Christmas Eve at Friday Harbor

  “I’m right most of the time,” he admitted modestly.

  A laugh rustled in her throat.

  “Why did you open a toy store on the island?” he asked.

  “It was sort of a natural segue. I used to paint children’s furniture. That was how I met my husband. He had an unfinished furniture factory where I bought some of my stuff—little table-and-chair sets, bed frames—but after we got married I stopped painting for a while, because of his…you know, the cancer. And when I started working again, I wanted to try something different. Something fun.”

  When she saw that he was about to ask something else, possibly about Eddie, she forestalled him by asking quickly, “What do you do?”

  “I have a coffee-roasting business.”

  “Like a home-based business, or—”

  “I’ve got two partners, and a facility in Friday Harbor. We have a big industrial roaster that can produce about a hundred pounds per hour. We have about a half-dozen roast profiles we sell under our own name, but we’ve also come up with a few different lines for outlets on the island as well as Seattle, Lynnwood…and a restaurant in Bellingham, actually.”

  “Really? What’s the name?”

  “A vegetarian place called Garden Variety.”

  “I love that place! But I’ve never tried the coffee.”

  “Why not?”

  “I gave it up a few years ago, after reading an article that said it wasn’t good for you.”

  “It’s practically a health tonic,” Mark said indignantly. “Full of antioxidants and phytochemicals. It reduces your risk of certain kinds of cancer. Did you know that the word ‘coffee’ comes from an Arabic phrase that translates to ‘wine of the bean’?”

  “I didn’t know that,” Maggie said, smiling. “You take your coffee seriously, don’t you?”

  “Every morning,” he replied, “I run to the coffeemaker like a soldier returning to a lost love after the war.”

  Maggie grinned, thinking what a wonderful voice he had, low but penetrating. “When did you start drinking it?”

  “High school. I was studying for an exam. I tried my first cup of coffee because I thought it would help me stay awake.”

  “What do you like most about it? The taste? The caffeine?”

  “I like starting the day with news and Jamaica Blue Mountain. I like having a cup in the afternoon while complaining about the Mariners or the Seahawks. I like knowing that in one cup of coffee, you’re getting flavors from places most of us will never see. The Tanzanian foothills of Kilimanjaro…the Indonesian islands…Colombia, Ethiopia, Brazil, Cameroon…I like it that a truck driver can have just as good a cup of coffee as a millionaire. But most of all I like the ritual. It brings friends together, it’s the perfect ending to dinner…and on occasion it can tempt a beautiful woman to come up to your apartment.”

  “That has nothing to do with coffee. You could tempt a woman with a glass of tap water.” An instant later, eyes widening, Maggie covered her mouth with her hand. “I don’t know why I said that,” she said through the screen of her fingers, mortified and marveling.

  Their gazes met for an electric moment. And then a smile touched his lips, and Maggie felt her heart give a hard extra thump.

  Mark shook his head to indicate that it was no problem. “I was forewarned.” He gestured to their surroundings. “Transportation makes you lose your inhibitions.”

  “Yes.” Mesmerized by his warm blue-green eyes, Maggie struggled to regain the thread of conversation. “What were we were talking about?…Oh, coffee. I’ve never had coffee that tasted as good as the roasted beans smell.”

  “Someday I’ll make you the best cup of coffee you’ve ever had. You’ll follow me around begging for more hot water percolated through ground robusta.”

  As Maggie laughed, she sensed that something had come alive in the air around them. Attraction, she realized in wonder. She had thought somehow that she’d lost the capacity for this, the vibrant sensual awareness of another person.

  The ferry was moving. She hadn’t even noticed the blare of the ferry horn. The powerful engine sent vibrations along the bones of the vessel, softer thrums milling through the floors and seats, as regular as a heartbeat.

  Maggie thought she should take an interest in the view as they headed across the strait, but it had lost its usual power to entice her. She looked back at the man opposite her, the relaxed strength of him, the splayed knees and the long arm propped on the back of the bench.

