The Wildwater Walking Club

by Claire Cook

  “I’m hoping you can conjure up a hotel room for my walking partners and me for the lavender festival. We have our hearts set on going and we all really, really need to get away. One of us even has a lavender farm way over here on the East Coast in Massachusetts, and I just took a buyout from my company and it’s the first vacation I’ve had in—”

  “You’re not going to believe this,” the woman said.

  “What?” I said.

  “I just had a cancellation not five minutes ago. Technically, I’m supposed to check the waiting list…”

  “Oh, please,” I said. “Please, please, please. I’ll bring you a pair of sneakers. Balancing Act. The Walk On By—top of the line. What size shoe do you wear?”

  I called Tess and Rosie right away, and they came back over after dinner. I poured them each a glass of white wine. “It’s not lavender black currant champagne,” I said.

  “It’ll do,” Tess said.

  “To hot times in Sequim,” Rosie said. We clinked our glasses.

  “I can’t believe the woman who answered the phone wears an eight and a half,” I said. “I mean, how lucky can you get?”

  “I can’t believe you got us a hotel room,” Rosie said. “And a suite, no less.”

  “No way am I sleeping on that pullout sofa,” Tess said.

  “We’ll take turns,” I said. “Come on, let’s spend those frequent flier miles.”

  It took almost two hours, but eventually we worked our way through the online frequent flier reservation maze, and got all three of us on the same flights, both ways no less.

  “What a workout,” Tess said. “They sure don’t make it easy. I can’t believe how many miles it took. And how about that fuel surcharge—such a rip-off.”

  “But we did it,” Rosie said. “That’s the important thing. Ohmigod, how am I ever going to take that much time off?”

  “Not a problem,” I said. “I’ll come weed for you tomorrow.”

  “Really?” Rosie said. “You’d do that?”

  “Sure,” I said. “As soon as we finish walking. And lifting and stretching.”

  After they left, I went into my kitchen and stared at my phone for a while. I closed my eyes and willed Rick to call. I went into the bathroom, washed my face, slathered on some moisturizer, brushed my teeth, gargled with mouthwash.

  Just as I was walking to my bedroom, my cell phone rang.

  “Wow, that was quick,” I said out loud. I took my time walking to the phone. unavailable, my caller ID said, which was probably true, but I thought I should talk to him anyway. My heart took an extra beat as I reached for the phone.

  “Hello,” I said, trying unsuccessfully to conjure up my sexy dream voice.

  “How’re your windows working for you?” a rich male voice said.

  I knew I should just hang up. “Okay, I guess,” I said.

  “Did you know that hands down the best thing you can do to increase your home value is to install tilt-to-clean vinyl replacement windows?”

  I closed my eyes. “Really?” I said, just to hear him talk some more. I imagined him handsome, but not too, with kind eyes and a killer smile. I mean, everybody had to make a living, and who knew, he might make big bucks selling tilt-to-clean windows. Not that money was the most important thing.

  “I kid you not. You’ll pay them off in one to five years with just the energy savings alone. And that’s without factoring in the sizeable tax rebates you can receive for making your home more energy efficient. And best of all, our personalized, professional estimate is free, and if you hurry you can just make the deadline on our thirty percent off special.”

  I’d heard stories about a woman my age at work who was paying some guy in his thirties for regular “massages” that included more than a massage. Maybe it had all started with a phone call like this.

  I was lonely, but not that lonely. “Thanks anyway,” I said before I hung up. “But windows are the least of my problems.”

  Day 17

  10,013 steps

  “I’LL BE OVER AS SOON AS I CHANGE,” I SAID TO ROSIE. THE three of us had just finished working out, and Tess was already on her way back to her house.

  “Are you sure?” Rosie asked.

  “Absolutely. I’ve got nothing else planned for the day.” Actually, I had nothing else planned for most of the rest of my life, but why go there.

  “Thanks,” Rosie said. “I’ll meet you out in the lavender field.”

  I’d just replaced my sweaty, white walking T-shirt with a ripped-up old red one, and I was putting on an old pair of sneakers I didn’t mind getting dirty, when my phone rang.

