Chapter 2
Edison
Edison held sat in his tiny office in the Starfall Point Public-Library-Slash-Post-Office-Slash-Public-Works, and repeatedly smacked his forehead against his equally tiny desk.
His shoes, freshly rinsed, sat drying on a brass rack near the long-defunct fireplace, proof that the events of that morning actually happened. Why had he gotten on the ferry? He’d had every opportunity to jump off the boat, even as it pulled away from the dock. Why had he just let himself be taken? He had vacation savings. He could have chartered a helicopter. Why had he tempted fate?
Edison whimpered as water dripped from his soggy shoes to the worn-shiny brickwork. Maybe this was his karma catching up to him? He considered himself a good person, kind to strangers, a cheerful supporter of several nonprofits, head-patter for random domesticated animals of all types. But he was willing to go full-on Hunger Games when it came to surviving the ferry ride.
There was a knock on his creaky office door, and an equally creaky voice called softly, “Eddie, sweetie? Are you all right? You’ve been hiding in there for about an hour.”
Edison groaned into the surface of his turn-of-the-century walnut desk. After six years on this island, Margaret Flanders was the only person on the island that continued to call him “Eddie.” Grasping that he just wasn’t the “Eddie” type had been the keystone of his gradual, hard-won acceptance amongst the locals. Margaret was the only holdout on the Eddie front, but Edison suspected that had something to do with Margaret wanting the position as head (and only) librarian for herself for the better part of four decades. Margaret got her own back in her own way.
And they’d had multiple discussions about the inappropriate nature of her calling Edison “sweetie,” “honey,” or any diminutive endearment, even if he was younger than Margaret’s children.
“I knew this trip to Lansing was a bad idea,” she huffed, setting a proper silver tea tray on the desk—one of many household artifacts left behind when the Van Deever family decided to donate the building to the island community. The Van Deever furniture business had suddenly expanded in Grand Rapids in a post-Industrial, pre-Depression boom so quickly that the family couldn’t travel up north to properly enjoy their tidy little summer mansion anymore. Given the lack of real estate on the island, it had seemed like good sense to house multiple public offices in one place. The courthouse-slash-police department-slash-jail was just across the street.
Margaret poured steaming hot water into a delicate Limoges teacup, another Van Deever throwback. “You should have just attended that conference remotely or something. They do that all the time nowadays with the webcams and such.”
“I was giving a speech,” Edison groaned, sitting up and suffering the indignity of a bright pink Post-it note stuck to his forehead. “The keynote speech for the Midwest Librarians Association’s annual conference on running public facilities in nontraditional spaces, a research topic on which I am the MLA’s committee chair, with pass-around visual aids. I’ve put off attending the conference for years, and this was the closest they’ve ever held it to my location. The association president herself informed me that I had officially run out of excuses. I couldn’t do it remotely.”
“I could have done it for you!” Margaret cried, putting her hands on her hips. “And don’t start your jawing about wanting plain old Earl Grey. You need peppermint to settle your stomach. No sugar.”
Edison ignored her fussing. He’d become used to her “mothering” over the years, combined with her proprietary attitude towards this cramped little space that used to be the workspace for the lady of the house. It was better to just let her feel useful and undo the damage later…because Margaret’s husband sat on the library board. “I’m the head librarian, and the only paid staff member. It would look pretty bad for me to let my volunteer do my job for me.”
“Senior volunteer,” she corrected him.
“In terms of my continuing employment, it would look pretty bad for me to let a volunteer, no matter how senior, do my job for me,” he countered.
Margaret shook her head. “I only say that I don’t see why you had to put yourself through that ferry ride when you don’t have to. You know what it does to you.”
Edison sipped his tea as Margaret bustled around the room, sliding files back into their proper place and grabbing books from the “repaired” stack to reshelve. While her back was turned, he used the little silver tongs to drop two sugar cubes from the bowl into his cup and stirred quickly. He had his reasons for staying in the innermost room of the boat, huddled against the wall, clutching his laptop bag to his chest like a newborn’s security blanket. Normally, this didn’t cause problems. Edison rarely rode the ferry, and when he did, Captain Perkins knew to put an OUT OF ORDER sign on the bathroom he was using to prevent little scenes like the mutual meltdown this morning.
Edison wasn’t a complete asshole, no matter what that hauntingly lovely lunatic may have thought. He hated that he occupied one of two available closeable small spaces on the boat, when there were so many people aboard, and eventually, some of them were going to need the facilities. But it was the only place on the boat he felt safe. As long as he couldn’t see the water, he could pretend it wasn’t there. It was the same with the island. He lived as far inland as one could possibly go, in a charming little bungalow surrounded by trees. It made his house considerably cheaper, compared to most real estate on the island. There was no view.
He should have known something would go wrong with this particular voyage when he heard the door opposite banging over and over, as the day camp kids dashed in and out of the other bathroom. After his shoes were defiled, Edison noted the OUT OF ORDER sign was taped on the other bathroom door. He supposed he had the camp kids to thank for that.
Normally, he didn’t leave the safety of his sanctuary until the lines were secured and the gangplank was extended, but halfway through the voyage, some…person started screaming at a highly distressing pitch while hammering at the door like a deranged blacksmith. That didn’t exactly help his stress levels.
When he finally opened the door, he was fully prepared to verbally take down the harridan. But when he looked at her, she seemed so sad in a way that was all too familiar. Angry, but sad. Lost, but also sad. There were deep shadowed crescents under those fathomless gray eyes, even while they were flashing with unholy fury, and he was seized by the urge to wrap her in his arms and hold her there until that look went away. And that had nothing to do with the scent of gardenia and ocean air wafting from her collar. It was the common human desire to comfort someone who seemed at her lowest. But—given the compelling little line forming between her brows—he was pretty sure she would have smacked him if he’d followed through with those hair-sniffing aspirations.
Said aspirations had made him feel even more guilty for his facility-hoarding, but then she’d opened her mouth. After she opened her mouth, he still felt bad, but the impulse to hug her or smell her seaward flowery hair was definitely—significantly—reduced.
“Well, you got through it, and that’s all that matters. You don’t have to do it again for months,” Margaret said, stacking some disordered papers in his inbox. “Now, on to new business—”