The Bookshop at Water's End

by Patti Callahan Henry

  “I’m Daisy. And this is George, in case you’re confused.” Daisy attempted a grown-up voice that made my heart feel pulled to a future I wasn’t nearly ready for.

  “Phew, thanks for telling me,” Piper said and then looked to me. “Want me to show them around?”

  “We have to eat food first,” Daisy said in the voice Tim called Miss Priss.

  “Then let’s do that,” Piper said and she held out her hands, one for each child. I watched my children take my goddaughter’s hands, and I felt the house settle as if it took one long exhale of relief.

  chapter 15

  PIPER BLANKENSHIP

  Lainey and the kids arrived in midafternoon, just when the sun was at its fiercest. Mom and I were settled on the back screened porch watching the river do its river thing—moving slowly to wherever it goes and then coming back again. Small johnboats and kayaks passed; herons sat on the marsh edge and posed as if for a portrait; dolphins nosed up and then back under, showing off with their sleek backs and flipped tails.

  The front door screen opened and then slapped shut.

  Here we go, I thought. Here we go.

  Mom jumped from her chair but I waited, not wanting to yank myself from the story I was reading and back into the real world. It took me a minute sometimes, the moving from one world to the next so quickly.

  When I entered the bedroom to see the kids, they hung back while Mom and Lainey did that best-friend-hugging thing. There was the boy, George, with a head full of hair so white it glowed, and then the girl, Daisy, a little older and taller, with the same hair but longer and tangled with curls.

  Mom hugged Lainey with a squeal as if they were teenagers who had just won Homecoming Queen. I was embarrassed for Mom, acting so silly and young. She was telling Lainey everything she’d done to the house—so proud of what she’d accomplished. And she should have been. She’d taken it from a ramshackle mess to cottage-cute. I could be as mad at her as I wanted, but I would say this—she knew how to make a house a home.

  Now we left the bedroom to explore. I followed them—I had no idea how much eight- and six-year-olds could do alone. I knew nothing of kids. I could have taken a summer job designing rocket ships to the moon and have been just as prepared as I was following the kids.

  “Piper,” Mom called, “will you keep an eye on the kids while I get us some lunch? We’ll be in the kitchen.”

  “Got it,” I called back, with absolutely no idea of what “got it” could mean in this context.

  “You’re our babysitter?” George asked.

  “I am.”

  “We didn’t want to come here without our dad,” Daisy said and pulled a stuffed rabbit she’d taken from her mom’s bag closer to her, one ear dangling and one tucked.

  “Well, that’s funny. Can I tell you a secret?” I asked and bent, my hands on my knees.

  “What?” George asked, wide-eyed and reaching for his sister’s hand.

  “I didn’t want to come here either.”

  “Really?” Daisy smiled.

  “Really.” I nodded. “But I’ve found some fun things to do. There’s a beach to play on, and an ocean to swim in, and a bookshop . . .” I hesitated. A bookshop might not sound all that fun to them. “And a movie theater with real popcorn, and a candy store and . . . I can teach you card tricks.” I was pulling stuff out of thin air now. I didn’t know how to do card tricks. But look, we’d made it five minutes into the summer and I hadn’t lost them or made them cry.

  “I want my mommy,” Daisy said and peered around the room as if surprised to find it empty.

  “So do I,” I said. “Let’s go find her.”

  Daisy put out her hand for me to take, and I did, her little fingers winding through mine. She pulled me forward. “Let’s find her.” As if we were in it together.

  I entered the kitchen with Daisy holding fast and George trailing behind us, singing some song about a spider. Lainey and Mom were setting out lunch—peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, chips and juice boxes for the kids and shrimp salad for us.

  “Well, look at you,” Lainey said. “Already the pro.”

  I laughed because if I was anything at all it wasn’t a pro.

  “Let’s eat on the porch,” Mom said, “and then we can all go to the beach for a while.”

  Lainey stepped up and took Daisy from me.

