He must be a runner; his arms were slightly muscular but not overly so and... oh wait. He was walking in my direction and then took a seat opposite me at the table. I gulped nervously as I doubted he had missed how much I was looking at him as he approached.
“Sadie? I’m Oliver,” he said, extending a hand to shake mine.
7
In a world where I have moved to a remote set of islands, I supposed it was completely normal for a guy this attractive to be speaking to me. He had a drop of Irish in his accent that was the undercurrent melody that my ears had zoned in on. It seemed I had stopped listening to the words he was saying completely.
“Sadie are you okay?” he asked.
“I am, Oliver. Never better. You know, I haven’t eaten in possibly two days so I might be about to slip into delirium,” I smiled. “Based on last night, there’s a chance I’m already there.”
Effie came over with the tallest, thickest stack of pancakes that I had ever seen. I hadn’t ordered this, but it was exactly what I needed. Effie shot me a look that suggested she had known that this was the perfect breakfast and shimmied away to the cash register.
“I’m sorry to hear that. I suppose the situation with Greta put you off your food,” he sighed.
“How do you know about that?” I asked, lowering my knife and fork in a swift movement and locking eyes with him. Had I been sleepwalking again? Blabbering to one and all about my ghost encounter and humiliating myself on my first day here, that would be just typical of me.
“You found her in the cemetery, no? News travels fast around here, well, gossip travels fast. Hard to say what’s true and what isn’t,” he laughed. The cemetery. Of course, I had almost forgotten that I had discovered a body, somehow it wasn’t the issue pressing on my mind the most.
Seeing a ghost was feeling less like a dream now, part of me seemed more certain that it had really happened and that was concerning.
“I did, yes. I was with Kate and we were checking on the cemetery because it had flooded,” I recounted. My speech was slow as I was taking large pauses in between words to add another huge forkful of pancake into my mouth.
“Well I work for the island paper and I was hoping to get a short statement about your ordeal, if that’s okay. I called earlier and Effie said she’d spoken to you about it,” he explained. I looked over at Effie and she blew me a kiss. Was she pranking me? Was this a blind date? I was still out of sorts with the time difference and the new hot weather, sticking a handsome man in front of me was a fun way to shake things up.
“That’s fine,” I agreed. We spoke for a few minutes about the storm and my reactions to the harsh introduction to island life. He was funny, his questions caught me off guard and his charm was undeniable. It did feel as though the discussion about the body discovery had ended and we were moving on to other topics, though he kept taking notes. Was I still be interviewed?
He raised his right hand, palm facing outward to the room. “Do you mind?” he asked. I stared at him blankly, unsure of what he was asking. With a smile, he did something that I couldn’t explain. I stared at the room and watched in confusion as half of the customers appeared frozen in time.
“What?” I muttered, mostly to myself. He grinned broadly and wrote something down.
“I take it that’s your first time witnessing magic?” he asked. “What are your initial thoughts?”
My mouth opened and closed a few times before I built up the courage to speak. “My thoughts are that it’s not kind to set me up like this. Is this how you treat everyone that moves here? I have left everything and everyone I know to start my life over in this place and you all think it’s funny to trick me? I hate pranks, I hate people who are only flirting with you for a joke and I...”
I was on my feet now. My chair had screeched along the floor as it moved back to accommodate my legs, I was about to storm off and Oliver stood up and grabbed my hand. I felt at ease all of a sudden and I suspected that his beautiful face was being used as a weapon against me, that must be why Effie sent him, right? He was too pretty for me to suspect of trying to play tricks.
“Sadie, I’m sorry. I don’t understand what I’ve said or done,” he said. His voice was loaded with an apologetic tone and I pulled my hand away. Effie was looking over at us and all of her jovial spirit had been replaced with a serious expression. She marched across the café floor, reached an arm behind me and ushered me in the direction of the kitchen.
“You, step to it,” she barked at Oliver. He clawed at his belongings on the table and hurried to catch up to us. I was pulled into the kitchen and the chef twirling was still going on. Effie pushed open the door to my house, pulled me into the dining room, waited for Oliver to join us, then closed the door.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“I want to start with an apology on behalf of all of us, clearly we’ve been in a freefall over the Greta issue and you have gotten caught up in the absence of organization and leadership,” Effie huffed.
“When you say, ‘Greta issue’, what are you referring to?”
