Chapter Two
Ciara
County Kerry, Ireland
Three weeks later
The beach is busy today. I guess it’s been busy since early April, when the weather first changed, but it’s especially busy today. They must have let the schools out early. Or maybe everyone’s just playing hooky.
I can’t blame them if so. My father used to say that nowhere is more beautiful than Ireland in the sunshine.
Probably because we never get that much of it.
Especially on the west coast, where it rains 50 percent of the year.
We’re used to clouds here. To dull, drab gray permeating our world.
And so, when they part, when that big ball of fire shines down on us, it’s a little like Dorothy stepping into Oz.
The grass looks greener, the rivers sparkle, and everyone walks around with bemused looks as they inform each other that for two hours the other day we were hotter than Seville.
There now, they say triumphantly. Where else would you get it?
Beautiful. For a week or two anyway. Because the thing is, when you’re not used to much more than that, when your buildings are designed to keep in the heat and your entire humidity-loving ecosystem has developed around the rain you so often complain about, you start to long for a breeze.
For an item of clothing you haven’t sweated through.
And as I stand manning the tiny smoothie truck on this sweltering May afternoon, watching a mother diligently cover her toddler head to toe in sunscreen, I wonder how much longer my people, my temperate, let-me-just-grab-a-jacket people, can pretend to enjoy this.
“What the hell are you doing?”
Maddie’s voice whips through the cramped space of the truck, sounding so furious that I look down to make sure I’m still peeling bananas and not, you know, murdering a small child.
“Ciara.”
“What!” I exclaim as she stomps inside. “Stop yelling at me. I’m on my period.”
“No, you’re not; we’re synced. Where’s Natalie?”
“I let her go early.”
“You can’t do that. You don’t work here.”
“And apparently she doesn’t know that.”
Maddie plucks the banana skin from my hands, dumping it into a trash bag before pinning her glare on me. “You’re supposed to be at home. Writing.”
“I’m taking a break.”
“You’re procrastinating.”
“And providing you with free labor in the process. I’m making smoothies,” I add when she goes to argue. “I’m not heading down the mines for the day. Plus, you have air-conditioning.” I grab the small portable fan from the shelf, holding it up to my face. “We’re in the middle of a heat wave.”
“It’s going to be in the late twenties for a couple of days. That’s barely a heat wave.”
“They say it’s going to be like this for the whole summer. The shops have run out of factor fifty.”
“No, they haven’t.”
“The tar is melting on the roads.”
“Get out of my truck.”
“Right after I help this gentleman.”
I nudge her out of the way, beaming at the man approaching the counter. He’s cute. Got the whole Surfer Boy vibe going for him. Probably a tourist. You can tell because he’s one of the few people here who doesn’t look as if they’re dying from sunstroke.
“Hello there,” he says, smiling up at me. “And how’s your afternoon going so far?”
“Oh, I’ve had worse. What can I get you?”
He barely glances at the menu before picking the first thing. “I’ll take a banana crush.”
“Fabulous choice. Lucky I prepped ahead of time, huh?” I add to Maddie, who huffs as she starts scooping ice. “Would you like some honey with that?”
“I’d love some…” He peers at my nametag. “Sierra.”
“Keer-ah,” I correct. “It’s a hard C.”
“It’s cute.”
“It’s four fifty.” Maddie leans past me, card machine in hand, and the man’s attention flicks to her. His smile stays right where it is.
“And what’s your—”
“No. Pay. Thank you.”
Oh, she is not in a good mood. It’s not you, I want to tell Mr. Flirty, but then I catch him checking out my boobs, so I don’t.
“It’s really your people skills that make this business such a success,” I say when he’s gone.
She ignores me. “Did you sleep okay last night?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sure?”
“I don’t know, Mads, I was asleep, wasn’t I?”
For an hour or two, anyway.
I woke up this morning with a ball of anxiety in my stomach so tight that all I could do was lie there until I needed to pee badly enough that I got up.
And I tried after that. I did. I showered and dressed and turned on my computer and opened up all the things I needed to, but the room was too warm and my mind was too empty and when I went down to the kitchen it was to find the sink leaking and the freezer not freezing and one of the pictures I’d hung last week had fallen to the floor and smashed, scattering glass all over the tiles.
On top of that, John, my postman, rocked up to the house with the usual bundle of seven fan letters addressed to my father and I had to find a new box for them because the others were already full.
