* * *
The Martinelli cottage is completely dark—except for the lamplight shining in one living room window. The golden illumination comes through the straight white curtains hanging there. Right outside the window, heavy beach roses climb the trellis. The blossoms edging the window glimmer in the lamplight, too.
Mack pulls into the packed-grass driveway curving along beside the cottage—which is where he parks the car. After killing the engine, he sits there and just looks at that one window for several minutes. Beyond the cottage, the moon rises far above Long Island Sound. Crickets chirp; distant waves lap over and over at shore.
But Mack watches only that lamplit window before getting out of the car. Reaching into the backseat then, he lifts out his bag of groceries, crosses the dew-covered lawn and walks inside the quiet cottage.
five
THURSDAY MORNING, MACK WALKS BACK from the beach alone. The air is warm and the sun shines bright as he crosses the backyard from the path. His swim trunks are wet; a towel is slung around his neck; a bunch of wildflowers are in his hand. As he nears the cottage, a noise comes through the open windows. He tips his head, listening, then walks inside through the slider off the deck.
That noise is louder—a thrumming hum, starting and stopping. Hum, stop, more hesitant thrums. It’s a repetitive, clicking sound.
Holding those fresh-picked flowers, Mack opens one kitchen cabinet, then another. He lifts out a bowl first, then a too-small crystal vase. All the while, that rhythmic humming continues. After opening a second cabinet, he sets the flowers on the countertop and walks down the cottage hallway. As he does, that clicking hum—start, stop—hesitantly continues, growing louder as he nears the sewing room at the end of the hall.
“Hey. What are you doing?” he asks from the doorway.
Avery looks up from where she sits at the sewing machine. Sunlight streams in the window. Thread spools, and pins, and swatches of fabric cover her workspace. Avery’s hands maneuver a piece of that fabric; her foot rests on a foot pedal; a pin cushion is strapped around her wrist. “I’m making masks. Especially for your nice neighbors. The ones who threw rice at us?”
“Rafe and Rosa?”
Avery nods, lowers her head and slowly sews a line of stitches. “I’m using some of your fabric samples from that basket,” she says, hitching her head to the large white basket nearby. “Is that okay?” she asks, raising her foot from the pedal to pause her stitching.
“Yeah.” Mack steps into the room. “Definitely.”
Again, Avery presses the foot pedal. That sewing needle thrums through gold-swirled fabric she’s feeding beneath the presser foot. “Any chance you can string some rope between the two shepherds’ hooks out front? And attach that sign?” Her stitching pauses as she slides over a hand-drawn cardboard sign reading FREE for Neighbors.
“This is really nice of you.” Mack picks up the sign. “I didn’t know you could sew.”
“I can. A little bit.” As she says it, Avery stitches the sides of the mask, effectively holding its pleats in place.
Mack watches, then brushes through the fabric samples on the worktable. There’s a denim piece; a bandana-patterned piece; blues and creams and greens. “I was just thinking,” he says, picking up a flowered fabric. “If you never had your dining room chairs reupholstered, I’d never have even known you.”
Still stitching, Avery asks over the sewing machine’s hum, “Do you really know me, Mack?”
“What?”
“Do you really know me?” she repeats, still hesitantly stitching.
“Avery.” He sets down a fabric sample. “Of course I do.”
She stops stitching and pulls her nearly finished gold-swirled mask from beneath the presser foot. “What’s my favorite food?”
Standing there in his tee and wet swim trunks, Mack only looks at her.
“As a child,” Avery continues, “what did I want to be when I grew up?”
From Mack, again no answer. Just a shifting of his feet, a glance at her hand-drawn sign.
This time, Avery’s voice is softer. “What’s my biggest fear?”
Mack silently shakes his head with no answer.
Avery sets aside the mask and picks up a length of elastic. But her hands? They suddenly stop moving as she only looks at Mack standing near her table. “When was I last happy?” she whispers.
In the silence as he only looks back at her, the cry of a seagull comes through the windows, its call mournful. “Aren’t you happy now?” Mack asks, his voice serious. “With me?”
This time it’s Avery who doesn’t answer. Doesn’t say yes. But doesn’t say no, either.
Mack waits a few seconds, then picks up the rope and finished masks and heads out the cottage’s front door.
Avery takes a long breath before finishing up with the elastic ear loops. Setting the gold-swirled mask down, she goes to the window and sees Mack outside. He’s arranging the shepherds’ hooks far enough apart so that all her masks can hang on the strung rope. She watches as he ties on the rope, but she walks away then. Walks out of the room and goes to the kitchen. When she reaches for a glass from the cabinet, she notices the handful of wildflowers strewn on the counter.
“Oh, Mack,” she whispers as she touches a yellow blossom, a lacy green leaf. Bending to a lower cabinet, she pulls out a ceramic white pitcher and fills it with water. One at a time, she arranges the stems of buttercups and yellow goldenrod, Queen Anne’s lace and purple coneflowers. Last, she tucks in the wisps of beach grass and wraps a piece of twine around the pitcher, tying a bow beneath the spout.
* * *
During lunch, Mack asks Avery to join him on the beach afterward.
“It’s a hot summer day, and I missed you this morning,” he says with a small shrug. “Come with me this afternoon.”
So as Avery puts on her bathing suit—this one a black one-piece with mesh inserts—Mack digs around in the shed for an old sand pail.
Now they beachcomb at the water’s edge. Avery pulls her straw sunhat low. They walk the length of the beach, all the way to the rocky peninsula and back. Seagulls drift on a salty breeze overhead. A few beach umbrellas throw pockets of shade. Along the sand, Mack veers this way, and that, picking up shells. He rinses them in the sea and drops them in the pail. Avery walks along with her head dipped, keeping her eye on the tideline. She adds smooth beach rocks and pieces of sea glass to the pail. The frosted greens and whites and blues shimmer among the wet seashells. Every now and then, she swishes her fingertips through them, clattering and clicking salty shells.
When they get back to their umbrella, Avery sits on her sand chair in the sun while Mack skims a few flat stones he’d picked up. The stones skip and jump along the water’s surface, leaving a spray of the sea behind them. When he walks to their umbrella, he pulls a bottle of sunscreen from her tote and kneels on a big blanket beside her chair.
A minute later, Avery slightly—just slightly—jumps at his touch. Mack’s leaning behind her and rubbing the white lotion onto her back, just beneath her neck. Gently he moves aside her hair, his other hand swirling across her skin. When she leans forward, wrapping her arms around her knees, he rubs lotion lower on her back. His hand moves in slow circles; his touch, soft.