by Kelly Harms
“In the end, I declared bankruptcy and, eventually, the farm was foreclosed. I ended up living in my car for months, working hard to pay off the settlements I owed my creditors, until the shelter job came up and gave me a chance to get back on my feet.”
“Oh my God,” I say, my heart aching to think of Noah in such a horrible position, contemplating what could have happened if all the chips hadn’t fallen into place as they did.
“Don’t be upset, Janey,” he says. “I got myself into a dire situation, yes, but I’m making up for it now, and I even have a farm of sorts again. Things can only get better from here.” He pauses. “Except … well, things with you were already pretty darn good.”
I sigh and look up into his eyes. “They were, weren’t they?”
“I’d like them to get better.”
“Me too,” I hear myself say softly. I angle myself toward him, tipping my face upward, praying against prayer for what I want to happen.
It does. He kisses me gently, putting one hand on my cheek as he does, then angling my face so he can kiss first my left eyelid, and then my right. Then he pulls back and locks eyes with me, his hand sinking down my neck, just to my clavicle, where it warms me through.
“Janey,” he says. “I’ve made a lot of stupid mistakes in my life, as you well know. Debt, denial, bankruptcy. But believe me when I say this: not finishing your cold cantaloupe soup was one of the stupidest.”
I clasp onto his upper arms, one in each hand, heady with the knowledge that I don’t have to let go. “All stupid,” I agree quietly, forgetting that anyone else is in the room, as I sink my head onto his chest. “But also, all reparable.”
I close my eyes and breathe in the comfort, the safety, the feeling of home I find in this kitchen, near these people. Then I open them again, looking from Noah to Nean plaintively, wanting them to know just how much I need them both.
Nean looks back, and then she frowns. “I’m not going to the grocery store, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
I smile. It was exactly what I was thinking, but when I look at Noah again, cooking becomes the last thing on my mind.
December
NEAN
“The sharing of food is the basis of social life, and to many people it is the only kind of social life worth participating in.”
—LAURIE COLWIN, Home Cooking
Believe me when I tell you that Janey and Noah getting together has been one of the more disgusting developments of my life. Who knew Janey would turn out to be such a lap sitter? Every time I walk into a room she’s sitting on Noah’s lap playing with his hair or kissing the top of his head. Blech. It’s not safe in here anymore, ever since he moved in after the first freeze in October.
Luckily I have a place to escape to: the bakery. Though it was a shock to the system at first, over the last few months I’ve gotten pretty good at getting up at the dawn of time and driving in the dark to town to get the daily bread going. With coffee, all things are possible. I like the ritual of it, and I’m making real money—which is a good thing, because soon, when Janey starts her long-overdue student teaching in January, we’re going to need a second car.
The doorbell rings, and, speak of the devil, it’s Honey, holding an armload of the long skinny paper bags that we sell baguettes in. I give her a big one-armed hug when she’s inside, then take the bread off her hands. “I baked this, didn’t I?” I ask, laughing. I’ve only been home from the bakery for a few hours, and my work seems to have followed me home.
“You did,” she admits with a sheepish shrug. “But I also brought a cake—it’s in the car. You’re going to love it—it’s practically dripping with frosting flowers.”
“Sounds fabulous. J.J.!” I call. “Come meet Honey.”
From the living room J.J. lumbers over, holding a glass of red wine and one of Janey’s cheese puffs. He looks exactly the same as he did when he left in August, only less tan. And he’s experimenting with a beard, with limited success, though don’t tell him I said that. “Hey,” he says, popping the puff into his mouth to free up a hand. “Nice to meet you.”
“You too,” says Honey. “Though I’ve never heard of you,” she teases.
“Really?” J.J. looks taken aback.
“I wish,” Honey says with a smile. “Unfortunately, Nean has it kind of bad.”
“It’s true,” I tell him, angling up for a kiss. “I do.”
“I heard there was cake,” says J.J., after he’s obliged me.
“It’s in the car,” Honey says, and before she can go on, he throws open the door letting a burst of cold air in, and trots outside in his socks, calling, “Be right back.”
“Nice guy,” Honey says to me with a smile.
“Right? Who knew they existed?” I say, because even now, the idea takes some getting used to. But damned if I’m not up to the task.
J.J. returns with the cake at the exact moment that Janey starts calling for dinner, and we all obediently march to the formal dining room, a room we are actually using for the first time tonight, because it’s way, way too cold to sit on the sun porch, and there are just so darn many of us. Nancy is already sitting at the long table next to Rupert and two other staff from the shelter who are off work tonight, and so is Danette, the chef from the fancy restaurant in Damariscotta, and her wine steward girlfriend Angie. Danette and Janey met at the farmer’s market when they were fighting over a good-looking slab of bacon, and when they found out that Danette buys some of her produce from Noah, a fast friendship was formed. I’d be jealous, except I was too damn happy for Janey when I heard she’d managed to make a new friend without puking in the bushes or breaking out in a rash. That’s a real breakthrough.
