Since the shell and the form within required several hours to cool, she drove with CiCi into Portland, had a long lunch—thank God not at the country club—with her mother and sister.
Wedding talk dominated, but Natalie radiated happy, and that glow reflected on their mother. If you can’t beat them, Simone thought, join them.
“You saw the pictures I sent of the attendants’ dresses.” Natalie sipped from her second glass of champagne.
“I did,” Simone told her. “They’re lovely—sleek and elegant, and I love the color.”
“Boysenberry.” Tulip indulged in more champagne herself. “I had my doubts, and I admit I tried to talk Natalie into something more traditional. But she was right. It’s a striking color, especially with her accent colors.”
“The blush and pale silver.” CiCi nodded. “You’ve got an artist’s eye when you want one, sweetie.”
“I was hoping you and Simone would wear the silver. If you’d look for a dress in that color. The boutique I’m using has some really beautiful choices. And there’s still time to customize.”
“I look good in silver,” CiCi mused.
“You’re not in the wedding party.” Natalie shifted her gaze to Simone. “But I’d like you to … I want you both to be part of it.”
“Why don’t we go to the boutique after lunch?” Simone suggested. “You can help me pick out a dress.”
Natalie blinked. “Really?”
“You’re the bride, Nat.” Simone tapped her glass to her sister’s, and caught the glint of tears in her mother’s eye. “Let’s all go shopping.”
Just a dress to her, she thought, but a symbol that mattered to both her sister and mother. And it would fill in another couple of hours while her bronze cooled.
By the time she and CiCi drove back toward the foundry—with dresses, shoes, bags, wraps for a fall wedding—she felt energized.
“I actually enjoyed that,” she marveled.
“It never hurts to get out of our own comfort zones. You made them happy.”
“We did.”
“Yes, we did.” She gave Simone an elbow. “Now they owe us.”
“Big-time.”
Since she wanted to do the rest of the work herself, and didn’t want to spend her days off-island, Simone had the foundry load the encased bronze back into her car.
“I’m texting Reed,” CiCi said as they drove onto the ferry. “I want him to know we’re on our way back.”
“I don’t want him coming back to the house until I’ve done the breaking out and have the bronze back in my studio for the metal chasing.”
“I’ll hold him off, and I’ll call on a couple of strong men to haul it out on the patio.” As she texted, she glanced at Simone. “I want to be there for the breaking out.”
“I wouldn’t have it otherwise.”
Two and a half hours later, Simone swiped sweat off her forehead. Bits and chunks of shell lay over the tarp along with a variety of hammers and power tools.
And the bronze stood in the early evening light.
“Gorgeous, Simone. Gorgeous.”
“He will be.” She’d grind off the sprues, finish the surface with pads from coarse to fine, retexture here and there, and perfect. “Few more steps.” She circled it. “The metal chasing, a good sandblasting, then the patina, but I can see it, CiCi. I can see it’s exactly what I hoped.”
“So’s he, whether you know it or not.”
“I didn’t hope for him, that’s the thing. For a while I didn’t hope for anything, and that was useless. Then I woke up and I hoped to be able to do something like this. That was enough, it honestly was because I had you, and this place, and could always come back. And then … he looked at me.”
She crouched down, traced a finger over the bronze face. “He loves me.”
“A lot of men, and a few women, have loved me. It’s not enough, baby.”
“No, it wouldn’t be. It wouldn’t be even though he’s beautiful and kind, he’s brave and smart and so many things. That wouldn’t be enough.”
She pulled off the bandanna she’d tied over her hair. “But he unlocked something inside me, CiCi. And unlocked, I see more, feel more, want more. He made me believe. I love him because of who he is, and who I am with him.”
“When are you going to tell him?”
“When this is finished, and I show it to him.” She straightened. “Is that silly?”
“I think it’s profound. I’m going to help you clean this up and get this beauty upstairs.”
*
While Simone chased metal, Reed rounded up a couple of kids who felt tossing lit firecrackers into trash cans in the public bathrooms was the height of vacation fun.
He might have let it go with simply confiscating the rest of the cherry bombs and ash cans and a lecture, but the father, who’d apparently enjoyed more than his fair share of booze on the beach, got in his face about it.
“What’s the big deal? They’re just having some fun. Didn’t hurt anybody. And I paid good money for those cherry bombs.”
“The big deal is they broke the law, endangered public safety and their own, and destroyed property.”
“Buncha trash is all.”
Still trying for some diplomacy, Reed nodded. “Which they’ll clean up.”
“My boys aren’t janitors.”
“They are today.”
“Hell with that. Come on, Scotty, Matt, let’s go.”
“They’re not going until they clean up the mess they made.”
Drunk Dad puffed out his chest. “What’re you going to do about it?”
Diplomacy, Reed concluded, couldn’t always work. “Since they’re minors, I’m going to fine you for contributing to their delinquency and for bringing illegal explosives onto the island.”
“Bullshit.”
He smiled an affable smile. “No shit about it.”
“I’m not paying a red cent to some rinky-dink play cop trying to hose me down and harass my boys on our vacation. I said, let’s go!”
He turned. Reed shifted to block him.
Red-faced, riled up, he shoved Reed.
“Well, we’ll add assaulting an officer to that list.” Only slightly amazed, Reed dodged a wild swing, then settled the matter by spinning the man around and snapping cuffs on his wrists.
“This is not the way to behave,” Reed told the boys as the older one gawked and the younger began to cry. “Sir, you’re considerably inebriated,” Reed continued as the man struggled and swore—with several in the crowd that gathered taking pictures and videos with the ever-present cell phone. “You’re resisting, are now a public nuisance, not to mention showing yourself to be a bad influence on your minor children. Is your mother around?” Reed asked the boys.
The younger one blubbered, “It’s our week with Dad.”
“Okay. Let’s settle all this at the station. Sir, I can perp walk you there, or you can come along quietly.”
“I’m going to sue your fucking ass.”
“Perp walk it is. You need to come with us, Scotty, Matt.” He glanced down at the dog, sitting, waiting. “Let’s go, Barney.”
By the time he got to CiCi’s—he had a dinner invitation—it was after nine, and he wanted a drink like he wanted his next breath.
“Rough one?” she asked him.
“Ups and downs, with the deepest down a couple of kids with cherry bombs scaring the crap out of people, and their drunk, argumentative father, who capped it off by puking in my office from a combination of temper and booze. It wasn’t pleasant.”
“I’m going to get you a beer, then plate you up a spicy barbecue sandwich that’s one of my specialties when I’m not a vegetarian.”
“I love you, CiCi.”
“Go sit out, drink your beer, and look at the water. Some Ujjayi breathing wouldn’t hurt.”
The beer helped, and so did the water—the look, scent, sound of it. Maybe the breathing didn’t hurt. But Simone stepping out—her hair was kind of coppery lately and right now tied up with a blue bandanna—carrying a plate of barbecue and potato salad smoothed out all the rest.
She offered the plate, tugged on the hair under his cap, bent down to kiss him. “Cherry bombs and drunk vomit.”
“Yeah.” He gestured to the dog already snoring at his feet. “It wore my deputy out. How are things on the mainland?”