by Sarah Jio
After I’ve logged five miles around the lake, according to my Garmin, I slow for a cooldown walk, then stop on a bench to watch a mother duck and her ducklings push through the reeds and cross the banks of the lake to a spot on the dock ahead. The mother waddles proudly with her six fuzzy ducklings behind her. The last one is smaller than the rest, and he’s having trouble keeping up. The mother and the larger ducklings have already made their way back to the lake as I watch the littlest one lose his bearings. He looks right, then left, as if he’s not sure where to turn. He’s lost. In that moment, I want to run over to him, scoop him into my arms, and carry him back to his mother. I rise to my feet and take a step forward, but with lightning speed, a large rat scurries out of the thicket and lifts the duckling into his mouth, and the two disappear in one dreadful swarm into the grasses beside the bank.
“No!” I scream. “No, you can’t have him! You can’t do that!” I feel helpless and horrified. At once, I am nine years old, hovering over an abandoned robin’s nest beside Amy, fretting over the fate of the baby birds. I stare out at the bank for a long while, and then I realize I’m not the only one watching. The mother duck is watching too. She knows.
I think about that scene for a long time as I walk the final quarter mile up to the crosswalk. I think about the nest and the eggs, and the mother duck and her babies. There will always be rats and ducklings. There will always be predators and prey. And banks and small businesses in default. And people like me who swoop in like rats and take what’s owed to them, or what they’re hungry for. It’s the circle of life, but at this moment, I don’t like my place in it.
I’m red faced and my mind is reeling when I walk past Antonio’s on the way back to the bookstore. I smell garlic cooking now, and I breathe in the comforting scent. The door is propped open a bit, so I know Gavin must be inside. I poke my head in cautiously. “Hello?” I say, taking a step inside.
“Hello?” I say again, admiring the rich red of the dining room walls and the dozen or so attractively set tables. There’s a wooden slab counter that might accommodate six more guests, but all in all, the room is small and intimate, and I love it instantly.
A wood-fired oven burns slowly behind the counter, and I can smell the warm, smoky scent of cherrywood smoldering. There’s a clanging sound in the kitchen, as if a pot’s fallen to the floor, before the door swings open and Gavin appears. He smiles when our eyes meet. There’s a smudge of tomato sauce on the white towel that hangs from his waist. “Hi,” he says. “Sorry, have you been waiting long?”
“No, no,” I say. “I was just walking back from a jog around the lake, and I thought I’d stop in and say hi.”
“Hi,” he says, still smiling.
He turns back to the kitchen when a timer beeps. “Come with me,” he says. “I’ll show you around.”
I nod and follow him through the swinging door to the immaculate kitchen. It’s a little larger than the dining room. On either side of a big stove is a bank of stainless steel countertops. At the center is a large, sturdy table with strong legs. It looks like something salvaged from an old Italian villa.
“It’s gnocchi day,” he says, pointing to the flour-dusted cutting board, where an impressive mound of orange-tinged dough lies at the center. “Have you ever had sweet-potato gnocchi?”
I shake my head. “No, but it sounds like heaven.”
“Good,” he says. “You can help me, and earn your lunch.”
I grin and head to the sink to wash my hands, then return to the table, where Gavin shows me how to roll out the dough in long, snakelike lines. Next, we cut them into one-inch sections. He hands me a wooden tool called a gnocchi paddle, which is basically a flattened piece of grooved wood affixed to a stick. We roll the segments over the paddle and it gives the dough a pressed and finished look.
We set them on a sheet pan dusted with cornmeal, talking as we press more dough. It feels good to work with my hands, mindlessly. I’m overcome with a relaxing calm.
“Have you always liked to cook?” I ask, piling a batch of pressed gnocchi on the sheet pan.
“Yeah,” he says. “I used to play restaurant with my sister and brother. I liked being the chef.”
I smile. “But the real question is did you have an Easy-Bake Oven?”
