Chapter Twenty-Seven
Andrew
“Thanks for picking me up,” Andrew said as he slid into the passenger seat of Rosie’s late-model Volvo SUV. “I should have
offered to drive. I didn’t think about it.”
“It makes more sense for me to drive. I know exactly how to get to Barbara’s house.”
Her car smelled like her, of springtime and flowers and lemons. Delicious.
“You don’t have Emma or your mom?” He gestured to the back seat, empty except for a covered platter.
Rosie shook her head. “No. Em had a problem at the bookstore so she’s going to be late. And Emma’s picking up her grandmother
on her way, since her car is easier for my mom to get in and out of.”
“What about Olive?”
“One of the employees at the bookstore agreed to babysit her. She’s at the house now.”
“She’s a really cute kid. You must enjoy having her live with you.”
Rosie’s features softened with a radiance that sent a funny quiver through him. “It’s a dream. I’m sure your mom feels the
same way about having your kids close. Some day you’ll understand that, when you have grandkids. It’s an entirely different
kind of love.”
“Is it?”
“Raising kids is like having to tend a garden you planted yourself. It’s hard work, full of worry and responsibility.
But loving a grandchild? That’s like walking into a beautiful, wild meadow that’s already in bloom.
You get to marvel at its beauty without the burden of having cultivated it yourself. That probably sounds silly.”
“It sounds lovely,” he assured her.
“It’s a love that’s just as deep, but lighter somehow. You see all the joy and possibility without feeling the weight of knowing
you’re quite possibly shaping their entire future. It’s a second chance to savor childhood, this time with the wisdom to know
how fleeting and precious these moments truly are.”
She had changed clothes from the jeans and work shirt she had been wearing earlier. Now she wore a pretty sundress with a
matching sweater over it against the chill of the coastal evening.
She hardly looked old enough to have a daughter, let alone a granddaughter. If he were a smooth, slick kind of guy, he might
be able to figure out a way to communicate that to her without sounding smarmy.
Instead, he kept his mouth shut, wishing he were better at this sort of thing.
He had never been much of a womanizer. After his first few books came out and he started to get a fan following, he had plenty
of women proposition him at signings or book events. Though he did know a few other tomcat authors who leveraged their quasi-celebrity
status to take advantage of their fans, that had never appealed to him.
He had only one serious relationship before he met his wife, with a woman he had known in college and met up with again while
he was writing his first book. She had been a chef and the two of them had lived together for two years. The food—and the
sex—had been great but Soledad hadn’t wanted to commit, too married to her career.
When she left him for the owner of the restaurant where she worked, he hadn’t really been brokenhearted.
Two years later, he had met Tracy in a meet-cute straight out of a romance novel. On a rainy afternoon, he had been finishing
up meetings in New York with his publisher when they had both jumped into the same cab. She had been an editor at the same
publishing house—not his editor and not even his imprint, but she had known and read his books.
One thing led to another and he had asked her out for drinks that turned into dinner. Before he quite realized how it happened,
they were taking turns flying between his place in Los Angeles and hers in New York City.
Their relationship had seemed easy and comfortable from the very beginning and it had seemed a natural progression when he
proposed. Since he could write anywhere, he had fully intended to move to New York, but Tracy had been frustrated with her
job and wanted to strike out on her own as a freelance editor and literary agent. She had been the one who pushed for them
to buy a house in the hills above Los Angeles and settle there, where they could raise the children they both wanted.
He never would have imagined back in those heady days of starting their lives together that a decade later, he would be a
widower raising those children on his own, that they would lose their cherished house in a fire, or that he would upend everything
to move himself and his children to a crumbling house on the Oregon coast.
Tracy would have loved it here, he thought. She would have found peace knowing Zara and Finn were safe, happy and loved, that
they were living close to their grandmother and were making new friends in this community that had already embraced them.
He suspected that Tracy would have loved Rosie, too. The two of them would have gotten along great, bonding over their shared love of books.
“Almost there,” Rosie said, tugging him out of his thoughts.
“Sounds good.”
“I think you’ll like everyone. The Sea Witches have been meeting in some form or another for about twenty years. People come
and go, but the core group of about ten of us have been there forever. We’re pretty eclectic in our reading choices. We like
everything from sci-fi to historicals to nonfiction. It depends on who is hosting the group that month. They get to pick what
book we read.”
“In my experience, book clubs are only peripherally about the books. Is that the case with yours?”
She laughed, a sound that rippled through her vehicle.
“Guilty,” she admitted. “We do talk about the book for a nominal portion of the book club. The rest of the time is spent visiting,
catching up on our families and what’s happening in our lives. They’re a fascinating group. Barbara, for instance, recently
got back from a monthlong cruise around Japan. I can’t wait to talk to her about what she saw. My other friend Shara is trying
to adopt a child through the foster system, since she and her husband haven’t had any luck conceiving. I haven’t had a chance
to talk to her about the status of their application. We’ve supported each other through all kinds of things—divorce, problems
with our kids, loss of our spouses.”
“They must have been a big help to you after your husband died.”
She nodded and grew silent. “Amazing. I would have been lost without them. And my mom, of course.” She sent him a look across
the width of the vehicle. “Did you have someone to help and support you when your wife died?”
“My mom, of course. She came to live with us after Tracy was first diagnosed. I also have a couple of good friends. We’ve been tight since we were in boarding school together. They’re more like brothers to me.”
“Where are they now?”
“Pete lives in Palm Beach. He’s an attorney. Jonas is actually in Africa working for an organization that helps villages access
clean water.”
“A worthy cause.”
“The two of them couldn’t be more different but they were still both rocks in their own way.”
“Boarding school,” Rosie said in a surprised tone. “I’m not sure I would have taken you for a boarding school kid.”
