The café expanded by ten tables every summer when Nora opened the outside seating. These were the days when the waitstaff would increase by three or four college kids, and Nora might find things so busy that she herself jumped behind the griddle. Lauren always felt off-kilter during the first “outdoor day,” as they called them.
She stuck to her usual section, front of the house, near the windows. Nora seated a thirty-something man, tall and good-looking enough to turn a few heads, alone at a two-top.
Lauren handed him a menu.
“Need a minute?” she asked, shaking her pen and realizing it was out of ink. She patted down her apron for another. The customer hadn’t answered her question; she glanced up at him. He was looking at her in a way that once would have made her uncomfortable. When she’d first started working at the café, men would sometimes stare at her from across the room or let their gaze linger a little too long when she took their orders. She thought they recognized her from the news but soon realized that, no, that was just how men acted around a twenty-something-year-old woman.
The man smiled and turned to the menu—but not before noting the wedding band on her left ring finger. She saw him register the ring, and he knew she saw him looking.
“What would you recommend?” he said.
“You really can’t go wrong with anything.” She pointed at the specials board.
“That actually makes the decision harder.” He smiled. Lauren wanted to put a quick end to the exchange. She didn’t do banter.
“The quinoa French toast is very popular,” she said.
“Sounds great.”
She took his menu, relieved to be able to turn her back to him, and brushed past Nora on her way to the kitchen.
“Looks like he wanted something not on the menu,” Nora said with a wink.
“You’re right,” Lauren said. “It’s not on the menu.”
Et tu, Nora? she thought, retrieving an order. Then she told herself to stop being cranky. But she couldn’t help it; she’d been woken up in the middle of the night when Stephanie finally came home, banging around drunk in the bathroom.
She delivered the French toast to the guy at the window table.
“I’m Matt, by the way.” He extended his hand.
“And I’m working,” she said.
“I know. Actually, so am I.” He handed her a business card. “I’m a documentary filmmaker. I directed the film The Disappearing Sea, about the recovery of Phang Nga after the 2004 tsunami.”
“Didn’t see it.” She put the card down on the table.
“It was nominated for an Academy Award.”
“Congratulations,” she said woodenly before turning away.
“Lauren, wait.” She froze. She hadn’t given him her name. Don’t freak out, she told herself. There’s probably an explanation. Across the room, she spotted Nora chatting with a regular. She tried to catch her eye but Nora was laughing, distracted.
Her breath came fast and shallow, and she rushed to the safety of the bathroom. She closed herself inside, telling herself not to jump to conclusions, that one and one did not necessarily equal two. He might know her name because he’d heard a regular call out to her. And he was a filmmaker, but so what? That didn’t mean he was interested in Rory.
That first year, she’d turned down Diane Sawyer and the New York Times and BuzzFeed and a Wall Street Journal reporter writing a book. Rory would have hated people selling a paper or a TV broadcast on his name. A book? Forget it. And why should they get to do that? Hadn’t Rory given enough?
Hadn’t she?
Around the same time, she got a letter from Rory’s brother warning her someone was trying to make a documentary film about Rory. Don’t talk to him, he’d written. As if she needed him to tell her that.
But after a while, it all seemed to die down. The world had moved on. Or so she thought.
She couldn’t hide in the bathroom all day. She came out and found Nora by the coffee station. “Can you take table two for me?”
Nora glanced over, smiled, and was about to say something cute, but Lauren shut her down with “He’s a filmmaker. He knows my name.”
Nora’s face fell. “I’ll take the table. Why don’t you just manage the front counter until he leaves.”
Lauren felt safer, more in control, behind the counter. Busyness, motion, was her friend. She filled the Plexiglas display case with the muffins delivered that morning. A woman walked in to buy a mug and a baseball hat. Two regulars showed up for takeout. Falling into her usual rhythm, she tried to forget about the man in the seat by the window.
He stopped at the counter on his way out the door.
“You were right; the French toast was amazing. Those mugs for sale?” he said.
She turned her back to him.
“Lauren, I don’t mean to upset you. But I am working on a film about your late husband, and I would really like the chance to talk to you about it.”
She whirled around.
“Forget it. Not happening. Understand?”
“I think your husband’s story is important. I think it’s worth telling.”
She glared at him.
He held up another business card and made a show of placing it on the countertop. “I hope you’ll reconsider.”
She watched him leave, then, hands shaking, tossed the card in the garbage.
Matt pulled his car onto a side street and parked. He wouldn’t let the bumpy first encounter discourage him. This was what progress looked like.
He opened the browser on his phone and checked the listing for a room rental he’d found earlier that morning. When—not if, but when—Lauren Kincaid agreed to talk to him, he needed a work space and a small crew. With his very limited funds, he was maybe putting the cart before the horse. But the room for rent looked perfect; it was on the bay side of town and had its own entrance separate from the rest of the house. And the nightly rate was better than he had hoped to find. He didn’t want to lose it.
He opened the car window and let in the smell of salt air and the squawk of seagulls. With a deep breath, he dialed Craig.
Straight to voice mail.
“Craig, it’s Matt Brio. I’ve had a breakthrough on the Rory Kincaid film. Things are moving quickly, so please give me a call when you can.”
His next call was to the number listed for the room rental. Another voice mail. And then he remembered that it was a holiday weekend and that normal people would be with their families. He had to be patient.
This is what progress looks like.