Sea Glass Winter

by JoAnn Ross

  “I need to talk to your mom.”

  “What did I do now?”

  “Nothing.” Except work his tail off both in class and on the court. “You’re fine. This is just a… booster club thing.” With the exception of bad guys who were trying to blow him up, Dillon was not accustomed to lying to anyone. Let alone a student. Which just went to show how badly the woman was messing with his head.

  “Oh.” Matt turned back to the ball, sending up a one hander from the far end of the driveway. Swish. “She’s in her hotshop. In the garage.” He tilted his head in that direction, bounced the ball twice, and sent it sailing into the basket with his other hand. Ken had been right about one thing: The kid from Beverly Hills was a phenom.

  “Thanks.”

  She looked to be finishing up as Dillon entered the garage, which was not only as hot as the surface of the sun, but as bright.

  “Wow,” he said, looking at the shelves lining the walls. “You’ve been busy.” They’d been empty the first time he’d been in here. Now they gleamed in the light from the overhead halogen fixtures like Aladdin’s treasure cave. “Guess you got your mojo back.”

  “I did.” She pulled off the heavy gloves and wiped her glistening forehead with the back of her hand. “I have to admit that I was starting to get seriously concerned when nothing was working, because I’ve never—not even when my mother was dying—been blocked before.

  “Then, as I told you, in desperation, I took some time to go to the aquarium, and everything just clicked. Plus, I think having Matt settling in and getting back into the groove eased my mind enough that I was able to reconnect with my subconscious.”

  She did seem more relaxed than he’d seen her. And, Dillon thought, totally in her element surrounded by fire and all that brilliant colored glass. “I have you to thank for that.”

  “He’s a good kid. He just needed time to adjust after a rough year.”

  “Don’t we all.”

  A little silence settled over them. Maybe it was hopeful thinking, but Dillon wondered if she was considering asking him to stay for dinner again.

  “I really like this,” he said, filling in the conversational gap by turning toward a tall piece of clear glass with a remarkably lifelike coral jellyfish with light bluish green tentacles trailing down floating inside it. As she’d done with the green flash, clear bubbles rose from the bottom, giving the sense of movement.

  “Except for a few commercial pieces I’ve done for places like the Dancing Deer Two, I’ve never been drawn to creating such true-to-life pieces,” she said, coming to stand beside him. “Usually I’ve done more free-form, letting people decide for themselves what a piece might represent. But when I was walking through the aquarium tunnel, through the different life zones, I noticed what I’ve always, on some subconscious level, known. I’d just never really thought about it before.”

  “What’s that?”

  “On land, with the exception of some insects and other animals who’ve learned to camouflage themselves over the eons, plants and animals look different. But what I realized while I was walking through the passage, surrounded by all that teeming sea life, is that in the sea, they often look alike.”

  “I’ve never given it any real thought, either,” he admitted. Which could well be because he’d grown up in the oil patch of West Texas, a very long way from any sea.

  “Well, as you know as a physics teacher, there’s a school of thought that glass is neither a liquid nor a solid. Because liquid molecules are disordered and not at all rigidly bound.”

  “While solids’ crystals are rigidly bound little armies,” Dillon said.

  “Exactly. Glass molecules are disordered, but rigidly bound. Which is why, when people in ancient times looked at wavy cathedral windows being thicker at the bottom than the top, they believed that if given enough time, glass would eventually melt into a liquid onto the ground.”

  “Theoretically, maybe. If you were able to wait around two million years or more.”

  “True. Which is why it’ll never be proven. As for the cathedral windows, the simple fact is that there was much less quality control at the time, and before our modern float-glass process was invented, most window glass was rolled, which resulted in a lot of the rippled glass you see in old windows of houses even now. When builders got pieces of glass that were thicker on one edge, it was only natural to put that side down.”

  “Makes sense. I’ve always liked that old wavy glass.”

