Tiny Island Summer (13 page)

“I’m serious,” John continued, more than a little put out by the whole situation. “She didn’t know it was Mom. She didn’t even know our last name. And you got her fired.”

Ben rolled his eyes. “I’m not going to apologize for something that I did when I don’t feel bad about it.”

“Then you’re an idiot,” John told him before walking out the door.

Ben heard the screen door slam shut and turned to wash the dishes and start the coffee. He refused to apologize when he didn’t see how he had been wrong. She’d gone after Mom and had taken advantage of her. More than that, she’d taken advantage of
him
. He’d invited her out to dinner and she’d turned him down because she’d already gotten everything she needed out of him, hadn’t she? She must have been on her way to Duluth the moment he’d asked. Water splashed out of the sink and onto the front of his shirt. He’d been lost in thought and had let the water run to overflowing. Ben turned off the faucet, stripped off his T-shirt, and threw it across the room.

He needed air.

Ben pushed open the front door and stood on his porch. He froze. Darcy, oblivious to his presence, walked down the street toward her town house, maybe thirty feet away. She hadn’t seen him and seemed to be returning from a coffee run in town. She carried three coffees in a carrier and a brown bag, no doubt filled with pastries. Darcy looked cheerful and he felt his blood boil.

Why did she get to smile and be happy when he was miserable? Shouldn’t she be miserable too? Hadn’t he gotten her fired? She’d wronged him, he told himself again to help prevent him from feeling any guilt in the situation.

Ben stepped off the porch into his driveway and caught her eye. The smile dropped off her face, replaced immediately with a scowl before she looked through him, as if he wasn’t even there. Saved from the trouble of waving hello, Ben, half-naked, set off to get his coffee on the same road Darcy had taken. He’d been awake for most of the night seething with fury at her and himself and his mother and the situation.

He’d toyed with the idea of calling Caitlyn. Loneliness had often led him to make stupid decisions. But he’d only gotten her to stop calling him a few days before. No matter how much easy fun she promised, it came at a steep price—one he was not willing to pay.

It’s not as if she’s a distraction from Darcy,
Ben reminded himself.

Even thinking about Darcy made his blood boil. He clenched and unclenched his fists. He wanted to hit something. He hated everything about his situation. But maybe John had a point.

Ben walked alone into the coffee shop, barked out his order to the barista, then turned around, and marched himself home. He was not fit company. He packed up an overnight bag, left John a note, and walked down to the yacht club.

A couple days of peace and solitude on his boat, cruising around the islands was exactly what he needed.

Darcy turned off County Highway J onto Valley Road and instantly felt lost. Following the directions Eric had texted her down a packed dirt two-lane road through forest-covered hills with only the occasional building had her anxious that she’d already missed the turn. Getting lost would give her a chance to back out of getting a tattoo. Maybe Charlotte had made the decision, but Darcy hadn’t fought her on it. She wanted to see it through. She wanted to accomplish something she’d been talking about for years. Darcy was determined to ignore her fear of the pain and get inked.

“Look,” Char suddenly exclaimed, sitting up straight and pointing at the sign for Compton Road.

An overpowering surge of anticipation and apprehension left Darcy frazzled, as she made the turn.

She drove up a gravel road, past neat, even rows of apple trees, and pulled into the parking lot in front of a charming white clapboard house with green shutters. The shutters had small hearts cut into them, making them more adorable then functional, and she could see the green-and-white gingham on the curtains through the windows. It was exactly the kind of sweet house where you’d expect to find a storybook character.

Darcy parked the car and looked at Char in disbelief. She shrugged her shoulders, gave Darcy an apologetic half smile, and got out of the car. Darcy sighed and followed her. As she locked the car, the door to the cottage opened, and Marjorie stepped out onto her front stoop, silently appraising the pair as they did the same to her.

She stood five feet and maybe weighed a hundred pounds soaking wet. Her hair was completely white and cut short in a pageboy. She wore a light blue gingham apron over a crisp white oxford shirt and full navy-blue skirt. Darcy couldn’t help but wonder if Marjorie had ever worn jeans. Darcy couldn’t see any tattoos and was starting to wonder about the information she’d been given. She stifled her feelings and smiled at the older lady. There was no need to be rude because someone had led her on a wild goose chase.

