Sandcastle Beach--Includes a Bonus Novella

by Jenny Holiday

  They hadn’t done it a lot—seven times, to be exact. And curiously, it hadn’t changed anything about their relationship outside of their truces.

  But the Premier League season had ended in May, and with it their détente. And the next season didn’t start until August. So he had no idea what she was doing now. He studied her. On the surface of things, she looked the same as ever. Well, it was Monday—no theater on Mondays—so she didn’t look like an overdressed murder victim circa 1985, but her hair was piled on top of her head like it always was when she wasn’t playing a character. She was wearing a green T-shirt with Shakespeare’s face on it that said “Will Power.” She was probably wearing her green Converse high-tops to match. He leaned forward to peek over the bar. Yep.

  Everything was normal, was the point.

  Except maybe her eyes were a little less bright than usual. Her eyes were usually glinting with…something. Her latest entrepreneurial impulse, general mischief, bloody revenge, whatever.

  Today, though, they seemed less sparkly.

  He hadn’t responded to her inquiry about a truce. He nodded and pulled out her bottle of wine. He had no idea what they would watch. He didn’t even know if the app archived matches once the season was over.

  But a person didn’t question a truce. That was the whole point of a truce. You suspended hostilities and truced.

  She put her hand out to stop him from pouring her wine. “I can’t. I have to be somewhere.” She slid off her stool. “You closing tonight?”

  She was asking what time the truce would commence. “Nope,” he lied. Since she didn’t have a show tonight, she didn’t have to be up late, and it was usually two thirty before he made it upstairs after he closed. This would be some more practice for Carter.

  And for him. He had to get used to letting other people take more responsibility at the bar.

  “Off at nine,” he said.

  Maya should have had the wine at the bar. As she trudged up the path to her parents’ house, she could have used the liquid courage.

  But as much as she enjoyed sipping wine at Lawson’s Lager House, alcohol wasn’t going to solve her problems.

  Money was going to solve her problems. She had talked to her friends some more, and they’d come up with a plan and a budget to tackle all the repairs needed at the theater. And given that, she’d let herself be talked into going after a loan.

  She just wasn’t going to get it from TD Bank. Or RBC. Or Scotiabank. All three—RBC just today—had turned her down for a small-business loan. Not that that was much of a surprise. On paper, the extremely not-for-profit Moonflower Bay Theater Company probably wasn’t the greatest bet. But if they would come see a play, understand the potential. Experience it.

  Which she’d asked the bank officers—fine, young, tie-wearing men all—to do.

  “That’s not really how we parse loan applications,” the TD guy had said. And from Mr. Scotiabank: “I’m more of a TV person. Did you watch Game of Thrones? Epic. Epic.” RBC had merely said no thanks. She’d been like, Really? That’s it? Just “no”?

  The aroma of charcoal suggested her dad was out back grilling, so she let herself in the side gate and plastered a smile on her face. “Hi! What are you grilling? I thought we were doing takeout?” Not that she cared. She’d be happy with anything. Her own budget-constrained diet of late had been heavy on packaged ramen noodles, which Jenna had had on sale for fifty cents apiece recently. And since Maya’s car was currently dead behind her building, making runs to a proper grocery store impossible, she’d stocked up.

  “Hi,” her dad said. “Your mom is bringing some takeout home, but I bought some fish from Jake Ramsey today. We thought we’d do a bit of a smorgasbord—eat the fish while it’s fresh.”

  Jake, who was all but retired as a commercial fisherman, still went out occasionally and sold to the townspeople directly from the pier at the little beach. “You want to thread those onto skewers for me?” Her dad nodded toward a Ziploc in which chunks of fish were marinating in a mixture of yogurt and spices.

  Her mother came through the gate, dressed in her work clothes. She was a nuclear engineer. Everyone’s stereotype of a nuclear engineer was a dude in a hard hat and a hazmat suit, but her mom wore standard Hillary Clinton–style pantsuits to work. “Hi! Happy Monday!” Maya usually had dinner with her parents on Mondays. Even if she was in the middle of a run of shows, Mondays were always free.

