Sailing Lessons

by Hannah McKinnon

  “You left Boston?”

  Piper nodded. “I haven’t been able to make rent in three months. Hank helped out, and Shannon wrote me a check the first month. I didn’t want to ask you, since you haven’t even opened the shop yet. Claire couldn’t float me anymore.”

  Wren let her breath out. Frankly, she couldn’t imagine floating anyone that long. “What happened to finding a teaching job?”

  Piper shrugged like it was a matter of deciding between dinner options. “I’m not feeling it.”

  “Piper.” Wren had seen her like this before. She was famous for starting things she did not finish, and equally famous for her inability to commit. It drove Shannon nuts, and she was surprised to hear Shannon had actually lent Piper money to begin with. She’d never said a word about it to Wren. “You’ve got more degrees than the rest of us put together. It’s time to figure this stuff out.”

  “I know, and I tried. I applied for jobs and I even got a couple interviews. But when they called me to come in I just sort of freaked out. I don’t want to teach. I can’t imagine being responsible for a whole classroom of kids.”

  Wren glanced back at the dressing room. “But you love kids. And they love you right back.”

  Piper’s eyes welled up. “I know. Which is why I just can’t. All those kids belong to someone, and those parents would be relying on me . . . and the kids would need so much from me. And that guy I was dating?”

  Wren braced herself. Piper’s track record with guys was well established in the family. She picked the worst ones, and the worse the guy the longer she held on to him. “What about him?”

  Piper’s shoulders started to shake. Wren pushed a tissue box in front of her.

  “He’s married.”

  “Jesus, Piper!”

  “I know. I lied to all of you about him getting out of a relationship. He’s in it for the long haul, and he’s not ever going to leave her. What’s worse, he’s coming here this week. With his family.”

  “He has kids?” Wren pushed her chair back. This was too much, even for her little sister.

  “I know. I told you I fucked up.” She was crying in full now, but Wren couldn’t stand to hear another word. This was low. Piper was better than this, and yet her behavior said otherwise. Lindy would flip if she knew.

  Wren ran her hands through her hair. “Does Mom know?”

  Piper shook her head.

  The shop door opened, and Ari breezed through with two iced coffees. “Good morning! One more day until . . .” She took one look at the two sisters and stopped in the middle of the floor. “Sorry. Want me to come back in a few?”

  “No, no! Please come in.” Wren waved her in and took the coffees. She was grateful for the interruption. “Ari, you remember Piper.”

  “I’m so sorry to interrupt. I can come back,” Ari whispered.

  “Don’t you dare.”

  Ari glanced back at Piper who was still sitting at the counter. “Everything okay?”

  “Just as it should be.” Wren forced a smile. “The usual joy of family.”

  “Did you see the sculpture came in last night?”

  “What? Where?” It was the one specialty piece Wren had ordered for the shop. A huge splurge. She’d been expecting it all week.

  “In the back. I’ll show you.”

  Together they positioned themselves on opposite sides of the oversized box.

  Piper stood back as they passed her, moving carefully through the store. “What’s in the box?” she asked. She didn’t seem to be taking the hint that Wren was done listening. She had work to get to. Important work.

  “It’s a splurge,” Wren admitted, setting the box down. She opened the top delicately and began pulling back the layers of tissue to reveal a mountain of foam packing.

  Gingerly, Wren sifted through the Styrofoam peanuts. Piper and Lucy crowded around.

  “Is that the glass wave?” Lucy asked excitedly.

  “It is,” Wren said. “And we can’t touch it, okay baby?”

  Curiosity got the better of her, and Piper joined them. All four leaned over the box as Wren scooped the last of the packing away to reveal a sparkling crest of green-and-blue glass. “Oh, man.” Wren ran a finger tentatively over the top of it. “She did it for us. She really did it.”

  A crest of clear glass bubbles seemed to float atop the wave like crystal beads, and Wren took Lucy’s hand. “Very gentle now,” she instructed her, and she ran her small index finger over the bubbles. Lucy giggled.

  “It’s so smooth mommy.”

