by Sally John
“If you’re ready, then it’s time. That night…” She shook her head, her expression more somber than usual. “It will be good to get it behind us. I for one still give this place a wide berth when I walk to the front gate.”
“I wish I would have done it sooner.”
Samantha touched Liv’s arm, a rare act. “You couldn’t. Is there anything I can do to help?” Her offer was rare too.
“Thank you, dear, but I think Beau has it all under control. He’s probably the main reason I feel ready. He’s quite competent, isn’t he?”
“Mm-hmm.” Samantha shifted her weight and crossed her arms. And blushed. Or maybe that was Liv’s imagination ignited by Jasmyn’s gossip about Beau flirting.
“Muscular too, hmm? I like a good bicep on a man. And pecs. My Syd had arms and a chest like—”
“Liv! TMI. Are you coming out of there?”
“Oh.” She gave the place one last glance. “Yes, I’m done. You don’t care to…”
“No.”
Liv picked up her bag and shut the door. They walked a few steps, and then Samantha stopped and turned toward the cottage.
“Liv, it needs something on the exterior. Somehow it still looks like that night.”
She stood beside Samantha and studied Cottage Three. “It does. Somehow. What is it?”
“I don’t know what it is, but if the bluish-greenish color goes, maybe it will go too.”
Liv stared at the door. It was aquamarine, not bluish-greenish. The color was carried over to a decorative piece of overhang, the two chairs, and the trim around the window.
“Samantha, dear, that’s brilliant.”
“Really? I figured you’d say it’s been this color since Hector was a pup and we don’t mess with decor that old.”
She chuckled at the echo of her own words. “It has been here for that long, but I’m not that much of a stick-in-the-mud, am I?”
“Not when it comes to plumbing.” Samantha smiled.
“Okay. Well, mark this a red-letter day then. We’re going to change the color. It will totally change the vibes.”
“Way to go, Liv.”
“Thank you. Hey, what are you doing home on a Tuesday morning?”
“I have the day off.” She met Liv’s stare, almost nose to nose.
“My, my. Shall I bake a cake?”
Samantha rolled her eyes. “My boss made me.”
Good for him. He should do that more often. The girl works far too much.
“Jasmyn and I are going patio furniture shopping with Chad. He has a friend’s pickup truck in case we find something I like.”
After four years Samantha was adding furniture to her home? “You plan on staying then?”
“I thought I might.”
They stared at each other for a moment. Samantha giggled first and then Liv laughed.
Samantha smiled. “Maybe when you finish Cottage Three, you’ll find somebody nice to move into it. See you later.”
Liv watched her walk toward Chad’s cottage, too stunned to reply. Samantha was making jokes? Samantha was giggling?
Well. Wasn’t that something?
Liv could not help herself. She grinned and sashayed around the fountain and hummed a tune of her own creation. Her heart leapt, this time in a good way.
Forty-Four
Jasmyn sat in the small pickup truck, scrunched quietly between Chad and Sam. The two of them were odd friends, sniping at each other for the entire twenty-minute drive from the Casa.
They were parked now in a lot near Brother Benny’s Thrift Shop, a warehouse-sized storefront in a strip mall. Neither of them were making a move to open a door.
Chad said for the umpteenth time, “Samantha, I really can’t believe you want to shop in a fourthhand store.”
She sighed. “Give it a rest, Chadwick. I told you. Sometimes they have good secondhand stuff. Wealthy people donate things all the time. This is where I got my kitchen table which, according to Liv, is a name brand worth ten times what I paid for it.”
“Jasmyn and I would much rather go to Furniture Row. Right, Jasmyn? You don’t want to hang out with the sordid underside of San Diego.”
“Uh…”
“Chad!” Sam said. “Stop it. You are not an elitist even if you did grow up with a nanny and a butler. Brother Benny feeds and shelters a lot of homeless people from what they make at this store.”
“Just because I had certain privileges doesn’t mean I’m against recycling and helping the less fortunate.”
Jasmyn gaped at him. “You really grew up with a nanny and a butler?”
