The Solace of Bay Leaves

and no one else’s, but keeping the secret was putting me in a difficult position. I hadn’t actually misled my other employees— they were managing that on their own—but I’d let them draw the wrong conclusions, and that made me uncomfortable.
But it was still a relief to dodge that bullet. So to speak. For the moment, anyway.
Then Sandra’s husband arrived and the three of them headed out to dinner. I bundled up for the walk home. It was funny to see my regal dog—Airedales are known as the King of Terriers for a reason—in the yellow slicker that reminded me of the Morton Salt girl. I grabbed my tote, a baguette and a bottle of Viognier poking out.
No sign of Meg Greer on our way through the Market. I hoped she’d found who she was looking for.
The aroma of fish stew simmering in a tangy sauce—our lemon-dill seafood blend, if my nose wasn’t mistaken—filled the wide stairwell leading to my loft. I half expected to see the neighbors clustered outside my door, clutching bowls and begging, “Please, sir. Might I have some more?”
Food, glorious food! started playing in my head.
Great. I’d given myself an earworm. From Oliver Twist, no less. Oh, well. It could have been worse. It could have been the theme from The Mickey Mouse Club, which hit all the wrong notes in my brain, over and over and over.
“Smells like heaven,” I said after Arf and I had fought our way through the imaginary crowd of hungry children and were safely inside the loft.
“Looks like heaven, now that you’re here,” Nate replied and I nearly swooned. Is there anything so gorgeous as a man standing in your kitchen wearing an apron and brandishing a spoon?
Well, yes, there is. And I was reasonably sure of getting that sight later.
I fed Arf, then slipped into the bedroom for a quick change. By the end of the day, my comfy shop clothes tend to reek of paprika and other spicery. Friends say their noses tell them when I’ve arrived—I carry the shop aromas with me like Pigpen in the old Peanuts comic strip carried a cloud of dust.
In the bedroom, the trio of neon lips I’d bought at Aimee’s shop last summer glowed against the original redbrick wall. Beneath them sat the beautiful cypress tansu, a Japanese step chest I’d fallen for, also in her shop. Not long, coincidentally, after I’d fallen for the fisherman now tossing a salad in my kitchen. I’d hoped he’d leave a few things in the drawers, and they were filling up. His green cargo pants lay on the floor and I draped them over the low-back wooden chair in the corner, a find from an antiquing trip with Kristen.
I pulled on navy leggings and a pink cotton tunic and padded, barefoot, out to the main room.
“Sit,” Nate told me and slid a glass of wine across the butcher block counter. I sat, as directed, on a barstool scored on a different junking jaunt.
“You get the whatever it was fixed?”
He glowered, but not at me. “Needs a part we couldn’t make or scrounge up on a Saturday. On a better note, got the catch report from Bron. Going strong. He figures they’ve got another two or three weeks. He should be home early next month.”
Bronson Seward, his younger brother and fishing partner, whom I hadn’t met yet. They co-owned one boat for Puget Sound, the increasingly troublesome Thalassa, and another, The Kenai Princess, based in Dutch Harbor, Alaska. A larger boat, the Princess required a crew, which meant they fished as late in the season as they could to make sure the men got a decent share. “You’ll like my little brother, I promise.”
“But will he return the favor?” My friends and family had taken to Nate immediately. Even Tag liked him, which made me nervous at first.
“Oh, yes,” he said and I swear, his green eyes twinkled. “Oh, yes.”
I sipped while he stirred, and told him about the day in the shop, the successful food tour, and what little news Kristen had gleaned about Maddie.
“I’ve never heard you mention her until all this happened.”
“Kristen’s closer to her than I am. For lots of reasons.” Friendships change. Sometimes we make choices that trigger those changes. Sometimes we let our envy and regret get in the way. “In college, end of sophomore year, one of our professors recommended several students for internships with a big nonprofit. Maddie and I both worked there, in different divisions. End of summer, they offered me a paid position during the school year.”
He gave the soup another stir, then put the lid on the pot and stood across the counter from me, listening closely.
“My parents didn’t have extra money, so the job was a big help.” I paused to sip my wine. “Midyear, I dropped out of school. That meant the end of the job, which was okay. I grew up surrounded by social service work and by then I knew it wasn’t for me. It did give me a taste of HR, and later, a woman I met there helped me get the law firm job. So it worked out, for me.”
“What does this have to do with Maddie?” he asked.
“What I didn’t know was that Maddie had applied for the school year job, too, but they hired me. When I quit, she reapplied, but they didn’t want to fill the spot midyear. It was for a junior— they didn’t want someone about to graduate—so she was out of luck for the next year, too. She didn’t need the job—she just really wanted to work in that field.” I tightened my grip on my glass. “So basically, I took the opportunity she’d desperately wanted and wasted it. After graduation, she started working for her dad in the family business, while getting her MBA.”
Nate studied