Cottage by the Sea Read online

  “You’re right, he is a strong man. Strong and determined. My father left Ireland when he was seventeen years old and put himself through college. He was the first teacher in the Irvine school district. Did I ever tell you that? This whole area was nothing but bean fields and strawberry fields when he and my mom moved here. The Irvine Ranch had one tiny school for all the farmworkers’ children, and my father was their teacher.”

  “I never knew that.” Sharlene held open the kitchen door.

  Erin walked back inside, her thoughts racing furiously. “My father taught for the Irvine school district for forty-seven years. Do you know anyone anywhere who has done that? Been a teacher for forty-seven years? And when he retired, there was nothing. No thank-you. No letter of appreciation. And look at Irvine now. Half a century after the bean fields, it’s nothing but rows of houses as far as you can see.”

  Erin stopped by the kitchen counter. She felt her face burning as a molten topic overflowed from her erupting heart. “When my father left Irvine, he told me that after my mom died, there was nothing here for him anymore.” A tumble of tears choked her words. “Nothing here for him. Nothing at all. That’s what he said.”

  Erin lowered her voice and added the final, painful truth. “But the thing is, I’m still here. And I’m not nothing.”

  She let the tears fall. There it was: the soul wound that hadn’t healed in the eighteen months since his departure. Her father chose to marry a woman who was nothing like Erin’s mom, and then he moved a thousand miles away, preferring Delores’s company over the familiarity and proximity of Mike and Erin.

  Sharlene reached for a paper towel next to the kitchen sink and offered it to Erin for her tumble of tears.

  “I can’t believe I’m saying all this.”

  “It’s okay. It’s better to get it all out now.”

  “Shar, we promised we would take care of him. Mike and I promised that to my mother. So how are we supposed to do that when he’s so far away and his wife won’t even take him to the hospital?” Erin dabbed away her tears with a rounded edge of the rough paper towel and answered her own question. “I guess this is how we do it. I get on an airplane and go to him in Oregon.”

  “You’re right. That’s what you should do.”

  Erin blew her nose and drew in a wobbly breath. Gathering her thoughts, she said, “I need to call Mike.”

  “Are you sure you’re okay?” Sharlene asked.

  “I will be. Are you okay with meeting our client at Café Kate?”

  “Yes, of course.” Sharlene gave Erin a side hug. “Call me if you need anything. I’ll be back in a little while.”

  Over the next few hours Erin managed to book a four o’clock flight, pack a bag, and leave her supportive husband a love note on his bedroom pillow. Mike had immediately agreed with her assessment when she had called him. Even if her father was okay, which Mike said he doubted, he thought Erin should be there to help to decide if further steps needed to be taken.

  Sharlene returned with a great report of her meeting with their first client and offered to drive Erin to the airport so Mike wouldn’t have to leave work to take her. By two thirty Sharlene and Erin were headed for John Wayne Airport. A light rain splattered against the windshield.

  “Did you pack warm clothes?”

  “Yes. I’m sure I overpacked. I don’t know how long I’ll be there. I hope only a few days. Call me if you need anything, anything at all.”

  “I will. But don’t worry. I’m sure everything will be fine here.”

  “This is the worst possible time for this to happen.”

  “I know.”

  Even though Erin understood that her reasoning was out of whack, she felt angry that the long-awaited day of the opening of their business had been hijacked by this emergency. She hated that she was thinking such a thing. It wasn’t her dad’s fault. Yet as much as she tried to adjust her feelings, her attempts to summon up gracious thoughts weren’t working. The anger she felt lingered through the check-in process and through security. She headed to her boarding gate with jaw-set determination.

  Just as Erin’s flight boarded, her cell phone rang. It was Delores. She sounded much more amiable than she had that morning.

  “We’re still at the hospital. You wanted me to call you as soon as I had an update. They ran some tests. Your father had an ischemic stroke.”

  Erin wasn’t sure what that meant.

  “The doctor said this could be an isolated incident or a prelude to more of the same. They weren’t able to see any more blood clots, but that doesn’t mean others aren’t hiding. The doctor did tell me that the best time to run the test is within three hours after the first symptom appears. He said it was good that we came in when we did. You were right about that, Erin.”

  Delores’s small accolade acted like a tiny pin that poked a hole in the inflated anger Erin had been carrying with her. She could feel the fury dissipate with a hiss. “How is he feeling?”

  “Better. He said he’s better and not to worry about him.”

  “Delores, did you get my message? I called earlier and . . .”

  “Yes, I listened to your message.”

  “So you know that I’m coming up there.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll rent a car, and I made reservations at a hotel near the hospital.”

  “You can cancel the hotel. Just stay at our place.”

  “Are you sure?” Erin tried to evaluate Delores’s spurt of hospitality.

  “Of course you can stay with us. Unless you would rather not.”

  “No, that’s fine. Thanks for the invitation. Did they give you an idea of how long my dad would stay at the hospital?”

  “The doctor is sending Jack home now. He put him on blood thinner and told him to go home and get some rest. I have a list of symptoms to watch for. Bad headaches, shortness of breath—”

  “Delores, sorry to interrupt you, but my flight is boarding.”

