Forever Beach

by Shelley Noble

“I’m sorry for . . . yesterday . . . I was upset.”

  “I know you were. Reesa, good to see you.” He nodded and walked over to talk to the two guys who had just bought the cheese shop two stores down.

  Sarah stared after him, then she sat down. “Do you think he knows that was me apologizing?”

  “Probably,” said Reesa. “But you might want to do it more formally when there is less of an audience.”

  Sarah nodded. She didn’t get why anyone would like her. She’d never learned grace or finesse. She was prickly when she felt insecure, outspoken when she was angry, and had way too many knee-jerk reactions.

  It had been different when Sam was alive, but now that he was gone, it seemed like she was regressing to those days when she had to protect herself every second. And that just made her doubly nervous that she would blow the chance of keeping Leila. Which made her even more prickly . . . which made her—

  “Sarah?”

  Sarah jumped, almost upsetting her mug. “Sorry. So did you find out anything?”

  Reesa wiped the foam off her mouth. She was wearing a light gray suit with a white blouse. Completely out of sync with the shorts and T-shirts, cover-ups, and trendy beachwear of the other patrons.

  She pushed her coffee mug to the side, leaned over to get something from the briefcase Sarah knew must be sitting on the floor by her chair. And returned with a manila folder that she dropped onto the table and opened to the first page.

  “First things first. I talked to Ilona Cartwright. She’s agreed to meet with us; this doesn’t mean she’ll take the case, but even if she doesn’t, she will have some advice. We’re meeting her first thing Monday morning, so if you have to make arrangements, do so. We won’t get a second chance.”

  Sarah nodded. She took a breath, then another for good luck. “You make it sound like she might not be interested.”

  “She’ll have to review the case, but this is right up her alley. She spends most of her time pleading cases for people who are just out to get as much from the other person as possible, but giving children a good home is her passion.” Reesa frowned.

  “What?” Sarah asked suddenly insecure. “You don’t think I’ll make Leila a good home.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, yes I do. I was just thinking that passion is an odd word in connection to Ms. Cartwright. She’s as cold as a Subzero freezer and yet . . . anyway, she’s the best and though she’s overscheduled, she’ll take a look. Monday morning 9:00. Bring all the documentation you have.”

  “Boxes,” Sarah said, slightly embarrassed.

  Reesa smiled. Sarah noticed that she looked tired and pale; maybe it was the suit. “Bring the docs from Leila’s last two visits to Carmen, how she was before she left, how she was when she returned.”

  Sarah shuddered.

  “And her social and educational milestones.”

  “Hey, we had a cookout at Karen and Stu’s last night. We should have called you, but it was impromptu.”

  “Thanks, but I couldn’t have made it.”

  “Bad day? I forgot to ask about the kids you were removing.”

  “You don’t want to know. You just worry about your case. And get Danny Noyes in the loop. We won’t need him on Monday, but he needs to stay on his toes. I’ll try to keep in touch with him, but every summer, my caseloads go through the roof. The heat I guess.”

  Reesa turned a piece of legal paper toward Sarah. “I’ve written out some questions I think you should be prepared to answer. In case she asks. She’s pretty intimidating, and even though she works for the weak, she doesn’t like a show of weakness.”

  “You trust her?”

  “Trust? Trust doesn’t really come into it. She likes to win. And she knows how to adapt to every legal situation I’ve seen her in. Just do what she tells you. And, Sarah, don’t be combative.”

  Sarah circled her cup on the table. “Don’t show weakness but don’t be combative. Right.”

  Reesa laughed. “What can I say? But seriously, she needs to do some yoga or something. And so do you. Do not let this situation get to you, because if it gets to you, it will get to Leila and make whatever happens just that much harder.”

  “I won’t let them—”

  “If you’re serious about this working out in Leila’s and your favor, then you’ll chill out. It doesn’t do anything but screw things up when you worry about stuff that is out of your hands. We may not even need a lawyer. But best to be prepared. Dress professionally. And go apologize to Wyatt.”

