Summer By The Sea

What the hell was she doing?

Sarah knelt and picked it up, brushing off the beach sand. This phone was her lifeline. With it, she could call Richard Lee and beg him to reconsider her temporary banishment from the company she had started.

She wasn’t cut out for a “retreat.” She didn’t want to “put her head on straight,” or “think about her actions” as he’d instructed. She was meant to work. To get things done and accomplish business miracles.

She put her head in her hands and began to weep again. Honestly, she’d reached rock bottom. She hadn’t even wept when her entire staff had resigned en masse.

Just because she’d called them “ungrateful little shits” during their morning motivational talk. Who the hell needed morning motivational talks—aside from Richard Lee, apparently? What were they all—in kindergarten? These were business professionals working in Silicon Valley’s most up-and-coming tech firm, for the California Business Bureau’s Woman of the Year.

Yet again, she wiped her eyes.

Her phone still remained silent. No one called her back. No one jumped at her command.

This was not her usual life.

Sarah sat cross-legged, imitating the picture on the cover of the meditation textbook she’d marked up for all six hours of her flight. Airy-fairy, none of it made a bit of sense to her, but since she was at rock bottom, she was going to do anything she possibly could to claw her way out of this pit of despondency.

Breathe in, breathe out, she told herself. Breathe in, breathe out.

So friggin’ idiotic. What was the point in counting breaths like a child just learning her numbers?

Still, maybe she shouldn’t have called that lawyer’s assistant—she couldn’t even remember her name—an ass. Or had she called the lawyer an ass? Sarah couldn’t remember. It didn’t even matter, to tell the truth, except that if she didn’t please Richard, didn’t at least try to “calm down,” then she would never influence him to bring her company public in the timely manner she wanted.

She needed Richard’s goodwill. Richard Lee was respected. A big-time mover and shaker in the Valley, with a track record of bringing companies public and making the founders as well as himself wealthy beyond all belief.

She took a breath and grabbed the phone. Richard would want her to apologize to the lawyer’s assistant. But it had been a long time since she’d apologized to anybody.

Her phone suddenly rang, shocking her.

“Hello?” she answered the call tentatively.

“Ms. Buckley?” This was the same young female voice as before. “This is Sophia, Ms. Kimball’s assistant again.”

“Hello, Sophia. I’m...sorry for using harsh language with you. I apologize.”

There, she thought. Richard would be proud.

“Um, that’s okay. I called Ms. Kimball, and she said she’ll be over to Cassandra’s cottage in about an hour. She’s at a real-estate closing with a client, and as soon as it wraps up, she’ll be there.”

An hour? “What am I supposed to do until then?” Sarah demanded.

“Well...there’s a beach right there, isn’t there?”

“I don’t care about the beach,” Sarah snapped. “I need a shower. And Wi-Fi.”

There was silence on the other end.

Damn it. It occurred to Sarah that if Aunt Cassandra didn’t have email, then she certainly didn’t have Wi-Fi, either.

Sarah held back her scream. The summer was going to be worse than she’d thought. “Fine,” she gritted out. “I’ll expect her in an hour.” She felt hot and sweaty and disgusting from the long plane ride followed by a long drive in a rental that smelled of cleaning fluid and didn’t work too well in the air-conditioning department. “Until then, I’ll change into my bathing suit at the gas station down the street and then take a long jump in the ocean. That’ll freshen me up from my journey.”

She was sounding too much like a martyr, so she cleared her throat. “I’m looking forward to meeting my aunt’s attorney,” she added. After all, as Cassandra’s only surviving family member, Sarah would likely be an executor of her aunt’s will someday, so she saw the practicality in having a decent relationship with the woman.

You see, Richard, she thought, I can be nice when I need to.

“Ms. Shipp brought the Business Roundup article you were in to show us,” Sophia continued, oblivious to Sarah’s irritation. “We’re so excited you’ll be visiting us in Wallis Point this summer. You’re a local celebrity.”

Wait, what? Cassandra had seen that article? Sarah didn’t know which was more surprising, that Cassandra had noticed it or that she’d been proud enough to show it to people.

“Well, it may not be for the whole summer,” Sarah said. Indeed, she was hoping Richard could be persuaded to let her come back earlier. Say in a week or two, when she could meditate and radiate Zen with the best of them. Sarah had always been a good student when she’d put her mind to something.

