Geoducks Are for Lovers (2 page)

After gathering her list and the mugs, Maggie heads inside to find her keys and bag. Biscuit comes running when she whistles for him, wagging his tail and bouncing when he sees her purse. She suspects he loves going on errands with her because he knows he’ll get treats wherever they go. The two are rarely apart; he is her loyal companion and friend. 

First stop on today’s list of errands is picking up her weekly Community Sustained Agriculture box from the farmers’ market. Her cabin’s small lot means no sizable kitchen garden, so Maggie supplements with local produce. The long history of farming on the island makes her feel proud and the foodie in her loves the challenge of cooking with whatever she gets for the week.

Sally mans the CSA stand when Maggie and Biscuit arrive. 

“Look who finally turned up on Tuesday.” 

Maggie furrows her brows. “Did I say I was coming on Saturday? It completely slipped my mind.”

“Welcome to the aging brain. No worries, we redid your box fresh this morning figuring you’d turn up today.”

“Sorry. I get lost in my head some days. What’s in the box this week?”

“Lots of greens, more zucchini, Japanese eggplant, some cherry tomatoes, and cucumbers. I put a pint of marionberries in there, too.” Sally reaches down to scratch Biscuit’s head. “And a few homemade dog treats.” Biscuit gives her a paw to earn his treat. 

“Sounds perfect. I was going to try to pick some wild blackberries this week.”

“There should be some ripe berries out there, but you better get picking before the weekenders turn up if you want the best ones.”

Maggie nods in agreement. “Good point.”

“Can’t wait to read what you make this week. Lester and I still talk about the stinging nettle pasta you posted this spring. Who’d have thought you could make something delicious with such nasty stuff! Your blog is delightful.” Sally smiles with pride.

Her mother’s friend’s kindness touches Maggie. “I love that you read my blog. Thanks for the support.” 

“You’re a Whidbey Island girl now and we support our own.” Sally gives her a hug. “Are you doing any baking with those berries? Boy, do we miss your mother’s baking. Such a shame.” 

“I’ll probably make scones or a pie. Or both. Some days I really miss the bakery.” Maggie’s eyes begin to prick with tears. “It wasn’t the same without Mom, you know?” 

“Oh sweetie, nothing is. You did the best you could for as long as you could. Caring for your mom and running her bakery would be too much for anyone. It was the right thing to sell. Anne’s recipes live on, even if they aren’t quite as good as when she or you were there.”

Maggie takes in a quivering breath. One of the toughest things she did in the past year was selling her mother’s share of the bakery after Anne’s death. “Thanks for saying that. I was never the baker Mom was. I’m a writer, not a baker.”

“You doing okay these days?” Sally strokes Maggie’s arm.

“Hanging in there. Friends are coming up this weekend and this beautiful summer weather helps.”

“Friends sound fun. You should have good weather all weekend. Sun trumps rain most days. Although you don’t want to get spoiled and forget where you live.”

Maggie gestures out over the field toward the Sound and Mount Baker in the distance. “How can we ever forget?”

The people who call this corner of the world home perpetuate the myth it rains around Seattle every day, year round. Locals attempt to protect their treasure by emphasizing the never-ending rain and damp winters while avoiding talk of long sunny, warm, but rarely hot, days lasting late into the evening hours. These summers almost balance the long, cold, dark days of winter. Almost.

Connie from the bank walks over from the parking lot. Knowing she’ll get stuck in an epic gossip session if she doesn’t leave now, Maggie grabs the box marked Marrion and says a quick good-bye. She waves to Connie as she passes her on the way back to the car. 

A short drive later, Maggie parks on Second Street in Langley. “Another cookie?” she asks Biscuit, who bounds from her car after getting his leash attached.

An empty table in the shade outside Useless Bay Coffee waits for them. After tethering Biscuit’s leash to a chair, she heads inside. Biscuit won’t run off, but if he isn’t tied up, he’ll wander around, on the hunt for treats. “No begging,” Maggie calls over her shoulder. Biscuit sighs and lies down under the table.

“Morning, Maggie,” Erik greets her from behind the counter, wiping his hands on his green apron. His lanky build and floppy blonde hair remind her of Quinn in college. Or a golden retriever puppy.

“Hey there,” she says, eyeing the pastry case.

“Regular? Or are you in a fancy mood today?” 

