What the Wood Hides

NORA

There are two ways to discover that the boardwalk has a problem.

The first is to read a forty-three-page proposal about structural deterioration while sitting in an air-conditioned room.

The second is to watch a town worker push an orange barrier across the path you use every morning and say, “Nobody through here until we check the decking.”

I recommend neither, but the second gets your attention faster.

It's Friday, June nineteenth. Mom and I have been open for twenty minutes when the maintenance truck pulls up by the blue arcade. A man in a yellow vest steps out with a measuring tape and another man who carries a clipboard as though it has personally offended him. They walk to the narrow ramp connecting the North Walk to Harbor Avenue, confer with a third worker, and start setting out cones.

I come around the counter still holding a handful of coins.

“What's wrong?”

“Soft spot along the deck edge,” the man with the clipboard says. His badge reads PARKS & PUBLIC WORKS. “Someone reported it yesterday after the meeting. We're checking the support before anybody uses this section.”

“The ramp?”

“Main deck beside it. The ramp entrance might need a short closure while we're here.”

“Can you do that?” The question is out before I hear how stupid it sounds.

He looks at the cones, then back at me. “For public safety? Yes.”

“Right. Sorry.”

He isn't unkind. He explains the accessible route to the boardwalk from the northern parking entrance will remain open, though anyone coming from the Harbor Avenue bus stop will have to go a longer way around until they determine whether the deck can be reopened.

I want to ask whether the ramp has been checked in the last year. I want to ask how much the town has put aside for repairs. I want to ask why it always seems to take a public meeting for somebody to find a problem everyone has been walking past for months.

Instead I ask the only useful question I can think of. “Should we tell customers not to use the stairs beside the arcade?”

“Those are open. We'll mark the closure limits.”

“Okay.”

When I return to Flynn's Window, Mom is putting fresh ice into the lemonade dispenser.

“Was that the ramp?” she asks.

“Part of the deck near it. They're checking underneath.”

She nods, as if another uncertain expense has been added to a list she already carries in her head.

“You'll need to redirect customers,” she says. “Don't guess about what is safe. Point them to the posted detour.”

“I know.”

She gives me a look.

“I really do know,” I say, softer.

The first person who complains is a man in a golf shirt who has to walk an extra hundred yards to reach the café. The second is a woman with a walker who doesn't complain at all. She studies the detour sign for a long moment, checks that the alternative entrance is step-free, and turns back toward Harbor Avenue.

“Would you like me to carry anything?” I call.

She shakes her head. “No, thank you. I just wish the signs were bigger.”

She's right. The temporary arrow has been printed in the town's favorite shade of nearly invisible gray.

I go back inside and find a sheet of white poster paper. Mom watches as I write ACCESSIBLE NORTH ENTRANCE THIS WAY, add a large arrow, and tape it beside our menu.

“Make sure it matches the town detour,” she says.

“It does.”

“Then good.”

It's the first time all morning I feel like I've done something useful.

At eleven, Tess arrives wearing an expression that says she has consumed too much coffee and not enough food. She has an overnight edit of the meeting footage on her laptop, but she doesn't take it out until the line at the café disappears.

“I've got twenty-six minutes of usable interviews,” she says. “That includes people who think the redevelopment is the best thing that's ever happened and one gentleman who spent five minutes describing why the Ferris wheel is a conspiracy.”

“Please tell me you cut him.”

“I gave him twenty seconds because he has a point about maintenance records. The conspiracy part is gone.”

“You're dangerously reasonable.”

“It's becoming a medical condition.”

We sit on two of the bolted stools with our knees pointed toward the sea. The cones by the ramp are visible beyond the arcade, bright orange against blue paint.

Tess follows my gaze. “I heard.”

“It's probably nothing.”

“Don't say that unless you know.”

I look at her. “Does every person in my life have to sound like a municipal compliance officer?”

“No. Your mother gets to sound like a bank manager.”

I laugh, but the sound doesn't last. “What if they're right, Tess?”

“About what?”

“What if we can't keep it?”

She closes the laptop gently. “Then we find out what we can keep. And what we need to change.”

“That's what Julian says.”

“I didn't mention Julian.”

“You were going to.”

“Was I?”

“Your face does that thing.”

“My face is extremely professional.”

“Your face should apply for an internship at Mercer Vale.”

She considers me for a second, then looks toward the water. “Nora, yesterday Mrs. Alvarez said she'd rather rent an affordable new stall than keep paying to work in a place the town hasn't maintained. Did you hear her?”

“Yes.”

“Because you clapped, and then you went very quiet.”

“Both of those things happened.”

“She's not betraying you.”

“I know.”

“Do you?”

I can't answer. Mrs. Alvarez has spent years slipping peppermints into my apron pocket. She was supposed to be on the same side as us. The fact that I haven't asked what side she actually wants makes me feel small.

After Tess leaves to interview the arcade operator, I walk over to the jewelry booth. Mrs. Alvarez is sorting pairs of silver-colored earrings into rows. She always wears a scarf knotted loosely around her neck, even in June. Today it's purple with tiny green flowers.