“Not a butler. A cook. And an au pair.” He shrugged, a gesture that he somehow made appear elegant in a denim jacket. “And a live-in housekeeper. Not my fault.”
“Of course not. It’s just that I’ve never met anyone so filthy rich. I mean…” She made a whoops face.
He smiled. He had the straightest, whitest teeth; the most gorgeous eyelashes over eyes like beautiful gray-green glass; and a face so handsome Quinn would have fainted dead away at the sight of him. He always smelled nice too.
“Wealth is relative. Our next-door neighbor was obscenely rich. That’s more than filthy.”
Sam opened her door. “Why don’t you just wait here, Chad? We only invited you along for the truck and the muscle anyway.”
“I have an excellent eye for decor.”
“Ha-ha.” She got out of the truck. “Says the guy who can’t find the top of his couch.”
Chad turned to Jasmyn. “What do you think, love?”
He was charming too.
“To tell the truth, I’ve never, ever been furniture shopping in my whole entire life, new or fourthhand. I’m happy just to tag along.” She smiled. “Even if you two do argue like an old married couple.”
They both went silent and exchanged a puzzled look.
Jasmyn slid over to the open door and hopped out. “Come on, Chad. As long as we’re here, let’s all go inside. You can choose the next stop, okay?”
He blew out an exasperated breath. “Okay, fine.”
The three of them headed across the parking lot with Jasmyn still between them.
Sam leaned around her and frowned at Chad. “We’re more like siblings because he’s an annoying little brat.”
“And she’s a bossy big sister.” He winked. “But now that I think about it, old married couple fits too. I’m going to call you Mildred. You can call me Robert. Those are good names for an old married couple, don’t you think?”
“Whatever floats your boat, Robert.”
Jasmyn laughed. To think she had imagined these people were part of a weird cult. That would be true only if goofy and down-to-earth equaled bizarre. They were no weirder than Valley Oaks people.
They entered the store and stopped. It was one of those overwhelming places that had no obvious start here direction.
Jasmyn let out a low whistle. “It looks like a football field.”
“Only bigger,” Chad said. “And a whole lot messier. You’re really okay with this, Jasmyn?”
She scanned the enormous facility and wondered if she was okay. As far as the eye could see, furniture and household items cluttered row after row after row. People, strollers, and shopping carts filled the aisles. Rock music thumped, sixties era. It overloaded her senses the way Disneyland had at first. That was a happy place, though, and she had soon felt at ease. This place reminded her of the shopping mall Quinn had dragged her to soon after the tornado. She’d had a major meltdown, and they left without buying clothes she needed for work.
Jasmyn took a deep breath. The mall incident happened within a week of the tornado. That was more than six months ago. She imagined the calendar in her kitchen. Today was the sixteenth. Tomorrow was the seventeenth. Tomorrow marked seven months. Seven months.
It was time to move through it, whatever it meant.
“It’s not as disorderly as it appears,” Sam said. “Clothing is on the left. We’ll avoid that whole half.�
�� She swung her arm in a wide arc. “We’ll check out patio tables in the far back corner. Chad, go find something to do. There’s a play area for kids over there in the middle.” She pointed toward it. “We’ll come find you when we’re finished.”
“Mildred, you’re such a tease.” He spoke loudly with animation, his voice spilling onto passersby who turned and watched him. “I’ll scope out rockers for Jasmyn, so we can take back the one we loaned her. I miss it so much. I mean, the memories surrounding it. Oh!” He held a hand to his chest. “Rocking our little ones in it, night after night. Treasured stuff, Mil, treasured stuff. Okay, text me.” He strode off.
Jasmyn called out, “Thanks, Robert,” and looked at Sam. “You’re going to catch flies if you don’t close your mouth.”
She snapped shut her jaw, her face the color of late summer tomatoes. “That guy is impossible.”
“He’s funny, Mildred.”
“A regular hoot.”
They strolled down a wide aisle lined on both sides with dining tables and hutches. Jasmyn was surprised to see several pieces like the ones that had filled her farmhouse, old things her grandparents traced back to their childhoods. A wave of nostalgia rolled through her.
