Fourteenth Chapter: Destiny
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Posted on May 14, 2012
Light gusts of wind blew brown leaves in swirling patterns as Noah, rid of his beard, sat at his desk staring out the window, surprised to see a red robin sitting on the sill, waiting patiently for her mate to arrive with another twig. Like clockwork, the other red robin flew in, placed the twig in the nest, and flew away to go find another twig.
Diane sat at her desk watching him. “Noah, you okay? You gotta snap out of it and finish the profit projections that were due yesterday. Noah… Noah?”
“I can’t stop thinking about her. It just doesn’t make any sense.”
“Who? Cindy?”
“No… Robin. She was the one. I don’t understand what happened,” he said morosely. “Robin, I don’t understand,” he said softly to himself.
“Destiny’s funny that way. If it was meant to be, Robin will come back to you. If she doesn’t, then it was never meant to be. It’s like that saying, If you love something, set it free…”
Noah leaped up, grabbed his briefcase, and strode toward the door.
“Hey, where you going? What about the projections?”
Noah stopped and looked at her. “To pay a visit to destiny,” he said, dropping the completed budgets on her desk and disappearing down the hallway.
Book Giveaway
Posted on May 10, 2012
I’ll be giving away paperback books of Sand Dollar: A Story of Undying Love at Goodreads.com.
Enter here to win, and good luck!
If there’s no contest currently going on, please check back again at a later date.
Thirteenth Chapter: The Company He Keeps
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Posted on May 7, 2012
The phone was ringing off the hook as Noah lay motionless on the bed. Rosa walked into the bedroom and answered the phone on the nightstand. “Hello. Oh, hi, Mr. Hartman. Yes, Noah’s here, but he no want to talk right now. He knows it’s been two weeks since he’s been to work. He knows the budgets are past due. Okay, I tell him. Bye, Mr. Hartman.” No sooner had she hung up the phone than it rang again. “Hello. Oh, hi, Mrs. Hartman. No, Noah no want to come for dinner tonight. He still no feel good. Okay, I tell him. Bye, Mrs. Hartman,” she said, hanging up and leaving the room. The phone rang again, and Rosa could be heard speaking down the hall. “Hello. Oh, hi, Scott. No, Noah no want to talk right now. Okay, I tell him…”
“My life was not the same without Robin in it. I was depressed, and nothing could make me happy — nothing except for Robin, that is.”
Twelfth Chapter: The Marriage Proposal
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Posted on April 30, 2012
My seventy-seven-year-old sister-in-law enters my hospital room and walks over to my brother standing beside my bed. “Hi, honey,” she says, kissing him. “Hi, Noah,” she says softly, looking down at me.
“Hi, Sharon. Thanks for coming,” I say, happy to see her. “I’d like you to meet my new friend Josh over here. I was just telling him the story about Robin and me.”
She looks into my eyes, smiles, and kisses my head, making me blush.
“You know, Noah, you’re a man after my own heart,” Josh admits. “I had no idea you were such a romantic. ‘And on that day you and I will simply sail away into heaven together’ — now that’s good stuff. Did you think of that all by yourself? Anyway, go on, go on; I love a good love story.”
They were all looking at me with pleasant eyes that encouraged me to continue. “So, like I was saying… it was a wonderful summer that I’ll never forget. But all good things must eventually come to an end. The air was getting colder and the leaves were starting to fall. And like the song says, ‘Seasons were made for change’, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. Nothing could have prepared me for what would happen next…”
Tenth Chapter: The Real World
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Posted on April 30, 2012
High on a cliff overlooking a sandy beach, Zeke was giving Noah a huge bear hug in front of an old trailer at the trailer park. Zeke was big and burly, nearly double Noah’s size, with a thick beard.
“Sorry, we’re big huggers in our family,” Zeke admitted, releasing him. “Me and Mary are so glad to finally meet you. Robin has told us so much about you. And anyone who treats our little girl with love and respect is always welcome here.”
“Thanks, that’s really nice of you to say,” Noah said, recovering from the hug.
Mary was short, with long, salt and pepper hair. “Hi, Noah, I’m Mary,” she said, kissing his cheek and making him blush. “You sure are easy on the eyes.”
“Thanks, Mrs. Jaworski.”
“Mrs. Jaworski? Who’s that? Call me Mary. Who knows, maybe someday you’ll even call me Mom.”
“Sure thing… MOM.”
Ninth Chapter: Meet The Parents
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Posted on April, 23, 2012
A valet driver opened the door to Noah’s Ferrari convertible as it pulled up in front of Capriccio restaurant in downtown Providence. Inside the elegant Italian restaurant, the ambiance was warm and charming, with a cobblestoned floor, columns with decorative moldings, and tables glowing under candlelight. The pianist at the baby grand was playing The Way You Look Tonight by Frank Sinatra as Noah, holding a small gift bag, walked over to the alcove where Scott, Sharon, Miriam, and Jerry were sitting.
“Happy birthday, Mom,” Noah said, kissing his mother’s cheek.
“Come here for a second,” she said, motioning for him to duck down.
Noah grimaced, lowering his head as Miriam proceeded to lick her hand and pat his hair down. As a tuxedoed waiter approached, Noah pulled away and sat down at the empty seat beside his brother. As the waiter made his way around the table with a bottle of Dom Pérignon, he poured Champagne into everyone’s glasses.
