Page 7 of Summer Longing
“I’m sorry,” Elise said again.
Fern hugged her. “For the record, I like the paint color. How can you go wrong with something called Sapphireberry? In fact, if we get a dog, I’m voting for that name.”
Getting a dog had also been explored last year. Another consolation prize.
Stay positive,Elise told herself. She leaned over and blew out the candle on her nightstand. “You know what I was thinking we need for this room?” she said. “We should buy a mosaic from Amelia.” See? She was invested in the new space. She was contributing ideas. She was on board.
Fern smiled. “I have a better idea. You can take her class and make one of your own. It might be a good hobby for you.”
Amelia Cabral taught mosaic-making out of the art studio on the third floor of the Beach Rose Inn, classes she’d started three years earlier, shortly after she’d been widowed.
Yes, Elise would busy herself with the tea shop and maybe take a mosaic class. She would decorate and embrace her new temporary living quarters. She would move forward, not looking at what she’d left behind.
She would do it for Fern.
Chapter Four
For her first night at Shell Haven, Ruth slept with the curtains open. She wanted to greet the day with a view of the water.
At dawn, she pulled on her robe and walked to the window. The sky was cerulean, and the houses across the street appeared to be lit by a pale pink glow. She had long remembered this about Provincetown, the spectacular, almost otherworldly light.
Despite the scenery, Ruth could not stand still for long. Always in motion—her blessing and her curse. She headed down to the kitchen.
Yesterday, following her very bumpy arrival, she’d managed to stock the kitchen with essentials (of which coffee was at the top of the list) and unpack a few of the boxes that she’d sent ahead.
The house was in a prime location with gorgeous views, but the kitchen had sealed the deal for her. It had a French Country feeling, with long shelves of unfinished wood filled with mismatched bowls, white subway tiles on the floor, a white hutch displaying a collection of tin plates, glass-fronted cabinets, and a rustic wood table that could seat six to eight. Clifford Henry told her it had been made by an artisan in Provence. The wide windows overlooking the back patio and the garden were clearly a modern addition.
Ruth made her coffee, then sat at the table and contemplated the day ahead of her. Six months after selling her company, she still felt the occasional moment of panic at the seemingly endless stretch of free time ahead of her.Think positive,she told herself. Retirement wasn’t an ending. It was a beginning!
And yet, last winter, she’d been reminded that it wasn’t that simple. Her newfound leisure time became a minefield when she decided to go for a manicure.
It started out fine. Inside the salon she was greeted by a familiar—and gratifying—sight: a wall of narrow white shelves filled with bottle after bottle of the nail polish she’d created thirty years ago, a brand she’d named Liv, after her daughter, Olivia.
When Olivia was small, she’d happily answered to Ruth’s nickname for her. As a teenager, she insisted on Ruth using her full name. Now the only trace that remained of Liv the sweet toddler was the label on the bestselling nail polish in the country.
Ruth had scanned the shelves of Liv bottles meticulously arranged by color and shade. She searched through the deep reds, looking for her signature color—the first she’d put on the market—Cherry Hill. She looked and looked, moving farther into the purple shades, thinking it might have been misplaced. No luck.
She asked a technician for help finding the color and was told, “Oh, that’s been discontinued.”
Discontinued? Impossible. Cherry Hill was a classic. Ruth insisted there had to be some mistake. The woman told her that she was not the first to request the color, and when they’d called their distributor, they’d been told no more bottles would be shipping.
Cherry Hill was the most perfect red, a true red, not too orange, not too pink. It flattered every skin tone. It was a perennial bestseller. But more significant, it was her sentimental favorite. How could the new owners of the company do such a thing?
This discovery accelerated her growing sense that selling the business had been a colossal mistake. She had signed on the dotted line, believing the buyers’ promises about an ongoing consultant role—and then never heard from them again.
She tried not to think about it, tried to accept it, but if the new owners would do something like discontinue Cherry Hill, the day might come when her brand, her baby, was unrecognizable. And there was nothing she could do about it.
This was the realization that had sent her looking for something else to put her energy into. She’d turned her attention to the new phase of her life with fresh vigor. And now, six months later, there she was in Provincetown. And yet…
Ruth got up from the table, leaving her coffee, and walked up to the second floor, where there were a few remaining unpacked boxes. She knew that buried somewhere inside one of them were the last remaining bottles of Cherry Hill. It suddenly felt very important for her to find them and make sure they had weathered the move.
Her approach to packing had been as ordered and methodical as her approach to everything in life, so she easily found the box labeledBEAUTY/SUPPLIES.She sliced through the tape.
On top, protected by bubble wrap, was a cosmetics mirror. It was the type sold at any high-end drugstore, with a metal stand and a rotating mirror that was magnified on one side. But this particular model was nearly fifty years old. It had belonged to her mother.
Ruth had vivid memories of her mother sitting in her bedroom in front of her vanity performing the morning ritual of “putting on my face,” as she called it. In the 1960s, this entailed making the eyes as big as possible with heavy, winged black eyeliner, pale blue eyeshadow, and false eyelashes topped with gobs of mascara. Ruth would watch with fascination, certain her mother was the most beautiful woman in the world.
Joan Goldberg had been a loving mother but a very unhappy woman. Her life advice to Ruth? “Don’t start cooking dinner every night. Then it will always be expected of you.”
