Having handled her friend so fully, Anne nodded to Thandie and spoke under her breath. “May I suggest you begin with your ego?” The two women traded friendly shoulder nudges and caused the other to laugh.
Thandie held in her giggle. “Any more questions?” She waited a moment.
A hand went up from the rear of the group. “Do we get to eat when we’re through?” one of the trio asked.
“Snacks are on the way down and will be served by the dock. Now, grab your mat and fan out. If you need assistance, I’ll be walking amongst you all. All you need to do is ask me.” Thandie clapped her hands and felt a smile spread across her face. She wasn’t sure about adding this activity to the schedule at first, but as the guests’ eyes lit up while taking their mats, she could see that it already had promise. “And don’t forget to have fun with it.”
“I could use some help,” Grant said, leaning back on his elbows with his ankles crossed out in front of him like he was sunbathing. He tugged lightly on her leg, and she sat beside him on one side of his mat.
“That’s what I’m here for. What do you need help with, Grant Goldie?” She spoke quietly until the guests had made their way further along the old shore.
“I need . . . I want to know you.”
A blush heated her cheeks at his bold declaration. “I don’t think that’s very professional.”
“No, it’s not,” he said.
She was afraid to look at him and be sucked into the smoldering gaze that she could feel on her skin. She remembered her job again and what was at stake. “I’m not promising that I’ll answer, but you may ask me one thing.”
“Your name. Is there a story there?” Grant turned her chin towards his face.
“Yes.”
“That’s all I get?” he whined.
She shrugged and played coy, but couldn’t resist his pathetic pouting for long. “I was named after my grandmother, Thandeka. She was the only person in the family who supported my parents being a mixed-race couple. She passed away and my parents fled from South Africa shortly before I was born.”
“That sounds like a whole other story.”
“And maybe you’ll get to hear it someday.” She batted her lashes in a slightly too smug sort of way. “The kids in school called me Thandie for short, and it just stuck. I like it. It’s a good conversation starter.”
Grant grunted his agreement. “I appreciate you telling me. And now that I’ve gotten my one answer, you should probably check on the others. I’ve stolen enough of your time.”
Thandie stood and brushed off the small bits of gravel that had stuck into her palms. “Get to stacking.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said and grinned, his eyes wrinkled above his cheeks. “Thanks for sitting with me for a moment.”
“Anytime,” she said and turned around quickly to walk away. Anytime? What was she thinking? Although crossing a professional line with Grant was not going to happen, she was having a difficult time remembering that she was an employee at the retreat, and he was a guest. Their little conversations and stolen moments felt like little dates. The best dates she had ever been on.
Perhaps the clear line, the one she was not going to cross, took some of the pressure off of talking with him. And she did enjoy talking with him. She enjoyed looking at him, too. His rugged stubble, strong jaw, and bright eyes were more attractive the more she saw him. She liked the skintight tees he wore under unbuttoned plaid shirts every day. And his cargo khakis hugged his bum in all the right places. She wondered if admiring his form was a sin, because it felt so naughty.
Thandie shook the raw image from her head. She really needed to stop thinking of Grant in such a familiar way. She bent down and placed a square stone on a flat one in honor of the thing she needed to let go of. There was no reason to have hope that she and Grant could be anything more than what they were in the vacuum of their situation.
“What are you stacking for?” the man with the baritone voice asked from down the way, though he was the closest guest to where she had stopped.
“William, right?”
He nodded and asked his question again.
Thandie wagged her finger over her tiny tower. “You know I can’t tell you that. Do you need help with yours?”
William leaned to one side on his mat and revealed his rather large tower.
“That’s impressive,” she said as she counted the stones in his stack. There were easily a dozen stones to his cairn. Her curiosity was piqued, and she really wanted to know what all of his layers represented, though she dared not ask. “Did you know you were such a natural at this?”
He chuckled. “I don’t know if I should be happy at this, or depressed at all the things that I need to let go of.”
“Well, this is an exercise on introspection, and I suspect you’ve already begun to let go of some of those things, whether you realize it yet or not.”
“You want to know?” William tapped his fingers along the edge of each stone causing the tower to waggle, though it didn’t tip over.
Thandie waved her hands. “Oh, no. This is for you.” But her grin gave her away, and he called her over.
“You know the woman who I’m here with? Clara? We were engaged once. A long time ago. Every one of these stones represents a time that I decided not to call her. A time that I drove by her house and didn’t stop. A time when I should have apologized and didn’t. A time when I could have been a better man for her.”
“You’re here trying to rekindle your—”
“Trying to heal. Yes,” he said. “And I think this is a good start.”
“I do too,” Clara’s voice stole William and Thandie’s attention from behind them. She pointed at her stack of equal height. “I had the same idea.”
Thandie, realizing this was now a very private moment between two people in need of each other, backed away. The couple embraced as though they had each thought of the moment for a hundred years. It was sweet, and real, and beautiful. Thandie quietly wished them well and moved further down the way towards the other guests.
Margret was quick to wave Thandie over and present her stack for approval. With a wide grin and Vanna White hands, she said, “Well, what do you think?” The stack was made up of two towers, each four stones tall. A skinny, flat rock bridged the towers with three more placed on top at the center. One final round stone balanced at the apex like a head about to roll off a tiny body.
