Chapter Twenty-Three
Andrew
This wasn’t a bad way to spend a morning, Andrew thought as he adjusted Finn’s helmet, double-checked Zara’s, and put on his
own.
The morning was sunny and bright, with the air smelling fresh and clean from all the rain and sunlight gleaming on the water.
A few more days like this and he might begin to think living here in Oregon hadn’t been the worst idea ever.
“Okay. Ready to do this?”
The kids grinned at him.
“Yes. Let’s go,” Zara said.
They took off with Finn in front. Zara followed behind him on her pink mountain bike and Andrew took up the rear so that he
could keep a careful eye on both of his children.
He loved bicycling. In LA, this had been one of his favorite exercises, taking his bike down to the beach paths and riding
up and down the coast. This wasn’t quite the same as a good, hard workout. He had to ride at a pace slower than a snail stuck
in peanut butter and maintain a careful eye on them at the same time, but he enjoyed it nonetheless.
“Do you have the package, Z?” he asked his daughter.
She gestured to her basket. “I’ve got it here. It’s all wrapped up.”
Andrew was aware of a tingle of awareness as they biked several houses down on their way to Rosie’s place.
He had only seen her sporadically since the party. She had stopped at Stormhaven a few times to check on the progress, but
he had either been away from home or up in his office.
He wasn’t sure how but since she had taken over managing his renovation, the pace of the work seemed to have accelerated dramatically. At this rate, he hoped the house would be done in the next month, right around the time his book was due to his publisher.
“I hope she’s home,” Zara said.
“If she’s not, we’ll simply keep bike riding and stop on our way back.”
Their plan had been to head to a park on the other side of town they hadn’t yet visited, one he had heard had a fun playground
as well as an easy path down to the beach.
Mostly, he wanted to take advantage of the nice weather to explore their surroundings. They crested the hill toward Rosie’s
house and drove up her driveway. As they did, several chickens scurried out of their way.
“I hope Dottie is around,” Zara said. “She’s the funniest dog.”
Rosie’s little Dottie might quite possibly be the ugliest dog Andrew had ever seen, with her wispy fur and squat body, but
somehow she was still adorable in spite of it. Or maybe because of it.
“I get to ring the doorbell,” Finn said, carefully grabbing the package out of Zara’s basket with both hands.
“Not if I get there first,” Zara said. She raced up the porch steps, but before she could ring the bell, Andrew heard a sound
from around the side of the house.
Someone was singing. It was Rosie, he realized, singing along to a nineties pop group he remembered well, in a sweet alto
voice.
He didn’t want to surprise her, but if she had headphones on, she wouldn’t hear them anyway.
“Guys, it sounds like she’s in the backyard. Let’s go around and find her.”
His children eagerly agreed and headed in that direction. The chickens seemed interested in their goings-on and followed close behind them. Zara was nervous about them, but Finn seemed completely comfortable.
When they rounded the house, they found her kneeling by one of her flower gardens, pulling weeds and deadheading old blooms.
“Hi, Rosie!” Finn exclaimed. She didn’t hear, so the boy moved closer. “Hi, Rosie!”
She squealed and whirled around, dropping her hand tools in the dirt. “Oh my word! You scared the life out of me.”
“Sorry,” Andrew said. “We tried to make noise so you’d hear us, but you seemed preoccupied.”
A hint of color crawled up her cheeks. She looked fresh and lovely, so pretty he wanted to simply stare at her.
He was fiercely drawn to her and wished he dared pull his phone out and take a picture of her, right here in her garden, surrounded
by flowers and sunshine.
“We brought you a present,” Finn said. “I made it myself.”
“A present! That’s so kind of you.” She rose with a puzzled expression.
“This is completely Finn’s idea. He did all the heavy lifting. Zara and I just rode along.”
“Thank you,” she said, still looking confused as she accepted the hastily wrapped gift Finn handed to her.
“At art camp, we had to make a sculpture from clay. I didn’t know what to make and the teacher said I could make something
for someone else who did something nice for me.”
“Okay,” she said slowly, looking no less baffled.
He beamed at her. “You helped my dad find my Darth Vader minifig when I lost it at the party. I was so sad and I thought it
was gone forever. My dad said you are the one who first saw it in the grass and that you looked for a long time.”
Rosie’s expression softened with pleasure. “That is really kind of you. I can’t wait to see what you made.”
