A few days later, $45,000 had not seemed to be enough. In her life before, she’d had handbags that had cost a quarter of that amount. Now she was going to try to live a whole life on it, and her worry that she would not be able to do so settled like a rock in her belly. Learning to be poor would be the first challenge of her new life. Still, it brought her a feeling of excitement, too. There was fear, yes—it came from wondering what she would do if she failed to learn how to live. But for now, she was making her own life, and, small though it was, it made her happy.
She’d found a little furnished apartment in the top floor over a florist. It was just an attic studio, the whole apartment not even as large as her bathroom in Providence, but it had two skylights and two big dormer windows, so it was flooded with light, and it always smelled of flowers. The kitchen was little more than a tiny refrigerator and a microwave on a chest, but Sabina wasn’t much of a cook, so she didn’t mind. The furniture was sparse and worn but comfortable, and the rent was cheap. She used a little bit of what she’d taken to calling her ‘freedom fund’ to buy some brightly colored linens for the brass bed, and to add pillows and throw rugs and some inexpensive prints to the whitewashed floor and walls, and she thought it was sweet and cozy.
She didn’t have a television, but she’d never really watched television, so she didn’t miss it. There was a used bookstore a couple of doors down from the florist, and she’d gotten a whole box of books for thirty dollars; that would keep her entertained in her quiet hours.
She’d taken only the clothes she’d had with her at the beach house, and only because she couldn’t very well wander around naked. There’d been enough clothes in those bags, and they were ‘normal’ enough to be practical, so that she thought she’d be okay with clothes for a while.
A few things had caught her off guard—her phone, for example. Auberon had always simply handed her a new phone when he thought the time was right for her to have one, so when it stopped working, she’d been surprised. Luca had helped her get a new one in her own name, just as he’d helped her set up a bank account and get a debit card. She felt ridiculous, not understanding so many simple things, but the world had moved on without her, and it was as though she were coming into this life as a foreigner. Again.
The bell over the café door jingled, and Carmen walked in, dressed in black cargo shorts and a snug, blue t-shirt, her hair in a ponytail and her feet in light brown work boots. She was coming from work.
Sabina had grown to like her very much; she felt like she might be a true friend. She wasn’t effusive or even especially friendly, but she was open and honest and had a wry sense of humor that Sabina appreciated. While she felt herself to be too naïve and inexperienced, especially for her age, Carmen had a cynical edge. She wasn’t jaded, exactly, but she wasn’t surprised when things went awry. Maybe that was why Sabina liked her so: though they were the same age, Carmen felt like an older sister.
“Hey.” Carmen sat down. “Sorry I’m late. You order?”
“No. I waited for you.” With a nod, Carmen stood back up. Sabina did as well, and they went to the counter and ordered their lunch.
When Sabina had her salad and seafood soup and Carmen had her chicken sandwich and chips, they sat again and chatted while they ate. Carmen wasn’t one to talk without purpose, so mostly she grilled Sabina about how things were going, and Sabina asked her about her work.
During a lull in the conversation, Sabina took a breath and asked the question she’d been setting to the side of her head throughout lunch. “And Carlo is well? And Trey?”
Carmen stopped in mid-mouthful and gave Sabina a look, eyebrows lifted. Then she resumed chewing. After she swallowed, she said, “You know the rule. If you want to know how he is, I’ll give you his number and you can call him.”
It had been nearly a month, and for all her excitement and trepidation about starting her new life, all her happy fussing over her wee apartment, all her wandering around through the quirky shops downtown, or her evening walks on the beach as the tide slid in, Sabina missed Carlo fiercely. Trey, too. She’d had a little taste of what it might have been like to be a mother, and she’d come to love that bubbly little boy. She loved his father, too. She knew it was true, though she also knew it was reckless to want so badly to give her heart away after the life she’d just escaped.
At night, she played their few kisses, their sweet touches over and over in her head. She learned to masturbate thinking about him. Or relearned, actually. She had almost never touched herself like that while she was married, not even when she was alone. She’d thought Auberon had killed that urge in her, tainting anything sexual with the cast of pain. But thinking of Carlo and the way he’d touched her had brought need back. Not even the last thing Auberon had done to her, instructing another man, a stranger, to do terrible things, and then allowing that stranger do his own terrible things, could cool the ardor with which she thought about Carlo.
She spent time with his family—mostly Carmen and Luca. As today, Carmen always refused to talk about either Carlo or Trey with her at all. Luca would give her a general update. But they both were of the same mind, that if she was so curious she should contact him herself.
But was she ready? Was she strong? She knew she needed to be on her feet first—independent. But what if he had come to his senses, back in Providence, living his real life, and no longer wanted to be with her? She wasn’t yet strong enough to prepare herself for that possibility—that likelihood—and so she wasn’t yet strong enough to talk to him directly. She need to be settled in a life of her own.