  “You’re not alone. A lot of people think it gives old homes more character. In fact, Lucas asked me if I thought I could make some windows for the house he and Mary Joyce are going to build. She thought it would remind her of the farmhouse she grew up in back in Ireland.”

  “Interesting idea. Are you going to do it?”

  “It could be a fun challenge, and I’m considering it seriously enough to start studying up. There’s still so much to be discovered about the thermodynamics of glass, but it seems to me that glass is actually a separate entity somewhere between solid and liquid.

  “Anyway, that’s a long story for why it seems natural to use water as a theme for glass objects.”

  “Especially since so many things in the sea are transparent,” he said, immediately seeing her inspiration.

  “Exactly. That’s what I love about the jellyfish.” She beamed because he understood.

  Claire Templeton was an attractive woman. But when her face lit up and her eyes sparkled with enthusiasm, she was, hands down, the most compelling woman he’d ever met. He also wondered if she knew how sexy she was when she started getting excited about molecules.

  Physics and fire.

  Could any female be more perfect?

  “You can actually see right through jellyfish,” she said, “which makes them especially perfect for glasswork. It took a bit of trial and error to keep them that way, especially when I was putting on the striping. But unlike stone, or even wood, glass can create an organic, almost moving quality, which is what I was shooting for.”

  “You definitely pulled that off. How did you get the colors?” The dome of the jellyfish faded from turquoise to pale green.

  “The light turquoise color came from adding copper oxide, and the palest green is sea glass that I found on the beach, probably originally from a 1900s Coke bottle, which I melted back down,” she said.

  “That’s really recycling,” he said, thinking that she’d taken it back to what those original glassmakers had worked with.

  “Isn’t it? Oh, and it might be over the top, but I decided to add a bit of phosphorous powder to a few of them, like this cobalt blue one, so it’ll glow in the dark. It’s not for everyone, but I called the owners of the gallery and they sounded really excited about displaying a few pieces in a dark side room lit with black light. I think it should really show well and add fun to the showing.”

  The jellyfish in question was floating across the inside of a huge globe, its wavy glass tentacles trailing behind like ghostly ribbons. Below was a brilliant yellow coral reef teeming with colorful fish and plants.

  “You’ve done an amazing amount of work since the last time I was here.” Since he didn’t see a dinner invitation on the horizon, he decided to take matters into his own hands. “I’d say you need a reward. How about letting me buy you dinner? I owe you one after you shared your clams and crab cakes.”

  “Which you cooked.”

  “After being in this place all day, you don’t need to stand over a hot stove. I was thinking of going to Bon Temps for dinner. Why don’t you and Matt come with me?”

  Her brows knitted as she looked up at him. “We’ve been over this. Even if I had time to date, which I definitely don’t, you’re too much of a complication.”

  He put his hand on his heart. “Ouch. That sound you just heard was my ego deflating.”

  “As if,” she countered with a bit of sass he found every bit as appealing as her smile.

  “Don’t think of it as a date,” he sug
gested. One of the things he’d always done best when confronted with a roadblock, on either a basketball court or a minefield, was to figure out a way around it. “You have to eat. I have to eat. And I’ve never met a teenager who doesn’t have to eat.”

  When he sensed her weakening, just a bit, he charged for the shot. “When was the last time Matt had Cajun food?”

  “I’m not sure he’s ever eaten Cajun.”

  “Well, then, after how hard he’s been working on the court and in class, don’t you think he needs a reward?”

  She shook her head. “That’s playing dirty.”

  He decided against telling her that he wasn’t playing. At all. “It’s just dinner, Claire. Three people sharing a meal in a public place. Would it make you feel better if I promised not to kiss you over the popcorn shrimp, then ask you to go steady?”

  She laughed, as he’d hoped she would. “You’re impossible.”

  “Just hungry.” And not just for Sax’s crab jambalaya. “How long will it take you to get ready?”

