Chapter Eleven
By the afternoon of Lynette’s second full day of vacation, she could begin to feel the stress of the past few months melt away beneath the hot sunshine. Spending the previous day on the beach and around the resort with her dearest friends was providing a balm; a soothing and easing of her troubled mind.
The heat must have worn her out, too, because she enjoyed her first good night’s sleep of eight solid hours in a long time. She woke feeling well rested and ready for another relaxing day outside. The old saying that laughter was the best medicine was true. And today was shaping up to be just as beneficial to her troubled soul.
Jackie, on the other hand, seemed to be experiencing a different kind of day. Instead of relaxing like the rest of them in one of the two canoes, she was determined to master the art of paddleboarding.
As Lynette watched Jackie struggle with the board, she sensed her friend was going in the minute the woman’s feet tipped the board ever so slightly to the right. The universe loves balance, so Jackie’s body tried to compensate with a dip to the left. The seesawing motion escalated quickly, ending in a graceless splash into the previously calm waters between the two canoes.
Lynette let out a bark of laughter.
Kit smirked. “Gravity wins again.”
“I warned you to keep that beast as flat as possible,” Renee said to a spluttering Jackie. “It isn’t very forgiving.”
“You don’t say,” Jackie spat out.
Lynette watched as her dripping-wet friend attempted to hoist herself back up onto the blue fiberglass board, but it was too tippy. The dock they’d launched their mini–boat parade from looked toy-sized. They’d floated out farther than she’d realized while Annie shared funny stories about her granddaughter’s monkey-like climbing adventures.
“Maybe little Nora could show you how to climb back onto that thing,” Kit suggested from her front seat in the other canoe. Renee sat behind her, having insisted she was the best one suited to steer the heavier old boat.
Jackie flipped Kit off for the less-than-helpful comment, which subsequently threw the poor woman off balance again, and in she went, all the way under the water.
Lynette took pity on her and used her oar to guide the lighter-weight, newer canoe over to Jackie’s side. Annie didn’t seem inclined to help from her position in the back, but it wasn’t hard to maneuver it alone.
“Matt sure gave you a nice birthday present here, Renee,” Lynette said, appreciating the ease with which she could single-handedly propel the red canoe forward. “Here, Jackie, grab my hand. It’s too deep out here. You aren’t going to drown with a life jacket on, but I don’t think you’re going to be able to climb back up on that board. I’ll help you crawl in here instead.”
Lynette felt her canoe tip back and forth, much as Jackie’s board had a minute earlier. “Sit down, Annie! Are you trying to send both of us into the water, too?”
“Me?! If you try to haul Jackie into this canoe, we’re going over for sure!”
Lynette stuck her hand down near Jackie’s head but glanced toward Renee for assurance that this was the best course of action. Renee lifted her oar out of the water and placed it across her lap. Kit followed suit behind her, a marginally concerned expression wiping the grin off her face.
“This is exactly why I leave paddleboarding for the kids,” Renee said. “They can scramble on and off that thing, no problem. Me? Not so much. Just be careful, Lynette. Jackie is probably strong enough to climb into your canoe with some help, but Annie’s right. You could tip.”
Jackie slapped Lynette’s hand away, let go of the paddleboard with her other hand, and lunged for the side of the newer canoe. Annie dropped to her butt with a shriek while Lynette grabbed hold of both sides of the canoe, doing her best to counteract Jackie’s weight.
There was a second or two when it felt like Lynette was fighting a losing battle, but it was their lucky day. Jackie hadn’t mastered the paddleboard, but when she hooked her right leg over the edge of the canoe, she was strong enough to haul herself up and in. She landed on the bottom of the canoe in a spreading puddle of water, right between Annie and Lynette.
Annie hollered again as she lunged for the beach bag she’d brought along. “Jackie, you’re going to soak our snacks!”
Jackie’s answering grunt told Lynette the woman couldn’t care less about food right now. She struggled to sit up, then sighed in frustration when Renee yelled to grab the paddleboard before it floated away.
Lynette retrieved her oar from the bottom of their canoe where she’d dropped it while trying to hold the boat steady. She fumbled it as she swung it over the side of the canoe, and it slid through her hands. Something on the shaft caught on a ring and pulled it right off her finger. Both the ring and the oar plunged into the lake and out of sight.
It was Lynette’s turn to shriek.
