Inside, a hostess called Nick “sir” （okay） and Laurie “madam” （weird） while bringing them to a table by the window that looked out at a funny little garden that looked like the inspiration was part Zen, part mini golf. They both asked for fizzy water, and the hostess described the steaks as the result of cow lives that sounded nothing short of idyllic, then she left them to go over the aggressively laid-back paper menus. “I bet the food is really good here,” she told Nick. “And I bet they are sweating about making this place work.”
He widened his eyes and nodded. “I appreciate the effort, which is effortful.” Someone brought the fizzy water, and someone else took their orders—steaks for both, because why not?—and brought a little bowl of bread and a steel cup of butter. The music was gentle coffeehouse anesthetic, not quite fancy but also not cool. “So,” Nick said as he tore a piece off a miniature loaf of French bread, “what’s the duck news? You were going to send it to someplace in Hartford, right?”
“I was,” she said. She explained how Matt had materialized and taken the task off her hands, exactly the way she needed. “This way, I’ll know it’s in good hands, it’s taken down there in person and everything.”
“What do you think your odds are?” he asked.
“That it’s real? That it’s worth money? No idea. I’m not sure I care that much about that. I mean, obviously, it would be great, but that would go to my folks and Dot’s other family, just like it will when they sell her house. It’s not like I’d pocket it.”
“So you’re still planning to sell the house?” He wasn’t looking at her. He was busily buttering some bread.
“Of course,” she said. “What else would I do?”
He shrugged. “Keep it?”
“I already have a house.”
“I know.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Nick, you know I’m not moving here, right?”
He nodded. “Sure. Yes. Of course.”
“I’m not moving into Dot’s house.”
Now he looked up. “If you say so. You just look pretty comfortable kicking around that kitchen, that’s all.”
“I’m also pretty comfortable kicking around the kitchen I already have.”
“Okay. So you’re not in it for the money, you just want to solve the duck.”
She smiled. “Yeah. I know it’s weird. It’s probably nothing. It’s just the way she had it in there, under the blankets, and then that letter, and now the picture that we found. I just want to know. I’m just curious. I know you probably think it’s strange.”
Nick had always kept his hair fairly short, because when he let it grow longer, its close waves would grow into total chaos. But there was this one curl he had—she used to call it his Superman wave—and it would drop down over his left eye. And when Laurie used to gaze at him a lot, which was most of high school even before they started dating, it was one of the things she gazed at. She could never decide whether it was the result of calculation or good luck, whether he spent ten minutes making sure it would fall the right way, as she would have, or whether he just ran his hands over his head every morning and was blessed, as she figured boys mostly were. She was thinking about this at the moment when he said, “I don’t think it’s strange. I think it’s great.”
She blushed. Oh boy. New subject. “So now that you’ve single-handedly saved your place of work, what’s next?”
He immediately took out his phone. He scrolled through some screens and then showed her a picture of a blue van with colorful type on the side. “This is the Rockland Bookmobile,” he said. “I want one just like it.”
“It looks expensive.”
“It is,” he said, “but we need it. We also need the county to get a better mobile app, and we’re still in the middle of all these repairs. We’re trying to figure out how to do it without closing down, since every time you close, somebody starts arguing over whether you should ever open again.” He put his phone away and sighed. “I basically never stop thinking about that building. I see construction paperwork and grant proposals when I close my eyes.”
“Do you like that?” she asked.
“I think it and I are one now,” he said with a smile. “I think I’ve fused so completely with that place that I don’t think about liking it or not, you know? I just do it.” He shrugged. “How about you? Do you like your work?”