The first few years, he had hated every moment of it. He had desperately wanted to go home but of course his father wouldn’t
allow it.
“My dad would never have considered anything else for his sons.”
“Sons?”
He frowned, wishing he hadn’t let that slip. He either had to ignore the question or talk about a topic he usually tried to
avoid.
He found he didn’t mind sharing that part of his life with Rosie, for reasons he wasn’t sure he was ready yet to analyze.
“I had an older brother. Will. He was two years older than me. He died when I was eight.”
She shifted her gaze from the road and he saw her green eyes looked murky with compassion. “Oh, Andrew. I’m so sorry. I had
no idea. I’m not sure your mother ever mentioned her other son.”
He wasn’t surprised by that. Nancy had done all her grieving inwardly. Will’s death had devastated what had already been a
dysfunctional family.
“He drowned,” Andrew said, his clinical tone at odds with the grief that still felt raw.
“Every summer we would go to a family cabin on a lake. He went out for an early morning swim one day without permission and . . . never came back. He was a strong swimmer but they think he had a leg cramp or something.”
“How terrible for your family.”
“It was rough.”
He remembered that time vividly, waking up and being angry that Will must have gone swimming without him. He had rushed to
the lake to yell at him, only to find his brother floating twenty yards from the shore.
He had screamed and screamed his brother’s name and could still recall how his father had shoved him aside as he dove into
the water.
“Your parents still sent you to boarding school? I wouldn’t have wanted to let you out of my sight.”
“It was our family’s way. Will had started the year before he died. Then it was my turn.”
“Was it as horrible as people say?”
“Not really. Parts of it were. I missed my mom.”
“Not your dad?”
Andrew thought of his brusque, distant father who seemed to become even more so after his brother’s death.
“We didn’t have a close relationship.” Or one at all, really. “He was very busy with work. He was an investment banker with
a lot of important clients. His work responsibilities didn’t leave much time for him to play catch in the backyard.”
She gave him a long look, as if his words explained something she’d been trying to piece together in her mind.
“So you turned to books.”
Nailed it. “Yeah. Will was the gregarious one. I was happier curled up with a stack of library books.”
“Same. I don’t have the trauma of losing a sibling in my past, but I think I told you my family moved around a lot when I was young. I wasn’t great at making friends but it’s hard to feel lonely when you’ve got a world of book characters to keep you company.”
Oh, he liked this woman. He could easily see himself falling hard for her if he wasn’t careful.
“I think it’s even more remarkable, then, that you’ve chosen to be an entirely different kind of dad than your own.”
“What do you mean?”
“I was thinking this afternoon what a great father you are. From my perspective, everything you do seems to be aimed at ensuring
you’re making the right choice for your kids.”
Andrew knew he did not deserve her praise. Most of the time, he felt he was completely fumbling through this single father
thing, like a sailor navigating through uncharted water with a broken compass. Every day brought new challenges, unexpected
storms and hidden reefs that threatened to sink the whole damn thing.
Still, it was nice of her to say.
“I try. My kids are my greatest gift.”
“I get that. Emma was mine. We tried for about five years to have a second child with no success. I wish I had done what Shara
and John are doing and gone the adoption route.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Multiple reasons. We tried all the fertility treatments without success. I had a couple of miscarriages that were devastating
for both of us. We finally decided around the time Emma turned seven that we were spending so much time and energy trying
for another child that we were wasting our chance to savor the one we already had.”
“Sounds very wise.”
“I don’t know about that. But I don’t really regret it,” she said as she pulled up to a house in a secluded cove he never would have been able to find on his own.
When he saw the line of other cars parked in the neighborhood, Andrew was annoyed to feel a quiver of nerves again. He knew
he had absolutely no reason to be nervous. Readers were his people. Even if they weren’t huge fans of his books, they all
shared an appreciation for the power of the written word.
Too late to back out now. He might as well roll with it. As he climbed out, Rosie opened the rear door, reached in and emerged
with a bottle of wine as well as the covered tray he had noticed earlier.
“My lemon bars,” she informed him. “We sign up each month to bring either appetizers or desserts.”
“I didn’t realize there was food.”
“Small bites, mostly. Though I’ve had a busy day and I didn’t have time for dinner. Or much lunch, come to think of it. I
hope I can nibble enough through the evening that my stomach won’t growl in the middle of the book club.”
“Let me carry something for you,” he said.
She handed over the tray of lemon bars and led the way to the front door of what looked like a large, modern beach house with
soaring windows and elegant landscaping.
A small sign on the door bid new arrivals to come straight in, so Rosie pushed it open. As soon as they walked inside, everyone
greeted them with enthusiasm.
Andrew counted a few more people than he was expecting. Maybe thirty?
As she had done at her neighborhood party, Rosie made the rounds, introducing him to everyone.
He knew he would never remember anyone’s names and was touched when their host, a tall, stately woman, pulled out a marker and adhesive name tags for everyone.
He knew it was only on his account as these people must all know each other.
It was clear that Rosie was enormously well respected in town. He had noticed it during her party and it was even more apparent
here, surrounded by a smaller group of friends.
As the group chatted prior to the actual start of the meeting, Andrew found himself pleasantly surprised by how much he was
enjoying himself. Everyone was gracious and welcoming and their enthusiasm for his work was both flattering and invigorating.
Every so often, his gaze would drift to Rosie, catching the way her face lit up when she smiled or how she leaned forward,
completely engrossed as she listened to someone speak to her. Her genuine interest in others was magnetic, and Andrew found
himself increasingly drawn to her gentle strength and easy grace.
He marveled at how she could make everyone, including him, feel so at ease.
He liked her, more than he had liked anyone in a very long time.