“Please, won’t you stay?” Grace asked Blake. “I can assure you it’s healthy and nutritious. Carrie is very particular.”
But to the disappointment of all, Blake declined the invitation, heading home for some concoction of kale, squash, beef, chicken, quinoa, oil and... Lin Su might not have caught all the ingredients, but he was in training—there was another race in a month.
“Sounds delicious,” Grace said doubtfully.
“Sounds excruciating,” Winnie said, making everyone laugh.
Blake laughed with them. “After the next two races I’ll have a little downtime. I’ll exercise and eat well but the strict training and diet regimen is relaxed a little bit. I’ll eat and drink like a regular person,” he said with a grin.
“Well, when you’re done with the next race, I’m buying,” Troy said, lifting his beer in Blake’s direction.
The size of the Banks household had grown, if only slightly. Now there was a cleaning crew headed by a woman named Shauna Price. There were three women who swooped in twice a week and applied a devoted two hours to cleaning the house, top to bottom. They were friendly without having much to say, charged a lot, carried their own supplies with them and vanished without saying goodbye. Once a week Shauna dutifully asked Lin Su if everything was all right. She didn’t ask Winnie; Lin Su believed Winnie terrified her.
Three mornings a week from 10:00 to 10:45 a.m. Curtis Rhinehold appeared—the physical therapist. He put Winnie through a series of exercises meant to keep up her strength and balance, though whether it did any good was questionable. In his absence, Lin Su continued the exercises because it couldn’t hurt anything and maybe it would give her a little more time and function. Winnie grumbled and complained, though Lin Su was confident if she weren’t getting this attention her complaining might be worse.
The end of summer was pleasant; the weather was warm and dry. Lin Su was warned it was leading into a cold and wet and often windy winter on the bay. Charlie enjoyed his new Thunder Point friends and anticipated the start of school very hopefully. His buddy Frank Downy, an MIT sophomore who shared Charlie’s passion for online research, had headed back east to college in mid-August. Cooper’s young brother-in-law, Landon, had gone back to the University of Oregon to begin football practice at about the same time. With Thunder Point High School starting a new year, Spencer was knee-deep into his own football practice with his team, moaning and groaning about those young men taking a toll on his back and knees. Troy was busy preparing for classes when he wasn’t helping Grace in the flower shop or helping around the house. Charlie wasn’t bored for a second. He had Winnie and Mikhail and was very independent.
And now he had a new friend—the triathlete next door. Charlie saw Blake every day, sometimes just talking on the beach, sometimes hitting the volleyball around or working on his bicycle. One afternoon Lin Su saw Charlie hosing Blake’s deck while Blake scrubbed it with the bristle broom. On another warm and sunny afternoon Charlie took Blake for a hike along the ridge to show him the lookout where he’d see the migrating whales in another month or so.
Lin Su was happy Charlie had a friend, and a good male role model never hurt, but she’d rather Charlie be enamored of Troy or Spencer or even Cooper—nice, stable, married men. It would be a mistake for Charlie to think a man like Blake would take a place of permanence in his life. He was a little too free and easy for Lin Su’s tastes. And their situation—the job and the location—was temporary. With any luck it would stick for a while, but eventually they would have to move on.
They always had to move on.
For now, the job caring for Winnie Banks was ideal. Lin Su put in a lot of hours, but had long breaks during the day while Winnie napped or didn’t need her. And while she would try to play the role of employee and caregiver, always available but at a polite distance and not a member of the family or town, the family and town wouldn’t allow it. She’d been with Winnie since June and they were growing close. Winnie was even closer to Charlie; they’d become thicker than thieves. Lin Su and Charlie were drawn in and embraced; they dined together, visited, gossiped, even played games together.
Lin Su was trying to remember her place.
“I don’t want an agency nurse’s aide,” Winnie said. “Think about this. You take care of my bedding, help me bathe, escort me to the bathroom, help me dress—we are intimate, you and me. If you couldn’t fit in with this odd crew I now call family—a daughter, a teacher, an old coach—I would have to look for someone else. I’m afraid you’re stuck with us.”
Three women Lin Su’s approximate age who were good friends and bonded in many ways were also all showing very nice baby bumps by mid-August. Grace, Iris and Peyton. Iris Sileski was the high school guidance counselor and had sold Grace the flower shop—they’d been friends since the day Grace arrived in Thunder Point a couple of years before. Peyton Grant, the town physician’s assistant who had conveniently wed the physician, made regular visits to check on Winnie’s health as did her husband, Scott. It was only natural, then, that there would be small and regular gatherings of those three—sometimes at the end of the day, sometimes for lunch, sometimes morning coffee, sometimes dinner. They were all due to give birth just before Christmas.
When they gathered in or near Winnie’s house, if Lin Su wasn’t busy, they pressed her to join them. Winnie very much enjoyed having them around, and with Lin Su’s or Grace’s help, Winnie could even join them if they met at Cooper’s bar or in town at the restaurant. Winnie even enjoyed brief trips to the diner, something that made her daughter howl with laughter, accusing that it must have been Winnie’s first diner experience ever.
“True, if it were my diner, it would be decorated far differently and would look more like a salon, but this is fine for me,” she said, lifting her perfect nose slightly. “For now.”
Lin Su knew it wasn’t the diner that drew Winnie and definitely not the decor—it was the women closer to her own age who tended to meet there from time to time. There was Carrie from the deli whose daughter, Gina, managed the diner on the day shift. Carrie’s best friends, Lou, a teacher, and Ray Anne, a local Realtor, were known to meet there, as well. Winnie never asked to be taken to the diner on a whim but if one of the women called or stopped by to say they were meeting for coffee and pie Winnie might ask to go. Better still, if they were meeting at Cliffhanger’s for a glass of wine, she was sure to make the effort, even if she had to impose on Troy or Mikhail to take her, even if she had to rely on her wheelchair for the outing.
“I’ve never had girlfriends before,” Winnie whispered to Lin Su. “You have no idea what a different experience this is for me.”
But Lin Su did know. Her own mother, Marilyn Simmons, would never hang out with a gaggle of women in a small-town diner. Marilyn was her adoptive mother. Her biological mother hadn’t survived long after her exodus from Vietnam, thus Lin Su’s adoption by an affluent white American couple from Boston at the age of three. They liked to refer to it as a compassionate adoption. Marilyn, wife of Gordon Simmons, a well-known attorney, fancied herself something of a socialite. Her biological daughters attended the best boarding schools and universities while she served on charity boards, played bridge, golf, attended prestigious events, supported political campaigns and shopped. No, she had never been seen in a diner with ordinary women.
That was yet another thing about Thunder Point that Lin Su immediately appreciated—people gathered without deference to class or status or income. She knew that Winnie was financially comfortable; most of her home health care patients had been. If they could afford to pay a salary and benefits to a private nurse, they had planned well. And Winnie did look fancier than the town women she’d meet for a coffee or a drink, but the women didn’t treat one another differently.
Lin Su would be lying if she said she wasn’t