Page 43 of Windward Hearts

“Oh, yeah,” Izzy said with all the confidence of a kid who had grown up in a seaside town. “All the time. That’s not even that bad at all.”

“That’s what I think too,” the doctor agreed. “Now, the weirdest part is that, after I put the drops in, the light in the room will look really bright, so I’ll take you to a dim room to wait for the drops to work…”

Isabelle seemed entirely taken in by the doctor’s warmth and easy competence, and she was very brave as she accepted the dilating drops in her eyes. She squeezed her parents’ hands as the stinging drops went in, but didn’t make a sound. The family was then taken to an appropriately dim secondary waiting area, but they weren’t left there for very long before the substance took effect. Soon after, they were brought back to the examination room, where the doctor patiently explained every step to Izzy before she did it.

“So, this contraption is actually like all different kinds of glasses at once,” she explained. “It’s called a phoropter, which kind of makes me think of dinosaurs. Tell me which of these settings helps you see better, setting one… or two… ?”

Cadence and Tyler sat quietly in the corner while Izzy and the doctor went through all the steps of the exam. When they were done, the doctor sat back and addressed her patient directly.

“So, Izzy,” she said. “I do think that some glasses will help you see better, just like the way you could see when we used the phoropter. It will help with your distance vision, like seeing the board at school or watching television at home. Did things seem clearer when you looked through the lenses than they do now?”

“Yeah, I guess so,” Izzy agreed, although she sounded much less opposed to the idea now that she’d made it through the exam.

“Well, the good news is that there are about a billion cool choices for frames downstairs in our shop,” the doctor said brightly. “So I’m confident that you and your parents can find ones that you think look cool. There are some that I walk past every day and then feel disappointed that they don’t make them in adult sizes.”

Izzy basically had stars in her eyes over the idea of being seen as cool by this doctor, whom she clearly adored.

“Okay!” Izzy said brightly.

The Meadowses thanked the doctor, then headed down to the glasses shop. On the way, Cadence looked down at her daughter, whose eyes were obscured by the giant, disposable sunglasses that the doctor provided to protect their patients’ eyes after dilation.

“Izzy, honey,” she asked delicately. “Can you tell us why you didn’t want to admit that you were having a hard time seeing?”

Isabelle looked more than a little sheepish. “Nobody in my class has glasses,” she said, as if this explained everything… and in a way, it did. Change was hard for kids, and being different made that change even more intense.

“But Dr. Miller thinks I’ll look awesome,” Izzy reported, as though her parents hadn’t been present for everything. “So it probably isn’t that bad.”

“Probably not,” Tyler agreed. Behind Izzy’s back, he squeezed Cadence’s hand. Their relief was positively overwhelming. It felt so good to know that Izzy’s troubles were on their way to being resolved.

Izzy spent more than a little time looking at the different frames available in every shade of the rainbow. After the kind of deliberation that was usually reserved for negotiating peace treaties, she selected a pair with translucent plastic frames. They were pink at the top, then faded into an orangey, peach sort of shade in the middle, before becoming yellow on the bottom. They were absolutely adorable, and as Tyler and Cadence went over to order the prescription lenses that the doctor had recommended, they watched Izzy pull faces in the mirror while still wearing the sample frames. She cheesed at her own reflection, then stuck out her tongue, then frowned dramatically… though this expression didn’t last long, since she was too clearly enjoying herself to hold the unhappy emotion.

Cadence released a sigh that she felt like she had been holding for weeks. There was, after all, nothing a mother wanted more than to know that her child was happy. And, looking at Izzy right now, there was absolutely no way to doubt it.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Hope took the first bite of the muffin she had just purchased from Honey Bee Bakery and practically moaned with happiness at the taste. It was a raspberry muffin, baked with those big, coarse crystals of sugar across the top. The generous sprinkling should have made the white chocolate drizzle overkill… but it wasn’t. It was a perfect muffin. It was the kind of muffin that made Hope think that more people should write poems about muffins. It quite honestly made her consider calling up the handful of food critics she’d made contact with over the years and telling them that they were all sleeping on the eateries in this tiny town in Massachusetts.

Another part of her wanted to keep the secret for herself, lest she find herself battling the masses of culinary tourists for this sweet, tart, rich, deliciousness.

She took another generous bite, her eyes closed with happiness, and chewed slowly. When she had swallowed the bite, she opened her eyes and⁠—

She nearly choked on a mouthful of nothing when she saw June standing right in front of her, grinning.

“Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry,” June said, stifling a laugh as Hope pressed a hand to her chest, trying to calm her racing heart. “I didn’t mean to startle you. I just didn’t want to interrupt what seemed to be a private moment between you and that muffin.”

Fortunately, Hope had also purchased a cup of coffee. She took a mouthful, found that it was nearly as excellent as the muffin, and carefully cleared her throat.

“It was a private moment,” she said with a smile when she could trust herself not to cough again. “I was composing an ode. Have you ever eaten one of these?”

She lifted the muffin in illustration. She would offer June a bite, in the name of friendship and all that, but it would be a notable sacrifice. It really was that good.

“Oh, trust me,” June said with a laugh. “Every muffin they sell in this place and I go way back. In the fall, they do an apple walnut oat muffin that will make you cry.”

“Ooh, I will have to try that,” Hope said before she could pause to consider that it wasn’t at all likely that she would still be in Magnolia Shore in the fall.

I can visit, though, she reminded herself. No, she would visit. She should have been visiting more anyway, rather than always offering to host her grandmother in Boston. Now, she just had lots of reasons to do so.

Friends, muffins, Miriam. There were way worse reasons to hop on a train up from Boston.