The Oysterville Sewing Circle

The kids stuck close to Caroline as they all went inside. The old house welcomed her, as familiar as her mother’s embrace. The foyer was bright with a mirror reflecting the light from the outside and a hall tree made of driftwood.

Every house had a smell. This one was a particular mix of baking, salt air, and the dry, tumbly aroma from a constantly running clothes dryer. At least it used to run constantly when Caroline and her siblings were young. Now there was probably far less laundry cycling through, but the fluffy smell lingered still.

The living room was filled with an eclectic mix of furniture, family pictures, a few antiques, and Mom’s old upright piano.

“We all took lessons,” she said, noting Flick’s interest. “My brother Austin got really good at it.” She steered them to the hall bathroom and somehow managed to change Addie out of her pee-smelling clothes and into clean ones. Then she supervised the washing of hands, still somewhat befuddled by the idea of having to supervise anything of the sort. Just a short time ago, she was on her own, living in the heart of New York City’s fashion district.

There were artifacts everywhere—the pottery soap dish Jackson had brought home from preschool with his little handprint in the middle. Another family picture hung above the commode, this one of the older girls holding up a surfboard with Caroline and the boys seated on it. She still remembered the roars of laughter that had erupted as they’d struggled to stage the shot, getting dumped into the sand multiple times. She was eight or nine in the photo, wearing Virginia’s hand-me-down swimsuit, which she’d rescued from looking like a hand-me-down by sewing a rumba ruffle to the back.

“I’m off to work,” Dad called from the front hallway. “See you tonight, okay, C-Shell?”

“Sounds good,” she said.

Next stop was the kitchen. Contrary to what people expected of a longtime restaurant family, the kitchen was small and plain, with a four-burner range, a roomy fridge, and the all-important dishwasher. Mom always said a fancy kitchen was no substitute for good cooking.

“I’m Virginia,” said her sister, blowing them a floury kiss from her spot at the counter. “And you’re about to have the best pancakes of your life.”

Caroline gave them a nudge. “She’s bossy sometimes.”

“Not bossy,” Virginia said with a sniff. “I just have better ideas than most people.” She was the second eldest and most outgoing of the Shelbys. “I have a secret pancake recipe. But I tell it to everybody, so it’s not really a secret.” She pulled a couple of barstools over to the counter. “Have a seat, you two, and pay attention. You have to sift the dry ingredients together. See how the sifter works?” She demonstrated and gave them each a turn. “That makes everything nice and fluffy. And we use real buttermilk, not regular milk. It tastes kind of sour.” She offered them a sample on a small spoon, but the kids shrank together and shook their heads in silence.

Watching her sister’s ease with the children, Caroline felt a renewal of the doubts that had chased her across the country. Unlike Virginia and her mom, she didn’t “get” kids. She never had. She’d always been vocal about being childless by choice. Possibly that made her boy-friendless as well, but that was the price she paid for clinging to her freedom. Yet here she was with two kids in tow, and she had no idea what to do with them.

She thought for a moment about the expression on Will Jensen’s face when she’d told him, “They’re mine.”

And they were. Yet they weren’t.

“The eggs are from our own hens. See how yellow the yolks are?” Virginia broke two of them into a glass bowl and whisked them together with the buttermilk and a bit of melted butter. Then she combined everything to make the batter. “The biggest secret of all is this awesome cast-iron griddle. It’s a Griswold—they don’t even make them anymore. This one is as smooth as glass. I have it on the perfect temperature. Help me out here.”

She poured the batter and supervised as the kids dotted the pancakes with blueberries. A few minutes later, Caroline got the two of them situated on benches in the adjacent breakfast nook. Their eyes widened as she placed the first batch of pancakes on the table, bursting with berries and slathered in butter and warm maple syrup. The ultimate comfort food.

“Dig in, you two,” she said. “Let’s fill your bellies, and then I’ll show you where you’re going to be staying.” Over their heads, she checked with her mother, who offered a nod of encouragement.

The children devoured their breakfast with gratifying speed. Caroline helped herself to coffee and a pancake fresh off the griddle. It was so good it nearly brought tears to her eyes. “Thanks, Virginia. That was delicious. It’s been a long haul.”

“You’ve all had quite an adventure,” Mom said. “I want you to know, I’m so very sorry about your mother. You must miss her so much.”

“She died,” Addie said. “She’s not coming back.”

“It’s a terrible thing. I wish we could help. All we can do is love you and keep you safe and help you remember your mom. If you feel sad and want to tell us about it, we can listen.”