  It was the most beautiful piece she’d ever seen, and any regrets about the cost or doubts about the choice evaporated in the morning air. She thought of what the artist had told her when she described her vision in her studio in Provincetown. “Art is memory.” As Wren ran her daughter’s hand over each tendril of hand-blown wave, she felt it. There would be a discerning buyer who would see it for what it was and want it. A piece of the Cape to take home with them and display in their own home.

  “It’s stunning,” Ari breathed. She stepped closer for a better look. “Where are we going to put it?”

  “Because it’s so delicate, we need to put it somewhere up high. I don’t want shoppers to bump into it.”

  “Or kids to touch it!” Lucy said, proprietorially, as she headed back to the dressing room.

  At that moment, there was a knock from the front door. The bell overhead jingled. “Oh, sorry! I forgot to lock it when I came in,” Ari said.

  Just what Wren needed. Their first customer, who she’d have to turn away. “I’ll take care of it.” She headed to the front of the store, prepared to apologize. “I’m sorry but we aren’t open for business yet . . .” she began.

  Caleb Bailey stood in the middle of the shop. “Should I come back?”

  “No. I mean, please come in.” Piper, hearing his voice, followed her to the front.

  “What do you think? Isn’t this place great?” She whisked past Wren and grabbed their father’s arm, pulling him in.

  But Wren couldn’t stay. She didn’t stay to see the look of wonder on her father’s face as Piper led him around, pointing out the handmade jewelry and picking up a fisherman’s sweater. She didn’t even want to bring her father back to the rear of the shop to show him the glass sculpture. Instead she went to the dressing room behind the counter and kneeled down.

  “Knock knock,” she said.

  The curtain swung open. “Yes?” Lucy asked. She had a smudge of purple marker on her nose.

  “There’s someone here I want you to meet.”

  Lucy looked over her mother’s shoulder. “That man?”

  Wren nodded. She realized that even though they’d discussed her father’s return that morning, Lucy wasn’t connecting the dots. They hadn’t been expecting him so soon—Wren had thought he’d call first.

  “Okay. But I’m working on a picture,” Lucy said.

  Wren would normally tell her to pause what she was doing, to come out and say a proper hello. But she decided to let things unfold. “All right. Can you come out in a minute, though?”

  Lucy nodded and swept the curtain closed.

  Wren returned to the front of the shop. Her father was standing with his hands on his hips staring up at an antique map on the wall. “Monomoy Island?” he asked. She nodded, taking pleasure in the attention he was giving every piece.

  He regarded it another moment, then moved on to a watercolor hanging nearby. “The fish pier,” he said, approvingly. “Before they added on.”

  Piper came to stand beside her. “He likes it,” she whispered. “He likes everything you have in here.” She turned to their father. “You haven’t seen the best one yet.”

  Without waiting for permission, Piper glided into the back of the store. “Wait!” Wren interrupted.

  “Relax, sis. I’ve got it.” Wren tried not to grind her teeth as Piper slid the box to the middle of the floor.

  “That’s incredibly fragile!” she warned.


  Piper ignored this and pulled open the lid. “I’ve got it.”

  Wren stood back as her father bent over the box. He reached his hand in and carefully pushed back the packaging. Finally, he looked back at her. “Why this piece?” he asked. This time he wasn’t smiling.

  Wren felt the back of her neck prickle. “Because I liked it.”

  Caleb considered this and reached inside the box.

  She wanted to say, “Be careful!” But she was taken aback by what he’d just said. He regarded the piece more carefully and settled it slowly back into its nest of wrapping. “What do you like about it?”

  Piper looked perplexed, too.

  “Look,” Wren said, trying to keep her voice light. “I spent a lot of time considering the kind of items and art I wanted to carry. I know art is subjective . . .”

  “Don’t be offended,” their father said. “I’m just curious. Why this one?”

  But she was offended. A minute ago, he’d been poring over every item in her shop with seeming approval, and now he’d picked her favorite piece and was criticizing her choice. A choice that she took very personally. Who was he to walk in here and question her like this?

