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“No,” Elijah says with a smile that looks full of pride in his dear old dad. “He went for a walk. He’s been gone a while, but he should be back soon.”
“He what?” Marigold’s heart begins to hammer in her chest. “It’s too soon for him to be out. Way too soon. He’s good to be out of bed and to hang around with us when he has the energy to be up, but under no circumstances should he be out there walking alone.” She rushes to the front room and jams her feet into a pair of beat up beach shoes. “I have to find him. I can’t believe you let him go, Elijah.” She sounds as disapproving as she feels, and rather than waiting for Elijah to respond, she flings open the front door and rushes toward the beach.
“Mum!” Elijah calls from the open front door. He’s still standing there in an apron with an oven mitt on one hand. “I’m really sorry. He said he felt good enough!”
Marigold lifts a hand in the air to show that she’s heard her son, but she doesn’t slow down or stop.
The island is essentially an oval with bits of land bitten out of it by the water. Seadog Lane runs across the entire southern edge of Shipwreck Key, and Marigold’s bungalow is at the east end of the main road. If she were a betting woman, she’d put money on it that Cobb has ambled down to Seadog Lane from her property, with a plan to walk to the coffee shop and back home again. His thinking would be that if he suddenly doesn’t feel well, he’ll at least be in the presence of people who could pick up a phone and call Marigold to retrieve him. And though this soothes her a bit to know that her ex-husband, always a creature of habit, will most likely be found wandering down the sidewalk in plain view of the other islanders, it also rankles her that he’s even left the house.
“Hey, Marigold!” Heather Charleton-Bicks, one of her good friends and another member of the book club, is stepping out of Jolly Roger Rags with two giant shopping bags in hand. She stops short as Marigold plows down the sidewalk determinedly.
Marigold, harried to her very core and slightly breathless, stops too. “Hi, Heather. Merry Christmas. Almost.” She takes a deep breath and releases it. “By any chance have you seen a very attractive man in his mid-50s wandering down Seadog Lane and probably stopping to pet every dog he sees? He’d be about six-foot tall,” she holds a hand up to show how much taller Cobb is than her, “with light brown hair, a scruffy goatee, and the kind of eyes that make women fall in love with him simply because he’s held the elevator door.”
Heather laughs knowingly. “I know those kind of guys. In fact, I’ve married a few of them.” She lifts one hand, her heavy bag coming with it. “I assume you’re talking about Cobb Hartley though,” she says, looking a tiny bit starstruck. “He just went into The Frog’s Grog after standing around on the sidewalk and talking about music for fifteen minutes with Bev Byer.”
Marigold blanches. “He went into abar?” She starts to walk the rest of the way down the street without saying another word to Heather.
“Wait, Marigold! You didn’t tell us your ex was coming for Christmas!”
Just as she’d done with Elijah as he stood helplessly in the doorway to her bungalow, Marigold lifts a dismissive hand over her shoulder. Only this time she calls out, “I’ll tell you guys all about it at book club!” before storming across the street and making a beeline for the bar.
“Nigel Cobb Hartley!” Marigold shouts as she flings open the heavy, scarred wooden door of The Frog’s Grog. Her voice is ragged, and she stands in the bright light of the midday sun, letting her eyes adjust to the dark bar with its pirate ship interior. Dark wood beams run the length of the ceiling, and the bar and tables are all made of the same weathered ebony wood.
“Uh oh,” Bev says with laughter in his voice. He’s standing behind the bar, polishing a glass with a white rag as he talks to Cobb, who is sitting on a barstool right across from him. “Looks like the boss has found you.”
Cobb turns around on the stool guiltily, looking at Marigold in the doorway. “Hey, Goldie,” he says with a sheepish grin. “I went for a stroll and met this character out on the street. Real nice bloke, this guy.”
“Yeah, he’s a great bloke,” Marigold says, cutting through the nearly empty bar and walking straight up to Cobb. She puts an elbow on the bar and leans in to him, making sure that their eyes are level. “But what in the hell do you think you’re doing?” Marigold slaps the counter with her palm and then lifts her hands to the sky, letting her head fall back in disbelief. “Ina bar, no less?” She looks at him again, letting her hands fall to her sides.
Cobb clears his throat and Bev sets down the glass politely, disappearing through a swinging door to give Marigold and Cobb some privacy.
“Goldie, you’re embarrassing me,” Cobb says quietly, trying not to look peeved. “I went for a walk, and then I came in here for a—“
“A drink?” she asks incredulously. “Did you seriously come in here to have a drink ten days after having bypass surgery? When you’ve been sober for—what—eight years now? Wait,areyou still sober?” she asks, feeling the full weight of the horror that descends upon her. Has she, in fact, brought her ailing ex-husband into her home when he’s fallen off the wagon without telling her?
