The Big Dig

by Lisa Harrington

  “It does look good,” Lucy said, pressing down on the dirt around the newest clump of flowers.

  Kit looked around. “Where’s Colin?”

  “He’s at the beach. He’s checking to see if there’s anywhere to maybe build a wharf for a boat.”

  “That’s actually a good sign. Like he’s thinking ahead.”

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  Kit rooted around in her knapsack and pulled out a pink-and-yellow pinwheel. “This is to mark your first summer here.” She stuck it amongst the flowers. “I still can’t believe you’re leaving tomorrow.”

  “I know.” Lucy looked at her watch. “I really should go,” she said reluctantly. “I’ve got to pack.”

  “Okay, we’ll save our final goodbyes for tomorrow,” Kit said. “Josie’s invited everyone for lunch.”

  “Uh-oh.”

  “Don’t worry. It’s a potluck. Just bulk up on the potato salad, that’s what my mom’s bringing.”

  Lucy walked back to Josie’s. She took her time, taking in the details, storing them in her memory. In one way, it felt like she just got here; in another, it felt like she’d lived an entire lifetime in less than six weeks.

  She dragged her feet up the stairs to her room, much like she had on her very first day. The room was a mess, not cleaned once since she’d arrived—probably nothing to brag about. She pulled her suitcase into the middle of the floor and started throwing things in. There didn’t seem to be much point in folding, or separating clean from dirty; she just gathered everything up and tossed it in. The familiar smell of smoke made her turn around.

  Josie appeared in the doorway, puffing on a cigarette, sporting a new creation. A dress covered in Canadian flags. Must have been on sale after Dominion Day. “You should think about coming back next summer,” Josie said, squinting through the haze.

  “Really?”

  “I’m going to miss having you around,” she said gruffly.

  Lucy nodded. “I’ll think about it.”

  “Oh yes. The boat. Apparently Colin’s getting one.”

  “No. I said I’ll think about—” Lucy stopped and smiled. “Never mind.”

  Josie left the room, a cloud of smoke hanging in the air behind her.

  Lucy stood up and flapped her arms. That was one thing she wasn’t going to miss. She picked up her jar of beach glass off the windowsill. I didn’t fill you to the top, but maybe I will next summer. Next summer I won’t get sidetracked. She carefully rolled it up in her beach towel and placed it in the suitcase. Next, she collected all her stuff off the dresser. Many of the items left behind a perfect outline in the dust.

  With her finger she wrote, Lucy was here.

  Guess I’m one of those people now, too, she thought.

  Chapter 24

  “It has a fish in its mouth,” Lucy said, pointing to a heron as it gracefully swooped in and landed on the sandbar. It was her last morning, and she and Colin were sitting at the top of the beach stairs.

  “Not for long,” Colin said.

  They watched the heron tilt its head back and swallow the fish whole.

  Lucy made a face. “Yuck.”

  “What time’s your dad coming?” Colin asked.

  “Any minute now.” She rested her chin in her hands and stared out over the ocean. The tide was dead low, as low as she’d ever seen it. And the water was so flat and still, it perfectly mirrored the blue of the sky.

  “Don’t you want to be at the house when he gets there?” Colin asked.

  “No. I want to sit here for a while.” Her eyes returned to the heron and she followed it along the length of the sandbar. But then it suddenly flew away, startled by a bright yellow fishing boat as it pulled away from the wharf piled high with lobster traps.

  “Josie says that I’m more upset about all this than I think I am.” The words seemed to tumble out of Lucy’s mouth all on their own. “She says it’ll hit me after the dust settles, like later, when I’m back home. What if she’s right? Makes me kind of afraid to go.”

  “Yeah,” was all Colin said, but she wasn’t sure if that meant he agreed or not.

  There remained a bit of a strangeness between them. Neither one of them had talked about the obvious—that they were brother and sister. But maybe that was okay for now.

  She lost track of how long they sat there, gazing at the water, saying nothing, breathing in the salty smell of low tide. The sound of whistling floated through the air. Star Wars. Lucy hadn’t heard that for a while. She glanced over her shoulder to see Kit coming towards them in her full Princess Leia getup. Lucy smiled widely. She was glad to see her. Conversation seemed to flow more easily when Kit was around—she filled in any breaks or pauses, even if it wasn’t always with the right words.

