Soaring (Magdalene #2)(13)

“Excellent. Noon. Weatherby’s Diner. We’ll be the two blondes in a window booth.”

“Well, if there are two other blondes, so you know me, I’ll be the short, middle-aged brunette,” I informed her.

“Petite,” she stated as reply.

“I’m sorry?” I asked.

“Women are not short. They’re petite. They also are never middle-aged. They’re mature.”

I didn’t know how to reply to that true but firmly declared statement except to say, “Oh. Right.”

She sounded vaguely flustered when she backtracked, “You can, of course, refer to yourself however you wish.”

I felt the need to smooth her fluster and did this saying, “Petite is a nicer word. So is mature.”

“They are, indeed,” she agreed. “Though I also am not overly fond of mature. Why a woman needs to qualify that, I cannot fathom.”

I couldn’t help but agree.

“So I’ll be the petite, mature brunette,” I told her, trying to make a joke. “However, the mature part is just for you and me.”

“And Alyssa and I will be the not-petite, mature blondes,” she returned, and thankfully I could hear the smile in her voice. “Further, you should be aware that as it’s summer, I may have my son, Ethan, with me. And as Alyssa and her husband, Junior, are kind, good-hearted people, they’ve wisely made the decision to copiously populate Magdalene with their offspring. Therefore, she could have a bevy of children with her. They’ll be the ones causing mayhem. I’ll do my best to be certain Ethan doesn’t join in, but he has a mind of his own and his father and I like to encourage exactly that.”

I grinned at the counter. “That’ll be good then as you all will be hard to miss.”

“Indeed,” she again agreed. “Now, do we have a plan?”

“Yes, Josie, we have a plan. I’ll see you and Alyssa Wednesday at this Weatherby’s place.”

“You can’t miss it,” she told me. “It’s in town and town’s not that big. It’s right on Cross Street. But if you have troubles, simply call me.”

She seemed oddly formal, which was quite a contradiction to her cursing, but friendly and totally informal husband.

“I’ll find it,” I assured her.

“Good. We’ll see you then, Amelia.”

“Yes, Josie. See you Wednesday.”

She rang off and I put the phone to the counter.

Lifting my head, I looked at a beautiful space that didn’t look that fabulous with boxes stacked against the walls.

However, apparently, if Josie Spear had anything to do with it, this house sale would happen quickly and I could get started on creating a home I loved that my children were comfortable in.

Until I had that clean palette, though, I wasn’t going to start that project.

Which meant, home from my meanderings to nowhere doing nothing that actually bore fruit as I’d met some people and had plans for lunch on Wednesday, at that exact time, I had nothing to do.

Nothing.

No friends.

No housework.

No job to get to.

No children coming home imminently.

The cable and Internet were scheduled to be installed the next day so I didn’t even have that.

All of sudden, I had the strange feeling of being crushed.

Crushed by the weight of all that was new that was around me.

Crushed by the weight of all that I had to do to make my house a home.

Crushed by the weight of all my mistakes and the effort I knew it would take to remedy them.

Crushed by loneliness. Loneliness that in all my years of being alone I hadn’t even begun the work to make the change from feeling that to feeling aloneness and being comfortable with it.

Crushed by the fear of the specter of my parents who were remaining aloof, but they’d tire of that and then they’d invade in insidious ways that could obliterate the fragile embryo of what I was trying to create.

It took effort. It took time. I stood in my beautiful open plan kitchen with its views of blue sea as I expended that effort and took that time.

Then I made a plan.

I grabbed my phone, pulled up the app that found places that you needed that were close, hit the map to let the GPS guide my way and I went back out to my car.

I pulled out of my garage and headed to the home improvement store. There, I gathered so many paint chips I could set up a display in my house.

I then drove to the closest mall, not only so I would know where it was, but so I could buy a few books.

Only then did I go home.

I put the paint chips in a kitchen drawer. I’d go through them after the house sale and when I’d lived at Cliff Blue awhile so I knew what the walls needed (and incidentally, I loved that name and determined to refer to my house by its name even on the address labels I would order when I had the Internet).

Instead, I did something I’d never done in my life (though part of it I couldn’t do as in La Jolla I had a house on a golf course, not by a beach). Something I’d never even considered doing.

I spent time with me.

I did this lying on my couch with a glass of wine. I sometimes read. I sometimes stared at the sea.

I then had another glass of wine.

And then another.

As I did it, I realized I liked doing it, reading, sipping, staring at the sea. So much so, I didn’t think to have dinner.