by Susan Wiggs
He’d just get settled into a school and then they’d move again. When he was twelve years old, his mother had died suddenly, leaving a gaping hole in his life, and exposing the yawning gulf between him and his father. Driven by grief, he had pushed himself harder still, but even the most extreme sports failed to fill the void.
In the navy, he pursued the toughest training courses he could find—BUD/S and SEAL training. The exercises were so grueling that there were days when his soul seemed to leave his body. He found survival mechanisms he never knew he possessed, and during active duty, they’d saved his life more than once. Serving in the navy had been his way of finding a place in the world—for a while.
“Do you miss it?” asked Beau. “Being on the SEAL team, I mean. Would you still be doing that if you hadn’t been injured?”
“I don’t think much about the what-if,” Will said. “I always wanted to live here on the peninsula, and I always wanted to be a teacher. The plan just happened sooner than anticipated. Are you thinking about enlisting?”
“It’d be a big help to my mom,” Beau said.
“Tell you what. Come by my office after sixth period and we’ll talk.”
Relief softened his eyes. “Thanks, Coach.”
He watched Beau heading for the main building, seeing so much of himself in the kid—the eager yearning, the focus. But could he honestly recommend a stint in the military to anyone? It took a passion for service. Or maybe a complete lack of alternatives.
After the incident that had taken his eye, his path had changed almost overnight. He returned to his wife and to civilian life. Now here he was, the way he’d always planned, yet still wanting more. Wanting permanence. Wanting Sierra to find contentment. Wanting a family.
Life was good here. He’d always believed that. This place was part of his DNA, the one consistent element of his peripatetic childhood. As a navy kid, he’d been all over the world, and his grandparents’ place in Oysterville, where he’d spent his summers, was the home of his heart. It was a boy’s paradise, where he could explore the crystal-clear blue waters of Willapa Bay or brave the turbulent swells of the Pacific on the west side of the peninsula. He was filled with memories of riding horses and flying kites on the seemingly endless flats of shifting sand, hiking through mysterious forests, fishing for the freshest of seafood, or gathering the sweet, prized oysters for which the town was famous.
Slinging a towel around his neck, he checked the time and crossed the parking lot to his car. On the far side of the lot, he spotted Caroline Shelby walking toward the administration office with her two kids. He didn’t feel the astonishment of seeing her the other day, a distant memory suddenly made flesh. Now he felt an instinctual urge to connect with her again.
Keep going, he told himself.
Go say hi, he told himself.
Pretend you don’t see her, he told himself.
Ever since bumping into her the other morning, he’d been trying to stop speculating about Caroline Shelby. But school was a gossip mill, and people were already talking. The Shelbys’ middle child was back in town with a couple of mixed-race kids in tow. He’d overheard the attendance clerk saying, with scolding conviction, that Caroline had always been an odd one—the purple hair, the crazy outfits. A misfit in the Shelby clan. People discussed those two little kids and wondered what she was up to now.
He wondered, too.
“It’s that guy.” The little boy with her pointed straight at Will.
She looked over his way, and he saw her stiffen when she recognized him.
“Hey there,” he said, crossing the parking lot and falling in step with them. “First day of school?”
“That’s right,” she said, casting a nervous glance at the kids.
“Cool,” he said. “What grades will you be in?”
The little boy—Frank? No, Flick—mumbled, “Kindergarten and first.”
“I have it on good authority that the kindergarten and first grade teachers are the nicest.”
“Oh?” Caroline offered a fleeting smile. “Where’d you hear that?”
“From their students,” Will said. “Kids are tough critics. I should know. I’m a teacher, too.”
Flick stared up at him. “You are?”
“Yep. I teach math to the big kids. I have to be extra nice because, like I said, students are tough critics.”
“We’re scared,” Addie said.
She was so damn cute. She wore jeans and a bright yellow shirt, and little sneakers with curly laces. He read the words on the front of the shirt. “Hey, that says, ‘Ask me about my superpower.’” He looked at Flick. “Your shirt says the same thing. So I’m asking. What about your superpower?”