  “I liked the artist,” she said, scrambling. “I liked the way the blown glass tapered at the tips of the wave, the way it was so solid and powerful at the base, but so fragile at the top.”

  Caleb shrugged.

  “You don’t like it?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  Wren prickled. What was wrong with her? This was her store, and everything in it was so her. If he didn’t appreciate that, well then . . . She couldn’t help it. “Then what are you saying?”

  Piper threw her a look. But she didn’t care.

  “You have a strong aesthetic in here,” he began. “There seems to be a connection to each piece. So I just wondered why this one.”

  “Because it tells a story.” There, she’d blurted it out in a voice that was too strong, perhaps defensive. But it was all she had. Suddenly she felt like crying.

  Watching their father move through her store, running his hands over the things she’d picked with such care had an effect on her she hadn’t anticipated. When he turned to look at her, his face was so full of awe and tenderness that she felt she might cry. She hadn’t known how much this would matter to her. And now he just stood there, staring back at her.

  “What?” she asked. “What is it?’

  He smiled. “I wanted you to defend your aesthetic. You have a good eye, Wren. Don’t be afraid if someone challenges that.”

  Something else had caught his attention.

  “Now what?”

  Caleb peered around her. “Now, I think I need to introduce myself,” he said.

  It was then Wren realized that Lucy had come out of the changing room. She was right there, at her elbow.

  “Mama,” she said, shyly. “I finished my picture.”

  Lucy held up a drawing of a boat. There were two stick figures on it. Both had big eyes, one with long lashes. The round orange sun was smiling.

  “Baby. It’s beautiful.”

  “May I?” Caleb asked softly, holding out his hand.

  Lucy leaned shyly against her mother, and Wren felt that sudden maternal pull, the need to keep her there, pressed safely at her side. What if he said something about Lucy’s drawing like he had about her sculpture? But Lucy held the picture out for him to take.

  “Do you know who I am?” he asked.

  “Lucy,” Wren said, wanting to take control of the introduction. “I’d like you to meet your grandpa.”

  Lucy regarded him seriously. “I knew you were coming.” She pointed to one of the stick figures in the picture. “That’s you.”

  Wren sucked in her breath.

  After a long moment Caleb glanced up at her. “Looks just like me,” he said. “And who is this pretty one?” He pointed to the other stick figure, the one with long eyelashes.

  Lucy laughed. “Don’t be silly. That’s me.”

  Twenty-Five

  Piper

  Why had she come home? Wren was her only hope at a sympathetic ear, but she hadn’t given it. Piper knew her relationship with Derek was wrong. She’d never thought otherwise. But she’d fallen in love, and now everything was a mess. Wren was the one person in her family she’d been counting on to set judgment aside.

  And then there was her father. Piper had been excited to show him around Wren’s store and showcase her sister’s hard work. Wren certainly wasn’t doing it. Caleb loved everything in that damn shop, and Piper could see how pleased it made her sister. It was all going so well until she pulled out the glass sculpture. Wren hadn’t wanted her to touch it. God, she was so uptight these days, more and more like Shannon. But it all seemed to go off the tracks when he asked questions about the sculpture. It had started out as genuine interest, Piper thought. He was an artist. Visuals were his life’s work. But Wren had bristled, becoming suddenly defensive. And that was when Lucy appeared.

  Good Lord—the way her father had looked at her little face when she’d stepped out of the dressing room and handed him that drawing. Piper had had to walk away. Caleb was smitten, and why wouldn’t he be? But in that moment, it occurred to Piper that Wren had so much to show. So much to show for herself and her life. Her new business. The love she’d stocked it with. And most of all, little Lucy. What did Piper have to show for her life?

  She’d really been hoping they could get lunch together afterward, but then her dad said he wanted to get back to the motel. It was as if his curiosity had been sated, and he’d seen all there was to see. She was about to offer to buy the two of them a cup at Monomoy Coffee, but then she remembered her nearly empty wallet. She was twenty-six years old, living in her mother’s house, and down to her last ten dollars.

