Great Big Beautiful Life(46)

“So Jodi knows Shiatsu?” I guess.

She cackles at this. “Good lord, it wouldn’t surprise me, but no. We have a routine. A gal comes to the house. I’m already lying on my stomach by the time she gets here.”

“And that works? She’s never seen your face?” I say, my skepticism only mounting.

Her narrow shoulders lift. “Maybe a glimpse or two across the years, but she’s young. I doubt she’d have any idea who I was. Doubt anyone would. The world’s moved on.”

“That’s not true,” I say. For all Margaret knows, this massage therapist is “Linda,” who emailed me the tip about Margaret’s life down here. A tip whose origins Margaret insisted she had no guess at, when I first tracked her down. I’m about to suggest as much when Margaret pushes herself up onto her feet.

“It is true,” she says, adamant. “The world moved on. Just like I hoped it would.”



* * *



? ? ?

On Wednesday morning, I step out into the thick mist and immediately kick something sitting on the walkway.

A cup of iced coffee—now toppled onto its side and leaking onto the stone—beside a paper bag. I crouch to pick them up, heart floating upward at the chocolate croissant inside the bag and the word scribbled on the outside of the coffee cup.

Friends?

I carry my bounty with me to the driveway and head toward downtown.

The gallery that carries Margaret’s wind chimes and mosaics sits between a seafood shack and an ice cream shop, one block from the water, and because this is a world of retirees and vacationers, it hardly matters that it’s late morning on a weekday.

The shop is crowded with women in sun hats, men in sandals, and teenagers either glued to their phones or surreptitiously checking each other out.

I fight a smile as I pass a couple of sunburnt ladies excitedly cooing over a “darling little turtle mosaic”—not one of Margaret’s, of course.

But there is a large rectangular one framed in the dead center of the back wall, a spiral of pale blues, the shades so similar that you can’t quite see the pattern until you squint. And when I do, it’s like one of those old Magic Eyes, a clear path coming into focus.

Unicursal, with one way in and out.

I find it strange that someone like Margaret, who comes from a family so thoroughly ensconced in history and culture, would be drawn to this idea, that no matter what you do, you’ll end up in the same place.

It would be much easier for me to imagine her strangely specific upbringing shaping her into the kind of person who fancies herself the master of her own fate.

Then again, maybe suffering the kind of loss she has makes a person need to yield some control. To stop asking What could I have done differently? and just accept that this is the path she’s on.

One that started with a man who tried to control the world with money, and then one who tried to control it with the written word, and eventually led to her and Cosmo Sinclair in a doomed car chase.

Maybe it’s a kind of comfort to her, to believe she was never the one in the driver’s seat.

Even that day. Even when she lost the love of her life in a stupid, preventable accident.

“This one’s underappreciated.”

I jump at the voice just over my shoulder and turn to find the shopkeeper smiling up at me, her curly hair held back from her freckled face with a neon-green headband to reveal large wooden hoop earrings.

“Is it for sale?” I ask her.

“Technically,” she says. “But I can’t bring myself to drop the price any lower. I love it too much. So it will probably live here for the rest of its days.”

“How much?” I ask.

“Twenty-three hundred,” she says.

I try not to flinch, which makes her crack a smile.

“Yep, that’s about the usual reaction I get,” she says. “It’s not exactly the kind of thing you buy as a vacation memento. But I thought someone would at least want it for their vacation home down here.” She leans toward me conspiratorially. “You interested?”

“Currently I don’t even have a wall big enough for this,” I say, “let alone the money to buy it. Who’s the artist?”

“Her name’s Irene Mayberry,” she says. “A local. A gruff sort, not very chatty, but she’s a true artist.”

“Not to be a plebeian,” I say, “but how exactly can you tell?”

She screws up her mouth as she thinks. “I think what it is…is that just from looking at it, you can tell she had a reason for making it. I mean, aside from making it to sell, you know? A lot of the people I work with, I’d consider artisans. They’re great at their craft and they make things they love, and that they know my customers will love. And that’s extremely valuable.

“But there’s another way of making things too. Irene’s stuff…every time I look at it, I can’t help but feel like she was trying to find something. Or maybe get somewhere. Like she was bushwhacking through a very dense forest because something she just had to know lay on the other side.”

She flashes a knowing smile. “Or who knows? Maybe she’s a total charlatan, and I’m an easy mark. Either way, I like it.”

“Me too,” I say honestly. “Do you have any smaller ones? Or…more specifically, cheaper ones.”