Cold Comfort Read Free Page A

has an interest, and aptitude, for all this new-fangled technology. I’m taking her to a routine doctor’s appointment. And she’s not happy that it’s getting late.”
    “Well, tell me what she needs, and I’ll get you out of here asap .” He clapped his hands together then rubbed his palms as if trying to warm them.
    “She wants four cod fillets—or fill-its , as she calls them—as long as her palm and about a half-inch thick. She said Giacomo will know exactly what she needs. Is he here?”
    He blushed. “Giacomo’s me.”
    “You?”
    “Yeah, I was my uncle’s namesake. When he passed away and left me the shop, I sort of reinvented myself from plain old Jack to the ethnic Giacomo. It sounds more authentic when I attend the meetings for the Federal Hill Little Italy Rotary Club. You know what they say… When in Rome …”
    I burst out laughing. I had forgotten how much I’d missed Jack’s dry, deadpan sense of humor.
    He reached a hand inside the case and pulled out a whole cod fish—head, tail, the works.
    “You said four fill-its ?”
    “Right. Four.”
    On the counter behind the refrigerated case, Jack settled down to work. With the precision of a surgeon, the long blade of a knife cut the fillets fresh off the fish, completely skirting the bones. Then he slapped the four of them atop the scale and said, “That oughta do it. Are these for dinner tonight?”
    “No, they’re actually for tomorrow.”
    “Tomorrow? Thanksgiving?”
    “Yeah, Minnie thinks it’s not Thanksgiving without every course imaginable—soup, salad, pasta, fish… Seven courses in all. It’ll probably be midnight by the time we actually dig in to the turkey and fixings!”
    He grinned as he wrapped up the cod fillets. “Maybe she thinks the Pilgrims were Italian?”
    “You might be on to something,” I told him, realizing how much I missed the easygoing, playful banter we’d had in college.
    “Well, tell Minnie these are on the house,” he said. “Happy Thanksgiving to you both.”
    As I thanked Jack, the one other customer in the store—a woman carrying a bag of Panko breadcrumbs and a jar of shrimp cocktail sauce—approached the cash register and interrupted our final goodbyes.
    When Jack finally passed the bundle of fish over the counter to me, I looked and was surprised to notice he wasn’t wearing a wedding band.
    “Well, you take care… And a Happy Thanksgiving to you, too.” I slipped the fish atop all the other bundles packed inside the overflowing shopping cart.
    “By the way, you have a little smudge on the corner of your lip there,” he said, pointing to his own face in order to show where on my own.
    Mortified, the small shop suddenly seemed hot and closed in. I followed his lead and wiped away what I figured were lingering traces of powdered sugar from the pastry and started pushing the cart toward the door.
    I hurried out of the store, grateful to be met by a cool gust of fresh air.
    My phone chimed again.
    It was another text from Aunt Minnie: U R 10 mins late. Now I’m getting worried.

Two
    We made it to Aunt Minnie’s chiropodist appointment with time to spare. While I sat in the waiting room, thoughts about bumping into Jack swirled inside my mind. I mentally tried to distract myself, flipping pages in magazines, silently analyzing and critiquing all the photographs.
    Once Aunt Minnie had her toenails and corns and calluses trimmed, she was like a new woman, back in business and raring to get home to start prepping for Thanksgiving dinner.
    She was thrilled that we returned in time to catch her “story,” that’s how she referred to Days of Our Lives, her favorite soap opera. She slipped out of her clothes and back into her housecoat and sweater. Then she switched on the television set on the kitchen table and settled down to work.
    First thing she did was set up the pumpkin pie and pop it into the oven. “Won’t be Thanksgiving without it,” she said.
    You’d think, with the