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The Oysterville Sewing Circle
Susan Wiggs
The #1 New York Times bestselling author brings us a searing and timely novel that explores the most volatile issue of our time—domestic violence. Caroline Shelby has come home to Oysterville. And in the backseat of Caroline's car are two children who were orphaned in a single chilling moment–five-year-old Addie and six-year-old Flick. She's now their legal guardian—a role she’s not sure she’s ready for. But Oysterville has changed. Her siblings have their own complicated lives and her aging parents are hoping to pass on their thriving restaurant to the next generation. And there's Will Jensen, a decorated Navy SEAL who's also returned home after being wounded overseas. Caroline is drawn back to her favorite place: the sewing shop owned by Mrs. Lindy Bloom, the woman who inspired her and taught her to sew. There she discovers that even in an idyllic beach town, there are women living with the darkest of secrets – and one of those women is her. Thus begins the Oysterville Sewing Circle, where Caroline finds the courage to stand and fight for everything—and everyone—she loves.
THE OYSTERVILLE SEWING CIRCLE
Susan Wiggs
Copyright (#u5cd290a1-241d-5bf6-849a-4955efaba810)
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
The News Building
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published in the USA by HarperCollinsPublishers 2019
Copyright © Susan Wiggs 2019
Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2019
Cover photograph © Laura Kate Bradley/Arcangel Images (front)
Shutterstock.com (http://Shutterstock.com) (back)
Susan Wiggs asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008151386
Ebook Edition © September 2018 ISBN: 9780008151393
Version: 2019-07-12
Dedication (#u5cd290a1-241d-5bf6-849a-4955efaba810)
Contents
Cover (#u1a5555bd-c816-55de-b751-0f08a5b017c9)
Title Page (#u999ff0c4-8401-550b-aa54-0890639b05aa)
Copyright
Dedication
Prologue
Part One
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Part Two
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Part Three
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Part Four
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Part Five
Chapter 21
Part Six
Chapter 22
Part Seven
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Epilogue
Author’s Note
Acknowledgments
Keep Reading …
About the Author
Also by Susan Wiggs
About the Publisher
(#u5cd290a1-241d-5bf6-849a-4955efaba810)
In the darkest hour before the breaking dawn, Caroline Shelby rolled into Oysterville, a town perched at the farthest corner of Washington State. The tiny hamlet hung at the very tip of a narrow peninsula, crooked like a beckoning finger between the placid bay and the raging Pacific.
She was home.
Home to a place she’d left behind forever. To a place that held her heart and memories, but not her future—or so she’d thought, until this moment. The chaotic, unplanned journey that had brought her here had frayed her nerves and blurred her vision, and she nearly missed seeing a vague shadow stir at the side of the road, then dart in front of her.
She swerved just in time to miss the scuttling possum, hoping the lurching motion of the car wouldn’t wake the kids. A glance in the rearview mirror reassured her that they slept on. Keep dreaming, she silently told them. Just a little while longer.
Familiar sights sprang up along the watery-edged roadway as she passed through the peninsula’s largest town of Long Beach. Unlike its better-known namesake in California, Washington’s Long Beach had a boardwalk, carnival rides, a freak show museum, and a collection of oddities like the world’s largest frying pan and a carved razor clam the size of a surfboard.
Beyond the main drag lay a scattering of small settlements and church camps, leading toward Oysterville, a town forgotten by time. The settlement at the end of the earth.
She and her friends used to call it that, only half joking. This was the last place she thought she’d end up.
And the last person she expected to see was the first guy she’d ever loved.
Will Jensen. Willem Karl Jensen.
At first she thought he was an apparition, bathed in the misty glow of the sodium-vapor lights that illuminated the intersection of the coast road and the town center. No one was supposed to be out at this hour, were they? No one but sneaky otters slithering around the oystering fleet, or families of raccoons and possum feasting from upended trash cans.
Yet there he was in all his six-foot-two, sweaty glory, with Jensen spelled out in reflective block letters across his broad shoulders. He was jogging along at the head of a gaggle of teenage boys in Peninsula Mariners jerseys and loose running shorts. She drove slowly past the peloton of runners, veering into the oncoming lane to give them a wide berth.
Will Jensen.
He wouldn’t recognize the car, of course, but he might wonder at the New York license plates. In a town this small and this far from the East Coast, locals tended to notice things like that. In general, people from New York didn’t come here. She’d been gone so long, she felt like a fish out of water.
How ironic that after ten years of silence, they would both wind up here again, where it had all started—and ended.
The town’s only stoplight turned red, and as she stopped, an angry roar erupted from the back seat. The sound jerked her away from her meandering thoughts. Flick and Addie had endured the tense cross-country drive with aplomb, probably born of shock, confusion, and grief. Now, as they reached the end, the children’s patience had run out.
“Hungry,” Flick wailed, having been stirred awake by the change in speed.
I should have run that damn light, Caroline thought. No one but the early-morning joggers would have seen. She steeled herself against a fresh onslaught of worry, then reminded herself that she and the children were safe. Safe.
“I have to pee,” Addie said. “Now.”
Caroline gritted her teeth. In the rearview mirror, she saw Will and his team coming toward her. Ahead on the right was the Bait & Switch Fuel Stop, its neon sign flickering weakly against the bruised-looking sky. OPEN 24 HRS, same as it had always been, back in the days when she and her friends would come here for penny candy and kite string. Mr. Espy, the owner of the shop, used to claim he was part vampire, manning the register every night for decades.
She turned into the lot and parked in front of the shop. A bound stack of morning papers lay on the mat in front of the door. “I’ll get you something here,” she said to Flick. “And you can use the restroom,” she told Addie.
“Too late,” came the reply in a small, chastened voice. “I peed.” Then she burst into tears.
“Gross,” Flick burst out. “I can smell it.” And then he, too, started to cry.
Pressing her lips together to hold in her exasperation, Caroline unbuckled the now-howling Addie from her booster seat. “We’ll get you cleaned up, sweetie,” she said, then went around to the back of the dilapidated station wagon and fished a clean pair of undies and some leggings from a bag.
“I want Mama,” Addie sobbed.
“Mama’s not here,” Flick stated. “Mama’s dead.”
