“Maybe it was how I was dressed.” Wendy laughed to see the paint still on her hands, wedged into her fingernails, and probably in her hair. “I probably scared her.”
“So how is your plumbing project coming?” He opened the door. “You got running water yet?”
“Don’t ask.” She let out a groan as she went outside. “It’s worse than we thought—but it should be done by the weekend.”
“Well, I was trying to invite you and your son and, uh, anyone else in your family ... I thought you might want to share Thanksgiving with me and my family.” His tone was warm. “But you were giving me the brush-off.”
She considered the state of the beach cottage as well as the expense of taking Jackson out for a fancy dinner—especially in light of her unfortunate finances. “You know, Caleb, that sounds really wonderful. We’d love to come. What can we bring?”
“Just bring yourselves and a pair of athletic shoes.”
“Huh?”
“Hopefully you like to play football,” he said, writing an address on a small pad. “Here.” He tore it off and gave it to her. “Two o’clock tomorrow. And I’ll have a check for your shells by then too.”
She thanked him, said goodbye, and hurried back to her car. Once she was safely inside she felt tears in her eyes. Relief or pent-up frustration—possibly hope? She couldn’t be sure, but she let them flow freely as she drove back to the cottage.
seven
ON THANKSGIVING MORNING,Wendy decided the breakfast dishes could wait until later. “We need to go beachcombing,” she announced as they put their plates in the sink.
“Can we go right now?” Jackson asked. “The tide’s really low—they call it aminus tide. And it sounded kinda windy last night. So maybe we’ll find something really good out there.”
“Let’s get our buckets.”
Soon they were out on the beach, and after just a few minutes, Jackson gave a happy shriek. He was wearing Poppa’s tall rubber boots and was actually wading in the water, claiming that was the best place for good finds. Wendy wasn’t so sure, and since she had on tennis shoes, she stayed on the dry side of the surf.
Jackson let out another happy yelp, running toward her. “Mom!Mom!I found a sand dollar!”
Wendy hurried closer to see, and sure enough, he had a sand dollar in his hand. Although it was a dull gray color, it was good sized and unbroken. “Jackson!” she exclaimed. “That’s fantastic. And it’s all in one piece—”
“There’s another one!” He bent down to pluck something from the rolling surf.
“You’re kidding!” Was it possible he’d actually found two sand dollars? In her whole life she’d never found one.
“It’s like I read about online.” He held it up. “You gotta go in the water at a minus tide after a storm. Hey, there’s another one!” He ran through the water to get it. “I think I hit the mother lode.”
Wendy kicked off her shoes, rolled up her jeans, and despite the chilling water, waded in to look as well.
“Another one!” he shrieked.
She ran over to see him putting the fourth sand dollar in his bucket. “That’s amazing,” she told him.
“I read that people don’t find them because they’re looking forwhitesand dollars, but the sand dollars are mostly gray. Until they’re dried out or bleached, they sort of blend with the sand and—hey, there’s another.” He pointed down through the ankle-deep water. “See it, Mom? It’s right there. You can pick it up if you want.”
She stared down through the surface of the water, not seeing anything but wet gray sand. And then she noticed a round shape. Bending down, she plucked what was, indeed, a sand dollar. “Wow.” She studied it closely. “This is a first for me.”
But Jackson was already working his way down the beach and finding more. Perhaps he was right—maybe he had hit the mother lode. She walked a bit farther, staring down at the shallow water, and there, to her shock, she spotted another. “I found another one!” she yelled.
“Great, Mom! Let’s keep working this section of beach and see how many we can find before the tide turns.”
Wendy continued hunting, letting Jackson direct her toward which section to search. To her amazement she continued to find more sand dollars. Finally, as the bottom of her bucket disappeared, she couldn’t help but do a happy dance. “This is so fun!” she cried. “I feel like a pirate discovering a sunken treasure.”
“Arrr, matey. We be hauling in the loot,” he called back in a good pirate imitation.
Before long, she was as good at spotting the sand dollars as her son, and her bucket was actually getting heavy—making her feel seriously giddy. She couldn’t remember when she’d had such a good time—maybe not since childhood. Finally, the tide had fully turned and the water in their “lucky” gathering area grew too deep to continue.
“How many did you get?” she asked Jackson as they stood together at the water’s edge.
