Just Haven't Met You Yet(21)

When I look up, Ted is watching me almost reverently. Then his eyes quickly fall to his wedding ring, and he turns it around and around between his finger and thumb.

“That’s a beautiful way to think of it. I . . .”

“Ted? Ted Palmerston?” comes a voice from behind us. We both turn to see a thickset, muscular man with a shock of ginger hair and a tattoo of the Jersey flag, a white rectangle with a diagonal red cross, on his arm. He has his hand outstretched toward Ted, a huge grin on his face. “While I live and breathe, Palmerston returns.” He laughs.

Ted’s eyes seem to grow larger as he holds up a palm in greeting.

“Hey, Danny,” he says.

Danny looks at me, waiting for an introduction he doesn’t get.

“I’m sorry to hear about your dad,” he says, turning back to Ted. “I always poke my nose into his porch whenever I pass L’étacq. You know, check he’s OK.”

“That’s decent of you, Danny.”

I look back and forth between the two men.

“And I . . . I heard about your, er, situation. I’m sorry, that’s got to be tough.”

Ted nods, and Danny eyes me curiously.

“Hi, I’m Laura,” I say, giving him a wave. “I’m a passenger of Ted’s.”

Danny glances down at the cups on our table and at Ted’s awkward expression. He’s rubbing his beard again, as though if he rubs it hard enough, a conversation genie might spring out. Maybe it’s not just me he gets all monosyllabic around.

“I see.” Danny looks back and forth between us with a sly smirk. “Well, you ever want to go for a beer and set the world to rights, you just let me know, mate. Though maybe you’re all set.”

Danny gives him a wink and then rejoins the woman and boy waiting for him over by the kiosk awning. They start talking, looking back in our direction.

Now I have so many questions: What is wrong with Ted’s dad? What’s his “situation”? Is he in trouble with the law? Has he entered a beard-growing competition for money and now doesn’t know how to get out of it? By the look on Ted’s face, now isn’t the time to ask.

“Excuse me, I need to make a phone call. Thanks for the coffee, take whatever time you need to explore the beach,” he says gruffly, then strides off back the way we came, shoulders hunched up around his ears.

Now I’m worried he felt interrogated. Dee tells me I have a habit of asking too many questions when I first meet people. She says, “People don’t want to be bitten into like an apple, Laura—to show you their core in one conversation. Sometimes you have to peel the skin away slowly.” It made me think of the game my mother used to play when I was a child—where she’d try and peel an apple all in one go. You had to be gentle with the knife, create an even ribbon of peel, so it came away in one piece. I’ve never been able to do it—I don’t have the patience or the sleight of hand.

I check my phone again. Why hasn’t this guy called yet? My number is right there on the baggage tag. Picking up my hot chocolate, I take a final swig but misjudge it and slosh the dregs down the front of my dress. CRAP! I desperately blot at the brown stain with a napkin, but it’s useless. What is wrong with me today? Now I’ll definitely need to find something else to wear before the suitcase exchange.

Climbing down to the beach via a ladder on the harbor wall, I try to shake off my irritation. The woman and her two children are still on the beach, and I ask her to take a picture of me on the rocks, in the same place my mother was standing. Checking the old photo for reference, we line up the harbor wall in the background to make it match. I tilt my body away from the camera then turn my head back around, in an effort to hide the hot chocolate stain. The tide is different, and the light is wrong, but the woman is kind and patient, and I’m satisfied with the image she takes.

Her children are wide-eyed girls with blond hair, sun cream–streaked faces, and sand-dappled legs. They show me what they’ve been collecting in their buckets.

“Beach tweasure,” says one, handing me a shiny green rock the size of a coin. “For you.”

The sweetness of the child and the kindness of the gesture sends a stab of something through me, and I clasp the rock to my chest as though it really is treasure. Heat rises behind my eyes as I say good-bye to the family and head back to the car. All those hours my mother must have spent doing childish activities for my benefit: collecting shells at Portishead beach, making papier-maché crowns to paint and decorate, endless treasure hunts in the garden to find buried coins made of kitchen foil. All that time she invested in my childhood happiness. I wish now I had held on to just one of those papier-maché crowns.

Back at the car, Ted has put his cap back on, pulled low over his brow. He looks at my chocolate-covered dress as I climb into the passenger seat.

“What happened?”

“Clumsy-itis. Does it look terrible?”

Ted pauses and then shrugs. “As long as you’re not trying to impress anyone.” His eyes flash me a sly look.

He knows that is exactly what I am trying to do—as soon as I can find the person I am trying to impress.

“Look, I got a present,” I say, showing him the green rock.

“Sea glass,” he says.

“Sea glass?”

“It’s all over these beaches. It’s old glass—rubbish, worn down, and tumbled smooth by the sea,” he says, looking at the piece in my hand. “My mother used to collect it. She’d say the sea was trying to give us back something beautiful from the ugly things we throw away.”