  “Do you know how to get to our place?”

  “Yes, I’ve got it.”

  “I’ll leave the floodlight on above the garage, so that should help you find us. Just remember it’s a gravel road from the highway to our place, so slow down as soon as you make the turn.”

  “Okay. I’ll see you later tonight.” Erin found her seat, stowed her carry-on, and closed her eyes, hoping her seat companion wasn’t in a chatty mood.

  She couldn’t quite figure out what to make of Delores’s responses. Was it fear that had made Delores so abrupt and aggressive in her earlier phone call? The news about Erin’s dad wasn’t good. He had experienced a stroke. But maybe all he needed was the medications the doctor had started him on. Maybe that would be enough to resolve the problems he had encountered.

  Erin wondered if she had been too hasty in deciding to go to Oregon. No one had asked her to come. There wasn’t anything she could do. She really needed to be home, working with Sharlene.

  The slow-burning, teeth-clenching anger she had felt earlier returned and seemed to be sitting on her lap in the narrow airplane seat. Earlier all the anger was focused on Delores and her father for marrying Delores and moving so far away. This time she didn’t know who to be mad at. Delores was as much at the mercy of her father’s condition as Erin was. She knew her father had the right to choose to live his life the way he wanted, and if he chose to marry Delores and move to Oregon, that was his decision. Erin shouldn’t disapprove of his behavior when what he wanted was to live his life this way. When it came to her anger over his having a stroke, Erin knew he obviously had no control over the rogue blood clots that had made their way to his brain stem.

  Why am I so angry?

  For a moment, Erin wanted to blame Mike for her angst. He could have talked her out of going. He could have told her to wait for the medical update. But he didn’t. He urged her to go right away.

  In the end, Erin chose to blame herself. She was the one who had given way to her emotions. She had taken on the role of mother. Now
that her own mother was gone, more than once Erin had fallen into trying to fix everything for everybody. She couldn’t fix this, not a stroke.

  As the plane lifted off the runway, Erin remembered something her mother had written in her journal.

  It’s not always about what I think it’s about. The older I get, the more convinced I am that God has a hidden objective tucked into every disagreeable situation I encounter. If only I would collect those sparkling gems of truth while I’m in the midst of each difficult relationship or experience, I’d leave this earth a wise and spiritually wealthy woman.

  Erin reclined her seat. She felt lighter. That was often the way she felt when she drew a cool sip from the fount of her mother’s journals. The words her mother left behind were words from her heart, and they still touched Erin deeply.

  Faith O’Riley had indeed left this earth a wise and spiritually wealthy woman. Erin could only hope the same would be said of her. Oh, how she wished her mother were here now.

  3

  May you have warm words on a cold evening,

  A full moon on a dark night,

  And the road downhill all the way to your door.

  As the plane landed in Portland, Erin wondered if she should call Delores to let her know where she was. Opting to get on the road before she called again, she picked up her suitcase at baggage claim and followed the signs to the car rental shuttle.

  The air felt icy and damp when Erin exited the shuttle at the rental lot and made her way down the row of cars to space B-15, where she found her red compact. The trunk was nice and roomy, and the car had only 1,783 miles on it, so the new-car scent lingered.

  As soon as Erin entered her destination into the GPS on the dashboard, hail pinged across her windshield. She wanted to retrace her steps to the airport shuttle and take the first flight home to her comfortable surroundings in sunny California.

  For the first five or so miles, the traffic inched along as the hail turned to slush and came at her small car on great gusts of wild wind. Erin couldn’t believe anyone would want to live in a place like this. The fog closed in around her as she headed south, and the traffic systematically siphoned off at each subsequent off-ramp.

  She pulled out her cell phone, dialed Mike’s number, set the phone on speaker, and placed it on the dashboard.

  “I was just about to call you,” Mike said when he answered. “How was the flight?”

  “Fine. No problems. The weather is horrible here, though. Hail and sleet. It’s freezing. I’m so glad I brought my old ski jacket. This is really terrible weather for driving.”

  “Do you need to stay there in Portland for the night?”

  “No, I’m okay. I’m going to take it nice and slow.”

  “I don’t want to distract you while you’re driving. Why don’t you call me back when it’s easier for you to talk?”

  Erin agreed and continued down the freeway past towering evergreens whose tops were now obscured by the brooding gray clouds. She fiddled with the radio dial and listened to classical music for nearly an hour as she tried to think through what she would say and do once she was with her dad and Delores. During the flight, her feelings of wishing she hadn’t come slowly gave way to a quieting of her soul. Like her mother, she wanted to find the hidden agenda God most likely had tucked into this trip. Secretly, she hoped the gem she was supposed to search for had nothing to do with Delores. She hoped the treasure would be in her reconnecting with her dad. More than anything, she prayed he would be okay.

  For a long stretch, the view on either side of the freeway was of open fields partially obscured under a blanket of fog. By the time she turned off the freeway and headed west for the coast, she felt it was safe enough to put her phone on speaker and call Mike back.

  “How’s the traffic?” His familiar voice filled the car and instantly gave her a sense of comfort.

