Total pages in book: 129
Estimated words: 125117 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 626(@200wpm)___ 500(@250wpm)___ 417(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 125117 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 626(@200wpm)___ 500(@250wpm)___ 417(@300wpm)
Ash lifted his to-go cup in salute, like it stood in for the man himself.
“He kept coming over to give me things and saying that people returned them and he couldn’t resell them. It was total crap, of course, but I was desperate so I shut up and accepted it. Now I just deliver a bouquet of flowers to his house every week to say thanks. Not that it’ll ever even out.”
Truman’s heart swelled at the image of Ash honoring Bob’s generosity every week forever.
“Anyway. Now that it’s fixed up, Carlton’s offering about ten times what I paid for it. I don’t know, I’ve got a little time to figure it out, but…”
He trailed off as they turned another corner, and the rocky coastline came into view. Once exposed to the water, the wind whipped them, but the sun shone brightly, sparkling off the wavelets and shadowing the giant-tumbled rocks.
“Wow,” Truman breathed, awed, and for the first time that day, it was exactly the right word. “The ocean is absolutely gorgeous.”
“That’s Penobscot Bay.”
“Oh. Great word. Is the bay different than the ocean?”
“Nah, not really. Same water.” Truman smiled as Ash continued, “The Penobscot are the Indigenous people whose land we’re on. It’s a mispronunciation of the Algonquin for the people of where the white rocks extend out.”
And extend out they did. There was a line of rocks that looked like they made a path of steps into the water. Truman felt like at the right moment, he would be able to follow them down below the waves into a salt-crusted crystal palace.
“Wanna sit?” Ash tugged lightly on Truman’s jacket and pointed at a flat-topped boulder.
They picked their way across the rocky shore, Bruce trotting easily alongside them, and sat down. It was immediately more comfortable. The sun warmed their faces, and two large boulders buffered them from the punishing wind. The smell of salt and the sound of the waves were lulling, and Truman sipped his latte in a state of unfamiliar bliss.
“My mom has early-onset Alzheimer’s,” Ash said, sipping his own coffee and gazing out over the bay. “She was diagnosed three years ago. That’s why I moved back to Owl Island.”
Truman felt like he’d swallowed a stone. “I’m so sorry, Ash. That’s…damn.”
“Lots of the time, she’s okay. Like her old self. Around dinner, though, she gets really confused. And at night, she sometimes freaks out, doesn’t know where she is. She…” He didn’t finish the thought.
“And you take care of her.”
“I try.”
Ash paused for long enough to eat half of a blueberry muffin. Long enough that Truman wondered if the kind thing to do would be to change the subject. But then Ash continued.
“The thing that’s most important is that she has consistency in her life. Routine. It helps. And she’s lived on Owl Island for forty years, so I’m not going to stick her someplace where she won’t know anyone. Where no one will know who she used to be.”
“But that means you have to be here. And you don’t like it?”
Ash shook his head. “I like it. A lot, actually. I’m not real social, as you might have gathered.” He gave Truman a self-deprecating smile. “I enjoy the peace here. And it’s a beautiful place to live. It’s just… Being here means being alone, mostly.”
He said it so softly the wind almost snatched the words before Truman could hear them.
“You’ve got Greta, right? Well, usually.”
Ash murmured his assent, and Truman realized that he meant alone in terms of romance, intimacy, a partner.
“Oh, I see. That’s so hard.” Truman imagined Ash late at night, hair rumpled and beautiful eyes tired, grief-stricken at the loss of who his mother once was, yearning for comfort, for conversation, for love, and finding himself perpetually alone. “That’s so, so hard.”
Ash shoved the rest of his blueberry muffin in his mouth and patted Bruce’s head. Truman’s heart ached for him.
Truman wasn’t good at aching.
He hated problems that didn’t have solutions, and he hated doing nothing, even in the face of a problem without a solution. He wished he had the power to comfort Ash in some deep, fundamental way, but he didn’t. There was only one thing he had the ability to do.
“If Thorn was doing better, that would take some of the stress off, right? Give you some more options at least?”
“Yeah. Definitely.”
“Then that’s what we’ll do!” Truman pledged.
Ash reached out and put a hand on his knee.
“Thank you,” he said, voice choked up. And a wave broke over the rocks, salty droplets spattering their faces.
A sign.
***
They were sprawled on Greta’s couch in the living room, Ash having decided that since he’d already closed the shop for an hour, he may as well leave it shuttered to dream up ways to save it. Truman chose not to make the first thing on the list maintain regular hours because it seemed passive-aggressive, but he added it as a large bullet point in his mind.