“Sam, do you mind if I roam around?”
“Go for it. I’ll be in lawn furniture.” She walked off.
Jasmyn turned a corner, heading deeper into the forest of furniture. Its thick musty scent reminded her of an attic.
She and Quinn had spent countless hours playing in the attics of both of their houses. Their grandmothers and mothers had been of the opinion that women should never get rid of a thing because somebody might need it someday. The contents of trunks and boxes and wardrobes provided enough entertainment for the countless rainy and snowbound days a Midwest childhood offered.
The thought of all that had been lost saddened her. So much of it she had taken for granted. Maybe someday she would have her own home again. Maybe she would shop like Sam did, at secondhand stores, and find replacements. Not for everything. Not for antiques like the hundred-year-old porcelain bowl—
Jasmyn’s eyes locked onto a desk.
It was a rolltop. Dark walnut. Brass handles. Not manly huge, not cutesy lady small. As Goldilocks would say, it was just right.
And it was a dead-ringer for her grandmother’s desk.
Jasmyn stopped before it and her breath caught. If she peeked inside the cubbyhole in the lower right-hand corner and found a J carved in it, she’d honestly believe the tornado had picked up the desk in Illinois, gently plopped it down in California, maybe at a yard sale where it didn’t sell, and then it got donated to Brother Benny’s Thrift Shop.
Sudden tears burned in her eyes. She moaned out a long sigh. How had she forgotten the desk? In the aftermath of the tornado, while sifting through mounds of wet trash that had been her home and belongings, she repeated what everyone kept saying to her over and over: They’re only things. At least you’re safe. The things don’t matter. You can buy things.
Now, faced with a replica of the desk, she understood that on the contrary, things did matter. They really did. If she had died, they wouldn’t have mattered. But she hadn’t died, and a deep longing welled inside of her to touch the things of her childhood.
Jasmyn touched the desk. She rolled up the front cover. It clattered into place, revealing an unmarred level surface and a backdrop of cubbyholes and tiny drawers. She leaned over and ran her fingers along the bottom of the narrow opening in the lower right-hand corner. No J engraved for June Anderson Albright. No marring of any kind, anywhere. It was in excellent condition.
Her grandmother had told of how she had carved her initial at the age of eight or nine when the desk was new. Her mother had whipped her. It seemed an odd memory for Gramma June to smile about, but she always did. Jasmyn noticed because the woman seldom smiled. As a matter of fact, the only time she appeared happy was when she sat at the desk, reading or writing. She read every book under the sun and wrote poetry, two talents that had totally bypassed her daughter and granddaughter.
Gramma June allowed Jasmyn to use the desk for coloring and doing schoolwork. That might explain why Jasmyn loved it, no matter how much she struggled with schoolwork and coloring inside the lines of princess gowns. Seated in the big, creaky wooden chair, with Gramma June’s rare encouragement, she felt as if she were on an island, protected from a scary world.
Jasmyn bent and opened several of the drawers that ran down either side of the desk front. They were empty. Her lost ones had been stuffed with notebooks and papers filled with poems and notes in her grandmother’s writing.
She straightened and looked for a price tag on the top. The thing was in mint condition and probably cost hundreds of dollars, way more than she would plop down for something she didn’t exactly need to replace.
She squeezed between the desk and a bookcase and found the price tag. Someone had thoughtfully taped it on the back panel where it wouldn’t leave sticky residue on the front surface. She flipped it over and gasped. One hundred twenty-five dollars? One hundred twenty-five? Were they batty?
No, she was batty. Something she didn’t exactly need to replace? Replace? Really? Where exactly was she going to place it? In her suitcase next Monday when she flew back to Valley Oaks?
A hollowness filled her. It felt as if a huge chunk of herself had been gouged out from her insides.
It probably had been. Her things were gone. Things she had touched, smelled, sat on, slept on, ate from, polished, and passed every single day of her life. Most of those things had been touched, smelled, sat on, slept on, eaten from, polished, and passed every single day by her mother and grandparents and those ancestors she never knew. Those things were links to her past, to her roots, to who she was.