“Hi, I’m Darcy, and this is my friend Charlotte,” she said moving away from the car to shake her hand. “And you must be Marjorie?”

Confusion passed over her features for a moment before she found her voice. “Marjorie? No, I’m her twin sister Marcelina. Hold on, I’ll go in and get her for you.”

As she left, Darcy nearly sagged from relief. She turned to look at Char.

Thank God
, she mouthed, her eyes wide for emphasis.

Seriously
, Darcy mouthed back with an accompanying shake of her head.

About five minutes later, Marcelina returned with Marjorie in tow. Marjorie had dyed her white hair red. Not red as in redhead but red as in fire engine. She had cut her bangs to reach from one ear to the other in a solid row of fringe, and the rest of her hair fell to her shoulders. Double piercings in both ears, a cartilage piercing in her right ear, and her dainty, pert, porcelain doll nose had been pierced above the left nostril. Darcy felt sure she at least had her tongue pierced, if not more, although Darcy would be too scared to ask.

Her style was an interesting combination of biker leather, hippie chick, and classic grandma. She wore a tight black leather vest over a flowing tie-dyed peasant dress. On her feet were those awful sensible shoes favored by grandmas and British matrons. Seeing her in those shoes was disheartening. It was proof that wearing those shoes in old age was as inevitable as the sagging of boobs. But the most surprising thing about Marjorie was that Darcy didn’t see any tattoos.

Marjorie stood on the porch next to her sister, pulled out her pack of cigarettes from a vest pocket, lit one, and began to blow smoke rings as she stared at us. Darcy half expected Marjorie to ask who they were in the mode of the smoking caterpillar from Alice in Wonderland. She smoked to the clear displeasure of her sister, who attempted in vain to waft the smoke away. Finally, Marcelina gave up and moved to stand off the porch with the women, a safe enough distance to prevent getting smoke blown in one’s face. Marcelina seemed annoyed and unlikely to do the introductions, so Darcy took charge of the situation.

“Hi, I’m Darcy,” she said with an extended hand, leaning in toward her.

She looked at her blankly, looked at the hand with a raised eyebrow, and looked back. Catching onto her annoyance, Darcy lowered her hand into her back jeans pocket and stepped back.

“And this is my friend Charlotte,” she continued. Charlotte ever so slightly raised her hand in greeting. “I want to get a tattoo, and everyone says that you’re the best.”

Marjorie inclined her head at that, not impressed with her brownnosing. After a few more minutes of awkwardly facing each other in silence, Marjorie finally spoke. “Who’s everyone?” she asked indifferently, allowing a glimpse of her tongue, confirming the tongue ring.

“The townies who hang out at Tom’s,” she replied without missing a beat.

She nodded then and smiled, which shocked Darcy more than if she’d pulled out a gun. Her features were as delicate and dainty as her sister’s, no doubt she had adapted her scowl as a counterbalance. When she smiled, she looked girlish and pretty, her seventy plus years melting away before their eyes.

“What about you?” she asked Charlotte.

Charlotte quickly shook her head.

“No, no. I’m here for moral support, that’s it,” she rapidly replied.

Marjorie shrugged her shoulders and added, “suit yourself.”

She finished her cigarette, threw it on the porch, and smashed the butt with her heel. Darcy looked over at Marcelina, who was barely containing her fury. Anyone could see how badly she wanted to yell at her sister, but her good manners held her tongue in check in front of customers. Marjorie looked over at her and gestured for her and Char to follow her inside.

Marjorie led them inside through the orchard shop, a tidy little room full of coolers holding pies, freezers with frozen berries, shelves stacked with jams, jellies, salsas, and spices, and one wall dedicated to their fruit wines. Darcy would definitely need to go back for a few samples. She looked over at Charlotte , who nodded her agreement, intrinsically knowing the question from the look on Darcy’s face. They passed through a supply room with empty jars and bottles in neat rows on shelves waiting to be filled, baskets for the fall apple picking and smaller ones for the current berry picking, labels, and boxes. Quite the cottage industry Marcelina had set up. Darcy wondered how much she sold in a year, if she had a mail-order business, how she had gotten started. She wanted to know it all.

