The Portuguese Fisherman
By Tuesday morning there was an air of expectancy in the Briggs household, a sense of knowing something was going to happen but not knowing whether it would be good or bad.
At the breakfast table, Lila, a lifetime believer that food was the salve for everything, announced she’d be making chicken and dumplings for dinner.
“I won’t be here,” Meghan said. “I’m going out.”
Given that Meghan didn’t date all that often, and when she did it was almost always on a Saturday night, Tracy and Lila both turned with their eyebrows lifted.
“Out where?” Lila asked.
“I have a date.”
“On a Tuesday?”
Meghan stirred a spoonful of sugar into her coffee and nodded.
“Is this one of those Chamber of Commerce things?” Tracy asked.
“No.” The thought of seeing Tom again caused Meghan’s lips to curl into a smile. “I’m having dinner with Tom Whitely, the new vet.”
Hoping to hide the grin on her own face, Lila turned away.
That evening, Tom arrived early, but Meghan was ready and waiting. She’d been watching from an upstairs window and recognized the blue Audi when it turned in to the driveway. It was a convertible, and tonight he had the top down.
Earlier she’d thought of pinning her hair up, doing something a bit more glamorous than her usual look. She’d pulled a narrow black sheath from the closet and slipped it over her head, then twisted her hair into a dazzling black clip. But when she’d looked in the mirror, her reflection screamed, “This is not you!” At the last minute, she’d changed her mind and was now glad of it.
She watched him climb from the car and start up the walkway. He was dressed casually: khaki trousers and a white, open-collar shirt. She breathed a sigh of relief, glad she had changed into the sundress and strappy sandals. Meghan heard the ding-dong of the doorbell, but the last thing she wanted was to seem overly eager. She waited a minute, listened as he introduced himself to Lila, then started down the stairs.
He was standing in the living room, and when he looked up, his eyes widened.
“Wow,” he said. “You look fabulous!”
The way he said it caused a spot of color to rise in her cheeks.
“You too,” she said. “I mean, you look good. A manly kind of good.”
He laughed.
After several minutes of polite conversation with Lila and Tracy, he tactfully said they had a dinner reservation and should get going.
From the moment he backed out of the driveway, Meghan had a feeling it was going to be a good evening. Their conversation seemed to pick up almost exactly where it had left off Friday evening. He said he’d made a reservation at the Portuguese Fisherman and asked if that was okay with her.
“Doc Anderson recommended it,” he said. “He claims they have a flame-grilled Chilean sea bass that’s to die for. And if you don’t care for fish, they have pretty good steaks.”
“I love seafood,” Meghan replied. In truth, she would have eaten anything or nothing at all, because the pleasure of the evening was simply being with him.
The restaurant was in the next town over, a forty-minute drive that you could make in thirty if you took the highway. Tom didn’t. His GPS was set to bypass highways, and they drove leisurely along back roads rich with the smells of summer: apple orchards not yet ready for picking, fields of watermelon, and peach trees heavy with fruit.
As they drove, the breeze lifted the ends of Meghan’s hair from her shoulders, and in the setting sun it appeared more golden, luminous almost. Tom cast a sideways glance and smiled. When they stopped at a crossroad, he reached across and tucked a loose tendril behind her ear.
“If the wind is too much, I can raise the top,” he said, but she shook her head and told him it was perfect as it was.
The Portuguese Fisherman was a small building that looked as if it had at one time been a house. The entrance opened into a foyer that led to different rooms. The hostess, noticing the way Tom’s arm circled Meghan’s waist, suggested the Lareira Room. It was one with a stone fireplace along the wall and a scattering of candlelit tables circling a small dance floor. In the far corner, a man with silver hair and an easy smile strummed a guitar. Although he sang in his native language, Meghan knew these were love songs. The tenderness of his expression told the tale.
Tom held his hand to the small of her back and led Meghan to the table. Feeling the heat of his touch, she leaned closer and whispered, “This place is lovely.”
He smiled and again credited Dr. Anderson for the recommendation.
Once they were seated, he asked if she would like to share a pitcher of sangria. She nodded, and he ordered the red. It was rich and fruity, the kind that had been made hours earlier and was given time to soak in the flavor of sweet orange and fleshy peach. He filled both glasses, and they lingered over the drinks for a long while before ordering appetizers.
They talked of all the things they had yet to learn about one another. He spoke of the hardships after his father had died and described how he’d worked his way through college. During the years of grad school, he’d worked at a clinic in Ohio, saving every nickel so he could one day have a practice of his own.
