The Charm Bracelet (32 page)

As Arden ascended, she could see her childhood reflected in the ripples. She remembered seeing her mother's face above the water when she taught her to swim. She pictured her mother waiting on the dock every time she floated on an inner tube.

She was always there for me,
Arden remembered.

Arden came to the top, gasping for air, her body covered in goose bumps.

Perhaps my mother never left me. Perhaps, just perhaps, I had abandoned her when she needed me the most.

Jake swam over to Arden and reached out to her. “Are you okay? I'm sorry. Just wanted to have some fun.”

“I'm fine. But I lost my glasses,” she said, running a hand through her dripping hair. “I must look a mess.”

“Actually, you look … beautiful,” Jake said. “Wait here.”

Without warning, Jake dove down.

Arden leaned forward to get a better look, but only her reflection stared back.

Arden gasped when she saw herself in the glassy surface of the big lake. Without her glasses and with her hair wet and tousled, she looked years younger. She looked softer, more feminine.

She looked like her mother and her daughter.

“Got 'em!” Jake yelled as he surfaced, holding Arden's glasses over his head like a prized pearl he had just plucked from the ocean's depths.

Suddenly, Arden leaned in and kissed Jake. Jake took Arden's body into his arms and chest. Her body exploded in more goose bumps.

Arden had never kissed or been kissed like this—with such abandon—and the blood rushed through her body, warming her even in the chilly lake water.

She looked up into the sky, the water rushing down her face.

“I'm right here,” Jake said, holding her tightly. “You're safe.”

For the first time in a very long time, Arden knew he was right. She thought of her mom and dad, of their first date here so long ago, and how life seems so big and yet is really made up of the smallest of moments, the most intricate of memories.

The two began to splash each other in the water, and that's when Arden realized something else, too: She was actually having fun.

Suddenly, she yanked her glasses out of Jake's big hands and tossed them into the sky.

“How can you see?” Jake gasped.

“I have contacts back at the cabin,” Arden said. “I'll rely on you for now.”

She hesitated, then continued, “But, with or without my glasses, I finally realized something.”

“What?” Jake asked.

Arden smiled at Jake, but didn't respond. Instead, she dove back into Lake Michigan and let loose a happy scream that seemed to release decades of insecurity, unhappiness, obsessiveness, and worry. It was a scream that answered Jake's question of what she finally realized, even without her glasses:

I can see everything clearly for the first time in my life.

 

Forty-five

Lolly's voice drifted from her bedroom window and floated out to the dock where Lauren was painting.

Her grandmother was humming an old tune with which Lauren wasn't familiar, but it didn't matter: Her happy, lilting voice delighted Lauren, as well as the birds zipping about the lake, and they began to sing in unison with the oldest bird on Lost Land.

Lauren smiled and studied her painting of the three Lindsey ladies.

Something is missing,
she pondered.

And that's when she heard it: The echo of her grandmother's charm bracelet jangling like the backbeat of a drum's cymbal to all the chirping.

That's it!
Lauren exclaimed.

Lauren dipped her brush in the paint and began to add bracelets to the wrists of her and her grandmother, before slowly adding in the charms her grandmother had given her over the years as well as the charms whose stories her grandmother had shared the past week.

Oh, why not?

Lauren laughed and began to add a charm bracelet to her mother's wrist, too.

She stopped and studied her work, and then looked out over the lake. Hundreds of tulips were in bloom—a crayon box of colors—giving the lake a paint-by-numbers feel.

Lauren stared at the flowers, tipping to and fro in the gentle breeze. Suddenly, her heart began to race. She picked up her paints, palette, and easel and began to run toward the cabin, screaming, “Grandma, Grandma, Grandma!”

“What is it, my dear? Are you okay?” Lolly yelled, alarmed, from her window. Her face, painted as brightly as the tulips, appeared at the screen. “Are the ground hornets already out? Did you get stung?”

“No!” Lauren yelled, stopping, out of breath. “Can I go with you into town?”

“I have to work until six,” she said. “Are you sure?”