  One shoe on and one shoe off, I hobbled into my kitchen. Sherry’s name peered out from my caller ID. I wasn’t sure I wanted to talk to her, but I figured I might as well get it over with, instead of worrying about whether or not to call her back.

  “Hello,” I said, as if I didn’t already know who it was.

  “Hi, Noreen, it’s Sherry.”

  “Oh, hi, Sherry.” I felt totally phony and it wasn’t just about the caller ID. “How’s it going?”

  “Fine. I’m at work, so I have to make this quick. I was just wondering if you were planning to go to O’Malley’s tonight.”

  I looked at my calendar. It was Wednesday again. Who knew. “I hadn’t really thought about it,” I said.

  “Well, I was just thinking if you were already planning on going out, maybe we could skip O’Malley’s and meet at Lemongrass instead. Remember the place where we had drinks and appetizers last time? Near that mall?”

  It couldn’t possibly be a good idea, but I also couldn’t think of an easy way out. “Sure,” I said. “What time?”

  “Five-thirty?”

  “See you then,” I said.

  I grabbed a handful of walnuts and pushed my back door open. Hannah was leaning against the fence that separated our properties, talking on her cell. She jumped when my door slammed.

  I waved as I walked across my backyard.

  “I’ll call you right back,” Hannah said into her phone. She clicked it off, then looked up at me. “What?”

  I pointed to the path to Rosie’s house. “Nothing. Just saying hi.”

  “It’s a free country,” she said. “I should be allowed to talk on my own phone.”

  I kept walking. “Have a nice day,” I said.

  Rosie was already weeding when I got to her house. An old, faded purple bandana covered most of her curls. I wondered if it had belonged to her mother.

  “Wow,” I said. “It’s like a sea of purple around here. And I just can’t get enough of the smell.”

  “Thanks for reminding me,” Rosie said. “Sometimes I actually forget to smell the lavender. You get so used to it, you know? Here, jump right in.” She pointed to a wheelbarrow. “If it’s not lavender, it goes in there. The weeds are brutal this year. All that rain in June. We’ve got some sand down for mulch, but it doesn’t do much. We can’t use bark mulch—it holds in too much moisture and causes rot.”

  Rod Stewart strutted past us, stopping occasionally to scratch and peck at the ground. The Supremes followed him in a single file that was so perfectly spaced it looked almost choreographed. I kept waiting for them to break into the poultry version of “Stop! In the Name of Love.”

  “Not again,” Rosie said. “Don’t you dare eat my lettuce,” she yelled. She lowered her voice again. “Just in case you were wondering where the expression ‘fly the coop’ comes from, they’re amazing escape artists. Let me know if they’re bothering you.”

  Maybe it was all that walking together, but Rosie and I fell into an easy weeding cadence, standing a few rows apart and working from left to right.

  “Will the lavender still be in bloom when we get to Sequim?” I asked.

  Rosie laughed. “Of course. They plan the festival around the peak of the bloom season. Theirs is a couple weeks after ours.”

  “So this is past peak?” I asked. I looked out over the rows and rows of bushy pl
ants covered in spikes of flowers. Most of the flowers were some shade of purple, though a few plants had pink blooms like my Hidcote, and even white. Bees and butterflies were everywhere, as well as an occasional hummingbird, something I only remembered seeing in photos. The bees were making me a little bit nervous, but as long as I stayed out of their flight patterns, they didn’t seem interested in me.

  Rosie adjusted her purple bandana and left a streak of dirt under one ear. “Yup. Enjoy it while you can. Another few weeks and the show’s pretty much over, though some of the early bloomers will have a second, smaller flowering, which you can help along if you cut them back fast once the first one is over. Anyway, I should be harvesting. The best time is as soon as the blooms open.”

  I looked around. “It seems like such a shame to pick them.”

  Rosie pulled a big leafy weed, shook the dirt off the roots, then tossed it into the wheelbarrow. “Yeah, especially when I’m not really using the harvest. Most of the stuff in the shop has been sitting there for a while. I should at least change out last year’s dried bouquets and check to make sure nothing has gone bad. Not that we get many customers anymore.”

