Swept Away (22 page)

I nod. The warning is clear. Hands off.

He studies the muffins a bit longer, then sets up some racks on the counter. He taps the tops of a few. “Gotta be patient,” he says, I think to me, and not the muffins this time. “Don't want to leave half of them behind in the tins.”

He crosses to the fridge. “Kids drink soda, right?” He pulls out a can and holds it out to me.

I take it from him, hoping it will clear the lump in my throat. Freaky dumps the muffins out of the tins and onto the racks, then carefully turns them right-side up. He has a surprisingly delicate touch. He gives me another one of those sideways glances.

“Should probably test them,” he says with a twinkle a lot like Oliver's—at least when he's not mad at me. “Wouldn't want to serve subpar muffins to the family.”

I manage my first smile since Hubbard Island. Freaky chooses two muffins (he dubs them Lumpy and Lopsided) and puts them on plates for us. I've had dinner here a gazillion times, but I still feel a little nervous being here by myself. Not because I think Freaky is a freak anymore; I just don't really know what to say to him. Or if he knows what a superjerk I was to Oliver.

If Oliver did tell him, Freaky doesn't seem to be holding it against me. His twinkly blue eyes watch me as I take a big bite.

My eyes widen as the flavors collide in my mouth.

“New recipe,” Freaky says. “Threw in some shredded coconut and added a little almond flour.”

I swallow and lick crumbs from my lips. “Amazing.”

“Oliver and his ma seem to go for my baking,” he says. “So I want to keep up a steady stream.”

“Who wouldn't go for your baking?” I say. “Or anything else you make,” I add before taking another bite.

Freaky holds up his lumpy muffin and studies it. He breaks it into two, then pops one half into his mouth. “Hurt feelings come out in all kinds of ways,” he mutters as he chews.

My stomach lurches. “Wh-what did Oliver say?” I ask. And what could it have to do with muffins?

Freaky looks at me, startled. “Oh, sorry. So used to talking to myself, I forgot I had a listener. Even with the kids staying here.”

If I'm going to get Oliver to forgive me, I should try to find out what he might have told his grandfather. “So Oliver . . . ?” I prompt.

He frowns, as if he's trying to remember his train of thought. He waves a hand when he figures it out. “It's not Ollie. His ma, well, even though she certainly appreciates what's put on the table, she resents it too.”

“Why?” I hope that's not impolite, but I figure since he opened up the door by telling me something this personal he won't mind. Between Alice asking me to call her by her first name, and Freaky telling me his problems with her, I feel awfully grown up.

“I didn't do any of this”—he gestures around the kitchen­—“when she was small. So something about my doing it now irks her.” He pops the second half of the muffin into his mouth. “She
eats it all, mind you, second helpings too, but it bothers her.”

I have no idea what to say. But this is definitely a conversation I never expected to have with freaking Freaky Framingham. “So if someone's mad at you, what's the best way to make them stop?”

His face twists up, and he slaps the table with a loud “Ha!” I startle and bounce a little in my chair. “I've been trying to figure out the answer to that one for most of your young life. Longer.”

I trace an invisible line on the table in front of me, keeping my eyes glued to my finger. “I—I was really mean to Oliver.”

Freaky gets up and pours himself coffee from a stainless thermos. The mug he's using is chipped; I wonder if he makes pity purchases too. He leans against the counter and squints into the mug, like a fortune-teller reading tea leaves. “Sorry's a hard thing to say. Sometimes, though, you can tell how important a thing is by how hard it is to do.” He crosses to the table and sits down again. “But it's not just saying the sorry. Any fool can say words. It's how you back up those words that counts.”

“Yeah . . . ,” I murmur. “So you keep trying new recipes? To find the one that will make everything okay?”

He reaches over and pats my hand. I'm so surprised I don't even react. “I knew there was something about you I liked,” he says. “That's it exactly.”

I grin. “That would be such a cool story. A baker searching for the one perfect recipe to solve all the problems of the world.”