“Hmm,” Sophia was saying. “Maybe you could give a talk at the library? I’m a volunteer, and we—”

“No,” Sarah interrupted. Nip that idea right in the bud. Sarah didn’t intend to get too comfortable in this beachy backwater. Her time here was an exile—her punishment for forgetting that she’d ceded too much power to Richard, her investor. She needed to focus on sucking up to him again so she could grab her power back.

Besides, she was still wary of her aunt, truth be told. For good reason.

“Sorry,” Sophia murmured. “I know you’re very busy. We won’t disturb your vacation.” She cleared her throat. “Excuse me, but I have a call coming in. Rest assured that I’ll follow up with Ms. Kimball and keep tabs on how her time is running. She’s promised she’ll be right out with Cassandra’s key as soon as she can. In the meantime, please do enjoy the beach. It’s a gorgeous day, and I would kill to be outside with you.”

And Sarah would kill to be back in her office in California, but that wasn’t likely to happen within the next week or two, at least. Her plan was to master meditation in a lesson or two with Cassandra, and then have her charming and illustrious aunt call up Richard Lee himself. By next Sunday—or the following one, at the latest—Sarah should be back in San Jose. Ready to be calmer with her staff. More communicative. Less angry.

“Very well,” she said to Sophia, testing her new communicativeness. “I’ll be out on the beach. Please have Ms. Kimball come and find me when she gets here. Thank you. Have a nice day.”

* * *

I DON’T BELONG HERE, Sarah thought one hour later, gazing at all the serene, pleasant, happy people spread out on beach towels, lounging in sand chairs and meandering along the shoreline with the flowing tide.

Everybody within sight was either coupled up, with children or hanging with a group of friends. Sarah was the lone singleton. And her aloneness, combined with the uncomfortable memories of one perfect August summer, made her want to weep.

Again.

Until Richard had banished her, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d cried.

Swallowing, Sarah wrapped her arms around her knees. The beach was just as she remembered it, but smaller, maybe because she was no longer small. The air was cool with a salty sea breeze, different from the breeze in California. The sand was brown and soft like sugar. There used to be sand dunes between her aunt’s cottage and the sea, but sometime in the intervening years they’d eroded away, so now her aunt had a clear, direct view of the beach.

The tide was pushing her back—it was coming in fast. Sarah got up and moved her towel above the high-water mark. The waves were large today, larger than she remembered. A long time ago, her aunt had taught her to body surf. She’d taught her to stride into the water vigorously and without fear of the cold. To dive into a wave was preferred. Then, to wait for just the right one, at just the right time, and put her hands over her head and ride the wave face down in to shore.

Once she’d gotten the hang of it, it had been exhilarating. She’d felt such power in being part of nature’s force. Sarah felt herself smiling.

She glanced down at the one-piece bathing suit she’d changed into at the gas station down the street. The suit was red. Concealing. She would have no wardrobe malfunctions when she rode those waves again. No one was in the water right now, but Sarah was braver than most people—she’d had to be. She’d quickly learned not to shrink from a little frigid water, from hardship, from a challenge. It wasn’t in her nature anymore. She stretched, shifting her face away from the strong sun. Just then, a lifeguard in orange shorts and no shirt—just a whistle around his neck and a baseball cap on his head—pulled up on a single-rider all-terrain vehicle, about twenty feet in front of her. He lazily got off, sauntering to the tall lifeguard chair. He put his hands on his hips and peered up at the younger lifeguard occupying the seat.

Sarah took off her sunglasses to get a better look. The lifeguard who’d driven up was definitely older than the near boy on the chair. Perhaps he was a supervisor. Still, he was younger than she was, and once again, she remembered with gloom that she would be celebrating her fortieth birthday soon. Hopefully back at home rather than here with Cassandra.

But for now, Sarah didn’t mind looking at the man. He had a nice chest, tanned and buff, and she liked the look of his face, too. Intelligent and guarded.

The older lifeguard said something to the younger man that Sarah couldn’t hear. She sighed and forced herself to stop looking at them. A small plane flew overhead with a banner: Eat at Billy Joe’s. Fried Clams and Pasta. Family-Sized Dinners.

No, thank you, Sarah thought with a shudder. She worked hard to keep herself healthy. It was definitely harder these days than it had been at thirty, never mind twenty. And why was she looking at younger-than-her lifeguards without their shirts on, anyway?