  “Tell you what,” she said. “I’ll sit with Piper and go over the kids’ schedules. Then we can have fun from here on out.”

  Fun from here on out. Right-o.

  Lainey sat at the kitchen table and I sat facing her while George climbed into her lap and Daisy into mine. It was a comforting feeling, a child in your lap. Lainey placed a folder on the table.

  “I really want to thank you for helping with the kids this summer. I don’t get much of a break at home. They were late-in-life babies and just when I thought I might never . . .” She smiled and glanced at the kids as if making sure they were real. “Anyway, thanks. This folder is full of lists . . . Just bear with it because I made it in a spurt of uncharacteristic organization.”

  I opened the folder. Sure enough it was full of lists. Their favorite foods. Their favorite games. Their favorite everything: colors, clothes, songs. And their schedule.

  “And George, he runs off. You have to keep an eye on him all the time. He just . . . takes off without thinking. Daisy here will always stick by you, but George forgets that the world is too big.” She exhaled as if this big world was her biggest problem.

  “I’ll read it all,” I said. “I promise.”

  “And I don’t expect you to have them all day every day. I love being with them. Honestly, I just need some quiet to work a few hours a day.”

  I saw those hours in my mind like a pie chart, a piece of the day so large that the bookshop faded, the little boat on the river became obsolete and swinging in the hammock for no good reason drifted away.

  Mom piped in. “She’s fine with that and even more if we need it. Come on. Lunch on the porch. Everyone grab something.”

  “I think I’ll stay here and read through this folder,” I said. “I’m not hungry anyway.”

  “Nope,” Lainey said. “Lunch together. It’s mandatory because I said so.” She laughed with the statement, as if she was the one who was nervous instead of me.

  So off we went onto the porch and I had a feeling that it was a lot less about all being together than me watching the kids while they talked. And I was right. Like Thanksgiving when you’re stuck at the kids’ table. George, Daisy and I were at the card table and the ladies sat at the picnic table.

  “Okay, Bonny. How are you really doing? You hanging in there?” I heard Lainey ask.

  “I’m okay. Better now that you’re here.”

  “Of all the places to come to,” Lainey said quietly. “But I’m not complaining. We needed a getaway in the worst way. You’ve made the house feel like it used to, but better.”

  I pretended to be interested in the way Daisy needed her crust cut off, or the way George wanted to run out to the dock, but really I eavesdropped.

  Lainey glanced at us and then stretched her legs across the picnic bench. She was so fluid. Ever since I was a little girl, I’d wanted to figure out how she seemed so calm and peaceful. It was like watching a bird, a graceful one that stretched and then settled and slowly took in its surroundings. She wore her hair loose and over her shoulders and never fidgeted with it or piled it up or down. I was always running my hands into and out of my hair. She kept the littlest smile even when she thought no one was looking. Her oval face was topped off with a fringe of bangs, which I heard her jokingly tell Mom was “cheap Botox.” Her eyes, makeup free, were surrounded by the longest eyelashes, dark brown and curled upward.

  She caught me staring and smiled widely. “I remember more about our summers here than I do about any of my childhood
days at home or at school. I bet you’ll love it, Piper.” Lainey lost that smile for a minute and then looked off toward the river. “I wonder where Owen is right now. I wonder what he’d think about us all here together.”

  Owen. That name on Mom’s phone. The call she didn’t want to take. I took a quick glance at Mom and she, too, stared out to the river and then cleared her throat, as if wiping tears from inside.

  George broke the reverie as he pointed to the river and hollered, “A fishing pole.”

  “Yes,” I said. “Want to go down there?”

  But he was gone in half a heartbeat. His bare feet padded across the wooden floors and the screen door slammed behind him. I jumped up and ran after him as Daisy hollered, “Wait for me!”

  “Life jackets,” Lainey called as I caught George and grabbed his little hand.

  “Whoa, buddy. Slow down. Your mom says you have to wear a life jacket near the water.”

