Book 4 of The Wildwater Walking Club series!
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(Scroll down to read an excerpt.)
And don’t miss:
The Wildwater Walking Club
The Wildwater Walking Club: Back on Track
The Wildwater Walking Club: Step by Step
“Charming, engagingly quirky, and full of fun, Claire Cook just gets it.”—Meg Cabot
“Cook’s poignancy and sassy humor resonate with readers; her theme of reinvention uplifts and inspires.”—Savannah Magazine
The truth is most of us know what we should be doing by this point in our lives. The trick is doing it, actually walking that talk. But even for The Wildwater Walking Club, walking the talk is easier said than done when it’s winter in New England and you’re supposed to be rolling out of bed to walk the beach at the crack of dawn. Noreen’s buyout package benefits have run out, her health coaching business hasn’t exactly taken off yet, and she’s really hoping she can walk her relationship talk with Rick. Rosie is on overload with mom life and too many landscape design plans. Just as Tess is trying to purge and downsize, her borderline adult son boomerangs back.
Dashing from the snow to thaw out and reset in a last-minute women’s walking getaway to Savannah might be just what The Wildwater Walking Club friends need to take the next step.
Join Noreen, Tess and Rosie on their most inspiring adventure yet. You’ll be lacing up your sneakers and walking your own talk in no time!
“Claire Cook is wicked good.”—Jacquelyn Mitchard
“The Wildwater Walking Club reminds us of what’s important in life—the joy of friendship, the power of a brisk walk, and of course the importance of a good book. I couldn’t put it down.”—Anisha Lakhani
“The women of The Wildwater Walking Club are a delightful trio, full of heart and determination. As they—literally—put one foot in front of the other, the three new friends find unlikely paths that point them toward more fulfilling lives. Their journey left me genuinely inspired.”—Jean Reynolds Page
“Claire Cook has an original voice, sparkling style, and a window into family life that will
make you laugh and cry.”—Adriana Trigiani
Read an Excerpt!
Excerpted from The Wildwater Walking Club: Walk the Talk
Copyright © 2023 Claire Cook. All rights reserved.
Day 1
10,004 Steps
Eighteen months and a few hours after I became redundant, I stared up at the black abyss of my ceiling. My Fitbit vibrated, sending a burst of mini lightning strikes to my wrist.
The fresh sheets I’d actually gotten around to making my bed with serenaded me to stay just a little bit longer. They weren’t the zillion-count Egyptian cotton sheets I’d once imagined buying. But I had to admit their microfiber was soft and cushiony, and so far they were almost living up to their 4.5-star online rating. Plus, zillion-count Egyptian cotton sheets probably need to be ironed, and it’s not like that was ever going to happen anyway.
I yanked my fluffy blue down-alternative comforter up to my chin. It wasn’t the see-through peacock feather-filled comforter I’d fantasized about inventing, one that let the iridescent blues and greens shimmer through. Made with feathers from wildly exotic free-range peacocks who’d lost their feathers naturally and were more than fairly compensated for donating them to the cause.
But I really, really didn’t want to leave the comfort of even my ordinary comforter.
After allowing myself a single self-indulgent sigh, I rolled out from under the dead weight of the arm Rick had draped across me at some point during the night. He smelled like celebratory strawberries dipped in dark chocolate and yesterday’s deodorant. Maybe we both did. I held the crook of one elbow up to the vicinity of my nose and sniffed. Inconclusive.
Even though my brain knew it was coming, my body gave a startled twitch when my wrist vibrated again. I sat on the edge of the bed, poked the Fitbit screen with an index finger to make it stop.
WALK THE TALK, the screen read.
“I’m on it,” I whispered. I mean, after all, it had been my idea to program a new message last night. My old wake-up message was ROCKSTAR. I’d intended it to be encouraging and optimistic, but far too often it made me feel like my Fitbit was mocking me. At least now it would only be nagging me, which seemed like a step in the right direction.
Rick and I had spent yesterday afternoon and early evening at First Night in Boston, bundled up and wandering the streets, oohing and aahing over ice sculptures. This year’s theme was “Wonders of the Frozen Ocean.” As Rick snapped photo after photo with his phone, I could practically see the wheels turning in his head. I knew he was already translating some of this icy creativity into his own future garden sculptures.
I was happy for him. I loved that buzz of creativity, when inspiration is everywhere, and the lines that divide work and play fade away. I just wondered if I’d ever feel it again.
When we’d had enough of First Night, we rode the commuter train back to Marshbury, then drove to my place for a private early-bird celebration of our own. Later, as a rowdy crowd gathered to greet the new year by watching the ball drop in Times Square, and saner people considered the pros and cons of staying awake long enough to catch it on TV, I’d watched my final paycheck from my buyout package drop into my bank account.
