The Oysterville Sewing Circle. Susan Wiggs
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The sand feels wonderful. Have you ever been to a beach before?”
“Mama said she’d take us to Coney Island,” said Flick. “She never did, though.”
Caroline tried not to think about all the things they’d never get to do with their mother. “Well, you’re here now.” She jumped up. “I can’t be at the beach and not do a cartwheel,” she declared. “It’s completely impossible. No matter what sort of mood I’m in, I have to do a cartwheel. There’s something about these wide open spaces I can’t resist.”
With that, she spread her arms and executed a less-than-perfect cartwheel. “How’s that?”
“I want to try!” Addie leaped into a crouch.
“That wasn’t a cartwheel,” Flick said.
“It takes practice. Pay attention now.” Caroline drew a line in the sand with a stick. “You have to start in a lunge. It’s like a warrior pose in yoga.” She knew they practiced yoga at their school. “Put both hands down on the line and kick your feet over your head.” She showed them another cartwheel. “And then you land in a lunge on the same line. Voilà!”
The kids made several attempts, and she helped them along. “Not bad for a couple of newbies. You’ll have lots of time to practice. You know what else is fun? Running!” She took off, watching them over her shoulder. They eagerly followed and were soon running along the broad emptiness. They rushed toward a flock of birds and watched them burst into the sky in one huge motion. She led the way into the surf, letting the waves chase them, and they squealed as the cold water surged around their bare feet. For a few moments, they were just a couple of kids, and the sight of them running along the beach gave her a momentary sense of joy—and maybe hope.
Yet the feeling was tinged with sadness and uncertainty. She still had no answer to the question that had dogged her across the continent—now what?
After a while, she found a driftwood log, battered smooth by time and tide, with a twist that formed a natural bench. “Come here, you two, and have a seat.” She tunneled her bare feet into the cool sand, finding a sand dollar and a broken nautilus shell. She made a simple mound. “In the summer, there are sand-sculpting contests. One year my family made a dragon as long as a truck.”
Flick shaded his eyes and tilted his face toward the sky. “Is this where we live now?”
Oh, boy. Don’t lie. “This is where we live for now. You have a nice room, and on Monday we’ll get you enrolled in school. So yes. We live here now. I hope you’re going to like it. It’s where I lived my whole life when I was a kid.”
“Did you like it?”
She looped her arms around her drawn-up knees. Don’t lie. “I did,” she said. “Once upon a time.”
“Then why did you leave?”
“Oh, so many reasons. I wanted to explore the world,” she said. “I went to New York to be a designer, but I always remembered this place, and even now, when I create something, there’s a little bit of this beach in the design.” She traced her finger around the whorls of the nautilus shell. “This is my favorite shape, in fact.” She winced as she said it, because the motif had been tainted by the fiasco in New York that had ended her career.
A few fat raindrops spattered down on them. “Welcome to the Pacific Northwest,” she said. “It rains a lot around here.” She tucked the shell into her pocket. “Guess that’s our signal to go inside,” she said, tipping her face to the sky. “You’re going to need raingear and some gum boots.”
Somehow she muddled through the rest of the day. At bedtime, the kids were clingy, which was understandable. They were two little strangers in a world that probably felt to them like another planet.
Angelique had never been consistent about bedtime. Sometimes there would be a bath and a story. Other times the kids would doze off on the sofa and their mother would carry them to bed. The counselor had advised Caroline that they would do better with a regular bedtime routine. Even while on the road, she’d tried to stick to that. No matter where they were, she would start the process at seven.
A couple of nights during their trip, Caroline had felt like she was about to melt from exhaustion, but she’d forced herself to go through the routine in whatever motel or roadside inn they’d stopped at for the night.
On their first evening in Oysterville, she followed protocol. “Okay,” she said, pointing to the kitchen clock. “What’s that say?”
Flick eyed the clock, one of those silly cats with the pendulum tail. “Seven o’clock.”
“Wow, telling time already,” said Caroline’s mother. “Impressive.”
“He’s super smart. So is Addie. What happens at seven o’clock?”
“Bath, bed, story, song,” Addie said.
“We’ve been practicing every night,” said Caroline. “We’re getting pretty good at it, aren’t we, guys?”
“I want to stay up,” Flick said.
“I’ll bet you do. But kids go to bed at seven. No exceptions.” She was learning that they would always try to push. “Tonight there’s one more seven o’clock job. You have to tell everyone good night.”
They made the rounds, hesitant and dubious. Strangers in a strange land. They said good night to her parents, and to Virginia, who had moved to the apartment over the garage after her divorce.
Then they followed her up the stairs for a bath to scrub off the sand from the beach. “Can Dottie help you with your bath?”
Addie nodded. Flick thought for a moment. Then he said, “We have trust issues.”
Caroline ruffled his hair. “Smarty-pants.” She looked at her mother. “We’ve been meeting on Skype with a child psychologist. Flick and Addie are learning ways to talk about their feelings.”
“I see.” Mom went down to Flick’s level again and looked him in the eye. “I realize you just met me, and you must have lots of feelings about the changes happening so fast in your life. It’s amazing that you came all the way across the country to be here. I hope pretty soon I’ll earn your trust.”
Caroline’s mom filled the tub and stepped away, watching from the doorway. There were questions during the bath.
“Why did we come here?”
Caroline soaped them up and gently washed their sweet, small bodies. “Because we couldn’t stay at our place in New York anymore.” Not after what went down there.
“We could get another place near my school,” Flick pointed out.
“I couldn’t afford it,” Caroline admitted, tasting defeat, a bitter flavor on her tongue.
“On account of you got fired from your job.”
“Pretty much.” She saw her mother studying her and looked away, busying herself with the children. Fired. It happened all the time in her industry. Egos ran rampant, tempers boiled over, people stabbed one another in the back, designers were blackballed. Caroline had never believed it would happen to her, though. The job had been everything to her. It had defined her, and when it all unraveled, the sense of loss and despair had left her reeling. She wasn’t just grossly unfit to raise two orphans. She was grossly unfit to do anything but flee to safety. What would define her now? Failure? Despair?
“You were getting money by fixing up clothes for people,” Flick continued.
“You’re very smart to remember that,” she said, cupping his forehead as she rinsed off the shampoo. His hair was short, covering his head with tight whorls. Addie’s was longer, a mass of corkscrew curls. Through a painful process of trial and error, Caroline had figured out how to take care of it—lots of conditioner and a gentle combing with her fingers.
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