As Meghan listened, she could imagine the boy and then the younger man, studious and dedicated to his cause. She fell into the magic of his words while he spoke. With each thing he said, she asked for more, and he gave it freely.
“I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you,” he said, and stretched his arm across the table, his palm open, an invitation for her hand to be placed in his.
As she reached out to accept his offer, Meghan lowered her eyes and said, “I’ve been thinking about you also.” The shyness of a new and still fragile relationship was in her voice. She didn’t mention how at night when she closed her eyes, she could picture the soft gray-green of his eyes and the curve of his mouth as he smiled. She said nothing of how she had written pages about him in her journal. Those thoughts were too private, and it was too soon.
She blushed at the remembrance of what she’d written, then hurried past the moment by asking about Agatha and her cat, Winnie.
“Winnie is doing fine now,” he said. “She had a mild trichobezoar.”
“Oh. With Winnie being a Persian and coughing as she was, I thought maybe it was just a hairball.”
He laughed. “That’s what a trichobezoar is. Vets give it a technical name to impress people.” Tom liked that she’d asked about Winnie and was impressed she’d known about hairballs. “Do you have a cat?”
“Mama does, but Beulah is strictly her cat and won’t come near anyone else.” With a twinkle in her eye she added, “Sox is my baby.”
“Lucky for me you found him,” he said. “Had you not brought Sox into the clinic, we might never have met.” He looked into her eyes, feeling this was the start of something special. In a voice as soft as velvet, he whispered, “I think it was fate.”
Meghan’s heart fluttered, and she felt the warmth of a blush coloring her cheeks. “Maybe it was something far more powerful than fate . . . ,” she said, and told him about the storm.
“For a while I thought we might not make it back, then this big wave came and pushed me ashore. The odd part is there are no waves in the lake. Not ever. There’s no force to push the water one way or the other.”
He raised an eyebrow, and a look of concern settled on his face. “So then what . . . ?”
“I don’t know,” she said, and gave an easy shrug. “I’ve since wondered if maybe it wasn’t Daddy watching over me.”
The expression of concern was still stuck to his face. “Do you realize you could have been killed?”
Although he had known her only a short time, that thought struck him like a bolt of lightning.
“Promise me you won’t do anything like that again.”
She laughed, even though there was nothing funny. “Finding Sox was a once-in-a-lifetime miracle. I doubt I’ll ever come across another dog who needs saving.”
“If you did, would you do the same thing again?” The words were out of his mouth before Tom had time to reason why he would ask such a question.
Meghan hesitated, then answered, “It’s hard to say, but yeah, I probably would. Animals and babies can’t always fend for themselves,” she said, “so how can you not do something when they’re in trouble?”
That answer was yet another thing to like about Meghan, although Tom preferred to think she’d be more cautious next time.
When he asked about her weekend, she told him of the day with Lucas. She spoke of remembering Gabriel Hawke and how she’d learned from his website the techniques for teaching a deaf child to speak.
“I can’t begin to imagine how Gabriel’s mother did that,” she said. “I spent almost a full day teaching Lucas three words.”
She explained that Tracy had finally acknowledged the problem, and they were scheduled to see a pediatric audiologist on Thursday. She hesitated a moment, drew a small breath, then added, “I pray Lucas’s hearing disability is something that can be corrected.”
Tom saw the heaviness of this thought in the furrows of her forehead. Her love for the boy touched his heart, and he affectionately tightened his fingers around hers.
“Lucas is fortunate to have an aunt who cares so much,” he said, and in his mind he was thinking he, too, was fortunate to be sitting across the table from her.
When the sangria neared the bottom of the pitcher, Tom ordered a second one and a sharing plate of appetizers with a taste of everything: garlic shrimp, fried calamari, broiled octopus, and stuffed clams made tastier by the addition of bacon. Meghan scrunched her nose at the thought of octopus, but when he speared a small piece and held it to her mouth, she ate.
Later, after they had finished dinner, the guitarist thrummed a song so achingly beautiful it was impossible not to be swept away by it, and they danced. Feeling his hand pressed to her back, Meghan was again glad she’d switched to the sundress that bared her shoulders. When the song ended, they remained on the floor to dance again and then again.
In the dimly lit room, it seemed as though the rest of the world fell away and the music was meant only for them. They moved together, bodies swaying, her hip tight against his, his arm pressing her to his chest, so close she could feel his heartbeat. This was the magical moment when Meghan knew—not suspected but knew—she was madly, happily, crazily in love with Tom Whitely.
Later still, they ordered espressos and sat at the table looking dreamily into each other’s eyes.