Page 48 of The Magic of Sea Glass
Phillip stripped off his shirt, startling her, and she turned away as he stomped toward her bare-chested. He kicked off his shoes, took off the tuxedo trousers, and lumped them on the chair next to the mirror. Then he threw on his street clothes and stormed through the room toward the door.
The house was empty when he pulled into the drive. In a flash, he got out, raced up to his bedroom, and threw open the top dresser drawer. He rooted around in it until his fingers landed on the cool, smooth surface of the stones. He retrieved the sea glass bracelet, put it into his pocket, and got back into his car.
* * *
Rodanthe, North Carolina
Lauren lay in a cold sweat in her bed, the scent from the bonfire still lingering from when she’d opened the double doors after returning to her room. She’d needed some fresh air to clear her head, but it hadn’t helped, the fragrance only reminding her of the evening.
These difficult nights would spring up out of nowhere, blindsiding her every time. But this episode was different; she had new issues that were most likely the culprit. Drowning in guilt for feeling something tonight for Brody, and for allowing herself to get into this situation with the TV pilot, a lone tear meandered down the side of her face and onto her pillow. She stared at the dark ceiling, her eyes aching and her head pounding.
She clicked on the lamp and sat up. Her gaze fell on the top of the dresser and the little pile of sea glass. Shame and frustration swarming her, she crawled out of bed and put on her robe. Then she marched over to the pieces, scooped them up into her fist, left her suite, and headed down the staff hallway toward the kitchen to dump them somewhere so she didn’t have to look at them, and to see if Mary had any ibuprofen.
“Oh, hello,” Melinda said, standing by the kitchen table as Lauren entered, startling her.
“Hi,” Lauren returned, surprised she was up so late.
“That was quite exciting tonight.”
Lauren offered a smile, hoping her eyes weren’t red enough for Melinda to notice her distress. “Yes.”
“It’s the biggest thing to happen to this little beach town in decades. Wait until the locals find out about it; they’ll be lining up outside the inn to get a peek at the filming.”
The idea of it only served to add to Lauren’s trepidation.
“Mary and I decided to have a nightcap to talk about it, and she’s just gone to bed. I told her I’d clean up after us.” She walked over to the counter with two used mugs dangling from her fingers and rinsed them in the sink. “Can’t sleep?”
When Melinda turned away, Lauren rubbed her eyes, hoping to eliminate any last evidence of her tears. “I had a headache, so I came down to see if Mary had anything I could take for it.”
The sink still running, Melinda waved a dripping finger toward one of the cabinets next to the old, commercial-style oven. “She keeps a little stash of medicine in there. You’ll probably find something.”
Lauren padded over to the cabinet and fiddled with the bottles inside, until she found what she was looking for. After that she leaned across the counter toward the small trash can that the chef used for scraps and dropped her fistful of sea glass into it. She didn’t believe in good luck. The idea of it hadn’t gotten her anywhere but muddled and confused. Lauren opened the bottle and dumped one of the small pills into her hand.
Melinda pulled a glass from the cabinet, filled it with water, and handed it to her.
“Thank you.” She swallowed the pill.
“Got a minute for a chat?” Melinda asked.
Not wanting to retreat to her silent room where she’d be consumed by her thoughts, Lauren lowered herself into one of the chairs at the table and gestured to the seat across from her.
“I never got to tell you the story about the bracelet that Mary gave you.”
“Oh, yes,” Lauren said.
She didn’t have the heart to throw that away, since Mary had given it to her as a gift. She’d left it in her room, but decided that she’d slowly taper off the times that she wore it until everyone had forgotten altogether that she had it. Then she’d put it into her jewelry box as a memento of her time at the beach, but nothing more. The idea that it held any special power at all was just a false hope that she’d held on to for a brief moment in time.
“My father-in-law, Phillip, had it in his dresser drawer,” Melinda said as she sat down across from Lauren. “He and my husband never had the best relationship. Phillip had been a distant father, somewhat bitter about life, always preoccupied when my husband was growing up. When Phillip was around eighty, he got cancer, and we were the only family there to take care of him.”
Lauren hung on Melinda’s every word. She couldn’t imagine what the dynamics must have been like, nursing a man who’d barely been present for his own son.
“Before he died, while I was taking care of him in his final days, he got up and pulled out the bracelet from his drawer. He told me that he’d intended to give it to his wife, but never got the chance to.”
Lauren gripped her water glass. “How come?”
“He didn’t say. His wife, Alicia, had left him by then, so we’d originally guessed that he must have bought it just before.” She leaned forward. “However, later, when I asked him where it had come from, he said that he’d gotten it in the Outer Banks of North Carolina when he was passing through as a young man. There was something in his eyes that made me wonder if he was giving me the whole story of it. He said the artist told him that it was good luck, although he was adamant that, for him, it was anything but.”
Lauren sucked in a little gasp. Her inklings about it had been right. “So it isn’t good luck at all?”
