Chapter 13: Obligations

Berta saw it the moment he walked into the Anchor. The way his shoulders were set, the way his eyes went to the register to check the clock before he even sat down. She was already pouring his coffee before he could order it.

"You look like someone's going somewhere," she said, and it wasn't a question.

He didn't bother lying. The Anchor at 6:30 am on Wednesday was Berta's domain, and lying to Berta was like lying to the ocean — it always came back on you.

"Portland," he said. "Tomorrow."

"For how long?"

"Few days. Maybe a week. My father's having some health things."

Berta set the coffee down and leaned against the counter. She had fifty years of restaurant experience written into the lines around her eyes, and she used all of it to look at him like she was reading the menu of his life and seeing what he'd ordered without asking.

"Is Ivy coming with you?"

"No."

"Does she know?"

"Yeah."

Berta made a small sound in her throat that wasn't quite a word, just an observation expressed as a noise. She reached under the counter and pulled out the special — blueberry pancakes, his usual Wednesday order.

"She's not doing great," Berta said, setting the plate down.

Noah looked up. "How do you know that?"

"She was in here Tuesday morning. Ordered coffee, then left most of it. That's not someone who's okay."

He didn't have an answer to that. The truth was that Ivy had gotten very good at looking okay in the past two days. She'd smiled at him when he came back from the harbor walk. She'd kissed him goodnight like it meant something. But she'd also put physical space between them in the bed, and she'd stopped talking about tomorrow, stopped planning, stopped building forward. She'd pulled back into the version of herself that existed before — the version that knew how to leave.

"She's got a lot on her mind," he said finally.

"She's got a man leaving," Berta corrected. "That's what she's got on her mind."

Cam came in around 7:15, already talking before he got to the counter. He'd been up working on the Simmons place, had made good progress on the framing, wanted to know if Noah could swing by to check the load-bearing situation before he poured the footer. Then he saw Noah's expression and slowed down.

"What?" Cam said.

"I've got to go to Portland."

"For the whole job?"

"Just for a few days. Week maybe. My father's having heart problems."

Cam was quiet for a moment, which was unusual. Cam was never quiet. Cam filled silences the way water filled cups, reflexively, without thinking about it.

"That's rough, man," he said finally. "Is he okay?"

"I don't know yet. I have to be there for some appointments. Talk about his care plan."

"Yeah, okay." Cam sat down on the stool next to Noah. "That's family stuff. That matters."

The validation somehow made it worse. Noah appreciated Cam's understanding, but what he heard underneath it was: you're right to go, even though it means leaving Ivy. Even though it means abandoning the thing you've spent all summer building. Even though the cottage isn't done, not really — the work might be done but the life part is still unfinished.

"It's a few days," Noah said, and he wasn't sure if he was trying to convince Cam or himself.

"Right. Few days. And then you'll be back and everything will be fine."

But Cam didn't sound convinced either. Cam worked in the trades long enough to know that "few days" in a family crisis usually turned into longer. That people went places to handle emergencies and sometimes found reasons to stay. That the most important jobs got put on hold, and sometimes they never quite got picked back up.

"Yeah," Noah said. "Few days."

He finished the pancakes without tasting them. Berta poured him another coffee without asking. When Cam left — he had to get back to the Simmons framing — he gave Noah a pat on the shoulder that was meant to be reassurance but felt like goodbye. Like Cam was already mentally reassigning Noah's projects, already figuring out which ones could wait and which ones he'd have to farm out or take on himself.

By the time Noah walked back to his truck, the morning was fully light. The harbor was alive with boats heading out, the commerce of lobstering already in motion. He had a list on his phone of things to finish before Portland — caulk the trim work, check the deck boards one more time, make sure the swing was absolutely stable. Things to make sure Ivy wouldn't need him for. Things to ensure that when he left, the only thing left undone was them.

He drove to the cottage. Ivy's car was in the driveway, but she wasn't outside. He found her in the kitchen, hands in dishwater that had probably gone cold an hour ago, staring out at the ocean.

She didn't turn around when he came in.

"I saw Berta," he said.

"Half of Millbrook knows you're leaving."

"It's just a few days."

She still didn't turn. "Your mother doesn't sound like someone whose son is coming back in a few days."

He wanted to argue with that. He wanted to say that he was coming back, that this was temporary, that they were building something and temporary problems didn't erase construction that was already underway. But Ivy had been through things before — she'd left Millbrook at seventeen and didn't come back for fifteen years. She knew how temporary could calcify into permanent if you let it.

"My father's sick," he said.

"I know."

"I need to be there."

"I know that too."

She pulled her hands out of the water finally, dried them on a towel that was folded over the sink rail. When she turned to face him, her expression was carefully composed. The distance between them — maybe six feet, just across the kitchen — felt vast.

"I'm not angry at you," she said quietly. "I want you to understand that. I'm not angry that your father's sick. I'm not angry that you have to go. I'm just..." She paused, looking for the word. "I'm sad. I'm sad that this is how it ends."

"It's not ending," he said.

"It is, though. We both know it is. You're going to Portland to take care of your father. You're going to realize that Millbrook is your life, that I was just a summer thing, and you're going to find a way to tell me that that's okay. And it will be okay, probably. You'll go back to your construction jobs and your small town and your responsibility to your parents, and I'll figure out what I was doing here, what any of it meant."

"Ivy—"

"Don't," she said. "Don't promise me anything. Don't tell me you're coming back. I can't have that in my head while you're in Portland deciding."

She walked past him, out of the kitchen, and he didn't follow her. He could hear her footsteps on the stairs going up to the bedroom. Could hear her opening drawers. The sound of someone getting ready for a life without him in it.

He stood in the kitchen and looked at the clean counters, the finished cabinetry, the restored walls. Everything he'd built here for her was solid. Everything was exactly how it should be. And it was all going to be perfect for her to live in without him in it.

He sat at the table for a long time after that, not moving. The ocean moved. The light changed. Outside, people were living their lives in Millbrook, going to work, eating breakfast at the Anchor, doing the small things that added up to staying. And he had to leave, had to go back to Portland and sit in cardiology appointments and talk about medication management and figure out if his life was built on staying or on guilt.

He had to find out which one was true, and he wasn't sure he wanted to know the answer.