He laughs. “No, but my younger sister did, and she’d never let me play with it.” He smiles to himself as if recalling a funny childhood memory. “I’ll confess that one night I snuck out of bed and took it out of her room. I stayed up baking chocolate brownies. But I think I managed mostly to eat the dough.”
“Good choice,” I say.
He smiles. “The truth is, I could never do anything else but work in a restaurant. I love the energy of it. Every night it’s like a theater production. I thrive on the pageantry.” He looks up from the dough at me. “You know, I never asked you what you do for a living—I mean, besides owning the bookstore, of course.”
“Oh,” I say, suddenly self-conscious. “My work’s not very exciting.”
“I’m sure that’s not true,” he says, waiting expectantly for me to divulge more.
“I work at a bank in New York,” I say. “Finance. See? Boring.” I’d rather keep it brief than go into detail about the specifics of my job in banking. I’ve had enough experience chatting with people at parties to know that nobody finds my division of the bank at all charming, the same way undertakers don’t draw smiles over cocktail conversation.
“Just the same,” he says, grinning, “I’d love to hear how you got into finance. Was banking always something you were interested in?”
I finish the line of gnocchi I’m working on and venture a response. “If you mean did I used to play bank teller with my sister as kids, well, no. It was a career I sort of fell into.”
“Do you love it?”
“I’m good at it,” I reply.
“There’s a big difference,” Gavin adds.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, take me, for instance,” he says. “Right out of college, I went to law school.”
“Why?”
“Why does anyone go to law school?” he says. “For a girl.”
“Oh.” I give him a knowing smile. “Well, at least your heart was in the right place.”
“That’s the thing,” he says, suddenly serious. “As far as my career went, it wasn’t. I mean, I was good at law. Quite good. I made it through law school with flying colors. Graduated top of my class, and even got hired to practice at a big firm in Boston. I was good. I had a whole career ahead of me, but . . .” He shrugs, contemplating his next sentence.
“But what?” I ask, hanging on his every word. The thing is, I won’t admit it to Gavin, but our life stories, at least where our careers are concerned, seem to parallel each other.
“My heart wasn’t in it,” he finally says. “I was good at the work, sure, but when I gave my life a long, hard look, I realized that I hated law. I hated it so much. It just wasn’t me. It wasn’t what I was born to do.”
I nod, letting his words sink in.
“So I moved out here,” he says. “My parents thought I was crazy. And maybe I was, a little. I mean, who gives up on a law degree and a huge salary just like that?” He rolls out another line of gnocchi, then turns back to me. “But I found my way. I worked in several restaurants before getting the courage up to open this place.”
I nod. “And the girl?”
He looks confused for a moment, and then grins. “Oh, she left me the day I quit my job.”
“Sounds like a peach.”
“Oh, yes,” he says, smiling. “She was a plum.”
I return his smile. “And did you ever find . . . love again?”
He looks conflicted for a moment and he opens his mouth to speak, just as the back door to the kitchen opens. A pretty, dark-haired woman in gray Lululemon leggings and a black jac
ket bursts through the door carrying a big box of eggplant with deep purple, shiny skin. At first she doesn’t notice me. “Gav!” she says from the doorway, balancing the box in her arms. It looks heavy. “You wouldn’t believe how gorgeous the eggplant is at Pike Place this morning. I know I bought way too much, but can you blame me when they’re this perfect?” She speaks to Gavin in a familiar tone, as if she might launch into the details of her doctor appointment a moment later.
He runs to her side and lifts the box from her arms, and I feel, suddenly, that I don’t belong here. She has striking features: full lips, big brown eyes, and high cheekbones. She’s about my age, maybe a little younger. I wonder if she’s Italian. Her long, shiny dark hair is pulled back into a ponytail. She doesn’t wear makeup. She’s the type of woman who doesn’t need to. A natural beauty.
“Oh,” she says as soon as she sees me seated at the table. She turns back to Gavin as if I’m not there. “I didn’t know you had company.”
