The melancholy began to rise, but I battled it down, casting around anxiously for a subject to wedge into the conversational lull. Another whale-watching boat went past, close to the shore, having just left a nearby dock, a painting on the side: a rotund cartoon whale standing on a scale, holding up a sign that read “Whale Watchers.”
I pointed to the boat. “That’s a terrible pun.”
“Aren’t all puns terrible?”
“Says the guy who brought me to a restaurant whose name is a pun from a Rolling Stones song.”
“I never said the name was good. I said the food was.”
“I guess you would know—doesn’t your mom own a restaurant?”
“She does.”
“Please tell me it has a pun for a name.”
He shook his head. “As straightforward as they come. La Tasca Sofia.”
“What does it mean?”
“Sofia’s restaurant.”
“And your mom . . . ?”
“Sofia.”
“Is it Portuguese food?”
“No, Thai,” he deadpanned.
I scrunched up my nose. “Stupid question, huh?”
He softened. “No, I’m just teasing. It’s actually a lot of my grandmother’s recipes.”
“Does that mean that you cook too?”
He nodded.
“Are you married?” I blurted out, then clapped a hand over my mouth. “I’m sorry. I don’t know where that came from.”
“I—um—wow—okay . . .” He rubbed at his suddenly ashen face, and I felt my stomach drop. What had my grandmother said? Who says he’s not?
Of course. He’s married. Grandma, what did you do?
That reaction does mean he was flirting with you though. I pushed that thought aside. I wanted nothing to do with a cheater.
“Sorry. I—”
“It’s not what you’re thinking.”
I waited.
“I’m not, but I was.”
My shoulders dropped—I hadn’t realized I had tensed them. “Why didn’t you tell me you were divorced too?”
He rubbed the side of his hand across his forehead again. “Because I’m not. She died.”
Half of me wanted to wrap my arms around him. The look on his face was heartbreaking. The other half wanted to dive off the retaining wall into the ocean to escape my embarrassment.
“I—I’m so sorry.”
“It was almost four years ago now. I’m okay. You just caught me off guard.”
“What happened? I mean—you don’t have to talk about it—you don’t even know me—I—” THAT was what Grandma meant? She couldn’t have warned me?
“Drunk driver. She was coming home from a shift—she was a nurse.”
I exhaled loudly. “That’s—”
“I know.”
“I’m sorry.”
His glanced down. “Thanks.”
We sat in silence, and I desperately flailed for the right thing to say. My go-to was always to break tense or awkward moments with humor, which I definitely couldn’t do about his dead wife.
But if one of us didn’t say something soon, I wasn’t going to be able to stop myself.
“Do—do you want to talk about it?” I stammered to avoid saying something regrettable.
“Not really, no.”
And back to silence.
He closed his eyes momentarily, took a deep breath, and when he opened his eyes, I could see he was going to save me with a safe subject. “Listen, it’s—”
“Jenna!”
I turned my head, horrified, toward the sound of my grandmother’s voice. She was waving excitedly and entering the restaurant’s terrace with another older woman.
“We were walking by, and suddenly there you two were. How did you get here so quickly from the woods?” She started to pull a chair over, but Joe jumped up to do it for her, getting a second chair as well.
“We walked to the Ipswich Road and Ubered back to town.”
“Well, that explains it.” She sat, gesturing for the other woman to sit too. “Jenna, darling, you remember your cousin Donna. Donna, do you know Joe Fonseca?”
Donna peered at him over her glasses. “Sofia’s boy?” Joe nodded. “But you were a baby just yesterday!”
“Not quite yesterday,” he said amicably.
Donna shook her head at my grandmother. “They grow up so quickly.”
“You’re telling me. They’re already as old as I was when I was spending summers here with three kids.”