“What are you afraid of?” Fred asked.
Evelyn looked up at him. “Absolutely nothing.” She pulled a couple of bills from her wallet and slapped them on the table to cover her share. “Let’s go.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
We sat on a boulder by the side of the road, waiting for the Uber to arrive. There was just room enough for both of us, with an inch or two preventing our shoulders and hips from touching. An inch or two that I was very aware of for reasons I didn’t want to think about.
“Where does this road go?” I asked, trying to get my bearings. And maybe to distract myself. Not that Joe was paying much attention to me. He had his camera in his lap and his phone in his hand, and he was downloading the picture.
“Into town that way.” He nodded to the left. “And up toward Ipswich the other.” He switched the camera off, set it gently in the backpack at his feet, and then turned to me. “What’s your number?” he asked, gesturing with his phone.
“You can just AirDrop it.”
The hint of a smile played across his lips. “Or you can give me your number.”
I wanted to kick myself as I recited the ten digits.
My phone vibrated as the message came in, and I opened the picture, using two fingers to zoom in and see it more clearly. I hadn’t looked that spectacular in a photo—or in person for that matter—since my wedding. I shook my head slightly.
“You don’t like it?”
I glanced up, unaware that he had been watching my reaction. “No, I do—I love it. I don’t think you’re a photographer though. You’re some kind of wizard.” I remembered where we had just been. “Or a witch, maybe. When in Rome and all.” I returned to my phone, saving the image, then opening Instagram. I had a dozen new notifications. I had posted the previous two pictures partially to seem happy if Brad was looking. I didn’t know if he was—but my friends, whom I had effectively shut out except for sporadic texts to reassure my three nearest and dearest that I was alive, were. And I had forgotten, when I was hiding so no one could see what a mess I was, that there still were people who wanted to see me. Who missed me. And who, until that moment, I hadn’t realized I missed as well.
I scrolled quickly through the comments. I would respond to every one of them later, I told myself, then clicked the plus to upload the new picture. I thought for a moment about the caption, smiling as inspiration hit, then typed out Glinda’s line from The Wizard of Oz about only bad witches being ugly.
“What’s your handle?” I asked Joe. He told me, and I tagged him as the photographer, then hit the share button, resisting the urge to look through his feed then and there.
He unlocked his phone and touched the notification, grinning slowly as he read the caption. “Perfect.”
A car approached—the first we had seen in the fifteen minutes we had sat there—and Joe rose, saying it was the Uber.
“Where to now?” I asked when we were in the car.
“I’m hungry. Lunch?”
“Solid plan. Brewster’s again?”
“Liked it that much?”
“Um, that was the whole reason I went on this hike.”
He shook his head. “There’s more to Hereford than fried clams on a picnic table.”
I looked down at my yoga pants—I was sweaty and not dressed for a real restaurant. I would have liked to shower and change into nicer clothes first. But he was just as grungy as I was. And it wasn’t like I would run into people I knew. So I told the voice in my head that questioned every decision to get over it and watched out the window as the woods gave way to the marshes that led to town in one direction and the beach in the other.
The Uber driver eventually pulled to a stop in front of an unpretentious bistro with a green awning by the harbor, with outdoor seating overlooking the water. “Gimme Shell-ter,” the sign read. We seated ourselves outside, and a waiter soon brought waters and menus.
I picked mine up, then looked at Joe. “What’s your recommendation?”
“Everything is good.”
I made a face. “Okay, but I want Brewster’s-level good.”
He smiled and gestured to the waiter. “Two lobster rolls,” he said, pronouncing it “LAWBstah.”
“Lobster?” I asked when the waiter left. “Really?” It sounded so fancy.
“You asked for the best thing on the menu.”
I looked out over the water, suddenly aware, as we fell silent, that our situation was awkward. It was one thing when we were actively doing something, because we could talk about the woods or the town or my grandmother, but I had just spent six months frozen in time and the previous six years in a committed and all-consuming relationship. What did I have to talk about?