In Good Hands

By Iris Forester

Fiona is a single mother too busy picking up the pieces following her divorce from her criminal husband to worry about men. She's so focused on holding down a job, reigning in her unruly young son, and working on her burgeoning pottery career at her friend Paula's studio that when a carefree, good-looking drifter and fellow ceramics student named Marlow comes into her life, she doesn't put much stock into their fling. After all, he's not exactly marriage material, and a much more capable potential partner, a successful businessman named Carson, has also expressed his interest. Things get even more complicated when an anonymous benefactor begins magically making all of Fiona's financial problems disappear. Eventually, the entire little Pacific Northwest town of Salmon Bay gets caught up in the drama as Fiona feels herself pulled between these two men, all while trying to identify her fairy godmother.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bryant Street Shorts
• Release date: Dec 7, 2021
• ISBN: 9781094427713

Iris Forester

Iris Forester is never happier than when she’s tossed everything aside to follow one of the story threads that cross her path. She shares her home place with eagles, ravens and owls — but also makes time every year to spend in New York City. When she’s not writing, Iris works with paint, clay, and various difficult creatures.

Book preview

Chapter One

Fiona methodically plucked one small weed after another from the brick planter and laid them in a neat lineup on the rim. She always needed something to fidget with when she was anxious, and sitting there with her phone to her ear meant that she had only one hand free. Why was she being kept on hold for so long? How busy could an elementary school office be?

The unexpectedly warm April sunlight felt comforting on her shoulders, but the kindness of the weather wasn’t enough to soothe Fiona. When the principal finally came on the line, it was just another chapter of the same old story.

Ms. Mancini? Thank you for calling me back. I’m sorry, but you’ll need to come pick up Luke. He’s been having a hard day, and Ms. Stern just had to remove him from class.

But I’m… I’m in the middle of something. Unhappily, Fiona looked at the smudges of drying clay on her hand.

I’m sorry. I know it’s inconvenient. Is there someone else you could authorize to come pick him up?

No. I’ll be there in about ten minutes.

Thank you. Luke will be welcome back tomorrow morning. I’m sure he’ll be ready for a fresh start. He’s in the front part of the office right now, with the secretary.

Okay. Thanks. Bye. Why was she thanking the principal? The school didn’t even seem to be trying to meet the boy’s unique needs.

Fiona went back inside the pottery center and took her half-finished bowl off the wheel. Of course, it deformed as soon as she moved it, so she squashed the last half-hour’s worth of her work back into a lump and returned it to the bag of clay.

Paula came over and helped Fiona wipe down her area and put the tools away.

Luke again? she asked.

Fiona nodded. So much for the idea of focused concentration. I don’t know how I’m ever going to get better at working with clay. I’m always waiting for the exact phone call I just got.

Paula put a friendly hand on Fiona’s shoulder for a few seconds and said, I know it sucks. But you’re a great mom. And Luke’s a special kid — when he’s grown up, he’s going to take the world by storm.

Fiona gave her friend a brief, thankful smile and headed out to her car — only to find a new headache awaiting her. Another car had pulled in so closely next to her that she couldn’t open her door. And on the passenger side, Fiona had parked close to a retaining wall, so the other door couldn’t open, either. The parking lot for the community pottery studio had been carved out of an odd-shaped gap between buildings, and its six spaces were always hard to maneuver in and out of. But really, how oblivious could someone be to leave just ten inches of space between cars?

Striding back into the center, Fiona interrupted the start of Paula’s next demonstration.

I’m sorry to cut in on you, she said to Paula. But someone has parked so close to my car that I can’t get the door open. Then, addressing the five students, she said, If you have a black Subaru wagon, I need you to come out and move your car.

The students looked around at each other. One of them shot Fiona a sympathetic glance and rolled her eyes in solidarity. Fiona knew four of them at least somewhat but there was a new student today; he was already getting up, unwinding his lanky legs from the kick wheel and heading for the door.

I’m Marlow, he introduced himself, and I’m sorry. His contrite tone seemed genuine. She saw a faint flush on his fair cheeks as he ducked his head and went out the door. He backed his car up and apologized again to Fiona through his rolled-down window.

I must have been daydreaming when I parked. I’ve been really spacey today. I truly apologize for inconveniencing you.

She shook her head and waved off his excess remorse. It wasn’t as if she herself didn’t make plenty of foolish mistakes.

As she drove across the small town of Salmon Bay, Fiona found her mind drifting back to Marlow. Something about him had caught her attention. Maybe it was that he just didn’t have even a speck of the arrogant self-confidence that she was used to in men. Instead, he had big brown puppy-dog eyes and an open, expressive face. It was kind of adorable that he had actually blushed when he realized he’d been a nuisance.

All such thoughts evaporated, however, as Fiona walked into the school and retrieved her offspring. He was unrepentant and leaped wildly in delight at being released early from the confinement of school. Fiona wasn’t in the mood to discipline him. She knew perfectly well that a traditional third-grade classroom wasn’t the right place for him and the routines of decorum were sometimes literally impossible for him. His mind and body seemed constantly hungry: for movement, for new ideas, new vistas.

