The Abalone Shell Read online

  “I think you’ve earned the right to be a little selfish, Owen. Besides, if her ex had done what she needed him to, he wouldn’t be her ex.”

  “Yes… and sometimes it takes the kind of gut check he got when she filed for divorce to make people see what they stand to lose if they don’t change.”

  “Did Dad change after Mom divorced him?”

  “How would I know?”

  “Believe me. He hasn’t. Last Lauren heard of him, he was in court for another DUI.”

  “I didn’t know you and Lauren kept tabs on him.”

  “We don’t. But Uncle Howard went off about it the other day. Guess our dear ol’ pop called him up to beg for bail money.”

  “I assume Uncle Howard told him to take a flying leap off a high cliff.”

  “Yep. Wish he’d actually do it. The world would certainly breathe easier without him in it.”

  Out of habit, he nearly chided her for being cruel, but their father didn’t deserve his generosity and he certainly didn’t deserve hers, so he kept his mouth shut. While he knew Erin was trying to encourage him by using their father as an example, Hope’s decision to leave her husband wasn’t nearly as simple as their mother’s had been. The physical safety of her person and of her children was an easy choice for Andra to make. There was far more room for doubt when it came to emotional security.

  “Owen, please stop thinking like this. Have you asked her what she’s feeling?”

  “No. I haven’t had a chance.”

  “Then you have no proof of anything, and all you’re doing is giving yourself an ulcer.”

  He hugged her tightly. “What would I do without you?”

  “You’d be a miserable only child.”

  Chuckling, he smoothed his hand over her hair like he had so many times when they were little and she’d been scared of their father’s erupting temper or his friends’ drunken impropriety. “Right you are.”

  “Since you’re in the mood to admit I’m right, how about you take it a step further and admit I’m right about Hope, too?”

  “Fine. You’re right about Hope, too.”

  “Ah,” Erin purred, leaning back in his arms. “I could hear that all day and I don’t think I’d ever get tired of it.”

  “Don’t you have a job you need to get back to?”

  Laughing, she slipped out of his embrace and stood. “Hurry up and finish your chowder so I can take your bowl back to the kitchen.”

  “Yes, Miss Bossy Britches.”

  To spite her, he took his time eating his chowder, and she got tired of waiting. He hoped she was right and that his doubts were unfounded, but he couldn’t shake the guilt. Still, Erin was right about one thing. It was useless to worry until Hope gave him an irrefutable reason to. So he would try to ignore it.

  Fifteen

  After another four-day round of wind and rain, Hope was glad to see the sun again. She’d spent much of the day out on the deck of the cottage writing by hand while Daphne alternately read books and built elaborate cities with the set of wooden blocks her father had given her during their visit.

  If she was relieved to see the sun, she was even happier to finally feel the last of her anxiety over Dan’s admissions slipping away. A picnic dinner on the beach with Owen, some sand castle building, and plenty of scavenging the shore for treasures washed in by the storms were sure to lift her the rest of the way out of it.

  With that thought, she smiled and checked her watch. Then she closed her notebook and hooked her pen in its wire spiral.

  “Time to demolish your empire, baby girl,” she told her daughter, fingering a lock of the girl’s silky hair that had pulled loose from her twin French braids. She hadn’t realized how many pale gold highlights the sun and salt air had coaxed from both Daphne’s tresses and her own until they’d indulged in a mother-daughter hair-braiding party this morning. They looked like proper coast girls now.

  “Is it time to go down to the beach already?” Daphne asked, distracted. With her tongue protruding between her lips and a deep frown of concentration pinching her brows together, she set a final block on top of the tower that was as tall as she was. The whole thing wobbled in the soft sea breeze, but after a moment, it stilled, and she stood back with a triumphant grin. “Can you take a picture? I wanna show Daddy.”

  Indulgently, Hope grabbed her phone and snapped a picture of her daughter with her creation. She sent it off to Dan and was surprised when he replied immediately. “Your dad says, ‘great job, Daph.’ Want me to video you knocking it down?”

  “Yeah!”

  Hope started recording and nodded to her daughter. With a shriek of delight, Daphne gave a grand impersonation of Godzilla, crashing through the structure and sending the colorful blocks flying in all directions. Hope couldn’t help but laugh at her daughter’s antics.

  “All right, baby girl. Let’s get this picked up quick. We don’t want to be late for our date.”

  It didn’t take them long to stow all the blocks back in their handy zipper case and gather the buckets and shovels for building sand castles. Owen was supposed to meet them down at the beach around four-thirty—right at low tide—and he’d volunteered to bring dinner fixings with the thought that they’d have a repeat of the summer solstice even if it would just be the three of them.

  His truck was nowhere in sight when she parked in the northern beach access lot, so she figured she and Daphne had beaten him here, but when they reached the beach, he already had a fire going in the rock ring they’d used for the summer solstice. A wide grin split her face when he glanced over his shoulder and rose to greet them. She hadn’t gotten to see him nearly enough these last four days; she’d been writing like a thing possessed and, with his one employee out of town for her sister’s wedding, he’d been stuck manning his gallery.

  She slid easily into his waiting arms and sighed contentedly. “That’s much better.”

