“Christine sent this to you in love, not sadness. It’s time her gift represented what she intended.”
“I still miss her.”
Lindsey touched his cheek. One day she would tell him about Joe and Maggie and how she’d come to be a believer in things she’d once dismissed as easily as the magic of double rainbows. “She’s here, Matthew. Just as Ekaterina is there for Zach.”
He couldn’t help but smile. “You do realize how certifiable you sound.”
“Afraid I’m turning new age on you?” She twisted so that he could put the necklace on her. Pressing the pendant to her chest, she was overcome by a wave of emotions. “Now it’s my turn,” she said.
“Not yet.”
“There’s more?” She wasn’t surprised, just anxious. What she had to tell him would be as life-altering as their engagement.
He took a deep breath. “I’ve been offered a dream assignment, something I never imagined was possible.”
When he hesitated, she said, “Am I supposed to guess?”
“You couldn’t. Hell, I couldn’t.” He started to tell her and then stopped, lost for the right words. “Before I say anything more, I want you to know that I countered their offer with what I told them was a deal-breaker. They have to give me time off whenever you have free time.”
She grinned. “That’s easy.”
“Since when?”
“Yesterday.”
He frowned. “Does this have something to do with what you have to tell me?”
“It’s everything. I quit. Officially. Actually put it in writing. I’m no longer working for the agency—not covering any war, anywhere, anytime.” She tried to force a smile, but failed. Walking away was the right thing to do, but it didn’t make it any easier. She was leaving a job that had allowed her to make a difference. And going . . . where?
“I don’t understand.” Matthew studied her for some reaction. He prodded her with one of his own. “I can get out of this. I haven’t signed the contract, and there’s plenty of time for them to find someone else.”
“Why would you do that?”
“Isn’t it obvious? For the first time we have a chance to be together. There’s no way in hell I’m going to blow that for—”
“First tell me what exactly you would be giving up. What is it about this job that has you so excited?”
He wiped his hand across his eyes as if it would help him see what was going on more clearly. “It’s a documentary that’s being funded by a consortium of environmental and wildlife rescue groups. The goal is to create a film that shows what ‘endangered’ means in a way that reaches an audience beyond those already converted. Environmentalists have been preaching to the choir too long. They need new recruits to get done what needs to get done.”
“Playing devil’s advocate here,” Lindsey said, “what could you possibly say, or show, that hasn’t been done a dozen times already? How are you going to get someone to care about some obscure frog in Australia when they don’t care that there are children all across the world being sold into brothels by their own parents?”
“Self-interest. We’re going to connect that frog to the fires that consume Australia every year and show the ongoing consequences of inaction.
“Wealth anywhere depends on consumption. Take away the consumer, for whatever reason, and industry collapses. Just look at what’s happening in China. They have a glut of consumer goods that no one wants because no one can, or will, buy them. People are listening to the doom and gloom on the news every night, and they’re reacting in the only way they know how.”
Rarely did Lindsey get caught up in Matthew’s passion for the environment. Privately, she was like most people who believed the earth was capable of perpetual self-healing and that focusing on a specific owl or whale or wolf turned people into tree-hugging fanatics who then turned people like her into skeptics.
“So what will you be doing?”
“They want a still photographer to focus on the behind-the-scenes animal shots for the text and coffee-table books. Right now I’m it. They’re looking for someone who can capture the people behind the cameras, but—”
“I can do that,” she said, surprising him almost as much as she surprised herself.
“What?”
“I’m a whole lot better taking pictures of people than you are.” It wasn’t bragging, it was fact, something they’d talked about since college. She’d tried, but had never been able to capture the animal shots Matthew took as intuitively as breathing. It was the same for him trying to capture human emotion.
As fast as the thought had arrived, it struck her that she might not be wanted. “Could you work with me? Would that be a problem? I wouldn’t just be stepping into your territory, I’d be going there in combat boots.”
“I’m having trouble wrapping my mind around this,” he said, truthfully. “Give me a couple of minutes.”
“We’ve never been together longer than a couple of months. What if we started getting on each other’s nerves?” The more she embraced the idea, the more questions she had, most of them hypothetical. “How long is this assignment?”
“Two years.”
“Wow.” It was all she could think to say. And then, “When do they want you to start?”
“The film crew is leaving for China in four months. They want me with them to document their arrival.”
“Four months . . .” It wasn’t as long as it sounded. Half of that time would be spent getting ready.
Matthew leaned forward to take his phone out of his pocket. He went through his contacts until he reached his agent, then handed Lindsey the phone.
“Put up or shut up?” she said. “You don’t think we should talk about this some more?”
“No—I’m afraid you might change your mind.”
She smiled. “Could it really be this easy?”
“You haven’t got the job yet.” He was having trouble containing his excitement.
“Want to place a little wager?”
