“No idea,” I said.
I felt his hand go around my waist, then smoothly move up my back to the tag. “Lanoler,” he read slowly, ducking his head down so his lips were on my collarbone. “Seems well made. Although it’s hard to tell. Maybe if I just—”
I glanced outside the car, where people were walking past to the green, coffees in hand, backpacks over shoulders. “Nate,” I said. “It’s almost first bell.”
“You’re so conscientious,” he said, his voice muffled by my sweater, which he was still trying to ease off. “When did that happen?”
I sighed, then looked at the dashboard clock. We had five minutes before we’d be officially late. Not all the time we wanted, but maybe this, too, was too much to ask for. “Okay,” I told him as he worked his way back around my neck, his lips moving up to my ear. “I’m all yours.”
When I got home that afternoon, I saw Jamie seated at the island with his laptop. As he heard me approach, he quickly leaped up, grabbing a nearby loaf of bread and holding it in front of him as if struck by a sudden desire to make a sandwich.
I raised my eyebrows. “What are you doing?”
He exhaled loudly. “I thought you were Cora,” he said, tossing the bread down. “Whew! You scared me. I’ve worked too hard on this for her to find out about it now.”
As he sat back down, I saw that the island was covered with piles of CDs, some in their cases, others scattered all over the place. “So this is your Valentine’s Day gift?”
“One of them,” he said, opening a case and taking out a disk. “It’ll be, like, the third or fourth wave.”
“Wave? ”
“That’s my V-day technique,” he explained, sliding the disk into the side of his laptop. I heard a whirring, then some clicks, and the screen flickered. “Multiple gifts, given in order of escalating greatness, over the entire day. So, you know, you begin with flowers, then move to chocolates, maybe some balloons. This’ll come after that, but before the gourmet dinner. I’m still tweaking the order.”
“Right,” I said glumly, sitting down across from him and picking up a Bob Dylan CD.
He glanced over at me. “What’s wrong? Don’t tell me you don’t like Valentine’s Day. Everyone likes Valentine’s Day.”
I considered disputing this, but as he’d said the same thing about Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s, I figured it wasn’t worth the argument. “I’m just kind of stuck,” I said. “I need to get something for someone. . . .”
“Nate,” he said, hitting a couple of buttons on the laptop. I looked up at him. “Ruby, come on. We’re not that dense, you know. Plus half the house does look out at the pond, even at night.”
I bit my lip, turning the CD case in my hands. “Anyway, ” I said, “I want it to be, like, this great gift. But I can’t come up with anything.”
“Because you’re overthinking it,” he said. “The best gifts come from the heart, not a store.”
“This from the man who buys in waves.”
“I’m not buying this,” he pointed out, nodding at the laptop. “I mean, I bought the CDs, yeah. But the idea is from the heart.”
“And what’s the idea?”
“All the songs Cora loves to sing, in one place,” he said, sounding pleased with himself. “It wasn’t easy, let me tell you. I wrote up a list, then found them online or at the record store. For the really obscure ones, I had to enlist this guy one of my employees knows from his Anger Management class who’s some kind of music freak. But now I finally have them all. ‘Wasted Time,’ ‘Frankie and Johnny,’ ‘Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right’ . . .”
’"Angel from Montgomery,’” I said quietly.
“Exactly!” He grinned. “Hey, you can probably help me, now that I think of it. Just take a look at the list, and see if I’m missing anything.”
He pushed a piece of paper across to me, and I glanced down at it, reading over the familiar titles of the songs my mom had always sung to me, listed in block print. “No,” I said finally. “This is pretty much all of them.”
“Great.” He hit another button, taking out the CD and putting it on the counter as I pushed out my chair, getting to my feet. “Where you headed?”
“Shopping,” I said, pulling my bag over my shoulder. “I have to find something phenomenal.”
“You will,” he replied. “Just remember: the heart! Start there, and you can’t go wrong.”
I remained unconvinced, however, especially once I got to the mall, where there were hearts everywhere: shaped into balloons and cookies, personalized on T-shirts, filled with chocolate and held by fuzzy teddy bears. But even after going into a dozen stores, I still couldn’t find anything for Nate.
“Personally,” Harriet said as I slumped onto her stool an hour later for a much-needed rest, “I think this holiday is a total crock, completely manufactured by the greeting-card companies. If you really love someone, you should show it every day, not just one.”
“And yet,” Reggie said, from his kiosk, “you are not averse to running a two-for-one Valentine’s Day special on bracelets and assorted rings.”
“Of course not!” she said. “I’m a businesswoman. As long as the holiday exists, I might as well profit from it.”