  The drive home the night before had been the only time she’d been alone with her father. He seemed pulled between the fatigue of his journey and his desire to see more of his old hometown. “Let’s drive along Shore Road,” he suggested. And so they did, looping up and around the edge of the harbor. He asked about the new cottages by Chatham Bars Inn. He wanted to see the Chatham Fish Pier. She’d been happy to drive him around, slowing while he rolled down the window to look. Answering his questions about old houses that had gone missing, replaced by new big construction. The once-wild stretches of shoreline that had been built up. It must be so strange, she thought, to come home and find that your memory no longer matched the land.

  When she finally returned to her mother’s, Hank and Lindy were sitting at the kitchen island with cups of tea. “Want one, darling?” her mother asked.

  “I think I’m going to turn in,” she said, feeling suddenly worn out.

  “Are you all right?” Lindy wanted to know. She could tell her mother didn’t want to pry, but that she was concerned.

  “I am,” Piper said. She told them how she’d driven him through town and past all the places he’d asked to see. How surprised he’d been at how Chatham had changed.

  “Time waits for no man,” her mother said, rising and putting her cup in the sink.

  “Was it hard having him here tonight?”

  Lindy rinsed out her cup and set it in the dishwasher with all the other dishes and glassware they’d gone through at dinner. The top carriage sagged beneath the weight of it all. “It stirred up some dust from the past,” she said, finally. “He’s different, of course. We all are.” She turned around suddenly, her eyes on Hank. “What was it you said earlier? About coming back to a place you’d been away from.”

  Hank was staring out the window past them all. He looked startled from his quietude. Piper didn’t blame him. It must’ve been an exhausting evening for him, too. “Oh, you mean the Frost quote?”

  “Yes, that was it.

  Hank cleared his throat. “Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.”

  Lindy turned to Piper, an indignant look on her face.

  Piper was
confused. “We took him in, Mom.”

  “We did. But the question remains.” She set the dishtowel on the rack and straightened it, taking her time, before finishing her thought. “Is this still his home?”

  Lindy strode past her, stopping to peck her quickly on the cheek. “I’m glad you’re home,” she said. She went upstairs to bed.

  Piper looked at Hank. She felt guilty, suddenly. She’d wanted them to do this, she’d been the one to push the hardest. “Is this too much for her?”

  Hank sipped the last of his tea. “Don’t you worry about your mother. She’ll let us know when it is.”

  • • •

  Now, with no plans for the rest of the day, she found herself wandering aimlessly up Main Street caught in the sidewalk flow of the tourists. All morning she’d kept her phone turned off. The only text she’d gotten since arriving on Cape was from Adam. “You didn’t say goodbye.” What a mistake it had been to go home with him. He was a good guy, and she’d acted like a jerk.

  The noise in her head was as bad as the crowd on the sidewalk. She needed some peace and quiet, so she crossed the street and headed up to Where the Sidewalk Ends. Piper knew the bookstore owner, Caitlin. She was one of Shannon’s good friends, and she’d opened the shop several years ago with her mother. Piper waited impatiently behind a couple of young women in bright-printed dresses, sipping iced coffees who were blocking the door.

  “I can’t believe he did that. So what did you tell him?” one of the women said.

  “I told him it was over. I have my whole life ahead of me.” She flipped her long brown hair over her shoulder emphatically.

  Piper eyed the woman who had her whole life ahead of her. She couldn’t have been more than twenty, and even she was not settling for some guy’s nonsense. She groaned and ducked past them.

  Every time she walked in, she had the same feeling. The shop was a book lover’s haven: post and beam construction of honey-hued wood, vaulted ceilings with sweeping picture windows that let the sky inside, and a reading corner by the fireplace in the rear. The main floor housed everything from new fiction releases to local Cape Cod history. Display tables dotted the hardwood floors with breezy summer releases, coastal cookbooks, and lifestyle titles. Up the winding wooden staircase was a loft filled with children’s literature. Just outside and across the porch was a children’s annex ripe with picture books and colorful toys connected to the main building. Piper poured herself a cup of coffee, grabbed a new summer title off the first display table she passed, and made a beeline for the overstuffed armchair tucked away in the back. Heaven, she thought, falling into its cushioned recess.