Tales From Sea Glass Inn

by Karis Walsh

  Ari climbed on the tall driftwood trunk and sat with her legs dangling over the side. She gently kicked her heels against the wood while she opened her notebook and started to write. Not a story, but a journal. She started with details, like what time she had gotten out of bed and how her new novel was progressing, and then she jotted down some of the memories from her teenage years she had recalled this morning. She was still using words to explore the turmoil of emotions she felt, and not working them out internally, but at least she was writing as herself and not filtering her feelings through a fictional character. Someday she would create a novel using these notes, her image of the woman on the bluff, and the premise of loss and guilt. Just not now.

  Ari stared at the waves. They were calm and gray-green today. She closed the notebook and sat still, matching her breath with the steady thrum of the vast ocean. She wasn’t about to offer unsolicited advice to Pam, but she had been willing to take the words Jocelyn had thrown at her and act on them. After her anger had ebbed, Ari had considered Jocelyn’s suggestions. They had been pushy and intrusive, but slowly Ari had recognized the sense behind them. The night of the book signing, she had made notes until two in the morning for an idea she had thought of during her stay at the inn. She had ignored the unfolding story at first because she was determined to write the novel about mothers and daughters, but it had remained buried in the back of her mind. Once she turned her attention to it, the words and sentences began to flow.

  Pam had told her about her ex-girlfriend’s child, Kevin, and how he was slowly becoming part of her life again. Ari had been intrigued when she heard how Mel’s son Danny and Kevin were bonding like brothers even though no actual blood or legal relationship existed between them. Ari had changed most of the details in her story, including turning the brothers into sisters, but she’d kept the basic theme of people who were creating a unique family for themselves. Some of the concepts overlapped the book she eventually wanted to write about her mom, but most of it was unrelated. She had been determined to hold on to a project that wasn’t working, and she had nearly overlooked this new one. Her fingers stalled sometimes, hovering over the keyboard and trembling with doubt, but she always managed to write the next word, and then the next sentence and paragraph and page.

  Ari spotted a horse and rider in the distance, cantering toward her end of the beach. She jumped off the log and was going to meet them when she realized it wasn’t Jocelyn and Mariner. She stood still while the young girl and her chestnut horse passed by.

  Once they were nearly out of sight, she turned and went back up the stairs and circled around the inn to get to her car. She was stronger now, and ready to face Jocelyn.

  She drove the short distance into town and parked in front of the bookstore. She sat in her car for a few moments and watched Jocelyn through the window. She moved along a shelf, running her index finger across the spines of books. Every once in a while she pulled out a book and added it to the pile she held in her arms. Probably acting her part of Book Witch and choosing a bundle for one of her devoted customers. Ari loved the way Jocelyn paid attention to her readers. She connected with the people who came in her store, bringing them together with books and with other locals through her recommendations and book clubs.

  Jocelyn might have cited money as a main reason for having the book signing, but Ari didn’t believe it after watching her during the event. She united her neighbors with each other and against the threat of business failures and closures. She talked like someone who only saw goals to meet and challenges to overcome, but there was something more inspirational and relatable inside her. Ari had benefitted from Jocelyn’s attention and observation once she had gotten past the bossy language it’d been housed in.

  Ari got out of her car and went into the shop. Jocelyn came out of the stacks with a smile that grew wider when she saw Ari.

  “Hi, Jocelyn,” Ari said.

  “Hi.”

  This was going well. Ari wasn’t sure how to proceed. She had made quite a few decisions since the last time they spoke, and she wanted Jocelyn to hear every one of them.

  “My month at the inn is almost over,” she said. The smile faded from Jocelyn’s face and she put the pile of books on her desk.

  “I guess you’ll be going back home, then? I hope you enjoyed your stay at Cannon Beach.”

  Jocelyn’s tone had grown stiff. Ari shook her head. “No, I mean, yes, I’m glad I came. But no, I’m not going home yet.”