“What is it?” Thandie asked, genuinely curious.
“It’s Anne. Don’t you see the likeness?”
“I heard that,” Anne shouted from somewhere nearby.
“Good.” Margret shot back. “I said I didn’t have anything I needed to let go of, except maybe her.”
“I heard that too. Now come look at mine,” Anne said.
Thandie helped Margret to her feet, and they made their way toward where Anne’s voice had come from behind a clump of shrubs. When they came around the foliage, Thandie was unable to hold in her giggle. Anne had stacked a similar, albeit much larger structure, that had an uncanny resemblance to Margret.
“I’ll be damned, if that doesn’t look just like . . .” Margret covered her mouth as she realized that Anne’s stacked stones were positioned in her likeness.
“I think you two missed the point of this meditation,” Thandie said and stood between them. “Are you two always like this, with the jabs and teasing?”
“When you’ve known someone as long as we have, it just makes life more fun when you don’t take things so seriously,” Anne said.
“I whole-heartedly concur,” Margret added.
Thandie looked around at the other guests, who were beginning to stand and check out the other guests’ cairns. “Looks like everyone is about through. Why don’t you make your way back soon? I’ll check on the snacks.”
In the shadow of the dock, the chef had delivered a delicious charcuterie spread, complete with a pitcher of sparkling sangria and a plate of chocolates. She wanted to dive right in but knew the guests’ needs came first. With any luck, there would be some leftovers to munch on while she cleaned up from the activity.
If not, she fully planned on hunting down the chef, introducing herself properly, and requesting a mini version to enjoy later in her cabin. The chef was an enigma, popping in and out without being spotted, all the while preparing the most mouth-watering food she had eaten in her life.
“What’s for lunch?” William said, with a very smiley Clara on his arm.
“Oh,” Thandie said and moved away from the table. “This is just a snack. Lunch will be served at two in the cucina. Help yourself. Did you enjoy your meditations?”
The two forty-somethings touched noses. “I think this was exactly the breakthrough we both needed,” Clara said. “Sometimes you just hold on to things for so long that you forget that you can let them go.”
“Amen to that!” Thandie said. The woman’s sentiment rang true in more than one way.
Thandie wondered if she was holding on too tightly to the hurt, the anger, and the humiliation that had been weighing her down for months. Running away from it all had only added to her burden. Now she was broke and broken.
Taking a cue from Clara, and heeding her own advice, Thandie knew that she was in control of either holding on or letting go. Davis made his choice when he left her, and she had chosen to beat herself up over it ever since. Thandie was done holding onto his mistakes any longer.
She raced back to where she had stacked the one stone. Passing Grant on her way, he attempted to stop her by holding her arm, but she breezed by him.
“Where’s the fire?” Grant yelled as she ran past.
There was no time to answer him. There was no time to explain, or even a desire to do so. She knew what she needed to do. She slowed as she reached the spot where her tiny little rock sat on another, and she kicked them apart. That act alone was renewing. She had assigned the wrong thing to the poor rock.
This time, as she carefully selected the best rocks, flat and not too smooth, she spoke the hurts aloud. “Broken relationships. Lost time. Feeling sorry for myself. All the tears, wasted.” She gathered a few more stones and added them to this list. “Kisses, wasted. Laughs we never truly shared because you were too serious to understand me. Goodbye Davis,” she said as she stacked the seventh stone. It balanced, but not well. She took one more that had a slight concave side. “Davis,” she said again for good measure as she placed the apex stone on the cairn.
“Who’s Davis?” Grant asked, having caught up to her.
“No one now.” Thandie stood and looked at her tower, feeling much lighter than she had a few minutes ago, and much lighter than she had been feeling for months. She swiped the dirt from her hands and placed them on her hips. “You know how this could be better?”
Grant’s face said he had an idea but didn’t want to say it out loud. He shrugged his shoulders and nudged her to continue with a single chin nod.
She knew what she needed to do, though she hesitated. Her stack of rocks, each one representing the things she wanted so badly to let go of, the things she needed to let go of if she were ever to move on, stared back at her, begging for her to reconsider. “No more,” she said and kicked the stones as hard as she could. Her days playing soccer in grade-school came in clutch as the stones flew through the air and scattered amongst the pebbled old shore and long grasses. Her trauma and regrets came to rest in obscurity where the stones met the wildflowers dancing in the sunlight.
Applause echoed off the stones. She turned around and her cheeks heated at the sight of several guests watching the unplanned entertainment. She could do nothing but make the most of it. “That felt better than I thought it would.” She laughed.
“All I know is I would not want to be Davis right now,” Grant quipped.
Thandie let out a deep breath. She was ready to move on. “Thank you all for coming today, and I’ll see you back down here at sundown for the bonfire.”
“Can I help you clean up?” Grant asked. “I know I shouldn’t, but I want to.”
“No. I can handle it—”
“I’m not taking no for an answer.”
Something about the way he took charge didn’t intimidate her. His was a genuine offer and suggested in no way that he thought her incapable of doing her job. He really just wanted to help, and maybe it was time she let him.