“What now?” Kit asked, shaking her head at them from across the expanse of water between the two canoes.
The oar popped back to the surface. Lynette scrambled to retrieve it, careful not to send their boat rocking again. Holding her breath, she prayed that whatever her ring had snagged on still held her sentimental piece of jewelry against the oar shaft.
It did not.
“Oh no!” she spit out.
The ring was gone.
“Don’t worry about the paddleboard, Lynette. This boat is heavier, but I can still move fast enough to catch it,” Renee said, using the oar in her hand to push the other canoe toward the board as it floated away.
“It’s not the board I’m worried about!”
The canoe rocked underneath her again as Jackie tried to get situated. “What’s wrong, Lynette? Did you hurt your hand? Is that why you dropped the oar? Things got a little crazy there for a minute.”
Lynette held up her hand for Jackie. Her reddened ring finger throbbed. The unyielding silver—pulled off so abruptly—left a mark. Tears gathered deep in her throat and her eyes stung. “My hand will be fine. But my ring . . . it’s gone.”
She couldn’t quell a hiccup.
“Which ring was it?” Jackie asked, wiggling closer so she could better see Lynette’s naked finger.
“Jackie, I’m not going to tell you again—sit still!”
Even Lynette had to grin at Annie’s tone, despite the pain in both her finger and heart.
“Aye aye, captain!” Jackie said. “Or should I say Captain Granny? Jeez, if you yell like that at your granddaughter to sit still, she must be terrified of you!”
There was much laughter, but Lynette sobered quickly.
“My ring. It somehow caught on the oar and it fell off. Into the lake. I’ll never find it now.”
“Was it a special ring?” Renee yelled, still trying to retrieve her floating paddleboard.
Lynette sighed. “It was. My mom has a matching one. We both put them on years ago, when she got so sick with cancer. We’d met with a holy woman who blessed them shortly after the diagnosis. They were meant to help support healing. I feel terrible about losing it. I haven’t taken it off in years. Maybe the sunscreen I put on before we got out on the lake seeped under it. What will Mom think? What if her cancer comes back now?”
Renee and Kit had reached the paddleboard and hauled it up onto their canoe. Once it was more or less secured, Kit swiveled to look at Lynette again. “Oh, honey, you know that isn’t the way things work. Your mom will be fine. She is fine. Whether you take that ring off has absolutely no bearing on her health. Intellectually, you know that.”
“Spoken like a true scientist,” Jackie said. She didn’t sound like she found Kit’s assurances any more helpful than Lynette did.
Lynette knew her friends didn’t believe in things like spiritual blessings and good luck charms. At least not in the way she always had. But she was too upset to try to convince them otherwise. “I hope you’re right, Kit. Renee, your kids don’t scuba dive, do they? I’d pay them good money to come out here and look for my ring.”
She thought Renee looked sympathetic when their gazes met across the water, but her friend shook her head. “The water is extremely deep out this far, Lynette. None of us have scuba diving equipment, but I had guests a few years back who tried going out to explore around the lake bottom near the resort. They reported back that it gets super murky where the water’s deep. I’m afraid that ring is gone forever. What if you had another one made to look just like the old one? If you’ve worn it that long, surely you have pictures of it? Your mom would never have to know.”
Lynette considered Renee’s suggestion. Getting a new ring made to look like the old one might work, and maybe Donna would never have to know, but she knew. It wouldn’t be the same. She’d lost the talisman she’d been convinced had helped keep her mother healthy.
Not that her friends would understand.
She nodded back to Renee. “Maybe. We’ll see. But any chance we could head back to shore now? My finger hurts. Ice might help.”
In reality, her heart was hurting more than her finger, but it sounded like a good excuse to get off the water. She wasn’t having fun anymore.
By later that afternoon, Lynette had made a decision. Despite losing her special ring, she wasn’t going to pout. It would be a waste of this precious time with her friends.
When mosquitoes threatened to ruin their beautiful day outside, Renee invited them over to her screened-in patio for wine and crackers. It reminded Lynette of the porch at her own house that Donna loved so much.
Matt wasn’t home. Even though his shift wasn’t supposed to start until later, as the county’s sheriff his help had been needed for a possible drowning at a nearby lake. Lynette shivered when Renee explained where her husband had disappeared to. Her overactive imagination pictured her lost ring, floating down to settle on the chest of a drowning victim.
