For the Girls' Sake - By Janice Kay Johnson Page 0,70

ahead, just poking out of the sand. She steered Rose toward it.

Rose pounced. "Mommy, look!"

It was a whole bottle that Rose pried out of dried seaweed. Probably a beer bottle, but the shape was unusual, the glass roughened by sand and salt water.

Lynn squatted beside Rose, who was wiping sand and crusty seaweed from her find. "What do you think, is there a genie in it?"

Aladdin was one of Rose’s favorite movies.

"No." With one eye, Rose peered inside. "It’s empty. The top must’ve falled off, and he got out. Maybe he doesn’t have to give wishes no more."

"No more wishes?" Lynn’s gaze went to her husband’s broad back and dark head, bent as he listened to Shelly chatter. "What a terrible thought!"

"Genies get tired of doing wishes, you know," Rose continued importantly. "Sometimes they need a ’cation."

"A vacation?" Lynn pretended to think. "I suppose they do."

"Daddy said maybe we could all go on ’cation sometime. He said maybe Hawaii. It’s got beaches, he says. But you got beaches here, too."

"The ones in Hawaii are made of silky, golden sand instead of rocks. And the sun shines there lots more than it does here. Everywhere there are big colorful flowers and waterfalls tumbling into pools, and whales right offshore."

And Adam wanted to take her? It could be a sort of honeymoon, to make up for the one they hadn’t had.

Shelly suddenly crowed in delight. Face alight, she pointed into the foamy fingers of the waves. "Lookit! There’s one a’ those glass balls!" Hopping up and down with excitement, she exclaimed, "An’ it’s a big one!"

"Don’t you have sharp eyes." Adam lifted her onto his shoulders. "Okay, punkin, let’s go get it."

Rose and Lynn followed them across the wet gravel left by a receding tide. Sure enough, the Japanese float bobbed into sight and then vanished as a wave broke over it.

"Oh, no, it’s getting away," Adam said, pausing at the water’s edge.

"Catch it, Daddy!" His daughter bounced even harder and grabbed his hair. "Don’t let it get away!"

He looked ruefully down at his running shoes and jeans, then plunged into the ankle-deep foam. "Ah! It’s freezing!"

Knee-deep before he could get his hands on the glass fisherman’s float, Adam grabbed it then flinched and dropped it back into the water.

A mother’s anxiety seized Lynn, who watched with an eagle eye. He should have left Shelly behind. What if she fell off? What if an extra big breaker should knock him down?

A wave did surge in, soaking him to his thighs. Shelly seemed to have a grip on his hair as she kept bouncing and cheering him on.

"It’s going away again, Daddy! Those ol’ crabs won’t hurt you. You better get it, ’cuz it’s mine and I saw it first."

Gingerly he picked it up again and waded toward shore. One more cold wave washed up to his knees, and then he was squelching triumphantly up above the foaming edge of the surf, his teeth a flash of white as he grinned like a conqueror mounting the ramparts.

"What is it?" Rose asked dubiously, as he set it down and they all hunkered in for a look.

A foot in diameter, the green glass fisherman’s float still had the twine net encasing it. Tiny pale crabs scuttled all over it.

Lynn explained that it had floated all the way from Japan, where fishermen used glass floats still instead of plastic ones to anchor their nets. She helped evict the crabs.

"I bet somebody’d buy it, huh, Mom?" Shelly asked.

"I’m sure they would, but maybe you’d like to keep it." Two months ago, she’d have been grateful for the extra cash it would have brought, Lynn thought wryly. "To remember today by."

"Can I?"

"Yep." Adam smiled at her. "If not for your sharp eyes, we never would have seen it." His gaze touched Rose as if by accident, and then he lifted a brow at Lynn. "Do you find these often?"

"Hardly ever anymore," she admitted. "But see what Rose found?" She pulled the bottle from her coat pocket. "It’s empty, so we figure the genie must be taking a vacation. In Hawaii."

Shelly stared covetously at the bottle. "I bet a genie did live in it. Do you think he’ll come back?"

"Who knows?" Lynn let it slip back into her pocket. "You both found treasures today, didn’t you?"

On the way home Shelly and Rose ran ahead. Adam had to lug the big glass float. He paused once, when the girls found a tidal pool, to snatch a quick kiss, his lips