Sixth Chapter: Butterflies
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Posted on April 13, 2012
With a Kmart shopping bag in each of her hands, a woman wearing a black leather coat and gray wool hat crossed the busy Weybosset Street intersection in downtown Providence. The sign on top of the concrete building she entered read Emergency Family Services of Rhode Island. Standing behind the front desk wearing a white uniform and talking on the phone, Robin smiled at her and motioned with her hand to wait just one second. A young woman with greasy blonde hair and a torn coat waited anxiously beside the desk. Her two young children stared with blank faces at the TV across the lobby. The four-year-old, a cute little girl with curly, brown hair, spotted a penny on the floor, and without calling attention to it, she picked it up, examined it, and placed it in a large glass collection box containing only a handful of spare change.
“So you don’t have any beds open either, huh?” Robin said disappointedly into the phone. “Well, call me as soon as one opens up, okay? We’re filled to capacity over here too, and I’m running out of options for these people. Okay, thanks, Cheryl. Bye,” she said, hanging up with a frustrated sigh.
Fifth Chapter: Life At First Sight
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Posted on April 5, 2012
While Y-M-C-A by The Village People was playing at the main dance floor inside the Mardi Gras complex in Cranston, people were lined up outside, waiting to pile into the club. Noah and Scott were handed bottles of Heineken by the pretty, young ponytailed bartender as they stood watching the DJ spin records inside the mirrored booth. Scott resembled his brother, only with glasses, a slightly receding hairline, and an extra fifteen pounds from all the years of his wife’s good home cooking. Scott looked tailored, lawyer-like as a matter of fact, with a navy pinstriped suit, white shirt with gold cufflinks, and blue tie. Noah, on the other hand, was dressed more casually, wearing a blue sport shirt and tan pants.
“Thanks for coming,” Noah said as they stepped away from the bar. “The last time I came to a place like this, it didn’t go so well. At least this time I have good moral support and a shoulder to cry on,” he said, laughing.
“Anything to help, Little Brother, but I can’t stay too long, or I’ll turn into a pumpkin. I promised Sharon I’d be back by midnight. I figure if she can have Girls’ Night Out once a week, I can have Brothers’ Night Out once in a blue moon, right?”
“Sounds good to me,” Noah agreed, clanking his Heineken to his brother’s.
Third Chapter: Priorities
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Posted on March 22, 2012
“It was four years before that incident in Saint Barts with the sand dollar,” I tell Josh. “I had everything a man could possibly need — or so I thought. The year was 1992 and the place was Jamestown, Rhode Island…”
High on top of a hill rising up from a private, sandy beach sat a gray, shingled Nantucket-style house with six bedrooms, three balconies, and a large deck overlooking the mouth of Narragansett Bay. Scaffolding flanked the house on two sides. Thirty-five-year-old Noah stepped out onto the back deck wearing jogging shorts, a tank top, and running shoes, the sun just moments away from rising over the tranquil sea. He jogged down the numerous wooden steps leading to the beach below and along the vacant shoreline. Seagulls flew out of his way as small waves broke gently against an orange background.
The sun was shining as he made his way back to the house, running by a sand dollar sticking up in the sand, undetected.
Second Chapter: FRAGILE: Handle With Care
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Posted on March 16, 2012
Look at me. Not too shabby for an eighty-year-old man, huh? I’m feeling pretty good, although I can’t seem to remember how I got here or how this bandage ended up on my forehead. I hope I get out of here soon; I’d like to go home. After all, today’s our anniversary.
I lean closer to the mirror, turning my head to the side and touching the edge of the white medical tape holding the square gauze to my forehead. Let me just pull the tape up a little bit over here and see what this looks like. I hear a knock at the door. Better get back in bed.
I scurry out of the bathroom and run back to my hospital bed, jumping in with relative ease. There’s a second knock, this time louder. “Come on in,” I say, pulling the white cotton sheet up over my hospital gown.
First Chapter: Prologue
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Posted on March 16, 2012
Of all the guests congregated inside Touro Synagogue, no one was more delighted than Miriam Hartman, mother of the groom. She was sitting in the front row with tissues in hand, her husband to her right, the bride’s mother — a close friend — to her left. If only Noah had married a nice Jewish girl like Sarah all those years ago, Miriam thought, his life would have turned out perfect, just the way she had planned. Instead, his life was ruined by that shicksa Robin he had insisted on marrying against her wishes. She and Jerry tried to nip it in the bud before it was too late, but Noah was stubborn, some nonsense about butterflies and the way she looked at him. For the life of her, Miriam could not understand why Noah never listened to his mother, because after all, she only wanted what was best for him. And at this point in Noah’s middle-aged life, Miriam concluded, Sarah was best for him. With all the bad decisions he had made throughout his life, proposing to Sarah appeared to be the only redeeming one.
Relishing in subdued victory, there was no need for Miriam to ever take credit for the role she had played in getting the two of them together. For all Noah knew, running into Sarah at the premiere of Sand Dollar happened by chance, or perhaps even divine intervention — if you believe in that sort of thing. However, there was nothing divine about it — not that time anyway — because Miriam had secretly planted her there.
Book Cover
Posted on March 15, 2012
The paintings on the cover of Sand Dollar and this website are not actually paintings…
They’re pastel drawings!
And they were drawn by a wonderful artist in Oregon, named Deborah DeWit. Thanks Deb, for doing such a great job!
Her website is www.deborahdewit.com.
Click on images for a larger view.
sebastiancoleauthor.com 