Late Saturday afternoon, I drove past the sign at the edge of town that read WELCOME TO EASTPORT, ONTARIO, and rolled to a stop at the corner of Main Street. Before turning, I glanced over the pasture bordering the road and toward the riverbank, where maples and poplars flamed in vibrant hues of orange and gold in the pale sunshine.

Heading away from the river toward the centre of town, I passed the familiar landmarks of old St. Andrew’s Church at the corner of Front Street and McQuiggle’s Kitchen Nook on the opposite side—right next to Alessa’s, the hair salon my mother had opened when I was seven. The cow-shaped menu board outside Norton’s Ice Cream straddled the sidewalk amid a cluster of boutiques that teemed with tourists on summer weekends. Now that autumn had set in, traffic was light, and pedestrians scurried along the sidewalks to escape a sharp wind that tossed fallen leaves across the asphalt.

Jumbled emotions stole through me, a mixture of nostalgia and disconnection. Each time I returned to the town I grew up in, I noticed small changes here and there. Businesses closed and were replaced, new houses appeared and old ones were altered by renovations, and I spotted fewer faces I recognized. But at its core, the small grid of streets and long wooded riverbanks that encompassed Eastport remained true to my childhood memories.

Life here had been all I knew until the age of thirteen when my parents divorced, and I moved with my father to the city of St. Catharines. Since then, I hadn’t spent more than a week at a time in this town. The only exception was the summer I was seventeen and stayed with my mother while I worked at Richardson Orchards. That summer had promised to be the best of my life, and I’d almost asked Mom if I could move back into her home and finish school at Eastport High.

Even now, I sometimes wondered how differently my life might have unfolded if Jodi McCain hadn’t accosted me at Hal’s Chip Wagon on the last day of August, her vicious words sending me running back to St. Catharines with my heart badly crushed.

Turning onto Ferguson Avenue, I drove past a series of clapboard houses and newer brick dwellings set back on tree-lined lots. Near the end of the street, I came to my mother’s place, a cozy cream-coloured split-level with green shutters and lattice window boxes. The curtains on the front bay window were drawn shut behind Mom’s motley collection of houseplants that lined the sill.

Pulling into the driveway, I parked my little red Toyota hatchback beside her lime green Honda Civic. I stepped out of my car and stretched my arms, breathing in the crisp fall air. The wind kicked up again and rustled the copper-coloured leaves on the towering oak tree that sheltered the driveway. Grabbing my overnight bag from the back seat, I tramped up the porch steps to the front door.

The screen door swung open and my mother grinned out at me. The instant I stepped inside, she wrapped me into a lengthy hug, then held me at arm’s length to examine me.

Her brow puckered with concern. “You look thinner than before, Carly. Are you eating enough?”

I swung my bag off my shoulder and placed it on the braided rug by the door. “I eat plenty, Mom. Just not a lot of pasta these days. I can’t get away with it like I used to.”

“Of course you can. I made a fresh batch of spaghetti and pomodoro sauce for supper,” she said, confirming what I’d already discerned from the familiar aroma of tomato and spices that had greeted me when I walked in. “But I’m sorry, you’ll have to eat alone. I put the food in the fridge, and there are cannoli cooling on the counter. I’ll be back in a couple of hours. I have to pick up a friend who’s being released from the hospital.”

“Nothing serious, I hope.” I slid off my jacket and hooked it over the bamboo rack in the corner.

Mom lifted her shoulders. “No, just a routine bunion removal. Of course he can’t drive. His sister was supposed to pick him up, but she wasn’t feeling well so he called me.”

“He?” I folded my arms while I leaned my hip against the entrance table. “Is he cute?”

She swatted my arm, but couldn’t quite stifle the hint of a smile lifting the edges of her mouth. “It’s nothing like that.”