“Maybe I will have a little of that wine,” she said, hopeful that one glass would help banish the terrifying image from her mind.
Both Renee and Annie looked surprised.
“I thought you said you didn’t plan to drink anything stronger than lemonade on this trip,” Annie said. “I hate that even one cocktail can give you a migraine these days.”
Renee pulled the wine bottle out of the silver ice bucket. “If you’re sure you want some . . .”
Lynette was sure.
The migraine story was one she’d used to fend off offers of alcohol. She purposefully ignored the tiny voice in the back of her mind, warning her it was a bad idea to take another chance.
Isn’t this how it always starts? With just one?
As far as she knew, Renee was the only one of her friends who knew she’d spent a month, years ago, in a rehab facility. She didn’t consider herself an alcoholic; it had just been a dark period, right around the time it seemed that her mother’s cancer treatments weren’t going to be enough to save her. But Lynette had learned the tools to pull herself back from the edge, and Donna beat cancer.
It wasn’t like she hadn’t had any alcohol in the years since. She could handle a drink now and then.
Maybe her refusal to treat herself to a cocktail once in a while was part of the reason she found life in Ruby Shores so boring. Meeting a man for drinks in New York City or participating in a toast to celebrate a major milestone in her old business used to be fun. Just because Wyatt, the man she’d dated longer than most, told her alcohol turned her into a shrew, it wasn’t reason enough to give up the fun altogether.
As she took the first tart sip of the wine Renee handed her, she remembered how impressed her friends had been when she’d shown up to their class reunion weekend with Wyatt. The girls had only seen what was on the surface. Sure, he was younger and had a sexy way about him, but they didn’t know how deeply he’d hurt her when he walked away—not once, but twice.
Intent on keeping thoughts of yet another ruined relationship at bay, she downed half of her wine. Then she remembered Wyatt’s pictures from their reunion weekend. She slammed her glass down and jumped to her feet.
Both Annie and Renee looked at her in surprise.
“I’ll be right back,” she said. She ran into Kit and Jackie on her way out. “I’ll be right back,” she repeated, hurrying to her cabin.
The girls were going to love those pictures.
Five minutes later, she rushed back onto the porch with a large envelope. The conversation she’d interrupted ended abruptly, as if they might have been talking about her.
They stared as she waved the envelope in the air before again reaching for her wineglass. She emptied it in one big gulp, pretending not to notice how guilty they looked. A glow was already washing through her veins after that first glass of wine.
“I brought you all a present,” she said, ripping open the envelope to pull out a small stack of five-by-seven photographs. “Do you guys remember when Wyatt took these?”
Curiosity replaced the concern on a couple of their upturned faces.
Renee looked confused. “Wyatt?”
Lynette paused. “Oh, that’s right. You never met Wyatt. I brought him home for our class reunion. Annie took us out on her pontoon that weekend. Wyatt is a photographer, and he got some cute shots of us. I forgot all about them until I was unpacking some old boxes last week. Yes, I admit, I’m still not completely unpacked, even though we moved a year ago.”
“Actually, I think I remember you mentioning him when we were in Hawaii,” Renee said. She pulled a second wine bottle out of the bucket and refilled Lynette’s glass.
“You are the perfect hostess, Renee. I’m only sorry I don’t have any pictures for you.”
Renee sank onto the empty wicker rocker. “Don’t worry about it. I know I’m not quite the full-fledged Kaleidoscope Girl that the rest of you are.”
Jackie, who was sitting on the end of the sofa closest to Renee, reached over and gave their hostess a side hug. “That is ridiculous, Renee. You are a Kaleidoscope Girl, through and through.”
“Yes, you are,” Lynette said, and she meant it. Renee was a loyal friend.
Unlike Wyatt had turned out to be.
She handed two prints to each of the other three women who’d been on the pontoon that day. They laughed all over again, remembering the fun they’d had that weekend. Even Renee seemed to enjoy herself.
Lynette took a sip from her wineglass, then raised it in a toast. She gave a little whistle to snag their attention. “Here’s to spending time with the four best women on Earth. We’ve all made it through some difficult times, and we have the scars to show for it, but we are always better when we’re together. This is like summer camp all over again. But for adults. With wine.”
They met her toast with cheers and laughter, and as she looked from friend to friend, she hoped this was the beginning of a new, better chapter in her own life.