The Bookshop at Water's End

by Patti Callahan Henry

  But there was no way to explain all of that, to my parents or the teachers. It sounded ridiculous.

  I smiled at him. “You sure get around.” My words were slow and soft around the edges. I tried to articulate in that awful way people do when they’re trying to prove they’re sober.

  “Not much to do around here. This bonfire?” He pointed back at the crowd. “Happens almost every night even though any minute now the cops will come and tell us it’s illegal and to pack it up. Then we’ll do it all again tomorrow night.” He paused and ran his hand through the sand. Finger trails wavered like tiny rivers. “You okay?” he asked.

  “I’m fine,” I said. “Just fine.” I shifted on the sand. “Can I ask you something crazy?”

  “Anything.”

  “Why do you have blue eyes?”

  His laugh was so deep and resonant that I actually felt it rumble across the sand. “Do you mean why am I a black man with white man’s eyes?”

  “I wouldn’t have put it quite that way . . .” Embarrassment needled at my softly stoned conscience. “It was a stupid question. I’m sorry.”

  “I get asked that a lot. And the answer is simple. My dad, Hayden, is white and has these exact same eyes. He’s from North Carolina, but his family vacationed here one summer when he was a kid and he never forgot this place. My mom, Keke, is black, with some obvious recessive genes in her DNA. They met and married in college in D.C., and that’s where I was born. But Dad wanted to come back here to open an organic market. I think Mom was worried about coming to South Carolina, all the Old South bullshit, but it’s never once been a big deal. Life is one big adventure for the two of them, always wondering what might happen next.”

  “Well, your eyes are so beautiful that when you leave I want to see them again.” I again lolled back in the sand and cringed. What the hell had I just confessed?

  He twisted toward me and laughed. “That is literally the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me.”

  “Don’t count on it again.” I tried for levity and failed.

  “Don’t you want to come join the party?”

  “Maybe in a minute,” I said.

  “You too busy staring at the ocean?”

  “Yep. Staring at the ocean is on my to-do list this summer.”

  “It’s a very good to-do.” He leaned back on his elbows, staring at the sky. His dreadlocks caught in the breeze, tangling. His voice was low and husky, a just-woke-up kind of sound.

  “My mom’s best friend came yesterday,” I said before I knew I said it, like I always do. “And her mom disappeared here years ago. On purpose.”

  He sat up and turned to me. His face was in half shadow, and still I could see the sympathy, eyebrows drawn together with concern. “That’s horrible.”

  “Why do you think Lainey would come back to the place where her mother disappeared?” I asked Fletch as if he’d know. I rested flat on the wet sand. “Shit. I don’t know why I’m asking you. I don’t even know you. I don’t understand anything.”

  “Neither do I,” he said. “So look there, we already have something in common.” He lay down also and we turned our heads toward each other, our hair splayed on the wet sand like seaweed.

  I spoke so softly, but I was sure he could hear me face-to-face. “Sometimes the ocean makes me feel like everything is going to work out and be fine, and sometimes it makes me feel like the world is too, too big and nothing will ever be right because there’s too much of it all.”

  Fletch laughed, but it held sadness underneath it all. This was not what I wanted. I didn’t even know him—why would I want his pity?

  “Forget I said anything.”

  He grabbed my hand and pulled me closer, not to kiss or even touch me, just to have me there on the sand next to him. He released my hand. “You should stay right there until you know it’s the first option. Until the ocean lets you know that everything is going to be all right.”

  “I’m not sure that’s going to happen. There’s just . . . too much that’s messed up.” I knotted my hands behind my head and felt the gritty sand in my hair. I almost listed it all for him: failing out of college; court date for public intoxication; Mom leaving Dad; Mom’s mistake at work . . . but then decided that a boy I barely knew didn’t want to hear it all.

  We were silent for a minute, only the background noise of the crowd and the music, bursts of laughter and a squeal. Then someone called Fletch’s name, a girl’s shrill voice.

  I turned my head to him. “Someone is looking for you. A girlfriend?”

  “An ex.” He smiled at me in the half-light. “This is usually about the time she wants to talk about ‘it’ again. Right after her third beer.”

  I laughed and it felt good, and I wished I hadn’t taken a couple hits off that joint. I wanted to feel the laughter fully.

  “You have a boyfriend?” he asked. “Back home waiting? Is that why you’re here pining away?”

  “Nope,” I said. “He ran off with a girlfriend of mine to jaunt around Europe for the summer.” I tried to say it with a jovial nonchalance, but my attempt failed miserably. I sounded as sad as I was.

  “He’s a fool,” Fletch said and wiggled his fingers up the sand to give my hair a little pull.

  “The perfect thing to say,” I replied.

  We smiled at each other and then a spotlight hit the sand and the police made their nightly visit and someone threw water on the bonfire. It all ended that quickly, like a dream that ends when the morning alarm blares. Fletch stood and held his hand out to draw me to my feet.

  “You should head home. They don’t arrest anyone, but don’t hang around.” He rubbed his hands on his jeans, brushing off the sand, and then drew his fingers through his hair.

