Maybe Stephanie would buy it, would smile prettily and say, That’s okay, Dad, but not Jamie. She’d stare daggers at him and ignore him for as long as she damned well felt like it.
Once again, he needed Birdie. She’d always been the glue that held their family together. She’d guided him, gently and not so gently, toward an easy relationship with his daughters. She’d made sure that he’d apologized when he needed to and listened when it was imperative. Without her, he was on his own, and he had no idea what to say.
“You can quit being strong, you know,” Anita said as they sat at the kitchen table, eating an early lunch. A few presents sat on the counter.
“What do you mean?”
“A happy birthday from your stepmother and a little gift doesn’t quite cut it. Admit it, you miss your family. You’ve looked at the phone about fifty times today.”
“I’m fine. And you said you were going to teach me how to play cribbage tonight. That’s something to look forward to.”
She eyed Elizabeth. “What did you normally do on your birthday?”
“You mean besides warn everyone for a week that it was coming?”
Anita nodded.
“Let’s see. I usually took the day off from all volunteering projects and slept in. By the time I woke up, the house was empty. Jack and the girls always left birthday messages on the table. Once they tied balloons to the chairbacks.” Elizabeth’s heart did a little flip. She’d forgotten that … “Jack always made dinner for me that night. His one meal—chicken piccata. It took him two hours and two drinks to make it, and you couldn’t talk to him while he was cooking. He cursed a blue streak the whole time. After dinner, he gave me a body massage and then we made love. Oh, and I got to kiss and hug the girls as much as I wanted—they weren’t allowed to protest.”
“It sounds wonderful.”
“It was.”
“You’re good at it, you know.”
“What?”
“Denial. I mean, if I didn’t know you, I might think everything was just peachy for you.”
“I made a choice. I wanted to be alone.” Elizabeth’s voice softened; hurt feelings flooded through the barriers she’d built. Suddenly she was drowning in sorrow; a minute ago she’d been happy. She’d buried herself in denial because she knew how much a birthday without her family would hurt. No one had even called her today.
That was the realization she’d been running from all morning. No one had called.
Elizabeth forced a smile. “I’m going to go paint now. I need to finish four more pieces before the festival.”
Anita stood up from the table and unwrapped her apron. “Do you mind if I tag along? I could knit while you paint.”
“I’d appreciate the company,” Elizabeth answered truthfully. “I’ll go change my clothes and grab my stuff.”
Upstairs, she changed into a pair of baggy Levi’s and a well-worn blue denim shirt. She was almost to the door when she realized that she needed a belt.
She went back to the bureau and dug through her clothes, finally finding an old leather belt with a big silver buckle. She threaded it through the loops and cinched it tight, then went back downstairs.
Anita grinned at her. “You look like one of those country-and-western singers from home.”
“Daddy bought me this belt at Opryland, remember? I haven’t been able to wear it in years.” Smiling at that, Elizabeth gathered her supplies. It wasn’t ten minutes later that she and Anita were climbing down the steps.
“I can’t believe you can carry all that stuff down these horrible old stairs. I keep thinkin’ I’m gonna twist my ankle and plant my wrinkled face in the sand.”
Elizabeth laughed. She felt good again. The girls would call tonight. Most definitely. “The tide’s out,” she observed. “We can spend hours down here.”
Anita picked up the knitting bag she’d dropped down from the top of the stairs. Flipping her blanket out on the sand, she sat down and started knitting. A pile of fuzzy white yarn settled in her lap like an angora bird’s nest.
Elizabeth set up her easel, tacked the paper in place, and looked around for a subject. It was easy to find things to paint, but difficult to settle on just one. Her practiced eye saw a dozen opportunities: Terrible Tilly, the lighthouse in the distance, lonely and stark against the aqua-blue expanse of sea and sky … Dagger Rock, the black stone monolith that rose from the ocean in a cuff of foamy surf … a Brandt’s cormorant circling the land’s edge.
She settled on the ocean itself; it was definitely a watercolor day. No oils or acrylics. She needed to complete four paintings in time for the festival; there was no way she could make the deadline if she worked in oil.
Happy with that decision, she started work.
It wasn’t as easy as she remembered. She started and stopped three times, unable to find the flow she needed in watercolor. Everything was so damned wet; the colors kept bleeding into one another. She wasn’t controlling the paint.