The Oysterville Sewing Circle

THE OYSTERVILLE SEWING CIRCLE

Susan Wiggs

Copyright

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

The News Building

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www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in the USA by HarperCollinsPublishers 2019

Copyright © Susan Wiggs 2019

Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2019

Cover photograph © Laura Kate Bradley/Arcangel Images (front)

Shutterstock.com (back)

Susan Wiggs asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008151386

Ebook Edition © September 2018 ISBN: 9780008151393

Version: 2019-07-12

Dedication

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue

Part One

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Part Two

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Part Three

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Part Four

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Part Five

Chapter 21

Part Six

Chapter 22

Part Seven

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Epilogue

Author’s Note

Acknowledgments

Keep Reading …

About the Author

Also by Susan Wiggs

About the Publisher

In the darkest hour before the breaking dawn, Caroline Shelby rolled into Oysterville, a town perched at the farthest corner of Washington State. The tiny hamlet hung at the very tip of a narrow peninsula, crooked like a beckoning finger between the placid bay and the raging Pacific.

She was home.

Home to a place she’d left behind forever. To a place that held her heart and memories, but not her future—or so she’d thought, until this moment. The chaotic, unplanned journey that had brought her here had frayed her nerves and blurred her vision, and she nearly missed seeing a vague shadow stir at the side of the road, then dart in front of her.

She swerved just in time to miss the scuttling possum, hoping the lurching motion of the car wouldn’t wake the kids. A glance in the rearview mirror reassured her that they slept on. Keep dreaming, she silently told them. Just a little while longer.

Familiar sights sprang up along the watery-edged roadway as she passed through the peninsula’s largest town of Long Beach. Unlike its better-known namesake in California, Washington’s Long Beach had a boardwalk, carnival rides, a freak show museum, and a collection of oddities like the world’s largest frying pan and a carved razor clam the size of a surfboard.

Beyond the main drag lay a scattering of small settlements and church camps, leading toward Oysterville, a town forgotten by time. The settlement at the end of the earth.

She and her friends used to call it that, only half joking. This was the last place she thought she’d end up.

And the last person she expected to see was the first guy she’d ever loved.

Will Jensen. Willem Karl Jensen.

At first she thought he was an apparition, bathed in the misty glow of the sodium-vapor lights that illuminated the intersection of the coast road and the town center. No one was supposed to be out at this hour, were they? No one but sneaky otters slithering around the oystering fleet, or families of raccoons and possum feasting from upended trash cans.

Yet there he was in all his six-foot-two, sweaty glory, with Jensen spelled out in reflective block letters across his broad shoulders. He was jogging along at the head of a gaggle of teenage boys in Peninsula Mariners jerseys and loose running shorts. She drove slowly past the peloton of runners, veering into the oncoming lane to give them a wide berth.

Will Jensen.

He wouldn’t recognize the car, of course, but he might wonder at the New York license plates. In a town this small and this far from the East Coast, locals tended to notice things like that. In general, people from New York didn’t come here. She’d been gone so long, she felt like a fish out of water.

How ironic that after ten years of silence, they would both wind up here again, where it had all started—and ended.

The town’s only stoplight turned red, and as she stopped, an angry roar erupted from the back seat. The sound jerked her away from her meandering thoughts. Flick and Addie had endured the tense cross-country drive with aplomb, probably born of shock, confusion, and grief. Now, as they reached the end, the children’s patience had run out.

“Hungry,” Flick wailed, having been stirred awake by the change in speed.

I should have run that damn light, Caroline thought. No one but the early-morning joggers would have seen. She steeled herself against a fresh onslaught of worry, then reminded herself that she and the children were safe. Safe.

“I have to pee,” Addie said. “Now.”

Caroline gritted her teeth. In the rearview mirror, she saw Will and his team coming toward her. Ahead on the right was the Bait & Switch Fuel Stop, its neon sign flickering weakly against the bruised-looking sky. OPEN 24 HRS, same as it had always been, back in the days when she and her friends would come here for penny candy and kite string. Mr. Espy, the owner of the shop, used to claim he was part vampire, manning the register every night for decades.

She turned into the lot and parked in front of the shop. A bound stack of morning papers lay on the mat in front of the door. “I’ll get you something here,” she said to Flick. “And you can use the restroom,” she told Addie.

“Too late,” came the reply in a small, chastened voice. “I peed.” Then she burst into tears.

“Gross,” Flick burst out. “I can smell it.” And then he, too, started to cry.

