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“So nice to meet you both.”
Lily says, “I hear you want to learn more about Somerset Harbor through the food. We should talk. Come with me.”
I smile at Beau, then follow her. We walk to a hole near the water, and I ask, “How long have you and Cormac been together?”
She sighs, gazing at him. “Just a few months. But they’ve been the best months of my life.”
“That’s great. I understand you’re an actual chef, not just cooking the clambake?”
“That’s right. I’ll be opening a restaurant soon here in Somerset Harbor, but I had one in Manhattan for a while.”
Huh. “What made you go from there to here?”
“I’m originally from here, actually. My restaurant burned down, so—
“Oh, I’m so sorry. Was anyone hurt?”
She shakes her head. “Thankfully, no. Anyway, my new place will open at my parents’ B&B—"
“Oh my god, you’rethatOlson? I think I’ve been seeing your picture in the family photos where I’m staying.”
She laughs. “Yeah, that’s their place.”
“Somerset Harbor really is a small town.”
“It is, but it’s also pretty great. The clambake was a popular way to feed a group of people after the Civil War, and families up and down the East Coast keep the tradition alive. There are so few traditions that people still maintain and I love the fact that this one is about food that connects us all.” She then looks me over. “And I hope you don’t mind getting wet, because we need rockweed.”
I laugh. “I am game for anything, Lily.”
“Awesome. Let’s do it.”
We roll up our pants and wade out for the seaweed, which thankfully, isn’t too far. Twenty pounds of seaweed later, and our pants are wet by the end of the hunt. Then, she coaches me through lining the pit with rocks and firewood, and we get it burning hot. While waiting for the rocks to reach a super high temperature, we wrap the food in foil. Lily says, “This always takes the longest time, so tell me about yourself.”
“Not much to tell, really. I’m an architect. I live alone—"
“What was the last book you read?”
I smile at the question, unsure how she’ll react. “A delightfully addictive romance novel.”
She grins. “Really?”
“Yeah. It was great.”
“Ooh, tell me everything.”
I laugh and tell her the dirty plot about a girl whose debt gets paid by a mysterious billionaire who has been admiring her from afar. When we finish the foiling, we toss the seaweed onto the hot rocks, along with the corn on the cob and all the other layers. We soak canvas tarps in the sea to become a cover for the top layer of rockweed.
Lily says, “Now the fun part.”
“The food is done already?”
She laughs. “God no. We bury it.”
“Since you dug the hole, I’ll do the burying.”
She stands back. “Be my guest.”
I load it with sand until she says stop, and then we are owed some ice cold beer while we wait. Once the food is ready about an hour later, the meal begins, and all notion of gentility is out the window as the MacMillan clan digs into the shellfish. The adults are just as ravenous and messy as the kids, and it’s a relief to see there’s nothing snobby about Beau’s family at the moment. They might all be in designer clothes, but no one is precious about a damn thing when it comes to drawn butter and seafood.
