Chapter 10

CHAPTER TEN

Caitlin glanced up at her daughter Pearl and pressed her lips together. Caitlin was sitting at the dining room table, catching up on bills, and she had a clear view of her daughter, who was curled up on the couch propped up by pillows, watching one of her favorite movies. Pearl was giggling and happily drinking the smoothie that Caitlin had made for her.

Caitlin smiled to herself and went back to looking at the bills. Her mother radar was going off—it had been a couple of days since Pearl had been to the doctor, and she seemed to be doing much better. Caitlin was beginning to suspect that her daughter was just milking her time on the couch, since being sick meant that she got to have more screen time than usual. Pearl had clearly been enjoying her time resting and being a couch potato, and Caitlin had a feeling that she was going to feel as right as rain as soon as something interesting happened.

As if to confirm Caitlin’s suspicions, at that moment, someone knocked on the front door.

“What’s that?” Pearl asked, sitting up and looking perky. “Is it a package?”

“We’ll have to see,” Caitlin said as she stood up and started toward the front door. Through the front windows, she could see a delivery man walking back toward his truck.

She opened the front door and saw a cardboard box resting on the doormat. She saw the name of the online dress company that they’d ordered Pearl’s flower girl dress from printed on the side of the package, and she grinned.

She picked up the box and brought it back inside the house.

“Guess what this is?” she said, shutting the front door and grinning at her daughter.

“Is it—?” Pearl clapped both her hands over her mouth.

“Your dress is here!” Caitlin shook the box excitedly, and Pearl leapt off the couch and raced toward her mother.

“Oh my goodness!” Pearl cried, bouncing up and down. “I can’t wait!”

“You must be feeling better,” Caitlin said, laughing, as she set the box down on a table by the window and started to open it.

“Oh, I am now,” Pearl said. “The dress cured me.”

Laughing, Caitlin finished opening the box and pulled out Pearl’s dress. It was pink and frilly and charmingly designed. The little girl squealed as soon as she saw it.

“It’s so pretty,” she gasped. “Can I try it on right now?”

“Yes, you may!”

With another excited exclamation, Pearl grabbed the dress and took off. Caitlin arched a brow at her daughter as she took off running toward the bathroom, looking as though she was perfectly well. Chuckling, Caitlin began to tidy up the package materials—she broke down the box to be recycled and threw away the plastic bag that the dress had been wrapped in. By the time she was finished, Pearl had gotten changed into her flower girl dress, and her smile lit up her whole face.

“Look at me, Mommy!” the little girl cried, sashaying down the hallway. “Look at how beautiful my dress is.” She paused and twirled, and the skirt of the dress rippled.

Caitlin felt tears spring into her eyes. Pearl looked beautiful, and Caitlin felt sentimental, thinking about her daughter walking down the aisle as a flower girl. It made the upcoming big day seem all the more real. It was such a huge moment in both of their lives, bringing Michael officially into their family. Caitlin was so happy that Pearl was just as excited to celebrate the marriage as she was.

“Come here, honey,” she said, folding her daughter into a hug. “I’m so glad you like the dress.”

“I love it. Thank you, Mom.”

Caitlin could feel Pearl wiggling out of the hug, and she laughed and stepped back.

“You want to go look at it in the mirror?” Caitlin asked her. “The big one in my room?”

“Yes!” Pearl took off running down the hall, and Caitlin followed her, smiling and feeling her heart glow with happiness.

Gwen turned over in bed for what must have been the twentieth time. Outside, the wind was whistling against the eaves of the house, and she could hear an owl hooting in the distance. She felt as though she was living in the middle of the countryside, not tucked into the center of a town. It was late enough that she wasn’t even hearing any cars drive past—only the sounds of nature.

She rolled over again and stared at the ceiling. The streetlamps outside were casting a faint glow across her apartment, and a tree was making shadows across her ceiling. She watched the shadows of the leaves flicker and dance, feeling just as restless as they looked.

“I give up,” she murmured finally, sitting up and clambering out of bed. If she was awake, she might as well be doing things.

She padded into the kitchen in her slippers and began to make herself some tea. She poured a precise amount of water into her tea kettle, and then measured a teaspoon and a half of loose-leaf tea into her tea strainer, which was round and plain.

As she waited for the kettle to boil, she leaned against the counter with her arms crossed, staring into space.