“Do I look that dumb?”
Chapter 12
Propped against the headboard with pillows at their backs, wearing their new bathrobes, Matthew tipped the bottle of champagne, dividing the last splash between his and Lindsey’s glasses. “Congratulations,” he said.
“To both of us,” she added.
“We’re employed.”
“Together.”
He grinned. “What a concept.”
“I’ve been thinking . . .”
“Yes?”
“Where do we go from here?” She put her glass on the nightstand and curled into his side.
“Meaning?”
“Should we postpone getting married until we get back?”
“Fat chance. There’s no way I’m giving you that kind of time to change your mind.”
“I should tell my parents. A long time ago”—she looked up at him and smiled—“waaay back when I was positive there was no way I was ever going to get married, I promised my mother she could help plan my wedding.”
“Something small, I hope.”
“Just family. It’s time you got to know them better. I should probably warn you that my father thinks it’s your fault that I never see them. It doesn’t matter whether it makes sense, he can’t imagine his precious daughter would stay away for any other reason.”
“Oh great. And all this time I thought we got along fine.”
“Then my sisters and brother and their families. My sister-in-law isn’t crazy about me, but she’ll come around. After all, what’s not to love?”
“Anyone else?”
“There are some cousins my mom will want to invite.”
“Sure you don’t want to elope?”
She shook her head. “I owe this to my mom. I haven’t been the best daughter to either of them since I moved out. Maybe I can make up for it a little now.”
“What else needs to be done before we leave?”
“Sittina. I’m going to do whatever it takes
to get her and her grandmother to this country.” They’d gotten a call an hour before Ekaterina’s funeral telling them that Sittina had been found and reunited with her grandmother. A small victory in the midst of all the sadness that had surrounded them.
“You’re going to need an advocate for them while we’re gone. My understanding is that with this kind of thing it’s hurry-up-and-wait and then you have days, sometimes only hours, to meet a deadline.”
The proverbial lightbulb turned on in Lindsey’s mind. “My dad would be perfect. He’s been driving my mother crazy since he retired, and this would give him something to do. Something he would love doing.”
“Next?”
“What do you mean?”
“There has to be something we’re forgetting.”
“You mean besides California?”
“I don’t see how we can fit in going back there. Not with—”
“Then we skip something else. The beach house is where we found each other again. Besides, I made a promise to Rebecca that I’m going to keep, come hell or high water. Not going back isn’t an option.”
“It means that much to you?”
“It means everything.”
“Then we’ll call it our honeymoon.”
Matthew unlocked the door to the beach house, turned to pick up Lindsey, and before she could say anything, carried her across the threshold. “How do you suppose this tradition got started?” he said as he put her down and turned to flip the light switch.
“I happen to know this one,” she said, “and you’re not going to like it. Your choice—either it’s to represent women who were kidnapped and raped who did not go to their new husband’s home willingly, or as a way to demonstrate the bride’s virginity by her reluctance to cross into the room that contained the marriage bed.”
“Can we go out and do it again? This time you can come in on your own two feet.”
She laughed, something that was becoming as easy as it had been hard in her old life. “How about if we go with the reluctant virgin thing instead? That way we could head straight for the marriage bed.”
“You’re insatiable.”
“I’m on my honeymoon.”
He took her hand. On her third finger was a plain, recycled platinum wedding band, one Lindsey had discovered in an eco-friendly jewelry store in New York. He wore a matching band, sized and polished and inscribed inside with the word FOREVER.
During the ceremony, when he put the ring on her finger, she’d leaned forward and whispered, “This does not mean I’m going to become a vegetarian.”
He’d winked and smiled slyly. “Should have made it part of the vows.”
Epilogue
The end of February arrived with a gentle breeze and a scattering of cotton-tufted clouds in an azure blue sky. For two weeks the single universal topic of conversation in the Santa Cruz area was the beautiful weather. Unspoken, but recognized by those who lived in a water-thirsty state, was the underlying feeling of guilt that permeated time spent enjoying the sunshine on the patios of restaurants and taking long bicycle rides along the shore.
More often than not, whenever the people who called the area home were outside, they sent quick glances to the horizon, looking for the gray that would indicate an incoming storm. As two weeks turned into three, they stopped talking about how lucky they were to live in such a mild climate and turned on the news each night for updates on the weather.
By the middle of March, water and fire districts were holding special meetings on how to deal with what they foresaw as an upcoming drought season.
And then the end of March arrived—not on slippered feet but in hobnailed boots. A storm that meteorologists had tracked and predicted would hit the Bay Area and bypass the area from Half Moon Bay to Monterey entirely, stalled offshore and then veered right.
Trees were uprooted, shingles stripped from rooftops, and streets flooded. Entire neighborhoods were isolated. People benefited from the generosity of those living around them or went hungry.
