“The history is so fascinating. I—we have wanted to visit.”
“You do seem to be making the most of your visit.” Eleanor remarked, looking at Jasmine’s ring. “Is that from Wakefield’s?”
“Yes, it is,” I answered for her. “I was walking by with Tora, and I saw a ring that was almost as beautiful as my wife, so I decided she had to have it.”
“Now, how sweet is that?” She glanced at David. “What happened to your other rings?” she asked, and my expression dropped.
Jasmine mirrored my expression before speaking up. “Actually, we didn’t have any. We got married so fast, we didn’t have time to shop for them.”
“Ah, so you’re newlyweds!” He clapped me on the shoulder.
“Yes.” I nodded. “Very new.”
“Well, that is definitely cause for a celebration.” Eleanor smiled. “Let me go see how dinner is doing. I need to keep Minnie away from the Lawry’s before she gives us all high blood pressure.”
“I’d love to help you in the kitchen.” Jasmine disengaged herself from my hold. “And we brought you this bottle of wine.”
“Ah, the good stuff,” Eleanor quipped. “We’ll get started on this while we finish up dinner.” David and I watched the two women weave their way through the crowd in the dining room and disappear.
“So, a full house, huh?” I looked at the small crowd of people milling around long wooden table.
“Yeah, my wife loves to throw dinners, and I’ll use any excuse to fire up the grills.” He chuckled.
“Grills?”
“Oh, yeah,” he said in a mischievous almost-growl. “Follow me.”
David led me through the back door of his house to a large patio structure with a perimeter of what looked like every iteration of an outdoor cooking appliance I’d ever heard of. There were barbecue grills, smokers, large griddles, and a few I didn’t recognize.
If I was in a cartoon, the smell emanating from this outdoor piece of heaven could have picked me up and carried me away. It was sweet, spicy, meaty, smoky, and other varieties of delicious that I couldn’t identify. David caught my eye and gave me a knowing nod before handing me a black apron similar to the one he’d been wearing when we’d met this afternoon.
After handing me a beer and introducing me to other men drinking beer and manning their own meat stations, David gaveme a blow-by-blow of some of the most sophisticated cooking tools I’d ever seen.
“Wait, so you built this?” I pointed to a large smoker.
“Well, I modified it.” He chuckled. “You can’t trust what comes out of a factory. You gotta put your own sauce on it.”
“David is being modest.” A man who was named Rick, but was called Bubba, pointed at David with his beer. “He built most of these. He invented some stuff, too. Things you won’t see anywhere else.”
“That’s impressive.” I nodded.
“Well, it’s in the genes.” David smiled and cracked open another beer. “Inventing and building stuff runs through my veins. My great-grandfather was an inventor. That’s how he could afford to found an entire town. Growing up, we were always told, ‘If you can’t find it…’”
“…‘make it,” the rest of the men finished in unison before cheering.
“So tell me more about this smoker.” I gestured to all the buttons and dials. “What does this run on, propane?”
The entire group went silent.
“Propane?” a man named Eric shouted in disbelief. “David, where did you find this fool?”
“Boo this man,” Bubba chimed in.
“All right! All right!” I held my hands up in concession. “My mistake.” I chuckled. “So tell me what this thing does use for fuel.”
I spent the next hour or so getting the equivalent of a grilling lesson from a NASA scientist. David told me that he had a handful of advanced engineering degrees from MIT, where he met hiswife, and some other prestigious schools. When he was about my age he left his high-six-figure job—at NASA, coincidentally—to move back to Miller’s Cove to raise his family. I immediately wanted to ask him if he had any regrets, but the contented look on his face erased all my doubts.
If you had asked me at any point in my life up until the minute I had this conversation if I would be willing to walk away from my hard-earned career to grill ribs on my back porch with my friends, toss a couple of kids in the air, and be loved by a good woman, I would have answered “no” without hesitation.