  Jocelyn had been fidgeting with the books. She stopped and looked at Ari. “Not going…Are you planning to stay at the inn longer?”

  “That’d be too pricey long-term. I rented a room in town, just a block from the beach.”

  “Long-term?” Jocelyn laughed. “I keep repeating what you say. I’m just surprised. I didn’t expect you to want to stay.”

  Ari closed the distance between them and stood next to Jocelyn without touching her. She wasn’t sure how Jocelyn would react to what she was going to say, and she didn’t want to push her. “I guess I found my inspiration here, but not where I expected. I thought I’d be inspired by the waves or the smell of salt in the air or the cry of gulls. But I found it in you.”

  Jocelyn shook her head and bridged the gap between them, resting her palms on Ari’s hips. “I didn’t inspire you to do anything. I should have let you find your own way. Better yet, I should have helped you through this block by being a sounding board and just letting you vent. Instead, I pushed you into a book signing and told you how to handle your own pain and creativity.”

  “I needed a push. I was stuck in a spiral of sadness and guilt, and the more time I spent not writing, the worse it got. You showed me a different direction to take.” Ari paused, overcome by the emotions of the moment and tempted to run away from the intensity. The realization that Jocelyn cared enough to want to support Ari’s writing spread a beautiful warmth through her, but doubt followed quickly with an icier chill. Would she be able to reciprocate? What could Ari give Jocelyn in return? Only the steady anchor of Jocelyn’s hands on her kept Ari from bolting to either her keyboard or the highway home. “I’m writing again, Jocelyn, and I have you to thank for it.”

  “You’ve started the book about you and your mom?” Jocelyn raised one hand and caressed Ari’s cheek. Ari saw a mixture of pride and pleasure in her expression.

  “No. Something else.” She kept her answer vague, but Jocelyn would be the first to read her new book. Ari had never felt the urge to share her work—her life—so intimately with someone else. “I’ll return to the one I envisioned someday, but I need to take a step back and spend more time with my memories and emotions before I transform them into fiction.”

  “But I was the one who was wrong,” Jocelyn said. “Your books, the way you write, they’re important to people. Your characters resonate with readers because their emotions are genuine. And they’re genuine because they’re things you’ve actually felt and experienced. Don’t let something I said take that away from the work you do.”

  She put her hand on Ari’s shoulder and Ari covered it with her own, letting their fingers intertwine. “You didn’t take anything away from me. I’ll always write about the things I feel, but some emotions have to be mine for a while longer before I can give them away.” Like the one she was feeling right now. Someday she’d write about this wave of love flooding through her, but for now it belonged only to her and Jocelyn.

  She leaned her forehead against Jocelyn’s and sighed. She had come to Cannon Beach a broken and blocked writer, but also one too focused on herself to see past her own needs. She had wanted healing, not for herself but for her ability to distance herself from the pain she felt. Jocelyn had healed her heart, instead. What could she offer in return?

  Jocelyn wrapped her free hand around the back of Ari’s neck and held her close with a firm but gentle pressure. “So you’ll be staying here a little longer?”

  “Indefinitely,” Ari said. She brushed her nose against Jocelyn’s an
d kissed her cheek. “No one is waiting for me at home except a few houseplants.” She paused and finally put her concerns into words. “You were here for me when I needed someone honest and strong, but I don’t want you to think I’ll always take and never give. I want to support you. To discover you. Hopefully, I can be what you need, too.”

  “What I need? Hmm…I don’t suppose you’d be interested in doing another reading and signing while you’re here? I’m thinking over the holidays would be good because we should have a tourist surge during those times.”

  “Mercenary,” Ari said with a laugh. She captured Jocelyn’s mouth in a hungry kiss and nibbled on her lower lip. “I’ll do anything you ask.”

  Jocelyn’s hand tightened on Ari’s nape. “Forget the signing, then. I can come up with some much better ideas for you.”

  “I can’t wait.” Ari’s arm went around Jocelyn’s lower back and pinned them hip to hip. Jocelyn braced her hands against Ari’s shoulders and her smile faded.

