The Scarlet Letter Society (22 page)

She pulled into the Matthew’s Island Country Store. On the island there were three restaurants, a few carry-out places, and the country store; her favorite place. Patty and Jack, who had bought the store a few years before, had created something completely rare in today’s world: a sense of place. They’d respected the history of the store. Its original wooden shelves, sagging slightly under a century of supplies, still held flour and canned goods and trash bags. But they’d incorporated local art and local wines and excellent homemade prepared foods and baked goods so the store had a modern feel as well. It was the perfect blend of old and new, and Eva bought everything from them when she was visiting. Local watermen brought fresh crabmeat and oysters caught on in the Chesapeake Bay, and a local creamery delivered ice cream in an amazing array of flavors.

Patty and Jack always greeted her, and all their customers, by name. They knew she’d order the London Broil on a plain wrap with their homemade horseradish sauce. They knew she’d go to the freezer in the back to see what new flavors of homemade ice cream had arrived.

There was comfort in familiarity. Even though she wasn’t on the island but maybe once a month, everyone locally seemed to know her and no one treated her like a tourist (what islanders often referred to as a “chicken necker” or an “up-the-roader.”).

Eva took the short drive to her mother’s cottage.
My cottage
, she corrected herself. Once the will had been executed, of course the cottage had been bequeathed to her as the only child. Her mom didn’t have any money, just enough to cover the expenses of her death and burial, but she had this cottage.
Her home
. And now it was Eva’s.

She drove toward the southern tip of the island and turned left on Tilghman’s Neck road. Many years ago, before a population decline, Matthew’s Island had consisted of four small villages. Tilghman Neck was one of them. There was still a small church and post office (though now residences) and even though the entire
island was only four miles long, the small village with its cluster of 20-25 houses had an even cozier feel to it. She pulled into the driveway.

The cottage sat at the end of the drive, off to itself a bit, nestled near some loblolly pine trees and constructed diagonally to face the water. Built in 1932, it was a Cape Cod-style house with arts and crafts styling, though no truly high form of architecture existed on the provincial island. There was a screened front porch with a vintage 1930s metal porch furniture set: a three seat glider, two rocking chairs and a matching table. She entered the porch, always appreciating the
thwap
of the wooden screen door behind her. The extra key was “hidden” under a jar of seafoam green sea glass on the coffee table. She used this key, forgetting that she had her mom’s set in her purse now.

Eva’s mom had been a great decorator, achieving the perfect “coastal style” after devouring books and magazines on the décor for years. The soft aqua, yellow, orange and cream hues throughout the cottage creating a soothing environment and a perfect backdrop for her sea glass and driftwood accents. Eva put the groceries away in the small retro red and white kitchen with its two-seat chrome metal table and vinyl and chrome chairs. She stopped and stared at the table. It was like the ghost of her mom was sitting there, drinking her coffee and reading the newspaper like she did every day for fifty years, the last several decades alone since her husband had died.

Every moment she remembered her mom wasn’t coming back felt like a punch to the stomach. Being in the cottage alone was strange. It wasn’t bad, it was just different. Quiet, peaceful, a tiny bit spooky. She would have to learn how to be alone. She was used to noisy worlds: teenage boys, industrious big city law firms. When she’d left this island at age 18, she swore she would never come back. After growing up in such a small place, she wanted nothing but big cities. But now, the smallness of it all created a completely perfect place for her to try to put the pieces of her life back together, somehow.

She sat down at the small table to eat her meal. Taking out her iPad, she put her Pandora 80s station for background noise, and did the first thing she always did when she got to the cottage: she checked the tide schedule. As any good sea glass
hunter knew, low tide was the best time of the day to find the shards of bottles and tableware from years past. Enormous antique apothecary jars like the one in her office, filled with sea glass in colors that matched each room’s décor around the cottage, awaited her new beach finds after they were cleaned and dried and sorted. Tomorrow morning, she knew where she’d be at 9:10 a.m.: on the beach, picking up the broken pieces.

Lisa walked into the downtown restaurant and saw Ben sitting at the bar. She immediately recognized the blazer/jeans/tousled dark brown hair and that fabulous smile with that goddamn distracting dimple as he got up from his seat and turned to face her.
That dimple
, she had written in her diary,
is so entrancing
. She walked over and he reached out to embrace her. He held on to her for a second longer than casual business acquaintances or friends would do, and she breathed in his smell. It was familiar, and she felt a shiver through her spine as he stepped away.

“So what do beautiful bakers like to drink?” asked Ben, looking into her face intently with those gypsy hazel eyes. “Vanilla vodka? Chocolate liqueur?”

“Beer,” said Lisa, smiling at him. “It’s pumpkin ale season, and there’s a local brew I love.”

“Sounds great. I’ll try one, too,” said Ben. “Do you want to get an appetizer here at the bar, or should we get a table?”

“Oh, let’s stay here and get an appetizer,” Lisa said. She was too nervous to sit at a table—any one of her customers or her stupid subdivision neighbors could walk in, and sitting at the bar with someone who wasn’t your husband seemed so much less formal than having a table to themselves.

They ordered the crab dip with homemade Old Bay chips, a Maryland staple, and some calamari. The pumpkin ales arrived and they sipped from the bottles.