  An older man, who looked just like Rosie, but with only a hint of red left in his yellowy white curls, came out to join us.

  “Hey, Dad,” Rosie said. “Noreen, this is my father, Kent Stockton. Dad, Noreen Kelly, one of the neighbors I’ve been walking with.”

  I held out my hand, and he kissed it, dirt and all. “Now, there’s a nice Irish name,” he said. “Can I get you two girls a sandwich?” he asked.

  “Right, Dad,” Rosie said. “Like you’ve ever made a sandwich in your life.”

  He grinned.

  “I’ve got to get going anyway,” I said. “I’m meeting someone for dinner.”

  “Wait,” Rosie said. “At least let me give you a few more lavender plants. You can dig them in yourself and water them, and I’ll check on them before we walk tomorrow. Just let me dump these weeds in the compost and we’ll load up the wheelbarrow.”

  Rosie filled the wheelbarrow with lavender plants, and threw in some lavender moisturizer and a kit for making lavender scones. “Everything else is in the kit—all you have to do is add the buttermilk. Oh, and the egg. Do you want me to grab one from the Supremes?”

  “I don’t think so,” I said.

  Rosie’s dad grabbed the handle of the wheelbarrow. “I’ll wheel it home for you, little lady,” he said. “It’ll do me good to get some exercise. And that way I can wheel it right back and save you the trip.”

  “Thanks,” I said. He was adorable, sweet, and gentlemanly. Why didn’t they make men like this in my dating demographic?

  “Great,” Rosie said. “See you in the morning, Noreen, and thanks so much. And Dad, if you see the chickens, will you shoo them back this way?”

  “Will do, my darling daughter.” Rosie’s dad lifted the handles of the wheelbarrow and started to sing in an old-fashioned baritone as he pushed it along. “Lavender’s blue, dilly dilly. Rosemary’s green. When I am king, dilly dilly. You shall be queen.”

  My eyes teared up. Until that moment, I’d completely forgotten my own father used to sing a version of that same song to me when I was a little, little girl. I missed him all over again.

  Kent Stockton and I were almost to the end of the path when we heard the first scream.

  It was a woman’s scream, and it sounded like it was coming from the direction of my house.

  MY MOTHER WAS still screaming when we found her. She was standing up on one of my dining room chairs while Rod Stewart and the Supremes circled her like covered wagons in an old western.

  “Have you got some breakfast cereal handy?” Rosie’s dad asked.

  I was already heading for the Special K. As soon as I had the box in my hands, the chickens abandoned my mother and made a bee-line for me. I threw the box to Rosie’s dad, who caught it and started shaking it like he’d done it a million times before.

  He reached his free hand up to my mother. “Kent Stockton,” he said.

  “Get them out of here,” my mother yelled. “Now!”

  “A pleasure to meet you,” Rosie’s dad said. “Perhaps I can make you a sandwich later.”

  “Mom,” I said, once my mother had finally gotten off the chair and had a little bit of time to settle down. “What are you doing here?” Even with the screaming and the chickens, the two large suitcases camped out in my front hallway had not escaped me.

  My mother reached up to stroke the earrings she was wearing. They looked like turtles. Or maybe flattened armadillos. “Why aren’t you at work?” she asked. “Is something wrong?”

  Leave it to my mother to find a way to turn the tables. “Why did you leave my front door open?” I countered.

  “I was just airing things out a little,” my mother said. She was sitting on my couch, and I was across from her on a chair. “How was I to know you had livestock issues?”

  “I thought you were on Nantucket,” I said. “I was just making plans to go see you.” This last part wasn’t quite true, but I had come as close as thinking about calling my sister to plan a visit.

  “You know I don’t like strange guest rooms,” my mother said. “Anyone could have slept there. There was a damp smell, too.”

  “Mom, it’s an island. It’s supposed to smell wet.”

  “Your sister had to go home for a day anyway. Jenny broke a wire on her braces and Jason forgot something he couldn’t live without. They dropped me off on the way back. I told her not to wait. Good thing I know where you hide the key.”