  “How are you spending the weekend?” she asked.

  “Visiting a friend.”

  “The woman who was at the store with you?”

  His expression became guarded. “Yes. Shelby.”

  “She seemed nice.”

  “She is.”

  Maggie knew she should have left it at that. But her curiosity about him was growing beyond all casual boundaries. As she tried to summon an image of the composed, attractive blond woman—Shelby—she remembered having thought that they looked right together. Like the couples in jewelry commercials. “Is it serious between you?”

  He pondered that. “I don’t know.”

  “How long have you been going out?”

  “A few months.” A contemplative pause before he added, “Since January.”

  “Then you already know if things are serious.”

  Mark looked torn between annoyance and amusement. “It takes some of us longer to figure it out than others.”

  “What’s left to figure out?”

  “If I can overcome the fear of eternity.”

  “I should tell you my motto. It’s a quote from Emily Dickinson.”

  “I don’t have a motto,” he said reflectively.

  “Everyone should have a motto. You can borrow mine if you want.”

  “What is it?”

  “‘Forever is composed of nows.’” Maggie paused, her smile turning wistful at the edges. “You shouldn’t worry about forever…time runs out faster than you expect.”

  “Yes.” Somewhere in his quiet tone there was a bleak note. “I found that out when I lost my sister.”

  She gave him a sympathetic glance. “You were close to her?”

  There was an unaccountably long pause. “The Nolans have never been what anyone would call a close-knit family. It’s like a casserole. You can take a bunch of ingredients that are fine on their own, but put them all together and it turns into something really terrible.”

  “Not all casseroles are bad,” Maggie said.

  “Name a good one.”

  “Macaroni and cheese.”

  “That’s not a casserole.”

  “What is it, then?”

  “It’s a vegetable.”

  Maggie burst out laughing. “Good try. But it is a casserole.”

  “If you say so. But it’s the only casserole I like. All the others taste like something you put together to empty out the pantry.”

  “I have my grandmother’s recipe for mac and cheese. Four kinds of cheese. And toasted bread crumbs on the top.”

  “You should make it for me sometime.”

  Of course that would never happen. But the idea of it caused heat to rise from her neck, spreading up to her hairline. “Shelby wouldn’t like it.”

  “No. She doesn’t eat carbs.”

  “I meant me cooking for you.”

  Mark said nothing, only looked out the window with a distracted expression. Was he thinking of Shelby? Anticipating seeing her soon?

  “What would you serve with it?” he asked after a moment.

  Maggie’s grin fractured into a laugh. “I’d serve it as a main course with grilled asparagus on the side…and maybe a tomato and arugula salad.” It seemed like forever since she’d made anything beyond the simplest meals for herself, since cooking for one rarely seemed worth the effort. “I love to cook.”

  “We have something in common.”

  “You love to cook, too?”

  “No, I love to eat.”

  “Wh
o does the cooking at your house?”

  “My brother Sam and I take turns. We’re both terrible.”

  “I have to ask: How in the world did you end up deciding to raise Holly together?”

  “I knew I couldn’t do it alone. But there was no one else, and I couldn’t put Holly into foster care. So I guilted Sam into helping.”

  “No regrets?”

  Mark shook his head immediately. “Losing my sister was the worst thing that’s ever happened to me, but having Holly in my life is the best. Sam would say the same.”

  “Has it been what you expected?”

  “I didn’t know what to expect. We take it day by day. There are great moments…the first time Holly caught a fish at Egg Lake…or one morning when she and Sam decided to build a waffle tower with bananas and marshmallows for breakfast…you should have seen the kitchen. But there are the other moments, when we’re out somewhere and we see a family…” He hesitated. “And I see it in Holly’s face, wondering what it would be like to have one.”

  “You are a family,” Maggie said.

  “Two uncles and a kid?”

  “Yes, that’s a family.”

