wangled it into an invitation to meet her on the beach the next day. Seven-year-old Bailey as chaperone. Sandcastle building as activity.
If he could get Tracy’s feet on that sand again, she’d open that door she was hiding behind. He was sure of it. Hopeful, anyway.
“C’mon,” he urged, giving her hand another small squeeze and then letting go so as not to spook her. “It’s a beautiful afternoon. We’re still playing hooky. Go for a walk on the beach with me?”
The bill of her cap ducked toward her chest, completely obscuring her face. “I’m not-”
“It’s just a walk, Trace.”
“I’m not interested in it being anything else.” There was that door again, slamming right in his face.
He’d been patient before, though, and he could be patient again. Once she got the feel of the sand between her toes, she’d let go. A little. Please.
They strolled the short blocks toward Central Beach, crossing Ocean Boulevard, which was lined with extravagant homes and mansions to reach more than a mile’s length of a wide swathe of sugary sand. He offered his hand to Tracy to climb over the tumbled boulders and rubbery ice plant that was the last barrier to the beach itself. She ignored it to scramble over them on her own.
They weren’t alone. Though the beach was wide enough-and the water cool enough in December-to prevent it from looking like a remake of an Annette and Frankie
Little kids braved the winter-chilled water, their white chubby tummies and plastic blow-up rafts screaming “tourist” even louder than a four-door sedan with Enterprise stickers. Local preteens in wetsuits, flippers, and boogie boards showed off their gymnastic skill, SoCal-style. Others with skim boards scattered the pipers and gulls as they threw the thin pieces of wood down on the wet sand and rode the retreating white water.
Young men played football. Girls in bikini bottoms and sweatshirts wiggled their toes to the beat of their iPods. Young moms toted toddlers on one hip and mesh bags of sand toys on the other. Retired couples in L. L. Bean windbreakers lifted binoculars, training them toward the Pacific’s commuter lanes, where migrating whales could be spotted heading to Mexico for the winter.
Something odd struck him. He looked over at Tracy. “There’s no one our age.”
“What?”
“Out here.” He gestured toward the clean sweep of sand around them. “Our age group is missing.”
“No…” But Tracy’s voice trailed off as she scanned the beach. Then she shrugged. “All at work, I guess.”
“Busy putting kids through college, I suppose.”
“Or busy making money for those cutesy new wives and the new families they plan to make with them.” There was a hot, bitter snap to her words. She shoved her hands in her front pockets. “Now the old wives, they’re off looking for their decimated pride and shattered expectations while scrambling to figure out how they’re going to support themselves and their children on a single income.”
He blinked, startled into stopping. “Tracy-”
“I’m sorry.” Her voice cooled as quick as it had snapped. “That was uncalled for.”
She drew her hands from her pockets and crossed her arms over her chest, closing up again like a sea anemone touched by a painful finger. Pivoting south, she started trudging down the beach in the direction of the red-peaked roofs of the Hotel del Coronado, the wind blowing the tails of her shirt around her hips.
Dan hurried to catch up. “Is that-”
“By the way, I was thinking about Christmas gifts. Bailey’s taken care of and I’ve ordered a few for Harry off the Internet. A college sweatshirt, some gift cards, but if you-”
“I don’t want to talk about Harry.”
“I found this funny battery-operated fly-zapper shaped like a tennis racket for Bailey. I’m going to put it in her stocking, though I have a feeling the first annoyance she’ll use it on is Finn.”
Dan couldn’t get the words out of his head as he trailed behind her. The wind changed direction, flattening her shirt to her back, her shoulder blades looking suddenly so fragile. When they’d met, she’d been working at the store full-time, but he knew she’d upped her part-time hours after her first husband left.
Because it was a family business, because she’d been almost fully running it with minimal help from her parents when they’d met, Dan had assumed it wasn’t a career she’d “scrambled” to put together, but a perfect opportunity for a newly single mother.
“Did you not want to work at The Perfect Christmas?” he asked. “Was there something else you wanted to do with your life?”
Continuing to churn through the sand, she glanced over at him. “What about you? You’re the one who left a big-shot stockbroker job to join me at the store.”
But that had been easy for him. When it came to choosing between a stress-full or a Tracy-full life, taking on comanagement of The Perfect Christmas after her parents’ death had been an obvious decision. “I get more satisfaction out of the store’s customers than any of those whose portfolios I used to fatten.”
He didn’t comment on his use of the present tense. Before she might have, a Frisbee landed at her feet.
Tracy stopped, stooped, and peeled the plastic disc off the sand. Without a word, she handed it over to him.
Without a word, he took it. She couldn’t throw a beanbag, and they both knew it. He swallowed a bittersweet smile as he took aim at the shirtless young man standing downwind. What would kill him was to lose moments just like this, when two people’s shared domestic intelligence made an everyday occurrence a ritual that strengthened the relationship’s bonds.
Except for all that domestic inside dope, he
She’d turned to study the surf. Two more waves rushed in before she spoke. “Sometimes I think about the places where we get the items for the store. Remember those cranberry candles we had last year, the ones shaped like old-fashioned Santas? They were from Michigan. Sometimes I think about Michigan and its lakes that have waves like our ocean.”
For their honeymoon, they’d spent a week in San Francisco. But between the demands of the store and the kids, the fact that he’d moved like crazy growing up, and finally that they lived in a premier vacation destination, travel had never occurred to him. “Anyplace else?”
“Those little sugary-looking cottage ornaments are imported from Switzerland,” Tracy said. “I think about going there. And I can smell the history and the burning sun on the clay pinatas that we import from Mexico City.”
Dan shook his head. She had places she wanted to see that she’d never shared with him. Feelings too?
Digging into her first marriage and subsequent divorce had never been on his agenda. He’d thought she felt fairly neutral toward the other man. He’d told himself she was entitled to her privacy. Now he wondered if he’d been ducking her pain.
Was there some good way to bring it up?
He couldn’t think of one. “Tracy, about Kevin…” Though he watched closely, she didn’t even flinch.
“Why would you mention him?”
“He’s Bailey’s father.” Lame, but the best he could do. “When she was living at home, he would show up at the house on occasion-”
“On the occasion he felt bored,” she said, the words spitting like ice cubes onto the sand, “or some pang of guilt managed to bore its way through his unfeeling hide.”
Oh-kay. Not neutral. Definitely not neutral. Dan took a breath and plunged on. “It was obvious that Bailey was, uh, conflicted when it came to him, but how about you?”
Tracy turned her face toward him. A strand of windblown hair stuck to the corner of her mouth, and she drew it away with a finger. “How about me, what?”
“How…how did the divorce affect you?”
In the ensuing silence, his gut churned in nervous anticipation.
“You know those carved jewelry boxes we have at the store? The ones that require opening a dozen latched