Marjorie came to a stop in front of a locked door. She reached into her vest pocket again and pulled out her keys. After fitting a key into the lock, she pushed open the door and motioned for us to enter first. The room was dark, dank, and dusty. Darcy couldn’t see inside very clearly at first, as heavy black drapes hung over the windows, but it smelled of neglect, that indefinable must of stale air, mothballs, and old Naugahyde.

Marjorie walked in behind them, flipped on a switch, and the single light bulb above blinked into life after a couple false starts. Their eyes had barely adjusted to the artificial light when she threw open the curtains. Darcy blinked hard again and took another look around. The wall opposite the windows had been entirely covered in mirrors, like a dance studio. Where the ballet bar should be, a black lacquered shelf jutted out holding all sorts of containers and needles for tattooing. In front of the shelf sat a row of three stools covered in black Naugahyde. A stack of four banquet chairs sat in the corner and directly in front of the window sat a flat black Naugahyde daybed.

Everything was covered in approximately two inches of dust.

“I never let Marcelina in here,” Marjorie offered as means of explanation to their unspoken questions.

Darcy started to get nervous. She wanted a tattoo, not tetanus or hepatitis C, and she was having serious misgivings about the cleanliness of the shop. She was there on the word of a good-looking man. When Darcy stopped to think, that probably wasn’t a good enough reason to be doing something. Right at that moment, Marjorie moved to the locked closet Darcy had missed in her perusal of the shop. Marjorie unlocked it and opened the door to reveal an organized set of shelves with pristine needles and well cared for pigments. Darcy let out a sigh of relief.

“I closed the shop about ten years ago and left everything the way it was on that last day. Sorry it’s a mess, I don’t get in here to clean as often as I should.”
Or ever,
she wanted to add. “But I always tend to my tools.”

Marjorie walked over to put everything on the table and patted one of the stools. Darcy sat on it gingerly at first, then thinking how stupid it was to be concerned about getting a little dirty, she relaxed. Char walked over to the daybed by the window. After thoroughly inspecting the cracked seat underneath a liberal covering of dust, she put one leg underneath her and half sat, half perched.

Marjorie had been too busy prepping her station to pay any attention to them.

“What do you want?”

Darcy pulled out the sketch of strawberry leaves with a tiny flower to surround the birthmark on her ankle. Immediately, she started apologizing about the tattoo design being so small. She couldn’t help but think back to one of the first things Ben had ever said—that she apologized too much. Maybe he was right. Marjorie listened and nodded her head then stopped her with a hand.

“Enough, I get it.”

She then proceeded to ignore Char in favor of the ankle. She reclined the chair to bring the footrest up to the height of the table and lifted her foot gently. Darcy giggled.

“Sorry, it tickles,” she said sheepishly.

Marjorie shot her a questioning look. Darcy didn’t know how to respond, so she didn’t. She maintained eye contact with Marjorie, and after a minute, the older lady shook her head.

“It’s going to be a lot worse than ticklish. Are you sure you want this?”

“Yes,” she replied clearly.

And that was the end of talking.

She grabbed a thin-tipped marker and began to sketch the bud and leaves. Darcy stole a few glimpses and what she saw was stunning. She knew better than to say anything else. Marjorie would not have taken any suggestions from her with good grace. After studying her design from a few different angles, she nodded to herself then over at Char. That was the big cue that the needle would start and she’d need to help hold her down.

Darcy had never realized that something so little could cause so much pain. It gave her real misgivings about the labor and delivery of a baby. She blacked out as the pain persisted. She didn’t remember much after Char had to put her weight on Darcy’s torso to keep her in the chair.

When Darcy came to, her ankle burned and Char stood over her, fanning her.

“Is it over?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“How long ago?”

“A while.”

She flushed. “At least no one else was here to witness that.”

Char nodded slowly. “I’m going to drive us home, okay?”

“That sounds good. I’m ready to get up now.”

Char helped raise her to a sitting position then out of the chair. They wandered back the way they had come, finding Marjorie outside on the porch smoking another cigarette.