He beamed with pride as he handed over the small bundle. Andrew wanted to tell her to keep her expectations low, but he would
never say anything to hurt his son’s feelings.
He had to hope she could understand the emotion behind the gift. Something told him Rosie was the kind of person who would
never denigrate a child’s offering, no matter how humble it might be.
As he had hoped, she unwrapped the bundle as if it were a priceless antique. When she saw the misshapen clay trivet Finn had
made, embedded with shells they had picked up on the beach, her features lit up.
“It’s beautiful,” she exclaimed. “How did you know I needed exactly this in my kitchen?”
Finn beamed. “I didn’t know. I just made it. We found those shells ourselves. Since they were broken, my dad said we could
keep them.”
“I love the way you made them in a circle around the edge. That’s very creative.”
“I made one, too,” Zara said. “Dad’s going to keep mine. It’s bigger, but I don’t think my shells looked as good as Finn’s
did.”
He wanted to hug his daughter for going out of her way to praise her younger brother. As annoyed as Zara could sometimes get
with Finn, she loved him and would be the first to protect and defend him.
“What are you doing?” Zara asked. “Why are you pulling up your plants?”
“I’m not. I’m pulling up the weeds. They are starting to take over because of the rain. I want to plant some new flowers in
my beds, but I have to get the weeds out first.”
His children looked so intrigued by the process, he had to wonder if he had never weeded with his children.
The answer came easily. No. When would he have?
In California, they had lived in a gated neighborhood where the grounds were taken care of by a company.
Tracy had kept flower baskets but she had been too frail to do much gardening the last year of her life.
“Where is Dottie?” Finn asked.
“I’m afraid she’s not here. My daughter and granddaughter took her for an adventure today. They were going on a hike to Hidden
Beach. Have you been there yet?”
“No,” Andrew said. “Never heard of it.”
“Oh, you need to take the kids someday. It’s about a mile hike from the trailhead, and then you come to a beach that very
few people go to. You usually have it mostly to yourself, with only two or three other people. If you hike down the beach
another half mile or so, you’ll find a beach that has the most magnificent sea glass.”
“Why?” Finn asked, his favorite word.
“It’s a long story but a long time ago, people threw their trash over the side of a cliff nearby and down to the beach. The
beach has been cleaned up but over time the ocean has taken all the glass from those bottles and jars and smoothed it over
to make sea glass.”
“So the sea glass is garbage?” Zara asked.
“Some of it might have started that way. But now it’s like beautiful, colorful stones.”
“Can we go there?” she asked Andrew with a pleading look. “Our art teacher said we could make another trivet at home and put
sea glass in it instead of shells. She gave us the directions in our packet.”
“That does sound fun,” he said. “Not today, though. We’re on a bike ride now, going to Orca Park.”
Zara’s features fell. “I’d rather go find sea glass. Can’t we do that instead?”
He really needed to work on teaching his daughter to embrace the present instead of always looking ahead. He feared that was
a habit she had picked up during her mother’s illness. They were always looking toward the next doctor’s visit, the next surgery,
the next chemotherapy treatment.
He needed to remind himself of that, too. His children were growing up far too quickly and he needed to savor days like this.
“Can we help you plant your flowers before we go to the park?” Finn asked Rosie.
Rosie sent Andrew a quick look, and he could tell she was gauging what he wanted her to say. He supposed they could plant
a few flowers if his kids would enjoy it.
He gave her a noncommittal shrug, and she smiled at the kids.
“You want to plant flowers instead of going to the park?”
“Yes!” Zara exclaimed, much to his surprise. “We can plant flowers first then go for a bike ride.”
He was not about to discourage his children from helping someone else, especially if that meant he would be able to enjoy
more time in Rosie’s company. Win-win, all the way around.
“Great idea,” Andrew said. “We can spend a few moments weeding and planting some flowers, then we’ll head to the park.”
The children exclaimed with delight.
“I might even have a few extra pairs of gardening gloves,” Rosie said. “Let me go put my lovely new gift in the kitchen and
I’ll grab them for you.”
The children laughed at the chickens pecking around until Rosie emerged from the house with two pairs of small gardening gloves and one pair of large leather work gloves.
“You’ll have to show us what to do. I don’t want to pull up your prize pansies or something,” he said.
She pointed out a few of the more common weeds for them to identify. “If you’re in doubt about whether something is a flower
or a weed, you can always ask me.”