Three weeks later.
On our walks in the morning, people say howdy, or g’day. Some just nod their heads, and there’s a tall, lanky man, with too-long hair, who roller-blades on the cycle path. He takes his hat off when we see him and doffs it to Seb like a circus clown might. Seb loves him.
I know the locals from the weekend visitors who flash in and are gone. And I can tell the weekend visitors from the tourists who stay longer, but don’t walk every day, because they’re out early to climb caves, wine-taste, lunch, or shop.
I still don’t know the name of the man who checks his crab pots in his boat. Sometimes it’s the father and once or twice, it’s been the son. On weekends, they do it together. They wave when they pass our patch of the beach, and once they nosed in to shore and offered to take Seb for a ride.
I walked out up to my thighs, terrified of getting a stinger tentacle wrapped around my leg, and handed him to the fisherman. He put a life jacket over Seb’s shoulders and sat my son between his hairy knees. Seb’s blonde head peered into the nets as each pot was pulled and even from the shore, I could hear his squeals as the blue crabs came scuttling up, flicking at the net with clacking claws.
The elderly couple who tried to help me on the beach the day Seb had the eczema attack are permanent residents of the Caravan Park. Her name is Molly, his name is Len. She has stunning red hair that flows almost to her hips and a wonderful, vibrant laugh. He’s got a full head of greying hair that always looks like he’s spent a lifetime walking into a prevailing wind. Behind his spectacles, his eyes twinkle.
What I love about Molly and Len is how very much in love they are. Every time he looks at her, or she looks at him, it’s like the rest of the world melts away.
Most afternoons after four, Len comes to fish off the beach. Molly is always with him, sitting in one of her long, flowing skirts on a low-slung deckchair Len has carried to the beach for her, a book in her lap. Those books always look extremely well read.
It was one of those afternoons, with Len fishing, Molly reading, and Seb and I making footprints in the sand, that I scraped Brayden into the shoreline, carving his name with my toes.
The waves washed it away.
I wrote Sebastian.
Then Jennifer.
Then beach, and half a dozen others — whatever word popped into my brain. Shack. Court.
Writer. Money. Emmy.
Each time, the waves erased my scribbles.
Words Worth. Gone.
Then I wrote SeaScribe, and as I swirled it in the sand with my toes, I glanced up the beach. Molly’s flowing cotton skirt fell still, as if nature closed the door on the breeze.
Geographe Bay smoothed to molten lead, and SeaScribe stayed scrawled on the sand. Resilient, it seemed to me.
Whether it was luck or good management, once SeaScribe had a name, the phone began to ring. Carl Barron, Kennett Pickering, Nathan Blain, and now Debbie Caletta, they all tell me the same thing. They say prices hit rock bottom late last year and the market is on the move. People want to list property again, and the agents are looking for a service like mine, to give them that exclusive edge.
All I know is, the day after I wrote SeaScribe on the beach, I got busier. Not enough to have me shouting success from the beach house porch, but there’s signs that I’m on the right track and this new life can work.
Brayden says it’s all in the name, but he would — he’s claiming SeaScribe as his.
He’s on night shift until the end of next week and then he comes home. I’m counting the hours. It’s been harder to stay in touch because he’s working 5 p.m. to 5 a.m. When he’s getting up at 5 p.m. for “breakfast,” I’m in witching hour with Seb. When he gets back to his accommodation for “dinner”, I’m still asleep.
I miss him.
***
I’m cleaning my teeth next morning when Seb comes looking for me. He stands in the bathroom doorway, pointing earnestly toward the front door, jabbering.
Spitting out toothpaste, I rinse and wipe my face. Then I come out to see what’s going on.
That’s when I hear the knock.
I open the front door to a gorgeous-looking girl of about twenty or twenty-two, with long legs and ebony hair in a loose pony tail.
‘Are you Jennifer Gates?’
‘I am.’
‘Happy Valentine’s Day.’ She gives me a wide, generous smile. ‘Please sign here.’
She holds out a device with a screen and a pen. Tucked under her other arm is a tall, clear, cylinder containing a single, perfect, yellow rose.
I sign, and she hands over the rose and the card and wishes me a lovely day before she runs to her delivery van.
Valentines’ Day. I hadn’t given it a thought.
In the kitchen, I open the cylinder and put the stem in the tallest glass I can find.
My fingers fumble as they prise open the card.
Jenn,
I always thought a yellow rose about to open was the most beautiful thing in the world.
Then I found you.
Brayden
I read those words for a very long time, stunned by the simplicity, the beauty — by the way the note unfolds so much more than paper and ink to me.
The ridges and valleys embossed on the card are smooth beneath my fingers. It’s almost surreal, matching the florist’s feminine, fluid hand-writing with Brayden’s rocky voice as I say the words in my head.
Carefully, I take the stem in my fingers and bend my nose to the bloom. The perfume is subtle, fruity — peaches, I think — the petals cling tight to their secrets.
***
Brayden Culhane can keep a secret too.
I’m sitting on the porch steps two days later. It’s Friday and I’m playing Hungry Dinosaurs with Seb — both of us pressing levers to make our Dinosaurs eat bellyfulls of brightly coloured balls — when Brayden’s black Pajero turns into the beach house drive.
He never mentioned anything about a visit and I’m on my feet so fast my purple dinosaur burps its balls out, instead of sucking them in.