Pressing her lips together to hold in her exasperation, Caroline unbuckled the now-howling Addie from her booster seat. “We’ll get you cleaned up, sweetie,” she said, then went around to the back of the dilapidated station wagon and fished a clean pair of undies and some leggings from a bag.

“I want Mama,” Addie sobbed.

“Mama’s not here,” Flick stated. “Mama’s dead.”

Addie’s cries kicked into high gear.

“I’m sorry, honey,” Caroline said, knowing the soothing, overused phrase could never penetrate the five-year-old’s uncomprehending grief. With a scowl at Flick, she said, “That’s not helpful.” Then she took the little girl’s grubby hand. “Let’s go.”

A small bell chimed as she opened the door. She turned in time to see Flick heading the opposite way at a blind, angry run toward the road. “Flick,” she called. “Get back here.”

“I want Mama,” Addie sobbed again.

Caroline let go of her hand. “Wait right here and don’t move. I need to get your brother.”

He was quicker than any six-year-old should be, darting through the half dark across the damp asphalt parking lot. Within seconds, he was shrouded in mist as he headed toward the cranberry bog behind the store. “Flick, get back here,” Caroline yelled, breaking into a run. “I swear …”

“Whoa there,” came a deep voice. A large shadow moved into view, blocking the little boy’s path.

Caroline rushed over, engulfed in a sweet flood of relief. “Thank you,” she said, grabbing for Flick’s hand.

The kid wrenched his fingers from her grip. “Lemme go!”

“Flick—”

Will Jensen hunkered down, blocking his path. He positioned his large frame close in front of the boy and looked him in the eye. “Your name’s Flick?”

The boy stood still, his chest heaving with heavy breaths. He glowered at Will, giving the stranger a suspicious side-eye.

“I’m Coach Jensen,” Will said, showing a sort of practiced ease with the kid. “You’re a fast runner, Flick,” he said. “Maybe you’ll join my team one day. I coach football and cross-country. We train every morning.”

Flick gave the briefest of nods. “Okay,” he said.

“Cool, keep us in mind. The team can always use a fast runner.”

Caroline forgot how to speak as she stared at Will. There had been a time when she’d known the precise set of his shoulders, the shape of his hands, the timbre of his voice.

Will straightened up. She sensed the moment he recognized her. His entire body stiffened, and the friendly expression on his face shifted to astonishment. Nordic blue eyes narrowed as he said, “Hey, stranger. You’re back.”

Hey, stranger.

This was the way she used to greet him at the start of every summer of their youth. She had grown up on the peninsula, with salt water running through her veins and sand dusting her feet like a cinnamon doughnut from her parents’ beachside restaurant. Will Jensen had been one of the summer visitors from the city, polished and privileged, who came to the shore each June.

You’re back.

Now the decades-old greeting wasn’t accompanied by the grins of anticipatory delight they’d shared each year as they met again. When they were kids, they used to imagine the adventures that awaited them—racing along the endless beaches with their kites, digging for razor clams while the surf eddied around their sun-browned bare feet, feeling the shy prodding of youthful attraction, watching for the mythic green flash as the sun went down over the ocean, telling stories around a beach fire made of driftwood bones.

Now she merely said, “Yep. I am.” Then she took Flick’s hand and turned toward the Bait & Switch. “Come on, let’s go find your sister.”

The entrance to the shop, where she’d left the little girl, was deserted.

Addie was missing.

“Where’d she go?” Caroline demanded, looking from side to side, then lengthening her strides as she towed Flick along with her. “Addie?” she called, ducking into the shop. A quick scan of the aisles yielded nothing. No movement was reflected in the convex security mirrors. “Have you seen a little girl?” she asked the sleepy-looking clerk at the counter. Not Mr. Espy, but an overweight youth with a game going on his phone. “She’s five years old, mixed race, like her brother.” She indicated Flick.

“Is Addie lost?” Flick asked, his gaze darting around the aisles and display racks.

The clerk shrugged his shoulders and palmed his hair out of his face. “Didn’t see nobody.”

“I left her right here by the door, like thirty seconds ago.” Caroline’s heart iced with fear. “Addie,” she called. “Adeline Maria, where are you? Help me look,” she said to the kid. “She can’t have gone far.”

Will, who had followed her into the shop, turned to his team of sweaty athletes. “Go look for her,” he ordered. “Little girl named Addie. She was here just a minute ago. Come on, look lively.”

The boys—there were about a half dozen of them—fanned out across the parking lot, calling her name.

