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Jo smirks. “I suspect it means that now that the cat is out of the bag, the news of our marriage will spread around the village so fast that we’ll be loaded down with gifts and trinkets before the day’s end.”
Sure enough, the tea stall owner has overheard everything and loads us up with mulling spices and other holiday blends, all divided into pretty little reusable tins. “This is a special blend I wasn’t going to debut until tourist season, but you two can be my guinea pigs. Seems appropriate enough.”
When I inspect the tin, it says something about enhancing fertility. Oh my god.
I suspect Jo is right about the village. Not only is everyone buzzing around us the more we shop, but after a couple of hours, we have more presents than we know what to do with. Bottles of wine, champagne, treats from the chocolatier, free lunch at the deli, bags of treats for the animals at the pet store, vouchers for free chicken feed and bird seed from the garden center, local honey, more venison jerky than either of us can eat in a year, and that’s just the beginning.
Hours later, our final stop is the bakery.
“Oh no,” Jo says, laughing as she stops near the window of the shop.
“What is it?” I ask.
She points to the display, and it’s a three-tiered cake. White fondant icing done in a detailed quilted pattern with expertly crafted sugared flower decorations.
I scoff. “There’s no way that’s for us, Jo. Bakers display wedding cakes in their shop windows all the time; that’s how they draw business.”
Jo shakes her head. “You don’t know Mirror Lake.”
This can’t be for us. How would they have had the time?
But when we enter the shop, there are more than two dozen villagers inside waiting on us, watching us expectantly.
As soon as they see us, the crowd bursts into a rousing rendition of a traditional Gravenland drinking song often sung at weddings…and sometimes funerals. And as Jo suspected, the cake is for us. Jo and I are treated to slices of delicious cake, and the baker sends us home with extra pieces. With a wink, the baker assures us he’ll freeze the topmost tier and save it for our anniversary.
On the way home, we pass Sabine’s. The sounds of lively music drifts out the door as customers bustle in and out of the pub.
The attention is getting to be too much for me, and now seems like the perfect place to grab a drink.
Sabine meets us on the sidewalk before we can enter, however, and wraps Jo up in a tight hug.
She exclaims with tears in her eyes. “Jo! Jakob! I promise I’m not responsible for everyone finding out the news!”
Jo assures her we assumed nothing of the sort.
“We just came by for a drink before heading home. Today has been a lot. For both of us,” Jo tells her friend.
Sabine shakes her head, gesturing toward the pub. “You don’t want to go in there, then. Not unless you want to get absolutely smashed from unlimited rounds of free drinks and be forced to listen to hours of contradictory, drunken advice from every old married man in the village. You two had better scoot.”
We thank our friend Sabine and head home.
It’s nice that some people know how to look out for their introvert friends.
25
Jo
The attention on Jakob and me eventually dies down, and I fall back into my comforting rhythm.
That is to say, my new comforting rhythm. I wake up in the morning, and I no longer have to wish for wild morning sex.
I go to work and spend mostly-easy days filling grocery orders during this slow season. At lunch, Jakob usually appears with a packed lunch that we share in my office. We talk about everything — the eventual children we may have, what sort of schooling is available in the village, how we both want to start our own holiday traditions that neither of us grew up with.
Jakob spends his afternoons doing simple home repairs around the village. Word eventually spreads that he’s handy, and some of the local property owners hire him to do maintenance on vacation cottages around the lake. Although I have enough savings to last us a while, and I want Jakob to focus on his art, I appreciate having a handy man around the house.
In the evenings, Jakob returns to walk me home, and we share dinner, tend to the chickens, and share housework. Though he always does more than his share, including fixing up whatever needs fixing, chopping wood, and always keeping the fireplace burning bright on cold nights.
One evening, as we’re sitting by the fireplace after dinner, he mentions, “I miss my studio.”