“Adrianna, this is June,” he says. “Our new neighbor.”
She scrunches her nose. “Neighbor?”
“Her aunt, Ruby, passed away recently and left June the bookstore.”
Adrianna forces a smile. “Oh,” she says. “I think Lillian said something about a new owner.” She finally turns to me. “I’m really sorry about your loss.”
“Thank you,” I say, still stunned by her presence.
Gavin turns to me. “Lillian and her husband own the toy store across the street, Geppetto’s.”
“Yes,” I say cheerfully. “I knew them as a child.”
Adrianna busies herself with the eggplant. She stands at the sink and begins running each under the faucet. “So I hear you’re selling the bookstore,” she says to me. Her tone is friendly enough, but her words sting somehow.
I’m startled for a moment. I haven’t told anyone about my intentions for the bookstore, and suddenly I feel on the defensive. What will Gavin think? “No,” I say quickly. “I—”
Gavin leaps to my rescue. “You shouldn’t listen to neighborhood gossip, Adrianna.”
I smile, but I feel a pit in my stomach, wondering what the locals must be thinking about me. Did someone overhear my conversation with the moving company? Were they tipped off by my profession? And then my mind turns to Gavin and Adrianna, their past and present.
“It’s OK,” I say quickly, trying to defuse the tension in the room. And I realize I don’t have any idea who Adrianna is. His girlfriend? His sister? Please let her be his sister. “So you’re Gavin’s—”
“Business partner,” he says quickly before she can respond. “Adrianna and I co-own the restaurant.”
I nod. I feel immediately foolish. They’re either married or dating, or maybe it’s more complicated than that. In any case, I have the keen sense that Adrianna isn’t happy to have me in her kitchen. I stand up and brush the flour off my hands. “Thanks for the cooking lesson,” I say to Gavin. “But I should get back to the shop. I have so much work to do.”
He frowns. “But you haven’t gotten to taste any of it.”
Adrianna eyes the table, then turns back to the freshly washed eggplant that she’s setting on top of a cutting board at her right.
“It’s OK,” I say. “Another time.”
“All right,” Gavin replies, disappointed. “Don’t be a stranger.”
I nod as I walk out the door to the dining room, and then back out to the street. I unlock the door of the bookstore, and I walk inside. What just happened in there? I decide to keep to myself from now on. It’s always easier that way.
I spend the day sorting through boxes of books, alternating between trying not to think of what Gavin talked about in the restaurant’s kitchen and analyzing his every word.
I work through lunch, stopping at two to eat a stale bagel I picked up at the café the day before. I think of Arthur, and how impersonal our working relationship is. He knows nothing about me, and all I know about him is that he’s married to his job (which is likely why his wife left him ten years ago). Do I want to end up like that?
At five, I’ve successfully cleared out nine boxes, when my stomach growls. I think about ordering pizza, or maybe taking a cab to the Whole Foods Market a few miles up the road. I walk upstairs to grab my purse, when I hear a knock downstairs. But when I make it down the staircase to the door, there’s no one there, just a large paper bag on the doormat. I reach for it, then latch the door again. Inside is a steaming hot takeout container with my name on it, beside a bottle of Italian wine. There’s slip of paper folded in half. June, you have a lot on your plate, and on your mind. Gnocchi always brings comfort. Enjoy + sweet dreams.—Gavin
I smile and sink into the wingback chair by the fire, then pull out the box of gnocchi. There’s a cloth napkin wrapped around a knife and fork, and I eagerly take a bite, closing my eyes as I let the flavors swirl in my mouth. Food has never tasted so good, and I finish the gnocchi, then run upstairs and find a corkscrew in Ruby’s little kitchen. I bring it down with a tumbler and pour myself a glass.