  “No, I don’t. Dad says I don’t. I know how to swim same as Daisy.”

  “Well, it’s just safe.” I didn’t have any idea how to negotiate or argue with a six-year-old and I sure as hell wasn’t going to say, Because I said so.

  I reached the dock and opened the bench storage to pull out two orange jackets. I fastened them on first Daisy and then George before I took out the rusted bait box.

  “So who knows how to fish?”

  The voices from the porch were muffled and I was sure Mom would go deeper now; maybe even tell Lainey how I’d been in trouble. The horrible, vortex-sliding feelings came back to me so quickly, so easily. One minute I was feeling like I could handle this summer, find a slow way into it while reading and making a new friend in Fletch, while being in a quiet house with nice people in a small town. But the frantic need to not be me found me again. Not the girl in trouble, not the girl who had failed at school, not the girl whose boyfriend had left her for another.

  I baited a plastic worm on a hook for George and made funny faces, but I wasn’t fully there. The estranged feeling crawled over me with its need to remind me that everydamnthing was wrong.

  The tears came no matter how I tried to stop them. Why couldn’t the good feelings last? I could use a nice night out with a few beers or a shot or two of Jack Daniel’s, just to take the edge off this longing and regret. While George and Daisy tangled their lines and bickered, I glanced at my cell phone.

  Nothing. Absolutely nothing from Ryan. As if I’d never existed. I clicked over to his Instagram and scrolled through the photos. He was in Venice. How very nice for him. Tears rolled down my cheeks and I was hot with shame and sadness. I felt a tug at the edge of my T-shirt and I looked to Daisy. The life vest had ridden up and her round cheeks were resting on the orange fabric. “Why are you crying?”

  “Oh,” I said and wiped at my face. “Oh . . . nothing. I’m fine.” I squatted and readjusted her jacket. “Just fine.”

  She took her hands and placed one on each of my cheeks. “Don’t cry.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I won’t.”

  I glanced to the porch and saw Mom and Lainey huddled together, laughing.

  Life was so fragile, everything easily broken—a mood; a chance; a life. I hoped it would be a long, long time before George and Daisy understood. Without thinking, I planted a huge kiss on Daisy’s round cheek right there on the dock while that river flowed past us.

  chapter 16

  BONNY BLANKENSHIP

  Lainey hadn’t yet emerged from the bedroom that first morning, and I needed a distraction. Piper had taken the kids to the beach to let Lainey sleep in. I opened the leather to-do folder. I picked one thing from the list every day, finished it, and then another and then another and . . .

  Paint wicker furniture.

  The two chairs and table were part of a set I’d found at the flea market, which someone had painted what I called poop brown. I’d bought a spray paint as close to haint blue as I could find and this task seemed as good as any.

  The chairs and table were stashed in the little garage and I dragged them out to the back lawn and set them on a large tarp, sweating as if I’d run ten miles in that formidable heat. Changing one thing into another made me feel like I had some control over at least the littlest things in my world, when I had no control over much of anything just then. I knew, logically, that painting an old wicker set would no more set things right in my life than making wishes inside a river under a full moon. But it was worth a shot.

  The little ball inside the spray can clacked around as I shook it, a satisfying sound. With one step back I pushed the button and blue paint spewed out, covering the wicker in slow swipes of paint, obliterating the brown color completely. An armrest. A leg. The seat. My heartbeat slowed, and the low hum of fear settled down for a siesta in the morning heat.

  “Bonny,” I heard and startled. The spray paint came along for the ride as I spun around to see Lainey standing there, sleepy and disheveled. The blue streak spread across the air and then across her white T-shirt and onto the green grass. Lainey hollered and jumped back, and then glanced at her shirt before looking back to me.

  I stood stock-still, holding the paint can aloft. “Oh, my God.” I slapped my free hand over my mouth, stifling a laugh.

