The Matchmakers of Minnow Bay (37 page)
Read The Matchmakers of Minnow Bay Online
Authors: Kelly Harms
“You think so? That sounds pretty great.” I can totally see it happening. Exactly like that. Every day like this one. Eighteen forever.
“I have no idea, but I do know one thing for sure. It's going to be an incredible adventure,” says Renee in her unbelievably confident way, the way that makes you feel like someone's got your back, from now until forever. “Wait and see. I'm never wrong.”
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“This is it!” Colleen comes thundering down the stairs of the inn. She hasn't walked quietly anywhere since she got the letter last week from her adoption agency in Haiti. Marianna, age four months, with a full head of dark hair, a cleft palate, and eyes to break your heart, is coming to live in Minnow Bay in three short weeks, where she will become Marianna “Marnie” O'Donnell. The expedited adoption, of course, was paid for by the proceeds of the two paintings Jenny sold, the check I signed over to Colleen and tucked in the envelope I asked Ben to give her on the night I left. The three of us girls like to joke that a Hutchinson ended up giving Colleen her baby after all, but the truth is, Colleen took a chance on me, and Jenny believed in me, and I just gave them back what they had already given.
Hope
for something better than what I had.
Belief
that it was within reach.
“Is it about Marianna?” I ask, popping out of my room on the third floor, which Ben, Steve the dog, and I have been renting and shacking up in together while his house gets to a stage he calls “woman-ready.” That stage is just having walls in all the rooms and screens on the windowsâI'd hardly call that high maintenance, but I sure as hell wasn't moving into that dump.
“No, you idiot,” says Colleen lovingly. “Get dressed. Get Ben! This is
it
!” She turns to her phone and starts feverishly dialing.
Ben wanders out of the room, wearing pajama pants and nothing else. We feel like we're in a college dorm sometimes in the inn, with the comings and goings and the shouting and thundering, but then, we're all practically family by now anyway. I sort of half expect Jenny to pop up from the landing, and then thirty seconds later she does, waiving a FedEx envelope in her hot little hands and making what can only be described as an excited hoot.
“Today's the day!”
“What is going on?” I ask, and wrap my robe tighter around myself.
Ben grabs me from behind and turns me around and gives me a huge kiss that I feel in every hair follicle. “Today's the day, baby.”
“Will someone please tell me what's going on?”
There are days in Minnow Bay when I think that I should probably have the words “Will Someone Please Tell Me What's Going On?” made into a T-shirt. Even when I'm not being snowed for the purposes of Ben Hutchinsonâretention, Minnow Bay continues to mystify and confuse me with its strange rituals and seemingly impromptu parties. I duck into the room and grab a camisole and cardigan to take the place of my robeâI was naked from the waist up for reasons that are neither here nor there except to say that Ben and I are enjoying living togetherâand splash some water on my face and come downstairs.
The entire population of Minnow Bay is standing in the vestibule of the inn.
They are all in their spring coats and hats. The door keeps opening, and new people keep coming in. Simone, Carla Hutchinson, the woman who runs the bistro, the bookstore owner, the yarn-store clerk, people whose names I've learned and forgotten and people who I've never even met. They are milling about noisily and all of them, apparently, are interested in the contents of the FedEx envelope that Jenny is holding.
Ben, I suddenly realize, is standing in front of the painting I gave Colleen those months ago. He's smiling broadly at me. He looks like a total computer dork. Band T-shirt over pajama pants, unbuttoned flannel over that, and not having had time to get cleaned up, he's wearing old glasses and sporting a college-kid beard. I'm so in love with him. The last three months have hit me hard.
Jenny hands Ben the package. “Are you sure this is it?” Ben asks, and he looks a little nervous.
Jenny nods. “I peeked,” she tells him. I hear the sound of truck doors outside. One by one, the Hutchinson boys are starting to arrive now from further afield.
And then I get it.
My heart starts to tighten, to pound, and I swear my face starts shimmering with excitement.
Ben opens the FedEx envelope with a flourish, reaches inside, pulls out a few official-looking documents, and clears his throat loudly. “Everyone, excuse me, everyone? May I have your attention, please?”
