All through the winter, she took Willa down to the beach every morning, to frolic with her pack of regulars, a corgi and a golden retriever, two chocolate labs, and a few other rescues. The big dogs would chase tennis balls into the water, while the small dogs watched from the shore and gave each other looks that seemed to ask Why on earth would they do that? Diana met their owners; her fellow washashores, women and men who’d had other lives in other towns and cities, who’d landed on the Cape and decided to stay. One woman was a sculptor, one man was a writer; a married couple were university professors who kept a pied-à-terre in New York City for the school year. All of them loved the Cape, and couldn’t imagine living anywhere else, and they were happy to tell Diana where to go and what to do.
On Sundays, she’d bundle up and join Charlotte the sculptor and ride her bike to Provincetown for a restorative yoga class. When it was over, she’d treat herself to a latte at Joe, then pick up a few groceries and pedal back home. On Wednesdays, she would go to the Truro library, where she got to know both of the librarians: Margo, who was older, bubbly and enthusiastic, grabbing Diana’s hand as she led her to the New Release table; and Tessa, who was younger, quiet and tall. Both of them would put books aside for Diana’s visits. She’d check out a stack to get her through the week; always fiction, tilted heavily toward mysteries. She’d make a fire in the woodstove, brew a pot of tea, and read the afternoons away on her days off. Her favorites were cozies, where a tea-sipping spinster or a group of knitters solved the crime, without ever resorting to violence. Happy endings guaranteed.
One night in December, Michael Carmody came to the Abbey for dinner, accompanied by a pretty young woman who wore dangly gold earrings and a dress of peach-colored silk. Diana could have never worn that color, but the shade made the woman’s pale, luminous white skin seem to glow. Reese winked at Diana as he seated them in her section. Diana shot him a dirty look, but before she could head over with menus and bread and glasses of water, Ellie had swooped in, smiling and chattering, greeting Michael with a hug. “I’ve got this,” she called to Diana.
Diana told herself that it didn’t matter. She returned Michael Carmody’s friendly wave, and tried not to watch as he held the woman’s chair out for her, or to listen as her laughter rang out across the dining room. When she walked by to deliver desserts to a four-top, an hour later, Michael and the woman were talking intently, their voices low, leaning so close to one another that their foreheads were practically touching, and he never even looked her way as he escorted his lady friend out the door. Well, she thought, that’s that.
* * *
Jane, a fellow dog walker, told Diana where to get her shellfishing permit, and taught her how to use a clam rake. All through January and February, every few weeks, at low tide, Diana would walk Willa out onto a sandbar. Willa would run, chasing gulls, while Diana, in wool socks and rubber boots and a puffy down coat, raked the sand, listening for the telltale clinking sound of shells against the rake’s tines, and filled the wire bucket with clams. One weekend Jane, who was short, with cropped gray hair and clear blue eyes, took her to Pamet Harbor and showed her how to pry oysters off the rocks with a knife. Back at home, Jane watched, supervising, as Diana struggled to pry the shells open, finally managing to free six mangled oysters from their homes. She poured herself a beer and sliced a lemon into wedges, arranged the oysters on a platter, and ate them, with lemon juice and cocktail sauce, while she and Willa and Jane and Jane’s Bernese mountain dog, Thatcher, sat on the deck in the thin winter sunshine.
She went oystering all through the winter, dressing in layers, with canvas gardening gloves on her hands and a wool cap pulled down over her ears. She tossed the shells into a heap at the corner of the deck, thinking about her summer with Dr. Levy, the way that she would boil the shells until they were clean, then throw them onto the driveway. “Okay, kids, do your thing!” she’d call, and Sam and Sarah would race outside to stomp on the shells, jumping up and down, crushing them to bits.
By March, her heap was almost knee-high. Diana thought about dropping some off as an offering, as a combination thank-you and hello, but she knew she couldn’t. Even seeing the house would be too much. She picked up a shell and held it in her hand, turning it over, admiring its shape and the shades of cream and gray on its inner curve, underneath where the oyster had lain. She looked at them until she had an idea. Then it was just a matter of gathering supplies.
She found paper napkins in the clearance bin at one of the fancy home goods stores in P-town. “With the summer people gone,” said the proprietor, “there’s not much call for cocktail supplies.” Diana bought a pack of napkins with a pattern of blue anchors and seashells on the white background, and bought gold paint, white paint, and Mod Podge at the hardware store on Conwell Street.