  Her dad aimed a great big moony smile at her mom. Maya’s parents had met as kids in Brampton when they were paired as science partners in eighth grade. “Only time I ever got an A in science,” her artistically inclined dad always said. They had bonded over the sometimes stressful pressure of being kids of immigrants who had done their growing up—they had both arrived as toddlers—in suburban Canada. “You should have seen how mad I made Nani when I brought home a paisley minidress and announced I was going to wear it to prom,” her mom would say. And Dad would grin and say, “Oh, but you should have seen the dress.”

  Dad had followed Mom across the country as she did university, grad school, and a postdoc and finally to Moonflower Bay, when she got a job at a power plant a ways up the lake.

  It was gross. It was cute. Maya was jealous.

  She was jealous of her parents. She was pathetic.

  Her mom set a bag on the table on the deck. “I’ll go inside and get dishes and drinks.”

  “You sit,” Maya said. “Take a load off, and I’ll get everything. I’m going to throw in a load of laundry anyway.”

  “Machine broken in your building again?” her dad asked.

  “Yep.”

  Nope. But two bucks could buy a load of laundry or four packages of Jenna’s sale ramen. Or one-third of a glass of Riesling at Lawson’s.

  Maya entered the kitchen through the back door, its cheerful, familiar yellow walls and cozy breakfast nook bringing her back to happy days. She and her brother used to let themselves in this door, once they were deemed old enough to come directly home from school rather than kill time at the store waiting for their mom to swing by on her way home from work. That table was where Maya would set up with her homework—or, later, with scripts to memorize.

  She’d always imagined having a house like this someday. A smaller one, maybe, but in this neighborhood near the lake. Maybe eventually with a boyfriend as part of the package. On paper, it had sounded like a doable dream.

  In reality, her friends were pairing off, she lived in a decaying apartment, and she wasn’t going to be able to make the payments on her commercial mortgage beyond September. So yeah, she could sort of see why the fine young men of the Canadian banking sector were not falling over themselves to lend her money. Hopefully, the Bank of Mom and Dad had lower standards.

  Her stomach did a little flip. Hooboy, was she nervous, even though she was pretty sure her parents would give her the money. Her parents were always in the front row at her plays, her dad in particular clapping louder than anyone. It was just more of that icky feeling of having to admit that she’d failed. She should have thought more about her approach tonight. Maybe she should have drawn up some papers? Shown that she had a specific plan for the money? Which she did—she had a list of repairs as long as her arm.

  “You coming out?” Her mom popped her head in through the back door. “Everything okay?”

  “Yes, yes! Just daydreaming.”

  She jogged down the stairs to the basement to empty her duffel bag into the washer and back up to grab dishes and utensils. Her stomach lurched as she went back outside. Having to ask her parents for money made her feel young. And not in a good way. It made her feel small. Five years ago, when she arrived home with a head full of plays and a heart full of hope and they’d offered her a chunk of cash, it had been different. She’d been so confident, so sure she would make it. This time, she was asking out of desperation.

  Well. She should just come out with it. Or, no. Maybe she should wait until they’d started eating, because that way—
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br />   “We have news,” her dad said.

  Oh. Okay.

  “We have to get Rohan on FaceTime first,” her mom said to her dad.

  “What’s going on?” Maya asked, suddenly concerned. She talked to her brother, and her parents talked to her brother—she assumed—but they never had group confabs.

  “Hang on and we’ll tell you.” Her mom poked at her phone.

  “Oh my God, is someone sick? Is someone dying?” Here she was prepared to hit them up for money, and something was wrong. She ran through the mental list of their relatives in Brampton and Toronto and Vancouver. Last she’d heard, everyone was okay.

  “Hey, what’s up?” Her brother’s face appeared on the small screen. He was all sweaty, and he had a towel around his neck.

  “Are you at the gym?” Maya asked, temporarily distracted from the impending demise of her family.

