Ronan O’Malley, 62, retired Puget Sound ferry captain, stood slouched against the VFW beer cooler, twisting a dented can of Rainier between calloused, salt-stained fingers. He’d avoided the annual clam bake for three years straight, ever since his wife Eileen died of ovarian cancer, convinced any joy he felt without her was a kind of theft. His old crew mate had practically dragged him out of the house that morning, saying he was turning into the reclusive old lighthouse keeper ten miles up the coast, and Ronan had been too tired to argue.
The sun hung low and golden over the water, painting the waves streaks of tangerine and pale purple, and the air reeked of fried clams, charcoal, and Coors Light. He’d just lifted the can to his lips when a kid with a neon squirt gun darted between his legs, and a woman carrying a paper plate heaped with steamed clams slammed straight into his chest. Pilsner sloshed over the rim of her cup, soaking the front of his faded navy flannel, and she yelped, fumbling for a napkin in the pocket of her cutoffs.
“Jesus, I’m so sorry—these kids are feral today,” she said, dabbing at the wet spot on his shirt, her knuckle brushing the sparse gray hair on his chest for half a second. He froze when he looked down at her. Mara Hernandez. 58, widowed last year when Jake, his best friend and first mate for 22 years, had a heart attack out on his fishing boat. He’d had a stupid, harmless crush on her since they were 17, when she worked the snack bar on his summer ferry run, and he’d spent 40 years shoving that feeling down, ashamed he could want anyone but Eileen, ashamed he could want his best friend’s wife.
She recognized him at the same time, her dark eyes widening, and she laughed, a low, throaty sound he remembered clear as the ferry’s horn at dawn. “Ronan? I thought you’d locked yourself in that house of yours for good. The librarian said you still haven’t returned the Moby Dick copy you checked out two years ago.”
The offer was out of his mouth before he could think better of it. “Low tide’s in 45 minutes. I can show you. Only the locals know the good ones, the ones with the purple starfish.” He cringed right after he said it, waiting for the guilt to hit, for the voice in his head to yell that this was wrong, that Jake was his brother, that Eileen would hate this. But when he looked at her, she was grinning, her dark hair streaked with gray blowing across her face, and the voice was quiet for the first time in three years.
He drove his beat up 2008 Ford F-150 down the dirt road to the lighthouse, the windows rolled down, salt wind whipping through the cab, and she sang along to the old Tom Petty CD he had stuck in the player, off key but loud. They climbed down the rocky embankment to the tide pools, and he pointed out clusters of anemones, tiny hermit crabs scuttling across the rocks, fat purple starfish clinging to the stone just below the water line. She stepped too far to get a closer look at a neon orange sea slug, her boot slipping on a patch of slimy seaweed, and he grabbed her wrist, yanking her back against his chest before she could fall into the cold water.
They stood that way for three heartbeats, his arms wrapped around her waist, her back pressed to his front, and he could smell coconut shampoo and fried clams and the salt that was always stuck in her hair. She turned in his arms, her face inches from his, and she didn’t pull away. “I used to leave peppermint taffy in your ferry locker back in ‘79,” she said, quiet, like she was admitting a secret she’d held for decades. “I was too scared to say anything. You were already dating Eileen, and Jake was asking me out every other day.”
The last of the guilt dissolved right then, thin as sea foam under the sun. He’d spent 40 years thinking that crush was his own shameful secret, that he’d been betraying two people he loved for no reason, and it turned out she’d felt the same thing, all that time. They climbed back up to the beach, and sat on a huge piece of driftwood bleached pale by the sun, and he pulled a bag of peppermint taffy from the center console of his truck, the same kind he’d kept in his locker back in the 70s, and split it with her.
The sun dipped below the Olympic Mountains, painting the sky pink and deep violet, and the waves lapped soft at the shore a few feet away. She rested her head on his shoulder, her hair tickling the side of his neck, and he didn’t stiffen, didn’t pull away, didn’t feel like he was stealing anything at all. He reached into the pocket of his jeans, pulled out the chipped white shell Eileen had given him on their first date, the one he’d carried with him every day since she died, tucked it into a crevice in the driftwood beside them, and laced his calloused fingers through hers.