Caroline found the clean leggings and undies in a small heap by the door. “She needed the restroom. I told her to wait. I was only gone a minute.” Her voice wavered with terror. “Oh, God—”

“We’ll find her. You check inside the store,” Will said.

She grabbed the clothes and stuffed them in her jacket pocket. “Stay with me, Flick,” she ordered. “Do not let go of my hand, you hear me?”

His sweet round face was stony, his eyes shadowed by fear. “Addie’s lost,” he said. “I didn’t mean for her to get lost.”

“She was here a minute ago,” Caroline said. “Addie! Where’d you go, sweetheart?” They went up and down the aisles, looking high and low among the stocked shelves. The store seemed no different from decades ago. They passed bins of candy and bags of marshmallows for s’mores. There were fishing supplies in abundance and a noisy chest freezer filled with bait and ice cream treats. Boxes of soup mix and Willapa Bay oyster breading and fish fry. A sign designating goods from local vendors—kettle corn, bread, eggs from Seaside Farm, milk from Smith’s Dairy. Caroline’s mother used to send her or one of her siblings to the Bait & Switch for supplies—bread, peanut butter, toilet paper, cupcake tins … With five kids in the house, they were always running out of something.

She made her way methodically along each aisle. She checked the restroom—twice. The indolent clerk pitched in, poking around the supply room in the back, to no avail.

Good God. Good fucking God, she’d only been in charge of these kids for a week and she’d already lost one of them. They had come from the urban pile of Hell’s Kitchen back in New York City, yet here in what had to be the smallest town in America, Addie had gone missing.

Caroline unzipped her pocket and fumbled for her phone. No signal. No goddamn signal.

“I need your phone,” she said, grabbing the clerk’s from the counter. “I’m calling 911.”

The guy shrugged. At the same time, Will stuck his head in the door. “Found her.”

Caroline’s legs nearly gave out. She set down the phone. “Where is she? Is she all right?”

He nodded and crooked his finger. Feeling weak with relief, she grabbed Flick and followed Will outside to Angelique’s car—her car now, Caroline supposed.

She leaned down and peered into the window. There, curled up on the back seat, was Addie, sound asleep, clutching her favorite toy, a Wonder Woman doll with long black hair. Caroline took a deep breath. “Oh, thank God. Addie.”

“One of the guys spotted her,” Will said.

Flick climbed in through the opposite door, his face stolid with contrition.

Caroline collapsed momentarily against the car, trying to remember how to breathe normally. The panicked departure, the jumbled, seemingly endless days of the drive, her terrible fears and confusion, the careening sense that her life was reeling out of control, rolled over her in a giant wave of exhaustion.

“You all right now?” asked Will.

Another echo sounded in Caroline’s head. He’d asked her that question ten years before, the night everything had fallen apart. You all right?

No, she thought. Not even close to all right. Had she done the right thing, coming here? She nodded. “Thanks for helping. Tell your guys thanks, too.”

“I will.”

After so many years, he didn’t look so very different. Just … more solid, maybe. Grounded by life. Big and athletic, a square-jawed all-American, he had kind eyes and a ready smile. The smile was fleeting now.

“I guess … you’re headed to your folks’ place?”

“They’re expecting me.” She felt a sense of dread, anticipating a barrage of welcome. Yet it was nothing compared to the situation she’d fled.

“That’s good.” He cleared his throat, his gaze moving over her, the crappy car stuffed with hastily packed belongings, the little kids in the back seat. Then he studied her face with a probing gaze. His eyes were filled with questions she was too exhausted to answer.

She remembered the way he used to know her every thought, could read her every mood. That was all so long ago, in an era that belonged to different people in a different life. He was a stranger now. A stranger she had never forgotten.

He went around to the rear of the car, where she’d left the hatchback wide open. His gaze flicked over the crammed interior—hastily stuffed luggage and gear, her prized single-needle sewing machine broken down in pieces to fit, her serger, boxes of belongings. He shut the door and turned to her.

“So you’re back,” he stated.

“I’m back.”

He looked in the car window. “The kids …?”

Not now, she thought. The explanation was far too complicated to explain to someone she barely knew anymore. Right now she just needed to get home.

“They’re mine,” she said simply, and got back in the car.

The cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears or the sea.

—ISAK DINESEN

NEW YORK CITY

Fashion Week

A plume of vapor from a garment steamer clouded the backstage section where Caroline was working. She and a couple of others from the Mick Taylor design team inspected, tagged, and hung each item in readiness for the show. The area was overheated with makeup lights, klieg lights, and too many bodies crammed into the space.