He looks impressed. “I like that.” He gets back up and starts to move the muffins from the cooling rack to a platter. “Sometimes it doesn't even matter if you get the recipe right. Sometimes what matters is that you just keep trying.”

It's so weird that I'm having this conversation with Freaky Framingham. “How come the people you're supposed to be able to talk to are the ones who are the hardest?” I ask, thinking of my mom.

“Depends,” he says, his back still to me. “Afraid to disappoint them, maybe? Fear that what we're going to say will make them think differently of us. Or prove something we were afraid they already thought.”

Since Mom already thinks Justin is perfect and I'm the problem child, Freaky's theory makes a lot of sense. If she knew I'd behaved like such a brat, the worst thing would be if she chalked it up as typical Mandy. Sometimes I wonder if Dad hadn't died when I was eight and Justin was eleven if he and Justin would have fought like me and Mom, and Dad would have beamed at
me
the way Mom does at Justin. We've been getting along better lately, and I guess our current truce still feels fragile.

“Oliver and his mom talk a lot,” I comment.

Freaky comes back to the table for his coffee mug. “Yeah, they're good that way.”

I hear the sound of tires on gravel, and my heart speeds up.

“Sounds like they're home,” he says. He gets up and heads out to the living room. I hear the door open, then he says, “Ollie, Mandy's here.”

I grip the edge of the table to keep from fleeing out the back door. The pounding in my ears blocks out any response Oliver has, so I have no way of knowing how he reacts to this info.

Then he's in the doorway. And then I'm standing up. And then we're staring at each other.

“Hey,” I say softly. Probably too softly for him to hear. I clear my throat. “Uh, so hi.”

He doesn't say anything. Not a good sign.

I force myself to jump right in. “Okay, so I'm sorry. Super sorry. Colossally sorry.”

Freaky was wrong. The hard thing isn't saying sorry—the hard thing is the gap between when you say it and when the other person answers.

Oliver crosses to the fridge and pulls out a soda. Even his back looks angry.

“Um . . . I'm trying to apologize here,” I say, shifting my weight and then shifting it back.

I hear him pop the can, then he takes a swig. “Yeah, I got that.” He turns around. “I'm trying to figure out what you're sorry for.”

“For—for all of it. I mean, you're obviously mad at me, so clearly I have reasons to apologize, right?” I'm so confused. Doesn't he think I owe him an apology?

“Yeah,” Oliver says. “But what I'm trying to figure out is what happened. You were acting like I was the one who did something wrong, but I can't for the life of me figure out what.”

“That's part of what I'm saying sorry for.” I sit back down and rest my forehead on my hands. “I messed up, didn't I?”

“I don't know! Did you?”

I raise my eyes to meet his. Now he doesn't look angry; he looks genuinely confused. And upset.

“You did everything right,” I explain. “Well, except for maybe where you didn't ask me if I wanted to go, you just . . . well, that part doesn't matter,” I add quickly when a flicker of temper
crosses his face. I plow on. “I should have told you. I'm not really big on the communing-with-nature kind of scenario. Allergies. Falling down. Well, you saw. It wasn't a pretty picture.”

“Why didn't you just tell me?”

I throw up my hands. “You didn't give me a chance. You were all excited, with a big picnic and guidebooks.”

“Big whoop.”

He still sounds mad. He comes closer to the table. “Why do you think I'd want to do something that wouldn't be fun for you?”

He's got me there. I pick up tiny muffin crumbs with my fingertip.

He slides onto the chair across from me, where Freaky had just been sitting. “Have you been doing that all along? Only pretending to like stuff? Humoring me?”

I can't respond, knowing he's not going to like my answer.

“So this whole thing? It's all been fake?” He stands up with such force the chair wobbles. He grabs it and rights it with a thud.

“No!” I'm on my feet too. “None of this is fake. None of the real parts.”

He glares at me like I just said something really dumb, which come to think of it, I just did. “I mean, the important parts, the parts that make things real.” Ugh! Why is this so hard?

“So what
were
you pretending? The things that you don't consider”—here he uses air quotes—“important?”