  “Mmm,” was all he replied as he kissed the top of her head and let out a breath.

  Then he lowered his head and kissed her. It was different than any kiss they’d shared, and in the moment before it drove all thought from her mind, it felt like he was trying to memorize every detail, savor every taste and texture.

  “Wow,” she breathed when he reluctantly released her.

  She expected a smug gleam to ignite his green eyes, but she saw only adoration and something she couldn’t name—something that sent a shock of anxiety through her. He smiled, and whatever it was vanished. Not sure she’d seen it, she shook her head and drew a deep breath to invite serenity to return.

  “What’s for dinner?” she asked brightly.

  “Nothing fancy. I thought cheese burgers might be a nice, relaxing change from the more elaborate dishes we seem to have a habit of putting together.”

  “Cheeseburgers actually sound fantastic.”

  “We’ve got a while before the coals are ready. What should we do while we wait?”

  “Sand castle!” Daphne cheered.

  “Sand castle it is.” Owen tossed another log on the fire and emptied his canvas sack on the soft sand. When Hope dropped her sand castle buckets and shovels beside his, he laughed. “Looks like we’re going to be building a mighty palace this evening.”

  “Yeah!”

  “You should’ve seen the tower she built with the blocks her dad gave her,” Hope remarked as Daphne gathered an armload of the buckets and raced to the damp sand halfway down the beach toward the water’s edge. “Grandeur seems to be her theme of the day.”

  “I’ll bet it was spectacular.”

  Hope glanced at him when his voice hitched, but his expression was as relaxed as it ever was. “It was. Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine. Why?”

  “I don’t know. You sound… tired, maybe?”

  “It’s been a long week.”

  She was likely overanalyzing because of that kiss moments ago, but she sensed an evasiveness in his words. Then he nodded toward her daughter and flash
ed her a mischievous grin that said race you, and her worries evaporated. She sprinted after him, but she had no hope of catching him, not with his long legs and her much shorter ones.

  She was still a tad on edge from her encounter with her ex-husband. Her time with Owen had been so wonderfully unhurried and candid that she had forgotten how tense her every confrontation with Dan was. The old habits were back in place. That’s all this was.

  As they constructed a massive sand castle together and decorated it with shells and sea glass and pebbles like they had that first, smaller castle what now seemed like a lifetime ago—had it really been only a few weeks?—Hope made a conscious effort to break those old habits.

  It wasn’t easy.

  She couldn’t help but note Owen’s every smile, listen to his every word and search for the underlying thoughts and emotions, and it frustrated her because it seemed like he wasn’t as relaxed as he usually was. There was an intensity about him that felt alien. And a hint of the old sadness, which she now realized had been significantly lessening in their time together, was back, shadowing those beautiful eyes now and again even as he indulged her daughter.

  Once her mind, trained by fifteen years of shouldering criticism and blame that wasn’t rightly hers to bear, latched onto that, she began to realize that it hadn’t only been their busy schedules that made it seem like they hadn’t been together as much. There was an emotional distance, too, and there had been since Thursday. Since Owen had met Dan.

  Because it was subtle, she didn’t say anything, still unsure if it was real or if it was only a figment of her imagination.

  After dinner, they hunted for sea glass and shells, and Hope was able to forget her concerns again for a while. Owen found a nice large piece of abalone shell, and when he described how he would use it in a wind chime—as the wind catcher that would knock the striker against the rods—his face lit up. She loved how animated he became talking about his work with Daphne.

  Finally, he sat in the sand near the fire and patted the spot in front of him. Hope snuggled herself in and leaned against him with her back pressed to his chest. She pulled his arms around her and watched her daughter dance with the rising tide. Occasionally, she glanced down at Owen’s hands as he turned the piece of abalone shell around and around.

  All was quiet on the beach tonight. There were a few other parties scattered around, but it seemed everyone else was of the same mind to enjoy a peaceful evening.

  With their bodies pressed together, it was impossible to miss when Owen’s stiffened beneath her and he stopped turning the shell. She glanced up at him and noted a distant look in his eyes as he stared across the cove toward the open ocean. When she saw the muscle in his jaw tighten, she sat up, twisting her body to face him. She wasn’t imagining it this time. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Doesn’t look like nothing. And that nothing sounds just like the one I used to give Dan when he asked if I was upset and I lied to keep the peace because it was easier than telling him what I really felt.”

  At the mention of her ex, a strange light sparked in his eyes—bright pain entwined with guilt.

  “Ah. This is about Dan.”

  He didn’t answer, didn’t meet her gaze, and it was all she could do to stop herself from begging him to contradict her.

  “You haven’t been the same since you met him,” she said quietly. “At first, I thought it was just me falling back into old habits of overanalyzing everything, but it isn’t.”

  The only indication that he’d heard her was the narrowing of his eyes, which remained trained on some point far away that only he could see.

  “What I can’t figure out is why.”

  At last, he brought his attention in close, but instead of looking at her, he lowered his gaze to the shell in his hand. He began turning it around again. Slowly. Methodically.

  “He still needs you,” he murmured. “Dan. I think he’s finally realizing what he lost, and I’ve tried so hard to ignore it. But I can’t….”

