The Ocean Between Us by Susan Wiggs Read Free Book Online Page B

Assistance Calls Officer, coming up the walk.

PART TWO
POINT OF EMBARKATION
    POE: Point of Embarkation: to make a start, to engage, enlist, or invest in an enterprise.

CHAPTER FIVE
    Nine months earlier
    In the cramped, overheated dressing room of a self-consciously hip boutique called Wild Grrl, Katie Bennett’s head popped through the neck opening of a green Free People sweater. “How about this one, Mom?”
    Grace helped her adjust the sweater, smoothing her hand down the textured mohair knit. Moving to Washington State from Texas over the summer meant the kids needed sweaters and jackets. As she turned Katie square into the mirror, she sneaked a glance at the tag dangling from the armpit—$64.99. Great. “It’s a good color on you,” she said. “Too bad it doesn’t even cover your navel.”
    Katie turned this way and that, lifting a mop of straight brown hair off her neck and contemplating her reflection with the hypersensitive, overcritical eye of a fourteen-year-old girl. Grace wanted to tell her daughter she would look beautiful in a gunny-sack, but Katie would argue with her. Katie always argued, and she usually won.
    As Grace sorted through the other outfits they’d selected, sheglimpsed the back of a woman in the unforgiving three-way dressing-room mirror. Neglected hair, a double-wide backside, jiggly upper arms. Then Grace straightened up and lifted her arm over her head.
    The pudgy woman did the same.
    She put her arm down.
    So did the woman in the mirror.
    She twitched her hips from side to side.
    So did—
    “Mom, what are you doing?” Katie asked.
    “Contemplating suicide.” Grace laughed to make sure Katie knew she was kidding. She shuddered at the back view of herself in the unflattering fluorescent light. It shouldn’t be such a shock. She knew she’d been getting a little wide in the beam but had managed to avoid taking a hard look in the mirror. Whose hips were those, and why were they so large? How did she get to this state? At some point—she had no idea when—gravity must have kicked in. With no prior warning, she’d turned into a not-very-attractive stranger. But there she was, in living color, the dumpy, middle-aged suburban housewife she never thought she’d become.
    “Is something wrong?” Katie prodded.
    Grace sighed and picked up her purse. “No, sweetie. I don’t know what I was thinking when I put on these khaki shorts.”
    “You look fine,” Katie stated.
    The kids didn’t need for Grace to look like anything but Mom, and she’d done a damned good job of that. When Steve did a good job, he got a medal or pin of commendation. While she got… She wondered why no one ever gave women medals for motherhood.
    “I’m the one in trouble, Mom. Nothing’s right.” With a long-suffering sigh, Katie peeled off the green sweater and tossed it to Grace.
    “What about the hip-hugger jeans?” Grace suggested. “They were cute on you.”
    Katie slipped a T-shirt over her head. “In order to wear hip-huggers, you have to actually have hips.”
    Grace patted her arm. “Trust me, you’ll get them. The Lord will provide.” She avoided her reflection as Katie finished dressing.
    Katie didn’t seem to notice her uncharacteristic silence as they went to find Emma. She was in another dressing room, where she’d put aside a stack of selections to show her mother. As blond and willowy as a prima ballerina, eighteen-year-old Emma never experienced the uncertainties that tortured her younger sister. At the moment, Emma was modeling a jersey skirt and sweater, her natural good looks magically transforming a discount outfit into a Marc Jacobs original.
    Grace smiled at her older daughter. “I see you narrowed your choices down to, what, a few dozen?”
    “Two skirts and three tops, and I’ll kick in for half,” Emma said. She worked as a lifeguard at the Island County Aquatics Center. It turned out to be the perfect place to meet people. After living here just two months, she had