1
As Katie wound her way among the tables, a breeze from the Atlantic rippled through her hair. Carrying threeplates in her left hand and another in her right, she wore jeans and a T-shirt that read Ivan’s: Try Our Fish Just for
the Halibut. She brought the plates to four men wearing polo shirts; the one closest to her caught her eye andsmiled. Though he tried to act as though he was just a friendly guy, she knew he was watching her as she walkedaway. Melody had mentioned the men had come from Wilmington and were scouting locations for a movie.
After retrieving a pitcher of sweet tea, she refilled their glasses before returning to the waitress station. Shestole a glance at the view. It was late April, the temperature hovering just around perfect, and blue skies stretchedto the horizon. Beyond her, the Intracoastal was calm despite the breeze and seemed to mirror the color of thesky. A dozen seagulls perched on the railing, waiting to dart beneath the tables if someone dropped a scrap offood.
Ivan Smith, the owner, hated them. He called them rats-with-wings, and he’d already patrolled the railing twicewielding a wooden plunger, trying to scare them off. Melody had leaned toward Katie and confessed that she wasmore worried about where the plunger had been than she was about the seagulls. Katie said nothing.
She started another pot of sweet tea, wiping down the station. A moment later, she felt someone tap her on theshoulder. She turned to see Ivan’s daughter, Eileen. A pretty, ponytailed nineteen-year-old, she was working part-time as the restaurant hostess.
“Katie—can you take another table?”
Katie scanned her tables, running the rhythm in her head. “Sure.” She nodded.
Eileen walked down the stairs. From nearby tables Katie could hear snippets of conversations—people talkingabout friends or family, the weather or fishing. At a table in the corner, she saw two people close their menus. Shehustled over and took the order, but didn’t linger at the table trying to make small talk, like Melody did. She wasn’tgood at small talk, but she was efficient and polite and none of the customers seemed to mind.
She’d been working at the restaurant since early March. Ivan had hired her on a cold, sunny afternoon whenthe sky was the color of robins’ eggs. When he’d said she could start work the following Monday, it tookeverything she had not to cry in front of him. She’d waited until she was walking home before breaking down. Atthe time, she was broke and hadn’t eaten in two days.
She refilled waters and sweet teas and headed to the kitchen. Ricky, one of the cooks, winked at her as healways did. Two days ago he’d asked her out, but she’d told him that she didn’t want to date anyone at therestaurant. She had the feeling he would try again and hoped her instincts were wrong.
“I don’t think it’s going to slow down today,” Ricky commented. He was blond and lanky, perhaps a year or twoyounger than her, and still lived with his parents. “Every time we think we’re getting caught up, we get slammedagain.”
“It’s a beautiful day.”
“But why are people here? On a day like today, they should be at the beach or out fishing. Which is exactlywhat I’m doing when I finish up here.”
“That sounds like a good idea.”
“Can I drive you home later?”
He offered to drive her at least twice a week. “Thank you, no. I don’t live that far.”
“It’s no problem,” he persisted. “I’d be glad to do it.”
“Walking’s good for me.”
She handed him her ticket and Ricky pinned it up on the wheel and then located one of her orders. She carriedthe order back to her section and dropped it off at a table.
Ivan’s was a local institution, a restaurant that had been in business for almost thirty years. In the time she’dbeen working there, she’d come to recognize the regulars, and as she crossed the restaurant floor her eyestraveled over them to the people she hadn’t seen before. Couples flirting, other couples ignoring each other.
Families. No one seemed out of place and no one had come around asking for her, but there were still times whenher hands began to shake, and even now she slept with a light on.
Her short hair was chestnut brown; she’d been dyeing it in the kitchen sink of the tiny cottage she rented. Shewore no makeup and knew her face would pick up a bit of color, maybe too much. She reminded herself to buysunscreen, but after paying rent and utilities on the cottage, there wasn’t much left for luxuries. Even sunscreenwas a stretch. Ivan’s was a good job and she was glad to have it, but the food was inexpensive, which meant thetips weren’t great. On her steady diet of rice and beans, pasta and oatmeal, she’d lost weight in the past fourmonths. She could feel her ribs beneath her shirt, and until a few weeks ago, she’d had dark circles under hereyes that she thought would never go away.