“Do you have a minute?” I ask.

“For you, five. For a customer, ten.”

“I'm not buying anything.”

“Then five.”

I lean against the outside of the stall. “I'm sorry I didn't ask how you felt about the plan.”

Her hands stop moving. “You asked me last week whether I would sign a petition.”

“That's not the same thing.”

“No.”

“I thought because you love the boardwalk—”

“I do love the boardwalk.” She holds up a pair of earrings, checks the clasps, and sets them down. “But loving a place doesn't pay for a roof after a storm. My daughter helped with my tax paperwork this spring. She asked me why I'm working six days a week to earn less than I did when she was a child.”

I don't have an answer.

“Maybe the new market hall will be too expensive,” she says. “Maybe there won't be a stall for me. That's why I want numbers. But I cannot keep telling myself the present is wonderful because the past was.”

A couple stops to examine a necklace. I move aside while she makes the sale. She wraps it in tissue so carefully it might be made of glass.

When the customers leave, she turns back to me. “You're a smart girl, Nora. You could make people listen. Just don't decide what everybody needs before you've asked them.”

I nod because anything more would sound like a defense.

On the walk back, I stop at the temporary closure. A town worker is kneeling beside an opened inspection panel. He shines a light beneath the deck and calls out measurements to his colleague. The underside is dark, all bracing and bolts and sand trapped where it shouldn't be.

I have walked over that spot hundreds of times. I never thought about what was keeping me up.

The worker looks up. “Can I help you?”

“No. Sorry. I was just looking.”

“Stay behind the cones, please.”

“I will.”

This time I don't resent being told.

By closing, the crew has replaced one warning sign and left the deck edge cordoned off pending a more detailed assessment. The detour remains. No one has declared the whole ramp unusable, but no one is saying the problem is solved either.

Mom pulls the shutter down at eight. We count the drawer on the steel worktable. The numbers are steady enough for a Friday, although two customers left after seeing the detour.

When Mom opens the freezer, its motor makes the tired groan I have started recognizing in my sleep.

“We need to replace it,” I say.

“We've been needing to replace it.”

“Can we?”

“We can put it on the business card. Then hope summer sales stay strong.”

I watch her fold the receipts into the yellow folder. “Is that how you've been paying for everything?”

“Not everything.”

“Mom.”

She sets the folder down. “The café isn't going to collapse overnight. I have a line of credit, some savings, and a plan for the off-season. It's not a glamorous plan, but it's a real one.”

“You should have told me.”

“Why? So you could give up the college housing deposit to buy me a freezer?”

The question hits so close to my secret calculation that I look away.

Mom notices immediately. Of course she does.

“Nora.”

“I didn't say that.”

“You didn't have to.”

I stare at my flour-dusted shoes. “What if I leave and you need me?”

“I will need you,” she says. “I'll need you to call. I'll need you to tell me when you're having a good day and when you're pretending not to. I'll need you to come home for the holidays and complain about my cooking. But I do not need you to surrender a place you worked hard to earn.”

“You make it sound simple.”

“It isn't. That's why I'm telling you before you make it harder.”

She reaches across the table and squeezes my wrist. For a moment she looks tired enough that I want to wrap both arms around her and hold on until the season is over.

Then she lets go, opens the folder, and turns it toward me.

The repair estimate for the freezer sits on top. Beneath it is our concession agreement, ending September thirtieth, and a note from the accountant about next year's uncertain costs.

“Here's what I can tell you,” she says. “We need this summer to make money. We need a realistic option for next summer. And I need you to stop acting like being frightened is a personal failure.”

“I'm not frightened.”

She raises an eyebrow.

“Fine,” I say. “I'm terrified. But also angry. Can I do both?”

“You inherited that talent from your grandfather.”

We laugh quietly in the closed café.

Later, at home, I spread my notes across the kitchen table. The meeting transcript. The vendor survey. A screenshot of the route map. A photograph of the old boardwalk, all crowded summer clothes and impossible hairstyles.

At the top of a blank page I write WHAT WE KNOW.

I list the facts without embellishment. The South Spur has been closed eighteen months. Concession renewals aren't guaranteed. A full cost comparison hasn't been published. Temporary access is unresolved. Some businesses want to stay as they are; others need change.

Below that I write WHAT WE DON'T KNOW.

How much would a phased repair cost? Who would pay? Which businesses could remain while work happened? Could the arcade be preserved without keeping every deteriorating section beside it? Who would maintain the place afterward?

It's a terrible list. It is also the first one that feels honest.

My phone buzzes. It's a photograph from Tess: the boardwalk taken from Harbor Avenue, with the maintenance barriers glowing orange beneath the streetlights.

TESS: footage for the film. not dramatic music. yet.

I smile. Then I open my college acceptance email. For the first time in a week, I read it all the way through, including the paragraph about student orientation and the link to the housing deposit.

I don't pay it. Not tonight.

But I write JULY 1 on the calendar beside AUGUST 6. Both dates take up the same amount of space.

Tomorrow, Tess and I are going to start asking the questions we should have asked before we made our first poster.

I close the notebook without crossing out anything that scares me.