  “You say that like you’re asking if I’m at a crack house.”

  “It’s a gorgeous summer evening. You live on Lake Michigan. You should be outside doing your Rambo moves.” Her brother was one of those CrossFit cultists, always leaping over things or randomly jumping up on park benches. Because it wasn’t enough that he was rich and successful and lived in a glamorous high-rise condo in the Loop, he had to be ripped, too.

  “It’s AMRAP night at my box.”

  “I have no idea what those words mean.” Heh. Benjamin had said that very sentence to her a few days ago when she’d been talking about Holden Hampshire.

  “Children of my heart,” her mother said. “Shut up.”

  Right. Someone was dying. “What’s wrong?”

  “Yeah, what’s happening?” Rohan asked. “I admit I got a little nervous when you said you wanted to schedule a FaceTime for all of us.”

  Crap. If her devil-may-care brother was worried, someone was definitely dying.

  “Well, let’s just come out with it so we can get on with dinner,” her mom said, turning to her dad.

  Maya braced her hands on the table.

  “We’re going to retire,” her dad said.

  “Okay?” her brother said warily.

  “I’m a little surprised,” Maya said, understating it entirely. Her parents were in their early fifties. She turned to her dad. “What about the store?”

  “I’m going to sell it.”

  “What?” Rohan said, the shock in his voice echoing Maya’s feeling on the matter.

  “Neither of you want it,” her dad said. He looked between them. “You don’t want it, do you?”

  “No?” Maya said, aware that her answer came out sounding more like a question. She didn’t want it, but the sudden prospect of the store being gone underscored just how much the idea of it as her backup plan was entrenched in her consciousness. The store had always been there. Had felt like it always would be.

  “Let’s back up a bit,” her mom said. “We know this sounds out of the blue, but there’s some logic here. Last winter, at a routine physical, your dad was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure.”

  Oh my God.

  “Thank God Nora Walsh came to town,” her mom added. “I’ve been after him to get a checkup for years.”

  “It’s not as bad as it sounds,” her dad said quickly. “We made a plan, and it’s working.”

  “Why didn’t Nora tell me about this?” Maya exclaimed, but of course the answer was doctor–patient confidentiality.

  “Yes, no need to worry about your dad,” her mom said. “He’s taking his meds and we’re working on lifestyle changes, but for that we need time. Time for long walks and workouts at the community center. The point is, the health scare has made us reevaluate things. We’ve both worked so hard for so long—especially your dad.”

  It was true. Her dad staffed the store all the hours it was open, except on the weekends, when her mom rotated in, either to relieve him or to keep him company.

  “We want to travel while we still can, too,” her dad said. “Other than the handful of times I’ve been to India, I’ve never been outside of Canada.”

  This was also true. Maya’s mom traveled for work sometimes, to conferences in the US mostly. And she took Maya’s grandmother to visit relatives in India every other year—which struck Maya as kind of funny, because in Mom’s stories about her youth, she always painted a picture of herself in constant rebellion against her parents. But because of the store, her dad rarely traveled.

  “We ran the numbers,” her dad said, “and while we’re not going to be living in luxury, we can swing it. We just feel like we’ve worked hard and saved money, and now it’s time for that investment to pay off.” He smiled at Maya’s mom. “Mostly, I just want to hang out with your mother.”

  Again: so gross. So cute.

  “So that’s it!” said her mom. “Sorry for the drama. It’s all good, though.”

  “So you’re really going to sell the shop,” Rohan said.

  “Yes,” her dad said. “I’ve had a commercial agent in. She’s going to give me her thoughts next week. The goal is to get it on the market in the fall, and your mom is going to retire at the end of the calendar year.”

  Well then. So much for Maya’s safety net.

  And so much for her loan. There was no way she was asking them for money now.

  “So, change of subject,” Rohan said weakly. He seemed thrown for a loop by this news, not that Maya could blame him. “Maya, can you send me the dates for your summer play?”

