Salt-Kissed Dreams (Magnolia Shore #5)

Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

June Caldwell blinked at her closet like she’d never seen it before.

She didn’t have time for this, but her brain simply wasn’t working the way it needed to.

She often felt this way after a particularly challenging day at work, and today she had cleaned two houses, then done a full eight-hour shift at the Main Street Diner.

That was a sure recipe for brain soup… something they fortunately didn’t serve on the menu at the diner.

Right. Clothes.

She could do this.

June quickly swapped her diner uniform, which was covered in the usual smudges of condiments and coffee that a long shift always brought with them, and put on a sweater and a pair of fitted jeans that always made her feel as though she was more put together than should be possible, given how comfortable they were after being washed and worn about a thousand times.

She glanced in the mirror on the back of her closet door. The outfit wasn’t bad. She wouldn’t win any fashion awards, but she felt cute, and that was what really mattered.

Her hair though…

Well, there wasn’t much to do with her shoulder-length blonde hair that wasn’t taking a shower and starting from scratch, and she didn’t have time for that, so she just pulled the top half back with a clip and called it a day.

She frowned at her reflection, considering, then decided that she looked pretty good, considering that she had worked two jobs and been on single-mom duty all day.

Indeed, as soon as she emerged from her bedroom, her seven-year-old son, Benjamin, sat up from where he’d been slumped on the couch.

“Wow, Mommy, you look pretty!” he said.

She smiled at him, her heart swelling in the way it always did when she looked at Benjamin… even though it twisted at the same time when she saw the shadows under his eyes and the way he dropped back into the cushions of the couch only moments after he’d sat up.

Benjamin had recently been diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes, and mother and son were still figuring out how to navigate the new medical condition that had taken over their lives.

Or, at least, that was how it felt most days.

Today had been one of them. Benjamin had been coming along to June’s shifts at the Main Street Diner since he was a little boy, long enough that he had his own “regular spot” in the back, close to the kitchen.

He was usually so patient. He’d sit there, doing his homework, coloring, or reading a book while June waited tables.

But since shortly before his diagnosis, Benjamin’s energy had been beyond low.

This had been the first sign that something was wrong, the thing that had sent June to seek a doctor’s opinion in the first place.

And Benjamin’s doctor had assured her that once things stabilized, he would find a way back to being his old self, but in the meantime…

He was uncharacteristically cranky. And June couldn’t even blame him. He had been forced to handle a major, permanent upheaval to his life. And this wasn’t even the first time in his short life that he’d been asked to contend with such a thing.

“Thank you, baby,” she said to Benjamin, who was snuggling up against Miriam Landers, June’s friend and one of Benjamin’s favorite babysitters.

Miriam, who was a sprightly and stylish seventy, leaned her silver hair with a neat pixie cut against Benjamin’s far more unruly mop.

“Your poor fashionable mom is going to have to go out and do something boring, and she’s not going to get to do any of the cool, fun stuff we have planned.

” Miriam, who had more spirit in her little finger than most people did in their entire bodies, gave Benjamin’s hair a playful ruffle. “Stinks to be her, huh?”

Benjamin giggled, although there were still several clear signs of weariness in his expression.

June hesitated. Should she stay home? Would it be better if she was here?

But then Benjamin looked at Miriam with the adoration that he always showed the older woman, both before and after his diagnosis.

“Yeah, we have to watch the next episode!” Benjamin said excitedly. “It’s been forever since you were here to watch with me.”

June felt her anxiety lessen at his childish exasperation, not to mention the blatant exaggeration.

Miriam had been here a week ago, but that was a long time for a kid who wanted to watch the next episode of some show about cartoon dogs that Benjamin insisted he could only consider watching when Ms. Miriam was over to babysit.

Miriam agreed evidently, as she leaned back to look down at Benjamin.

“You didn’t watch without me, did you?”

“No,” Benjamin protested, looking insulted that she’d even asked. “It’s our thing.”

“Of course,” Miriam said apologetically. “My mistake.”

“That’s okay, Ms. Miriam,” Benjamin said as he snuggled back in, satisfied.

