“Now, we’ll put these pans in the oven.” She slid them on the shelf beneath the table she was working on. “And with the magic of Frick Island, they bake in an instant.” She snapped her fingers and then pulled the layers she had baked earlier from the same shelf and set them on top of the table, grinning. Take that, Julia Child.
As she began the icing part of her demonstration, Pearl, who wasn’t overly prone to nostalgia, found she was suffering from a touch of it anyway. This Cake Walk was as big as the ones from twenty years earlier or more. If not bigger.
Not that it surprised her, of course.
It just reminded her of what BobDan always said: Everything ebbs and flows like the tide.
And she supposed he was right.
—
Piper zipped up her suitcase and set it on the floor, where Anders hefted it up by the handle. “Is that everything?”
Beyond Piper’s open window, they could hear the low rumble of tourists BobDan had brought over by the boatload on his new seventy-five-seat ferry—and beyond that, the near-constant hammering and drilling and electric sawing that didn’t seem like it had stopped since the Frick Island Renewal Committee had completed their visionary plan four months earlier. Piper hated to leave the day of the Cake Walk, but freshman orientation at Cornell was in two days and she wanted to settle into her dorm and find her way around the campus before everyone got there.
“I think that’s the last one,” she said, and followed Anders out into the den. The cat slipped around her legs, purring, and then moved on to Anders. He lifted the cat in his other arm and nuzzled him.
Piper took a deep breath. She’d known this day was coming since she got her acceptance from the university’s entomology department in May, but suddenly she felt completely unmoored by it.
“Can you give me a minute?” she said.
Anders looked at her and offered an understanding grin. “We’ll be outside.”
Piper watched him go and then turned to look around her carriage house one last time. She’d be back, of course. On breaks from school, summers, but she knew Mrs. Olecki would most likely be renting it out to guests now that tourism had picked up again. And it felt like the last time this house would be fully hers.
She studied the room, letting all her memories flood in, competing for space in her brain. Dancing with Tom around the tiny space, trying to avoid crashing into the furniture, sitting side by side in comfortable silence while she pieced together puzzles and he mended nets or read. She even remembered all the fights—the glorious screaming matches fueled by passion and anger and love.
And then she tried to take a mental picture, so she could always remember it just this way: the pewter crab wall clock they’d picked out together at the antiques shop, the threadbare easy chair in the corner, the book lying facedown on the upturned crate—all of it still, silent. As if each inanimate object were holding its breath, still waiting patiently for Tom to return.
And then, just like that, he did.
She let out a little gasp when she spotted him, there in the worn seat, his blond hair shorn tight against his tan skull, his briny-gray eyes smiling at her in the way they always did— slightly amused, full of adoration. She stared back at him, her eyes suddenly pricking with tears, her heart swelling with relief, joy, and love.
Always love.
She cocked her head and waited, willing him to say something, anything. But he didn’t. So she just smiled back, drinking him in one last time until, finally, she blinked. And then—just like that—he was gone.
She stood, staring at the empty chair, allowing herself to slip into her grief for a minute like a familiar winter coat.
And then she straightened her spine and walked out the front door into the wide world that was waiting for her. Well, Anders and the cat, anyway.
Hands shoved in his pockets, his unfortunate cowlick sticking straight up in the air, Anders looked up at her. “You ready?”
Piper considered the question. She thought of all the things she was leaving behind, all the things she was going to miss: Tom (her husband, not the cat) and Pearl and the general store and Arlene and her perfect little carriage house and Tom (the cat, not her husband) and Anders. They promised to see each other often, of course, despite the three hundred and fifty-two miles between them. (Or less, if Anders took one of the many job offers in New York that had come his way. He was taking his time making a decision, though, and Piper couldn’t help but think—though he’d never admit it—that Anders had an affinity for Frick Island. And didn’t want to stray too far from it.)
Still, Piper felt a little misty-eyed and a lot terrified because she had no idea what lay ahead of her; what her life was going to look like. But she felt
