Free Life's a Beach by Claire Cook Page A

with him. At least make him work a little.”

    It didn’t seem worth pointing out that sex was the one thing Noah and I had figured out. It was only when we got out of bed that things seemed a bit vague.

    “You know, if you don’t believe you deserve better treatment, you’ll never get it. Look at me. I got everything I wanted.”

    “Yeah, and now you have Mom’s hips.”

    “Don’t try to change the subject. Is he still there?”

    “No, why?”

    “Why?
Why?
So what, he just shows up, gets laid, and then leaves before he even cooks breakfast for you?”

    I wasn’t sure whether to hang up on my sister, or turn the shower off so I wouldn’t run out of hot water before I even got in. “Oh, please, not that it’s any of your business, but he had to go home to take his dog out. He’s very conscientious like that.”

    “Sure. Too bad you’re not his dog. I hope you at least talked him into helping out at Mom and Dad’s today.”

    “Why? They’re not his parents. Listen, I have to go. I’ll see you over there.”

    “HEY, DAD,” I said, about twenty minutes later when I wandered over to my parents’ house. “Is there any coffee left?”

    “It was nice of that young fellow of yours to help us out before he left,” my father said. “He swept the whole porch.”

    “What? You made Noah sweep the porch?”

    My mother let the screen door slam behind her. “He didn’t seem to mind at all,” she said. “I told him he should show up during daylight hours sometime, so you could bring him over here for dinner.”

    “I can’t have this conversation without caffeine,” I said.

    My mother caught up to me in the kitchen. I poured myself a cup of stale coffee and she climbed up on a stepladder. “We’ll whip the house into shape this weekend, and then get to work on your place early in the week.”

    “Dad’s already helping me with my place,” I said. “We’ve got it under control.” I took a sip of my coffee, then poured the rest of it down the sink. “Where’s the coffee?” I asked.

    “Same place it’s always been.”

    I opened the cupboard next to the refrigerator and grabbed the old tin coffee canister. It wasn’t hard to find, since there were only about three items left on the shelf. “Hey,” I said. “Where did everything go?”

    “We’re trying to make the cupboards look bigger.” My mother climbed down and placed some old bottles on the counter, then climbed back up again.

    I filled a new coffee filter with extra coffee and added water to the coffeemaker, then went over to help my mother. She handed me some more bottles.

    I managed to get them onto the counter without breaking them. They were tiny. The dark brown and green ones looked like they might be antiques, and a clear one looked like the bottom of a baby food jar. Some of them had corks in the top, and others were topped with a circle of fabric tied with a piece of ribbon. “Hilton Head,” I read out loud from a faded yellow label. “Sanibel. Virginia Beach. Paine’s Creek. Pegotty. What are these?”

    “Sand,” my mother said. “From every beach your father and I have ever walked.”

    “Oh, that’s so sweet,” I said. It was strange to think of my parents having collections I hadn’t bothered to notice. I started picking up bottles and reading them. I lined them up across the length of the old flecked counter my parents had never gotten around to upgrading.

    My mother climbed down from the stepladder and leaned back against the counter. She picked up one of the bottles. “We sure walked a lot of beaches in our day.”

    I picked up another one. “Detroit?”

    My mother giggled like she was Becca’s age. “That was from your father. He brought it back from a business trip. I’m sure there are lovely beaches in Detroit, but he scooped the sand from the ashtray in the hotel lobby.” She shook her head. “I think that’s my favorite one of all.”

    “Do you have a box I can pack these