She couldn’t stop thinking about that man, that Isaiah Dunlap. He was so handsome, and he seemed roguish and full of life. She didn’t know why she felt so drawn to him, especially considering how laid-back he was. He was the complete opposite of her in that way—she wanted everything to be done a certain way. She was surprised that she would be drawn to someone like that.

Especially after Ron , she thought, pressing her lips together.

Ron had looked like the put-together type—he dressed very smartly and he kept his appearance neat and professional-looking. At first, Gwen had thought he would be precise about details just like she was. When it had become clear how laid-back he was, at first, she’d told herself it didn’t matter, and that their differences could work together. But Ron had become irritated with her habits—he hadn’t liked how rigidly organized she was. He’d kept telling her that she needed to do things differently, and getting frustrated with her precision, calling her “uptight.”

Ron had clearly not been the right guy for her. So now why was she feeling drawn to another man who was also clearly laid-back—seemingly even more laid-back than Ron was?

I can’t help thinking that Isaiah is different, she thought, lifting the tea kettle off the stove as it began to whistle. He seems laid-back, but he also seems very competent. He’s smart, and it’s clear that he knows how to work hard.

She frowned as she poured hot water into a mug. Ron really hadn’t been on top of things. Maybe someone who was laid-back wouldn’t be bad for her as long as he was someone who understood what it was to have a strong work ethic.

She started to pace around her kitchen a little as she waited for her tea to steep—she checked the time, wanting it to steep for four minutes precisely. Outside, the same owl hooted again, and she frowned in surprise that she could hear owls even in town.

It just went to show what a sleepy little town it was, she thought. Even wild animals felt comfortable being there at night.

She checked the time and continued to pace. She found herself wondering if she would ever find someone who was a good match for her. She felt that she wouldn’t be able to let go of her need for structure—she could never understand how other people could be so haphazard. Would she be able to find someone who was as careful about details as she was? She was beginning to think that was very unlikely.

By the time her tea was fully steeped, her mind was filled with questions about what a healthy relationship would look like for her. She took her mug and sat down at the kitchen table, drinking the hot liquid carefully.

Was there a middle ground? she wondered. Could she find someone who was willing to compromise, and accept the way she liked to do things? Could she compromise too, and learn to not care quite so much about how everything was done?

She took another sip of her tea, savoring the herbal flavor. Outside, the wind whistled against her apartment, rattling the windowpane a little bit. She heard a car passing on the street below, and she felt surprised—and, strangely, a little less lonely. It felt good to know that she wasn’t the last person left awake in the whole town.

She sat quietly for a while, mulling over her thoughts. In the past, she’d never had a lot of time for just sitting and thinking. Her workload in New Hampshire has been so heavy that she’d been constantly going from working to running errands to working out to cooking to spending time with Ron to sleeping to working again. She’d managed to get it all done with a precision that was just shy of superhuman, but nevertheless it had been exhausting. Now that her workload was so much lighter in Blueberry Bay, she was finding that she had a lot of time on her hands, and she felt uncomfortable with it. She didn’t know what to do with all that time—she wasn’t used to just doing nothing. It was as if she was a machine that was always set to high power mode, and she was finding herself having to learn how to be in medium or even low power mode.

She felt uncomfortable with her new schedule. Her new, slower pace of life was giving her a lot of time to think. And meeting the residents of Blueberry Bay and seeing how they lived their lives was giving her a lot to think about. All of the people in town appeared to operate at the slower pace that she seemed to have been forced into—and they all seemed happier than the busy people in New Hampshire had been.

Could she really start a new life there in Blueberry Bay? She felt so different from all the people she’d met there. They were wonderful—she liked them a great deal—but she felt as if she was coming from another planet or something like that. The energy with which she lived her life was so different from theirs. She thought about Olivia, who had seemed so happy when she talked about her family and her boyfriend. She’d seemed like such a genuine, compassionate person. And then there was Caitlin, who had been so kind and sweet.

Gwen took another sip of tea, wondering if she would ever be able to fit into Blueberry Bay. She tried to picture herself as a thriving member of the community, and she couldn’t quite manage it. She had a feeling she would need to change before that could happen, and she didn’t want to change.

She sat quietly for a while longer, slowly drinking her tea and at last feeling herself become sleepy. She stood up, rinsed out her cup, and set it inside the dishwasher. Then she crawled back into bed and shut her eyes, enjoying the feeling of the cool sheets against her cheek.

Would she ever fit into Blueberry Bay? she wondered as drowsiness swept over her.

And would she ever find the kind of person that she could build a life with?