Eighteen months of full base salary and benefits had seemed like plenty of time to get my act together. But time flies when you’re in danger of running out of hopes and dreams and money, and the sad truth was that figuring out my life usually meant taking two steps forward and one long pathetic slide back.
I’d spent far too many years working for Balancing Act Shoes before they’d been gobbled up by another company. Most recently I’d been Senior Manager of Brand Identity, part of the team that created sneakers like Dream Walker (You’ll Swear You’re Walking on Clouds), Step Litely (Do These Sneakers Make Me Look Thin?), and Feng Shuoe (New Sneakers for a New Age). Somewhere along the way I’d mistaken my resume for a life.
A guy from the takeover company I never should have been fooling around with tricked me into accepting a buyout package. And then, in one fell swoop, he dumped me, which hadn’t exactly helped my post-redundancy self-esteem, or lack thereof. But I’d survived, and sometimes it even felt like I was actually starting to thrive.
Now, under the amber glow of the nightlight, I foraged on the floor for yesterday’s walking clothes. I worked my legs into my thickest leggings, pulled a gray waffle-weave Henley-buttoned long-sleeve shirt on over a sports bra. Grabbed a pair of wool socks that were too thick for my regular sneakers but perfect for my ancient-but-trusty L.L. Bean snow sneakers.
“Happy New Year,” Rick mumbled into a pillow as I headed for the door.
“Time will tell,” I said.
* * *
Even with the heat blasting inside my house, I could feel how cold it was outside. No way was I sticking so much as my nose out until I saw the whites of Tess and Rosie’s puffy morning eyes, or at least a flash of their puffy winter parkas. I blinked the sleep out of my own puffy eyes, divided my time between peeking through the blinds on one of my front windows and peering into the tiny peephole on my front door.
Call me Nancy Drew, but not long after taking my buyout, I’d discovered I had a yard. And a neighborhood. With actual neighbors. Eventually, I’d started walking, slowly and semi-painfully, and before long I was joined by two of those neighbors, Tess and Rosie.
My house was the smallest of five houses built on the grounds of a working lavender farm when the owners decided to sell off some of their property. As my realtor had explained it to me, if you imagined a pie, the original lavender farm still owned half, and the five newer houses each had a pie-shaped slice of the other half.
Tess lived on a slightly larger slice right next to mine. She was a third-grade teacher who’d taken the summer off from her usual tutoring side hustle to spend time with her daughter before she headed off to college. The fact that her daughter was no longer speaking to her freed up plenty of walking time.
Rosie, a landscape designer, lived directly behind me on the lavender farm. Her parents had been the original owners. When her mother died, Rosie was the dutiful daughter who’d stepped up to move in with her father and help him with the farm, dragging her contractor husband and their two sons kicking and screaming with her.
The street Tess and I lived on was called Wildwater Way, although there was neither any noticeable wildness nor water in the immediate vicinity. The three of us called ourselves The Wildwater Walking Club, which was possibly a bit dorky, but so what.
Because our lives had imploded, each in a different way, we bonded. We walked. And talked. And walked and talked some more. We sallied forth on an adventure together. And then another. I became a certified health coach, even managed to acquire an actual client. My mother and Rosie’s father fell madly in love and drove us crazy by jumping between our houses for loud romantic trysts.
And through it all, we kept walking. At least most of the time.
* * *
“Happy Freakin’ New Year,” Tess yelled through her scarf from the end of my driveway. I pulled my door closed behind me.
“Ditto,” Rosie yelled as she came around the corner from the path that connected my backyard to the lavender farm. We were louder when we walked in the winter, because we had to be.
When I yelled “Happy New Year,” my breath made a frosty cloud even through my scarf. I crunched over crusty patches of ice on my driveway, on alert for signs of more treacherous black ice.
Tess slowed down just long enough to let Rosie and me catch up to her, then picked up the pace. Under the twinkle of stars and the soft glow of streetlights, we fell into step together.
We walked three abreast down the middle of Wildwater Way. We synchronized the bundled-up winter swing of our arms and the slightly abbreviated winter-length of our strides, all except for Rosie’s occasional extra hop, which was almost like a shivery hiccup.
The wind howled and yowled some more. We stepped over an ill-placed snow drift, climbed over a fallen branch. We huddled a little closer, both for warmth and so we could hear one another yell.
I blew out another frosty air cloud. “Do either of you happen to remember how we managed to walk our way through winter last year?”
“Don’t ask me,” Rosie said. “I think I’ve blocked all of last winter. You know, or you’d never do it again. Like childbirth and vacationing with in-laws.”
“We didn’t,” Tess said. “Remember? We pretended we were going to walk later. Or that we’d already walked. Eventually we just started avoiding one another until the weather was more civilized.”
“Speak for yourself,” I said. “I wouldn’t do that. I’m a certified health coach.”
“I’m pretty sure you said you were studying for your exam,” Rosie said.
