragic part of the story, I’d tell you he rode off, and I never saw him again. That it taught me that life is short; you need to seize the moment. Carpe diem or whatever that expression is. But Uncle Larry came back about seven hours later—high on life and possibly gummies, with another story of another one of his crazy adventures. No, the tragedy came a few months later when his doctor diagnosed my full-of-life uncle with stage four pancreatic cancer. Then, four months after that, we said goodbye.
“I had a good run, kiddo,” he said that last day in his hospital bed, rubbing one of the many tears I shed with the pad of his thumb.
“Do an old guy a favor and chat with a stranger sometime. Take a moment to gaze up at the stars every once in a while and think of me when you’re dancing to my favorite song or drinking a Diet Coke. I’ll be watching you, Beans.”
Beans.
He gave me that nickname when I was a kid. I was a rascal. Always full of magic beans.
I can barely remember being like that: full of whimsy and wonder. The world, in its way, prepared me early to watch it claim a beautiful spirit with not so much as an afterthought.
Larry died in his sleep a few hours later, quietly and with little event other than the absence of the beep beep beep of the heart rate machine.
If there were magic beans still lingering deep within my psyche, they died along with him.
1
September 2025
I can hear the music pumping from the store’s speakers as soon as I round the corner onto Queen Street. It’s some obscure song by some obscure band I don’t even attempt to pretend I’ve heard of. The store’s front door is propped open by a tiny stone garden gnome painted to loosely resemble Snoop Dogg, allowing the tiny blue-haired woman to wheel out a rack of carefully curated secondhand treasures onto the storefront sidewalk.
The rack suddenly picks up speed down the ramp, then swings hard to the right. But just as it’s about to flatten me, Koko Hayashida, the owner and sole proprietor of Thrift Me Baby (One More Time), gives it a hard yank, pulling it backward before she locks the metal wheel latch into place with her foot and looks up.
“Oh, hey, Lise.” Koko waves a white crocheted vest in my direction. “Happy Friday.”
Within twenty-eight seconds of our first encounter on this exact same spot three months ago, she gave me a nickname, immediately dropping the dowdy “Anna” half of my name for the much cooler and shorter “Lise.”
“Hey.” I brush my dark fringed bangs from my forehead and loop my right hand under the strap of my backpack, letting it slip from my shoulder in an effort to look more cool and Lise-like.
“Looks like you’ve been doing some shopping?” I incline my head and peer into her already crowded vintage shop, wondering where this rack of clothing even fit before she pulled it out onto the sidewalk.