  As they continued to talk, it somehow slipped into the bonelessly comfortable, unstructured conversation of longtime friends, both of them letting it go where it would.

  She told him what it was like to have lived in a big family—the endless competition for hot water, for attention, for privacy. But even with the squabbling and rivalry, they had been affectionate and happy, and had taken care of each other. By the time Maggie was in fourth grade, she had known how to cook dinner for ten. She had worn nothing but hand-me-downs and never thought a thing about it. The only thing she had truly minded was that possessions were always lost or broken. “You get to a point where you can’t let it matter,” she said. “So even as a little girl I developed a Buddhist-like nonattachment to my toys. I’m good at letting go of things.”

  Although Mark was hardly verbose when it came to discussing his family, there were a few spare revelations. Maggie gathered that the Nolan parents had been absorbed in their private war of a marriage while their offspring sustained the collateral damage. Holidays, birthdays, family occasions—all set the stage for routine showdowns.

  “We stopped having Christmas when I was fourteen,” Mark told her.

  Maggie’s eyes widened. “Why?”

  “It started because of a bracelet my mom saw while she was out with Victoria. It was in a store window, and they went in and she tried it on, and told Vick she had to have it. So they came home all excited, and from then on, all Mom talked about was how much she wanted that bracelet for Christmas. She gave Dad the information about it, and kept asking had he done anything about it, when was he going to get it, and it became this huge deal. So Christmas morning came, and there was no bracelet.”

  “What did he give her instead?” Maggie asked, fascinated and appalled.

  “I don’t remember. A blender or something. Anyway, Mom was so angry that she said we would never have a family Christmas again.”

  “Ever?”

  “Ever. I think she’d been looking for an excuse, and that was it. And we were all relieved. From then on we all went our separate ways for Christmas, spent it at friends’ houses, or went to a movie or something.” Seeing her expression, he felt the need to add, “It was really fine. Christmas never meant what it was supposed to, for us. But here’s the weird part of the story: Victoria felt so bad about the whole thing that she got Sam and Alex and me to pitch in and buy the bracelet for Mom’s birthday. We all worked and saved up for it, and Victoria wrapped it in fancy paper with a big bow. And when Mom opened it, we were expecting some huge reaction—tears of joy, something like that. But instead…it was like she didn’t remember the bracelet at all. She said, ‘How nice,’ and ‘Thank you,’ and that was it. And I never remember seeing her wear it.”

  “Because it was never about the bracelet.”

  “Yeah.” He gave her an arrested look. “How did you know that?”

  “Most of the time when couples argue, it’s not really about the thing they’re fighting about; there’s a deeper reason why they’re arguing.”

  “When I argue with someone, it’s always about the thing I’m arguing about. I’m shallow that way.”

  “What do you and Shelby argue about?”

  “We don’t.”

  “You never argue about anything?”

  “Is that bad?”

  “No, no, not at all.”

  “You think it’s bad.”

  “Well…I guess it depends on the reason. Is there no conflict because you happen to agree about absolutely everything? Or is it because neither of you is all that invested in the relationship?”

  Mark pondered that. “I’m going to pick a fight with her as soon as I reach Seattle, and find out.”

  “Please don’t,” Maggie said, laughing.

  It seemed they had only been talking for ten or fifteen minutes, but eventually it registered with Maggie that people were gathering their belongings, and preparing for the arrival at Anacortes. The ferry was crossing the Rosario Strait. A mournful blare irritated her into the awareness that an hour and a half had disappeared with unbelievable speed. She felt herself coming out of something like a trance. And she reflected privately that the ferry ride to Anacortes had been more fun than anything she had done in months. Maybe years.

  Standing, Mark looked down at her with a disarming half smile. “Hey…” The soft tone of his voice sent a pleasant prickling sensation along the back of her neck. “Are you taking the ferry back on Sunday afternoon?”

  She stood as well, unbearably aware of him, her senses wanting to draw in the details of him: the heat of his skin beneath the cotton shirt…the place where the dark locks of his hair, shiny as ribbons, curled slightly against the tanned skin of his neck.