“Not that we bought that one for a hot minute,” Tess said. “Or a ridiculously freezing cold minute.”
At the bottom of the street, we started to take our usual right toward the beach. Another group of 40-to-forever women came out of nowhere. A relentlessly upscale couple, twinning in ski attire that made them look like they’d gotten lost on the way to some slopes, appeared from the darkness a few steps behind them.
Tess, Rosie and I marched in place to let them all go ahead of us, then crossed over to the sidewalk.
A car beeped and breezed by, way too close for comfort.
“Geez Louise,” Tess yelled at the car. “Buy a lady dinner before you take her out.”
“They’re not still celebrating New Year’s Eve, are they?” Rosie said. “Do you ever think about the fact that there’s this whole parallel universe out there where people are only awake at this hour if they haven’t gone to sleep yet?”
“Amateur night,” Tess said. “No one in their right mind goes out on New Year’s Eve once they reach the age of reason.”
“Whatever that is,” I said. “I’m still hoping I’ll recognize it when I bump into it.”
A line of headlights lit up the street we were used to having mostly to ourselves at this hour.
“At least the extra light helps with the visibility,” Rosie said.
“Right.” I shook my head. “At least we can see where we’re going if we have to jump out of the way.”
“At least it’s almost light out,” Tess said. “If daylight savings time ever becomes a year-round thing, we are so screwed. Sure, it would keep the sun up later in the day, but it’s total discrimination against early-morning walkers. I mean, October was tough enough until we fell back in November. Now through February would be unbearable. I’d probably have to take a sabbatical from teaching just to get my steps in.”
We stepped off the curb and took a left on the little side street that was our shortcut to the beach.
The North Beach parking lot was packed to the gills, fish pun intended.
“Apparently, January first is amateur day,” Rosie said, “as opposed to amateur night.”
“The good news is they’re probably fueled by caffeine instead of alcohol,” I said.
“I have no problem with amateurs walking,” Tess said, “but I think it’s only fair that they wait until we’ve finished for the day.”
People were climbing out of cars, trekking across the parking lot like they were on some wannabe version of a Camino de Santiago pilgrimage. Everybody wished everybody else a happy new year as they passed.
“Don’t worry,” Tess said. “They might be all revved up this morning, but they’ll be over it before we know it. Their New Year’s resolutions will sink into oblivion in a week or so. Two tops.”
“Or at least by Valentine’s Day,” I said. “Statistically, the gyms start filling up this week and empty out again in February, too.”
“It feels like they’re trespassing on our beach,” Tess said. “Not to sound selfish or anything.”
“No more selfish than usual,” I said.
“Thanks,” Tess said. “I resemble that remark. I mean, if you’re not going to be selfish, who’s going to do it for you, you know?”
We crossed the parking lot, paying particular attention to swinging our Fitbit-wearing arms. We marched in place, waited our turn, walked through the gap in the seawall.
The wind coming off the water nearly bowled us over. I yanked my hood back over my head, spit out the piece of scarf and hunk of hair that had blown into my mouth.
A lone male surfer paddled his board through the ice-cold ocean, pushed himself up to a standing position.
“Impressive,” I said, loud enough to be heard over the wind and the waves.
“Or crazy,” Rosie said.
Tess sighed. “There’s nothing hotter than a man in a wetsuit. Something about all that neoprene rubber.”
It was just the inspiration we needed to break into song, making “Summertime” more seasonally appropriate and giving surfer boy a cameo. We sang at the top of our lungs, and by the time we got to the second hush and keep walking part, the people we passed were really starting to stare at us.
But we only swung our arms and sang louder, because that’s what The Wildwater Walking Club did.
We sang the final don’t you stop. And then we turned toward the water.
The pink light had appeared.
We stopped walking. We even stopped talking, which only happened in particularly magical moments.
People think it’s all about that big flashy orange sunrise, but those twenty or thirty twilight minutes before sunrise are the real show. Especially at the beach where there’s nothing to block it. The sun is still hiding below the horizon, getting ready to come in like a big orange wrecking ball. The air and the sand blend together in dark edges, and the sea and the sky meet in the deepest shade of navy.
And then a breathtaking pink band glows low on the horizon. The fact that this phenomenon is called the Belt of Venus, named after the Roman goddess of love, makes it even better.
“Wow,” Rosie said. “Just wow. I’m even okay with sharing this with the New Year’s Day walkers.”
“If I believed in making New Year’s resolutions,” Tess said, “now would be the time.”
“If I believed wishes came true,” I said, ‘this might be even better than wishing on a star.”
We all sighed, one after another, like a wave.
Then we turned and started walking again.
Keep reading!
Buy The Wildwater Walking Club: Walk the Talk:
Paperback
Kindle
International Links
Nook
Apple Books
Kobo
GooglePlay