The Oysterville Sewing Circle

by Susan Wiggs

  “The one thing he’s good at.” Virginia had been divorced for a year. She’d had what everyone thought was a fine marriage to a lawyer, and a job as an investigator at his firm. Their eight-year-old daughter, Fern, was a bright-eyed Pippi Longstocking of a child.

  In the Shelby family, Virginia was the “pretty one”—a designation people pretended not to espouse in this day and age. But they did. Virginia was adorable and perfectly proportioned. Virginia had a good hair day every day. Virginia had naturally fabulous eyebrows and flawless skin.

  Yet when it came to love, she had either terrible judgment or terrible luck, depending on who was giving the opinion. “I’ve had my heart broken so many times, it’s all scar tissue,” she often said with a flair for drama. When she’d married Dave, an ambitious, newly minted attorney, the family all thought the drama would end. It did for a while, until the previous year, when his wandering eye stirred things up again.

  Mom held open the back door. “Adult conversation awaits.”

  “Can I carry something?” Caroline offered.

  “Just your emotional baggage,” Virginia said, picking up an appetizer tray.

  So it was going to be that kind of conversation, Caroline realized as she followed her sister out the door.

  Their father had made a cheery blaze in the fire pit and they sat around in the Adirondack chairs, faces aglow in the golden light. “Wow,” said Caroline. “We have a quorum.”

  Both her parents were present, along with Virginia and their brother Jackson. He was cheerfully single, a fisherman with a wild streak that lingered long past adolescence. Yet when it came to buying seafood for the restaurant, he was all business—a serious foodie and an advocate for sustainable fishing practices. Almost none of the seafood the restaurant served came from a radius larger than a hundred miles. It didn’t need to, because the waters in the area yielded a bounty of cold-water fish and shellfish.

  Their father lifted a glass of beer. “IPA from the Razor Clam Microbrewery, and the wine is a nice claret I’ve been saving for a special occasion.”

  He was a level 4 sommelier and managed the bar at the restaurant. When he called the wine “nice,” it was almost always an understatement.

  “A toast,” said her mother. “Welcome back, Caroline. I’m sorry about the circumstances that brought you back, but it’s wonderful to have you here.”

  They clinked glasses, sipped and savored. The claret was, as expected, extraordinary. “Oh, man,” she said. “Thanks, Dad. Expensive wine is something I’ve never been able to indulge in.”

  “Looks like that’s about to change.” He gave her the dad smile—eyes crinkled, mouth a perfect bow of affection—the indulgent look she used to live for.

  Lyle Shelby was the family’s charming patriarch. He was the sun, blazing with passion and enthusiasm for life, and everyone else basked in his warmth. To win a word of praise was always the goal. He was so genuinely proud of his family that the worst punishment he ever doled out was disappointment. “We’ve missed you, C-Shell,” he said, smiling across the fire as he called her by the old family nickname.

  She took another sip. “I’m really grateful I had a place to bring these poor kids.”

  “They seem a little shell-shocked,” her mom said.

  “They are. But believe me, they’re doing a lot better now.” She cringed, still hearing the echoes of Flick’s wailing cries for his mother and Addie’s gasping sobs those first few nights.

  Caroline looked around at her family, their faces so familiar and dear to her. Despite the passage of time, the feeling of security, of balance, was as powerful now as it had been throughout her youth. She clenched her jaw to stave off tears of utter relief. And then she remembered she didn’t have to clench anymore.

  She was home. She was safe.

  Burning tears squeezed out on a wave of grief and stress, worry and uncertainty, fear and disappointment. And most of all, the utterly crushing knowledge that two little kids now belonged to her, and her alone.

  She set down her wineglass and brushed off their concern. “Sorry,” she said, using her shirttail to dab at her face. “I’m all right. Just exhausted. Running on fumes.”

  “Of course you are,” said her mother. “You’ll feel better tomorrow. Promise you’ll sleep in and let me look after the little ones.”