Besides, it makes me feel good to know she’ll have lots of friends around when I go away to pastry school next fall.
Yeah, yeah. Look at me making something of myself. It was J.J.’s idea. Now he’s looking for jobs for after graduation near the culinary institute, so I think I’m stuck with him.
Janey’s made noises about missing us, but we’ll be just over in Vermont, so I’ll never be far if she needs me. And it won’t be long until I am back, I can promise her that. This house is my real home. I couldn’t stay away for long.
We all take our seats, and I smile as the newcomers to the Janey experience gape at all the food weighing down the table. It’s Christmas Eve, so we’re doing the feast of the seven fishes, but I don’t think Janey was able to stop with just seven. Everywhere I look there are dead things from the sea. Most are looking scrumptious, and a few things look nasty, like the eel stretched out on a long skinny platter and the stuffed squid bodies, tentacles long gone but probably lurking in one of the other dishes somewhere. Not that I won’t eat them all anyway. At least nothing’s still alive. You should have seen that eel go down.
When we’re all assembled, Janey brings out the big showpiece, a huge, steaming pot of creamy oyster stew, and Noah trails behind her with a smaller crock of corn chowder and a platter of portobello steaks for Honey, who is annoyingly vegetarian. Janey moves around the table, ladling our bowls full of stew, and when she comes to me I see that her eyes are glinting in the light of the candles. I know right then that neither of us has ever been happier.
When we are all served, and champagne is bubbling in all our glasses, Noah rises to make a toast. In the back of my mind I hear him thanking us all for being there, complimenting Janey’s cooking, praising her decision to become a home ec teacher and the bravery to see it through. I hear him wishing us love and joy in the New Year, and friendship and a place to call home for the rest of our days. But I’m not really listening. I’m looking at the wall behind him, where Janey has framed Aunt Midge’s funeral speech, and remembering that day when we told her good-bye. She would be proud of us, crowded around this big table, getting ready to eat and drink like there’s no tomorrow. I know she would. And though I can’t see the words from this far away, I remember by heart the little postscript she must have added towar
d the very end of her life, the one she marked “Confidential” in block letters at the end of her letter.
“CONFIDENTIAL, to my girls, my family, Janey and Nean,” it reads, in the jittery cursive I will never forget. “Don’t forget, I’m watching you. So keep it interesting.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks to my spectacular agent and true friend, Holly Root, and to my gifted editor, Katie Gilligan, to the inspiring Pete Wolverton, the estimable Tom Dunne, and the teams at Thomas Dunne Books and Waxman Literary who lent their considerable gifts to this publication.
Thanks to my family, the famous Harmses of Cedar Rapids, Los Angeles, and Rochester, and to Josh Wimmer.
Thanks to Andrea Cirillo, Christina Hogrebe, Lyssa Keusch, Lucia Macro, Annelise Robey, Meg Ruley, Patience Smith, and Nancy Yost for all you taught me about books along the way. And thanks to Maine for letting me borrow your beautiful coast for my fantasy world.
Thanks to my friends Barbara Poelle, Kelly O’Connor McNees, Jennifer Ferreter Sabet, Eileen Joyce, and Anna Rybicki. If you hate my book, these are the people to blame. It is their kindness, encouragement, and enduring friendship that made its creation possible.
Read on for a sneak peek of Kelly Harms’s
THE MATCHMAKERS OF MINNOW BAY
Available August 2016
“The Matchmakers of Minnow Bay is the perfect feel-good read. An irresistible premise, a charming—though forgetful—heroine, an emotionally-involving love story, lovely writing … it all adds up to cozy hours in a fictional place you’ll wish you could visit. Don’t miss this delightful novel!”
— Susan Wiggs, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Family Tree
“Sparkling dialogue and a winning heroine, who finds her big-girl panties amid the disaster zone her life has become and head in a new direction, finding love along the way, it had me turning the pages into the night.”
— Eileen Goudge, New York Times bestselling author of Garden of Lies
“Shopaholic’s Becky Bloomwood meets Capote’s Holly Golightly—This charming tale is filled to the brim with eccentric characters, uproarious predicaments, and a charming setting. Kelly Harms has created the most lovable character in Lily, a starving artist with a penchant for disaster and a completely unbreakable spirit. One for the beach chair!”
— Kate Moretti, New York Times bestselling author of The Vanishing Year
For more information, visit KellyHarms.com
TEN YEARS EARLIER
“I think I’ve looked at this one too much,” my best friend Renee says to me as we come around the corner and find what I suspect is Magritte’s most annoying piece. It’s got the same strong lines and supreme confidence of his most famous work, The Son of Man, the fancy guy with the bowler hat with a green apple floating in front of his face. But the subject matter of Time Transfixed is very different—a flat fireplace in a streamlined drawing room, with the perspective angled from lower left corner to upper right, so you know the room is a room, not a box. And of course, the ultra-black locomotive made out of a steam pipe thrusting out of the fireplace. Like it’s … you know.