The kids looked at each other, then up at Caroline.
“He asked,” she said. The shadow of worry in her eyes eased slightly.
“Watch this.” Addie unsnapped a side pocket of her shirt. She whipped out a thin red swath of fabric—a scarf?—and attached it to the back of her collar with snaps.
“Whoa,” said Will. “Check it out. You have a cape.”
“It’s a superhero cape. Here’s mine.” Her brother took his out and snapped it on. “We can fly!” He took off running across the lawn in front of the admin building, the thin fabric flying out behind him. His sister followed, making a powerful whooshing sound as they zoomed around.
“I’m going to take a wild guess and say you made the shirts.”
“Finished them up at midnight,” she said. “My mom did the lettering on the front.”
“Good work. They’re really cool. Genius, in fact. How did you come up with the idea?”
“It’s remarkable how inspired I can get in the middle of the kids’ meltdowns. And how inventive I can be with old T-shirts and used windbreakers.”
“Seriously? Those are made out of old clothes?”
“And a bit of ingenuity.”
“Every kid is going to want one. What the hell, I want one.”
That drew a smile from her. “Right.”
He remembered that smile, like a light suddenly switching on. The still-familiar sense of easy friendship they’d shared long ago took him by surprise. Those days were over, he reminded himself. They belonged to a past that was gilded by nostalgia, something that could be remembered but never reclaimed.
“I ought to make one for myself,” she said. “I think I’m more nervous than they are. Their school in New York was so diverse, like a mini UN. What if they feel out of place here?”
He wondered about their father. Where was the dad? Had she been married? He wanted to ask her that. He wanted to ask her a lot of things. Instead, he said, “Kids are adaptable. I bet they’ll do all right.” Lame. But he didn’t know her anymore. He spoke in platitudes. “I’ll let you get to it. I hope it goes well for your kids today.”
Judging by all the swooping they were doing, he suspected they would be just fine.
“Flick got into a fight at recess and Addie wet her pants,” Caroline said to Virginia. They were seated together on a bench at a playground near the restaurant, watching the children blow off steam after school.
Virginia gave her arm a pat. “First day of school is always hard. When Fern started kindergarten, she spent the whole day in the bathroom.”
Caroline watched her niece flip herself over the monkey bars with supreme confidence. “And the next day?”
“I think we got it down to half a day. Eventually she settled in.”
“Addie was too shy to ask where the bathroom was. The teacher had extra undies on hand, thank goodness.”
“The sign of an experienced teacher,” Virginia said. “Fern had Marybeth Smith, and she was terrific.”
Caroline smoothed her hand over the packet of papers she’d been given to fill out for the school. Records requests, health forms, permission slips, enrollment histories. “God, I am so out of my depth here.”
“You’re new. Give yourself time.”
She held out the bag of chips t
hey were sharing—stale leftovers from Addie’s uneaten lunch. “I thought the superhero shirts would give them confidence. Instead, Flick got in a fight over his, and Addie lost her cape. I found it in the bottom of her backpack.”
“News flash,” Virginia said. “It’s not about the shirt. Kids get in trouble and lose stuff at school every day.”
“I’m the one feeling lost.”
“Welcome to parenthood. Trust me, everybody feels exactly that way at one time or other. And yet our kids survive. A year ago, I thought my divorce was going to turn me into a babbling idiot and Fern into a basket case. Now the two of us—we’re doing okay.” Her expression turned soft with affection as she watched her little girl scampering up the ladder to the tallest slide on the playground.
“You are,” Caroline assured her. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here for you during the whole Dave drama last year. I know it must’ve been awful, finding out he was cheating with someone at his firm.”