“Mom, I think it’s great if you’re interested in someone.” In her mid-fifties, my mother still had smooth features and only a few elegant white streaks in her full mane of dark hair, and despite the pasta and cannoli, she’d kept her svelte figure. A number of suitors had pursued her since her divorce, yet none of those relationships had lasted longer than a year or two, and as far as I knew she hadn’t dated anyone in ages.

Mom made a dismissive gesture. “I told you, Ed’s just a friend.” She busied herself buttoning her cardigan and adjusting the collar of her blouse in the oval mirror above the table.

“Ed?”

She nodded. “Ed Connolly.”

“The butcher?”

“He’s not a butcher anymore. He’s been in pest control the last ten years. Very successful.” She frowned at her reflection for a moment, then grabbed her purse off the table and extracted a tube of lipstick.

“That’s…wow. Well, you’re always harassing me to get married, so why shouldn’t I do the same to you?”

“I don’t harass you,” Mom countered while touching up her lips with a muted shade of mauve. “I just want happiness for you, and you always sound miserable when we talk on the phone. Marriage wasn’t for me, but that doesn’t mean you won’t meet the perfect man and settle down.” Tossing the lipstick into her purse, she turned to me and patted my cheek in affection. “Rob just wasn’t the one, I suppose.”

Her wistful tone made my insides clench. She’d set her sights on Rob as her son-in-law the weekend I brought him to meet her. I almost muttered something about marriage not being for me, either, but held my tongue. Best not to launch that discussion. My heart told me he was the one—my one chance that I’d senselessly thrown away.

My mother grabbed her purse and her burgundy suede jacket from the coat rack. “I’m sorry to leave right away. We’ll catch up later. Ciao, bambina.”

“Okay. Say hi to Ed for me.”

She blew me a kiss and hurried out the door. The screen door banged shut behind her as her heels clacked down the front steps.

I stood in the quiet of the empty house for a minute. The open door let in the echoing cries of a crow high in the elms across the street, and not much else. The quiet of my childhood street always took me by surprise whenever I came back from the city.

After a minute I meandered into the kitchen. Mom had redone the room a few years ago, adding cove lighting and new appliances, and with only herself in the house she managed to keep everything immaculate. The pots she’d used to make supper had been washed and stacked in the drying rack. Sunlight streaming through the window over the sink gleamed on the chrome and stainless-steel fixtures, and a vase of lilies on the windowsill reflected orange and pink on the dark granite countertop.

My gaze skated to the plate of fresh cannoli sprinkled with powdered sugar that sat on the far end of the counter. I turned my back on them, ignoring the allure of golden pastries overflowing with cream filling, and opened the fridge. Rooting around, I found a container filled to the brim with Mom’s famous pasta sauce, but a bottle of rosé in the door shelf snagged my attention, and for a lingering moment I considered filling a glass and parking myself in front of the TV until I got hungry.

Then again, after an hour of driving, I felt too restless to hang around the house. I’d spent too much of my childhood and adolescence waiting around for my mother to return from her salon or whatever function or meeting she’d been attending, always at least an hour later than she’d predicted.

Instead I retrieved my jacket and headed back outside, undecided where I was going. While I locked the door with my spare key, a gust of breeze tossed my hair into disarray and scooted down my collar, making me shiver. I zipped my quilted bomber jacket up to my neck before heading out on foot.

For a block I strode in the direction of my old elementary school, following a route I’d walked so many times I knew every crack in the curb and every tree that had swelled in size over the years, or been cut down. Above the roofs of the houses, I glimpsed the spire of St. Joseph’s Catholic Church where I’d been baptized as a baby and, seven years later, received First Communion wearing the white satin dress my mother had brought with her from Italy.

But instead of taking Maurice Avenue in the direction of the school, I turned the other way toward a commercial section of Church Street.

I spotted Hal’s Chip Wagon still parked by the hardware store. Hal Roy still ran the place as far as I knew, serving the same greasy burgers and thick ripple fries my friends and I used to live on in the summer. A woman and two children stood by the window, on the very patch of pavement where I’d been ordering fries and a cola when Jodi McCain stormed up to me, red-faced with fury, hurling accusations I couldn’t deny.