“Yeah, me too,” I agree. “Or maybe the idea of Time Transfixed is just not sitting well with me right now,” I say. It is the day before art school graduation. Four years living with my best friend and making art and looking at art and eating, sleeping, drinking up art, and tomorrow it is all over.
Time is most certainly not feeling very transfixed.
“Magritte preferred a different translation for the French,” she tells me. “Something about stabbing time with a knife. It’s a lot more aggressive, more active that way.”
“I wish I could stab time with a knife.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Easy for you to say. You’re going off to law school after graduation. Law school, Renee. You’re going to be a lawyer, and make tons of money, and wear suits.” I pause at that. “Have you really thought this through?”
She laughs warmly at me. “Of course I have! It’s going to be great. I love arguing. And you don’t have to wear suits unless you’re in court.”
“Do you even own a suit?” I ask her.
She laughs. “Just the one I bought for the interview. And it was separates so I don’t think it counts. Don’t worry, Lily. I’m still me even if I’m going to be a lawyer. Law school won’t change the fact that I don’t wear pantyhose.”
“When will you sculpt?”
Renee shrugs. “There will be time. Or I can always set it aside for a little while, come back when I’m more inspired. It hasn’t really been as fun for me since … well, since I started planning my future.”
I look at her sideways, thinking, That is what you get for always worrying about your future.
“I don’t think you’ll survive without your art.”
Renee tilts her head at me, looking away from the Magritte for the first time. “Or maybe that’s more you than me. You need to be covered in paint every hour of every day. You are the one who’s talented. You’re the one with the passion.”
“You’re talented! You have passion!”
“Remember what they said to us at orientation freshman year?”
“No,” I say honestly. “Something about reporting date rape?”
“Besides that. They said, if you can do something besides art, you should.”
I open my arms in question. “Well, that’s everyone, though. I can do lots of other things. I can sort of play the piano. I make a good espresso. And a good martini.”
“They meant do any other job. They meant if your soul wouldn’t die from not making art, don’t make art.”
“I think that’s a lousy litmus test,” I say. “Soul death is kind of an extreme bar to set.”
“And yet for you, I think you meet it. You are destined to do this,” she gestures at the museum, as though I am supposed to end up in a place like this. When much more likely, I’d be lucky to get paid to paint the side of a barn.
“So I’m destined to be poor and tortured for at least the next fifty years, and you, my best friend in the whole world, is destined to sue people for a living?”
Renee smiles mildly. “Well, that’s what I’m hoping.”
I gesture to the Magritte. “I am the fireplace. All out of whack and stagnant. And you are the locomotive, doing useful things and plowing ahead.”
“Actually I think the locomotive is supposed to be his penis.”
I snort. “You think everything in art is genitals.”
Renee shrugs. “It isn’t?”
We laugh. But my laugh is melancholy. Four years in art school together. Four years living together as best friends, telling each other everything, seeing each other at our absolute worst and absolute best. How can it be over already? How come time isn’t just a little more transfixed?
“There’s room for you to stay in my apartment any time you visit,” I tell her. “It’s such a sweet place; you’re going to be so jealous.”
“I’m just jealous that you don’t have to live in South Bend, Indiana, for the next two years. Promise you’ll visit every weekend you don’t have to work.” Renee grabs my hand. “I can’t believe we won’t be living together anymore. I don’t even know how that’s supposed to work. About seventy-five percent of my clothes are actually your clothes. I’m going to have to go shopping. Promise when you come you’ll bring your Seven jeans for me to wear?”
“Of course. Me, tequila, Seven jeans. I won’t even call first.”
“Perfect. See, things don’t have to change that much. It’s only a few hours in the car. Plus I’ll have all those law school hotties rounded up for you to date.”
“You are the best friend, Renee. Let’s trade keys tomorrow before the ceremony starts.”
“If you haven’t locked yourself out before then,” Renee says, speaking of my truly extraordinary ability to trap myself out of cars, dorms, studios, and apartments.
I ignore her. “And then when law school is over you c
an move in with me.”
“I might meet someone, you know,” she says vaguely. “Fall in love. Move to the suburbs.”
“Don’t even joke!”
A shadow crosses Renee’s face. I work very hard not to see it. It feels like the shadow of the locomotive. “Anyway,” she says eventually, “you think you’ll still be in that apartment in two years?”
“Renee, I am going to die in that apartment. In eighty years they will find me in there surrounded by bad paintings, half-eaten by cats. And you know what? I’m pretty okay with that.”
“Well,” she says, turning on her heels and making for the Miró. “As long as you have a plan.”
One
TEN YEARS LATER
“Getting evicted is the best thing that could have happened to me.”
I am trying to be convincing. I am keeping the tears at bay like a champ. Now I force a closed-mouth smile for punctuation.