  “Probably,” she said in answer to his question.

  “Will you be on the two forty-five ferry, or the four-thirty?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  Mark nodded, letting it go.

  As he left, Maggie was aware of a sense of unsettling pleasure, edged with yearning. She reminded herself that Mark Nolan was off-limits. And so was she. Not only did she distrust the intensity of her own attraction to him, but she wasn’t ready for the kind of risk he presented.

  She would never be ready for that.

  Some risks you could only afford to take once.

  Five

  Growing up in the Edgemoor neighborhood of Bellingham, Maggie and her brothers and sisters had explored the trails of Chuckanut Mountain and played along the shores of Bellingham Bay. The quiet neighborhood offered views of both the San Juans and the Canadian mountains. It was also situated next to Fairhaven, where you could browse through unique shops and galleries, or eat at restaurants where the waiters could always tell you about the freshest catch and where it had been brought from.

  Bellingham lived up to its nickname of “the city of subdued excitement.” It was laid-back, comfortable; the kind of place where you could be as eccentric as you wanted and you would always find company. Cars were bandaged with every kind of bumper sticker. Competing political yard signs sprang from people’s lawns like spring-flowering bulbs. Any kind of belief was tolerated as long as you weren’t pushy about it.

  After Maggie’s sister Jill picked her up in Anacortes, they went to the historic Fairhaven District for lunch. Since Maggie and Jill were the two youngest siblings in the Norris family, only a year and a half apart in age, they had always been close. They had gone through the school system one grade apart, attended the same camps, shared the same crushes on teen idols. Jill had been the maid of honor at Maggie’s wedding, and she had asked Maggie to be the matron of honor at her upcoming wedding to a local firefighter, Danny Stroud.

  “I’m glad we’re stealing some private time,” Jill said as they shared tapas at Flats, a small Spanish restaurant with oversized picture windows and a tiny ou
tside patio lined with flower boxes. “Once I bring you to Mom and Dad’s house, you’re going to be swarmed and I won’t get to talk to you at all. Except that tomorrow night, you’re going to have to make a little time to meet someone.”

  Maggie paused in the act of lifting a glass of sangria to her lips. “Who?” she asked warily. “Why?”

  “A friend of Danny’s.” Jill’s tone was deliberately casual. “A very cute guy, very sweet—”

  “Did you already ask him over?”

  “No, I wanted to mention it to you first, but—”

  “Good. I don’t want to meet him.”

  “Why? Have you started going out with someone?”

  “Jill, have you forgotten the reason I’m in Bellingham this weekend? It’s the second anniversary of Eddie’s death. The last thing I want to do is meet someone.”

  “I thought this would be the perfect time. It’s been two years. I’ll bet you haven’t been on one date since Eddie died, have you?”

  “I’m not ready yet.”

  Their conversation was interrupted as the waitress brought a bayona sandwich, a grilled pepper sausage and cheese on crusty peasant bread. It was always cut into three parts, the middle being the most succulent, smoky, and melting section of all.

  “How will you know when you’re ready?” Jill asked, after the waitress had left. “Do you have a timer that goes off or something?”

  Maggie regarded her with exasperated affection, reaching for the bayona sandwich.

  “I know a ton of cute single guys in Bellingham,” Jill continued. “I could fix you up so easily. And there you are in Friday Harbor, hiding. You could at least have opened a bar or a sporting-goods shop, where you could meet men. But a toy shop?”

  “I love my shop. I love Friday Harbor.”

  “But are you happy?”

  “I am,” Maggie said reflectively, after consuming a delicious bite of sandwich. “I’m really okay.”

  “Good, now it’s time to go on with your life. You’re only twenty-eight, and you should stay open to the possibility of finding someone.”

  “I don’t want to have to go out there again. The chances of finding real love are about a billion to one. I had it once, and there’s no way it will happen again.”