By Ann Hood

Meg didn’t know what had compelled her to take Exit 28 toward Portland instead of driving straight home to Providence. On the once-familiar streets she became so overwhelmed by nostalgia and bittersweet memories that she had to pull over and stare at the ocean to calm herself. While she was up in Brunswick for the library conference, all of these feelings had stayed tucked away, along with all of the losses of the past few years: first her mother dying, then Jeff leaving their marriage to “find himself,” and just last year Becca off to college five hundred miles away.

But here all of it washed over her with the salty air and silvery summer light so like that long-ago summer when she’d come to Portland to see Ben, her first love. The one who got away. He’d grown up here, and she had eaten her first-ever oyster with him at J’s Oyster Bar on the wharf. She hadn’t expected to love it as much as she did. But the sharp brininess and seaweedy taste had surprised her. “I think I’m in love,” she’d said, reaching for another, this time forgoing the cocktail sauce. She was in love. With Ben. And she’d wondered, hoped, that Ben knew that was what she’d really meant. But the subject of love didn’t come up again, that night or  the rest of the week.

Meg made her way slowly up hills and down, peering at storefronts and shop signs. What she wanted was a sandwich from the place where she and Ben had gone several times that long-ago week. She’d had the vegetarian sandwich, The Hearst Burger. Open the bun and the patty is gone! Ben had ordered the Downeast Feast just so the kitchen crew would come out banging pots and pans.

Unable to find the place, Meg wandered into a bakery instead. Immediately she was struck by how much the young woman behind the counter reminded her of her own twenty-year-old self: the same blond braids, the same round, wire-rimmed glasses, the same air of hopefulness, as if there was something good just around the corner. 

Meg ordered a brioche and then said, “I was looking for a sandwich shop. It gave its sandwiches funny names?”

The girl scrunched up her face, thinking. “Carbur’s?” she offered, and Meg could hear the Maine in her voice. Like Ben’s.

“Yes!” Meg said. Then: “That’s my name too.” She pointed to the girl’s name tag. “Meg,” she added.

The girl smiled, unimpressed but polite, and a shiver went up Meg’s neck, like she’d seen a ghost. A ghost of her long-ago self, the one who laughed so joyfully. Who delighted in her first oyster. Who didn’t have so many sad things to tuck away.

Back outside, clutching the bag with the brioche in it, Meg closed her eyes and breathed in deep, the air rich with salt and seaweed and oysters and young love. When she opened them again, the light had shifted slightly, less silvery now, almost lavender. The air, she thought, smelled different too. It smelled, she decided as she bit into the still-warm brioche, a little like hope.