  “I’d love to take you up on that,” said Caroline. “Tomorrow, though, I want to make sure I’m up when they are. I’ve lost count of all the different places they’ve awakened.” She tried to keep her voice steady as she added, “Poor kids. Their world’s been turned upside down.”

  “It has,” Mom agreed, “and they’re lucky you were there to help.”

  Caroline shook her head. “I’m awful. I should have seen what was happening. I can’t stop thinking about what I knew and what I didn’t know and what I refused to see.”

  “Signs of domestic violence can be subtle,” Virginia pointed out.

  “It wasn’t subtle. I saw bruises. And like an idiot, I let Angelique persuade me that it was nothing.” She stared into the flames, searching for answers she would probably never find. With an effort, she pulled her gaze and her mind back to her family.

  “So that was my first clue that something was wrong,” she told them. “I never noticed signs of her drug use, either. I didn’t see how horrible things would get, so quickly. Maybe I didn’t want to probe deeper. And obviously I failed to ask the right questions.”

  “You’re being really hard on yourself,” Virginia observed. “One thing I’ve learned since I started this new job is that people guard their secrets.”

  Caroline pushed a stick into the fire, creating a flurry of sparks that climbed upward into the night. “You’re probably right, but I feel incredibly guilty. I was so focused on myself and my career that I refused to see what was right in front of me. I’ll never live down the idea that she was in danger and I didn’t see it. How will I ever stop regretting that?”

  Mom came in for a hug, and somehow a box of Kleenex materialized. “I know, baby,” she said. “It must be overwhelming.”

  “She was the one who was overwhelmed. How could I have missed the signs?”

  Virginia gave her shoulder a nudge. “What the hell have you been designing lately? Hair shirts?”

  “At least Mick Taylor wouldn’t rip off that design.”

  “I’m sorry that happened to you,” Virginia said.

  “It seems like such a small thing compared to everything else that happened. It ended my career, and I thought it was the worst thing in the world. But this. God. I’ll never complain about work problems again.”

  “What happened to the guy who hit her?”

  “Roman? I mean, I guess he was the one. No idea what became of him. And that sucks. Guys who hit women don’t stop. He’s probably hitting somebody else now. The police have his name, but everything happened so fast, I don’t know what else to do at this point.”

  “Tell us how we can help,” her mother said.

  “You’re already helping. Jesus. And just so you know, that was my first breakdown. I didn’t want the kids to see me falling apart.”

  “We’re proud of you for stepping up, C-Shell,” her father said.

  “They’re so little.” It was hard to speak around the lump in her throat. “What the hell am I going to do? I don’t know the first thing about kids, much less kids who’ve been through this kind of trauma. I am completely unprepared.” She paused. Crushed the Kleenex in her fist. “And scared.”

  “Trust me,” Jackson said, “kids are scary even when you have time to prepare. That’s why I’ve never had any.”

  Virginia elbowed him. “You’ll change your mind after you grow up.”

  “Hey—”

  “Go open another bottle of wine,” said their dad. “We already killed the first one.”

  “How much do Addie and Flick know about what happened?” asked her mother. “You said you didn’t think they’d been abused, but were they
aware that something wasn’t right?”

  “Tough question. They’ve never mentioned seeing anyone hurt their mom, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t see anything. Joan, the therapist, told me to watch and listen. For what, I’m not sure. I keep going over and over that day in my mind, and I’m still confused. I can only imagine how those kids feel inside.” Caroline still hadn’t discovered what, if anything, Flick and Addie knew about the man who had hurt their mother. She and the social workers had tried to frame their questions carefully. Did your mommy have visitors over to your apartment?

  No.

  Maybe for a sleepover?

  No.

  Did anyone ever have breakfast at your place?

  No.

  As far as the children seemed to know, their mother went to work. They went to school and Nila looked after them. And their mom came home. Angelique had been a master at hiding things.

  Caroline hugged her knees up to her chest. “Have you ever seen a dead body up close?”

  “Oh, sweetie.” Her mom shuddered visibly.