“Never been surer of anything in my life,” Lauren said.

 

Forty-six

“Excuse me! Excuse me!”

Lauren wove through the crowded sidewalks of downtown Scoops, weaving through fudgies moving at the pace of zombies.

“Sorry,” she said, bumping arms laden with ice cream cones and lattes. “Pardon me!”

She had escorted her grandmother to Dolly's, acting casual but checking the time on her cell every minute, her pulse racing each time a group stopped Lolly to get their picture taken with her character, Dolly. As soon as her grandmother had entered the sweet shop, Lauren told her she wanted to go shopping and took off like a bullet, darting through the resorters like a crazed salmon swimming upstream. She zipped down the main drag before cutting toward the river, taking off in a sprint down the warped boardwalk, zipping past pontoon boats and yachts, sailboats and paddle boarders, outdoor bars jammed with revelers.

And that's when Lauren saw the brightly colored banner whipping in the wind, the reason she had decided on a whim to come to town with her grandmother:

75
th
ANNUAL TULIP QUEEN PAGEANT!

5 p.m., Memorial Day

Lauren stopped and caught her breath, taking in the scene. Scoops Park, the little town square overlooking the river, was rimmed in blooming tulips. The old Victorian pavilion, elevated on a white wicker platform and decorated in flowers and lights, served as the judges booth, while the parking lot that sat between the pavilion and The Mermaid, a popular waterside restaurant, had been filled with bleachers. In a corner of the park, an ancient weeping willow bent its arms into Scoops River, which swept them forward, giving the branches the appearance of a slow-moving street cleaner. Beyond the willow, a makeshift wooden platform jutted into the river.

Lauren nervously pulled her hair into a loose ponytail and made her way up the steps of the pavilion.

“Am I too late to sign up?” she asked.

A heavy woman with long white hair that had been pulled onto the top of her head, making it look as if she had a honey bun resting on her noggin, looked up and smiled. She was wearing a Tulip Queen sweatshirt and bright red sweatpants.

“You're a bit late, sweetie,” she said, checking her watch. “It's one o'clock.”

Lauren began to speak, but no words would come. Only tears.

“There, there. It's okay. What's the matter, sweetie?” the woman asked, reaching out to touch Lauren's arm. “You just need to fill out an application, give us the twenty-five dollar entrance fee, and have family that lives in Scoops.”

Lauren wiped her eyes. “My grandma lives here. And my mom grew up here.”

“Perfect,” she said, pushing a form forward on the table and handing Lauren a pen. “It's just that a lot of these girls have been working on their gowns and talents for months.”

“Gowns? Talent?”

“It's a pageant,” the woman said, tapping her nail where Lauren needed to sign. “Miss Tulip is like Miss America. Except…”

The woman lowered her voice into a whisper and looked around suspiciously. “… except, well, some of our girls don't always look like Miss America.”

Lauren laughed and handed the woman her form. She scanned it before surprising Lauren by shouting, “You're Lolly Lindsey's granddaughter? You're Ar-don't's daughter?”

Lauren nodded.

“Well, welcome, sweetie. This is sure gonna give this year's contest a little added drama now, isn't it?”

The woman leaned over the table and, for the first time, took a long, hard look at Lauren. “You sure don't look like your mama.” She stopped and scanned the application again closely, lowering her half-glasses to the tip of her broad nose. “Just wanted to make sure you signed the waiver, sweetie. Just in case, given your family history.”

“I'm very proud of my family history!” Lauren said defensively.

The woman gave Lauren a wink. “I'm just teasing you! Now, you best scoot, so you can go get a gown and work on your talent. See you at five!”

Lauren smiled, and then took off running, down the steps of the pavilion and then down the boardwalk, but not before turning around to take one last look at the platform.

“Excuse me! Excuse me!” she shouted at the fudgies, as she retraced her steps all the way back to Dolly's Sweet Shop. She reached the store just as her grandmother was finishing her one o'clock performance.

“Done shopping already?” Lolly asked, her eyes wide, surprised to see her granddaughter again so soon.

