Julie caught a glimpse of herself in a shop window and winced. Capris and an old hoodie of Ria’s: she’d let herself go since the divorce, the eighth deadly sin according to her ex-husband, Melvin. Not that it had done her much good to keep herself in shape for him.
He’d fallen out of love with her. He didn’t want to be married. Even though it had happened seven months ago, she still had trouble believing that thirty-five years of marriage were over, just like that. That Melvin had moved up to Saint Michaels and was living in some business-suite hotel close to his job.
She glanced up and down the quiet main street of town. She hoped she wouldn’t run into someone she knew, but then again, who cared? It wasn’t like she was out to impress anyone.
Still, she ought to try harder with her appearance. Look good, feel good, her determinedly perky, stylish mother had always said. “What do you think about a top like that for me?” she asked her granddaughters, pausing to look through the window of Pleasant Shores’ only “better women’s clothing” shop. Read: middle-aged and expensive. But for now, while she was getting alimony, she could still afford to shop there. The top in question was a dusty pink and had the forgiving waistline she needed.
“It’s cute,” Sophia said, glancing up from her phone and giving Julie an encouraging smile. Of course, she’d barely looked at the top.
Julie turned to Kaitlyn and lifted an eyebrow. “What do you think?” Partly, she was encouraging Kaitlyn to express an opinion, showing she valued it, but she did in fact expect more honesty from Kaitlyn.
Kaitlyn shrugged, her forehead wrinkling. “It’s fine. It’s just like everything else you wear.”
In other words, what did it matter what Julie wore? She was old, a grandma.
“You should get that one,” Kaitlyn muttered, jerking her head toward a purple-and-turquoise tie-dye tunic.
“Really? It’s so bright.”
Kaitlyn shrugged and they walked on, but Julie gave a glance back at the top Kaitlyn had pointed out. It would definitely be a new look.
As it turned out, Julie did see people she knew: a friend from the bookstore, then someone she’d met recently at church. She’d been a year-round resident for ten years, but to the locals, that was nothing; she was only now differentiating herself from the summer visitors.
Sophia saw some girls she knew and ran screaming to hug them, then started an intense conversation. Kaitlyn and Julie slowed their pace. “Do you know who they are? Old friends?” Julie asked. “Seems like she hasn’t seen them in a while.”
“They go to our school. She saw them an hour ago.” Kaitlyn’s lip curled. “That’s just how they act.”
Julie remembered, then, the shrill excitement Ria had exhibited every time she saw a girl she knew. “Should we keep walking?” she asked Kaitlyn. “She can catch up. Or we can wait for her at the benches.” The benches adjoined the big beach and were a gathering place where music groups performed and tourists clustered during the season.
“Whatever.” They trudged along, and Julie felt marginally glad that she’d gotten the girls out and about. She worried about Kaitlyn’s morale, in particular.
The sun was warm on her face, the breeze not too strong, the bay’s smells rising up as they got closer to the water. Julie loved the Eastern Shore, always had; it had been her idea to use her inheritance from her grandfather to buy a summer cottage here.
They reached the benches and sat down, and moments later Sophia joined them, breathless. “Sorry! Let’s go down.”
They walked through the shipped-in sand, debating where to sit. As they found a place to set up the chair and towels they’d brought, Sophia put an arm around Julie. “This was a good idea, Grandma.”
Her heart warmed. “It’s fun to spend time with you girls. Now, be sure to put on sunscreen.”
There were several groups of people on the beach, even though it was way too cool to swim. Cabin fever, she guessed.
Kaitlyn grunted and nudged her sister, and they both looked toward a group of boys, closer to Kaitlyn’s age than Sophia’s.
Kaitlyn finger-combed her hair and checked her appearance in her phone camera. “I look bad,” she said, tossing the phone down.
“You should totally go talk to them,” Sophia encouraged.
“No way!”
“Well, just...walk by them, then. Give them a chance to talk to you.”
“Will you come?”
“Okay, sure.” Sophia got up and grabbed her phone and slid back into her denim shorts. Kaitlyn had never taken hers off, and the two of them started in the direction of the boys, who were throwing Frisbees. Then Sophia turned back. “Is this all right, Grandma?”
“Go. Have fun.” She felt successful now, like she’d had a good influence on her granddaughters, getting them to come outside. She pulled out her mystery novel and leaned back in her chair, looking out at the water, watching as the girls got farther away. A buzz let her know that Kaitlyn had forgotten her phone, and idly she picked it up.
Make sure you spend time with Grandma like we talked about, was the message on the lock screen.
Oh. So it wasn’t that she was helping her granddaughters; it was that they were helping her, per their mother’s instructions. Embarrassed, she leaned her head against the back of the chair and closed her eyes.
Apparently, “spending time with Grandma” was a topic of discussion between her daughter and her granddaughters. She was a project.
She looked down at her pale legs and counted two more age spots. Great.
Grabbing her novel, she tried to read, but her thoughts kept returning to that text. If she wasn’t really helping her granddaughters, then she felt sort of...pointless. And that annoyed her. She had no intention of being one of those divorced women who dwelled on problems or pitied herself. She’d always been someone who took action.
She needed to make a change. But what?
* * *
MONDAY MORNING, TREY got lucky.
He walked with King down the rocky coastline toward the school. Walking on uneven terrain wasn’t the easiest thing for a guy with a spinal injury to do, but today, the outdoor setting gave him an advantage. Or at least gave him access.
Erica and her students—ten or eleven teenagers, mostly boys—were out on the beach. The kids stood or knelt in a rough semicircle, and Erica was talking to them, gesticulating with her hands, bending over to pick up something and hold it up.
Looked like a science lesson, and they’d chosen a rotten day for it. After that unseasonable warm spell, the temperatures had plummeted and the sky had gone heavy. Now a cold wind whipped Erica’s dark, shaggy hair. She forked it back with an impatient gesture and kept talking.