Page 39 of Summer Longing
“Is this place open?” one asked.
“It can be,” Fern said, standing up. “Follow me.”
“Is it your shop?” he asked.
“It’sourshop,” Fern said, smiling down at Elise. She reached for her hand, squeezed it, then headed up the stairs to open for business.
Olivia’s phone was out of reach and she couldn’t turn her neck to grab it. She didn’t know how long she’d been lying on the lawn. It could have been fifteen minutes; it could have been an hour.
The back problems always surfaced during times of stress. Three years ago, she’d wasted a lot of time and money visiting doctors and physical therapists. She went through bottles of Advil. Then her father told her about a book that said most back pain was the result of mental stress. The pain was real, the inflammation was real, but the source was her mind. It was a trick the body pulled; in order to distract you from emotional pain, it created physical pain.
Olivia hadn’t believed it. Only in desperation, after hobbling around for a month, weekends spent in bed, did she resort to reading the book. The solution, apparently, was to let your mind know that you were onto its tricks. She was to ignore the pain, not baby it with heating pads and stretching exercises. Because everything else had failed, she tried it. She read the book over and over until it sank in. And the pain stopped.
Now, it had returned.
Olivia heard the back door open. “Mother?” she called from the grass. She heard footsteps on the brick, saw her mother’s strappy sandals and the wheels of the stroller appear inches from her face, but she could not look up to see her mother’s expression. Maybe it was just as well.
“What on earth are you doing down there?” her mother said, kneeling beside her.
“My back went out,” Olivia said. “I can’t move.”
“Well, you can’t stay like this.” Her mother slowly helped her to her feet and into the house.
“I’m sorry,” Olivia said. “Obviously I can’t drive home right now.”
“I never asked you to leave,” said her mother.
Chapter Twenty
Monday morning, with Olivia sleeping in at the house on her unplanned third day in town, Ruth debated whether or not to go to the mosaic class. She could have run out to get breakfast, then helped Liv hobble down to the table, and they could have tried to talk once again. But she hated to break a commitment, her lifelong motto being something along the lines of “Showing up is half the battle.” She was still trying to figure out what the other half was.
As with her first visit to the Beach Rose Inn, she was met by Molly, the chocolate Lab. But unlike the morning of her bumpy landing into town, she was not alone climbing the porch steps. The other mosaic-class students were arriving and patiently waiting for Amelia to show them into the art studio. Ruth looked around but did not see Elise Douglas.
Amelia appeared, dressed in one of her signature flowing dresses, her white hair in a loose bun. Her tanned arms were adorned with heavy bangles. “This way, troops.”
They filed up the three flights of stairs to a large, sun-filled room on the top floor of the house. In the middle of the room was a wide rectangular table that could seat the entire class; at each seat, a sketch pad and colored pencils. The center of the table held bowls of pebbles, plates filled with colorful tiles, and a porcelain bowl that appeared to contain shards of shattered china. And everywhere, vibrant bursts of color: end tables tiled in cobalt blue, a full-length mirror framed with hundreds of pieces of china in a pattern of pale pink and moss green and crimson. Ruth understood the power of color; women had been tapping into it with makeup going back to the days of Cleopatra and before. There was a reason the cosmetic industry was a multibillion-dollar juggernaut, one of the few considered recession-proof. It was more than women wanting to look their best; splashes of color on their faces made them happier.
Amelia instructed the women to find seats at the table. Ruth moved to the far side, a habit from her days of conference rooms and seeking out the power position at the end. She couldn’t stop looking around the room, an endless visual feast. To her right, a mermaid statue shimmered with opaque green glass and bits of mirror. Beyond that, the walls were covered with floor-to-ceiling shelves, some housing colorful plastic bins, others holding towers of teacups and plates.
“The first step, and in some ways the most difficult, is deciding on your mosaic design. So today, we’re going to spend time brainstorming ideas and then sketching them out on paper.”
Ruth already knew what she wanted to create. From the first moment she’d walked into the Beach Rose Inn, she’d been awed by the stained-glass starfish mosaic in the center of the common room. She knew she could not replicate something so artful and elaborate, but she could at least use the starfish design as a starting point.
“But first, to give you some inspiration, we’ll talk a little about the materials for your mosaic.” Amelia indicated bowls brimming with glass, beads, and tiles and three saucers of small squares that looked like a cross between tile and glass. One was filled with dark blue, one with petal pink, one with bright orange. “Remember, anything can be used for a mosaic—buttons, shards of porcelain, glass, broken mirrors. That’s what makes it such a personal art form. If you find yourself bumping up against a limit to your piece, we will push through.”
Ruth was all for pushing through limits. And she missed working with her hands. In the early days of her company, she’d mixed ingredients in the stockpots, poured them into molds, boxed the final product in its packaging. As the company grew, she had less and less time for that. And there was less need for her to be that involved. Production was outsourced. She became the front person, the big-picture person. Her days were filled with meetings and travel. Her role changed, but she loved the new challenges just as much. Anything was better than her current role: nothing.
Amelia peered over her shoulder. “How’s it coming along?”
“Slowly.”
“A starfish! My favorite,” Amelia said.
“The one you have in the entrance of the house inspired me.”
With a wistful look on her face, Amelia said, “My late wife made that. It gives me great comfort. A starfish represents renewal and regeneration.”
“Oh,” Ruth said. “That’s so lovely.”