“Oh, Grandma,” Lauren said, running directly into her arms. “I need your help.”

Lolly's chin was quaking before her granddaughter had barely gotten the words out of her mouth.

“You're doing all of this for me?” she asked.

Then she stopped, grabbed Lauren's chin—her charm bracelet rattling—and looked deeply into Lauren's eyes, seeing her fierce determination.

“Time's a' wasting! We have a lot of work to do!”

 

Forty-seven

“I wonder what this is all about?” Arden said, more to herself than to Jake. “You don't think? No.”

She looked at her phone again, as Jake drove toward downtown Scoops in his pickup.

Arden reread aloud the text that had finally come through from Lauren as soon as she and Jake had just gotten back to the cabin.

“Meet me at Scoops Park at 5! DON'T BE LATE!”

“What do you think that means? What do you think is going on?”

Jake laughed, a rocky rumble that matched the engine of his truck. “I don't know, Agatha,” he joked. “Maybe she wants to do a surprise dinner downtown. It is Memorial Day. Why are you making it into such a mystery?”

Arden's voice rose in surprise. “Because it's my daughter. You know girls her age. They're
always
up to something.”

The truck bumped along the top of the dune road. To one side was the majestic view of Lake Michigan, stretching out to infinity like an ocean, its blue water meeting the blue sky, making it appear as if one huge, heavenly canvas had been stretched across the entire horizon. On the other side sat the river and the town—jammed with vacationers—and beyond Scoops were squares of green and ovals of blue, Mother Nature's patchwork quilt of farms, lakes, pastures, and vineyards.

Jake reached out and touched Arden's forearm. She dropped her phone in her lap and grabbed his hand. They drove that way until traffic into town became snarled, the tiny, two-lane road—no wider than a country bridge—unable to handle the giant SUVs sporting license plates from Chicago, St. Louis, Detroit, and Indianapolis.

“Over there!” Arden suddenly shouted, pointing at an empty space.

“I think your contacts work better than your glasses,” he said, parking his truck. “And you certainly look even prettier without them.”

The two took to the Scoops streets, falling into flow with the slowly meandering summer resorters, on their way for drinks and dinner. Arden grabbed Jake's hand and cut down a small alley between two restaurants, which spit the pair out just down the street from Dolly's.

“I became quite the expert at avoiding crowds my whole life in Scoops,” Arden explained in a matter-of-fact way when Jake stared at her for taking the impromptu shortcut.

Arden peered through the window of Dolly's, but didn't see her mother. She looked at the clock on the window, but there was no time designated for the next show.

Alarmed, she zipped into the sweets shop and asked a young girl with two shades of hair—white on top, black underneath—“Where's my mother? Lolly? I thought she worked until six?”

“She said she had an emergency,” the girl said, looking up as she rang a customer up.

“Was she okay?” Arden asked, alarmed.

“Totally,” she responded. “Very happy. She took off with some young girl.”

“Let's just go to the park,” Jake said, pulling Arden out of the shop and toward the boardwalk. “That's where she said to meet.”

“Something's just not right,” Arden said, checking her cell as they walked.

4:59.

And that's when she saw it: The giant banner above the park announcing the Tulip Queen pageant.

Strains of terrible music suddenly began to blare over a pair of squeaky speakers. Pimply, ragtag members of the Scoops choir—dressed in hideously bright colored T-shirts—stood in front of a row of mics and began to sway like flowers in the wind, singing off-key The Andrews Sisters' song that had kicked off the Tulip Queen pageant for decades:

Tu-li-tu-li-tu-li-tulip time!

“Oh, no,” Arden said, stopping in her tracks so quickly that a family of four nearly tripped over her body. “This is like reliving a nightmare.”

Jake put his arm around Arden and led her to the bleachers. Arden squinted in the late afternoon sun, the reflection bouncing off the river, and yanked sunglasses from her purse.

From behind the bleachers, a row of girls dressed in colorful, sequined gowns began to walk in a line toward the platform in front of the pavilion. From a distance, they looked like one, long, undulating glittering snake seeking sun.