  She sighed dramatically. “Give me twenty minutes,” she said. “Meanwhile, since you were thoughtful enough to send Lucas Chaffee over with that basketball setup for Matt—which I really appreciate, by the way—you might as well go shoot some hoops.”

  38

  He might be trouble. With a capital T. And he was definitely a complication. But as Dillon shared with Matt what Claire suspected was a highly sanitized version of his days in EOD, she realized she was actually having a good time.

  The restaurant was crowded, which wasn’t surprising, given the warm atmosphere on a drizzling winter night, the fire blazing away in the tall stone fireplace, and the quality of Sax Douchett’s cooking.

  “I could eat this stuff all day long,” Matt said when Sax came over to see how they were enjoying their dinner.

  “That’s why it’s called Come-Back sauce,” he said. “It’s my grandmère’s secret recipe.”

  “If you bottled it, you’d probably make a fortune,” Claire said.

  “Maybe so. But then, if that happened, I’d land myself in a business that took up all my time, when I’d rather just feed people and enjoy my family.”

  Having heard from Dorothy or Dottie the harrowing story of how he’d ended up as the sole survivor of a SEAL mission in Afghanistan, and having seen the sign at the town line announcing Shelter Bay to be the hometown of Navy Cross recipient Sax Douchett, Claire couldn’t think of anyone who deserved a calm and happy life more.

  “I think that’s a much better idea,” she agreed. “A slower pace is partly the reason I moved here.”

  She felt Matt, who was seated at her left, tense.

  “How are you liking Shelter Bay?” Sax asked Matt.

  He shrugged. But at least the glower was gone. “It’s okay,” he mumbled around a mouthful of dirty rice. “I like playing ball.”

  “Word on the street is that you’ve got some wicked skills on the court. I was a baseball guy myself, and to tell the truth, when I was your age, I thought this place had to be the dullest spot on the planet.”

  “Obviously you haven’t ever visited the oil patch in West Texas,” Dillon said dryly. “At least Shelter Bay has an ocean… . Matt, you surf?”

  Another shrug. “I did.”

  “Come summer you’ll have to get back into it. I’ve been thinking of taking it up. Maybe you can give me some pointers.”

  Although Dillon had promised not to kiss her over dinner, Claire could’ve leaned across the table and kissed him when her son visibly perked up.

  “People surf here?” He made it sound like another, far distant, alien planet.

  “Sure.” Dillon scooped up some crab jambalaya. “I saw a lot of surfers out last summer. There are apparently good breaks all up and down the coast. Including some for winter surfing, but those are for experts only.”

  “Which I am,” Matt said.

  “That may be. But you’re also important to the team, so why don’t you just save risking your neck until the season’s over?”

  “I guess that makes sense,” Matt agreed reluctantly.

  “All the folks counting on you to take the team to state probably wouldn’t be real thrilled if you crashed a surfboard into the cliff before playoffs,” Sax agreed.

  “Not you, too!” Dillon said.

  “I didn’t say I was one of them,” he assured Claire. “I’m just passing on what happens to be the main topic of conversation since you and Matt arrived in town.

  “A town which,” he said, turning back to Matt, “might seem like dullsville to you now. I didn’t grow up with the bright lights of L.A. but was definitely happy to leave when I was eighteen. But a funny thing happened. After college and the military, I discovered that this place exactly fits who and where I am in my life now.”

  “You never know where life’s going to take you,” Dillon agreed. “I sure never imagined living on the Oregon coast. But after my winding road led me here, it turned out to be just where I belong.”

  “When I was fifteen, I was positive I’d be living in Florence, Italy,” Claire said.

  “No way,” Matt said. “You never told me that.”

  “It never came up.” The truth was that she’d never wanted him to believe, even for a moment, that she’d changed her life plans because of him. She had, but she’d never regretted her decision for a heartbeat.

  “What were you going to do in Italy?” Dillon asked.

  “I was going to study at Le Arti Orafe Jewelry School and Academy. Jewelry has been an important part of the art of Italy since the Renaissance, and Florence has always been the gem in that crown.” She smiled at the memory of the young girl with the fanciful dreams.

