Theodore Wilson studied his twin’s photo in The New York Times. He set the red porcelain mug on the café’s tabletop, resting his beefy hands on his thighs. How could Sherman look so young? Where were his wrinkles, liver spots, jowls? Sherman either spent hours sipping consommé or paid piles of moolah for liposuction and the knife. His teeth, too, must be capped. Theodore stroked his wattle. Sagging skin hadn’t sent him running to the plastic surgeon to look youthful. On the contrary, he had embraced his folds as a flip-off to upper-crust norms.
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Above Boston Harbor’s murky waters, gray and white seagulls swirled and screeched at one another in the morning sunlight. The air reeked of dampness and dead fish. Riggings clanged against the schooner’s mast pole. Waiting in line to answer the captain’s questions before heading down the gangplank and onto the wharf, I watched sailors hurriedly stuff canvas sails into the boat’s hold. After six weeks of battling waves on the voyage across the Atlantic, they wanted to secure the ship and be off to enjoy their free time, before the boat loaded again and sailed with the next high tide…

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The island mourned.
She had hibernated while ice caps grew and shrank, snoozed as giant squids propelled through her waters, tossed as a saber-toothed tiger raised his hind leg and marked her cliffs as his own, and turned over as the last glacier scoured a divot, burping forth a boulder.
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Ruthanne glassed over the pasture from her living room. Last night’s rain had further matted the grass into hillocks, amber moguls poised to trip the unwary. She scanned her binoculars right and spotted two mallards paddling at the pond’s western edge. The drake upended and dabbled in the muck while the female swam on. Something red flashed within the higgledy-piggledy cattails and, sucking in her breath, Ruthanne dialed the Bushnells’ center focus wheel. In the morning’s overcast light it was hard to tell. Could it be? She wondered. Ruby home at last?
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Maddie swabbed the stainless steel counter, folded the dish towel, and surveyed her domain—coffee percolated, beans ground, mugs at the ready, chairs pushed against chrome table edges. Tucking a stray strand of red hair behind her ear, she admired the counter’s gleam. Each morning was like starting over, without the stains that bespoke unruly lives. She spotted an errant jam smear next to the napkin pile and erased it with her cloth.

She glanced out the front picture window at the pewter sky, darker than usual for this time of the morning. The clouds pressed like thick blankets against the surrounding spruce trees, their pointy tops all that kept the land from suffocating. They’d be busier than usual for a Tuesday. The threat of weather always brought people in, coffee warding off the loneliness that blows in on the toe of a storm.

Plucking one of the blueberry scones from the batch Judy had dropped off earlier, still warm from the oven, she set it aside and arranged the others neatly on a platter, careful not to mess their swirled lemony glaze as she handled them. Scones with dinged frosting were always the last to go, as if their tainted dressing was a talisman of interior shortcomings.

Ting-a-ling. Ting-a-ling, the bells hanging from the front door handle jingled.

Seven years of listening to those blasted chimes hadn’t changed the way she felt about them. They grated on her nerves and she’d asked Lottie a few weeks after starting work, if she could give them up. Lottie just raised her eyebrows in that ‘Where’d you come from?’ way she had and suggested Maddie think of coins rattling onto her palm each time the bells jingled, for nobody walked into Road’s End Café without spending money.

The bells never sounded like a reward for a job well done. On the contrary, they jabbed her, reminders she hadn’t mastered prior tasks: flawless iron-creased button-down shirts, Architectural Digest’s invitation to feature her home, perfect pitch singing children.

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“I’ve got it made if she hooks up with him,” the red Jimmy Choo slingbacks mused. “I’ll be tete-a-tete-ing with Obama’s pumps, walking Oscar’s red carpet, and ogling this season’s creations from New York Fashion Week’s front row. I’ll be box-pampered. From the precision of his trouser crease I can tell that he’s the type of guy who keeps his shoes in cases instead of throwing us helter-skelter into the closet. By his quick steps, I’m sure he’s a man with a plan. If she hooks up with him, I’ll kick back on this couch while she flips through Vogue, checking out the latest styles. With his Am Ex Platinum handy, she’ll speed-dial Marc Jacobs for a little black number that highlights all my best features. One eyeful of my barely-there-straps will open this show. I’ve got it made, once she hooks up with him.” For more, click download button above!