The room quiets, if only slightly.
“SHUT UP YOU GUYS,” says Jenny. The inn goes silent.
“Renee?” says Colleen into her speakerphone. “Can you hear us now?”
“I can hear!” Renee hollers from Chicago. “Good luck, Ben!”
Ben inhales deeply, and then looks from me to the crowd. “I'd like to announce a very important moment in my life that starts today. I hold here in my hands the official papers from the state of Nevada, Clark County, dated yesterday, April 19 of this very year. Hereby,” he reads, “the court finds in favor of the expedited annulment of the marriage of one Benjamin Hutchinson and Lily Sylvia Stewart, and revokes the marriage certificate of said couple, effective retroactively, for reasons of incapacity and incompetence!”
There's a mighty cheer in the room and I laugh. How can I not, when I finally understand what is coming next.
“And with that,” Ben calls over the cheer, “I can now officially tell you all that I am madly in love with a woman who is finally unmarried for the first time in ten years, and I would like her to immediately become married, and to me, and, if she sees fit to do so, I would like her to become married to me as soon as humanly possible!”
I start crying like a moron. There is more cheering. I cry harder.
“So I am going to ask you right now, Lily Sylvia Stewart, now that you have become my lawfully unwedded ex-wife, will you please, please, re-marry me?”
And there, in the Minnow Bay Inn where my life fell apart and was put back together and now will begin anew in ways better than I could have ever dreamed, I wrap my arms around my ex-husband and, in a voice loud enough for the entire town to hear, I say, “Yes.”
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Thank you to:
Holly Root, for making me start this, and Laurie Chittenden, for making me finish it.
Tom Dunne and Pete Wolverton: the ne plus ultra of publishing, and Katie Bassel and Melanie Fried for being indefatigable.
Hatch Art House, Art Beat of Hayward, and Absolutely Art of Madison, for setting my mind awhirl with the sublime beauty of the Midwestern landscape. The Art Institute of Chicago, for setting my heart on fire with the sublime beauty of everything else.
Kris Adams, Jennifer Ferreter Sabet, Abbie Foster Chaffee, Kelly Hilyard, Mrs. Emil Hoelter, Ms. Tina Juntunen, Amanda Maciel, Kimberly Megna Yarnall, Sara Naatz, Kelly O'Connor McNees, Barbara Poelle, Anna Rybicki, Ellen Shanman, and Cricket Stevens Gage: these incredible women are my Minnow Bay Village.
The Harms family: Claire, Doug, Kris, Roger, Sally, and Griffin, I love you.
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A
LSO BY
K
ELLY
H
ARMS
The Good Luck Girls of Shipwreck Lane
Â
K
ELLY
H
ARMS
is a former editor and literary agent who has worked with a wide array of bestselling and award-winning authors of commercial fiction. She traded New York City for the writing life in Madison, Wisconsin, where she lives with her adorable and sometimes imperious toddler, Griffin. She is the author of
The Good Luck Girls of Shipwreck Lane
. You can sign up for email updates
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Contents
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This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.
THOMAS DUNNE BOOKS.
An imprint of St. Martin's Press.
THE MATCHMAKERS OF MINNOW BAY.
Copyright © 2016 by Kelly Harms. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
Cover photographs: lanterns on snow © Christofer Dracke / Getty Images; hand lettering by Iskra Design
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Harms, Kelly, author.
Title: The matchmakers of Minnow Bay: a novel / Kelly Harms.
Description: First edition. | New York: Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin's Press, 2016.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016002480 | ISBN 978-1-250-07061-6 (hardcover) | ISBN 978-1-4668-8094-8 (e-book)
Subjects: LCSH: Man-woman relationshipsâFiction. | City and town lifeâFiction. | Mate selectionâFiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Contemporary Women. | GSAFD: Love stories.
Classification: LCC PS3608.A7493 M38 2016 | DDC 813/.6âdc23
LC record available at
http://lccn.loc.gov/2016002480
e-ISBN 9781466880948
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