“Movies,” I blurt. “I hated
Far Far Away
when I saw it the first time and even more when we saw it together.”

His eyebrows rise. “Really? I thought it was—” He stops himself and shakes his head. “But why would you do that? And why
do you keep making me pick what we do? That's why I didn't ask you about Hubbard. I thought you liked being surprised. I figured that's why you always have me choose.”

Huh. That would have been a better reason than the actual one. “I—I was afraid you wouldn't like what I picked,” I admit. I finally look directly at him despite the tears welling in my eyes. “And then you wouldn't like
me
.”

We hold like that for a moment, and I'm stunned as I watch all the angry drain out of him. Stunned and relieved. He does that sideways thing with his mouth. “Sardonic,” I think, is the SAT word for it.

“Are we done fighting now? Apology accepted?” I ask.

“On one condition,” he says, making his way around the table.

“Ooo-kay,” I say cautiously.

“From now on, you have to be more honest with me. If you don't like something, tell me. If you want to do something different, tell me. It's been a lot of pressure to keep coming up with things for us to do.”

I cross my heart with my index finger. “Absolutely. Scout's honor.” Exactly like Freaky said, I have to back up the words with actions.

“I have an idea of something to do,” I add. Then I hurl myself into his arms.

W
hen Oliver comes to pick me up the next day at Candy Cane, I actually have an activity in mind. “Can we go through the exhibits?” I ask.

He gives me a skeptical look. “That's more my thing, right? Our deal was—”

I cut him off. “I really want to. That night in here, it got me thinking about what it must have been like to have been the keeper in the old days. I want to learn more about it.”

Oliver grins. “Cool. Where should we start?”

I glance around the lobby. “How about right here?”

“I have an idea,” Oliver says as I shut the door and lock it. I don't want anyone thinking the lighthouse is still open. “How about you make up a story about whatever we're looking at, then I'll tell you the actual history. I'll bet my true stories are just as interesting as your made-up ones.”

I smirk. “Too bad there's no one here to act as judge,” I tell him, “because I will so win this bet.”

He points to a series of framed pictures hanging above the case. There's a diagram of Candy Cane, identifying the different parts. Beside it is a poster with the headings “Daymarks,” “Flash Patterns,” and “Foghorns,” explaining what each one is.

“Is this a test?” I ask. I put on my best schoolteacher voice. “Daymarks refer to the distinct shape and color scheme of each lighthouse so that a sailor knows where he is during the day when the light's not visible. Flash patterns”—I stop, trying to remember—“are the distinct way the light flashes for a particu­lar lighthouse. Kinda like Morse code, but not. Foghorns—self-­explanatory, right?”

“So the question is,” Oliver asks with a grin, “who decided Candy Cane should have the red spiral around the tower?”

I grin. Over the years I've entertained Cynthia with varia
tions of this story. I think back until I find the one she liked the best. “Okay, a long time ago, a nearsighted elf was on a mission for Santa in Rocky Point. He accidentally crashed into the original all-white tower. After he came to, the evil lighthouse keeper had him tied up in the tower. He recognized the elf for a magical being, though not quite clear on what kind. Using magic, the elf made the red swirl around the tower. When Santa and his reindeer search party flew over Rocky Point, Santa instantly recognized the giant candy cane as a distress signal, since candy canes are often used as markers up at Santa's workshop. You know, where there may be a message, or something to investigate.

“Using elfin magic, they turned the evil keeper into a buoy and put him out to sea. But it turned out that the elf had fallen in love with his candy-cane tower—and the lighthouse keeper's
non
evil daughter—and so he became the new lighthouse keeper of Rocky Point.”

Oliver is smiling broadly. “Okay, that's a much better story than the lighthouse board making the decision, even if they did get into a whopping argument over this particular design. Practically Hatfield and McCoy about it.”

“Well, I have to confess, I didn't make it up on the spot. It's from the archives.”

“What archives? The historical society?”

“Why would they have a story about Santa Claus in . . . never mind. No. When we come up with a good story, Cynthia and I always say ‘put that one in the archives' so that we'll remember it.”