  “Lucy!” Kit called. “Your dad’s here!”

  “Okay, thanks.”

  “Nice outfit,” Colin said, rolling his eyes.

  Kit fake smiled. “I wore it for Lucy. For her last day.”

  “I feel honoured,” Lucy said.

  “Well, they’re all up there,” Kit said dramatically. “In deep conversation.”

  “About what?” Colin asked.

  Kit put her hands on her hips. “What do you think? About you guys, of course. About doing stuff to bring the family together, blah, blah, blah, that kind of thing. And oh yeah, prepare yourselves, Josie will be cooking Thanksgiving dinner.”

  “Yikes.” Lucy couldn’t even begin to imagine all the ways Josie could massacre a turkey dinner. It was a disaster waiting to happen.

  As if reading her mind, Colin said, “Isn’t turkey one of those things you have to cook right? So we don’t all die of food poisoning?”

  Lucy nodded. “Yup.”

  “It’ll be fine. I’ll suggest Mom be supervisor. Anyway,” Kit turned to Colin. “I can’t believe I forgot the most important part. I heard your mom—” She frowned. “Um, I mean Esther, tell Lucy’s dad that the offer she and Dan made on the old diner in the village was accepted. They just got the call before they came.”

  “Oh.” He turned back to stare at the ocean. “Good for them, I guess.”

  “Show a little enthusiasm, would ya? Don’t you know what this means?” Kit asked him.

  “Not a clue.”

  “Hello? You, me. Summer jobs for life!”

  He didn’t respond.

  Lucy nudged him. “I know you said you’d rather sail, but it might be nice to have some cash too.”

  He just shrugged.

  “He’ll come around.” Kit bent over and gave Lucy a hug. “It’s going to be awesome. You can come back every summer and we can all work together.”

  Lucy smiled and nodded, because she didn’t know what to say to that.

  “Let’s go, guys,” Kit ordered. “They sent me to find you. They’re gonna wonder what’s taking so long.”

  Lucy glanced sideways at Colin. He didn’t look like he was going anywhere soon. “Tell them we’ll be up in a minute,” she said.

  “Okay, but don’t take forever. I’m starving.” Kit spun around, hiked up her bedsheet, and ran up the lane.

  Lucy watched her go. “I’m going to miss her.”

  “For about five minutes.”

  “Be nice. Or you don’t get your present.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out the velvet pouch. “Here. I think you should have these.”

  He leaned away from her like they were poisonous. “Why?”

  “Because they were for your parents’ wedding, and—” She was still having a hard time getting used to the idea that one of those parents was hers too. “And, well, I sort of had an idea.”

  “Like?”

  “If I were you, I’d sell them and put the money towards your new boat.”

  “I can’t sell them. They have initials on them, remember?”

>   “I thought of that, but then I remembered Esther saying that my mom—I mean your—I mean our…” Lucy stopped and licked her lips. “Esther said that Mom was planning on having the stones taken out and made into something else. I bet if you took them back to Jacobson’s they could do that. They could sell them and give you the money or whatever.”

  “Nah.” He shook his head. “I don’t want them.”

  “I really think.” She stopped again. “She would have liked that idea.”

  He kept shaking his head.

  “Just take them,” Lucy insisted. “You don’t have to do anything right away.”

  Colin stared at her outstretched hand. Finally, he said, “Okay.” And he took the pouch and jammed it into his pocket. “Believe it or not, I got you something too.”

  “You did?”

  She watched Colin pull out a wad of tissue paper from his other pocket. He passed it to her and she quickly unwrapped it. Her lips parted in tiny gasp when she realized what it was. “Ha.” She held up the silver lobster charm. “This was the one I wanted, but I never made it back.”

  “I thought, what with everything that’s been going on, you probably forgot about it.”

  “I did forget about it. I can’t believe you didn’t.”

  “Well. I really only remembered because we drove by the jewellery store. We were on the way back from looking at boats. I made Dad—Dan—stop.”

  Lucy closed her fingers around the charm. “Thanks.”

