Читать книгу That Summer Place: Island Time / Old Things / Private Paradise - Сьюзен Виггс - Страница 12

San Francisco, 1997

Catherine slipped off her glasses and sagged back in her chair, staring out at the pink Victorian across the street from her office. It was four o’clock and almost every ten minutes there had been an urgent call.

She pinched the bridge of her nose and saw stars. When her vision cleared, she was looking at her desktop, where a cluster of silver-framed images of her daughters Alyson and Dana were grinning back at her.

In a frame with delicate ballet shoes decorating the corners was a photograph of Dana, her oldest daughter, dressed in a pink tutu, her blonde hair scraped back off her small heart-shaped face. She had been six then and had no front teeth. Her gummy smile looked almost too big for her face. There was another shot next to it of her sitting on Santa’s knee, her eyes turned up to him in complete awe. And the last photo was taken only a few months ago when Dana went to the Sadie Hawkins dance.

She turned to Alyson’s pictures. There was her second-grade photo taken the day after she’d tried to cut her own bangs; she looked like she’d had a fight with a lawnmower. Every time Catherine saw that photo she smiled.

There was no picture of Aly on Santa’s knee. Aly had always preferred animals to humans. She had liked Disney’s Robin Hood better than Sleeping Beauty. She wouldn’t go near Santa because when she was three the older kids at her preschool had told her there was no such thing as Santa Claus. After that day, Santa meant nothing to her.

Now the Easter Bunny, well, that was different. Those kids hadn’t said anything about the Easter Bunny. So instead of a Santa photo, there was one of Aly sitting on top of the Easter Bunny’s furry knee, her hands cupping his pink fuzzy cheeks while she demanded to know how he got around to all the houses in the world and managed to hide all those eggs in only one night. One of Aly’s typical questions—the kind that were hard to answer.

Catherine glanced back at the stack of report folders in a jagged pile on her desk, then up at the smiling images of her daughters. She picked up the phone, punched in a series of numbers and got Seattle information.

Fifteen minutes later she had rented the same quaint Victorian house in the same cove on the same secluded San Juan island where she’d spent so many summers.

This June, she vowed, would be different for her girls.

It was different. Her girls didn’t want to go.

Dana had to turn down a free ticket to a rock concert at Great America and Aly was going to miss a birthday party at the boardwalk in Santa Cruz. Aly had eventually accepted Catherine’s decision to go to the island, especially after Catherine had bribed her by letting her bring along her cat Harold. But fifteen year old Dana was still scowling at the world. Nothing worked with her. If there had been a high school course in sulking, Dana would have aced the class.

Over an hour ago they had left the ferry at Orcas, purchased their supplies and loaded everything into a boat run by Blakely Charters. Until January, when daily ferry service would start to Spruce Island, the charter company made two runs a week. Sundays and Thursdays. Other than by seaplane, hiring a boat was the only way to get to the more remote and secluded islands of the San Juans.

It was late and the sun was sliding down the horizon; it turned the cotton clouds in the western sky gold, purple and red. Catherine leaned over the bow of the boat and pointed west. “Girls! Quick! Look at that sky!”

She had forgotten how gorgeous the sunsets were here. The color. The sheer beauty of nature. No one could possibly visit this part of the world and not believe in the perfect hand of God.

She turned toward her silent daughters to share their first sight of a Northwest summer sunset, and her heart sank.

Dana sat with her back to her, staring out at the water like a prisoner heading for death row. In her lap was an open copy of Stephen King’s Green Mile series. Without looking at Catherine, she blinked once, then buried her nose back in the book.

Dana’s sulking hurt Catherine. She didn’t want to let on that Dana had gotten to her, so she looked away. Aly had on a set of headphones. She was head-bopping to some song that shrieked through the headphone earpieces.

Catherine reached over, picked up the empty CD case, and read the name.

Alanis Morrisette.

She felt as if she were a hundred years old. She hated that music. Then she remembered how much her dad had disliked her Bob Dylan albums. She asked herself the question she always asked when she was dealing with the girls.

Will it matter in five years?

Dana’s sulking wouldn’t matter and hopefully some other hot young singer would be Aly’s favorite—if she still had her hearing.

The generation gap between her and her daughters felt as if it were as wide as the Grand Canyon. But she did know one thing—her relationship with her daughters would matter in five years.

She wanted her girls back, not these two young people she didn’t know anymore. She desperately wanted what few memories they could make this month, something special for them to look back on the same way she looked back on the island and those summers from her childhood.

She thought of this trip as a fresh start; she needed to be a mother again.

Catherine reached across and snatched the book out of Dana’s hands. “You can read this later.” She tucked it inside her duffel bag, then she punched the off button on Aly’s CD player and gestured for her to take off the headphones.

Both girls gaped at her.

She pointed ahead of them. “That’s Spruce Island,” she told them in a classic mother’s tone that demanded their attention—now.

Against the horizon the island was a camel-shaped lump of rocks and trees and natural coastline that grew larger the closer they got.

“I loved that island when I was your age. My favorite memories are there and it’s important to me that we spend time together so you can see what a wonderful place it is.”

They continued to look at her, then turned in unison to look at the island ahead of them.

“There are no houses,” Dana said in a voice that implied it was the very ends of the earth.

“There are summer houses, a few cabins and a village on the other side of the island. You can’t see them on this side. It’s more isolated. The island has always been a place where people go to get away.” She paused, then added, “Like us.”

They turned back around. From the looks on their faces you’d think she had just spoken Greek.

“The first houses were summer homes built late in the nineteenth century. Those hills are parkland and there are hiking trails.”

Dana frowned at her. “You hate hiking. You said you’d rather chew on foil than traipse up some mountain.”

“Yeah,” Aly said, siding with her sister. “You said smart people leave mountain climbing to the goats.”

Catherine realized she would never have to worry about losing her memory. She had her daughters to remind her of every single thing she had ever said.

“Fine. Forget about hiking. As I was saying, the house is on a cove on the western side of the island. There’s a private dock and a mooring. The rental agent said the owners still keep a sailboat. We’re free to use it. There are supposed to be bikes, too. When we used to come here there was a handyman’s cabin on a nearby inlet and a small harbor where boats from the mainland could moor. Other than that the island is pretty isolated.”

Twenty minutes later they stood at the end of a gray weathered dock, their bags and supplies stacked like building blocks and Harold whining in his cat carrier. There was nothing before them but silvery water. Catherine watched the boat turn around in a wide swath and head back for the mainland.

For just one moment she looked around her and was a little scared. It was secluded, and they were three women alone.

She raised a hand to her forehead and scanned the island. The large house was partially hidden by cedar and maple trees, but Catherine could see the sharp roofline. The old shingles were green with algae and moss, the way everything grew green in the dampness of the islands.

She took a deep breath, bent down, picked up a duffel and two plastic bags of groceries, then she marched bravely down the dock toward the rocky beach. Over her shoulder she called out, “Grab something and let’s go, girls. It’s getting dark.”