Second Chances in Lavender Bay (The Lavender Bay Chronicles #3)

45. Chapter Forty-Three

Chapter Forty-Three

T he following weekend, Diana thought it would be best if the four of them went in the morning before the sun got too hot. She didn’t want Mark to be totally uncomfortable for his first day spent at the beach.

The girls were ready, and Diana had the bag packed and parked by the front door. Earlier, she’d pulled out the wagon from the garage and wheeled it around to the front of the house. Mark appeared in the doorway as she put away the box of Raisin Bran and rinsed out the dish rag to wash off the Formica table.

Her husband stood there wearing a short-sleeved shirt tucked into a pair of tan shorts she’d made for him during the week. On his feet were a pair of dark socks and his good shoes. His legs, having never really seen the light of day, were whiter than white.

“Well, how do I look?”

Not wanting to discourage him, she said, “You look fine, honey.”

Smiling, he said, “Great. Are you ready?”

“In a minute.” She hadn’t thought to get him a pair of sandals, so the shoes would have to do. She laid her finger on her lip and said, “Mark, why don’t you put on an older pair of shoes?”

“What’s wrong with these?”

“Those are your good shoes. They’ll get destroyed at the beach.”

“I see. Give me a minute.” He disappeared, and she heard his footsteps on the staircase.

When he returned, Diana was waiting at the front door with Louise in her arms and Gail by her side. When she spotted her father, Gail jumped up and down. “Daddy! Daddy!”

Mark had put on an old pair of Oxfords he’d worn when they painted the downstairs. The tops were speckled with paint.

Diana bit her lip, trying not to laugh, and made a mental note to pick up a pair of sandals for him the next time she was in town.

The four of them walked to the beach. Gail walked along with them, and Louise sat in the wagon with the beach bag, a chair, and a beach umbrella.

“It’s very hot out already, and it’s not even nine o’clock,” Mark noted, pulling a neatly folded handkerchief out of his pocket and wiping his brow.

This early, the beach was still empty. Diana set up the umbrella and a blanket as close to the shore as possible so they wouldn’t have to trudge through hot sand to get to the water. She put a shoe in each corner to hold the blanket down. The wagon was parked at the edge of the umbrella, and Diana covered it with a towel to keep the metal from getting unbearably hot for the trip home.

“It’s a beautiful day,” Mark announced, staring out at the lake.

The lake was greenish gray in color and the sky an azure blue. The pale beige sand darkened as it got closer to the water, where it was flat and brown.

Diana put sun hats on the girls. Gail grabbed hold of hers and threw it off. Louise laughed and followed suit.

Diana knelt down on the blanket and said sternly as she put the hats back on them, “If you don’t keep the hats on, we’ll pack up and go home.”

Gail was about to protest when Mark, now seated in a chair beneath the umbrella and smoking his pipe, said, “Girls, do as your mother says. Please.” They both looked at their father. He so rarely scolded or disciplined them, preferring to leave that to Diana, that without further ado, they left the hats alone. Holding each girl by the hand, Diana walked them to the shore until the water washed over their feet. Both girls squealed. Behind her, she heard Mark laugh, and that made her smile.

She picked up Louise and swung her gently over the water, letting the waves tickle her feet and legs until the little girl was laughing uncontrollably. Next to her, Gail jumped up and down, splashing water everywhere and shouting, “Me, me, me!” Diana set Louise down in the surf near the shore so she could keep an eye on her. She picked up Gail and swung her out and back, her feet skimming across the water, and she yelled, “Wee!”

Under the umbrella, Mark sat with his legs stretched out, puffing on his pipe, a contented smile on his face. Diana kept the girls busy in the water for a while, and then they got out and knelt in the sand with the pail and shovels to build a sandcastle together.

“I don’t know where you get all your energy from, Diana,” Mark observed. “I’m tired watching you.”

Diana smiled at him. “It’s relaxing here, isn’t it?”

“Surprisingly so. I had no idea,” he said with a nod of his head.

Hopefully, he’d come again. She and the girls spent so much time at the beach. After a half hour of playing in the sand, Louise started to get fussy. Diana set them both on the blanket at their father’s feet, scrounged through the bag, and pulled out something for them to eat. She handed Louise a bottle with juice in it, then used an opener to uncap the lid of a Coke bottle, pouring the dark liquid into two glasses and handing one to Gail. “Be careful,” she said. Gail nodded and, holding the glass with both hands, she gulped from it.