  The tide had finally turned and a tiny breeze rippled across the water and up the stairs, just enough to catch the loose piece of tissue paper. Colin reached out and grabbed it as it was about to float over the bank. “Tell me something about her that I don’t know.”

  It took Lucy a second to figure out what he meant. “Oh.” He meant his mom. Their mom. “Um. Let me think. When she ate corn on the cob, she ate it one row at a time. She was like a tiny vacuum cleaner. The cob was spotless every time. It was bizarre.”

  “Hey!” He sat up straighter. “I do that! I do that too.”

  “I always knew you were a weirdo.”

  He gave her a shove. “What else?”

  “Okay. Well, even though she grew up on this beach, she didn’t like the water much. Some boy held her head under when she was, like, ten. She was always afraid of drowning after that. She must have really loved you to let you take her sailing. Me and Dad could barely get her on the harbour ferry.” As Lucy said the words, she experienced a twinge of something. Jealousy? She jumped to her feet. “We should go.”

  They didn’t rush, the heat making their steps leaden and slow. When Josie’s house came into view, they stopped. Everyone was gathered on the front porch talking and sipping drinks. Lucy searched for her dad’s face. When she found it, she was immediately filled with relief. But she also felt the burn of tears following right behind. It was because she was torn. Part of her was sad to leave Cape John, Josie, Kit, and Colin. The other part couldn’t wait to get away. She needed to not think about things for a while. Though being home wasn’t going to actually stop her from thinking. Josie’s words were still crystal clear in her mind, what she’d said about it hitting her later, but at least if she wasn’t here, she could be by herself and deal with it instead of having to pretend and put on a brave face and worry about everybody else. Did that make her selfish?

  “What the heck does Josie have on? She’s all in black.” Colin craned his neck. “And is that a veil?”

  “Oh, yeah. That. It’s actually mosquito netting she stapled to her hat.”

  “Seems kind of depressing for a family lunch. Or is she just really sad to see you go?”

  It didn’t go unnoticed, Colin’s use of the word family, but Lucy made no comment and just said, “No. It’s for Elvis.”

  “Huh?”

  She jerked her head around. “Elvis Presley. He died yesterday.”

  “What?”

  “You didn’t know?”

  “No. I’ve sort of been in, you know, solitary confinement—self-inflicted,” he added. “Guess I’m out of touch with world events.”

  “Muriel came over and told us last night. Apparently, they found him on the bathroom floor.”

  “Wow,” Colin said slowly. “But it’s a bit strange, isn’t it? He’s a singer. She’s deaf.”

  Lucy laughed. “I thought the same thing. Josie said he was such a good-looking fellow when he was young and she loved to watch him dance. Something to do with his, uh, pelvis. What was the word? Gyrate. Oh, and also she felt they shared the same eye for fashion.”

  “Wow,” Colin said again.

  Someone on the porch must have noticed them standing at the edge of the yard. The news spread through the crowd, and one by one, everyone turned and began to wave. All of them waving and smiling, smiling and waving.

  “Why are they acting all weird like that?” Colin said.

  “They’re probably not sure how they’re supposed to act.”

  Neither Colin nor Lucy seemed to be able make their feet move off the lane and onto the grass. It was like there was some kind of invisible wall blocking their way.

  Lucy lifted her chin and took a deep breath. “Well, you know what they say. You can pick your friends….”

  “And you can pick your nose. But you can’t pick your friend’s nose,” Colin finished.

  “Gross, no! You can pick your friends, but you can’t pick your family.”

  Colin raised an eyebrow. “Are you sure that’s how it goes?”

  “Yes,” Lucy said, stepping onto the grass and pulling Colin behind her. “I’m sure that’s how it goes.”

  About the Author

  William Harrington

  Lisa Harrington's novels include The Goodbye Girls (2018), Twisted, shortlisted for the Canadian Library Association's YA Book of the year, Live to Tell, winner of the White Pine, Ann Connor Brimer, and SYRCA Snow Willow Awards, and Rattled, published in 2010 to critical praise. Her work has also appeared in A Maritime Christmas. Lisa lives in Halifax with her family and puppy, Hermione. Visit Lisa online at lisaharrington.ca.