  The memory made Caroline shudder, too, recalling the shock and horror that had enveloped her that day. She would never be able to un-see the scene in the apartment. “It’s terrible in a really . . . special way. You look at this person and realize she’s just gone. An empty shell. She’ll never feel anything again. She’ll never feel love or joy or sadness or anger. All her potential vanished. The things she might have done with her life—for the world, for her kids—are over. They’ll never happen. That’s what went through my head during the longest fifteen minutes of my life. That’s about how long I waited for help to arrive. I had to set my phone on the table in order to use it, because my hand was shaking so hard. I could barely touch the numbers to call 911.”

  “That must have been so tough,” her father said. “So you never knew about her drug use?”

  “I didn’t know a thing about it. Nothing. She seemed to be in a great place in her career and with her kids. Except . . . some guy was hitting her. The therapist I’ve been talking to online told me that it’s not uncommon for a victim of violence to get hooked on drugs. Heroin completely eliminates pain—physical and emotional. But I thought I knew her. How did I miss the fact that she was using drugs?”

  “Addicts have a thousand ways to hide their addiction,” Virginia pointed out. “As far as you know, she was new to using. Could be she had a bad mix. Or maybe she was in recovery and no one knew. And then this was a relapse. A lot of overdoses happen in relapse, because the addict loses her tolerance for the drug.”

  “That’s what the EMTs said, and the police investigator agreed. So did the medical examiner. They said the signs can be subtle if you don’t know what to look for. There were little details I didn’t make sense of until it was too late. Like I noticed razor blades missing from my sewing kit, and I kept running out of foil. I had no idea those were dots to connect. My God, it was surreal.”

  “You told us on the phone that it’s complicated,” said Mom. “You weren’t exaggerating.”

  In the swift exodus and journey west, Caroline had given her family a massively oversimplified explanation. With the kids present nearly every moment since the day of Angelique’s death, she had not been able to go into detail about the suspected abuse, the overdose, their uncertain immigration status. She wanted to be absolutely truthful with them, answering their questions in simple, straightforward terms. But she was wary of giving them too much information before they were ready to hear it.

  Now she tossed her tissue into the fire and watched it incinerate. “It’s complicated on so many levels. I mentioned Angelique was Haitian. One thing I didn’t tell you is that she was also undocumented. At first she had a visa. It’s actually not that uncommon for high-fashion models to come on a temporary work visa and overstay. Or they come without a visa at all and work off the books. Angelique did it both ways. Her visa expired and she was working off the books. Turns out her agency was taking advantage of her, too.”

  “Does that mean the kids are also undocumented?” asked her father.

  “I suppose so. She arrived in New York when Flick was one and Addie was an infant. See my dilemma? I don’t know what on earth to do about it. I’m worried about asking too many questions about their status, because God knows what would happen if they were targeted for deportation now.”

  “They’re little kids,” Jackson said. “That would never happen.”

  “Don’t be so sure,” Virginia told him. “These days, anything can happen. When I worked at the law firm, one of the associates had a case where a nursing mother was separated from her baby. It was awful. Just heart-wrenching.”

  “Do you know of any friends or family Angelique might have had in Haiti?” asked Mom. “Anyone at all?”

  Caroline shook her head. “There’s no one. That’s why I agreed to have my name on the guardian slip for the kids’ school. It didn’t seem like such a big deal at the time. Friends do it for each other all the time.” She couldn’t remember the precise moment she realized her life had changed irretrievably. Now she realized that moment had happened the day she’d casually agreed to be named the kids’ guardian.

  “And you’re confident there’s no other family.”

  “Yes, but even if they did have relatives there, the kids have no memory of Haiti. Angelique was an only child, raised by a single father who died when she was a teenager. She had it really rough.” Caroline paused and decided not to get into exactly how rough it had been for Angelique in her native country. That would take all night. “She never knew her mother. Made it on her own as a model. She was discovered on a shoot in Haiti and eventually managed to get herself to New York. When I first met her, she was at the top of her game, constantly in demand, making gobs of money. That’s how it looked to me, anyway. To everyone who knew her. As it turns out, her life in the city was rough, too, but I found that out too late.” She shivered despite the heat from the fire.