  Reesa looked at her watch. “Damn.” She gulped down the rest of her coffee, leaving a mustache of foam on her lip that she quickly licked away. “Got to be at Probate in twenty minutes. Here’s the address for the law office; meet me there at quarter to nine.” She gathered up the papers except for the one she handed to Sarah and slid them back in her briefcase. “You have someone to keep Leila?”

  “I’ll ask Karen or I can ask Alice to come in early and keep her at the store, though she doesn’t like to do that. Leila is a bit of a handful.”

  “You could ask Wyatt; I’m sure he could manage the store and Leila without any problem. If you’d let him.”

  “Karen already gave me the lecture. I’m trying. I’m going to try again. If he isn’t fed up by now.”

  “Good. We could all use a good man now and then. Monday, don’t be late.” She hurried out of the coffee shop.

  Sarah thought she had just missed something. Reesa never talked about men. She hardly ever even talked about her husband, Michael.

  Sarah finished her tea. Stopped by a table to say hello to the owner of the antique shop, then stepped out into the morning sun.

  She meant to stop by Dive Works and do take two of her apology attempt. But when she got to the corner and looked two doors down, Wyatt was standing outside talking to a blond surfer chick. He leaned against the doorjamb and laughed. She tossed her hair. Then he pushed the door open and followed her inside.

  Sarah changed her mind about the apology. No way could she compete with a blond, tanned, athletic cutie.

  And he had been flirting. Sarah stepped off the curb, amazed how her mind was bouncing all over the place today. Places it never went. Places it didn’t want to go. Places she couldn’t afford to let it go. She had a business to run and a child to protect, and nothing else was worth getting derailed for.

  She glanced back at the store, then crossed the street corner to Clocks by the Sea. The day she first stepped into the store, she had laughed at the stupid name. She wasn’t even sure why she’d gone inside, except maybe she thought it would be easy to help herself to some contraband. Sarah still laughed at herself and her dismay to find everything safely locked behind glass, out of reach, or too big to carry.

  She could remember her initial disappointment. Because the old dude who sat behind the counter was the perfect stooge. He looked like some character from a fairy tale. White hair, kind face, dressed in a button-up sweater and a tie for crissakes.

  He looked up, their eyes met. And she knew he knew. She started to back away and he said, “So you like clocks?” She told him the name was dorky, made gagging noises at the prissy Victorian woodwork detailed in green, lavender, and blue.

  When he died and the store became hers, she didn’t change the name or the color scheme. And she never would. It was a family business, and she was family.

  She’d made a few changes over the years after Sam died. She carried more retail merchandise these days and had moved all the repairs to the back room or to the converted space at the cottage. She could use more space, but space was a rare commodity in the old town. If you wanted space, you went out to the highway.

  She would make do with what she had.

  Once inside, Sarah began dusting as she did each day before the store opened, starting with the display cases and moving to the mantel clocks, the wall clocks, then the grandfathers and grandmothers, her feather duster moving in counterrhythm to the pervading ticks and tocks of the clocks.

&n
bsp; At ten o’clock when the first cuckoo began to chirp the hour, she unlocked the door. By the time the others had joined in, Sarah was sitting behind the counter and Alice Millburn was coming through the door.

  Alice was a retired librarian who didn’t really care about clocks but was a great counter fixture. Pleasant as long as she could sit and knowledgeable enough to call Sarah from the back room when there was a question she couldn’t answer. And she didn’t mind Sarah’s occasional need to leave Leila with her when no one else was available.

  “It’s supposed to be a nice weekend,” Alice announced in her quiet librarian’s voice. “We should hope so. No one wants to buy a clock in the rain.”

  “Hope so,” Sarah said, answering the good part and ignoring the pronouncement of doom, which was the only real downside of Alice; she did love her pronouncements of doom.

  “Well, I’d better get to the work on the Kelly’s ormolu. They want it by next week and the parts have just come in.” Sarah started toward the back. “Oh, and can you open for me on Monday? I have an appointment.”

  “Oh, dear. Nothing wrong, I hope.”