  “No more traffic now. I’m out in the country.”

  “How much farther do you have to drive?”

  “According to this GPS system, the distance to my destination is sixty-two miles.”

  “That’s farther than I thought.”

  “Me too. It’ll probably take me at least two more hours to get there since I’m driving so slowly. I’ve never driven in weather like this.”

  “Should I let you go so you can concentrate on the road?”

  “No, don’t go. I can use the company. I’m not distracted. Just talk to me. How was your day?”

  Mike gave her a rundown of his less-than-exciting day full of meetings and phone calls at Pure Sight, a company in Irvine that manufactured contact lens solution. For the past seven years Mike had been an associate VP in the Research and Development Department. He told her about the strawberry cheesecake they had in the lunchroom that day for one of the employees’ birthdays and chatted about other random office news.

  Erin drove through what was now a fine mist and peered out at hills heavy with timber. She tried to describe the surroundings to Mike just as the fog broke in the west and allowed the last streaks of silvery winter light to illuminate the world around her.

  “You should see this, Mike. It’s like Narnia. I’m driving through the forest primeval, and the light is hitting the trees just right. Every branch looks as if it has been decorated with strings of crystal beads. It’s extraordinary.”

  “I’d like to see that part of the country someday.”

  “This is really beautiful.”

  Within a few minutes the last trace of sunlight was gone and so was the glittery ice that clung to the branches. “It’s dark now,” Erin told Mike. “All the enchantment is gone.”

  “I’m glad you got to enjoy it while it was still light. I hope you don’t have too far to go in the dark. Are you going to stop for some dinner?”

  “No, I’m not hungry. What about you? Have you had dinner yet? I don’t think we have much in the refrigerator.”

  They talked another ten minutes before signing off with their usual “Love you.”

  “Love you, too.”

  Erin drove on through the darkness, thinking about how great things were between Mike and her. She loved him more than ever.

  Their relationship hadn’t always been like this. Nearly fifteen years ago Mike had gone into a lingering depression after the sudden death of his twin brother followed by being laid off. For at least three years Mike struggled uphill every day to work through the losses. Many days Erin felt like a single mom, as she raised their three sons without hands-on support from Mike. He found a new job, but that one lasted only five months, and then he was laid off, which dipped him into an even deeper depression.

  Erin’s closest girlfriend back in that season of life had watched her go through the tough time day after day, month after month, and finally spoke her mind. “You should leave him. He’s not going to change. You’re doing everything for him and for the boys. It’s like you’re a single mom to four children.”

  Erin found it easy to let her friend feel sorry for her. She spent more than one lonely night contemplating her friend’s advice, which unfolded along the lines of “I’m not saying divorce him right away. You could just move out and file for a separation. At least that way Mike will know he has to shake off this depression and take responsibility if he wants to see the boys. And if he wants you back, let him fight for you.”

  Erin knew Mike had no fight left in his bones. But she also found she had little life left in her spirit. She wanted someone to take care of her for a change.

  In a brave move, Erin put aside her pride and went to her mother, seeking some heart-healing advice. She and her mom had always gotten along well. But they weren’t confidants during Erin’s early married years. Because of a variety of normal tiffs most mothers and daughters have over how to keep a house or raise children, Erin had pulled back from sharing anything with her mother more personal than the everyday surface topics.

  When Erin went to her mother with all the broken pieces of her marriage, she didn’t hold ba
ck. She confided the depth of her exhaustion in her seemingly hopeless, loveless relationship with Mike. Then she admitted that she had been contemplating a separation. Her justification was that it would give them space to work through the difficult time.

  Her mother’s poignant words returned as Erin drove through the dark night on her way to the wild Oregon coast. “There are no shortcuts in committed love. This is your path. No matter how long or lonely it may be right now, to experience the fullness of love, you must go the distance. Only the strongest and bravest stay on the path. And you, my darling girl, have been given everything you need to be among the strongest and bravest.”

  That defining conversation marked the moment that Erin and her mother bonded as two women who breathed in the same mercy every morning and prayed under the same canopy of peace every evening. Erin’s mother became her best friend as well as her faithful prayer partner.

  Now that Erin and Mike were in such a strong season of closeness and contentment, she found it hard to remember exactly how Mike had emerged from his dark season. She knew the prayers had had a powerful effect. Perhaps part of their effect had been in changing her heart and her view of Mike and their marriage. Grace became a whispered byword that kept her calm and steady when she normally would want to accuse or go into inner isolation.

  She vividly remembered the afternoon when it became clear something had changed. Mike was driving all of them to the beach for a family outing. She looked over at his profile and could tell that something was different. All three boys were buckled up safely in the backseat, and for the moment, they weren’t fighting. Their dog, Bo, was curled up contentedly next to the ice chest and beach towels. It was a Norman Rockwell sort of moment of family bliss.

  What Erin noticed next was that the sadness lines, which had been etching their way deeper into Mike’s forehead each day, were no longer there. The corners of his mouth were turned up. He looked over at Erin, gave her a grin, and focused back on the road with his chin lifted. It was as if Mike had remembered who he was and where he was going. And now all five of them were going there together.