Carmen snapped her fingers. “Hey. You with me?”
She shook her thoughts away and smiled at her friend. Unwilling to expose the truth of her thoughts, she offered something that had some truth in it. “Yes. Apologies. I was thinking about seeking a job. I saw a sign in the window of the yarn shop—I’ll go there, maybe, and ask.”
Carmen’s eyebrows went up in interest. “Have you ever worked, Sabina?”
“Yes. I worked at Le Palais Providence before I was married.”
“Wow. Swanky. Okay. The owner of that shop is a friend of mine. Andi is…she’s interesting. She’s a textile artist—a weaver. I’ve got a couple of pieces of hers in my house—the big one over the sofa is hers. Good people, but kind of odd. New-agey. You know what that means?”
Sabina shook her head.
Carmen chuckled. “Sometimes it’s like you were locked away in a fairy-tale castle or something.”
“I was, Carmen. A Grimm fairy tale.”
Her friend’s face went dark. “God, Sabina, I’m sorry. That was shitty of me to say.” When Sabina shrugged it away, Carmen cleared her throat and went on. “New age is, like, crystals and moon cycles, stuff like that. Sort of both mystical and natural, I guess. Her name when we were in school was Andrea. Somewhere along the line it became Andromeda. But she still answers to Andi, which is why I haven’t slugged her yet.” Carmen’s grin as she said that softened the edge of her words. “If you can stand the pan flute music or whatever, it might be an okay job.”
“She sounds delightful, honestly.” Sabina meant that sincerely. She had an image of this Andi as something like a fairy godmother, flitting about sprinkling stardust wherever she went.
“She’s a hoot, I’ll give her that. And she’s a decent person. I don’t say that about many people, so…”
“I’ll stop in right after our lunch. May I tell her that I know you?”
Carmen wadded up the waxed-paper wrapping from her sandwich and tossed it into the little red plastic basket in which it had been served. “I tell you what. I still have a little bit of time before I have to get back to the job site. Let’s walk over there, and I’ll introduce you.”
~oOo~
Andromeda Walsh—Andi—was everything that Carmen had said and more. She was tall—when Luca dropped by one afternoon to check on Sabina, she’d noticed that they were about the same height—and large, with broad shoulders and a pr
odigious bosom. She had straight, light brown hair, parted in the center, that ran to her waist in a silken sheet, and she had dusky blue eyes that Sabina would have sworn truly sparkled when she laughed. And she laughed a lot. She favored long, elaborate cotton tops with richly colored embroidery over faded jeans. And she seemed always to be barefoot.
She’d hired Sabina on the spot when Carmen had brought her in. From that moment, Sabina was happy in that humble job. By the end of the first week, she knew that she’d made another real friend. She loved Andi, and she loved the yarn shop, called Sea Weaver. Her life felt full and lush in a way she couldn’t remember it ever being before, certainly not since her childhood.
Yes, Andi was this ‘new agey’ that Carmen had described. There were crystals and bundles of herbs placed around the shop, and Andi wore caged crystals on a satin cord around her neck. The stereo played exotic kinds of music, too, but it wasn’t all pan flute. There was Celtic music, too, and Gregorian chanting, and occasionally music from South America that gave Sabina a vague cramp in her heart, sepia memories fluttering briefly to life.
The shop was a rainbow of color, and from the first time she walked in, Sabina felt at home. One whole wall, from the wide-plank floor to the ceiling, was shelving, white cubes set on corners to make a diamond pattern, and every cube was stuffed with a different color and style of yarn. Some of the yarns were machine spun, and some were handspun right in the shop. Tables in the middle of the shop had bins for knitting and crocheting supplies and patterns. On the wall across from the yarns were shelves for fabrics and baskets of raw wool and batting for spinning.
The color gradations alone bent Sabina’s mind. So many reds and blues and purples and yellows. So many of all of them. She was learning that she needed color, lots of color, in her life. Auberon had favored neutral tones in décor; in that way, too, Sabina’s life had been empty. Now, she wanted scarlet and cyan and violet and goldenrod and all of it, and it was all here.
Andi spoke of chakras and rhythms and other things that Sabina didn’t really understand, but she did it in a matter-of-fact way, as if these things were foregone conclusions and thus didn’t require a lot of discussion. Mostly, she had stories. The back part of the shop was set up like a studio, with a spinning wheel and a hand loom, and Andi would sit at one or the other, her bare feet working the treadles, and talk nearly nonstop as she worked. She had stories about Quiet Cove, and about her childhood and her wayward youth. She had stories about Carmen and the other Pagano siblings, too, she said, but instead of sharing those, she would turn up her mouth in an enigmatic smile and pass the shuttle through.