  It would be nice, I thought, to rest my head on his chest, let him run those same fingers through my hair. But those were stupid thoughts of a stoned girl, and I didn’t want him to know I was stoned.

  I nodded and waved my hand through the air. “Go on. I’ll see you in town.”

  I didn’t watch him leave, but I continued to observe the water. I could do things to make the world fade, but it would come back. Always, and sometimes worse.

  I walked to the shoreline, where tiny shells crinkled under my toes, and I threw the rest of the joint into the waves. It bobbed like an oblong, tiny white fish and then sank with its own weight. I again dropped to the wet sand where water met beach. I thought about Lainey’s mom, about being desperate and sad enough to disappear from her life and her kids, maybe even sink to the bottom of the ocean. And I cried.

  chapter 19

  BONNY BLANKENSHIP

  The next few days passed just as I’d hoped they would—with food and laughter, trips to town and lazy afternoons on the beach with margaritas in a Thermos and forays to the movies and bookshop. In the times when Lainey left us to walk alone or play with the kids, I opened the leather binder with my projects around the house to keep me occupied. Still no news from MUSC. Still no decisions made. The quiet hum of the river and ocean was on either side of me as I worked my way through the checklist. I didn’t forget about Nicholas Rohr or the job loss, or my impending divorce or Owen. No, those things still battered at the edges of my heart and mind, but for a couple days I did settle into what mattered most—my daughter and my best friend.

  Mosquitoes and no-see-ums bounced against the screen like drunken men approaching a bar. I snuggled into the brand-new cushions on the now blue wicker furniture and lifted my face to the ceiling fan doing its best to circulate the humid air. Lainey sat across from me, leafing through a magazine, her kids watching a Lainey-approved movie on my iPad. Piper had gone for a walk on the beach, needing to get away from us, I was sure. Sage incense, Lainey’s contribution to banish all bad energy, burned in the far corner.

  “Bonny,” Lainey murmured softly.

  “Yes?”

&
nbsp; “Do you remember that time Owen took us out in the little johnboat and we ran out of gas and had to try to paddle home using dead palmetto branches?”

  Lainey and I had both been doing this the last few days—throwing out random memories like confetti.

  “I do,” I said. “And Mr. Moreno saved us. He was out fishing and . . .”

  “We were so sunburned when we got home that we had blisters on our shoulders that night. Mom rubbed aloe all over us.” Lainey’s voice caught on the last word, like a nail snagging on a sweater, pulling at a string that might eventually make a huge hole.

  “And Dad gave us baby aspirin and Owen tried to sneak us the vodka bottle, saying it would cure us all,” I said.

  “He was fifteen,” Lainey said. “Already a mess, a troublemaker even before Mom left.” She hesitated, and I thought she’d fallen asleep or become lost in thought, when she said softly, “Can we talk about the night Owen came to your emergency room?”

  I nodded, but she wasn’t looking at me; she stared out toward the backyard. She took my silence as acquiescence.

  “How much have you seen him and talked to him since then? Or even before then, Bonny? I’ve missed him so much and he never calls or answers me. But he talks to you?”

  These were the fragile bones of our friendship. We’d avoided talking about him ever since my marriage. I trod softly. “He doesn’t talk to me much. I hear from him same as you—when he feels like it. The last time I saw him was the night before my wedding. You know this.”

  “It feels like there’s more. Like there are things I don’t know.”

  “No.”

  She folded and unfolded her legs. “Okay . . .”

  “We talk every couple months or when something happens. He’ll call out of the blue, or to tell me about a rescue in the Grand Canyon or a new adventure. We never see each other. He knows the milestones of my life, and he knows my marriage is rocky. We have talked. But not often, and I just knew I couldn’t . . . see him.”

  “Did he know about your plans? The ones to take the job in Atlanta and leave Lucas? Did he know?” Her voice changed; it was tight with questions coiled inside.

  “Yes.”

  “Did it have anything to do with him?”

  “I don’t know.” I paused. “Honest to God, I don’t know. I don’t think so, but how could it not? I’ve loved him; you know that. But in the literal sense, no. I wasn’t leaving for him. I decided to leave Lucas four years ago after that horrible night when I called you.”

  “The fight when he told you to quit your job—that his career was more important.”

  “Yes. I know people heal after things like that. I know. But not us. His anger and rage only grew worse and worse. God, Lainey, how many times have you suffered through listening to me? How long have you had to hash this out with me? I made those clandestine plans not to run away with your brother, but to get out. It would have been a nightmare to leave Lucas without leaving Charleston.”

  “But it had nothing to do with Owen?”

  “I don’t know what does or doesn’t have to do with Owen. It’s like he’s tangled in everything. But it’s always on his terms, Lainey. He shows up whenever he wants—and this last time at the hospital, after twenty-two years of nothing but letters and phone calls? It was devastating.”

  “Yes, it was.”

  Our voices changed—the lilt and cadence of our friendship transformed into something stilted and unnatural. The subject of Owen did this to us, which was why we mostly avoided discussing him altogether.