In that moment I think of my sister. I think of our first dinner in the apartment we shared briefly in New York. I was so happy that she’d come out to live with me. I was thirty and she was almost twenty-six. A job as an assistant at a fashion house lured her east initially, but she didn’t end up staying in that job, or any other, long. Amy was always letting herself be lured by greener pastures, only to find that the grass there was just as mucky as in the last place. But on that night, it was a new beginning for her. Her future was filled with new potential. I remember her talking about becoming a fashion designer. I made enchiladas, and we shared a bottle of wine. Ryan joined us at nine thirty, when we were both giddy and happy. I close my eyes. Ryan.
I shake my head as if to dismiss the memory, and I think of Ruby again. I feel an urge to read more of her story, and Margaret’s. In her last letter, Margaret wrote about a revelation she was about to share. What? I remember the mention of Make Way for Ducklings, and wonder if this could be the location of the next set of letters. I go to the shelf and find the book, but there are no envelopes inside. I scan the surrounding books, and there is only one copy.
I sit down, deflated, and decide to turn back to the other two books I found letters in. I flip through their pages. What’s different about these books? They’re old, yes, but there are many old books in the shop. Then I think to look at the copyright page of each, and remember how Ruby taught me to identify first editions. I see the telltale “1” on the number line in The Poky Little Puppy, and then turn to The Tale of Peter Rabbit, with its copyright date of 1901 and the words “First Printing.” That’s when I know. Ruby chose the first editions to leave her letters in. Just as I thought, she has left me a scavenger hunt.
My heart races as I begin searching for a first edition of Make Way for Ducklings. I know it must be here, somewhere. And then I think, if I were Ruby, where would I keep the first editions? I remember that I found The Poky Little Puppy high on the shelf, so I walk to the ladder and decide to look there. After an hour of searching, I almost give up, when I spot a green dust jacket poking out over some shorter books. I reach for it, and sure enough, there is a duck and her six ducklings on the cover. I think of the scene at the lake today, and I feel a surge of emotion. I open the spine, and there, just as Ruby left them, two letters are tucked inside.
I reach for the first, from Margaret, and climb down the ladder to the chair, where I read with anticipation.
March 27, 1946
Dear Ruby,
Mother came to visit again yesterday. She cast a disapproving glance at a copy of Runaway Bunny on the table and indicated (in so many words) that I ought to go back to university to finish my degree, become a teacher. It’s what the “spinsters” of her generation would do, she said. I didn’t tell her that I gave up teaching after that disastrous semester as a student teacher. (The best thin
g about that experience was gaining your friendship.)
While I did not truly believe Mother’s words, I absorbed them, and they all but deflated me. They had power over me. I woke up today with no zeal for my work. Her sentiments plucked the spirit and creativity right from me.
That’s what I must tell you: I’ve decided to set writing aside, at least for now. Not because Mother has won, but because I feel lost, and I’m afraid I can’t find my way.
That, and the voices of my characters just . . . stopped. I can’t hear them anymore, Ruby. All I hear is my own grating thoughts. Is there anything more horrid than being trapped inside yourself with nothing but your own insecurities?
No word from Roberta. I’m thinking about sending her flowers if I don’t hear from her by the end of the week. You’re right about sisters. We must take them as they are, even if they drive us mad.
Well, I must be off now. Crispian is gnawing at my pant leg. It’s an hour past his usual afternoon walk. So I will walk, and I will consider my future.
Maybe I should become a dog walker?
Your lost friend,
Margaret
I shake my head. How could she write that about sisters? We must “take them as they are, even if they drive us mad”? It’s a sentiment I can’t subscribe to, even when I press my mind to try. In the end, there’s still the pain so raw, it almost stings. What would Ruby and Margaret have done in my shoes? Would they have felt the same?
I turn to the next envelope, from Ruby, and I pull out the pages inside.
April 11, 1946
Dear Brownie,
Oh, I wept reading your words. It breaks my heart to see you in such distress. I want to reach through these pages and embrace you, my friend. I want to let you cry on my shoulder. I want to comfort you and encourage you to carry on. How can I convince you to ignore your mother’s sentiments? How can I make you see that her world is not yours, just as yours is not hers?
