A Broken Kind of Beautiful A Novel by Katie Ganshert

Author:Katie Ganshert
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9781601425911
Publisher: The Doubleday Religious Publishing Group
Published: 2014-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

Ivy searched the street, looking one way, then another. A lanky man wearing a large belt buckle and cowboy boots escorted a multipierced woman up the sidewalk. Ivy waited until they passed, then stepped over the curb to get a better look. She needed to find Sara and apologize. She shouldn’t have thrust Jordan on her like that, especially not if he’d broken her heart once before. But where could Sara be?

Ivy walked down the sidewalk toward Charlie’s Crab Hut, the place they were supposed to eat lunch before Ivy derailed the plans. A block and a half later, she spotted the furry backside of Sunny in the distance across the street, beyond a row of palm trees, off the boardwalk, sitting in the sand beside a woman with a thin ponytail on a wooden bench.

A blue truck marked with a silver F-150 rumbled pass. Ivy crossed the street, made her way through the sandy grass, and sat beside Sara. “Hey.”

Gentle waves hissed against the beach, and frothy whiteness receded in ripples out to the sea. The hot breeze danced wisps of hair around Sara’s face as she twirled a loose thread from her shirt around her finger until the tip turned red. “Did you know he was in there when you brought me inside?”

“Yes.”

“Why did you do that?”

Sara’s softly spoken question pinched the small hollow beneath Ivy’s breastbone. Because she had wanted to know if Jordan loved Sara and if Sara loved him back. Maybe curiosity was a sin. “I’m not sure.”

Sara unwound the thread. “Do you think I wanted him to see me like this?”

“What do you mean, like this?”

She motioned to her person. “I don’t even know if my outfit matches.”

“He doesn’t care about that.”

A doubtful puff of air brushed past Sara’s lips.

“You can’t see the way he looks at you. I can. And trust me on this, Sara, the man’s in love.” Ivy leaned back, her shoulder blades biting into the wood. “What I can’t decipher is how you feel about him.”

Sara’s ears turned red.

“You love him too, don’t you?”

Sara went back to work twirling the thread around her finger. Her nonanswer was really all the answer Ivy needed. She considered passing along her mother’s warning. Even sixteen years later, Ivy could still feel Mom’s fingers digging into her little-girl shoulders. Still see the dark circles beneath Mom’s eyes. “Never fall in love, Ivy. Nothing good can come of it.” Maybe the words in and of themselves wouldn’t have left such a lasting impression if Ivy hadn’t witnessed the truth of them. With every one of James’s rejections, Ivy’s mom had slipped further and further away until there was nothing left at all. “Why did he break up with you?”

Sara scratched Sunny’s ears. “He didn’t break up with me.”

“But your brother said—”

“I know what Davis thinks, but he made an assumption and I didn’t bother to fix it.”

“Poor guy.”

“Who—Davis?”

“No, Jordan. He’s lovesick. Trust me, I know that look well.”

“I’m sure you do.” Sara unraveled the thread and let it float away on the breeze.

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