“We’ve talked about this, Mom.” Rosie fought down her frustration. “Listen to the doctor. Take a vacation for a month. We need to let your ankle heal as long as possible, and then we’ll see how you are after the doctor says you can put weight on it again.”
She sincerely hoped her mother would decide that with the bookstore in Emma’s very capable hands, she could relax and enjoy her retirement.
She could sleep in all morning, go thrift shopping with her girlfriends in the afternoon—once her ankle healed, anyway—and even catch the party bus to the nearest casino in Lincoln City to play the slots.
Sylvia made a face. “It sucks getting old, little girl,” she said to Olive, who giggled as she continued eating her scrambled eggs.
To Rosie’s relief, her mother let the matter slide.
They could do this, Rosie thought as she finished her own breakfast. Juggling four generations in one house—okay, one house and a guest cottage in the backyard—would be a challenge but Rosie would make any sacrifice necessary to protect her mother’s health, heal the rift with her daughter and have an active role in her granddaughter’s life.
It wouldn’t be easy, but Rosie had been dealing with hard things for a decade. Compared to everything else they had endured as a family, this should be a piece of cake.
Chapter Two
Emma
An hour after that panicky wake-up scramble, Emma was still feeling frazzled as she and her mother loaded her grandmother into the passenger seat of her beat-up thirdhand Honda.
“It will be better to take your car than your mother’s,” Sylvia had said in her no-nonsense tone.
“Why?” Rosie had asked, looking almost hurt, as if Grandma Syl had said her Volvo SUV smelled like a dead raccoon.
“Because it makes the most sense. Emma already has a car seat for Olive. And you know how hard it’s been for me to boost my fat tuchus into your SUV.”
So there Emma was, embarrassed about her junk heap car. When she paid cash for it a year ago, depleting what was left of her savings after her final tuition payment, the car had represented all her hard-earned progress. She had a job. An apartment. And now a car of her own, so she wouldn’t have to spend an extra hour a day catching public transportation to take Olive to day care before heading to work.
Maybe it wasn’t the best-looking vehicle, but she had worked hard for every dent and rust patch.
They settled Sylvia into the front passenger seat, carefully adjusting her cast and her crutches, then her mother walked around to open the rear passenger door next to Olive.
“You can sit by me, Grandma,” Olive chirped, looking delighted at the prospect of a bookstore outing with her grandmother and great-grandmother.
With everyone settled, Emma climbed in and backedslowly out of her mom’s driveway. She was fully aware she was a ridiculously cautious driver. She rarely exceeded the speed limit and always looked both ways twice before entering any intersection.
Killing her father while learning to drive could probably scar a person forever in that direction.
And, yes. She found it darkly funny that she was so careful behind the wheel when she had certainly specialized in every other kind of risky behavior over the past ten years.
Mindful that she was carrying three people she loved, she drove slowly through Wood Briar.
The town had changed since she last lived there. New businesses had popped up here and there and a few others had closed. The pizza place where she and her friends hung out now seemed to be a bakery and the former bike shop sold tourist supplies like beach chairs, kites and towels, at least judging by the window display.
The town had added hanging baskets from the old-style streetlights, and their colorful blossoms spilled over in wild abundance.
The bookstore looked the same, taking up a prime corner of real estate only a block from the seawall.
“You can park in the back now,” her mother said. “A few years ago, the downtown alliance bought up the inner block area for parking.”
That was new. Parking had always been a problem downtown, especially in the summertime when tourists flocked to every small Oregon beach town, even the more remote ones like Wood Briar.
The tourist madness apparently hadn’t kicked in yet. On that early June Sunday morning, she could easily find a space close to the back entrance of The Rainy Day Bookshop.
Olive unhooked her own car seat, a relatively new skill Emma wasn’t all that thrilled about. “Stay there,” she ordered her daughter. “We need to help Grandma Sylvia first.”
The girl gave a pout but picked up her favorite doll that she had named Penelope, for some reason, and began chattering to her as Emma opened her trunk and pulled out the collapsible wheelchair her mother had insisted they bring for Sylvia.
“I don’t need this stupid thing. I’ve got crutches and a knee scooter. They’re perfectly fine.” Her grandmother’s wrinkled features wore a disgruntled frown as she glared at the chair.