Walking on Sea Glass

by Julie Carobini

  The sky is falling!

  Thomas gave the boss a serious nod. “Yes, sir. On it.” He backed away and pointed at Liddy, mouthing, “You and me. After work.”

  She grabbed the little white flag of surrender from her desk—Trace had bought it at a 99-cent store—and waved it at him. Hans frowned at her with his perspiration-lined face, so she quickly placed it back in its holder.

  “Anything I can help with?” she asked him.

  He glanced over his shoulder, then looked back at her, his spy voice on. “Listen, my wife’s going to drop by in a while and I’m not sure where I’ll be.”

  Liddy watched him, waiting.

  “You understand?” he said.

  She didn’t. Was he asking her to cover for him somehow? She wouldn’t lie, if that was what he was asking. But why would she need to?

  He blew out an exaggerated sigh. “I’ll need you to text me when she gets here, all right? I’ve got two groups in breakout rooms this afternoon and the chamber mixer to get ready for tonight. Not to mention all these people around here today.”

  “You mean the guests?” She smiled teasingly.

  He rubbed his hands over and over across the counter. “You know what I mean!”

  Liddy laughed. “Relax. You’ve got this. And yes, of course I’ll text you when Misty arrives. No problem.”

  Hans exhaled. “Wonderful. Thank you.” He began to walk away, but suddenly turned back to face her. The thumb and one finger on his hand pointed into the air. “You haven’t heard anything from Mr. Riley, I presume?”

  Liddy recalled the name, but barely. Was he an ultra-important guest? Had she taken a message from him? She grimaced. “Sorry, Hans, remind me who Mr. Riley is again.”

  Hans’s expression turned peevish. “Only the big kahuna around here … when he’s in town, that is, which is rare these days. He’s one of the owners of this chain of resorts—I would have thought you knew that—anyway, if you ask me, he’s the one in charge so it would be a good idea to memorize his name.”

  She made a mental point to do just that.

  As it turned out, Thomas had to ask Liddy for a rain check on the bar espionage he had planned for them later that evening. Hans was short on servers for the chamber mixer and Thomas had willingly agreed to help out, something about the need for more “ca-ching” in life. This was something she clearly understood.

  An hour later, she was half-glad that Thomas had canceled since she could feel her energy waning. Maybe this had not been such a great night to stay out anyway. Trace had been busy all day, bustling from conference room to conference room with various assignments. She showed up now with a pile of folders and a whole mess of calls to make.

  Trace blew a puff of air out of one side of her mouth to dislodge a straggly strand of hair, the motion only a temporary respite. “Help me with these?” she asked.

  Liddy grabbed half of the stack. “Happy to,” she said.

  Sometime between opening the second folder and reaching for the phone to call a guest, Liddy froze. Her mind stayed awake enough to tell her that something felt off, but her body wouldn’t follow any direction she attempted to give it.

  “You okay, Liddy?” Trace asked.

  She wanted to answer, but for what seemed like eternity—or at least several torturous seconds—Liddy could not form the words. Nor could she turn her head.

  Trace’s hand landed on Liddy’s arm then, and gently helped her put the phone down. Slowly Trace turned Liddy around in her chair, the pitch in her voice higher than usual. “What’s got you spooked?”

  Liddy blinked hard. She gulped air, and tried to settle the erratic thumping of her heart. She took in the worry lines framing Trace’s eyes. “I’m so sorry. I don’t know.” She forced out a tiny, hollow laugh. “I guess I’m just tired after this long day.”

  Trace’s eyes remained on Liddy’s, her frown intensifying. “Maybe you should stay away from that Thomas.”

  Liddy gave her a quizzical look.

  “I know you don’t talk about it much, but divorce is hard on the soul. My parents fought all the time, so you would’ve thought a divorce was the right thing. But dating other people took its toll on them. They both look older than Methuselah.”

  Yes, well, he’s dead …

  “Don’t give me that look—I know he’s dead,” she snapped. “All I’m saying is that you need to take care of yourself. Go do yoga, for heaven’s sake. You seem really tired.”