“So you haven’t told me much about your husband,” said Ben.

“Well, he’s a real estate developer in DC, so he’s gone a lot,” said Lisa, and then she found herself blurting out, “and he has a foot fetish, which is really awful
since I have a whole closet full of shoes I don’t even wear. I’d rather turn them all into cast iron cookware or a new Viking stove or a college fund.”

Ben laughed softly. “I’m sorry,” he said, “I don’t mean to laugh. But I think that’s more words in a row than I’ve ever heard you say.”

Lisa blushed and said, “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” said Ben. “I like the idea of getting to know you. And that sucks about the whole shoe thing. I’ve heard of foot fetishes but I don’t know much about them and I wasn’t even sure they were a real thing. I guess they are.”

“Oh, it’s real,” said Lisa. “Believe me. I probably have $40,000 worth of shoes that say it’s real. Too bad he doesn’t have a flip-flop fetish. I prefer wearing those”

“Well, you might have your Viking stove that way, I guess,” said Ben.

“So what about you, mystery man?” said Lisa. “We’re friends on Facebook but I feel like I don’t know you. I find out you have a son, and honestly, I don’t even know if you’re married or separated or divorced or what.” For some reason, talking about Jim and her feet had made her more conversationally bold.

“I was with Max’s mom for a long time,” said Ben. “But she left over a year ago.”

“Oh, Ben,” said Lisa. “I’m sorry.”

“I don’t really have personal pictures on my Facebook account because I have clients for friends, and I don’t like having pictures of Max on the Internet for some reason. I used to have family pictures up, but after she left, I couldn’t stand to have them there anymore.”

“That sounds tough,” said Lisa. “And now you’re a single dad?”

“It’s not easy,” said Ben. “But Max is absolutely the coolest little guy in the world, so it really isn’t as difficult as it could be.”

Their food arrived. They ate together, sharing stories about their siblings, their jobs, their neighborhoods. But it was getting late. Ben had to pick Max up at the preschool’s aftercare program, and Lisa wanted to be home before Jim got home.

He walked her to her car near the bakery.

“Thanks for a nice evening, Lisa,” said Ben, looking down at her, the shadow of that dimple more pronounced in the streetlight.

She looked up at him.

“No, thank you,,” she said. “I enjoy spending time with you.”

And then he took her hand in his and leaned down and kissed her. Ever so gently, right on the mouth, right on the street where anyone could drive by and see. It wasn’t a long kiss, it almost could have been mistaken from a distance as a friendly goodbye kiss, but it was just long enough for her to feel it all the way inside her body and wish it went on forever and ever or at least for a few hours, preferably while naked.

“Goodnight, Lisa,” said Ben as he gently released her hand.

“Goodnight, Ben,” said Lisa.

Lisa was a few minutes early for the November meeting of the Scarlet Letter Society. She parked her Chevy Equinox (Cyber Metallic Gray; she’d bought the 2010 car used, swearing she wasn’t thinking about it being roomy enough for a baby) a few blocks over at the bakery where she’d walk back to work after the meeting.

Zarina saw Lisa as she walked up the street toward the shop, holding the door open to let her in.

“I know I’m a little early, Zarina,” said Lisa. “Sorry.”

“Why would you be sorry, silly?” said Zarina. “Come on in and get warm by the fake fire and tell me what kind of coffee you want. You think everyone is sick of the pumpkin lattes we drank all through October? I did break out the peppermint mocha latte. Too soon?”

“No way,” said Lisa. “It’s never too soon for a peppermint mocha latte. I could drink them all year. I never understand why they have to be a holiday thing.”

“So what’s new with you?” Zarina asked, sitting down next to her.

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Lisa. “I’m stuck in this place of trying to decide whether I should fight for my marriage. We’re thinking about going to marriage counseling. And then whether we would go for in vitro so I can have the baby I’ve been wanting for what seems like forever. Or, I could just go ahead and have a
passionate love affair with my graphic designer, get pregnant with his love child, and Jim would never know the difference.”

“Whoa, there,” said Zarina. “Back that train up for a second. What do you mean go ahead and have one? Haven’t you been having one for months? I seem to recall something about walk-in freezer and covered bridge sex.”

Lisa turned crimson red, as though her internal temperature instantly rose 10 degrees.

“Oh my God,” she said. “I am such an idiot. You can’t say anything to Maggie or Eva. They would throw me out of SLS.”

“Chill,” Zarina said. “I’m not going to tell anybody anything. Do you mind me asking why in the hell you want to be a member of the Scarlet Letter Society in the first place when you aren’t even cheating on your husband?”

“I’ve thought about cheating on him for a year,” said Lisa. “I have a guy I would cheat with, and actually he kissed me last night for the first time. I have no friends in my subdivision. When I met Maggie and Lisa in the shop last year, I really liked them and I wanted to fit in. I overheard them talking about boyfriends versus husbands, and I just sort of…”

“You just sort of completely lied to get into the group,” Zarina said. “You know, if they knew about this, they would probably just laugh it off, but don’t worry. Your secret is safe with me. I have enough problems of my own without blabbering about yours.”