  “Can I be honest again? I was attracted to you from the moment you walked into my store and tried to spy on the books I’d recommended to Rosalie. Before I even knew your name. But I was too caught up in what I thought I needed, and I tried to control the way my feelings were growing. With a little help, I’ve realized how exactly perfect you are just because you are you. Not a version of me.” She relaxed the pressure on her hands and let Ari pull her close again. “We balance each other. I’m glad you’re staying.”

  Ari felt the steadiness of balance already, with Jocelyn in her arms. She was sure they’d clash at times, but they’d also bring peace and clarity to each other. She kissed Jocelyn again, her tongue exploring and promising. Jocelyn’s breasts were pressed against hers, and she felt when her breath came faster. She pulled away from the kiss and whispered, with her lips just grazing Jocelyn’s ear, “I’m not leaving here until I know how my new story ends.”

  Undertow

  Heather Grant honked and flashed her high beams before pulling into the oncoming lane and sailing by a slow-moving camper. Fucking two-lane roads. Passing lanes were few and far between out here on the highway from Portland to Cannon Beach. Once she was back in her own lane, she stepped on the gas pedal and accelerated to her comfortable cruising speed of ten miles an hour over the limit. Until she crested the next hill and found herself stalled behind a semi.

  She tapped restlessly on the steering wheel as she slowed to match the truck’s pace. The road wound through national forests and the Coast Range foothills, and the dense trees and vegetation occasionally opened up into wide swaths of clear-cut emptiness. Heather was focused on the road and not paying much attention to the area’s flora, but she noticed the lack of beauty when she drove past the acres of felled trees and torn-up shrubs. She didn’t have time to stop and mourn the forest or its inhabitants, though, since she was already hours behind her schedule. Her unaccustomed tardiness didn’t bode well for her enforced vacation.

  As soon as the road widened enough for her to pass, she was zooming along again with her lights illuminating the empty road ahead. She’d wanted to get this drive over during the light of day, but she’d stopped by the bank on the way out of town. She just needed to check on one loan for one customer, but then she had moved on to one other and one other. Three hours had elapsed before she turned her voice mail on and her computer off and locked the door to her office. Now she was traveling on unfamiliar, unlit roads as the early dark of winter enveloped the wilderness. She leaned forward, peering over the steering wheel, as if the extra inches would give her yards of visibility. She saw a shadow at the edge of her headlights’ range. A flash of movement.

  Heather braked hard. She felt the back end of her Volvo push the car into a skid, and she heard the click of antilock brakes and the squeal of tires searching for traction. She had been sitting too close to the steering wheel in her attempt to see the road ahead, and her head smacked into something sharp.

  One stretched moment of confusion, screeching, and hurt. And then silence. Heather gasped to catch her breath after the adrenaline dump. She sat in the silent, stopped car on the shoulder of the road with the smell of burning rubber in the air, blood dripping from her forehead and her broken thumbnail. A fat and shimmery raccoon stared at her car before ambling across her path and disappearing into the woods.

  “Damn.” Heather rummaged in her glove box and found a pile of fast food napkins. She wet them with bottled water and blotted her forehead. She was going to have one whopper of a headache in the morning. She winced as she gingerly peeled off the broken piece of thumbnail—her head and hand must have collided when she’d snapped forward. Once the semi roared past, rattling her car in its wake, she got out and checked the road to make certain she hadn’t hit anything. She’d seen the raccoon walk away unharmed, but what if it had been traveling with another one? She didn’t see any sign of animals either under her car or along the shoulder, so she got in and carefully pulled onto the road again.

  She drove much slower now, her eyes glancing left and right instead of staring straight ahead toward her destination. Her hands trembled on the wheel as her initial shock wore off. Her head and thumb throbbed, and she slammed on the brakes every time she saw the glint of light reflected on the side of the road. She saw several deer and an opossum, but none of them ran in front of her car. She sighed with relief when she saw the turnoff for Cannon Beach. Lights from the small town and an increase in traffic gave her a sense of being back in civilization after too long away, and she slowly let the tension release from her shoulders and neck.