  “Sure,” she said. “But you don’t have to come.”

  Her brother, like her parents, was a big supporter of the theater. He drove up from Chicago for every show. She always told him he didn’t have to, but she secretly loved all the big-brother boosterism.

  “No, I’m going to come. But I’m going to run the North Country Trail marathon in western Michigan—it’s this trail run in a national forest there—so I gotta get organized with dates. I’m going to do a loop—hit Moonflower Bay before or after the race, depending on what the play dates are.”

  “You run marathons now?” Jeez. How was she related to this guy? And “trail” marathons? She didn’t even know what those were, but they sounded a lot harder than, say, pavement marathons.

  “Yeah. Kara got me into long-distance running.” Kara was his latest girlfriend. “You remember how my event in track was always the long jump? But then I’d also run the eight-hundred-meter and Ben Lawson would kick my butt?”

  “Not really,” Maya lied, picturing teenage Benjamin all sweaty and panting in his little running outfit.

  “Well, I could run circles around him now.”

  “Anyway,” Maya said, changing the subject, “I’m excited to meet Kara.”

  “Oh, Kara’s not coming home with me,” Rohan said. “I’m not sure we’re at the meet-the-family point yet.”

  “So, what? You’re just going to leave her in the forest?” It boggled Maya’s mind how her nice, sweet brother who made it a point to come to all her shows had turned into such a player when it came to his own dating life.

  “Just send me the dates, and I’ll let you know when I’m coming, okay?”

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  After they hung up, they tucked into dinner. Maya noticed that her dad served himself only his grilled fish and rice, leaving the Chinese food for her and her mom—this must be the lifestyle changes in action. “In a way, it’s too bad that you’re doing such a great job with the theater,” he said. “You have such a head for business.”

  “I do?” If he only knew.

  “It was your idea for us to stay open until midnight on full-moon nights, and honestly, I’d never have believed the amount of traffic we’d get. And oh, I forgot to tell you—Ben Lawson stopped in the other day and told me about your idea to sell flowers in the bar.”

  “He did?”

  “‘She has such a head for business,’ I told him, and he agreed. That says a lot. He’s done a lot with that bar since he took over from his dad.”

  She stifled a
sigh. She just wanted to be at Benjamin’s apartment already. Which was a weird thing to think. It was weird all around, her asking for an off-season truce. But she’d been so nervous about today. The idea of kicking back on his big fluffy couch and watching some of her beloved Crystal Palace had felt like a sanctuary, a soothing, end-of-day respite.

  Of course, if there were a way for her to watch her beloved Crystal Palace on Benjamin’s big, cushy couch without Benjamin himself being involved, that would be even better. But as the universe had so recently and decidedly shown her, a girl could not always get what she wanted.

  “Have a fortune cookie,” her mom said, handing her the plastic takeout bag. “Take the rest home. Lisa Kim always gives me a bunch of them because she knows you like them so much.”

  Maya did like fortune cookies. Or she had when she was a kid. Back when the future had seemed limitless and she’d still believed in the power of wishes.

  She broke open the cookie and pulled out the little strip of paper. Your hard work is about to pay off.

  Yeah, right.

  Chapter Six

  The knock on his door came too early.

  Law had left the bar at seven thirty and, not expecting Maya until nine, was sitting on his couch watching Much Ado about Nothing while he paged through the loan paperwork for Lawson’s Lunch and tried to get Jason Sims’s house out of his mind.

  He jumped about a foot when her knock came. He started toward the door, but no. He was watching a movie version of Maya’s upcoming play, and he had to turn the TV off before he let her in. Shit.

  The remote had disappeared somewhere in the couch, so he jogged to the TV and started feeling around for actual, physical buttons. TVs still had those, right?

  She kept knocking.

  “Hold your horses!” His fingers slid over a patch of the casing that was differently textured from the rest, and he pressed frantically, like he was trying to defuse a bomb.

  Success! He raised his arms like he was some kind of tent preacher at a revival. But then he got control of himself and went to answer the door.