Page 2 of After Life
Ms. Cochrane made a funny, almost sad noise as she shifted the minivan into drive and pulled away from the pavement, onto the worn blacktop road in front of the ferry landing.
Julian’s fingers closed around mine, tugging me a bit closer—at least as much as our worryingly loose seat belts would allow. “This place is beautiful,” he murmured as we drove past a thick stand of towering trees with broad, glossy leaves and huge white flowers. A faint whiff of something lemony and herbaceous made it through the barely cracked window, followed hard by the salt-life-sharp tang of seawater and warming asphalt. The road followed the beach for most of the drive, the pale-yellow sand to our left and thick stands of palms and magnolias to our right, interspersed with salt-washed cottages and the occasional boat up on some sort of trailer or props.
Sandra muttered something under her breath as the road jinked to the right, cutting in toward the center of the island, and the town of Rosie Sands broke through the palms. “Holy crap,” Julian muttered. “It’s the town that time forgot.”
“It’s adorable,” I protested gently. “It looks like a postcard from the thirties or something.”
Everything was a vaguely washed-out candy hue, the sun and sea breeze doing their best to buff away anything brighter than pastels and earth tones. The buildings on the main street—possibly the only street, I realized, as we hadn’t turned off the ragged asphalt drive from the ferry landing yet—were all in that round-cornered, low-slung style I’d seen in black-and-white movies when I was a boy, old American films where men wore hats all the time and the women were always sharp and quick.
I tore my gaze away to glance down at my phone, buzzing with an incoming email alert. It was from Charlotte, a distant aunt on my father’s side. Her email was succinct and, frankly, a bit painful: Oscar, I would like to apologize if my email yesterday overstepped. It must be a shock to find out I exist after so many years. If asking you to visit so soon was too forward, I’m sorry.
Julian’s hand atop mine drew me back to the moment. “Hey, this is just for us, remember?” he chided gently. “Charlotte can wait a few days.”
I nodded. He was right. We’d made a promise this trip was just us, no work or outside drama. Just a chance for us to be together without anything pressing in on us. “You’re right,” I murmured. “It’ll keep.”
“Ray-Don’s is the only grocery on the island. He’s got everything you could need. The resort has a little quick-mart type thing, but it’s limited and overpriced,” Sandra said, bitterness coloring her words.
“Holy cats,” I muttered as we cruised past an old-fashioned grocery store, the kind with massive displays of produce out front and handwritten signs advertising the specials instead of corporate-printed jobs. “It’s like something out of Back to the Future.”
Sandra nodded in the direction of the man standing in front of the store, carefully arranging a pyramid of sweet corn. “Ray-Don grows most of it himself,” she said, nodding in the direction of a barrel-shaped man standing next to a pyramid of small watermelons. “Safer that way, he reckons, knowing what we’re all eatin’ and not havin’ to rely on the mainland.”
“Ray-Don,” Julian repeated slowly. “Ray. Don.”
Sandra glared in the rearview mirror. “Yeah. Ray-Don Smithers. His mother was a Noonan, one of the founding families, but married into the Smithers grocery dynasty. The Smithers folks have run the grocery here since 1911.”
He nodded thoughtfully. “Ray-Don,” he murmured when Sandra whipped her attention back to the road. “Like the radioactive element.”
“I’m sure he has a glowing personality,” I muttered.
Julian’s choked laugh earned another sharp glare from Sandra as she sped the minivan past the low-slung block of pink-washed buildings bearing old-fashioned signs painted on the sides: Delia’s Baked Goods and Fresh Coffee—Get Your Day Started Right!, Pirate Pete’s Boat Rentals and Bait, Wreckers Treasures Resale and Consignments. A few people were in front of the shops, but none paid us any mind. We were there before most things were open, from the looks of it, and Sandra speeding through the small village didn’t seem to bother anyone. The road took a rather sharp turn to the right, and I realized we were making a circle. “There’s only the one road?”
Sandra nodded. “We don’t need any more than that. All the houses and shops are on this side. The other side...”
“Is what?” Julian asked when she trailed off and fell quiet. “What’s wrong with the other side?”
“Nothing. It got sold to developers after the last world war. Before that, it’d belonged to Rosie Sands for centuries, but after it got snapped up like that, it’s been a tourist destination for folks into sport fishing and the like.”
The rest of the ride was prickly. Sandra’s eyes were fixed straight ahead, and her lips pressed into a thin line as she sped up, rocketing us toward Honey Walk, the cottage Julian had rented for the week. I had the feeling she’d just open the side door and lose us into the Atlantic on a hard turn if she could get away with it, but Sandra got us to the cottage in one piece.
One slightly carsick piece.
And when I say cottage, I’m only using that word because it was what was on the sign in front of the house. “I’ve seen smaller castles,” I muttered. “Christ...”
Honey Walk poked out above a thick stand of trees that swayed gracefully in the sea breeze. Sandra rolled down her window and poked a code into a battered metal box by the wrought-iron gate and, a moment later, it hissed and creaked open, sliding back into glossy dark shrubs lining the front fence.
“Work on Honey Walk started in the late 1600s, but the final construction didn’t take place until over a century later,” Sandra said with a tinge of pride, the brusque tone of voice from the ride over dissolving under the warmth she felt for the house. She moved the minivan slowly up the drive, gravel crunching beneath the tires as she crept toward what looked like a carriage house. She slammed the car to a stop with little care for the transmission and motioned us to get out. It took some doing but Julian managed to get out without tangling his cane in the seatbelt, and I followed with an ache in my knees from the cramped back seat.
“Leave your bags,” she ground out. “I’ll get ‘em. Follow me and I’ll show you the inside.”
We dutifully followed, slightly nervous ducklings in her wake as she strode up the crushed shell and gravel path and stomped up the rebuilt wooden porch. “This isn’t the original, obviously.” She sniffed, pausing at the door and rummaging through a heavy ring of keys from her low-slung hip bag.
“Are those the originals?” Julian asked, interest definitely piqued. He leaned forward, braced on his cane, as he tried to see the keys in her hand. Sandra closed her fingers around the hasps and glared.
“Yes. You’ll be given your own key to the interior rooms and the exterior doors, but I ask that you leave them here,” she pointed to a metal box on the porch, “if you leave the grounds for any length of time.”
Julian nodded eagerly. They both turned their eyes toward me, so I joined the bobble head brigade. Sandra, apparently satisfied, unlocked the door with a heavy thunk of the lock and pushed it wide. Inside, instead of the dark cavern I’d been expecting, the foyer was an explosion of color and textures. Sleekly polished dark wood was juxtaposed with the colorful spill of light coming from a high-set stained-glass window overhead, positioned as a skylight. Bright shapes made of colorful light covered us and I couldn’t help my pleased laugh. “I’ve always wanted to live inside a kaleidoscope,” I admitted to Julian, who gave me such a tender smile I couldn’t look at him for long because it made me want to tear up. “This is beautiful.” Turning my hands palms-up, I grinned as they were bathed in green light from the design above.
Sandra unbent a little, pleased by our admiration of the home so far, if I had to guess. She left us to ooh and aah over the foyer while she headed back to the minivan to retrieve our bags. “This is beautiful,” I repeated, and Julian smiled, dipping his chin to kiss the top of my head. “Admit it—you picked it because it’s a historic home and your history-loving heart couldn’t resist.”