Her words still stung just a bit when I thought back on them. Once in a while, when I came back to Eastport, I wondered what I might say to Jodi if I happened to run into her. I should probably thank her for saving me from my own stupidity. With eighteen years of perspective, she might even do the same. But I was in no rush to test the theory.

Heading into a stronger wind, I shuddered as the chill sliced through my jeans. I turned up the collar of my jacket and increased my pace, lengthening my strides. Within a few minutes I found myself standing under the striped pink awning above Sweet Dreams Bakery.

I hadn’t meant to end up there, but now that I had, I peeked through the window in search of Brooke McCarthy, formerly Brooke Eldridge, one of my dearest friends from elementary school. I saw three customers seated at a table, and I recognized the young woman working the cash register but couldn’t remember her name.

I pulled the door open, and the bell above tinkled pleasantly as I stepped into the warmth of the shop. Heavenly aromas enveloped me, drawing my eye to the display cases filled with an array of cakes, cookies, muffins and éclairs that might just give my mother’s cannoli a run for their money.

Approaching the cash register, I offered the young woman an affable smile. “Hi there. Is Brooke around?”

“Yeah, she’s in the back.” The cashier turned and called out, “Brooke! Someone to see you.”

“Be right there, Julianne,” Brooke’s voice answered. In a moment she emerged wearing a white apron and cap, her golden brown hair tied into a neat bun at her nape. She gaped at me in surprise before a delighted grin spread across her face. “Oh my gosh! Carly, I didn’t know you were coming to town. I talked to Faith just last week and she didn’t say anything.”

“It was a last-minute thing.”

Brooke scurried around the counter and pulled me into a hug. “This is awesome. It’s so great to see you.”

“Good seeing you, too.” My arms wound easily around her slender waist. I could still picture her as a knobby-kneed five-year-old with ponytails and bangs that were trimmed too short, and sometimes I had to look twice to recognize the statuesque beauty she’d grown into.

Drawing back, Brooke studied me with a sympathetic tilt of her head. “I was so sorry to hear you lost your flower shop.”

“Thanks.”

“Running a small business is tough. How are you enjoying working with Faith? Interiorscaping seems like a good fit for you.”

“It’s just part time,” I said, “when she needs the help.”

She squeezed my hand in encouragement. “You’ll try again, right? Start a new business?”

I lifted my shoulders, too drained from weeks of stewing over my future to discuss it.

She didn’t press, as though she read my reticence in my expression. “Staying with your mom for the weekend?”

“Yep. She had to go out for a while, so I’m looking for something to do to pass the time. I’d forgotten there aren’t a lot of options around here for amusing yourself on a Saturday night.”

“Try the Red Lion. It’s a new pub down where Dexy’s used to be.”

“Dexy’s is gone?” I asked, surprised but not unhappy to hear it. “Did the health department finally close down that dive?”

Brooke twisted her lips in derision. “I don’t know, but good riddance. The Red Lion is really nice. They renovated the whole place and put in pool tables and dartboards. The food is good, too.”

“I’ll have to check it out.”

“Hey, I’m about to close for the day,” Brooke said, a glimmer of mischief in her dark eyes. “Why don’t I take you? Ian can look after Ava. The bakery is closed tomorrow so I can cut loose a little tonight.”

“I’d love that.”

“It’s been ages since I had a girls’ night out.” Her grin turned wistful. “What I wouldn’t give to nip up to St. Catharines on a Friday night and hang out with my two besties like the old days.”

“Well, why don’t you?”

“Because the downside of being a baker is that you generally go to bed at seven o’clock. Well, thank goodness I’ve still got Mari close by for girl talk, though she’s got her hands full these days with her two little ones.”

“I’ll bet,” I said, acutely aware that while Brooke might bemoan feeling left behind, I was really the oddball of the group, with no husband on my arm or apple-cheeked children at my ankles.