She was fascinated by Andi’s artistry and craftsmanship. The acts of weaving and spinning seemed simultaneously simple and complex, and no matter how carefully she watched, she could not entirely understand how Andi was able to make such beautiful pieces.
Sabina’s job was simply to ring sales and stock the merchandise. Though the shop had a fairly steady traffic of crafters who trickled in throughout each day and often stayed to chat, it was rarely particularly busy. So she would sit on the stool behind the counter, and Andi would weave or spin, and they’d talk. After a while, Sabina began to answer Andi’s conversational questions. It was strange to speak to someone about the life she’d once had and not feel a taint of shame over the story. She wasn’t sure when she’d lost that shame. She was glad. She felt liberated.
After the shop closed up each evening at six o’clock, Sabina would stop at one of the restaurants for takeout, or she’d go to the market and pick up a premade salad, and head home to her little attic apartment, fragrant with the scent of cut roses and carnations. She spent her nights reading, or walking on the beach, and then she’d go to bed and dream of Carlo.
She was happy, and yet she was not content.
And so, finally, she called him. She had not needed Carmen to give her his number. She had had it all along.
~oOo~
“If there’s somewhere you’ve got to be, sweetie, you can just tell me. I can certainly close up on my own.” Andi spoke without looking up from her spinning.
Sabina blushed and turned away from the front window. “No, of course not. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize, it’s fine. But that’s at least the fifth time in the past fifteen minutes you’ve gone to stare out the window like you’re waiting for somebody. You have a hot date tonight or something?”
Sabine blushed more; she felt feverish from the infusion of blood to her cheeks.
“You do! Oh my goddess, you do! Who is it?”
“It’s not…a date. A talk only.”
Andi gasped and stopped the wheel. “It’s Carlo! Is it Carlo? Did you call him?”
Carlo was among the things Sabina had opened up about with Andi. She’d been a good ear and a good shoulder, with, as she’d said, ‘no dog in the hunt,’ which meant that Sabina could talk to her about Carlo in ways she couldn’t talk to his family. “Yes. Last night. He’s coming to town for the weekend.”
“Is this the first time since…?”
“That I will see him, yes. He came on Independence Day, for the opening on the beach, but I stayed away.” That had been difficult, to stay away from the opening of the cottages Carlo and his family had built, all of them working on the project, and it such an important event for the town. Everyone everywhere had been talking about it, and most of the town had gone. Sabina had stayed tucked up in her attic for the day and the night, thinking about Trey falling asleep in Carlo’s lap, Elsa at their feet.
It had been held on the same day that Auberon’s annual clambake would have happened. She would have liked to have been able to celebrate on that day with a real family, feeling real happiness. But it had been only shortly after she’d sent Carlo away, and she had not yet been ready to see him.
She wasn’t sure she was ready now, but she felt an ache that would no longer wait for her to know.
The bell jingled behind her, and Andi, who was facing the front of the store, smiled broadly, her eyes like blue diamonds. “Oh, I will definitely close on my own tonight.”
Sabina turned, and he was there.
~ 15 ~
She looked so good.
In some way Carlo couldn’t put his finger on, Sabina had changed visibly, notably in the weeks since he’d last seen her. She stood in the middle of Andi’s funky shop, wearing slim white pants that stopped several inches above her ankles—Rosa wore pants like that, too, and he knew there was a name for them, but he had no idea what it was—and a deep pink top, fitted nicely around her stunning curves. She should always wear colors like that, tones of red and purple; they made the dark gold of her skin glow. Her hair was long and wavy, the front pulled back and caught in a pretty clip at the back of her head.
When she turned and saw him, she smiled and lifted her left hand to her hair, a sweet and nervous gesture, and he thought he knew what was different. She seemed lighter, somehow. Not in size but in presence. And younger, too, maybe.
“Bina.” He took a step into the shop; she took a step toward him. Then they both stopped, their eyes caught together. His heart was racing.
“Well, come on. Do I have to do the pushing thing? I’ll do the pushing thing if I have to.” Andi had stood up from her spinning wheel and was coming toward them.
Carlo closed the distance and held out his hand to Bina. She laid her hand in his, slender and strong, the nails bare of polish, and he folded his fingers around it. “Hi, Andi. No pushing required.”
“That’s good, then. Hi, Carlo. I’d love to chat, but you two are late.”
Bina turned to Andi, a little wrinkle in her brow. “Late?”
“Definitely. Get thee out. Now. And I don’t want to see you in here tomorrow. You have the weekend off.”
“Andi! The weekend, it’s too busy!” Bina shook her head and tried to pull her hand back, but Carlo held fast.
Footsteps Page 20