Miriam and June shared a fond look over his sweetness.

June would have done anything to save her son from the burden of having a lifelong illness, but she wasn’t going to object to getting some extra snuggles when he wasn’t feeling well.

At seven, Benjamin was getting independent and so, so big.

June loved to see him grow, of course, but she knew that those attached-at-the-hip toddler years were behind her, so she always made sure to enjoy the hugs that came her way.

“You guys are going to be okay without me?” June asked. She always asked, even though she knew what the answer would be.

Benjamin answered before Miriam could.

“Of course, Mommy,” he said, grinning in a way that showed a gap where he’d recently lost a tooth. “We’re going to watch two episodes of our show, then I’m going to win at checkers—”

“Hey now!” Miriam protested jokingly. “I might win!”

“—then read books and go to bed,” Benjamin finished. He darted a sidelong glance at Miriam, then hid his face behind his hand and said to June, in a perfectly audible whisper, “I always win at checkers.”

“He doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” Miriam said, reaching around to tickle Benjamin as she spoke. “He’s just a boy. I’m a great checkers player.”

“No, you aren’t!” Benjamin’s words were practically lost in his peals of laughter.

June pressed her lips together against her own laughter. She was worrying over nothing… at least on Benjamin’s part.

“And you’re going to be a good listener for Ms. Miriam, right?” June prompted.

Another offended look from Benjamin, this one directed at his mother.

“I’m a really good listener, Mommy,” he said.

Miriam’s look wasn’t quite as insulted as the one that came from Benjamin, but it was close.

“I know what you’re up to, Juney,” she said chidingly. “I’m doing just fine. Benjamin and I are going to have a calm evening. Nothing too taxing for these old bones.”

“Or these young bones!” Benjamin chimed in.

June couldn’t hold her laughter back any longer at that comment, even if she was not entirely reassured.

She knew that Miriam had been feeling her age a little more than usual recently, and while she appreciated both that Miriam offered to watch Benjamin regularly and that Miriam’s presence gave Benjamin a grandmotherly presence in his life, she didn’t want to be a burden to her friend.

“I’m good,” Miriam said, punctuating her point. “Go. Moms need breaks too.”

June was tempted to press the point, but she’d had this argument a hundred times before, and she knew how it would go.

She would worry that she relied on Miriam too much; Miriam would counter that she loved Benjamin and that it was no burden at all.

Then, if June still balked, Miriam would remind her that it could be lonely, living alone, which she had done ever since her husband had died decades before.

And then June would start to think about how she too, had been widowed too young, about how Benjamin had unjustly lost his father when he was only a baby, and then June’s cute outfit wouldn’t matter, not when she’d end up crying her eyes puffy in the car.

It didn’t matter that it had been years since Keith died.

Grief still sometimes came for June and struck her like a sledgehammer.

In some ways, she was grateful for the pangs of loss that still sometimes left her feeling that rush of agony she had felt in those first days after she’d lost her husband, her child’s father, her first love.

Those jolts of sadness helped her feel as though Keith was still with her in a way.

It felt like an act of remembering to continue to feel sad that he wasn’t here anymore, that he wouldn’t get to see Benjamin grow up into the wonderful, wonderful child that he was.

Connecting over their losses was one of the things that had brought June and Miriam together.

Their friendship was about more than that pain, of course, but June really appreciated having someone who could understand that particular part of her history.

Their other friends didn’t have the same experience, which, of course, June was glad for.

She didn’t want them to suffer, obviously.

Losing someone, she had learned, was complicated. Grief was complicated.

“Go,” Miriam repeated, jarring June from her introspection. “Have fun. We’ll be here when you get back.”

“Okay, okay,” June said. She knew when she was beat. “Have fun, okay? I love you!”

Miriam blew her a kiss.

“Love you, Mommy!” Benjamin called.

June waved goodbye, and by the time she made it to the door, she could already hear Miriam and Benjamin cheerfully discussing the previous plot points in their show and their guesses about what would happen next.

June had a bittersweet smile on her lips as she grabbed her purse and headed out to her car.