  Lainey, too, burst into laughter. “What are you doing?”

  “Painting,” I said.

  “Obviously, but I mean what are you doing?”

  “Waiting for you to wake up.”

  In a playful move, a duck and dive, she grabbed the paint can from me and held it toward me like a gun. “What’s fair is fair,” she said. With that, she pushed the button and a streak of blue materialized on both my shins, up and over.

  “No way,” I screamed and dove for the can.

  She dropped it and ran straight for the dock and river. Without a glance backward, she tore off her ruined T-shirt and slid off her pale blue shorts. In a move so swift I couldn’t even holler after her, Lainey jumped in. I ran to the dock and peered down. There she was, holding on to the warm edges of the wood, shaking her head to scatter water drops that caught the sun like crystals. Her movements on earth were the same as they were in the water, always fluid. Her hair was once blond and now was darker, a few light streaks scattered like memories of the past.

  “Get in,” she said.

  “No way.” I shook my head and tried to back away, but she’d grabbed my ankle.

  “Come on, Bonny. You’re the one who always made us jump in.”

  “I was thirteen.” I laughed and shook my foot free from her grasp.

  Lainey pushed off from the edge of the dock and floated on her back. The tide, going out, pulled her sideways. “You’re going to get hit by a boat or end up in the ocean,” I hollered. “The tide is going out.”

  “You’re so much fun now,” she said to me, shaking her head to negate her own words.

  And then I was thirteen and not to be outdone by Lainey McKay, who could do and be anything she wanted. I would not let her have more fun than me, or be braver than me, or anything at all more than me. Without shedding my clothes as she’d done, I flipped off my sandals and jumped in after her. I hit the water and hollered just as I went under, swallowing a mouthful of brackish river. I came up sputtering and laughing both. Lainey was at my side and we grabbed on to the dock together.

  “See?” she said. “I can’t believe I forgot how great this water feels. It’s like silk; it’s like something smooth and warm washing past you, full of life.”

  “And fish and sharks and stingrays and . . .” I kicked my feet below. “We never thought about that when we were kids.”

  “Then don’t think about it now,” Lainey said and dove back under, flipping over so her feet came up like a mermaid’s tail.

  “Right,” I said to her when she rose. “I just won’t think about it.”

  “I’ve been told denial is my finest quality,�
� Lainey said.

  “It’s definitely not mine,” I said and lifted my face to the sun, my eyes closed. “All I do is think about what I’ve done, the damage I’ve done, how to fix it, if to fix it, when to fix it . . . what I should do, can’t do or . . .”

  “Stop!” She held up her hand.

  I kicked my legs under the water against the tide.

  From the back porch came the slam of the screen door and then Piper’s voice. “Mom?”

  “We’re here. In the river,” I shouted.

  Piper’s face appeared above us and she glanced back and forth between us. “I’m seriously worried about you both,” she said. “You two are very possibly crazy. I’m not letting the kids see you swimming in there because then they’ll want to get in that water.” And with that, she ran off.

  Lainey and I stared at each other, our eyes widening.

  “She may be right,” I said. “We may be crazy.”

  She tugged at my hair and we smiled at each other as if this was any other summer, another one that had come directly after the one before instead of arriving as it had, years later.

  We hauled ourselves out of the water and were heading into the house when my cell phone on the outdoor picnic table rang. I almost didn’t answer or even look, finally feeling a sense of calm start to settle around us. Then I saw the 404 area code: Atlanta.

  I answered breathless and still damp from the river as if the brackish water itself would protect me from bad news.

  “Dr. Blankenship?”

  “Speaking,” I said and wiped my face with a rag from the spray-painting project.

  “This is Morgan Ingram, from Emory’s Human Resources. I’m calling to inform you that we need to cancel your job offer. MUSC has not released the results of their investigation and we need to move on.”

  The ground shifted beneath me, and a sweeping panic rose from my chest. If I’d expected this to happen, I hadn’t let myself feel it.