When an elite designer was about to unveil his work to the public, the bustling pre-show energy was palpable. Caroline loved it, even the stress and drama. Today’s event was particularly exciting for her, because several of the designs she’d created for Mick’s label would be featured. It wasn’t quite the same as having her own line, but it was definitely a step in that direction. Although she labored long hours for Mick, she used every spare moment to work on her own collection. She gave up lunch hours, social time, sleep. She was a striver. She did what it took.

This was a key show for Mick Taylor, too. The past couple of seasons had failed to impress the fashion critics and influencers. Investors were getting nervous. Buyers for high-end stores wanted to be blown away. Mick and his design director were on edge. The whole industry was watching to see if he would climb back to the top of the food chain.

Everyone on the design team had been told to focus on the wow factor that would carry the designer to even greater heights. Rilla Stein, the design director, was dogged and demanding of her staff, and her loyalty to Mick was absolutely ferocious. Most of the team members were terrified of her. Though she favored pointy glasses and Peter Pan collars and looked like a cartoon librarian, she breathed fire in the design studio and had the personality of a pit viper.

“Hey, Caroline, can you give me a hand over here?” called Daria. She was a model on hiatus due to pregnancy, and was now working as a stylist. Her girl-next-door looks and growing baby bump contrasted dramatically with Angelique, Mick’s longtime favorite model, who stood on an upended crate. Angelique had become the hottest runway model in the city. She hadn’t even gone through casting. Mick had anointed her as his muse.

She was sought after for her innate sense of drama and her ability to switch looks at lightning speed, sometimes in as little as thirty seconds flat. She had dramatic chiseled cheekbones, bee-stung lips, and the slightest gap between her teeth. Her wide-set eyes held a shadow of mystery. Daria had styled her with a bold palette of makeup and a swirling updo, bringing the model’s features into sharp relief. To those who didn’t know Angelique, there was something vaguely frightening about her, a trait that commanded attention. She was one of Caroline’s best friends in the city, though, and rather than being scared of her, Caroline was inspired by her.

Orson Maynard, a Page Six reporter and fashion blogger, introduced his newest intern, Becky Barrow, to Angelique. “She’s working on a blog post for me, and she’s been wanting to meet you,” Orson said.

“And now you have.” Angelique’s expression softened as she shook hands with Becky, who regarded her with worshipful eyes. Angelique had avid fans in the fashion world. She’d been discovered in her native Haiti by Mick himself, who had been on a shoot on one of the island’s dramatic beaches. The cutting-edge designer was known for going to third world countries and using local talent in his fashion shoots. He’d even won humanitarian awards for his contributions to the places he’d visited.

“You must have been so excited when Mick discovered you,” Becky said. “I’d love to hear how it came about. And is it okay to record?”

Angelique nodded. A mention on the right blog was good business. “Ah, that. It is not such a big story. I was just sixteen and as green as saw grass. I thought I was prepared, of course, because I was so keen. Haiti has some of the most beautiful beaches in the world. Every time I heard of a shoot going on near Port-au-Prince, I made myself useful, doing odd jobs and absorbing everything like a sponge. I learned to walk, to pose. I learned styling and makeup. I started asking for work. Any kind of work—fetching and carrying, running errands, translating because the people who came from the U.S. always needed an interpreter.”

“And that’s when Mick Taylor discovered you.” Becky was starstruck.

“Discover is not quite the right word. He noticed me on a shoot when I was too young to work. Then on another shoot a year later. By that time, I had my son, Francis—he’s six now. Yes, I was a teen mom,” Angelique said.

“You’re a fabulous mom, and Flick is amazing,” Daria said.

“A year after that, I had Addie and we were able to come to New York.”

“He changed your life.”

“Speaking of change,” Orson said, giving Caroline a nudge, “I hear you’re exhibiting your original designs for the Emerging Talent program.”

“I am indeed,” Caroline said, aiming for a casual tone. Deep down, she was wildly excited about the opportunity. She turned to Becky. “Don’t put that in your blog post, though. It’s not my first rodeo, and I’m a dark horse.”

“So you’ve exhibited before?”

“Several times.”

The Emerging Talent program, funded by a consortium of established designers who had formed a nonprofit in order to nurture new artists, was the most prestigious in the New York fashion world. A panel of industry experts would view the work of several designers. The chosen one would be given a chance to exhibit their collection at the biggest runway show of the season.