“Marigold,” Cobb hisses, sliding off the stool. He takes her by the elbow and steers her through the front door and out into the bright December sunlight. “Could you please keep it down? All of that is my personal business, and I don’t need random strangers talking about how Cobb Hartley just had bypass surgery, or how Cobb has started drinking again. So knock it off.”
Marigold puts both hands up and shakes her head. “Did you just refer to yourself in the third person? Are you that self-important?”
Cobb lets out a stream of breath, rubbing his lips together as he cools off. “Listen,” he says, putting both hands on his hips and looking at the ground beneath their feet. “I am sober. I have been sober for nine years. I met Bev out here on the sidewalk and we started talking about Neil Young. He invited me in for a lemonade, on the house, and it seemed innocent enough. I am not and have not been tempted by alcohol for a long time, Goldie. I like the way I am now, and I’m not willing to mess that up.”
Marigold’s anger starts to dissipate as Cobb talks, but she can still feel the panic that had grown inside of her, imagining him falling down on Seadog Lane as pains rocketed through his chest because he’d chosen to go on a walk when he wasn’t ready.
“Okay,” she says, nodding in defeat. “I hear you. But you still cannot get up and leave the house like this. Elijah was busy baking cookies and thinking nothing of his dad out wandering the island without supervision.”
Cobb laughs. His indignation melts away as he looks at Marigold’s concerned face. “Hey, love,” he says, reaching out a hand to touch her on the arm. She yanks away from him, still mad. “I appreciate your concern, but I’m feeling pretty good today. And although your house reminds me of home, I was feeling a bit stir crazy, you know? Cooped up.”
“Then you should have walked in and interrupted me, Cobb. Told me you wanted fresh air. I would have gladly paused and come out with you, and it would have been safer anyway. But you don’t think like that, and you never have,” she says, getting ramped up again as the words spill out. “There were a million times during our marriage when it would have been so easy for you to put yourself in my shoes, or in Elijah’s shoes, but you never did, did you? Rather than simply asking for help, or making a decision that showed you’d given some consideration to someone other than yourself, you always chose you, didn’t you, Cobb?”
Cobb looks around as people pass by them on the sidewalk, his face showing a mix of mortification, anger, and guilt. “Goldie,” he says, “I’m sorry.” This time when he reaches out he takes her hand in his, trying to mollify her. “I truly am. You’re talking about a different person in a different time. That’s the old Cobb, but this is the new one.” He pats his chest with the hand that’s not holding hers. “And yes, I know I just spoke about myself in third person again, but cut me some slack. You’re out here shouting about our dirty laundry to a bunch of strangers, and it’s making me nervous.”
Marigold has more to say, but instead she stops herself. She holds her tongue for a beat, staring into the eyes of the man she’d loved for decades. It’s possible that he’s telling her the truth, and that he is an entirely different man than the one she’d finally left. It’s also possible that so much of what happened between them left a deep scar on her heart, one that won’t easily be healed with just apologies and with Cobb turning over a new, sober leaf. There are things between them that she left unsaid when they divorced, because at that time, it was all Cobb could do to keep his own head above water, and the last thing she’d wanted to do was drag him under with her own hurts and accusations. It had seemed unnecessary then. But there’s still a lot of unexamined pain between them, and it appears to be manifesting as anger.
Marigold takes Cobb’s cue and looks around; there are definitely people out shopping for Christmas and enjoying an afternoon on Shipwreck Key, and while she can’t help how she feels on the inside, she can definitely help the way she acts on the outside.
“You’re right, Cobby,” she says softly, still holding his hand. She shakes it and gives it a squeeze to let him know that she’s calmed down. “You’re right. I’m sorry for making a scene here. You just worried the crap out of me. And not for the first time.” Marigold locks in on his gaze and holds it, making sure that he gets her meaning—there’s a lifetime of worry and anguish between them, and all is not forgiven. Not yet.
“I know,” Cobb says, holding her hand properly in his as they start to walk back down Seadog Lane in the direction of Marigold’s house. “I know, love.” They stroll quietly for a minute or two, watching as golf carts decorated with tinsel and lights tool around, their drivers stopping in front of The Scuttlebutt for coffee, at Chips Ahoy for fish and chips to eat on the beach, or for last minute gifts at Jolly Roger Rags or Doubloons and Full Moons.