  Out in the parking lot, Liddy thought about what Trace had said. Had these strange sensations really been about the divorce all along? She had mentioned to the doctor that her life had changed course almost overnight. And he had agreed that her bouts of nervousness could be related …

  But he hadn’t looked all that certain.

  With a sigh, Liddy slipped inside her Jeep and made yet another mental note to make an appointment for that CT scan. She started it up and with more than a little irritation noticed a new rattle as she pulled out of her space. The car was gently used, a classic, she’d been told, so why should an unfamiliar sound spook her? Good thing her condo by the beach was just a straight five-mile shot along the shore. She would be home in less than ten minutes.

  She blinked against flashing lights at the L in the road. Just two more miles on the straightaway, and she could be home. But a large orange detour sign blocked her way. “Oh, come on.” Her mind ticked along. She could probably zip around the sign and fly home faster than the authorities would notice.

  But could she afford the ticket if she was wrong about that?

  With a groan, Liddy turned left and followed the detour road away from the beach and through seemingly endless fields of newly planted crops. She turned up the sound on the radio and laughed at herself. “First-world problem, Liddy.” It’s not like she had anyone waiting for her at home, nor any matter of urgency that made the extra minutes of her commute all that dire.

  Her first inclination that something was wrong happened about the time that she noticed one field of light soil morphing into another of dark, a sure sign that something amazing would surely be growing out on that expanse of land soon. She barely noticed the rattle; it sounded like a friendly tumble under the hood of her car, like a rapping on her front door. After one particularly loud knock, she turned down her music to listen more closely, continuing to make her way alongside the dirt-filled fields.

  That’s when she heard the hiss and caught sight of the temperature gauge shooting upward into red. “Crap!” By the time she pulled her car to the side of the road, next to a ditch, the hood was bouncing like a heavy load of towels careening inside too small of a washing machine. She switched the key to off, listening as her Jeep shuddered in relief.

  Dead.

  And the day’s glow was fading fast.

  She groaned and rubbed at a slight pulsating above her right temple. Surprisingly, few cars had followed her onto this lonely road. She thought about that. How lucky was she to have avoided a freeway commute each day? Still, this was no place for a breakdown. The more she considered her options—there weren’t many—the more her focus narrowed. It was as if her mind had begun to spiral from the stress and she had to hold her eyes steady so as not to be crushed by it all.

  She pulled herself together, and then she called AAA and waited. And prayed. Her newfound interest in prayer hearkened back to the hotel church service she had attended on Christmas. That’s how she thought of it … “hotel church.”

  A minivan pulling a trailer passed her, causing the Jeep to shift and groan from the gust. She thought back to the wide-eyed abandon when it came to the prayers spoken on Christmas. Those people all seemed so … so happy. Or maybe just peaceful. But she knew better. The woman next to her, for instance. She wore no wedding ring but had two young children to care for. How easy could that be? And the handsome man in front of her. She had tried not to eavesdrop—well, at least not too obviously—but several people had come over and hugged him and asked him how he was doing,
as if he had recently met with some kind of difficulty.

  She let out a sigh. “God, thank you that despite this trouble, you are with me. Please help me to be able to handle whatever comes out of this.” It wasn’t eloquent or particularly long, but the prayer had somehow eased the rising sense of dread as she waited.

  Eventually, the tow truck driver reached her, assessed the situation—a blown water pump that had damaged the radiator—hoisted her car onto the rig, and drove her to a gas station some three miles up the road. She was now even farther from home.

  She tried not to dwell on the fact that she could have been sipping an oak-scented Chardonnay right now. Instead she waited some more as the driver handed off her car to the mechanic, who was now preparing to deliver the harsh news to her, i.e., an estimate of repairs.

  “Had a little trouble on the road, I see,” the man in a grease-soaked shirt said.