“I think those guys are checking you out,” Melody said, nodding toward the table with the four men from themovie studio. “Especially the brown-haired one. The cute one.”
“Oh,” Katie said. She started another pot of coffee. Anything she said to Melody was sure to get passedaround, so Katie usually said very little to her.
“What? You don’t think he’s cute?”
“I didn’t really notice.”
“How can you not notice when a guy is cute?” Melody stared at her in disbelief.
“I don’t know,” Katie answered.
Like Ricky, Melody was a couple of years younger than Katie, maybe twenty-five or so. An auburn-haired,green-eyed minx, she dated a guy named Steve who made deliveries for the home improvement store on the otherside of town. Like everyone else in the restaurant, she’d grown up in Southport, which she described as being aparadise for children, families, and the elderly, but the most dismal place on earth for single people. At least oncea week, she told Katie that she was planning to move to Wilmington, which had bars and clubs and a lot moreshopping. She seemed to know everything about everybody. Gossip, Katie sometimes thought, was Melody’s realprofession.
“I heard Ricky asked you out,” she said, changing the subject, “but you said no.”
“I don’t like to date people at work.” Katie pretended to be absorbed in organizing the silverware trays.
“We could double-date. Ricky and Steve go fishing together.”
Katie wondered if Ricky had put her up to it or whether it was Melody’s idea. Maybe both. In the evenings, afterthe restaurant closed, most of the staff stayed around for a while, visiting over a couple of beers. Aside fromKatie, everyone had worked at Ivan’s for years.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Katie demurred.
“Why not?”
“I had a bad experience once,” Katie said. “Dating a guy from work, I mean. Since then, I’ve kind of made it arule not to do it again.”
Melody rolled her eyes before hurrying off to one of her tables. Katie dropped off two checks and clearedempty plates. She kept busy, as she always did, trying to be efficient and invisible. She kept her head down andmade sure the waitress station was spotless. It made the day go by faster. She didn’t flirt with the guy from thestudio, and when he left he didn’t look back.
Katie worked both the lunch and dinner shift. As day faded into night, she loved watching the sky turning fromblue to gray to orange and yellow at the western rim of the world. At sunset, the water sparkled and sailboatsheeled in the breeze. The needles on the pine trees seemed to shimmer. As soon as the sun dropped below thehorizon, Ivan turned on the propane gas heaters and the coils began to glow like jack-o’-lanterns. Katie’s face hadgotten slightly sunburned, and the waves of radiant heat made her skin sting.
Abby and Big Dave replaced Melody and Ricky in the evening. Abby was a high school senior who giggled alot, and Big Dave had been cooking dinners at Ivan’s for nearly twenty years. He was married with two kids andhad a tattoo of a scorpion on his right forearm. He weighed close to three hundred pounds and in the kitchen hisface was always shiny. He had nicknames for everyone and called her Katie Kat.
The dinner rush lasted until nine. When it began to clear out, Katie cleaned and closed up the wait station. Shehelped the busboys carry plates to the dishwasher while her final tables finished up. At one of them was a youngcouple and she’d seen the rings on their fingers as they held hands across the table. They were attractive andhappy, and she felt a sense of déjà vu. She had been like them once, a long time ago, for just a moment. Or so shethought, because she learned the moment was only an illusion. Katie turned away from the blissful couple,wishing that she could erase her memories forever and never have that feeling again.
2
The next morning, Katie stepped onto the porch with a cup of coffee, the floorboards creaking beneath her barefeet, and leaned against the railing. Lilies sprouted amid the wild grass in what once was a flower bed, and sheraised the cup, savoring the aroma as she took a sip.