Diana took the second glass, sipped from it, and handed it to Mark.

“Do you mind if I go into the water by myself? Can you keep an eye on the girls?” she asked.

“Go ahead.”

She walked into the water. The girls were busy eating and drinking, and didn’t notice their mother heading into the lake or they would have chased after her to join her.

The water was wonderful. She’d grown to love the lake, especially in the summer when it was as warm as bathwater. She went out up to her midsection, plugged her nose, closed her eyes, and disappeared beneath the surface, letting the water wash over her. When she emerged, she faced the shore and spotted Gail standing at her father’s side as he poured more Coke into her glass. Louise sat on the blanket with her back to the water. Diana wanted to enjoy these few minutes to herself.

The beach was beginning to fill up as people decked out in swimsuits and sunglasses carried picnic baskets and other supplies across the sand. Blankets and chairs were laid out as people claimed their territories for an afternoon of sunbathing and swimming.

She dunked again, mindful of her cap. They wouldn’t stay much longer. She wanted to be home by early afternoon to put the girls down for a nap and do some gardening.

There was a screech as Louise finally realized that her mother had gone into the lake without her, and she now stood at the shore, wailing and pointing at Diana. “Mama!” Mark was trying to entice her back to the blanket, but she only cried harder.

It was nice while it lasted , Diana thought. She held up her hand in a wave and called, “I’m coming!”

She stepped out of the lake, her brown skin glistening with water. Mark looked at her, a look that was familiar to her, causing her to smile, and said, “You look like Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus .”

It was his version of romance. She’d take it.

Louise clung to her legs, crying.

“Diana, where’s your medal?” Mark asked.

“What?”

“Your St. Anthony medal. Didn’t you have it on?”

Diana’s hand flew to her chest, feeling around for the medal she’d worn for over ten years, the gift from her friend. She never took it off, not even when she went to bed. Panicking, her stomach roiling at the thought of the loss, she scanned the sand around her feet. She set Louise down, and she and Mark searched through everything, shaking out the blankets and the towels. Mark knew how important the medal was to her. When they didn’t find it, she turned and looked at the lake. “I must have lost it in the water. I have to go back in.”

“Darling, you’ll never find it.”

“I have to try.” She occupied Louise with some toys and filled Gail’s glass with more Coke. Very slowly, she walked into the water, her gaze scanning the ground beneath her, left and right, looking for a glint of gold in the summer sunlight. The water was clear, and she could see the bottom with its little pebbles and tiny shells and the sand gliding back and forth with the rush of each wave, but she saw no medal. She walked slowly to the area where she’d been previously. The bottom of the lake was no longer visible here, the water too murky. She felt around with her feet, taking baby steps over the lakebed, but she had no luck. As she searched, she prayed. Over the years, she’d come to depend on this saint, the finder of lost things. The irony of praying to this particular saint to find his medal was not lost on her.

Back and forth, she covered a search area where she thought she might have lost it, but came up with nothing. She was so distraught that she didn’t hear the girls crying and whining on the blanket. By the time she emerged from the lake, Mark looked harried, and the girls’ faces were red, their noses snotty.

“Any luck?” he asked.

She shook her head. She felt sick inside. The medal had been a talisman of sorts.

“I’m sure it will turn up. We’ll put an advertisement in the Lost and Found section of The Lavender Bay Chronicles ,” Mark said.

She nodded, saying nothing. She went around absentmindedly, gathering things and packing them away in the wagon. She rubbed both girls on their heads to get them to settle down. It was way past nap time. Mark pulled out the umbrella from the sand and folded it up and laid it in the wagon. He then lifted the girls one at a time and set them on the folded-up blanket next to the umbrella. Diana shoved everything else into her bag and they set off, with Diana carrying the chair and Mark pulling the wagon through the heavy sand.

At home, she wiped the girls’ faces with a cool cloth, gave them their lunches, and laid them both down for a nap. Their room was on the northeast side of the house, which was the coolest. She headed back downstairs, where Mark had settled in at the dining room table to correct papers from his summer classes.