  She waited for him to continue, but he seemed incapable of putting his thoughts into words. “You can’t what?” she asked.

  “I lost my family, and it nearly killed me, Hope.”

  Finally, he met her gaze, and she jerked back. The pain in his eyes was as raw and fresh as it might have been that night he’d gotten the call telling him his wife and son were dead, and it seared a hole in her core, at once white hot and as cold as the darkest Montana winter night.

  “I can’t do that to him. I can’t take his family from him. And I can’t do it to you and Daphne. Oh, God, Daphne.” His voice cracked at that, and a wild hopelessness claimed his face. “Her voice when she begged him not to leave, and her eyes…. I can’t watch her heart break like that and know that I’m part of the reason for it.”

  “You aren’t the reason at all. And believe me. That isn’t the first time he’s broken her heart. He broke it every time he figured one parent was all she needed at her parent-teacher conferences or to pick her up from school. He broke it every time he turned her away when all she wanted was to play Legos or blocks with him.”

  She lunged to her feet and hugged herself tightly, shivering as the cooling night air hit her where his body had warmed her.

  “Our family was broken long before you came into the picture, Owen,” she said. Her chin wobbled traitorously. “Broken beyond repair.”

  “Did he ever truly realize what he stood to lose before? You might be surprised what a man will do when he loses everything. What he might do with one more chance.”

  “I have already given him fifteen years of chances. How many more chances does he deserve?”

  Owen didn’t answer that, and she didn’t expect him to. She was the only person on this earth who could answer that question, and she had. When she’d filed for divorce.

  “He will never change. I’ve lost count of the number of times he’s proven that. I spent so much energy and so many years of my life trying to fix a man who won’t be fixed. Do you know how many times we moved because the next town, the next job, the next whatever might be better? Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, Washington, back to Montana. I stopped counting after ten. He can’t keep a job more than a year—two at most—because he sabotages every relationship he’s ever had. At the slightest hint of trouble in any job or friendship, he’s done. He finds reasons why it can’t work, and sometimes they’re reasons that don’t exist!”

  By now she was shaking.

  “After fifteen years of destroying myself over what he needed, I have no chances, no strength, no anything left to give him.” Bitterness and hurt swelled in her chest, pushing her frustration ever higher until it now threatened to spill out her eyes. “L-leaving him was about w-what I needed.”

  Suddenly unable to utter another word, she whirled away, hastily gathered her daughter’s plastic buckets and shovels, and called Daphne to leave.

  “But Mom!”

  “It’s time to go.”

  Hope wiped her eyes and straightened her spine, and when her daughter reached her, she had managed to smooth her expression enough that Daphne only regarded her with a confused frown.

  “It’s getting late,” she explained.

  “Can I say goodbye to Owen?”

  She almost said no, but instead, she nodded, curious to see how the man would react to that. He didn’t disappoint. He plastered a smile to his face—it had no hope of reaching his eyes, but she applauded his effort—and returned the hug Daphne gave him. When the little girl asked what they were going to do tomorrow, he said she’d have to ask her mom. If only Dan had been so generous when Hope had told him she was leaving…. He would’ve proved Owen right. Would’ve proved that he truly wanted to change and that he could change. But he hadn’t.

  Daphne trotted back to her mother and took her offered hand, sensing something was off but too young to grasp what. Hope wondered if maybe they shouldn’t cut their summer vacation short and head home to Montana. Then she dis
missed the thought. Running from pain was her ex-husband’s mode of operation, not hers, and she had enough of her own bad habits to break without picking up his.

  She stopped and glanced back at Owen. He sat with his knees drawn up, his arms draped loosely around them, and his head hanging in defeat. When he curled his arms around his head, she hesitated. She wanted to stride back to him and hug him until their pain went away. Until he realized how much he meant to her.

  But she couldn’t. She wouldn’t.

  She was done fighting to keep people who couldn’t or wouldn’t fight to keep her in return.

  Sixteen

  Everything in Owen screamed at him to follow her, but he couldn’t move, paralyzed by the sharp, stabbing pain in his chest. If he hadn’t felt it once before, he might’ve thought he was having a heart attack, but he knew it was only his heart splintering again.

  He had tried to discredit his fears about Hope and Dan, but the harder he’d tried, the more tightly they had constricted him and the deeper those doubts had reached, dragging up memories that terrified him.

  Hope’s words made sense, and somewhere in a far corner of his mind that the shadows couldn’t reach, he understood that a woman like her never would’ve resorted to divorce unless there was no alternative left. But, trapped in the thrall of his memories, he was unable to forget that moment in the ice cream parlor when he’d recognized that same black, endless agony in the eyes of her ex-husband. He understood exactly how shattering it was to lose his family and what it could drive a man to do… what it had driven him to do.

  He shivered, unable to feel the warmth of the summer sun. He was caught in those frigid gray waves again, tossed around by the stormy current.

  Grief and guilt and frustration churned together, building and building until it exploded out of him in a bellow. It echoed off the rocky cliffs to the north, and when it died away, quiet reigned and even the ceaseless rhythm of the waves seemed subdued.