She liked it here. Southport was different from Boston or Philadelphia or Atlantic City, with their endless soundsof traffic and smells and people rushing along the sidewalks, and it was the first time in her life that she had aplace to call her own. The cottage wasn’t much, but it was hers and out of the way and that was enough. It wasone of two identical structures located at the end of a gravel lane, former hunting cabins with wooden-plank walls,nestled against a grove of oak and pine trees at the edge of a forest that stretched to the coast. The living roomand kitchen were small and the bedroom didn’t have a closet, but the cottage was furnished, including rockers onthe front porch, and the rent was a bargain. The place wasn’t decaying, but it was dusty from years of neglect, andthe landlord offered to buy the supplies if Katie was willing to spruce it up. Since she’d moved in, she’d spentmuch of her free time on all fours or standing on chairs, doing exactly that. She scrubbed the bathroom until itsparkled; she washed the ceiling with a damp cloth. She wiped the windows with vinegar and spent hours on herhands and knees, trying her best to remove the rust and grime from the linoleum in the kitchen. She’d filled holesin the walls with Spackle and then sanded the Spackle until it was smooth. She’d painted the walls in the kitchen acheery yellow and put glossy white paint on the cabinets. Her bedroom was now a light blue, the living room wasbeige, and last week, she’d put a new slipcover on the couch, which made it look practically new again.
With most of the work now behind her, she liked to sit on the front porch in the afternoons and read booksshe’d checked out from the library. Aside from coffee, reading was her only indulgence. She didn’t have atelevision, a radio, a cell phone, or a microwave or even a car, and she could pack all her belongings in a singlebag. She was twenty-seven years old, a former long-haired blond with no real friends. She’d moved here withalmost nothing, and months later she still had little. She saved half of her tips and every night she folded themoney into a coffee can she kept hidden in the crawl space beneath the porch. She kept that money foremergencies and would rather go hungry than touch it. Simply the knowledge that it was there made her breatheeasier because the past was always around her and might return at any time. It prowled the world searching forher, and she knew it was growing angrier at every passing day.
“Good morning,” a voice called out, disrupting her thoughts. “You must be Katie.”
Katie turned. On the sagging porch of the cottage next door, she saw a woman with long, unruly brown hair,waving at her. She looked to be in her mid-thirties and wore jeans and a button-up shirt she’d rolled to her elbows.
A pair of sunglasses nested in tangled curls on her head. She was holding a small rug and she seemed to bedebating whether or not to shake it before finally tossing it aside and starting toward Katie’s. She moved with theenergy and ease of someone who exercised regularly.
“Irv Benson told me we’d be neighbors.”
The landlord, Katie thought. “I didn’t realize anyone was moving in.”
“I don’t think he did, either. He about fell out of his chair when I said I’d take the place.” By then, she’d reachedKatie’s porch and she held out her hand. “My friends call me Jo,” she said.
“Hi,” Katie said, taking it.
“Can you believe this weather? It’s gorgeous, isn’t it?”
“It’s a beautiful morning,” Katie agreed, shifting from one foot to the other. “When did you move in?”
“Yesterday afternoon. And then, joy of joys, I pretty much spent all night sneezing. I think Benson collected asmuch dust as he possibly could and stored it at my place. You wouldn’t believe what it’s like in there.”
Katie nodded toward the door. “My place was the same way.”
“It doesn’t look like it. Sorry, I couldn’t help sneaking a glance through your windows when I was standing inmy kitchen. Your place is bright and cheery. I, on the other hand, have rented a dusty, spider-filled dungeon.”
“Mr. Benson let me paint.”
“I’ll bet. As long as Mr. Benson doesn’t have to do it, I’ll bet he lets me paint, too. He gets a nice, clean place,and I get to do the work.” She gave a wry grin. “How long have you lived here?”
Katie crossed her arms, feeling the morning sun begin to warm her face. “Almost two months.”
“I’m not sure I can make it that long. If I keep sneezing like I did last night, my head will probably fall off beforethen.” She reached for her sunglasses and began wiping the lenses with her shirt. “How do you like Southport?
It’s a different world, don’t you think?”
“What do you mean?”
“You don’t sound like you’re from around here. I’d guess somewhere up north?”
After a moment, Katie nodded.
“That’s what I thought,” Jo went on. “And Southport takes awhile to get used to. I mean, I’ve always loved it, butI’m partial to small towns.”