  “You’re angry with me,” I said.

  “No. I’m confused.”

  “There’s nothing to be confused about. I know you miss him, but I can’t make him call you any more than I can make him stop calling me. I don’t know what to say . . . I only know I love you and I want you here with me.”

  “There’s nothing to say. I’m not mad at you. If I’m mad at all, it’s at him. I promise.” She then stood and stretched. “I’m going to try and get some good sleep.”

  “Lainey . . .”

  “Don’t say anything else. We’re fine. It was just a question that’d been boiling around and . . .”

  “I understand.”

  Alone, I sat on the porch. The candles burned low, puddles of wax surrounded the wicks and the incense stick dropped its last ash. My heart beat in one-two timing, a quick rap-rap against my chest. I understood that being there wouldn’t banish Owen from my mind; how could it when this was where we had our first kiss, where I fell in love permanently and irreducibly? But I wanted to reclaim myself even in the place where he had claimed me.

  Memories I usually avoided clicked into place, one after the other, of Owen coming and going. Would I ever be free of his memory? I rose to walk back inside the house, and then, as if he’d heard my wondering, my cell rang.

  I didn’t answer.

  chapter 20

  PIPER BLANKENSHIP

  Fletch arrived quickly after his text asking if I was going to be at the bookshop that afternoon. His footsteps came up the creaky stairs to give me time to adjust myself in the chair, fix my hair over my shoulders and pose in some content version of a girl who wasn’t waiting for the boy, which she really was doing.

  “Hey, you,” he said, and I looked up from my engrossing story, pretending to be startled to see him standing there all windswept as if he’d just left the beach. This time his hair wasn’t pulled back into a thick black rubber band, somehow making him even more beautiful than before.

  “Oh, Fletch. Hi.”

  He glanced at the book, Station Eleven, in my hand. “So are you really into that book?” He pointed at my lap and ambled closer, his hands tucked into his back pockets.

  “Very.”

  “Tell me your favorite line so far,” he said and flopped next to me in the spot Mimi had just vacated.

  “Easy.” I lifted the book and flipped back to a page I’d bent over. “‘Hell is the absence of people you long for.’”

  “Nice,” he said and then shifted from foot to foot. “Not nice like it’s nice to long for people, but a nice sentence.”

  “I know, right? Even though it ends in a preposition and isn’t perfect on the outside, it is on the inside.”

  He laughed. “So I guess you’re so into that story that you might not want to go run some Market errands with me?”

  “You act like you want me to say no.”

  “Let me try again. Would you like to go run some Market errands with me?”

  “Sure,” I said. “Where we off to?”

  “Deliveries.”

  “Okay. Let’s go.”

  Fletch drove a Jeep, an open-air contraption that made me feel exposed and dangerous, like anything from the world could come in and grab us as we bumped along the dirt and pockmarked roads of peripheral Watersend. Because that was what I discovered—there were two Watersends: the one with the idyllic town square and the refurbished movie theater and quaint bookshop and then the one where people lived on the edge of poverty, but not quite tipping over. There the roads morphed into dirt and the picket fences were nowhere to be seen. The trailers began, and the dogs chased our Jeep, barking so heartily it seemed they were trying to tell us something.

  “What kind of Market business do you have out here?” I hollered into the air and over the music from the radio—Grateful Dead, a band whose lyrics I could never make out.

  Fletch downshifted and slowed, then turned the music low. “I deliver for a few customers. They either can’t get into town or won’t, so I just deliver them their weekly groceries.”

  “That’s nice of you,” I said and rested my head back on the seat and stared up at the sky.

  Fletch took a right into a gravel driveway and I grabbed on to the metal pole over my head to keep from sliding toward the outside of the car. He reached over and g
rabbed my leg, although we both knew that I was held tight by the Jeep’s harness belt. He kept his hand there for a moment and then shifted into park.

  The house in front of us was so small I wondered if it was a storage shed. But it must have been a home, because there was a garden to the right of it, a square plot full of tomatoes and peppers drooping heavy and full on the green stalks, waiting to drop into the hand that might receive them. Flowers bordered the vegetables—wild reds and yellows, blues and purples. And behind the main garden, a passel of sunflowers, what seemed to be a hundred of them reaching for the sky, their faces lifted in ecstasy.

  “I know,” Fletch said.

  “What?” I turned to him and it was then I realized that I was doing that thing I do—thinking all those crazy thoughts and some of them coming out in my voice.

  “The flowers like faces lifted. I’ve thought that before,” he said.

  I smiled but I also blushed, because this was what Ryan hated—when I said such random things that made no sense and I didn’t know I’d said anything at all.

  “Sometimes I don’t know when I say stupid things.”

  He took off his sunglasses and gazed right at me, like he wanted me to see the insides of his thoughts, right through his pupils. “That wasn’t stupid.”

  I unbuckled the harness and mumbled, “Oh, well, thanks.”

  He took my hand before I jumped out of the passenger side. “I like the things you say. You see things other people don’t see.”