Page 37 of Beautiful Place By the Sea

“Because I’m a literary expert?”

Oliver shakes his head, still bent over the book he grabbed. “Nah. Because Scarlett’s sassy as hell, and you seem like you’d enjoy it.”

“Oh really?”

He turns and looks directly at me, a smirk overtaking his face. “Very much so.”

“I see how it is, Oliver.” I shake my head in mock frustration, grabbing a book of my own to look at. I need to shift my focus away from wherever this banter we have going on might be headed.

Fortunately, a customer comes over then, asking for help with a book on local history, and Oliver rushes off to assist. It takes a full minute and a half before I realize I’m staring at him. I’m caught up watching the quiet, confident way he pulls books off the shelves, flipping them open and pointing to salient information, smiling when the customer does, and just generally seeming fully at ease here.

I shake my head rapidly as if to clear my thoughts. This can’t happen. I’m pretty sure Oliver hates me, and besides, I’m leaving at the end of August. There’s no point in entertaining this kind of daydream.

Taking a deep breath, I turn back to the counter and will my brain to focus on writing the staff picks. I only get through one before my eyes are dragged, as if by a magnet, back to his face across the room.

ten

Idon’t have to work on Sunday, and I manage to pull Laurel away from her computer for a walk on the Marginal Way. The fact that we’ve been here almost a week already and haven’t yet made it to my favorite place in town has me very antsy.

The sun is high above us, inviting little beads of sweat to race down the back of my neck as we stroll. But the flowers are luscious, the bees and butterflies flitting excitedly from bloom to bloom. I can’t say I blame them. Between the gardens and the sweeping oceanscape stretching out before us, I suspect we may have unwittingly stepped onto another plane entirely.

We walk mostly in silence, slipping into a single-file formation every 60 seconds or so as joggers and overwhelmed parents with strollers pass by on the narrow path. Between the constant need to move over and the steep, curving hills on parts of the walkway, it’s challenging to carry on a conversation.

“It’s hot,” Laurel moans, turning to face me when we’re about a quarter-mile from the end of the path. “Can we sit down?” She indicates a nearby bench.

My breath catches in my throat when I realize it’s surrounded by a ring of pine trees, set out on a rock jutting over the ocean. This is the spot. The place Eleanor wrote about in her diary.

My gaze flits over to Laurel’s perfectly made-up face, now marred by a sheen of sweat. I should tell her what I read. But I remember the feelings sharing Eleanor’s first journal entry dredged up for me, and I decide to sit with the information on my own a little bit longer.

“Absolutely. Let’s take a break.” We sink wearily onto the bench, and the temperature immediately drops at least five degrees thanks to the shade of the pines. The breeze is nice here, I think, looking out at the waves as they crash against the rocks.

To my right, just a little further down the path, is Perkins Cove, a perfect postcard of a place connected to Ogunquit’s main drag via the Marginal Way. It’s small; so small you probably could almost miss it, and it juts out into the water like the letter L, as if desperate to prove it belongs to the land.

A few restaurants dot the ocean side of the strip, just behind a calm patch of the Atlantic that’s technically called Oarweed Cove. The walking path continues in a loop around a minuscule fishing village made up of tiny shops, selling mostly fudge and high-end artisan wares.

On the back side of the village is a small harbor called the Basin, featuring several lobstering boats that take visitors on guided tours of their traps. On any given day, you might also spot a few sailboats that offer sunset trips out to Nubble Light down in York, plus a smattering of family-owned crafts. Spanning the harbor is a drawbridge that delights small children and adults alike when it breaks apart to let tall ships disembark for the open sea.

“I’ve missed it.” Laurel’s eyes are trained on a small sailboat bobbing over the waves south of us.

She doesn’t have to clarify. “So have I. Water?” I take a swig from the bottle I brought in my backpack, then pass it to her.

“Thanks.” We’re quiet for a moment as she drinks, and I get lost in my thoughts. I’m imagining Charlie and Eleanor, hovering like ghosts on the very rocks around us, setting up for a picnic. Grandpa’s eyes crinkling with joy when he looked at Grandma, as they always did; her smile bright as the midday sun. Him casually waving goodbye when her paramour arrived, heart twanging with his longing to stay. Her soul not yet aware of the future in store for her; distracted by this powerful, yet temporary love affair.

Then my mind flicks back to last summer, when my parents and I walked to Perkins Cove and stopped in this very spot. They’d been snippy with each other all morning, and by the time we’d found an available bench to take a breather, I’d had about enough.

“So, should we go out for lobster tonight?” I’d asked, hoping to lighten the tension in the air.

“I don’t care what we do,” Dad said quietly.

My mother had rolled her eyes. “Do you care about anything anymore?”

I remember shooting her a shocked glare. “Mom! Would you ever say that to a patient?”

She shook her head. “Of course not. I’d like to think no psychologist would.”

“Then why are you saying it to someone you love?”

I saw guilt, shame, and sorrow swimming through her eyes then, but I didn’t know what to make of them at the time.