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Reuben cleared his throat, and Jean looked at him. They’d talked about topics they could each bring up, but Becky had thrown a wrench right at Jean’s head. She looked back to Becky and reached over to take one of her hands.
“You’ll have to come to the cove all the time,” Jean said, her eyes filling with tears again. “To see it and experience it…and to see Heidi.”
A tear slipped down Becky’s face too. She swiped at it with her free hand and said, “I’d like that.”
ChapterTwenty-Two
Clara rolled over as her alarm went off. The weight of the day already pressed on her chest, and she couldn’t get a proper breath.
Jennifer wanted an answer on her offer to invest in Friendship Inn.
Clara needed to get out to the island and go through the expenses before she could say yes. Jennifer wanted all the bills that were accumulating, and Clara left everything at work so she didn’t have to deal with it at home.
Heaven knew she had enough going on here to fill the hours. Lena had decided she didn’t like riding two ferries to get to the inn, and she’d refused to go every day this week. That complicated things, because while she could live alone, Clara and Scott had never left her for longer than a few hours at a time. Certainly not all day long.
She could cook a few things—scrambled eggs and toast. She loved the toaster waffles with a lot of butter and syrup, and she could pour herself a bowl of cereal. Hot dogs, sandwiches, Lena could do all of that.
She and Scott had been going in shifts, with Clara getting on the first ferry off Diamond Island and working until early afternoon. Scott would show up about eleven, and that left Lena at home for almost four hours by the time Clara returned.
When she did, it wasn’t nap time. It was clean up time, and emotional management time, and lecture time, and frankly, she was exhausted.
She kept her eyes closed, because not only did the biggest decision of her life need to be made today, but it was Asher’s birthday party that afternoon. Clara hadn’t RSVP’ed though AJ had texted her privately to ask if she’d be there.
She’d managed to buy a gift through the miracle of online shopping, and she’d been up late last night pacing the kitchen when she remembered she hadn’t wrapped it yet. She’d done that, and she was all set to go to the party.
She didn’t want to go, though. She reasoned that she’d only met AJ a few month ago, and surely the woman wouldn’t care if Clara was at her one-year-old’s birthday party. He’d get the gift either way.
Scenes from beach day last weekend filtered through her head, and Clara could admit she’d enjoyed herself. She loved how accepting everyone had been of her and her family, but she didn’t feel truly close to anyone in the group outside of her mother and Jean.
Maybe Eloise, she thought, as she’d asked her questions all summer that Eloise had readily answered. Or Kelli. She’d always stood or sat by Clara at parties, always said hello to her early on, and generally seemed to want to get to know Clara.
It was Clara who didn’t like people much. She knew it. She knew it took her an extraordinarily long time to make friends and learn to trust people. She’d always labeled herself an independent person, and that was definitely part of it. But also, she’d grown up six years younger than Reuben, and that was enough distance to put them in two different generations.
She’d dealt with her father alone as a teenager, her mother too passive to do much to curb their shouting matches. She’d dealt with her assignments and grades alone, the perfectionist in her not allowing anything but absolute perfection.
She wanted the same for the inn, and deep down, she knew she’d never achieve it.
A sigh slipped from her mouth, and she forced herself to sit on the edge of the bed. “You’re going today?” Scott asked, his voice deep and husky from sleep.
“Yeah,” she said. “What else do I have to do?”
“Relax,” he said. “Take Lena shopping. Go to the birthday party.”
She stood and gave him a dirty look. “Shopping?”With what?she wanted to ask him. Three of their credit cards were maxed out, and Clara couldn’t really justify putting ice cream and shorts they didn’t need on another Visa.
Scott didn’t respond, and Clara stepped into the shower. She stared as the water went down the drain, wishing all of her problems could just as easily disappear. Go down a pipe to who-knows-where, where they were out of sight, out of mind.
She had no idea if the pipe taking the water from her shower was strong and secure, or if it was two showers away from leaking into the foundation of the house. It could go either way, because she couldn’t see it. Didn’t have to deal with it until it burst.
Clara was the one about to burst, and she knew it. She could feel the emotion simmering in the bottom of her stomach. It might be Lena whining about something that set her off, or it might be something even simpler, like the ferry being late or full.
Her frustration built and built inside her, until she blew, and she didn’t know how to stop being like that. “Therapy,” she said to the water going down the drain. She’d seen a therapist for many years in Montgomery, and she’d really enjoyed working on herself. She’d definitely slipped since everything with Scott had exploded her nice, quiet, normal life in suburbia.
She went through the motions of the morning—brushing her teeth, brewing coffee, brushing Lena’s bangs out of her hair and saying she’d be home later—and before she knew it, she’d stepped onto Friendship Island.
The construction crew wasn’t there that day, and Clara simply stood still and breathed in the stillness of this place. It was quiet and serene, and she owned almost the entire land mass she stood on.
She could sell it too, and then maybe she and Scott would be able to take Lena to get an ice cream cone without a terrible pinch beneath her ribs. She couldn’t describe the feeling of worry that surrounded her all the time. Always about money. What excuse would she use when the next card filled up? Which one would she pay this month with another one, just to buy herself thirty more days?