And they were gone. Totally gone.
She sank to the floor and wept.
Forty-Five
Jasmyn had allowed herself four extra weeks in Seaside Village after Liv’s heart attack. Now time was up.
Saturday morning she scrubbed Cottage Eleven and gathered the borrowed linens and kitchenware.
Saturday afternoon she began returning things to their rightful owners, a courtesy she had not bothered with on that fateful day four weeks ago. Liv had said it was because deep down Jasmyn knew she would be returning, which was why Liv had told her not to bother. She was considering keeping the cottage semi-furnished.
Jasmyn now carried Sam’s small television through the front door and out to the courtyard, balancing a box of chocolate truffles on top of it. Sam would have a conniption, but it would be a half-hearted one. The woman really did enjoy chocolate. After loading up Chad’s truck with patio furniture the other day at Brother Benny’s, the three of them had stopped for gelato and Sam’s choice was double-fudge chocolate.
The memory felt bittersweet. Chad had found her while she was on the floor beside the rolltop desk, blowing her nose. He sat down and commiserated with her. The treat had been his suggestion. It was, he had said, the least Robert and Mildred could do for their friend who had suffered great loss.
“Hey.” Keagan came into view.
Of course Keagan came into view at that particular moment, the weight of leaving as heavy as the television and probably as obvious.
He reached for the TV. “Let me help.”
“It’s not heavy.” As he scooped the television from her arms, she grabbed the box of candy.
“This belongs to Sam, right?” He veered toward her cottage. “I suppose this means you decided to go back.”
“People don’t uproot themselves to turn a vacation spot into their permanent place of residence.”
“Right.”
Jasmyn stubbed her toe. Was that a hint of sarcasm in his tone? The voice usually parked in neutral? She glanced down at her neon yellow shoe. The flagstone had left its mark. She wanted to cry.
“Do you have more to deliver?”
“Nothing big.” She didn’t want his help.
He turned
toward her. A brief flash of sunlight bounced off the lenses of his dark glasses. The corners of his mouth curved. He didn’t believe her.
“Really. Sam’s fold-up rocker and TV trays. Linens and kitchen things to Riley, Liv, and Inez. Shampoo and soap and stuff to Piper. She gave me way more than I could use. Little things. Chad said he’d get the big ones after I leave, like Inez’s bed and his table.”
“Okay. So how are you doing?”
“Awful.” She winced. The vocal fire hydrant was fully engaged. “I’m okay. There’s just too much to do. I should have packed earlier this week, but I didn’t want to miss out on anything. I took Tasha to get a DVD and Coco to get groceries. Inez and Louis took me to lunch. Piper helped me pick out a gift for Quinn. And…” The flow stopped. “And a lot of other stuff.”
He chuckled.
Chuckled?
“You didn’t want to miss out on spending time with people. I’m sure it was mutual. We are going to miss you, Ms. All Bright.”
“Ditto,” she muttered and stepped around him to knock on Sam’s door, the goldenrod yellow one.
“By the way, I’ll be happy to drive you to the airport on Monday. In Liv’s minivan.”
“Thanks, but I’ll take a shuttle.”
Sam opened the door. “Jasmyn! I said you can keep the TV until you leave.” She moved aside for them to enter. “Set it on the counter there. Thanks, Keagan.”
“I offered to take her to the airport, but she wants to take a shuttle.”
Sam frowned at him. They shook their heads in unison and turned to her. Sam said, “No, you don’t want to do that. They’ll cart you around the county for half the day and then you’ll sit in the airport for the other half.”
“I don’t mind—”
“Keagan will do it. I can’t get away from the office, and Liv’s not up for driving the freeway yet.”
Jasmyn wondered if they had rehearsed the conversation already. “Whatever.”
“Keagan, did you get the word yet? Goodbye pizza party, tomorrow night, on my new, old patio table.”
“I did, thanks. I’ll go get the rocker and trays.” He went back outside.