Cassie's Castaways: Island Women, #1

By Anne L. Watson

When Amy Bendbowe receives a call for help from her dying mother, Cassie, she rushes from Washington's San Juan Island to Mobile, Alabama, to see her. But Cassie has other ideas. Before letting Amy visit the hospital, she wants her to sell off or give away all the stock from Cassie's secondhand store. Is Cassie trying to keep the distance that has long separated her from her daughter? Or is this her way to help Amy finally understand her?
 
This is Book 1 in Anne L. Watson's Island Women trilogy, which includes "Cassie's Castaways," "Willow's Crystal," and "Benecia's Mirror."
 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Shepard & Piper
• Release date: Mar 31, 2022
• ISBN: 9781620352427

Book preview

CASSIE’S CASTAWAYS

Island Women

— Book 1 —

Anne L. Watson

Shepard & Piper

Friday Harbor, Washington

2015

Copyright © 2015 by Anne L. Watson

Ebook Version 1.2.1

Cover and title page art: Jewelry by Carolyn Aylward of Anastatia’s Button Jewelry

Anne L. Watson, a retired historic preservation architecture consultant, is the author of several novels, plus books on such diverse subjects as soapmaking and baking with cookie molds. She currently lives in Friday Harbor, Washington, in the San Juan Islands — the home base of her Island Women trilogy — with her husband and fellow author, Aaron Shepard, and their cat, Skeeter.

The Island Women Trilogy

Cassie’s Castaways ~ Willow’s Crystal ~ Benecia’s Mirror

Other Novels

Skeeter: A Cat Tale ~ Pacific Avenue ~ Joy ~ Flight ~ A Chambered Nautilus ~ Departure

Lifestyle

Living Apart Together

For more about Anne and

her books, please visit

www.annelwatson.com

1

Amy, 1992

Morning light slid across the mountaintops like a wash of pearl. How far away were they? Twenty miles, fifty? Drinking coffee in my living room, I watched them shine, as I did almost every dawn. Thinking of nothing but the moment, the beautiful moment.

My phone rang.

At this hour, either a wrong number or something important. I checked the caller ID before answering. Something important, then.

Hey, Dad. What’s up?

Hi, Honey! How’s life up there in the islands?

Dad was a good guy, and he loved me. But he used casual endearments only when he wanted something, a speech habit he wasn’t aware of. I turned my back on the view, sipped my coffee, and got my guard up.

Life is fine. How’s life way down in Seattle?

Good. Eliane and I went to a gallery opening the other night. You should have seen the garbage they were passing off as art. We laughed so hard on the way home, the cab driver probably thought we were drunk.

Drunk on having fun in downtown Seattle sounded good to me. Eliane was smart, witty, and a damned good artist. Didn’t fit the wicked stepmother mold in the least. I liked her a lot.

Say hi to Eliane for me. Anyway, what’s happening?

It’s your mother. She’s in the hospital. From what she says, it doesn’t look good. Can you go out there and help?

Shouldn’t I talk to her first?

She asked me to call you. I don’t think she wants to talk about it that much.

How long does she want me to stay?

More a matter of how long she has left.

Oh.

Does anyone know how long that’s likely to be? A week, a month?

You know how your mother is. Name, rank, and serial number, that’s about all the information she parts with.

That makes it kind of hard to plan things.

I know. Will you go? Please?

I felt cornered. But however weird my mother could be, she was not one to cry wolf.

Well, I guess, I said. If it’s okay with David. He’s not awake yet.

Isn’t that what women’s lib was about? Not having to ask your husband what you could do?

I sighed. Nobody said it was a matter of permission. But if I’m going to Mobile for I-don’t-know-how-long, it would be considerate to give him some say about it.

Why doesn’t he go, too? The two of you could hit New Orleans on the way back.

He has a deadline for his book. He’s barely going out to the mailbox.

Good lord. I thought authors had a little more liberty than that.

David says he’s tied to a desk as much as anyone else. The only difference is, it’s his own desk.

Sounds like you might as well go somewhere on your own, in that case. Give me a call after you talk to him, okay?