Do you want to go to the beach? she asked. The town of Salmon Bay was located on Granite Island, off the coast of Washington, and its beaches ranged from rocky tide pools to long, sandy stretches facing across the water into Canada.

Luke whooped and then asked if they could stop at home to get the binoculars.

And my bird book, he added. I want to see if we can find any black-bellied plovers. They should be migrating right now, going up to the Arctic.

At their little apartment, Fiona made a couple of quick cheese and tomato sandwiches, stashed them with some water and bananas in a brown bag, and drove with Luke out to a beach that was backed by a freshwater holly. She didn’t know as much as Luke did about the migrating shorebirds, but she knew that almost any kind of water-loving bird would find something there to like.

She thought about Luke, her wild, brilliant son. What kind of environment did he need? What kind of nest? What kind of feeding grounds?

Chapter Two

Two days later, Fiona had another studio session. She spent the first two hours scrubbing shelves, sweeping the floor, and generally trying to make herself useful. She couldn’t afford the lessons and wheel time that she wanted, so she traded labor to Paula for studio time. Paula had been a guardian angel to Fiona ever since the dark winter day when her husband, Michael, had been arrested, and it was only thanks to Paula’s excellent casseroles and steady support that Fiona had weathered those hard months.

Luke was another matter. Fiona didn’t actually know how well the boy was handling the disappearance of his father. Michael hadn’t been around a lot even when he’d supposedly lived with them, so as far as Luke was concerned, his father’s protracted absence wasn’t a big change. For Fiona, however, Michael’s unmasking had broken her world apart. Of course, they’d sometimes fought, and Michael had seemed to have a lot of secrets, but she had basically believed in him.

Michael had claimed that he had to travel a lot for his job, but even when she couldn’t rely on his presence, she could depend on him handing her money to pay the bills. As the only parent at home with a high-needs child, Fiona herself hadn’t done many outside jobs — just a couple shifts a week at the town’s used bookstore, more for the social break than for the pay.

She’d also believed that Michael’s work, which he’d described as agricultural consulting, was legitimate. The discovery that the agriculture he was consulting about was the large-scale growing (and subsequent processing) of coca leaves had come as an utter shock to Fiona. Furthermore, it meant that his income had vanished when he was arrested, and the house where they’d lived, which technically belonged only to Michael, had been seized by the authorities because it had been bought with drug profits.

Fiona herself had also come under suspicion, but in his sole act of decency, Michael had insisted to the authorities that Fiona had had no part in his criminal activities. And she’d been so shocked, so clueless, and so hysterical that the DEA officials had come to the same conclusion; she was indeed only an innocent bystander. Collateral damage.

So that was how she and Luke had moved from a pleasant farmhouse with a wide view to their little one-bedroom apartment in an alley behind a bank. Luke said he liked the smallness of the apartment because he always knew where his mother was when they were at home, and he’d accepted the story of his father’s activities with an inscrutable expression. Fiona was working on getting him some therapy, but so far, she hadn’t found any professional on the island who would take her insurance, and she couldn’t manage a mainland trip every week just then. So… she took him to the beach a lot, as well as the town’s small playground and the harbor, to watch seals. She also handed him off to his best friend Bryan’s infinitely kind family for campouts and game nights and other wholesome pursuits.

For her own part, Fiona worked a shifting collection of odd jobs, always trying to put together a schedule that allowed her to spend time with Luke and pursue her dream of becoming a professional potter. That dream was still distant because she was only beginning to turn out symmetrical vessels on the pottery wheel and, too often, her glazes ran down and stuck to the kiln shelves or cracked and bubbled. However, even when work went straight from kiln to trash can, Fiona never lost her fascination with clay. She pored over pottery sold at craft fairs and knew she could someday produce pieces at least as good… if she could just manage to survive until then.

Her sessions at the community pottery studio were her one luxury and an expression of faith in her own future.

Section Break

A few days later, Fiona was again at the studio. Having finished her allotted labor for Paula, she sat gratefully down in front of the wheel, while Marlow sat nearby at his own wheel and tried awkwardly to smack down his lump of clay in the very center. Fiona watched as Paula came over and showed him the technique, the way to use both hands to guide and settle the clay as the wheel spun.

Something about the man still intrigued Fiona. He looked like he was in his mid-thirties, so only a year or two older than herself, but he carried himself as if he were a college kid. He dressed like one, too: T-shirts with logos of things she didn’t recognize, and beat-up jeans. On his feet were rubber flip-flops, which was decidedly strange in the uncertain Pacific Northwest spring weather, and his dark blond hair was carelessly pulled back in a ponytail. Honestly, he looked like a cross between a refugee from an earlier decade and a California surfer who’d taken a wrong turn and ended up in chilly northern waters.

Paula had said that Marlow was new to the island and nobody knew much of anything about