Page 60 of The Treasure House

“You’ll need to dress warm,” he’d told me cheerily when Flo and I had swung by the store for graham crackers and marshmallows. “It’s the wind that chills you. Doesn’t matter how sunny it looks, those bay winds can turn you blue. Even in September.”

Gary beamed at me now, as he saw we’d taken his advice. Flo’s scarf was flying behind her as she approached the cooking pit, and I had my windbreaker zipped up to my chin.

“You weren’t wrong about the bay winds,” I told Gary ruefully, trying not to stare at Jake as he greeted Flo. Jake’s smile was broad and white and wreathed in dimples. It was the happiest I’d ever seen him.

“Colleen’s coffee will warm you up,” Gary told me with a wink. “It’s got a fair shot of whiskey in it.”

As promised, Colleen provided me with a steaming tin mug of whiskey-laced coffee. Colleen ran the café on Beach Road; she had silver-streaked dark hair, cinnamon brown eyes, and an impressive amount of jewelry on her small frame. She wore large, pressed-tin earrings and layers of necklaces made of sea glass. She always seemed pleased to see us when we popped by her café. Roger kissed me hello and instructed me to sit down and start shucking the corn with Josie and Elton. They clearly had a well-oiled routine for the lobster bake. Jake and Tom set a giant steel tub on the hot rocks in the pit and shallowly filled it with seawater, and as it was set to boil, we shucked corn and peeled potatoes and chatted over the boozy coffee. Flo was sent off to gather up seaweed, which was apparently going to be used to cover the food as it baked.

“How long has this been a tradition?” I asked as I tossed another ear of cleanly husked corn into the waiting basket. I kept one eye on Flo as she carried an armful of drying seaweed to the pit.

“Oh, a long time. Back to the days when this was a resort town,” Doris told me, shuffling her chair closer. “As soon as the summer folk went home, Saint-Cyr used to throw a lobster bake for the staff. A farewell for the season and thanks for all the work. And since most of Oxeye existed to serve the resort, the townsfolk used to get invited too.”

“They were a grand affair,” Gary told me. “Not like this modest little cookout. There would have been people everywhere.” His hand glided in front of him, as though he were conjuring an image of the past. “Picnic blankets and games and kids playing. A whole row of cookout pits and an ice cream cart. There’s a framed photo of one of the historic Saint-Cyr lobster bakes in the library—Josie can show you next time you’re in.”

Josie nodded agreeably. “It’s from the late fifties, I think.”

“Saint-Cyr used to be where the campground is?” I asked, remembering the signs we’d seen when we stayed there. My gaze drifted to the wooded spit at the far end of the beach.

“It was demolished in the seventies.” Elton sighed. He too was staring at the campground.

Doris nodded. “Crying shame too. It was a landmark in these parts.”

“My folks worked there,” Tom told me as he came to collect a basket of shucked corn to toss into the steel tub. “My pa was a waiter. He had a fancy suit with shiny buttons. He would have waited on Jake’s folks when they came up from Boston. Yours too, Elton.”

“Waited on me, you mean. I stayed there when I came courting Sylvie.” Elton sounded wistful.

My ears pricked up. “And Jake’s folks stayed there?” I was dying to learn more about Jake. He was close-mouthed about himself.

Tom grew cagey at my questioning. “Everyone’s folks stayed there. There wasn’t nowhere else to stay.” He turned his attention back to the cooking. “And then when it closed during the recession, in the seventies, there wasn’t anywhere to stay at all. At least not until the county opened up the campground.”

“Was that when Jake’s people bought a house in town?” I asked Elton. “After the hotel closed? Did Marly buy my house then? Jake’s aunt…?” I fished, guessing at their relationship. I was desperate to learn more about Marly as well as Jake. The glimpses of her we’d found in the house were tantalizing. A book with her name scrawled inside the cover, the old magazines, the button dish. All the cats. Why had she collected so many porcelain cats? And how was she related to Jake?

But at my mention of Marly and my house, I sensed the mood shift.

“Ah, I think we’re ready to put the vegetables in.” Doris got up and ended the conversation.

Josie caught my confusion. “No one likes to upset Jake,” she told me quietly, as she gathered up the bucket of potato peelings and cornsilk. “He’d rather we just move on and forget the past when it comes to the house.”

My gaze flew to Jake, as he helped Flo with a long tangle of seaweed. For someone who wanted to move on and forget the past he sure spent a lot of time in my house, giving advice about how it should be restored to its former glory. His cable-knit fisherman’s sweater pulled tight over his broad shoulders as he moved. He was more at ease than usual, laughing as he and Flo piled a veritable mountain of seaweed on top of the giant makeshift cookpot. He showed her how to tuck the seaweed down, so it formed a lid.

I had enough baggage of my own to understand there were reasons why people might not be forthcoming about their lives. For some reason, Jake didn’t want to talk about Marly, or about his relationship to my house. I could respect that. I didn’t want to talk about my past either. I wondered if we’d get to a point where either of us would be comfortable opening up… As if reading my mind, he glanced up. His gaze held mine, his eyes serious, then appraising.

“Mom, when you’re done having your stare-off with Jake, can you pass me the hand sanitizer? I stink of seaweed.” Flo waved her noisome hands in front of my face.

I blushed as red as the coals in the firepit. I noticed Doris and Gary exchanging amused looks and I swore Alan and Roger were smirking. I was so embarrassed I could barely look at Jake again.

It turned out the lobster bake was an all-day affair. Doris and Roger regaled us with stories about how hard the coming winter would be as we ate our way through not only lobster but also char-grilled steak, buttered corn, steaming potatoes, and then blueberry cheesecake and s’mores. By the time I licked the last marshmallow-smeared chocolate from my fingers, I was as relaxed and happy as I’d been in years. Tom lent Flo his binoculars and she whiled away the late afternoon searching the horizon for whales, then we wandered the length of the curved beach, gathering driftwood and chips of green and amber sea glass.

By the time the evening star was glittering in the east, Flo was languid and yawning. “I like it here.” She sighed as we traipsed back up the trail to the top of the cliff. “I’m glad we found this treasure house, even if it does come with a school full of buttheads.”

“Flo!”

“What? I can’t say ‘buttheads’ now?” But she was still grinning, and she looped her arm through mine as we headed home.

Fourteen

“It’s like there’s some kind of secret language I don’t know,” Flo grumped in her second week at her new school. “There’s this one girl, Lainey Mullins, and she whispers every time I walk past.”