  Not as much as Sarah hoped. “There’s a glitch in the adoption process, so we may have to go back to court.”

  “Oh dear.” Alice shook her head. Already imagining the worst, Sarah thought.

  Sarah smiled, and escaping the sympathetic look she knew would follow, she strode into the back room.

  She set her alarm and worked for almost four hours, not taking a break, not making a cup of tea, just working, losing herself in the intricate inner workings of the clocks.

  When the alarm went off, Sarah was more than ready to take a break and feeling a real need to see Leila. She was waiting at the bus stop when the day-care minibus pulled up. The automated stop sign stopped traffic to each side and the bus doors opened.

  The driver held Leila’s hand as she waited for Sarah to lift her off the step. In addition to her backpack, she was carrying a rolled-up piece of brown paper.

  “I’m big, Mommee,” she said. “Wait till you see.” She rattled the tube of paper at Sarah, knocking it against her head in her excitement.

  “Well, let’s go see, then.” They waved good-bye to the bus driver and started down the street, Leila chattering about lying on the floor and Mrs. Lester drawing all around her.

  “We got to pick our marker. I chose pink.”

  “Of course you did.”

  As soon as they were home, Sarah unrolled the life-size outline, while Leila jumped around and clapped and acted like a kid. Sarah said a prayer that it would last. She’d decided not to mention the ordered visit until after the weekend. That would be long enough to “prepare the child for visitation.” No reason for both of them to be freaked out for the next few days.

  They pinned down each corner of the rolled paper with a book. Where the Wild Things Are at the top right by Leila’s raised hand, Hannah’s Night at the right foot, a much taped and retaped copy of Wuggie Norple at the top left, and Marisol McDonald Doesn’t Match at the last corner.

  As soon as it was finished, Leila started to climb on the paper, but stopped herself and sat on the floor. “Shoes off first.”

  “Right,” Sarah agreed. “Shoes might tear it.”

  Leila frowned. “It might tear.”

  “It might,” Sarah agreed solemnly. “So it’s a good thing we have lots and lots of tape to fix it again.”

  She helped Leila to scoot onto the paper and align herself within the pink lines.

  “Ta dah!” Sarah exclaimed. She refused to feel sad, or scared, or anxious. Fix the now. She looked heavenward like a baseball player after a home run. She wasn’t sure there really was a heaven, but if there was, she knew that’s where Sam would be.

  “In fact, if we tape it to your closet door, you can see how much you grow.”

  They carefully removed the books, rolled the paper up, and carried it into the small bedroom that had once been Sarah’s.

  “We’ll have to move Elsa over.”

  “That’s okay.”

  Leila stood very close, breathing hard with concentration while Sarah carefully removed the tape from the Elsa Frozen poster and repositioned it on the wall next to the Beauty and the Beast poster.

  Then aligning the feet close to the floor, she taped the Leila outline to the door. Leila stepped in front of it, twisted her body around trying to fit her arm in the raised outline. It took some tries, but at last she was satisfied.

  “Take my selfie, Mommee.”

  Sarah pulled her phone from her pocket and took Leila’s picture. Selfies were a great way to document progress, failures, and just plain fun.

  Sarah took the rest of the afternoon off, content to let Alice watch the store while she played with Leila. She kept reminding herself not to be too clingy, not to let the panic that rushed up her at unsuspecting times flow out onto her daughter. And soon they both fell into the calm brought by comfort and structure and love.

  At six her cell phone jarred her from that total calm. It was Danny Noyes, Leila’s adoption caseworker. Holding on to her shred of hope that it had all been a big mistake, Sarah carried the phone into her bedroom and answered the call.

  “Sarah. Did you get the papers from the court?”

  “Yes.”

  “I wanted to touch base with you before they came in, but my caseload is into the next state.”

  “I know, Mr. Noyes. How did this happen?”

  “As you know, it’s our purpose to whenever possible reunite—”

  “No offense, Mr. Noyes, but can we please cut to the chase. I’ve been in the system longer than you have and I know what this means, someone f— screwed up.”