“It was the most special kind of awful,” Virginia agreed. “One of the sucky things about it is that, as bad as it felt, there was really nothing unique about my situation. My marriage failure story is the same as everyone else’s. We got so busy, with both of us working and looking after Fern. Too busy, and we neglected each other. Then he took up with that young associate at his firm.”
“I hope his nuts fall off.”
“Right? And when I confronted him about Amanda, he tried denying it. Then he acted as if his cheating was my fault.”
“Damn. I always thought you two were the standard everybody else had to live up to. You checked all the boxes—great careers, a nice house, perfect daughter . . . I thought you guys had it all.”
“So did I. Until I realized how far apart we’d grown. I was the firm’s investigator, for chrissake, and he took up with that woman right under my nose. It’s remarkable how much you don’t notice even when it’s smack in front of you. And too easy to be so focused on other matters that you forget to pay attention to something that’s crying out for attention.”
Caroline thought about that. She wondered how many opportunities she’d missed with Angelique simply by failing to notice something important. “I’m sorry for what you went through, but I’m glad you and Fern are doing well.” She felt a knot of guilt in her stomach. “You lost your marriage because you weren’t paying attention. Flick and Addie lost their mom because I wasn’t paying attention.”
“It wasn’t your job to parent their parent,” Virginia pointed out.
“How did you get so smart?”
“It’s funny how smart you can be in hindsight,” said Virginia. “And after half a year of therapy. Uh-oh.” Her tone and posture changed as her gaze tracked a woman hurrying toward them with purposeful strides.
“What’s uh-oh?”
“Here comes Cindy Peters, president of the PTA. She’s pretty much in charge of the whole school. You don’t want to be on her bad side.”
Cindy Peters had the perfect-mom look—coordinated crop pants and matte jersey top that complemented her yoga-sculpted figure, designer vegan sandals that matched her bag—and a gleam of determination in her eyes. “Excuse me,” she called. “Are you Flick’s mom?”
Caroline stuffed away the chip bag and brushed the crumbs from her hands. “Hi, yes, no, I—”
“Hi, Cindy,” Virginia said easily. “This is my sister, Caroline.”
Cindy flashed a toothpaste ad smile and stuck out her hand. “Great to meet you.”
Caroline shook hands, sharing the crumbs she hadn’t managed to brush away. “Virginia tells me you’re the PTA president.” She gestured at the pile of school forms. “I have my application here. I’ll try to get to it soon.”
“That’s terrific.” She took a familiar red cape from her bag. “My son Rutger says this belongs to Flick.”
Oh, shit. Was that the kid Flick had fought with today? “Um, yes, actually—”
Cindy sat on the bench next to her. “In that case, we need to talk.”
A half hour later, Flick and Addie were enjoying a playdate with Cindy’s kids while Virginia and Caroline headed down the street to the fabric shop.
“Okay, you’re my new hero,” Virginia said. “That was so cool, and so unexpected when Cindy said all the other moms wanted to know where you got the shirts.”
“You say ‘other moms’ as if I’m one of them.”
Virginia sent her a level gaze. “You are. And you just made a deal to mass-produce the shirts for a PTA fundraiser.”
“I don’t even know what hit me.”
“The promise of a big fat check from the fundraising committee, apparently.”
Cindy Peters was a woman who got things done. The spring fundraiser was coming up, and the regular T-shirt vendor for the event had canceled the order because of a production delay. Cindy had offered Caroline a more-than-generous per-piece price, certain the snap-on cape would be a huge hit.
“It’s not exactly a commission from Yves Saint Laurent,” said Caroline. “But I’ll take it, provided I can deliver the goods. It’s completely insane, but that’s pretty much been my life these days. It wouldn’t suck to fabricate the shirts and make a little money to get back on my feet. Am I insane to think I can pull it off?”
Virginia found a parking spot near the fabric store. “Not insane at all. And trust me, it’s empowering to get back on your feet. I mean, when I worked at Dave’s law firm, it was a job, but it was secondary. Now that I’m back in charge of my own life and livelihood, the stakes are higher. Some things are harder. But I wouldn’t trade the independence for anything. Well, maybe a better car.” The door creaked as she opened it.