Replacing the phone in its charger, I checked the mountains again, but the glow was gone. They looked cold and far away.

•

I watched dry grass scroll by, and more dry grass, and more. I was already homesick, sitting in an Amtrak roomette, thinking about Friday Harbor and San Juan Island: the cherry blossom petals riding the wind like tiny kites as we drove to the ferry. David’s good-bye hug. My inevitable feeling on the eastbound ferry ride — I’m going the wrong way!

The shuttle bus down to Seattle, a few hours’ layover, too short to see Dad. A train station that was forever about to be restored, in a neighborhood as mean and dirty as any in New York. Seattle was fun if you were rich like Dad. If you knew everyone, like Eliane. For tourists who went straight from the airport to a good hotel, who visited Seattle Center or Pike Place Market. But the blank windows of Pioneer Square’s empty shops and the blanker eyes of drugged-out panhandlers told another story.

One more reason not to take the train. That and the expense. And the prospect of being on trains for days. But it was the only way to get from Washington to Alabama without flying. And even thinking about flying was enough to give me nightmares.

More dry grass. Could we be going around in circles? What were the Great Plains for, anyway? In the summer, would this be lush grazing?

My phone rang.

Amy?

Be funny if it was anyone else, I said.

David laughed. I don’t know. You might have lost your phone.

This had happened a few times, so I couldn’t disagree.

I wanted to see if you were okay, he said.

I’m okay. I wish I didn’t have to go. I miss you already.

I miss you, too.

The words began to garble. Another tie to the island was dissolving.

You’re breaking up! I said loudly. I’ll call you from Chicago! I love you!

I love you, too!

And the phone went dead.

I love you, too, I miss you, too. He meant it. But he always said it like a reflection, as a response to me saying it first. I wondered why. How would it feel to be a person who could always say, I love you, too?

More dry grass passed by the window, crusted with patches of old snow. A ghost town slid by, boarded-up stores facing the tracks. A few burnt-out shells of buildings. A water tower poking into the sky. I would have bet it was as empty as a balloon.

A knock on my compartment door turned out to be the car attendant with a tiny bottle of champagne, with Amtrak’s compliments. When he was gone, I poured a little and raised my plastic wineglass toward the west, toward David and the island.

I love you, too, I said. I miss you, too.

2

When I finally stood on the front porch of my mother’s house in Mobile, I was exhausted. More than that, I was peopled out — tired of crowds, lines, voices. Tired of eating meals with strangers, telling them it had been nice to meet them. It hadn’t been bad to talk to them for an hour, but the truth was, if I’d had a choice, I wouldn’t have.

I had one more person to deal with: my mother’s friend Nicole, who had a key. Collapsing into a porch chair, I pulled out my phone and called her, hoping she wouldn’t be some Southern belle who would talk my ear off. I didn’t want sympathy or help; I wanted the key.

Far from being a socialite, Nicole was so brusque, it was a little unsettling.

Nikki, she said into the phone.

Is this Nicole Bernard? I asked. This is Amy, Cassie O’Brien’s daughter.

Are you at the house? she asked.

Yes, and she said . . .

Be there in a minute, she interrupted, and hung up.

Snapping the little phone closed, I stared at it in perplexity. As if it could explain the conversation. I went over what I’d said. Could I have offended her? I didn’t see how. Maybe she was in a hurry when I called — needed to go to the bathroom or something.

But when she got there a few minutes later, she was just as abrupt. I’d been watching for a car, but she was on foot, walking quickly. She barely paused at the porch stairs. And she barely paused as she dropped the key into my hand.

Turning to leave, she threw a gruff Welcome to Mobile in my direction, then strode back the way she’d come without so much as a glance behind her.

Weird lady. I wondered what her problem was. I doubted she had any reason to dislike me. I hadn’t met her before, and Cassie wouldn’t have told her anything bad about me. For one thing, my mother was so discreet, I sometimes fantasized she was in the CIA. And for another, we got along well enough, even if we weren’t that close anymore.

I shook my head. Maybe Nikki was so upset at Cassie’s