  Her GPS guided her along the quiet main street. A teeny grocery store and a post office that looked more like a gnome house than an actual building for humans weren’t a promising welcome to this town. A few elegant restaurants and a dozen or so art galleries were more suited to her taste, but how long would they keep her entertained? She was supposed to stay here two weeks, but she doubted she’d last more than one. Her doctor wanted her to take a vacation and see the sights. If she made an effort, she could get through his annoying prescription in half the time he’d suggested.

  She pulled into a parking place next to a huge and ancient house, and her headlights flashed on a sign for the Sea Glass Inn. What looked like glass tiles in a hundred colors glimmered like a rainbow, and Heather sat in her car staring at it for several minutes. She finally turned off the engine and got her suitcase out of the trunk. She was late enough as it was without wasting more time.

  Heather went through the front door and heard a chime echo through the house. She waited in the foyer until a tall woman wearing jeans and a yellow sweater came out to greet her.

  “You must be Heather. I’m Mel. I was beginning to think you might be lost since we expected you…Oh, goodness! What happened to you? Do you need a doctor?”

  Heather put her fingers to her forehead and felt a crusty blood trail curving over her eyebrow and down her right temple. “I’m fine, really. I’m late because I had to get some work finished before coming here, and I hit my head when I stopped to let a raccoon cross the road. Really, it’s nothing.”

  Mel looked skeptical, but she didn’t argue. “There’s a first-aid kit in every room. Just, please, let me know if you need anything else.”

  “I will. I just need to clean up and I’m sure it’ll hardly be noticeable.”

  She signed the register and followed Mel upstairs. The place was old. Freshly painted and decorated, yes, but Heather would have preferred something more upscale. A five-star high-rise complete with day spa and a thrumming, flashing nightclub. Sights and sounds and sensations that would occupy her mind and distract her. Her work usually did, and her vacations should, too. What would she do here? Think all day? She was supposed to be resting for her health, but the thought of a week or two of boredom made her blood pressure spike.

  Mel led her into a spacious room. The walls were painted a soft pale green, and a painting of a beach after a storm dominated the space over the bed. Heather looked a
t it long enough to recognize the talent of the artist and the beauty of embedded sea glass, but the subject was too much. She was used to surrounding herself with bland, nonprovocative landscapes and meaningless color-blocked pieces, like the art hanging in her bank. Or like the cheap oil painting hanging over her desk, depicting a generic old barn in the middle of a field. She turned away and set her suitcase on a folding luggage rack. A window behind it looked out over the backyard and the ocean. Heather couldn’t hear the rhythm of the ocean waves through the glass, but she felt it inside when she saw the hint of foam-tipped waves in the darkness. A small building sat sheltered in the garden. Large-paned windows were lit from inside, and Heather saw people moving around.

  “That’s Pam’s studio,” Mel said, coming to stand next to her. “I told you about the retreat she’s holding this week when we spoke on the phone. Four of the people attending are staying in the inn, and three others live nearby and are commuting. They’ll be spending most of their time in the studio and shouldn’t get in your way much at all.”

  “I don’t mind a full house,” Heather said. She knew Mel and the other business owners at Cannon Beach had lost an entire tourist season after the oil spill, and now they were offering a variety of activities and special events to draw tourists in during the traditionally lean winter months. She had gotten a good deal on this room because she’d come during the retreat week and Mel had offered her the participant rate, so she certainly wouldn’t complain about the extra guests. Besides, if she were here on her own, she wouldn’t be able to escape the attention of her hosts. This way, she’d be one of a crowd—a very small crowd of five, but still…

  “We normally serve breakfast and no other meals, but since the artists sometimes work so long they forget to eat, I’ve been keeping the fridge stocked with sandwiches and fruit and other healthy snacks. You’re welcome to share as well. Just help yourself.”