“I’m so damn scared,” Caroline admitted. “I didn’t sign up for this. One day I had a job as a fashion designer, and the next, I’m in charge of two little kids and an order for three hundred shirts.”
“As Heidi Klum says”—Virginia affected a German accent—“‘One day you are in, and the next day you are out.’”
“I’m out,” Caroline said, still trying to get her head around this crazy new situation. “I’m so far out, I doubt I’ll ever get back in.”
Virginia strode down the sidewalk toward Lindy’s shop. Caroline had filled her sister in about Lindy and Echo—the abuse, the need to talk. Virginia had not been surprised. In her job as an investigator, she had been privy to all sorts of secrets—dirty and otherwise.
“My little sister did not just say that,” Virginia stoutly declared. “Where’s the girl who fought and clawed her way to a fashion career in New York?”
“That girl? She grew up and realized there’s no way to stop the top designer in New York from stealing her designs. No way to get back into the industry after being blackballed. And with two helpless little kids—”
“You’re flooding.”
“I’m drowning.” Caroline sighed and slowed down, scanning the main street of the town, the shops and cafés gathered together like old familiar friends. “No, you’re right. I need to regroup and sort myself out. Starting with these kids.”
“Starting with a project that’s going to help you and the kids.” Virginia held open the door of the shop. A few customers were browsing, and Echo stood at the cutting table, measuring from a bolt of quilting fabric.
Lindy smiled and waved from behind the counter. “Welcome back!”
“Thanks,” Caroline said. “I’m here for supplies. Lots of supplies, as it turns out.”
“My sister got a big production order from the primary school,” Virginia said. “Check this out.” She showed off Flick’s superhero T-shirt, demonstrating the snap-on cape.
“That,” said Lindy, “is adorable. I love the slogan on the front. How can I help?”
“The PTA wants to produce them for a fundraiser,” Caroline said. “I can have the shirts printed wholesale, but the pocket and cape will need to be a custom cut-and-sew job. If I can get them made for a reasonable per-piece price, it could be a fresh start for me. So I wanted to talk
about supplies, and maybe see about getting some help with assembling them.”
“Echo can sew like the wind,” Lindy said.
Over at the cutting table, Echo gave her customer the fabric. “She’s right. I can.”
Caroline thought about the up-front money she was getting from the PTA. She held up Flick’s shirt. “How would you feel about helping fabricate a few hundred superhero capes? I mean, it’s not military-grade outerwear and I’m not a government contractor, but—”
Echo’s face blazed with a smile. “I’d love to.”
“That’s great. I’m going to need all the help I can get.”
Echo rang up the other woman’s purchase, then turned to Caroline. “Are you sure?” With nervous-looking hands, she snatched up a roll of trim and reeled in the excess. “I mean, if you’re really sure . . . I could use the extra income, even if it’s not a lot.”
Caroline thought about Echo’s situation. Abuse didn’t end when the pummeling stopped. It took a person’s self-confidence as well. “I’m really sure, and Lindy wouldn’t say you’re good unless you’re really good. I promised Cindy—the PTA president—I’d see if I can get it done. It was an impulse, but I think we can make it work. I can’t pay much to start . . .”
“I don’t mind. I love to sew, and you’re an amazing designer. We were looking at your stuff online. Amazing.” Echo’s posture changed. Her shoulders straightened and her eyes lit.
“Let’s give it our best shot, then.” Caroline felt more animated than she had in a long time. There was nothing like a design project to get her going, even something as simple as the kids’ shirts. “Did you say the outfit in Astoria is getting rid of their machines?”
Lindy checked something on her phone and wrote on a slip of paper. “Here’s the number.”
“Cool,” said Virginia. “I vote you go for it.”
“I second that.” Lindy beamed. “We had a lot of fun sewing together when you were a girl, didn’t we?”