  “No, no, it’s not like that. Ms. Delgado has been out of rehab for six weeks now.”

  “This stint.”

  “Yes, this stint. But you must realize these things sometimes take more than one try.”

  “Mr. Noyes, my mother died after one of her many ‘stints’ at rehab. I was eleven and had already been in the system for almost three years. My mother made the right choice in giving me up. If she’d done it earlier, I might have had a better chance of being adopted into a normal family like Leila has.”

  “Yes, I sympathize, but Ms. Delgado has a new apartment now, and she’s looking for a job. She’s tested clean for the last six weeks and now insists that she was coerced into signing her parental rights away.”

  “This was not done in a vacuum, Mr. Noyes. Several people were present, both caseworkers as well as the judge. I hope the department isn’t accusing Judge Beckman of coercion.” Stop it, Sarah. Don’t be adversarial. Be sympathetic.

  “Of course not, but Ms. Delgado claims her attorney didn’t fully explain the meaning of termination of rights. The court feels that we need to revisit the case to ensure we’re all on the same page.”

  Well, we’re not, she wanted to say. There has never been a same page. Carmen is a career crackhead. Pimped by her latest boyfriend and now out to make a few extra bucks off the government. But Sarah couldn’t say that. It would make her look belligerent, and they were all supposed to be so willing to work together.

  Sarah knew the drill. She’d given Carmen the benefit of the doubt, twice now. It had been a disaster for Leila and for her—even for Carmen.

  “To that purpose . . .”

  Here it came. She couldn’t stop it. Just couldn’t stop it.

  “We need to schedule a supervised visit. She wanted a full weekend visit, but we nixed that.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I’d hoped to schedule a visit for this weekend.”

  Before Carmen falls off the sober wagon?

  “But I didn’t hear from you.”

  Sarah willed herself to stay calm. “I just received the notification. You probably knew before I did.”

  “Well, yes, I suppose. How does this coming week look for you?”

  Looks like it’s going to be hellish with a major chance of setback.

&nbs
p; “I’ll need time to prepare Leila for the . . .” She’d started to say disruption in her schedule. Caught herself at the last second. Do not be adversarial. These people are doing what they think is best. Sure, but seeing it from the outside was a whole lot different from feeling it from the other side. “. . . for the visit. Not this weekend. We have plans.”

  It was the craft fair weekend. Sarah wouldn’t be participating; no way was she going to lug antique clocks outside to subject them to the weather and sticky fingers, both sugar and theft-wise. But there would be children’s activities and the beach all weekend, and Sarah wouldn’t go into the store at all on Sunday.

  “Ms. Delgado is available Wednesday after her AA meeting.”

  “It will have to be after three o’clock, Leila isn’t back from school until then.”

  “Shall we say three then at family services? Room 102. I can pick Leila up and bring her back.”

  “That won’t be necessary. I’ll bring her and wait.”

  “Actually, it would be better if I pick her up.”

  “Fine.” Sarah knew the drill and the psychology. Stay home so that the child knows she will have a place to return to. Don’t blow this because of your own stubbornness. “Thank you. She’ll be ready. See you on Wednesday.”

  “We really do have the child’s best interest at heart.”

  “Of course you do. And I really appreciate your effort on our behalf.”

  “Well, then until Wednesday.” They said good-byes, very civilized. Sarah hung up, barely resisting the urge to throw the phone across the room. She knew they were doing the best they could with the resources they had—not enough—for more children than they could place, with demands from all sides. Too many files, not enough money, not enough sleep, not enough people who cared. But that didn’t make it okay for a kid to fall through the cracks. Not now, not then, not ever.

  Dear Nonie

  I don’t guess you’re ever gonna write me back. But in case you read this I just wanted to tell you that my mama died. They came to tell me yesterday. I didn’t go to the funeral or anything. Because by the time the system found me she was already buried.

  I asked how she died.

  They just looked at me all sympathetic. They didn’t have to tell me. She died like all users die. I guess I should be sad. Or maybe even happy to know I won’t ever have to go back there, not that group home is much better.