  “Then you had me,” Matt said. “So you couldn’t.”

  “Oh, no.” Wasn’t this the exact reason she’d never brought it up? If she hadn’t been feeling so relaxed and comfortable, she never would have now. “I’d already decided, for various reasons, including financial ones, to go to school in Los Angeles, which also has an excellent design college.”

  “But L.A. isn’t Florence.”

  “No. But Florence isn’t L.A.” She smiled and resisted, since they were in public, patting his hand. “Besides, I’m terrible at languages.”

  “So,” Dillon said, leaping in to help her out when that hadn’t taken the frown from her son’s face, “we shot off the cannon this morning.”

  “Since you still have both your hands, I guess it went off without a hitch?”

  “Sir Francis Drake would’ve been damn proud to have our cannon on his Golden Hind.”

  “Drake was the pirate, right?” Matt asked. “I didn’t know he got all the way up here.”

  “Technically, according to my historian brother,” Sax said, “he was a privateer, which is basically a pirate for hire, in the pay of a government. In his case, the queen of England.”

  After a quick glance around the room to see that everything was running smoothly and that the servers were handling the dinner crowd, he turned a chair around, straddled it, put his arms on the top of the back, and continued his story.

  “My brothers and I used to play pirates all the time growing up and would pretend the cave on Moonshell Beach was where Drake hid the bounty he’d get from attacking Spanish galleons on their way back from China and Japan. And that the wreck on Castaway Cove beneath your and your mom’s cottage was the skeleton of one of those galleons. Which it’s not, but when you’re a kid, it’s fun to pretend.”

  “It also makes for a better story than some wannabe pirates sinking a merchant ship because they mistakenly thought it was carrying a shipment of Klondike gold bound for San Francisco, which is what actually happened,” Dillon said.

  “True. But there were a lot of wrecked galleons along this part of the coast. Since they were so heavy and more cumbersome, Drake used his lighter, faster ship to drive them into the cliffs; then he’d let the sailors who wanted to escape leave.

  “Afterward his crew wo
uld loot the ships, which sometimes took days; then he’d blow them up. He got so effective that the Spanish started calling him ‘El Draque, The Dragon,’ and the king of Spain put a twenty-thousand-ducat price on his head. Which would be about ten million dollars today.”

  “That’s dope,” Matt said.

  “We always thought so,” Sax said. “No one’s ever quite figured out where his secret port was. Some believe it was Whale Cove down at Depoe Bay. But that’s open and easy to see, and a lot of galleon captains would’ve loved to have sunk his ship. Not just for the bounty, but to get rid of him. So most people think it was probably Tillamook Bay up north.

  “Whichever, he was effective enough that Queen Elizabeth knighted him after he gave her enough to pay off her entire foreign debt.”

  “That’s even cooler than Captain Jack Sparrow,” Matt said.

  As he and the two men discussed pirates, both real and fictional, Claire sat back, sipped her wine while looking out at the bridge lights reflecting on the water of the bay, and felt the chains that had wrapped around her heart this past year begin to loosen.

  * * *

  Her ease was short-lived.

  “How come you never told me about Florence?” Matt asked as soon as they were back in the cottage and Dillon was driving away.

  “I told you, it just never came up.” Which wasn’t a lie. But it was a hedge.

  “Because you gave up your dream because of me?”

  “Oh, honey.” She wanted to put her arms around him, but feeling the now-familiar wall going up between them again, she allowed him his space. “Of course not. I was already going to school in L.A. when you were conceived.”

  He folded his arms across his chest. “If it wasn’t for me, why didn’t you go?”

  “As I said, it was partly because of the money. Your grandmother got divorced my senior year, and although she was given the house in the settlement, California doesn’t have alimony, so she had to find a new career. There simply wasn’t any money for me to go study in Italy.”

  “Your father could’ve paid.”