“I’m going to go back up to the beach and look some more,” she said.

“Diana, you won’t find it now,” he said reasonably.

“I can at least look,” she snapped.

He looked at her. Mark wasn’t one to shout or yell or use harsh words. It wasn’t in his nature.

She didn’t apologize; she was too upset. “I won’t be long. Please listen for the girls.” And she turned on her heel and headed back to the beach.

She returned to the spot where they’d been earlier; another family had already staked out the space. The mother, a woman younger than Diana, looked friendly, and Diana approached her.

“Hi. I’m Diana Sturges. We were here earlier”—she waved her hand around the area where their blanket was spread out—“and I lost my necklace.”

The woman made a sympathetic sound. “What does it look like?”

“It’s a St. Anthony medal. Gold. On a gold chain.”

“Do you think you lost it around here?”

Diana shrugged, helpless. “I’m not sure. I probably lost it in the lake.”

“Oh,” was all the woman said, her tone indicating defeat. “I’ll keep my eyes open. And I’ll tell my kids to look for it.”

“There’ll be a reward. I live on Peony Lane,” she said, giving her the number, but knowing the chances of this woman showing up at her door with her medal were slim to none.

Kicking off her sandals, she repeated her earlier actions, doing a visual sweep of the shoreline and wading out to the area where she’d been enjoying the water. Or at least where she thought she’d been. She could no longer be sure. Without Mark and their belongings as her point of reference, she couldn’t be sure if she’d gone too far north in the water or too far south. As she felt around with her feet and toes, tears threatened to spill over. Nearby, a group of young guys were throwing around a ball and dunking each other, laughing and shouting. She paid no attention to them until she got hit in the back with the ball. One of them, with a blond crewcut and the beginnings of a serious sunburn, came over, retrieved the ball, and asked, “You all right, lady?”

“I am. I’ve lost my necklace.”

“Where?”

“I think here, in this area.” She waved her hand around.

He whistled to his friends and waved them over. Both were dark-haired and freckled, which made Diana think they were brothers.

“She’s lost her necklace,” he told them. He turned to Diana. “We’ll take a look for you.”

“Oh, thank you. I can’t swim.”

“No problem. What does it look like?”

She explained it in detail and the three of them dove in, trying different areas as Diana waited, holding her breath. Every once in a while they came up for air before resuming their search. They began to get tired and weren’t able to stay underwater for very long. Concerned about their safety and knowing a riptide could catch them off guard at any time, she told them to stop.

“We don’t mind. We can look some more,” said one of the dark-haired boys, spitting water out of his mouth.

Diana shook her head. “I really appreciate it, fellas, but that’s enough. Hopefully, it will turn up.”

They all looked at one another and shrugged. She walked out of the water, remembering she hadn’t thought to bring her towel. She picked up her sandals. The young mother on the blanket asked, “Any luck?”

Diana shook her head. “No. None.”

“It’ll turn up. Have faith.”

Diana nodded and walked off across the sand, carrying her shoes. Once she reached the pavement, she slipped her sandals on her feet, not caring that they were covered with sand. As she walked back home, she kept touching the top of her chest where the medal used to be, feeling naked without it. Feeling lost.

Now what would she do? How could she have been so careless as to wear it to the beach? Even though she’d done it a thousand times before, it seemed stupid in hindsight.

And now it was gone.

She walked home slowly, taking her time, looking around on the off chance that she’d lost it on the way down, although she was doubtful about that. Memories of Joy giving her the necklace, and where she’d been at that point in her life, barely leaving the house to sit out on the porch, came back to her. If she had a nickel for every time she’d fingered that medal, she’d be as rich as Grace Gibson.

When she rounded the corner onto Peony Lane, she spotted Mark sitting on the front steps with the girls. He still had on his shorts with the paint-splattered shoes. He held his pipe between his lips, and she could almost smell the cherry-scented tobacco. Gail and Louise sat on either side of him, looking up at him, rapt. Even though he spoke to them as if they were colleagues, they were entranced by him. It brought a smile to her face.

Mark caught sight of her and smiled, raising his hand in a wave. He spoke to the girls and pointed to her. Louise stood and screamed, “Mommy!”

Diana smiled. What she’d lost retreated to the back of her mind as she was reminded of all that she’d found.