Caroline felt a surge of gratitude as she regarded her mother and sister. This was hardly the path she’d expected to find herself on, but here she was, in charge of two orphans, far from the life she’d been living in New York. Everything had changed in a split second—unforeseen, sending her scrambling. If she hadn’t had this family to fall back on, she couldn’t imagine what she would have done.

When they finished breakfast, her mother said, “Let’s clear the table together, and then I’ll take you to see your room.”

Flick surveyed the table, his brow slightly quirked. Angelique had been an unconventional mother in many ways, and traditional chores had not been a thing with her.

“Let’s take our dishes to the sink,” Caroline said. “Then we’ll wipe the table.” Falling back into a family routine was easy for her, but she could tell the kids would need time to adjust.

They made short work of clearing up and then trooped upstairs, passing more family pictures on the landing. The room her mother had prepared for Flick and Addie was the one Caroline had once shared with Virginia. Georgia, the eldest, had the privilege of a room of her own, and she used to lord it over the others like an anointed queen. The boys shared another. All five of them had fought like littermates over the bathroom.

Her mother stood with the door held wide open. “I dug out a few choice toys from the old days,” she said. “I hope you like Legos and stuffed animals. And books with actual pages that turn.”

The children regarded the room with wide eyes. Compared to the walk-up in Hell’s Kitchen, and later the apartment they’d shared with Caroline and their mother, the bedroom probably seemed as big as an airplane hangar.

A couple of old National Geographic maps still hung on the wall of her old room. The colors had faded and the dry paper was curled at the edges. She saw Addie studying them. “This is the United States,” Caroline said. “Our whole big country. Here’s New York, where we left last week. And we drove all the way here.” She traced the route with her finger, pointing to the spot where Oysterville would be, were it significant enough to appear on the map.

“That was a super-long drive,” Mom said. “I hope you two will be comfortable here.”

Addie made a tentative study of the toys and books Caroline’s mom had thoughtfully displayed. And Dottie’s thoughtfulness didn’t end with toys and books. She’d saved some of Caroline’s early and most painstaking work. “Caroline made the coverlets and curtains all by herself when she was only twelve years old. She was always so good at making things. Do you like making things?” she asked the kids.

Flick offered a lost little shrug of his shoulders, then studied the floor.

The coverlets were known as crazy quilts. According to Lindy at the quilt shop, Caroline had taken crazy to a whole new level. The pieces were not even standard in shape, but free-form bursts of color stitched together and embroidered with whimsical designs. Now she ran her hand over the cloth, thinking about that girl who’d been so obsessed with art and design. There was never a time when she wasn’t designing something. She’d felt so caged in here, knowing there was so much to experience and learn in the big wide world. Even after years in New York, she doubted that her family understood her hunger and need to be in the middle of everything in the hub of the design world.

Coming home felt like an embrace of safety.

Coming home felt like defeat.

Coming home was the last resort.

The sentiment was a sunken, hollowed-out spot inside her. Caroline realized it was wrong to let herself wallow this way. A better person would turn it into determination. But at the moment, as she drowned in exhaustion, it was the only possible way to feel.

Addie dragged Wonder Woman to the dormer window between the two beds and gazed outside. A thick wisteria vine twisted down the side of the house, its purple blossoms nodding in the breeze. The yard below had fruit trees, gnarled with age, and a fire pit they used to sit around on clear evenings, toasting marshmallows and telling stories. Farther in the distance, past the dunes, was the flat sandy beach.

Caroline hunkered down beside the little girl. “Virginia and I used to stand here together on summer nights, watching people on the beach. You’ll see—in the summer, it stays light ridiculously late, way past nine o’clock. So when we’d see kids still out playing on the beach, I thought it was totally unfair. It didn’t seem right that Virginia and I had to go to bed while the rest of the world was out playing.”

“And yet you survived,” said her mother.

“True,” Caroline agreed, straightening up. When she was older, the wisteria vine had been her secret escape route. She thought it best not to mention that.

“You’re looking at the Pacific Ocean,” she told the kids. “It’s the biggest ocean in the world. Let’s have a rest, and later we’ll go check it out.”

“I don’t feel like resting,” said Flick.

She felt like sleeping for a week. Not an option with two kids needing her. “Tell you what. Let’s go to the beach and explore. And there’s even more good news.”

That always got their attention.

“No car ride today.”

“Yay!”

“After all that driving, we need a little hike to stretch our legs.” They trundled downstairs, and as they headed for the door, she turned to Virginia. “Thanks again for breakfast.”

“You betcha.” Virginia wiped down the counter. “I have questions.”

“You betcha,” Caroline echoed.