I like John, but he always brings me seven letters, a number so exact that I’m starting to think he’s lying to me about them. As if he’s hoarding a lot more but thinks, Seven’s enough. She’ll be able to handle seven.
Well, joke’s on him.
I can’t handle anything.
And the way Maddie’s looking at me right now, I think she knows it.
“I didn’t send Natalie home,” I say. “She’s taking a break. She’ll be back in five.”
Maddie just shakes her head.
She does that a lot these days, but I understand why.
Her frustration comes from worry, which comes from love because she’s been my best friend since we were kids, which means she’s stuck with me.
And ever since I moved back to look after Dad, she stops by the house every other day to pop in and check up.
Real I was just in the neighborhood vibes for someone who lives an hour in the other direction.
But she continues to do it anyway. Because that’s what she does.
She was there throughout my father’s sickness and then his funeral.
She let me mourn and grieve and stay in bed for days on end, and now, slowly but surely, she’s doing her best to make sure I don’t stay that way forever.
Which is why I’m not entirely convinced I won’t wake up chained to my laptop one of these days.
“Where were you anyway?” I ask. “I’ve been here unsupervised for a whole twenty minutes.”
“I went to see the café,” she says, checking her stock of strawberries. “One of the boards across the window came loose and I found I can see inside if I squint hard enough.”
“That is…” I shake my head. “You have a problem, you know that?”
Her expression turns wistful. “I know.”
Maddie is the proud owner of this smoothie truck, but it’s not exactly her dream.
That would be the long-abandoned, dilapidated unit ten minutes up the road.
She wants to open a café there someday, but that involves a lot of money she doesn’t have, and the banks aren’t exactly lining up to hand out loans to seasonal businesses that are shutting up shop everywhere else.
Still, she works and she saves and she keeps that dream alive, so really, she should be accepting all the free help she can get.
I give her a hopeful smile. “Do you want me to man the ice cream machine?”
“I want you to go home and write,” she says. “Or at least get some sleep. You look exhausted.”
“Rude.”
“But true. Did you read that article about insomnia I sent you?”
Last time I checked, there were a thousand and twelve unread emails in my inbox, so…no.
“I’ll be grand,” I tell her as I try to catch the eye of two teenage girls walking past. They’re in a fast-food mood, though, and head straight for the burger joint parked next to us.
Our neighbors are a bit of a sore spot for Maddie, seeing as how she was supposed to be the only food truck this summer, and sure enough, she follows my gaze with a scowl as they join the queue.
“I keep getting his deliveries.”
“Whose?”
“Shane’s,” she says, as though his mere name is enough to put her in a bad mood.
“Burger Boy’s?”
“They never put his name on the order form, so they give everything to me because I’m the only one here in the mornings. Which means I have to sort through it all and deliver it myself.”
“Traveling a whole three meters to the left.”
“It’s the principle of the thing,” she mutters, holding a chilled water bottle to her cheek.
“Just go and talk to him. Tell him you’re going to stop minding his stuff.”
“I’ve tried! He’s never there, is he? He probably manages the whole thing from some penthouse apartment. I bet you he has a business on every beach in the country.”
I nod, though I’ve listened to the same spiel from her a hundred times already. I get it. She’s worried about the competition. But it’s not as though she’ll be short on customers for the next few months. That sun isn’t going anywhere.
“Maybe we should start table service,” I say. “We could make up a batch of juices.”
“Didn’t I tell you to leave?”
“And I’ll find a tray to—”
“Ciara.” Maddie’s hands land on my shoulders, her eye contact almost unnerving in its directness.
“You are the most beautiful, talented, wonderful friend I could possibly have, I love you with my whole heart and thank the universe every day that we grew up in the same place at the same time, but if you don’t go home in the next five minutes and write your book, I will, without hesitation, dump a carton of yogurt all over your head. ”
“That’s food waste.”
“Get out of my truck.”
And, with a firm hold on my elbow, she escorts me out.
Thirty minutes later, I turn off the radio and pull up outside my house, already missing the distraction of other people.
The air-conditioning in my car is weak at best, and I can feel a headache coming on, a dull pounding at the base of my neck that’s been threatening me all day.
I always seem to have a headache these days, but I guess only getting three or four hours of sleep a night will do that to a person. I don’t need a doctor to tell me that.