  She teetered. The acrid smell of carburetor cleaner overwhelmed her, invoking a memory of when she was little and her brother and friends spent Saturday afternoons taking apart their cars. “A little,” she answered. “Can it be repaired?”

  He nodded, his eyes fixed on the clipboard in front of him. He jotted some things down as she stood there in the night, waiting. Traffic provided a blasé shutter of background noise, impervious to her bad news. Goose bumps began to rise on her skin in direct correlation to the night’s drop in temperature. She hugged herself for warmth, and maybe a bit of comfort.

  Nothing could have prepared her, though, for the sense of panic that slammed into her at precisely the moment she was finally handed that clipboard.

  It started like paralysis. The mechanic was saying something to her as she clung to that clipboard, its sharp ridges digging into the undersides of her fingers. His words, like butterflies without a net, resounded in her ears, but her mouth could not—would not—allow her to respond. Her left arm shook then, a trembling with no distinct starting point. Just a steady and strong tremor that spread through her hands, and swiftly lit her left leg on fire. In a blink, her body collapsed under its own weight, and she landed in the arms of the attendant.

  She couldn’t recall being carried inside and deposited onto a less-than-stable vinyl chair in the tiny gas station office, but she remembered the crying. Sobbing, really. Later she would joke about how violently she had reacted to the estimate of car repairs.

  Oddly, the attendant said nothing other than, “Would you like to borrow a phone?”

  Twenty minutes later, Meg careened into the lot to pick up Liddy, her face knotted with concern. “My god, what happened to you?”

  “I-I think I may have epilepsy!” The flood opened again, releasing the tears she had managed to hold back while waiting for her friend to arrive.

  Meg drove her Beemer with one hand and patted Liddy’s shoulder with the other. “Oh … oh … it’s okay. My cousin has that—and she’s fine. You’ll be okay, too.”

  With everything she had, Liddy dearly hoped that in her case, her friend’s words would ring true.

  * * *

  “Haven’t you had enough of Google Analytics yet?” Jill peeked in through the doorway of Beau’s office. “Your trip back home did absolutely nothing to slow you down.”

  He leaned back against the leather desk chair and folded his arms at his chest. “You know it.”

  “Give it a rest already. Really, must I always have to keep after you like this?” She tsked, tsked. “You are like my children.”

  “Which one?”

  Jill laughed heartily. “All of ’em, darn it. Not a one listens to me anymore.”

  Beau switched off his desk lamp and stood. “Oh, come on now. Can’t be that bad.”

  She wagged her pointer finger at him. “One day, you’ll see.”

  He looked away as he gathered his things. Would he, really? The way things were going it wasn’t likely that Beau would find himself being called “Daddy” anytime soon. He swallowed a saturated sigh.

  “I’m sorry.”

  Beau jerked a look up to find Jill back at his doorway. “Sorry?”

  Her expression was grim. “Sorry to remind you of something sad. If it helps any, I believe you will find love again, Beau … even though it’s probably not my place to say so.”

  Beau shook his head. “Don’t be silly. You’ve been telling me what to do for nearly ten years now, even longer than I was married to …” His gaze caught that of his assistant. “Well. Thanks for kicking me out of here. Sometimes I need to hear it.” He flashed a smile. “Not always, but sometimes.”

  “Good night, Beau.”

  “ ’Night.”

  In the dimly lit parking lot, Beau sat in his car checking his phone. It was Wednesday and if he were to leave now he could stop by the church for a midweek service. Hadn’t been to one since Cody Kent stood in the pulpit proclaiming the benefits of living well.

  Ten minutes later he arrived to find the doors to the sanctuary already closed. He shuttered his annoyance. For as long as he had attended this church, public humility had been his pastor’s unmasked way of discouraging tardiness. Not that it had ever worked on him.

  An usher approached him and with a quirk of his head said, “I can let you in over here.” He led Beau to the front row—another procedure settled on by the pastor, as if doing so was akin to putting a kid wearing a dunce cap in the corner at the front of the classroom.