“Nah, I’ll have an
au lait
in a bucket. I need to get some writing done this morning.”

“Bucket
au lait
. Got it.” The espresso machine whirs to life as Erik starts to make her drink. “What’s today’s article about?”

“Huckleberries. Not sure what I’m doing with it. Every time I go to write it I get distracted by Huckleberry Hound and Mark Twain. Then the cartoon dog starts quoting Twain, and well... I need more coffee.” She shakes her head and chuckles at her own rambling.

“Maybe you need less coffee. My grandmother makes the best huckleberry jam and syrup. She cans them and we use it over everything.”

“Hmmm...” Maggie’s mind begins to spiral. “I think you might be on to something. I’ve been so focused on fresh, I hadn’t considered canning them. My grandmother made huckleberry syrup and I bet I have her recipe. Erik, you're a genius.”

The twenty-something grins and his cheeks pink at her praise. Maggie feels a little bit like Mrs. Robinson. He’s so young. No flirting with young boys, she reminds herself.

“Huckleberry syrup it is.” She begins plotting her article in her head as she waits for her drink.

“Pastry?” he asks.

“Nah.” She waves off his offer. “Just the coffee.” 

“Here’s something for Biscuit.” Erik hands her a homemade dog cookie.

She thanks him, pays and then heads outside to find Biscuit on his back, getting his belly rubbed by a man in cycling gear.

“Gorgeous dog. Yours?” he asks Maggie as she puts her coffee and bag down on the table.

“He is. Although sometimes I think he’ll be anyone’s for the right treat.” 

At the word ‘treat’, Biscuit rolls over and sits up, brown eyes focused on Maggie. She breaks the cookie in half.

“Interesting looking dog. What kind is he?” The stranger asks, standing. He looks like a typical summer visitor over for a day of cycling. He's clearly built up a sweat riding around the island. Maggie pegs him as a Web 2.0 kind of guy after eyeing his expensive looking gear. He easily could be one of her seasonal neighbors down at the beach.

“He’s a rescue dog. I’m not really sure. Most people think English Setter, maybe Border Collie, mutt. Something black, white, and freckled.”

Biscuit proffers his paw to the stranger. 

“Biscuit, no begging,” Maggie admonishes, but hands the second half of the treat to the cyclist.

“Good boy.” Cyclist guy pats the dog on the head. “I’ll leave you to your day. Have a good one.”

He grabs his helmet off an adjoining table and straps on his gear before giving them a wave and riding away.

Biscuit stares at Maggie. Seeing she has no more cookies, he sighs and lies back down near her feet.

“Flirt,” she chastises him before scratching his head, laughing at her companion.

After taking her Macbook out of her bag, she sips her coffee as her blog opens, and ponders the many uses for huckleberry syrup—buckwheat pancakes, crepes, ice cream, cocktails, Pavlovas... her stomach grumbles. Maybe she should have grabbed a pastry from Erik. Writing about food on an empty stomach is torture.

A half hour later she has the bones of her article finished as well as her coffee. Life as a food blogger means she can work from anywhere and at any time as long as she meets her deadlines. A few trips to Seattle a month to review restaurants, bakeries, and the latest foodie store suits her better than doing a daily commute and worrying about magazine layoffs. She checks her blog stats and reviews her advertising revenue. Freelance writing doesn’t pay what it used to, but she wouldn’t trade her current flexibility or beach cabin for a big byline.

She thinks about her life today while gazing up at the cloudless sky. The battles of the last few years linger in her mind as she looks out at the water and Camano Island in the distance. Her view is the same one her mother saw every day from her bakery down the street. Everything can change in a short amount of time, yet life keeps moving forward.

Biscuit stretches, yawns, and nudges her with his nose.

Shaking off her melancholy, she gathers her things. “Right. Let’s go. We have stuff to do.”

* * *

Maggie stretches out her arms, her shoulders protesting from hours of working on her laptop. After sending her review of a Fremont cheese shop to her editor, she adds the final photos to her article on six ways to enjoy her grandmother’s huckleberry syrup before posting it to her blog.

“Done,” she announces to the empty room, the quiet broken only by the music from her playlist.

