“I promise to keep my hands to myself,” he chuckles, holding his hands up in the air.
The fact that he used the exact same words all those years ago the first time he took me to the lighthouse isn’t lost on me. I don’t know if it was a coincidence or if he did it on purpose, but it worked. I’m so lost in memories that I distractedly nod and let him lead me across the street.
An hour later, my belly so full of seafood that I feel like I might explode, I rest my hands on my stomach and lean back in my chair.
Fisher wisely chose the Lobster Bucket for lunch because he knows it’s my favorite place to eat. Our table is littered with the remnants of the crab pot we shared, the butcher paper they threw down on the table piled high with the empty shells of king, Dungeness and snow crab, shrimp, steamed clams and muscles and a few cleaned ears of corn. I’m more than a little surprised and maybe a little sad that Fisher didn’t spend our entire meal trying to charm me or make fun of Stanford in some way. We talked about the inn and Ellie and Bobby and we talked about his woodworking and the orders he’s already received since coming back to the island. Our conversation was easy and friendly, exactly as it was before things went dark.
“There’s no way you’re going to sell Butler House, right? You love that place, Lucy. It’s a part of who you are,” Fisher tells me as we look out at the view and clean off our hands with the lemon-scented wet-naps the restaurant provided.
“Loving it and knowing when it’s time to let it go are two different things,” I tell him softly, suddenly wondering if I’m referring to the inn or him and quickly changing the course of my thoughts.
“Times have changed, Fisher. Nowadays, people want free Wi-Fi and charging stations wherever they go. They want to stay connected to the world, post selfies and tend to their crops on that stupid Farmville game,” I explain in irritation. “They don’t want to unplug from the world around them because they’re afraid they might miss something. They don’t care about the beauty of this place or the peacefulness that being here brings. They don’t care about spending hours just staring out at the ocean and being amazed by what’s right in front of them. They want waterparks and spas and nightclubs and I can’t give that to them. I can’t give them what they want anymore and maybe it’s time for me to see that.”
I realize I circled right back around to my initial thoughts, intermingling my feelings about Fisher and the inn until I don’t know which one I’m actually referring to. He changed, but he never realized that I changed right along with him. The things I wanted and needed morphed and grew while he was away. He was so lost, and I couldn’t give him what he wanted no matter how hard I tried. I can’t live like that anymore, with the inn or with him. I can’t keep banging my head against the wall trying to get people to see that not everything has to change, but sometimes you don’t have a choice. You either change or you fail.
Fisher suddenly gets up from his seat and grabs my hand, pulling me up with him. “Come on, I want to show you something.”
He drags me away from our table, quickly paying for our meal on the way out. I don’t pull my hand away from his even though I should as we step back out onto Main Street and walk a few blocks to the Visitor’s Center. He pushes the door open and we step into the large, air-conditioned building, walking over to a huge bookshelf on the far wall. He finally drops my hand and reaches up onto one of the shelves to grab a large, thick binder, filled with hundreds of papers. He flips it open and turns to me, holding the binder out in front of him.
“Here, look at this.”
I take the binder from him in confusion, looking away from him to a hand-written letter, three-hole punched and attached inside. I scan it quickly and my mouth drops open in shock. It’s a letter to the town from one of the guests of Butler House. It goes into great detail about the beauty of the inn and island and how they appreciated spending a week in an inn that was filled with friendly staff, an amazing owner and the best view on the entire island.
When I get to the bottom, Fisher flips to the next page and I see another letter, similar to the first one, going on and on about how the peace and old-charm of the inn was exactly what they needed. Page after page, letter after letter, the entire binder is filled with notes and cards about how they love that the inn is one of the few on the island that isn’t overwhelmed with all the latest technology and distractions and how they hope it will never change.
Tears run down my cheeks by the time I get to the last page and Fisher quietly takes the binder from my hands and sticks it back up on the shelf.
“Not everything has to change, Lucy. Sometimes, people are perfectly happy with the way things used to be. Life just gets in the way and makes them forget for a little while,” Fisher tells me softly. “My father, some of these people that come here, they’ve lost sight of what’s important, but you never have. That binder proves that what you have here on this island is something worth keeping, something worth fighting for. You can’t stop fighting, Lucy. You can never stop fighting for something you love and something you believe in.”
Wiping away my tears, we head back outside and I try not to think about the fact that I’m certain he was talking about more than the inn.
Before we part ways, he reaches into his back pocket and hands me some folded pieces of paper. I should refuse to take them and just walk away, telling him to stop trying to pull me back to the past, but I don’t. I accept them without a word, get into my golf cart and race back to the inn as fast as I can, where I lock myself in my room and read through the pages of our history, crying harder than I did in the Visitor’s Center.