  He never let it bother him, but this time, as he approached that front row, fourth seat from the center aisle, he slowed. The woman he had noticed out on the beach, and then the night of the Kent event, and recently at the church’s Christmas service, sat next to the open seat. Seat three. The usher slapped him on the back and Beau quickly slid in next to her.

  Her eyes were closed, but she was singing, her chin tipped upward, oblivious to his arrival. He gawked a second or two longer than necessary before closing his own eyes and opening his mouth to worship the God he had come to see. But as he sang, words of another kind filled his head. Words filled with hope about his future … concepts he could hardly wrap his mind fully around, and yet they were there. It was as if God himself had chosen this night to assure him that he had not been forgotten.

  * * *

  She almost hadn’t come. The past week had brought a flurry of tests, guests, and, unfortunately or fortunately, depending on how one looks at unexpected results, a diagnosis. After charging up what was left of her credit card, she got her car back from the repair station. And thankfully, the anti-seizure medication she was prescribed removed not all dark thoughts, exactly, but at least those associated with her future behind the wheel.

  Gone also were thoughts of lingering wine dates with Thomas or anyone else for that matter. Not that Thomas would have obliged her anyway. For some reason, the minute he’d learned that she may have some kind of illness—even though at the time what had now been confirmed had not yet been—Thomas had seemingly lost interest in their friendship.

  Whatever.

  “Do you want me to go to that church of yours with you tonight?” Trace had asked earlier in the day at work. “I mean, I’m Catholic and all, but I don’t think God’ll strike me dead or anything if I went with you. If you need me, I mean.”

  She pressed her lips together and found some papers to shuffle about on the reception desk. “Thanks, but no. I’m fine. Not even sure if I’ll quite make it tonight.”

  Trace stood there in the lobby, that overstuffed bag weighing down her shoulder. She’d filled it up at the dollar store with who knew what. “And you’re sure you’re okay to drive? The meds working okay?”

  Liddy’s nose prickled at the question, but she refused to cry. Trace’s concern touched her. She had, after all, been on the desk next to Liddy when the neurologist’s call had come through. The rims of Liddy’s eyes grew damp. “Of course, of course. The doctor wouldn’t allow me to drive if he thought there’d be a problem.” She flashed a look at Trace, deeply appreciative for her quirky co-worker’s concern. “N
ow, go home.”

  Trace nodded, her usual smile gone. She cinched the heavy bag to her side. “Call me if you need anything. I mean that.”

  Trace meant well; she knew that. But truthfully, Liddy would rather be alone than to have to sort all this out with someone she hardly knew. If Meg were in town, they would likely have sat in her tiny sunken living room with a bottle of wine and discussed her options. Chocolate would have been indulged in, too. But Meg was in Oregon tonight, and moving on to Washington tomorrow—not that she hadn’t called incessantly between stops. So her options were to sulk at home alone … or to visit the happy little church again and hope that answers would be forthcoming.

  When he had sat next to her, she’d had to force herself not to acknowledge him. She was worshipping God at the moment after all, sold out in song to her Maker for the first time in her life, actually. Not that God would have been all that offended if she had glanced at the familiar man who had crept into service late; she doubted that he let such things as human inattentiveness get to him. But life had delivered her one confusing set of blows lately—and she desperately needed answers, not any more detours. She had to keep her focus.

  “Tonight we’re going to try something a little different,” the pastor said once the music ended and all the musicians had taken their seats in the auditorium. “So instead of a sermon, earlier today I began to feel that there are some deep needs in our congregation—things that you and I know nothing about.”

  I’ll say.

  “So tonight, we pray for each other.” He glanced about the room. “Who’s first?”

  Her heart plummeted. She had hoped to soak up something to help her with all she had to grapple with, to find solace in hopeful words. But he wanted people to shout out their problems to the entire congregation? She could not fathom it.

  A woman in the back raised her hand and asked for prayer for her daughter who was having a baby. A man behind her asked for prayer for a work decision he had to make.