From her perch at the dining table, aka her downstairs office, she surveys the state of the house. With its vaulted ceiling and a double row of large windows, the open living area is airy with a view out over the deck and water beyond. The clean house feels inviting. The beds are made upstairs. The salmon for tomorrow’s dinner is in the fridge and couscous cools on the stove. Her excitement grows as she mentally checks off the last of her to-do list before Quinn’s arrival tomorrow. Remembering her overgrown flowerbeds, she decides she’ll pick flowers in the morning before catching the ferry.

“Ready for company?” Biscuit tilts his head, but doesn’t answer. She didn’t think he would. She’s become used to these one-sided conversations between her and the dog.

“It won’t be so quiet around here with a house full of people this weekend.” Silence answers her.

Wandering around the living room, she grazes her hand over books in the bookcase in the corner. Many of her mother’s favorites still line the shelves. Classic romances and a few of her grandmother’s birding books are mixed together. Bronte and Austen meet the birds of the Western U.S. The lower two shelves hold some of her parents’, and maybe even grandparents’, record albums from the sixties, seventies and eighties. 

The cabin has been passed down through the women of her family, from grandmother to mother, and now to Maggie, not because of any formal declaration, but solely because the women have outlived the men. She recalls her grandmother survived her grandpa by five years; her mother outlived her father by nine.

Inhaling deeply, she breathes in the scent of ocean, old books, and decades of fires in the wood-stove– the history and constancy of this home make her smile. The cabin is winterized, thanks to her parents wanting a year-round retreat, but the wood-stove is her favorite way to heat the house on chilly nights. Icy storms and windy winter rains are still a few months away, she reminds herself. 

Randomly pulling out an album, she mutes her playlist, walks over to the credenza under the window, and turns on the stereo. Joni Mitchell’s voice croons from the speakers when she puts the needle down on the turntable and cranks up the volume. 

As Joni sings about dancing and taking chances, Maggie joins in on harmony—so many memories hidden in these albums. Happier times with her parents here in this room mix with the longing she rarely lets herself feel to have one more day with either of them. 

Her father called Whidbey his briar patch back when the long sunny summers were all about salmon fishing and telling tales about the latest catch after a round of golf at the club. Her mother spent summers growing giant dahlias and baking pies that would win best of show ribbons at the Island County Fair. 

Wondering if her mom listened to Joni when alone and nostalgic, Maggie runs her hands over the cool white marble surface of the kitchen island and hears her mother’s voice expounding about coldness of stone being good for working with butter doughs and crusts. The luxurious stone is incongruous with the simple modern kitchen, but the scratches and stains of years of use fit right in with the vintage style of the cabin. 

Her mother’s countless homemade pies lead to the opening of the bakery. Anne’s pride and joy became much more than a side project to keep Anne busy after the death of Maggie’s father. Anne went from running the bakery six days a week to being sick and dying over two short years. 

Joni makes her melancholy, so she takes
Blue
off the turntable. Maggie looks at the next record over on the shelf:
Avalon
by Roxy Music. She had the same album in high school and college. Turning it over, she searches for her initials. Small uppercase M’s are carefully written on the back. She doesn’t remember bringing the record to the cabin, but here it is. 

With the first notes of “More than This,” the ghosts scatter as other memories take over– 1988 and a road trip with a beautiful boy with shaggy, brown hair. Maggie hums and smiles at the image of her eighteen-year-old self on the road with new college friends. The first big adventure of her newly-found freedom was driving down to the coast to hear a band in concert and staying on a stranger’s floor. Some of those friends from that road trip will be arriving tomorrow. Biting the side of her thumb, she remembers the beautiful boy and wonders if he ever thinks of her when he hears this album.

Her reflection greets her in the window when she looks out at the dark, summer night sky. If she squints, she can almost see her college self—hair is different, body is different, but something of her former self is still in there somewhere. 

“I’m a sentimental fool, Biscuit.” She glances over at the dog. “You could disagree with me just once, you know.” Biscuit gets up and walks over to the door out to the deck. It’s his way of saying ‘time for bed’.

The night outside is inky. A few of the other houses down the beach are illuminated, but the water beyond is black. Sparse lights twinkle on the far shore. Stars, so seldom seen in the city, sparkle above. After three years, Maggie is still getting used to the quiet darkness. She shudders and wraps her sweater around her in the cool night air. No more sweltering, summer nights in the concrete jungle of New York. The chill and quiet remind her of her solitude. Calling out to the dog, she gratefully returns to the warmth of her cozy living room.