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“Thanks Margery!” Carter calls from the kitchen.
I follow Margery out the door, and Carter follows close behind. When we get to the store, Mitch is standing at the counter tallying the day’s receipts, and outside the sun is starting to go down.
“Archie is outside,” Mitch says without looking up.
Outside, it’s chilly, and I shiver a bit, wishing I’d taken the extra sweater Margery left me. Carter pulls me in to his side, and loops one arm around me. He feels so warm that I don’t even bother protesting. The alarm bells that normally start ringing in my head when he gets close remain silent.
Archie is sitting on a bench outside the store, smoking what looks to be a hand rolled cigarette. He’s dressed in the familiar garb of a workman’s coat and boots that I’ve seen plenty of fishermen in Harborview don, and his face is covered in white and gray stubble. It’s tough to determine how old he actually is. His skin is worn from the sun and sea, but as his eyes are sharp and bright.
“I hear you need a lift back to the mainland?” he says, without looking directly at us.
“To Mount Desert,” Carter responds.
Archie grunts.
“We’d love to get back tomorrow,” I say.
“And we’re happy to pay,” Carter adds.
Archie makes a sound that’s somewhere in between a dry cough and a laugh. “I’m not a taxi service. I’ll take you when I can take you.”
“We just don’t want to take advantage,” I explain. “And we’ll be really grateful for any help you can give us.” I give Archie asmile, and hope he actually notices it. Because damn it, I really need to get back to work. I’m not sure how much longer I can appease my boss before he starts to think something is up.
“I can probably take you tomorrow,” he says. “But not until at least 3 p.m. or so. I’m stayin’ local tomorrow but I gotta check some pots I have by the cliffs in the north. And then I have some deliveries to make.” He jerks his head towards Shaky Jane’s. I guess Archie supplies the local restaurants. Makes sense.
Carter’s face lights up at something Archie has said. “That’s near the puffin colonies.”
“It sure is,” Archie says. “They’re starting to come in for the season. Saw a few of them yesterday when I was out.”
“Oh yeah? How many?”
“Probably only ten pairs or so. But they’ll be getting started on refurbishing their burrows.”
“I tried to do some bird watching from the shore yesterday,” Carter says. “But I only spotted a few. I’d love to get back to the northern part of the island to see them.”
Archie gives him a quizzical look.
“I’m a researcher,” Carter supplies. “I’ve been here the past two years tagging birds.”
“You know Hal?”
“Sure do.”
The next five or ten minutes are filled with Archie and Carter trading bird watching stories. Both of them have seen multiple species here over the years, and Archie has stories from sightings while fishing. He frequently sees the puffins returning to their burrows, beaks full of small fish. And Carter has plenty to say about the bird tagging process, which Archie listens to with rapt attention.
“You could come with me tomorrow,” Archie says, and my ears prick up. “You can come with me to check the traps. I coulduse the help. And then I can take you bird watching on the water afterwards.”
“That’d be great,” Carter says. “But I think we need to get back.”
His voice is easy when he says this, like he doesn’t care, but all I can think about is what he told me earlier, about how he doesn’t want to be the type of person who talks about himself. And maybe that extends to asking for things for himself as well. He knows I want to get back, so he’s deferring to how I feel, instead of saying what he actually wants to do. And I appreciate it—but I’m starting to understand that with Carter’s emotional intelligence comes a sense of selflessness. After all, how could it not? If you understand how other people feel, it’s natural to take that into account. And even though he comes off as distant and difficult to get to know—he’s actually grown up into someone who is considerate.
“Let’s go,” I say quietly. Because he needs someone to look after his feelings, too.
And maybe he doesn’t quite deserve me doing that for him, and maybe after this trip, I’ll never hear from him again. But I can’t help it—I want to see his face light up again. I want to see him happy, on the water, binoculars in hand, doing what he loves.
If after we’re done on Isle North and back on Harborview, he stops speaking to me again, well, I lived through it once and I can do it again. Back then it hurt more because I was in love with him. This time it’s bound to hurt less.
“Really?” Carter asks, turning away from Archie to give me an assessing look. “I’m surprised you’d want to go.”