The beach house stood firm, protected by the original shutters that had been stripped and painted and reinforced during the refurbishing the year before. The walls withstood hits by a half dozen branches from a neighbor’s eucalyptus tree, but the flower garden lost most of the perennials.
Andrew and Grace took inventory as soon as there was a lull in the storm, checking for cracked windows and any leaks that might have developed around the chimney. It became a routine for them as storm after storm hit, all the way through April and into May.
A three-week break was followed by another round of storms, not as fierce as the first, but without even a day’s break to clean up.
Julia called several times, and Andrew reassured her that all was good with her beloved beach house.
What neither he nor Grace had been able to see was the cracked shingle near the valley in the roof that separated the kitchen from the living room. For three months water had been entering the crack and running along the support beam above the kitchen cupboards, dripping behind the drywall, saturating the insulation, and warping the plywood flooring under the travertine tile.
Grace discovered the hidden damage when she tried unsuccessfully to open one of the kitchen cupboards. She grew sick to her stomach the more deeply she looked and the more damage she discovered. For the rest of the afternoon she tried to convince herself that it would be better if her father called Julia to tell her what had happened. She was sure to have questions Grace couldn’t answer.
In reality, Grace couldn’t face Julia’s dismay—not so much because of what had happened to the house, but over her disappointment in Grace.
But she couldn’t do that to her father. This was her job. She’d received the paychecks. What had happened was her responsibility.
Thankfully, Julia was home when Grace called. It wasn’t a phone call she wanted to make twice.
“The whole back wall in the kitchen?” Julia said in response to Grace’s initial description of the damage.
“And the cupboards. I took out the dishes and put them in the dining room just in case.”
“Thank you,” Julia said. “And you’re sure it isn’t something that could be fixed easily?”
“I don’t think so,” Grace answered, a catch in her voice.
“Don’t do that,” Julia said. “Don’t you dare feel guilty over what happened. It wasn’t your fault. You can’t fix what you can’t see.”
“But I should have—”
“Okay, I’m going to tell you something that I don’t want you to tell another soul.” Julia paused. “Promise?”
Grace nodded and then realized Julia couldn’t see her. “Promise.”
“This whole thing happening the way it did is like some screwy gift that I didn’t deserve.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I hated that kitchen.”
Grace turned to look at the polished granite counters, the sleek walnut cupboards, and the stainless steel stove. “Me too,” she said, incredulous. “It doesn’t fit the house.”
“There was no way I could tear it out and start over once I realized what I’d done. I was afraid I was going to have to live with it for the next twenty years.”
Grace grinned. “Not anymore.”
A loud crashing sound came from the kitchen.
“What was that?” Julia asked.
Grace peered around the corner. “The cupboard over the stove.”
“Time for you to get out of there. Tell your dad that I’ll call him when he gets home from work.”
Julia sat at her desk for several minutes after reassuring Grace again that nothing she’d done or hadn’t done had caused the leak. Her hand still cradling the phone, she thought about the upcoming home show she’d seen advertised in the newspaper. It wasn’t often that second chances like this one came along, and it was hard to believe it was pure coincidence.
While she didn’t believe in ghosts or spirits—never had, never would—it was comforting to im
agine Joe and Maggie having a hand in what had happened at the beach house.
Comforting was good.
She’d go with that.
P.S.
About the author
Meet Georgia Bockoven
About the book
The Story Behind the Book
Reading Group Discussion Questions
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Have You Read?
More by Georgia Bockoven
About the author
Meet Georgia Bockoven
GEORGIA BOCKOVEN is an award-winning author who began writing fiction after a successful career as a freelance journalist and photographer. Her books have sold more than three million copies worldwide. The mother of two, she resides in Northern California with her husband, John
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About the book
The Story Behind the Book
BETWEEN PHYSICAL and mental research, I’ve spent a couple of years exploring the central California coastline for the Beach House Series. It finally reached the point where I could close my eyes and feel what it’s like to be there, even when I was baking in the unrelenting sunshine and heat of California’s Central Valley.
Which, I suppose, is why I’m so in love with this Beach House Series. It’s not only necessary to go back to the coast to do research for each new book, but it’s fun to explore a place I’ve been to a dozen times and search for a new way to see it. The Boardwalk in Santa Cruz looks entirely different when you’re sixteen than it does when you’re forty or sixty. And for someone who’s never been athletic—ME—it takes a lot of observation and thought, not to mention imagination, to describe what it’s like to surf.
With this book, there was yet another reason to go back a second time—to film a promotion piece for Return to the Beach House. I hope if you have a chance you’ll drop by my website, www.georgiabockoven.com, and take a look. You’ll recognize a lot of the places mentioned in the book, just not the beach house itself. I like leaving that to my imagination—and yours.
Return to the Beach House Page 27