  I’d completely forgotten about Sherry. I looked at my watch. “Mom, I’m supposed to be meeting someone for dinner.”

  My mother sighed a long, martyred sigh. “Sure, dear, go right ahead. Far be it from me to get in the way of your love life. I’ll just find something in the freezer and pop it in the microwave. I don’t need much.”

  SHERRY KEPT HER cell on the table as we talked.

  I couldn’t resist nodding at it. “Waiting for a call?” I asked.

  “Not really,” she said. We each took a sip of our wine.

  “So,” she said.

  “So,” I said.

  “What’s it really like not to be working?”

  “It’s great,” I said. “Well, it’s sort of great and sort of disorienting. Why, are you thinking of taking a buyout?”

  “Maybe,” she said. “Rumor has it that the VRIF won’t be on the table much longer. Plus, the company’s changing so much. Everybody’s posturing, embellishing their job descriptions. You know, trying to make themselves look valuable so they don’t get edged out by Olympus. I heard an assistant who stuffs papers into folders for meetings is now calling himself the Director of Portfolio Development.”

  I smiled. “That’s actually fairly brilliant.”

  Sherry shook her head. “It just not the same there. And it’s anybody’s guess who’ll be left at the end of the year anyway.”

  I nibbled at a spring roll. “I’m sure you’ll make the right decision,” I said.

  We each took another sip of our wine.

  “So,” Sherry said. “Are you seeing anyone these days?”

  This was a tough one. On the one hand, if she should happen to mention it to Michael, I wanted him to eat his heart out with jealousy. On the other hand, Rick hadn’t exactly called yet, and just in case he never did, there was always the off chance that Michael would miss me, dump Sherry, and apologize for weeks, even months, until I finally forgave him.

  “Here and there,” I said. “How about you?”

  Sherry leaned forward. I braced myself. “Yeah,” she whispered. “But we have to keep it on the down low. He works on campus. You know…”

  I took another gulp of my wine.

  “I know, I know,” Sherry said. “You never think you’re going to do it, until you do it. But I don’t think I’ll be there much longer anyway, so it’s really just a technicality. And where else do you meet anyone but th
e office anyway?”

  A better person might have suggested Fresh Horizons small-group counseling sessions, but I just nodded. Maybe I was such an awful person I wanted to keep all the unemployed guys to myself. In a minute I’d be getting territorial with the tilt-and-clean vinyl replacement windows salesman.

  Sherry sighed. “Have you ever met someone you feel like you’ve known forever? You know, you have all the same references from the past, and you have so much fun sharing all your old goofy stories?”

  I was starting to get a sore neck from all the nodding, but I didn’t know what else to do.

  “Oh, God,” Sherry said. “He had me in stitches the other night. When he was in high school, his hair was so wavy—he called it a tragedy of epic proportions.”

  Until that moment, I’d never really understood the expression about your eyes bugging out of your head, but I could feel mine doing just that.

  Sherry didn’t seem to notice. “He had to wash it every night before he went to bed and sleep with one of his sister’s nylon stockings pulled down over his head.”

  “So he could get that cool surfer dude look?” slipped out of my mouth before I had time to stop it.

  Sherry just nodded and reached for her wineglass. She took a quick sip and started to laugh. “He’s so funny. He told me about a girl in his junior high who lost her garter belt in the hallway. He took it home and slept with it for years.”

  My jaw actually dropped. “He wishes,” I said. “That sounds totally made up to me.”

  Sherry ran her fingers through her hair. She had new blond highlights, and she looked like she’d dropped a few pounds, too. “No, he’s not like that at all. He’s really honest, probably the most honest man I’ve ever met.”

  After I finally said good-bye to Sherry, I parked my car at the bottom of Wildwater Way and took a flashlight out of my glove compartment. I circled around my street in the dark until I reached my step quota for the day. At the moment, it seemed like the only thing I could control in this crazy, crazy world.

  I was on my way back to my car, when I saw another car idling just behind mine. I froze. Maybe someone had been watching my every move, waiting until I got my mileage in before he mugged me. My heart kicked into overdrive.