  “You did the right thing, coming here,” said her mom.

  “Did I? Flick and Addie still don’t have a home. They don’t have a family. All they have is a failed, unemployed designer who doesn’t know the first thing about children—except how to avoid them.”

  “You’re overwhelmed,” Dad said. “You’ll feel better after another glass of wine and a good night’s sleep.”

  Leaning back, she felt the familiar ripple of ocean air on her face. She was still getting used to being home, the scents and sensations and flavors that were part of her blood and bone. Oh, she used to yearn to be away, certain her life was meant to be lived amid the bustle and excitement of the world’s capitals. She looked around at her family’s faces, so gentle in the kindly light of the fire. “I want you to know, I do appreciate this so much. It means the world to me to have a place to go while I sort out this situation.”

  “It’s good to have you home,” said her mother. “We’ll do everything we can to help. You know that.”

  “Fern and I are not going to be staying in the guesthouse forever,” Virginia said. “You can live there once I get my own place.”

  “The three of us don’t need the guesthouse,” Caroline said. “What I need is a plan.”

  “Well then, what’s the next logical step?” asked her dad. His favorite question.

  “For the first time in my life, I honestly don’t know. That’s why being responsible for these kids is so scary. How will I provide for them? What if something happens to one of them when I’m not paying attention?”

  “Every parent’s nightmare,” Virginia said. “Welcome to the club.”

  “I didn’t join the club. I got drafted.”

  “You’re safe and sound here,” said her father. “You can take all the time you need to figure things out.” He reached over and gave her shoulder a squeeze. “You just got home, C-Shell. Give yourself a break.”

  She stared into the fire as if the answers might magically appear amid the sparks and the flames. “I’ve had three tho
usand miles to come up with an answer,” she said. “I still don’t know.”

  “Let’s take this one small step at a time.” Dad was always the voice of reason.

  There was no rhyme or reason to this situation. She had no idea which step to take. But he was right. She was exhausted and needed to regroup.

  “What are your options with the kids at this point?” asked Virginia.

  “At the emergency hearing in New York, they said I had the option to surrender them to the state. The caseworker assured me it’s not a horrible choice. They’d go immediately into temporary emergency foster care, although with no guarantee they’d stay together. She told me that they might grow up in the foster care system or they could be adopted. I couldn’t imagine simply walking away from them, so I kept them with me.”

  “I don’t blame you for stepping up,” her mother said. “That was an incredible thing to do.”

  “I don’t feel so incredible. I just couldn’t stand the idea that they’d end up with strangers, and maybe even lose each other. Now that I’m in Washington State, I’ll need to apply to be their permanent legal guardian.”

  “Is that what you want to do?”

  “I . . . God, Mom. That’s like making them my kids,” she said.

  “And?”

  “It was never my plan. I never even wanted kids. I can’t seem to find a serious boyfriend, let alone someone who makes me want to have his babies.” She used to believe the one thing that would change her mind would be falling in love, falling so hard that she’d yearn to make a life with someone, make a family.

  “You were with some great guys,” Virginia said. “They looked great on your social media, anyway.”

  “Isn’t that what social media is for?” Caroline had met some good guys. Just not the guy. There was Kerwyn—Welsh-born, ironic, and darkly handsome. When they first got together, she couldn’t stop daydreaming about him and even found herself thinking she’d found something lasting. In time, though, she realized he rarely made her a priority. She’d been a mere convenience to him, an afterthought. And it wasn’t enough for her. She wanted to be someone’s whole world, an admittedly idealistic notion that had driven him away. After that, the pendulum swung the other way. Her next prospect, Brent, had been too into her. At first she’d enjoyed the attention, but after a while, she felt smothered and called an end to it. Most recently, she’d gone out with Miles, who was funny, charming, and good in bed—but they were moving through life at different speeds. She was in the fast lane, and he was in the no-go lane, drifting from job to job with very little purpose.