Florie shrugs. ‘Just seems funny after all this time, her comin’ up here like this at the last minute. You’d think she’d be plannin’ her life a year ahead if she’s so busy. Don’t people like her have diaries and PAs and all that?’
‘Florie. Be nice. She’s my only niece.’
‘Well, you could’a knocked me over with a feather when she said she was comin’, that’s for sure.’ She frowns at the icing bowl. ‘Where do you suppose Sam is with that cream cheese? Carrot cake’s just not the same without it.’
***
The screen door squeaks open and Sophie looks up to see Ellie step out onto the landing at the top of the steps to the general store. She wears a purple embroidered smock top and jeans rolled up over red plimsolls, and her dark green apron is spattered with colourful blotches of paint. A pair of horn-rimmed bifocals sits on the tip of her nose. Her aunt holds out her arms, which shake with a slight tremor.
‘Sophie! There you are! What a treat this is! My favourite niece here for my birthday.’
Sophie smiles up at her aunt and waves. She’s so tiny. So much smaller than I remember. A flutter of nerves travels up Sophie’s body. I should have kept in touch. Why did I stop writing, for heaven’s sake? Why didn’t I just pick up the phone? She’s family. My family. And she’s so frail. What was so bloody important that I didn’t even call until I needed something? Until I needed Kittiwake?
Sophie runs up the steps and embraces her aunt. ‘Your only niece, Auntie Ellie, unless there’s something you haven’t told me.’
Ellie squeezes Sophie tight and kisses her on the cheek. ‘Come inside. Florie’s making a carrot cake in the shop kitchen. If Sam gets back in time with the cream cheese, we’ll have cream-cheese icing. Becca insisted that ordinary icing just wouldn’t do.’
Inside, the store looks exactly the same as the day Sophie left Tippy’s Tickle back in 2001 – the walls and shelving the same sage green, the wooden floor polished to a bright shine, the two long wooden counters either side of the narrow room still painted white, with the wooden tops laden with boxes of Ellie’s art cards, jars of partridgeberry and bakeapple jam, and red paper bags of Purity hard tack bread for the stewed brewis everyone up here liked to eat with cod and fried pork-fat scrunchions, and for which she had yet to develop a taste.
A huge black Newfoundland dog with a red kerchief tied around its neck bounds towards them from the back room and rushes past Sophie out the screen door.
‘That can’t be Rupert.’
Ellie shakes her head. ‘No, no. Rupert passed away some years ago. He’s buried under the old tree up past the house. That’s Rupert’s son, Rupert Bear II. We call him Bear.’
Florie walks away from the bay window, carrying a large yellow bowl with a wooden spoon sticking out of what looks like vanilla icing. ‘Well, would you look what the cat dragged in? You gots fed up with New York finally? Decided to make your way back to Paradise?’
Sophie kisses Florie on her cheek. ‘Lovely to see you, Florie. How are the dachshunds?’
‘Best kind, duck. I’ve got people comin’ all the way from Halifax for my dogs now. Even had a fella email me the other day from Toronto, can you imagine that? Comin’ all the way from Toronto to Tippy’s Tickle for a dog?’ She looks over her shoulder at Ellie. ‘You’ll have to be printin’ up some more of your art cards, Ellie, for all these CFAs coming into town. Getting lots of publicity since Hildegarde won Best of Breed for dachshunds last year.’
Sophie raises her eyebrows in a question. ‘CFAs? I’ve forgotten what that stands for.’
‘Come From Aways.’ A man’s voice from the doorway.
Sophie spins around. Bear thunders back into the store, his tail wagging like a flag. Sam stands in the doorway, a silhouette against the late summer light streaming in from outside. The same leather jacket. Still lean in jeans and a white T-shirt.
Oh, God. Her stomach flutters and she takes a breath to calm her nerves. No man she’d met in the past ten years had stood a chance. She’d measured them all against Sam. Every single one of them had come up short. So, why hadn’t she done anything about it? She should have returned his calls, but there didn’t seem to be any point. She could have visited. People have long-distance relationships all the time. She’d thought Sam would just fade away. But he never did. Bloody hell, Sophie, you’ve been sleeping for ten years.
He sets a plastic Foodland bag on the counter beside the sign advertising hot chocolate for a toonie. Folding his arms, he leans against the counter. The stubble is flecked with grey, now, and threads of silver pepper his black hair. His brown eyes sweep over Sophie.
‘It’s anyone not from around here. You’re a CFA until you get Screeched in.’
‘Screeched in?’
Ellie grabs Sophie’s arm and leads her towards the battered wooden table and mismatched chairs in front of the bay window. ‘It’s a silly thing they started doing in St John’s some years ago for the tourists. It’s a bit of fun, really.’
‘Well, I don’t know about that, Ellie girl,’ Florie says, wrinkling her nose. ‘Kissin’ a cod! Whoever heard of such a thing? Eatin’ them, yes. Kissin’ them, not on your life.’
‘You’ll find out soon enough for yourself, Sophie. It’s my eighty-ninth birthday on Friday and I’m having a party. We’ll have a Screech-in then.’ Ellie sits down in an old wooden chair painted purple. A web of lines fans out from the corners of her eyes as she smiles at Sam. ‘You can play the Ugly Stick this time, Sam.’
‘That’ll be the day, Ellie.’
Sophie sits beside Ellie at the table, which is covered with stacks of art cards and jars of watery paints. ‘Where’s Becca? I have a surprise for her.’
‘She went off with Toby Molloy after lunch,’ Florie says as she peeks into the Foodland bag. ‘Said they were goin’ to check out the iceberg over by Seal Point. Don’t usually see them this time of year, but they’re coming around more often now. Breakin’ off from the glaciers up in Greenland. Said she’d bring back some ice to make some ice cream with. Betcha that’d cost a bomb in New York, wouldn’t it, Sophie? Imagine eatin’ iceberg ice cream in Central Park. Purest ice cream you’d ever hope to eat.’
Sam sits on a red-painted chair, leaning back until it tilts precariously against the wall. ‘I hope he knows what he’s doing. It’s choppy out there today. She should be studying for her university entrance exams.’
‘Oh, Sam, don’t be an old fuddy-duddy. They’re eighteen,’ Ellie says. ‘They’re young. Let them enjoy themselves.’
‘That’s just what I’m worried about.’
‘Toby’s a responsible boy, and Becca’s always been a good student here at home,’ Ellie says. ‘She’ll do fine on those tests, though I’m still surprised she wants to go to medical school. She’s such an artistic girl. And the clothes she makes!’ Ellie holds up an embroidered purple sleeve. ‘Just look at that embroidery, Sophie. It’s beautiful.’
Sam tips the legs of the chair back onto the wooden floor. ‘It’s hard to pay bills with art, Ellie. You know that for a fact. Being a doctor will give her some security.’